It seemed as you were very new to the concept of non-emotional attachment to identity/I because you argued my semantics.
Not really, I've been practicing various forms of Buddhist meditation for several years and have pretty low attachment to my identity. This is substantially different from saying with any kind of certainty that helping other people is identical to helping myself. Other people want things contrary to what I want. I am not helping myself if I help them. Having low attachment to my identity is not the same thing as being okay with people hurting or killing me.
The rest of your post, which I'm not going to quote, is just mixing up lots of different things. I'm not sure if you're not aware of it or if you are aware of it and you're trying to obfuscate this discussion, but I will give you the benefit of the doubt.
I will untangle the mess. You said:
For example, neuroscience will tell you, that you and your environment are not separate from each other, it's all a part of your neural activity. So helping another is helping you. If that doesn't resonate enough, for example, evolutionary biology that we're all descendants from stardust might. Or that there is a probability that you don't exist (as per QM) although very small. So what happens? Your identity and self vanishes, as it's no longer aligned with reality, you accept facts, emotionally.
Then I said,
I feel it might help you to know that none of this is actually factual. These are your interpretations of really vague and difficult-to-pin-down philosophical ideas, ideas about which very smart and well-read people can and do disagree. For example, the idea that you and your environment are not separate from each other may be true in some narrow technical sense but it is also very much false in probably more relevant senses. The same could be said for the idea that helping another is helping yourself. That's not true if the other I'm helping is trying to murder me -- and if I can refute the generality with one example that I came up with in half a second of thought, it's not a very useful generality.
Since I have now grasped the source of your confusion with my word choice, I will reengage. You specifically say:
For example, neuroscience will tell you, that you and your environment are not separate from each other, it's all a part of your neural activity. So helping another is helping you.
This is a pure non sequitur. The fact that human brains run on physics in no way implies that helping another is helping yourself. Again, if a person wants to kill me, I'm not helping myself if I hand him a gun. If you model human agents the way Dennis Hoffman's character does in I Heart Huckabees you're going to end up repeatedly confused and stymied by reality.
So what happens? Your identity and self vanishes, as it's no longer aligned with reality, you accept facts, emotionally.
This is also just not factual. You're making an outlandish and totally unsupported claim when you say that "emotionally accepting reality" causes the annihilation of the self. The only known things that can make the identity and self vanish are
and even these are only true for certain circumscribed senses of the word "self".
So let's review:
I don't object to the naturalistic philosophy that you seem to enjoy. That's all cool and good. We're all about naturalistic science around here. The problem is statements like
So helping another is helping you.
and
Your identity and self vanishes, as it's no longer aligned with reality.
These are pseudo-religious woo, not supported by science anywhere. I have given you very simple examples of scenarios where they are flatly false, which immediately proves that they are not the powerful general truths you seem to think they are.
This is substantially different from saying with any kind of certainty that helping other people is identical to helping myself.
No, it's not.
Other people want things contrary to what I want.
What does that have to do with helping yourself, thus other people?
Having low attachment to my identity is not the same thing as being okay with people hurting or killing me.
Yeah, but 'me' is used practically.
The fact that human brains run on physics in no way implies that helping another is helping yourself.
I said your neural activity includes you and y...
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, then it goes here.
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