To follow this line of thinking, are you suggesting I can have an intimate relationship with a rock? If you're not speaking to the point about intimacy, what point are you speaking to, because your post isn't very clear what point, if any, you were trying to make.

Yes. Only one small part of your brain finds that idea ridiculous.

Do you have intimate relationships with rocks? and if so can you describe what that relationship is like? Does your conscious self acknowledge this relationship or are you just speaking in some metaphysical sense that is completely intangible?

Like I said, people have intimate relations with dolls, 3d waifus, and goddamn robot dogs.

Its extremely closed minded to think intimate relations are limited to human -> human interactions

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intimate

Nothing in the definition requires two humans

And rocks I'm sure

Yes. People have great fascination with many inanimate objects, usually with exceptional features or stories based around them. They seek to protect and understand these objects at great depth. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uluru https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_Stone

And trees, and blankets, and baseballs, and coffee mugs, and diaries.

Well, the universe is full of rocks. “Intimate” may not be a great word (too anthropic and intangible), but writing off all these rocks as boring and banal is probably narrow sighted. Birds, sun and vegetation may feel intimate, but try to feel that without a rock right under your feet. They have a point, imo. We tend to ignore “default” things, but it doesn’t make them irrelevant, they are an important part of the setup. The next thing to feel intimate relationships with is gas (the universe is full of gas that produced you after all, isn’t that as close to “intimate” as it can get).

> “Intimate” may not be a great word

Intimate was the centerpiece of my curiosity. Sure I can have feelings about the universe and the rocks that exist within this universe, but there is no intimacy.

> isn’t that as close to “intimate” as it can get

No, intimacy isn't a feeling that just happens to you or a circumstance you happen to be in, it's an active relationship where both parties involved do something to foster or maintain the intimacy.

Can someone feel as though rocks were actively fostering or maintaining intimacy with them? I mean, I guess? I'm not sure what that would look or feel like to believe that inanimate objects were actively working to deepen their relationship with you.

Rather it feels like this metaphysical spiritual jargon I read here is just co-opting a word to give more significance to a different kind of relationship someone might feel towards inanimate objects. It's harmless I'm sure, but at the root of it, it feels very selfish and condescending to take a word that has clear meaning and suggest to someone they just aren't using all of their brain if they can't understand intimacy with inanimate objects.

Now, understand I really don't mind misuse of words if it's towards a greater goal of communication, but here it feels like it's towards a lesser goal of demeaning people who use the word only for effective communication.

I see why you're offended now. It was not my intention.

I don't think I can describe it in words. Like I said, our egos stop us from taking the idea too seriously, perhaps out of a survival instinct. There are some drugs that will cause "ego death". The part of your brain that distinguishes between the self and the other literally ceases to function. It sounds metaphysical and silly, but when it happens, you understand how insignificant your ego truly is in comparison with the world, and yet it tells you that it contains every perception that tells you what the world is, and it's only when that ego stops that you can see that the world, including you, can go on without your ego.

So, just like intimate moments with a lover, or a musical instrument, or blessed peaceful moment, you are allowed to forget about yourself. That is my understanding of intimacy.

What is yours?

I've tried basically every ego-death drug that exists (or that I'm aware of) and I've still not felt the need to assert to people that they have a non-functioning part of their brain they aren't using to understand "intimacy" with inanimate objects.

I've had intimacy with a lover because the lover is participating in the intimacy. I've never had it with an instrument, I have felt it with a musician. Again, intimacy requires two participating entities. An instrument is dull and lifeless and only a tool used by the musician to facilitate in intimacy. Without the musician the instrument is effectively a curiously shaped rock.

I've also had intimate moments, where again there was an entity participating in the intimacy. The very roots of the word mean to impress or make familiar, which requires two participants. A rock can't be impressed it cannot feel familiar. Likewise a rock cannot impress itself upon you even if you feel impressed by the rock, it also cannot make itself familiar to you even if you feel familiar with it.

Again though, it's not about the incorrect usage of the word, which people do all the time to _improve_ communication. It's about the assertion that I, or anyone else who feels like me, is wrong and just isn't using part of their brain. Has it occurred to you that maybe you're wrong? Maybe you're misusing a part of your brain to imagine something that has never existed.

I'm fully aware that I may be wrong and there may be something beyond my natural senses that would allow this intimacy on a spiritual level that maybe can be revealed only by taking drugs that unveil a part of our psyche that sees this more clearly. Are you aware that you may be entirely wrong? I suspect not since you've asserted your position comes from a greater understanding, although I suspect you've had no experience that was vastly different from my own, you've just chosen to believe that experience imparted a superior understanding to you than I might have.

I did no ego-death drugs, but I definitely can feel how the complexity of things I interact with reacts to my changes and approaches. It is animate, and intimate to my understanding of that word (I can’t even describe it to the others). One may say thay it’s all in my head, and in a sense would be right, but it’s all in your head as well. Were you a rock, you couldn’t feel it. Were your lovers p-zombies, you couldn’t tell it. But on the other hand, despite having relationships in my life, I can’t tell that they were more intimate than that, so that I could somehow choose one over another if asked to. Maybe I cannot feel intimacy it at all? Another possibility is that neither of us are wrong, stumbling on a definition of a rock. Any phenomenon is complex enough when you dig deeper, and the complexity is never inanimate, it interacts back.

Also, I too didn’t want to sound condescending or superior, and more importantly do not feel that way, but I understand the initial comment you replied to. One issue with this subthread is it never defined rocks or intimacy, which I tried to explore but then left.

it's an active relationship where both parties involved do something to foster or maintain the intimacy

Both yes and no. At wake up in the morning level, it is correct, but when you get into something deep/high enough, lines start to blur. Is a human the most complex being? Is he really what we think it is? Are we objects and not parts of something more sophisticated as a whole? Being non-religious non-esoteric I’m not speaking sprirituals here, these are physical questions you have to ask yourself anyway. See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28870858

Edit: and if you feel that these comments are quite delusional, it’s fine, because problems of consciousness (which intimacy fully bases on) live exactly on that level. The more you think about it, the less ground you feel.

Oh, I totally believe I might be wrong. I'm just sharing from my experience, as you are. I'm sorry you are taking it as implying some kind of deficiency because I'm truly not trying to.

I play piano for myself sometimes. I used to play because I was supposed to, but now I play because I can make such beautiful sounds, which sounds like bragging but I don't mean it that way. It's me and the piano together, for a moment, making something incredible.

It's ok if you haven't felt that with an inanimate object. It doesn't make you bad or lacking. And in fact, I do agree that this intimacy is a hallucination, borne of a perception that exists only in my own mind, meaningless to anyone else. That doesn't make it any less real to me. It still IMHO is as real and meaningful as a relationship with another human being.

Can someone define "intimate relationship" so that we know what we are arguing about?

I have an intimate relationship with kaolinite, silica, bentonite, and feldspar. I could go on and on.

Why the fuck not, people have intimate relationships with human sized dolls

I think you may be confused: it’s almost like saying that “a car has had an intimate relationship with a pole.”

Have you seen midnight mass? The protaganist from that movie in the final scene, says something along those lines... as she herself is dying. She was asked earlier in the movie: "What happens when we die"... and iirc she gave a more christian-themed notion as she herself was very religious, but you can see her shift from the dogma of catholicism to one more pantheistic.

When the memory of Riley asks her what happens when we die she responds:

“Speaking for myself? Myself. My self. That’s the problem. That’s the whole problem with the whole thing. That word: self. That’s not the word, that’s not right, that isn’t — that isn’t. How did I forget that? When did I forget that? The body stops a cell at a time, but the brain keeps firing those neurons. Little lightning bolts, like fireworks inside, and I thought I’d despair or feel afraid, but I don’t feel any of that. None of it. Because I’m too busy. I’m too busy in this moment. Remembering. Of course. I remember that every atom in my body was forged in a star. This matter, this body, is mostly just empty space after all, and solid matter?

It’s just energy vibrating very slowly and there is no me. There never was. The electrons of my body mingle and dance with the electrons of the ground below me and the air I’m no longer breathing. And I remember there is no point where any of that ends and I begin. I remember I am energy. Not memory. Not self. My name, my personality, my choices, all came after me. I was before them and I will be after, and everything else is pictures picked up along the way. Fleeting little dreamlets printed on the tissue of my dying brain.

And I am the lightning that jumps between. I am the energy fighting the neurons. And I’m returning. Just by remembering, I’m returning home. It’s like a drop of water falling back into the ocean, of which it’s always been a part. All things, a part. All of us, a part. You, me, and my little girl, and my mother, and my father, everyone who’s ever been. Every plant, every animal, every atom, every star, every galaxy, all of it. More galaxies in the universe than grains of sand on the beach.

That’s what we’re talking about when we say God. The one. The cosmos, and its infinite dreams. We are the cosmos dreaming of itself. It’s simply a dream that I think is my life, every time. But I’ll forget this. I always do. I always forget my dreams. But now, in this split second, in the moment I remember, the instant I remember, I comprehend everything at once. There is no time. There is no death. Life is a dream. It’s a wish. Made again and again and again and again and again and again and on into eternity. And I am all of it. I am everything. I am all. I am that I am.”

This monologue gave (continues to give me goosebumps)... I'm exmormon/agnostic, but still inspired and have some spirituality...I believe there's something bigger and better and our 'energy' continues on in some respect, or we're at least in a simulation and maybe will respawn and get another chance to get life 'right'.. either way, I think death isn't the end, and this was just a very beautiful way to think of it...

Thanks for sharing