What do you believe?

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Royce

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« Reply #45 on: November 16, 2013, 08:46:59 pm »
I agree, not controversial at all.

Do you disagree though? No matter what we try, nothing will change for the better?

Should we all just lay down and stare at a hopeless and meaningless existence? let that darkness swallow us whole, and make us more angry and hostile?

I choose not to live that way. It is a choice.

jamesA01

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« Reply #46 on: November 16, 2013, 09:23:31 pm »
It's not about us or what we do. It's about what is.

If a large enough asteroid had collided with the earth at any point in its history we wouldn't be here. If commercial fusion reactors come online soon, there would be a certain amount of power. I'm not interested in humans or their moral vanity, which is nothing but a lure or excuse for their evil, or the promise things will get better which they won't. What is and what exists independently of us is the realm we might look to intervene in for some sort of refuge and a more civilized death. What is out there - that's what can have some sort or liberatory affect, that's the only thing that can do so. We can't be saved, we can't have meaning, teleology, or the vanity of our good intentions as anything other than chimera. We can die differently. We can DISCONNECT the social body further. We can be more alone, less dependent on each other and more on other things. We could live and die in total isolation with the technological capability to minimize our reliance and interaction with each other, to have access to a humane form of death at anytime we wish, to have all the resources and technical skills to endlessly alter and explore our bodies. We could have more moments of solitude, something resembling peace or at least acceptance of depression. I don't think aiming much higher than this is a good idea.

I am disgusted by this endless search for some sort of inner revelation in which we pull a solution to our pointless lives out of our asses and realize the answer was the good intentions of our limited anthropomorphic perspective after all and it's all gonna be cool now cos we WANT it to be and that HAS to mean SOMETHING!

Is anyone prepared to wonder if that type of thinking, which is post christianity through and through, isn't functioning as a kind of denial mechanism that tries and FAILS to abate a massive depression and exhaustion with the futility and sad symbolic rules of the game we're all currently playing with each other?


Phallus Pendulus

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« Reply #47 on: November 16, 2013, 11:00:02 pm »
It's not about us or what we do. It's about what is.

What you are is what is. You're never going to transcend the limits of your flawed human perspective. You're never going to have a godlike 100% objective understanding of existence. Every thought in your head, ever, is a result of processes outside your control. Live with it.

You can either resign yourself to your fate of being human (with all the limitations that come with it) and try to have a happy and positive life regardless, or you can can obsess over the existential pointlessness of it all and end up drooling in a lunatic asylum (Nietzsche) or bitterly ranting about YOUR BRAIN IS ALWAYS DECEIVED, SEMANTIC ARMAGEDDON IS COMING on a blog (Bakker).

jamesA01

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« Reply #48 on: November 16, 2013, 11:43:23 pm »
You can shove your happy and positive life up your permanently grinning asshole.

jamesA01

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« Reply #49 on: November 16, 2013, 11:45:07 pm »
I know by saying so I am mentally ill/criminal and deserve locked up with SSRI's and tortured with condescension and self help hectoring until I commit suicide and it really makes you like appreciate the beautiful things in life you know? But still, sorry, just for once I'm not going to play ball.

jamesA01

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« Reply #50 on: November 16, 2013, 11:46:40 pm »
Also, the semantic apocalypse is already here and it was a physical illness that affected Nietzsche, not the consequences of his philosophy.

jamesA01

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« Reply #51 on: November 16, 2013, 11:48:07 pm »
And its funny that you extrapolate god like objectivity from my position which is the precise fucking opposite. That all that is actually there is what matters and not how we perceive it at all. And only the way we interact with, or rather, the way it interacts with us, is going to lead to any kind of civility.

Callan S.

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« Reply #52 on: November 17, 2013, 01:33:30 am »
Quote
I'm not interested in...the promise things will get better which they won't.
Aww, I thought you were arguing against 'Hey, get out there and work, work, work! And it'll all get better!' spouted by those who profit a great deal from all that work (and put others to work at propergating that idea).

James, I'd dig if you are against how the one currency (money) drags us all into one party line or something.

But I mean, what did you eat this morning, eh? If you're all 'fuck happyness' while your sustaining yourself with some self supplied food and shelter resources, okay, that's challenging!

Otherwise it sounds like you're hanging off the same teat as the rest of us, but think yelling at your fellow monkeys somehow means you are coming from somewhere else entirely.

Where is your somewhere else, and precisely how much yelling does it take to suddenly be coming from there?

Callan S.

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« Reply #53 on: November 17, 2013, 01:34:11 am »
On other matters: That mirror neurons talk, in regards to there being no empathy in heaven - that kinda tied into me Earwa theory and that its a far future thing. Why did they leave everyone to fall back to a dark ages life, then? Because empathy was so highly prized - they hadda leave everyone in the gutter, so as to maintain its presence.

Madness

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« Reply #54 on: November 17, 2013, 03:06:25 pm »
james, I'm not sure I really care either way but the option was there to modify your first post before another post shows up rather than post four in a row.

To wring some sense out of this for myself:

I don't like the concept of belief very much. What exactly is it? Something you just decide is true, because... you want to? Or you want it to be?

I am yet to be convinced that anyone espousing any beliefs is doing so from some sort of objective neutral and rational point of decision making, totally uninfluenced by their neuro-physiology. As if we were autonomous subjects rather than creatures with brains infested by memes circulating the socius, getting off on the sensation of will and presence, or the opposite.

I think you were responding generally to the thread (and to be honest, this thread was a reasoned version of what it might had been had we included population samples outside Bakker readership) but I will respond for myself.

I could narrate to you all the ways I've discovered, so far, that others come before me. But when all that is described I would probably suggest that I do decide a few items to be my beliefs (as opposed to the stuff, which clearly moved and shaped me before I had recognition of the forces at work) and that all my beliefs do for me, personally, is sometimes motivate me to embody practices, behaviors, that will shape me into the person I am aiming to be in my life.

And then messy life comes back, knocks my intentions out, and then I deal as best I can.

What's more, I'd probably go on to say that at this time, the evidence I've been exposed to suggests that all I'm doing is cultivating novel patterns (schema) of neuroarchitecture in order to change habitual behaviors. Carving the meat, as it were.

Let's get back to some of the earlier ideas posted here about the empathetic civilization.

Doesn't this kind of assume that empathy would be in favour of life itself. What about an empathy that saw death as the only reprieve? Is it not possible to have a kind of empathy that sees destruction as the only possible mercy? I think maybe this is more realistic than the idea that we are all going to have some moment of reconnection with each other where our self interest aligns with everyone else's.

Any of the people I've met IRL that espouse empathy have a suspicious tendency to do so almost exclusively for events and stories presented to them in the media.

We all have bad examples and are bad examples, sometimes. The best metaphor (metaphor) I can use is karma, the idea that if you do good, good comes back to you. Personally, I think this is actually an acute observation of sociocultural mechanism. I can frown or smile at people as I walk or skate the streets, I can hold doors, I can hold my tongue, etc, etc, ad nauseam. Or I can be loud and abravise, wear the scary, don't fuck with face, rudely and ruthlessly accomplish everything I want, in every petty moment. From my link in the chain, even these simple behaviors radiate from each of us - in my case, the way I behave further shapes how people view students, young-adults, the poor, as I am visibly each of these things. Not mention how others use there interactions with me as an individual to justify other actions.

I don't actually think I had to explain any of that here. To your point, I can imagine assisted suicide being empathy. I personally would love to get to a place where individuals aren't put in the position (because they are healthy) where they want death to be the only option.

It's not about us or what we do. It's about what is.

...

I am disgusted by this endless search for some sort of inner revelation in which we pull a solution to our pointless lives out of our asses and realize the answer was the good intentions of our limited anthropomorphic perspective after all and it's all gonna be cool now cos we WANT it to be and that HAS to mean SOMETHING!

Is anyone prepared to wonder if that type of thinking, which is post christianity through and through, isn't functioning as a kind of denial mechanism that tries and FAILS to abate a massive depression and exhaustion with the futility and sad symbolic rules of the game we're all currently playing with each other?

I think that this thinking is a product of accepting human sociocultural organization as it stands. Change has to be attempted first before we can use defeat as a reason to quit (and even then I'd counsel otherwise).

I'm not advocating any divine or alien revelations. I'm suggesting that we choose to act differently.

What you are is what is. You're never going to transcend the limits of your flawed human perspective. You're never going to have a godlike 100% objective understanding of existence. Every thought in your head, ever, is a result of processes outside your control. Live with it.

I think we can become relatively less flawed? Certainly, to me it seems, that we can become more capable and skillful in using our brain/body unit.

I know by saying so I am mentally ill/criminal and deserve locked up with SSRI's and tortured with condescension and self help hectoring until I commit suicide and it really makes you like appreciate the beautiful things in life you know? But still, sorry, just for once I'm not going to play ball.

james, this is the place to not play ball. It's welcomed, I think.

And you live in a country that quells dissent with the time-honoured tradition of Insane Asylums. It is unfortunate.

I do doubt that any of us thought that is what should be done with your opinions. I, for one, enjoy your perspective immensely. I simply wish you might tailor it towards action, expression.

For instance, I know a number of people who advocate against Social Services here in Canada for leaving children with dark creatures - people who had themselves been wronged and worked to change the structure of the system. It's not ideal but it is an option and an exercise of our limited agency.
« Last Edit: November 17, 2013, 03:10:19 pm by Madness »
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jamesA01

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« Reply #55 on: November 17, 2013, 03:21:35 pm »
The concept of karma you've mentioned is the bastardized western version. The original concept of karma is not about doing good in order for good things to happen to you. The goal is to have ZERO karma.

All this stuff about nice small gestures - I don't buy it. It's like the idea that if a person does one good thing or has one good characteristic they are somehow redeemed. Do I have to spell out what western cultural phenomenon this is descended from again?

I don't buy "choice", I don't buy any notion that we are going to redeem ourselves with some sudden moment where we realign our priorities. I don't believe it is peoples failure to desire the right way that makes them evil.


Madness

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« Reply #56 on: November 17, 2013, 03:29:45 pm »
The concept of karma you've mentioned is the bastardized western version. The original concept of karma is not about doing good in order for good things to happen to you. The goal is to have ZERO karma.

Personally, I think this is actually an acute observation of sociocultural mechanism.

I'm working my way, way back from negative, so it's moot point, regardless.

All this stuff about nice small gestures - I don't buy it. It's like the idea that if a person does one good thing or has one good characteristic they are somehow redeemed. Do I have to spell out what western cultural phenomenon this is descended from again?

I don't buy "choice", I don't buy any notion that we are going to redeem ourselves with some sudden moment where we realign our priorities. I don't believe it is peoples failure to desire the right way that makes them evil.

You don't have to think anything about my choices. I am mostly a product of my environment - whatever describing words I give those predeterminations. I don't want redemption nor do I care about it. I care about what I am, or 'this machine in this place is,' doing here and now and how that affects all the entities, known and unknown, matter and immaterial, in our consensual hallucinations.

The reasons I've chosen to act put me at a difference from the actions of others, 'chosen or not.'

Thoughts?
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jamesA01

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« Reply #57 on: November 17, 2013, 04:02:00 pm »
Fine, but you're bringing it back to individual persons when all I'm interested in is ideas in general.

sologdin

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« Reply #58 on: November 17, 2013, 04:11:14 pm »
redemption is an odd prosthesis to moral doctrine, a commercial or financial concept, much like salvation, ain't it? (corollary damnation is a legal concept, as expressed for instance in the ancient doctrine of damnum absque iniuria.)

exactly what is it that needs repurchased, anyway?

Madness

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« Reply #59 on: November 17, 2013, 04:20:20 pm »
Fine, but you're bringing it back to individual persons when all I'm interested in is ideas in general.

I'm unclear. Which part can I generalize on in particular? And beyond describing the futility or efficacy of certain beliefs over others, what is it I concede based on our generalizations?

exactly what is it that needs repurchased, anyway?

Maybe it harkens back to reclaiming the garden idealization?

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