Carmel wrote:The most obvious thing is that, there is no difference in women and men's IQ.
Weininger wrote at length about genius, and clearly distinguished it from "talent". IQ is quite obviously the latter. He said that men and women differ in terms of genius. And there is a difference between male and female IQs, actually. You say you've read his book, but you can't understand much of the content of a book if you read it with the conviction that its author is a suicidal psychopath.
I would say that modern science has only begun to catch up with Weininger on the issue of gender differences. He was a magnificent scientist.
He seemed to think that women were incapable of rational thought and were living in the henids. I don't see how the cognitive capacity of women being the same as men is irrelevant. Obviously, this only addresses one aspect of his gender "philosophy".
He makes other ridiculous claims as well that have been usurped by modern science, for example he claims that when women steal, it's because the feel "entitled", but when men steal, they feel deep pangs of guilt because they are inherently moral, whereas women aren't. Of course, in Weininger's day, people weren't aware that some men are sociopaths and psychopaths and these men would be incapable of feeling remorse for stealing due to the fact that they have no conscience.
His hypotheses regarding gender simply don't pass the test of reality, across the board.
jup:
Weininger wrote at length about genius, and clearly distinguished it from "talent". IQ is quite obviously the latter. He said that men and women differ in terms of genius. And there is a difference between male and female IQs, actually.
Carmel:
No, there is not a difference "actually".
jup:
You say you've read his book, but you can't understand much of the content of a book if you read it with the conviction that its author is a suicidal psychopath.
Carmel:
He was suicidal. I didn't say he was a "psychopath". I don't have to agree with someone to understand their writing. This is a logical fallacy on your part. My reading comprehension is outstanding.
jup:
I would say that modern science has only begun to catch up with Weininger on the issue of gender differences. He was a magnificent scientist.
Carmel:
Weininger wasn't a scientist. He was an immature kid with an opinion and no evidence to support it, he's much like you in that regard, lil' buckaroo.
Does this capacity to create useful blind spots or psychic shields against psychological pain during solitary introspection, as you more or less put it, indicate that the male mind is actually comprised differently than the female mind, in principle? By which I mean, is there any element of mind missing in males which exists in females, or vice versa, that you have been able to detect?
Carmel wrote:He seemed to think that women were incapable of rational thought and were living in the henids.
Most women are incapable of reason. A rational person can interpret a rock's falling down a hill as a rational thing for it to do, given its weight, gravity, the slope of the hill, atmospheric pressure, the mineral constituting the rock, and absence of magnetic fields, yet the rock itself is not rational. Women behave as "instinctively" rationally as the rock does, compelled by forces like emotions. The difference between being totally (women) and partially so (men) is significant.
He makes other ridiculous claims as well that have been usurped by modern science, for example he claims that when women steal, it's because the feel "entitled", but when men steal, they feel deep pangs of guilt because they are inherently moral, whereas women aren't.
Do you know of fathers who have to move out of the family home, which they have paid for, because the mothers don't want them there? Doesn't it seem odd to you?
Of course, in Weininger's day, people weren't aware that some men are sociopaths and psychopaths and these men would be incapable of feeling remorse for stealing due to the fact that they have no conscience.
This shows you either haven't read Weininger or can't remember what he wrote.
His hypotheses regarding gender simply don't pass the test of reality, across the board.
Starbird wrote:Does this capacity to create useful blind spots or psychic shields against psychological pain during solitary introspection, as you more or less put it, indicate that the male mind is actually comprised differently than the female mind, in principle? By which I mean, is there any element of mind missing in males which exists in females, or vice versa, that you have been able to detect?
It's as David said: the element of mind missing in males is the ability to enjoy pointless, wild, insane emotions. They don't take pleasure in insanity. Even at their most insanely impassioned (such as yahooing at sports games, or screaming hoons driving at reckless speeds while half-drunk), they are not enjoying the emotions themselves so much as helplessly expressing joy on achieving something dangerous and risky.
Crudely put, it's like giving a man the opportunity to experience wild, insane and pointless mental elements: he ponders it, and resists it, because it's meaningless and worthless to him. But give him the opportunity to achieve something grand or unusual, or to witness or help it to come to fruition, he gets very excited --- his vision, power, and creative instinct are aroused.
A crazy and surreal artist exploring insanity in performance is the same kind of thing. It's not the emotions per se, but the thrill of challenging set paradigms of reality and perception. The purpose remains uppermost. There is no real chaos in it, unlike the unconscious, reactive flim-flam of the feminine mind.
Carmel wrote:He was suicidal. I didn't say he was a "psychopath". I don't have to agree with someone to understand their writing. This is a logical fallacy on your part. My reading comprehension is outstanding.
Dan is right Carmel, it's an obvious fallacy to exploit the fact that Weininger was suicidal. Wouldn't it be fallacious of someone to list all the writers who have taken their own lives and exploit that information to unfairly and negatively discredit their output? What about Hemingway, or Virginia Wolf, or Hunter S. Thompson? Clearly, it's not as simple as you make it appear. The fact that an individual commits suicide is a relevant fact of reality, I don't think any sane person would dispute this, and yes this fact can inform the environment in which that individual lived and worked, but it's an unfair and unneccesary fallacy of relevance to fabricate an argument against that individual's views based entirely (or in part) on the fact that they took their own life. Just as it would be a fallacy of relevance to use the same information that some writer, musician, philosopher or whatever who commits suicide is somehow more worthy of interest and attention. Again, it can inform the reader on the life of the author, but the relevance of the event starts and ends there.
Suicide is an interesting topic in itself, in that it's almost exclusively considered by the living as a failure of some sort. Don't some parts of ourselves die all the time? When a person goes through a difficult period in their life, like something shitty happens and causes them to suffer for a while, isn't the death of those causes of suffering a good thing? I think it reveals more about those people who want others to live than it does about those who take their own lives, in the sense that rarely do we ask the suicidal person 'what is it that wants to die'? I think there's a decent possibility that Weininger would probably not have shot himself had someone asked him that basic question.
There's also the fallacy that all suicides are equal. Some suicides are idiotic, while another might be intelligent (like having a highly contagious and fatal illness, with no means of quarantining oneself or finding a cure; or euthanasia for those 70 years and over in an overpopulated planet).
In that respect, Weininger's suicide may have been the result of having a very rare, abnormal "condition" of psychological insight. To judge him accurately as weak for throwing in the towel, one has to be in his shoes, and know what he did. Who of us can say we know what he thought, or imagined?
Moreover, to judge his insights as unrealistic or disturbed, on the basis of his suicide, is convenient, but as Dan says, has absolutely no relevance to the content of those insights. What if he was aware of a form of popularised insanity, about which most people had blindspots? Such as, to pick an easy example, what women's talk about men really means? Just because it's not popular, doesn't mean it's not true. That would be like sparrows pecking an abnormal sparrow to death.
Kelly Jones wrote:There's also the fallacy that all suicides are equal....In that respect, Weininger's suicide may have been the result of having a very rare, abnormal "condition" of psychological insight. To judge him accurately as weak for throwing in the towel, one has to be in his shoes, and know what he did. Who of us can say we know what he thought, or imagined?
Who are we to consider some suicides 'idiotic'? I think to do so is to be short on compassion and understanding. My view is that Weininger saw too deeply into the nature of the 'fallen' human condition, saw no way out of the horror - at least in his day, layed out his views for posterity, and simply left the lifeless, loveless, dog-eat-dog, human insane asylum that he understood all-too-well. As was the case similarly with Nietzsche slipping into his 'insanity.'
Last edited by Bob Michael on Mon Jan 03, 2011 3:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Okay, let's say we've isolated what appears to be a, or the, missing element, and it appears to be an element missing in men, not in women. How does this specifically translate into the mental architecture of the mind? A missing element can result from there either being not enough mental furniture, so to speak, leaving a lacuna, or, there could be an excess of mental furniture, crowding out the cathexis to enjoying "pointless, wild, insane emotions" women are heir to. Which do you think it is: Are men emptier than women, or are they more full?
In case that seems recondite, let me consider it from another angle, before turning it back to you to comment. Suppose you had an organism with all the sense-organs of man, but, which was possessed of a kind of "blindsight" regarding each sense. That is, the ears heard, the eyes saw, the tongue tasted, but, this sense data were not transmitted discretely into the mind via the brain, but, instead, were used by the brain to generate a subconscious gestalt, that the sense-deprived mind then encountered, responded to based on its emotional/sexual value, and which led its brain to initiate actions which the mind itself never had direct sensory access to.
Such a mind, would not feel alienated from the world of emotionality, nor from the biological world, because there would be no paradoxical input from the senses, e.g. sight is futuristic, telling what is about to happen; hearing is simultaneous, telling what is happening now; smell is historical, telling what has happened, etc.. Such a mind would take it all in, and, for lack of contrast, see nothing at all except the colourful and exuberant tracings of its emotional threads, threads which, for lack of discrete sense data, serve as the flesh of the world connecting all to all.
Such a mind, would not think in terms of A = A, for there would be nothing discrete in its universe. Every emotional complex and flush would ebb and flow without true repetition, every identity would always come with a thread leading it back to the locus of the Self, which in turn is non-identical but ever-shifting. This mind would fear any complex of interaction ("being") which threatened to use shears to cut the threads and define territory, to halt the flux and insist on identity, to objectify for the purposes of insane logicking. Objectification would be a kind of rape. Does such a mind sound familiar?
To attempt to answer my own question from paragraph one, I will postulate that the "missing element" of men exists as the confluence of factors present in men which are not present in women, or else present in very distorted form. These would be: floating (manipulative) consciousness, discrete percepts, and floating (manipulative) memory. In response to this lack (lack of invasive masculinity dominating the mind) women's emotional and sexual aspects grow like fabulous alien jungles to fill all mental space, becoming so large they develop what I term roths ([ROW-ths] "reasons of the heart") which govern decisions by arbitrarily selecting henids for development, but, which, cannot themselves ever be fully expressed, being too large for words to utter.
Therefore, men are missing the sheer, overwhelming mass of intricate emotions. They must appear as stubble before the woman's garden of mind. This lack allows the Intellect to shine forth clearly, drawing men towards its painful white light, in the realisation of the higher things. Alienated from the garden of feminine Eden, man must rip the roots out of his very skin that he might pursue this transcendent beauty in whatever form his private mental language is able to comprehend. Because of this, men can and must discriminate between the lower, orgasmic, biological-abiotic principle of the feminine Lithosphere, and the higher, noetic, cognitive principle of the masculine Noosphere. His vision saps the pleasure from the purity of the feminine bliss within him, leaving a bitter taste of shame in its stead, driving him towards the Infinite.
Dan is right Carmel, it's an obvious fallacy to exploit the fact that Weininger was suicidal. Wouldn't it be fallacious of someone to list all the writers who have taken their own lives and exploit that information to unfairly and negatively discredit their output? What about Hemingway, or Virginia Wolf, or Hunter S. Thompson?
Carmel:
Were any of the authors you mentioned "enlightened"? That's supposed to be the focus of this forum or so I thought.
If a militant feminist showed up and and started spamming the place with Solanas quotes, I guarantee you that the fact that she was bat-shit crazy would enter the discussion...and she was bat shit crazy, btw. It's relevant to understand the psychology of an author who is writing about things that are of a personal nature, such as Weininger and Solanas did. Their psychological issues clearly affected their opinion on gender issues.
Robert:
Clearly, it's not as simple as you make it appear. The fact that an individual commits suicide is a relevant fact of reality, I don't think any sane person would dispute this, and yes this fact can inform the environment in which that individual lived and worked, but it's an unfair and unneccesary fallacy of relevance to fabricate an argument against that individual's views based entirely (or in part) on the fact that they took their own life. Just as it would be a fallacy of relevance to use the same information that some writer, musician, philosopher or whatever who commits suicide is somehow more worthy of interest and attention. Again, it can inform the reader on the life of the author, but the relevance of the event starts and ends there.
Carmel:
I don't negate his works based upon his suicide, but I do consider it relevant to his psychology and how it shaped his opinions. There is no point in trying to bury one's head in the sand and deny that it was.
Robert:
Suicide is an interesting topic in itself, in that it's almost exclusively considered by the living as a failure of some sort. Don't some parts of ourselves die all the time? When a person goes through a difficult period in their life, like something shitty happens and causes them to suffer for a while, isn't the death of those causes of suffering a good thing? I think it reveals more about those people who want others to live than it does about those who take their own lives, in the sense that rarely do we ask the suicidal person 'what is it that wants to die'? I think there's a decent possibility that Weininger would probably not have shot himself had someone asked him that basic question.
Carmel:
yes, or better yet, if he had asked himself that same question. What he wanted to die within himself was his "feminine" side. If he had comes to terms with it, instead of loathing it as he did, his fate would have been entirely different.
Last edited by Carmel on Mon Jan 03, 2011 2:42 am, edited 2 times in total.
Kelly:
Most women are incapable of reason. A rational person can interpret a rock's falling down a hill as a rational thing for it to do, given its weight, gravity, the slope of the hill, atmospheric pressure, the mineral constituting the rock, and absence of magnetic fields, yet the rock itself is not rational. Women behave as "instinctively" rationally as the rock does, compelled by forces like emotions. The difference between being totally (women) and partially so (men) is significant.
Carmel:
The empirical evidence does not support your nebulous, henidic, useless blatherings.
That's just the way it is. The rational thing to do would be to accept this and move beyond your cartoonish, one dimensional views that women are like rocks one liners. It's a complete joke.
--
I'm not interested in discussing Weininger with you. He's not worthy of spending time on as he clearly never attained liberation or enlightenment. He might serve a purpose for the young and angsty, psychologically immature who are still struggling with issues surrounding gender and sexual identity. I'm well beyond that stage.
Carmel wrote:Were any of the authors you mentioned "enlightened"? That's supposed to be the focus of this forum or so I thought.
Those authors I cited as examples may or not have been enlightened, it doesn't really matter since it's utterly irrelevant to the point I tried to make. It's a bit like asking "were any of those authors you mentioned left handed?". Do you define enlightenment as some sort of self-help method, where we're all supposed to sit in circles, hold hands and chant mantras or something? I hope not, I'm tone deaf.
Carmel wrote:If a militant feminist showed up and and started spamming the place with Solanas quotes, I guarantee you that the fact that she was bat-shit crazy would enter the discussion...and she was bat shit crazy, btw. It's relevant to understand the psychology of an author who is writing about things that are of a personal nature, such as Weininger and Solanas did. Their psychological issues clearly affected their opinion on gender issues.
Sure, I agree, but then it depends on how you define issues, don't you think? A person's issues will undoubtably affect their views and opinions since issues can be defined as views and opinions. Show me the person who doesn't have issues and doesn't have opinions. I doubt they exist, unless they're in a coma.
Carmel wrote:I don't negate his works based upon his suicide, but I do consider it relevant to his psychology and how it shaped his opinions. There is no point in trying to bury one's head in the sand and deny that it was.
Like Kelly said, no one can know for sure why he took his life, we can only speculate. You're again commiting a fallacy by allowing an event that took place after his writings (his suicide) to pollute your opinion of his work. You're projecting meaning where it may not be justified to do so, correlation is not causation.
Carmel wrote:yes, or better yet, if he had asked himself that same question. What he wanted to die within himself was his "feminine" side. If he had comes to terms with it, instead of loathing it as he did, his fate would have been entirely different.
I doubt it was that simple, and again we don't really know why he did what he did. Would you have preferred that his fate be that he lived, found a woman, got married, had a family, a career... in short a life that maybe you could be comfortable imagining the ideal scenario for him might have been? Or some other life, whatever, but just not that one, that ended that way? Don't you see how it's more about the way someone like Weininger is framed that causes the most problems, the way it's too easy to quote mine and cherry pick what he wrote in a way that cheapens his message, that twists meaning unfairly?
Those authors I cited as examples may or not have been enlightened, it doesn't really matter since it's utterly irrelevant to the point I tried to make. It's a bit like asking "were any of those authors you mentioned left handed?"
Carmel:
...and this is irrelevant to the point I was trying to make..and so it goes...as I said previously when I agreed with Dan... I don't take Weininger that seriously. He had potential, but unfortunately, never fully realized it and he certainly wasn't enlightened; I think it's important to keep that in mind given the alleged goals of this forum.
Robert:
Do you define enlightenment as some sort of self-help method, where we're all supposed to sit in circles, hold hands and chant mantras or something? I hope not, I'm tone deaf.
Carmel:
wtf, Robert? Have you lost your mind?! ;)...no, that's not how I define enlightenment. I generally agree with the definition of enlightenment as described by this forum, that is to say, that it is a lack of "delusion", but the problem with this definition is that there doesn't seem to be a clear consensus among people in general, or even amongst the members of this forum as to what that definition is and furthermore, no one is the sole arbitrater of this definition. Anyone who believes theirs is the one and only "true" definition is deluded beyond redemption, relatively speaking. :) How do you define "delusion", Robert?
Robert:
Sure, I agree, but then it depends on how you define issues, don't you think? A person's issues will undoubtably affect their views and opinions since issues can be defined as views and opinions. Show me the person who doesn't have issues and doesn't have opinions. I doubt they exist, unless they're in a coma.
Carmel:
Yes, I quite agree.
Robert:
Like Kelly said, no one can know for sure why he took his life, we can only speculate. You're again commiting a fallacy by allowing an event that took place after his writings (his suicide) to pollute your opinion of his work. You're projecting meaning where it may not be justified to do so, correlation is not causation.
Carmel:
His work pollutes his own work. I can see that quite clearly and would not think otherwise even if I was oblivious to the fact that he commited suicide. Did you read his book? Some of it is really off the deep end, of course, those quotes never get displayed here by his supporters.
Robert:
I doubt it was that simple, and again we don't really know why he did what he did. Would you have preferred that his fate be that he lived, found a woman, got married, had a family, a career... in short a life that maybe you could be comfortable imagining the ideal scenario for him might have been? Or some other life, whatever, but just not that one, that ended that way? Don't you see how it's more about the way someone like Weininger is framed that causes the most problems, the way it's too easy to quote mine and cherry pick what he wrote in a way that cheapens his message, that twists meaning unfairly?[/quote]
Carmel:
No, I'd preferred it if he had come to terms with his "psychosexual panic" as one critic correctly assessed it. As for cherry picking his quotes, that's exactly what the members of this forum consistently do. I've never quoted him for the same reason I don't quote Solanas. Not that there isn't any merit to small portions of their works, there is, but they're both entirely too psychologically and spiritually underdeveloped for my taste. They were lost souls, "walking corspes"(Krishnamurti's term). I have no desire to mentally enter or promote that aspect of their world.
Bob Michael wrote:Who are we to consider some suicides 'idiotic'?
It'd be idiotic to forget that circumstances change all the time. Suicidal despair is probably the most idiotic reason; moods can shift so suddenly.
My view is that Weininger saw too deeply into the nature of the 'fallen' human condition, saw no way out of the horror - at least in his day, layed out his views for posterity, and simply left the lifeless, loveless, dog-eat-dog human insane asylum that he understood all-too-well.
Nah. Have you read Sex and Character? Or his notes? Or On Ultimate Things?
Okay, let's say we've isolated what appears to be a, or the, missing element, and it appears to be an element missing in men, not in women. How does this specifically translate into the mental architecture of the mind? A missing element can result from there either being not enough mental furniture, so to speak, leaving a lacuna, or, there could be an excess of mental furniture, crowding out the cathexis to enjoying "pointless, wild, insane emotions" women are heir to. Which do you think it is: Are men emptier than women, or are they more full?
In case that seems recondite, let me consider it from another angle, before turning it back to you to comment. Suppose you had an organism with all the sense-organs of man, but, which was possessed of a kind of "blindsight" regarding each sense. That is, the ears heard, the eyes saw, the tongue tasted, but, this sense data were not transmitted discretely into the mind via the brain, but, instead, were used by the brain to generate a subconscious gestalt, that the sense-deprived mind then encountered, responded to based on its emotional/sexual value, and which led its brain to initiate actions which the mind itself never had direct sensory access to.
Such a mind, would not feel alienated from the world of emotionality, nor from the biological world, because there would be no paradoxical input from the senses, e.g. sight is futuristic, telling what is about to happen; hearing is simultaneous, telling what is happening now; smell is historical, telling what has happened, etc.. Such a mind would take it all in, and, for lack of contrast, see nothing at all except the colourful and exuberant tracings of its emotional threads, threads which, for lack of discrete sense data, serve as the flesh of the world connecting all to all.
Consciousness (mental experiences) are sense data.
Such a mind, would not think in terms of A = A, for there would be nothing discrete in its universe.
If it's conscious - say, a healthy, sane human being with normal neurology, hormones, etc. - then it directly and clearly experiences mental stuff as discretely and sensitively as a normal person would.
Every emotional complex and flush would ebb and flow without true repetition, every identity would always come with a thread leading it back to the locus of the Self, which in turn is non-identical but ever-shifting. This mind would fear any complex of interaction ("being") which threatened to use shears to cut the threads and define territory, to halt the flux and insist on identity, to objectify for the purposes of insane logicking. Objectification would be a kind of rape. Does such a mind sound familiar?
Not really. Logical thought is still present in a mind without ordinary senses. The absence of logical thought isn't really heightened emotional states, or being overwhelmed by a mass of intricate emotions, so much as a dullness of mind. Deafness, if you like, to consciousness. It's not a blissful garden of Eden so much as a fog, or a bog. But if one likes to keep things vague and dreamy, misty and mysterious, then yes, oblivion might seem blissful to the one who doesn't like the cold, hard realities of conceptual experience.
Carmel wrote:Kelly: Most women are incapable of reason. A rational person can interpret a rock's falling down a hill as a rational thing for it to do, given its weight, gravity, the slope of the hill, atmospheric pressure, the mineral constituting the rock, and absence of magnetic fields, yet the rock itself is not rational. Women behave as "instinctively" rationally as the rock does, compelled by forces like emotions. The difference between being totally (women) and partially so (men) is significant.
Carmel: The empirical evidence does not support your nebulous, henidic, useless blatherings. That's just the way it is. The rational thing to do would be to accept this and move beyond your cartoonish, one dimensional views that women are like rocks one liners. It's a complete joke.
There is plenty of evidence to support the fact that most women are incapable of reason. For example:
- academic females who are called philosophers, study feminism, not philosophy => covers all women in the philosophical side of the humanities
- there are no high-calibre female inventors => covers all women in technological fields
- there are no females who win the highest level prizes in maths => covers all women mathematicians
- housewives / homebound mothers take a lot longer to do easy work than is reasonable despite all the mod-cons => covers all domestic women
- the only high-calibre female avant-gardists are in feminism => covers all women
- feminists still regard lack of skills, education, and understanding in women as a result of being obstructed by others, rather than a lack of intrinsic desire for these things => covers all feminists
It's partly great being a leader of change, but if that change is negative, then it's much less great.
Kelly Jones wrote:It'd be idiotic to forget that circumstances change all the time. Suicidal despair is probably the most idiotic reason; moods can shift so suddenly.
Do you or have you ever had suicidal thoughts?
Kelly Jones wrote:Nah. Have you read Sex and Character? Or his notes? Or On Ultimate Things?
Yes, I've read 'Sex and Character'. Though my own first-hand insights into the human condition and the nature of its cure are plenty sufficient.
No, I don't. But in my twenties, I went through a gamut of emotions about the meaning and purpose of my existence, and really had a hard time. So I know that some suicides are truly idiotic, for their lack of foresight, insight and oversight.
I asked whether you'd read "Sex and Character", because you thought Weininger probably committed suicide from despair over a loveless race. But he wasn't into love, of the kind you espouse. I very much doubt he killed himself over a desire to experience more emotion, or to have others experience them more.
I think Weininger's suicide was an example of weakness. He said as much himself. Suicide is a criminal act(not speaking in the legal, social ethics sense), because in it a person uses his body as a means to an end by destroying it. It is on par with murder. I don't think there was any conscious motive involved in the act of his suicide itself.
Kelly Jones wrote:No, I don't. But in my twenties, I went through a gamut of emotions about the meaning and purpose of my existence, and really had a hard time. So I know that some suicides are truly idiotic, for their lack of foresight, insight and oversight.
Would you say then you underwent a dark night of the soul experience or a dead/rebirth experience whereby you came out of it a radically transformed person? One that lives in a totally new dimension of existence and is positively engaged in finding and rooting out all traces of self-delusion and false perceptions of both yourself and reality?
Kelly Jones wrote:I asked whether you'd read "Sex and Character", because you thought Weininger probably committed suicide from despair over a loveless race. But he wasn't into love, of the kind you espouse. I very much doubt he killed himself over a desire to experience more emotion, or to have others experience them more.
Let's forget the love ("loveless") angle here but keep my view that Weininger despaired over having to live in what he all-too-clearly saw as a "lifeless, dog-eat-dog, human insane asylum."
Carmel wrote:...and this is irrelevant to the point I was trying to make..and so it goes...as I said previously when I agreed with Dan... I don't take Weininger that seriously. He had potential, but unfortunately, never fully realized it and he certainly wasn't enlightened; I think it's important to keep that in mind given the alleged goals of this forum.
Fair enough, I just don't see the link you're trying to make between your perception of Weininger's non-enlightenment and his death as anything other than an ad hom in terms of his eventual value as a thinker. Especially since you say you don't take him all that seriously. If you did, do you think your ad hom would have more validity, more weight... ?
Carmel wrote:I generally agree with the definition of enlightenment as described by this forum, that is to say, that it is a lack of "delusion", but the problem with this definition is that there doesn't seem to be a clear consensus among people in general, or even amongst the members of this forum as to what that definition is and furthermore, no one is the sole arbitrater of this definition. Anyone who believes theirs is the one and only "true" definition is deluded beyond redemption, relatively speaking. :) How do you define "delusion", Robert?
Sure, there's a lack of consensus, but who cares? I think it's normal that there's no consensus on an internet forum, in fact there needs to be this lack for a discussion based forum to function at all. Which doesn't mean btw there's no useful definition possible. I get what you're saying and I agree that enlightenment is an absence of delusion, or rather an absence of deluded thoughts. Defining what a deluded thought is can be easy, or not, since all thought is delusion in a sense. And since you bring him up, like J Krishnamurti said, thought is separation, division. I just keep it as basic as I can and try to keep in mind the illusory nature of all things as much as possible, I find that value automatically comes from this without too much extra work on my part. Mind you, I don't have the ambition to be 100% delusion free, I don't think it's possible and I don't really see the use in it. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn't, who cares?
Carmel wrote:His work pollutes his own work. I can see that quite clearly and would not think otherwise even if I was oblivious to the fact that he commited suicide. Did you read his book? Some of it is really off the deep end, of course, those quotes never get displayed here by his supporters.
I've read most of Sex and Character, but not any of his other stuff. Like any decent writing from a period in time different to our own, some of it will last on in a timeless sense, and some of it will become archaic and obsolete. The salient insights in S&C are valid and reflect fairly accurately my own experience with people. If I'd began to read it when I was 20, I'd probably be quite a different person to who I am now at 38. Or maybe not, at 20 I think I would have probably written him off as a crank and harmful to my ability to attract females since I doubt I had the presence of mind to exploit his work to impress and seduce.
Carmel wrote:No, I'd preferred it if he had come to terms with his "psychosexual panic" as one critic correctly assessed it. As for cherry picking his quotes, that's exactly what the members of this forum consistently do. I've never quoted him for the same reason I don't quote Solanas. Not that there isn't any merit to small portions of their works, there is, but they're both entirely too psychologically and spiritually underdeveloped for my taste. They were lost souls, "walking corspes"(Krishnamurti's term). I have no desire to mentally enter or promote that aspect of their world.
Again, fair enough, but I don't see the use in the needless ad homs. Instead of it being a useful tool to critique when valid, you're shooting yourself in the foot and doing what Alex does, which is basically arousing interest in the subject instead of holding up a danger sign warning people off.
(1) Are you saying that "consciousness"--by which I understand to mean word-based conceptualisation "at the front of the mind," so to speak, in contrast to intuitive, amorphous quasi-conceptualisation termed intuition "at the back of the mind," so to speak--is equivalent to percepts?
(2) Are you saying that the concept of an holistically-percepted mind is impossible? That is, a mind, as I described, where sight, hearing, taste, etc. are not discrete, paradox-inducing contrasting inputs, but, rather, are blended together in a quasi-psychedelic undulation--as if the person were on a psychotropic drug like morphine or Toilet Duck.
(3) When you say "[t]he absence of logical thought isn't really heightened emotional states, or being overwhelmed by a mass of intricate emotions, so much as a dullness of mind....[etc]" are you speaking from experience? Where do you get this notion from?
(4) You then say, "...if one likes to keep things vague and dreamy, misty and mysterious, then yes, oblivion might seem blissful to the one who doesn't like the cold, hard realities of conceptual experience." In other words, subjectively, we are dealing with bliss, and, subjectively, we are dealing with a panoply of emotions being focussed on, and therefore magnified, by a consciousness that is disinterested or incapable of conscious thought (as referenced in #1, above)?
Kelly Jones wrote:Um, looks like the poet has overcome the philosopher.
In answer to the question, I think men can create a blind spot to their own psychological pain during solitary introspection, while women can't. Women don't seem to be able to aggress against themselves, preferring to keep their own path comfortable, and putting the burden of spiritual growth on others. I don't think they can handle the stress, because they succumb to the emotional whiplash effect rather than driving onward to the goal. I think this is the same reason women haven't been the great explorers, iconoclasts, founders of religion, progenitors of new ideas - and indeed, why they have not had the capacity to become mass murderers, war generals, serial sex killers, or major criminals. It's the ability to take major risks, and keep the goal in focus despite tremendous upheaval in the fabric of reality.
I agree with what you said, said, but I'd like to expand my own thoughts on women and psychology a little bit.
I Don't think women generally ever reach that level of self-importance (definition @ end) that is required for what you mention. I believe it is primarily due to biology, as they don't seem to focus as well as boys (if they did they would not be worse at most things), their rational powers don't naturally build up a self like a male usually does (evident by women's greater lack of care for rationality, and anybody who seriously investigates).
Without the development that males get mentally, gotten by being able to focus on tasks, and improving, thus becoming stronger themselves, and gaining more power and responsibility due to this, things like taking a stance, or making convictions based on personal responsibility just doesn't happen later on. It's something that builds up as an individual starts to trust that he can reason, becoming stronger and more durable in face of abuse and criticism etc.
The key to women though is the fact that they are invisible, if it was not for the fact that they invoke something by which they live off, such as (Men, Boyfriends, Mentors, politicians, Organizations, Rules,). They use these as pillars to avoid the weight of self. Men are just better conditioned, by biology and by nature, to end up pulling that stuff off cause they can handle it and they don't mind handling it.
edit: nr. 3
2:03 CET 1/4 - 11
definition: having self-importance: regarding ones self to be significant enough to make own judgements and stand by them..
