Are "women" a different species?

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
User avatar
David Quinn
Posts: 5708
Joined: Sun Sep 09, 2001 6:56 am
Location: Australia
Contact:

Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by David Quinn »

Every moment is glorious and the feeling apparatus that a Buddha uses to experience this glory is consciousness.

At root, elevated feelings are a sign of insincerity. They are indicators that one's consciousness has dimmed, that (once again) one has committed the orginal sin of leaving God's paradise.

Still, it is better to have elevated feelings than to be overwhelmed by coarse ones.

-
Steven Coyle

Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by Steven Coyle »

David Quinn wrote:Every moment is glorious and the feeling apparatus that a Buddha uses to experience this glory is consciousness.

At root, elevated feelings are a sign of insincerity. They are indicators that one's consciousness has dimmed, that (once again) one has committed the orginal sin of leaving God's paradise.

Still, it is better to have elevated feelings than to be overwhelmed by coarse ones.
If the elevation is due in part to God consciousness, then I can't really see any insincerity there. Sounds like you still fear guilt due to criticism.
User avatar
David Quinn
Posts: 5708
Joined: Sun Sep 09, 2001 6:56 am
Location: Australia
Contact:

Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by David Quinn »

Or alternatively, I have very high standards.

-
Steven Coyle

Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by Steven Coyle »

All standards are then limitless like the great void. ;p
Iolaus
Posts: 1033
Joined: Fri Sep 08, 2006 3:14 pm

Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by Iolaus »

Trevor,

S
o, um... the question had some context. I wasn't sniping at feelings, only at how useful they are in one area.
OK, thanks for the clarification. Feelings/emotions have gotten a very bad rap here over the course of time, and I assumed you were doing the same.

Shah, I used the word feeling, as people often do, to mean emotion. Surely you could see that - a refinement of conscience is not a bodily sensation.

Alas, I am in the midst of several quite good conversations, but I must depart for about a week, and will try to pick up as best I can when I return.

Love to all!

Unconditionally!
Truth is a pathless land.
xerox

Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by xerox »

...
Last edited by xerox on Wed Jun 17, 2009 1:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
Kelly Jones
Posts: 2665
Joined: Wed Mar 22, 2006 3:51 pm
Location: Australia
Contact:

Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by Kelly Jones »

As soon as I know what feelings are, I've used reason.

This is really why most people don't know what feelings are, and don't want to define them.
xerox

Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by xerox »

...
Last edited by xerox on Wed Jun 17, 2009 1:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Pye
Posts: 1065
Joined: Tue Jan 17, 2006 1:45 pm

Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by Pye »

Beneath every feeling/emotion is a value offended or served. The value offended or served is the cause of the feeling/emotion.

What we call the negative feelings/emotions reveal a value being offended [e.g. fear, disgust, anger, hatred, etc]; what we call the positive feelings/emotions reveal a value being served [e.g. joy, satisfaction, contentment, love, etc.]

The basest fear in the basest animal reveals the value of its life to itself and the motivation for the subsequent actions it must take. The highest love in the highest being reveals the value of the thing-loved by itself and holds this value in love's protective custody (like love of wisdom).

No sentient being can 'get by' without its feelings/emotions. These sensations are the low-note on the scale that rises to thought - making sense. They are not mutually exclusive, but one in the same scale.

In truly alacritous beings, all feelings/emotions are seen as the seed casings that they are to deliver this knowledge of values to them. And in truly alacritous beings, this seed-casing falls instantly away - having performed its function for the alacritous being in delivering conscious awareness of the value being offended or served.

The error, as it were, in any being, is mistaking the feeling/emotion as the end in itself; hence, arresting itself in itself. That's what you call being emotional - and yes, in every way will it prevent one from reaching knowledge of the value offended or served. If one is unaware that the sensation is but a delivery system of the thing in need of sense-making, then one has no chance whatever to reassess one's values on this more conscious end of the scale. If one has already consciously valued their values, then all feeling/emotion about it performs seamlessly its delivery of sensation to the sense-making organ of the mind.

I assume this of all self-declared sages - that their immediate sensations are immediately transferred by long awareness and practice to their sense-making capacity; hence, there is no need to stay wallowed in the feeling/emotion itself; no need to mistake the delivery system for the value it means to raise to immediacy - a value being offended or served. There is no provocation to action whatsoever - even and especially in the defense of the values of reason - if this provocation does not take place at all. It is absurd to speak of feeling-less or emotion-less beings. There would be nothing of value whatever to offend or serve; no reason to speak or act at all.

But no sentient being gets along without sensations. No sense-making being has anything to work with, without the feeling/sensation/emotion delivering the substance of thought to it. This unfeeling being would be altogether senseless.

The problem is mistaking the delivery system (feeling/emotion) for the end in itself.

With great rapidity does the person of higher consciousness know immediately what the sensation has just made them aware of. And being aware is making sense.
Pye
Posts: 1065
Joined: Tue Jan 17, 2006 1:45 pm

Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by Pye »

Fear of feeling/emotion itself makes no sense. For this, too, is a mistaken emphasis upon the feelings/emotions themselves, rather than the substance of value beneath them.

Such a fear will keep people from thinking clearly (making sense) just as surely as will any emotion held to itself alone.
User avatar
David Quinn
Posts: 5708
Joined: Sun Sep 09, 2001 6:56 am
Location: Australia
Contact:

Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by David Quinn »

Pye wrote:But no sentient being gets along without sensations. No sense-making being has anything to work with, without the feeling/sensation/emotion delivering the substance of thought to it. This unfeeling being would be altogether senseless.
Do you think it is possible for a person to act against his feelings, or in oblivion to his feelings? For example, to act from a consciousness of what is deemed to be right?

-
Pye
Posts: 1065
Joined: Tue Jan 17, 2006 1:45 pm

Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by Pye »

David: Do you think it is possible for a person to act against his feelings, or in oblivion to his feelings? For example, to act from a consciousness of what is deemed to be right?
Yes, but it is still these feelings shaping one's conscious life, one's values. It is still these feelings delivering the nascent start of conscious thought, that is, things brought to consciousness. This is first felt, first stirred. This can be and is brought to us by the body-immediate and all of its sensations. In the naming of particular feelings/emotions, thought is taking a step. In transcending, one simply doesn't just stay with that. In doing so, all raises to thought, and rains back down upon the body immediate, in a great integration of its potentially self-creating fluency.

I also take what you mean as Nietzsche's working against one's own nature, and this is also the self-creating, transcending being.

I've always considered you, David, to be one of those higher types in the sense that you know something about the seamlessness of all being, and this is what raises everything to thought more naturally for you. Sentiency goes this way, the more and more it sees. Its thoughts and feelings are then joined in the upward direction they have every reason to go, being open-ended and all . . . .
Leyla Shen
Posts: 3851
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:12 pm
Location: Flippen-well AUSTRALIA

Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by Leyla Shen »

Let it be said, Pye, that I think these recent posts of yours have been particularly insightful.

However, there appears (at least in my understanding of it) a contradiction:
Beneath every feeling/emotion is a value offended or served. The value offended or served is the cause of the feeling/emotion.
Yes, but it is still these feelings shaping one's conscious life, one's values.
Can you clarify?
Between Suicides
Pye
Posts: 1065
Joined: Tue Jan 17, 2006 1:45 pm

Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by Pye »

Well, I can certainly understand this need for clarification, being as one is entering a loop, so to speak (that is, sentiency). And where one chooses to enter it, appears to imply its linear beginning, or, "primary part"!

So, we can go ahead and say it is not feeling, but value that lays at the root of things. But this doesn't rise to consciousness without our first sensing it in the feeling or e-motion [that is, the "I" so-moved to see itself; it's position in the scheme of things]. In colloquial terms, you get upset about something before you can name the value being offended. The feeling is heralding that value's presence. In enlightened terms, such a sensation is immediately transformed to consciousness, thought-based or otherwise.

Cognizant people know instantly what's been felt; what's been delivered; why they feel the way they do. As Kelly mentioned elsewhere, as soon as you can identify an emotion, you've begun to think about it. That's right.

So, in my estimation, feelings/emotions are not there for the annihilation of same, but rather, for the speedy transfer of value into consciousness. It is not to squash them, but to see them for what they are; assist them as the e-motion that they are, rather than arresting them as things-in-themselves. And yes, in a feelings-only approach, one's equally in danger of annihilating the consciousness of the value it rests upon. I've often wondered how much therapists and such do, after they bring forth and encourage the feeling itself. Surely they understand this is only a partial success. Raising emotion is hardly an end-in-itself. At some point, one's reasoning process about it has to be hooked back in.

And really cognizant people make this transfer into thought with such naturalness, such rapidity, that they can spend most all of their time in full consciousness of themselves and things. But unless they are completely removed from a world of stimulus, cause, and effect, they can hardly declare themselves done with feeling. There will always be more to sense for the sentient being; more to make-sense of.

One takes note that those who declare they are 'done' with feeling and emotion, also appear to be completely done with thinking, too. They're, well, done! (whilst they're not done at all!)
Leyla Shen
Posts: 3851
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:12 pm
Location: Flippen-well AUSTRALIA

Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by Leyla Shen »

I’m still having trouble. (Hopefully, this is not too unwieldy for the lovers of thinking!)

This is what I understand you to be saying, expressed in my “language.” Let me know if I’ve missed and/or misunderstood something:
Well, I can certainly understand this need for clarification, being as one is entering a loop, so to speak (that is, sentiency). And where one chooses to enter it, appears to imply its linear beginning, or, "primary part"!
1. The distinction between feelings/emotion (sensing) and value is illusory in an ultimate/holistic sense. Therefore, as a whole (absolute), emotion/feeling and value are hereby defined as “sentiency.”

2. Thus, values can be understood as arising from sensing and sensing can be understood as arising from values without the necessity of postulating a linear beginning/primary part to sentiency.
So, we can go ahead and say it is not feeling, but value that lays at the root of things. But this doesn't rise to consciousness without our first sensing it in the feeling or e-motion [that is, the "I" so-moved to see itself; it's position in the scheme of things]. In colloquial terms, you get upset about something before you can name the value being offended. The feeling is heralding that value's presence. (In enlightened terms, such a sensation is immediately transformed to consciousness, thought-based or otherwise.**)
IF 1 and 2 are true, then:

3. “Value lays at the root of things” and does not “…rise to consciousness without first [being sensed] [linear beginning/primary part] IN the feeling/emotion.”*

…is necessarily false, BUT (without 1 and 2) the rest makes sense (!) with 3:
Cognizant people know instantly what's been felt; what's been delivered; why they feel the way they do. As Kelly mentioned elsewhere, as soon as you can identify an emotion, you've begun to think about it. That's right.
4. When there is no time differential (that is, when it’s instantaneous) between the identification of value and feeling/emotion, there is only value and such sentience is defined as “cognizant people.”
So, in my estimation, feelings/emotions are not there for the annihilation of same, but rather, for the speedy transfer of value into consciousness.
5. Thus, transcendence would be defined as having achieved the sentience of cognizant people, initially through the value-fogged feeling/emotion.
It is not to squash them, but to see them for what they are; assist them as the e-motion that they are, rather than arresting them as things-in-themselves.

And yes, in a feelings-only approach, one's equally in danger of annihilating the consciousness of the value it rests upon. I've often wondered how much therapists and such do, after they bring forth and encourage the feeling itself. Surely they understand this is only a partial success. Raising emotion is hardly an end-in-itself. At some point, one's reasoning process about it has to be hooked back in.
6. Thus, emotions/feelings serve the purpose of bringing values into consciousness and the act of “squashing them” represents, therefore, a destructive emotion/feeling since it serves only to subvert (a value seeking) consciousness.
And really cognizant people make this transfer into thought with such naturalness, such rapidity, that they can spend most all of their time in full consciousness of themselves and things. (See 4, where the consciousness of “cognizant people” is defined as the instantaneous [emphasis mine] confluence of value with emotion/feeling. How would this manifest as the distinction “emotion/feeling” in any way?)
7. Thus, there is an even greater sentience whereby cognizant people know nothing but (a majority state of? Again, see 4.) consciousness.

IF 4, 5, 6 and 7 are essentially (as in, in the essence of the statements) true, then:

8. “But unless they are completely removed from a world of stimulus, cause, and effect, they can hardly declare themselves done with feeling. There will always be more to sense for the sentient being; more to make-sense of.”

…is false and cognizant people don‘t really exist. And so, too, is:

9. "One takes note that those who declare they are 'done' with feeling and emotion, also appear to be completely done with thinking, too. They're, well, done! (whilst they're not done at all!)"

…false.

*If a value is something sensed in feeling/emotion, then it is necessarily unconscious and necessarily existing prior to the feeling/emotion regardless of any particular full or partial state of consciousness, no?

**Otherwise? What possible otherwise?
Between Suicides
Pye
Posts: 1065
Joined: Tue Jan 17, 2006 1:45 pm

Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by Pye »

(Crikey, Leyla, I missed this yesterday, noodling around in the top threads, as I tend to. Responding in the next visit/next block of time, ta.)
Pye
Posts: 1065
Joined: Tue Jan 17, 2006 1:45 pm

Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by Pye »

Leyla:
1. The distinction between feelings/emotion (sensing) and value is illusory in an ultimate/holistic sense. Therefore, as a whole (absolute), emotion/feeling and value are hereby defined as “sentiency.”

2. Thus, values can be understood as arising from sensing and sensing can be understood as arising from values without the necessity of postulating a linear beginning/primary part to sentiency.
Okay.
Leyla: IF 1 and 2 are true, then:

3. “Value lays at the root of things” and does not “…rise to consciousness without first [being sensed] [linear beginning/primary part] IN the feeling/emotion.”*

…is necessarily false, BUT (without 1 and 2) the rest makes sense (!) with 3: (Pye): Cognizant people know instantly what's been felt; what's been delivered; why they feel the way they do. As Kelly mentioned elsewhere, as soon as you can identify an emotion, you've begun to think about it. That's right.
Okay.
Leyla: 4. When there is no time differential (that is, when it’s instantaneous) between the identification of value and feeling/emotion, there is only value and such sentience is defined as “cognizant people.”
This is good that you are beginning to bridge the gap between 2 perceived things, because in the end, they are actually part of the same. That's basically what I've been saying, but I am stuck with traditional linguistic usage in discussing parts of it.

In fact, most of what confuses us is the linguistic tradition of separating one grade of feeling (emotions) from another grade of feeling (reason i.e. making sense). Thinking is feeling - the high note of the scale of [human] sentiency. Thoughts are feelings - expressible in linguistic form - and they would not, could not come into being without sentiency: sensing stuff, in body and mind. Which should really read: bodymind. Or something else entirely, for here, I would like to do just as you in obliterating any distinction between "them." There is no "them." It's all the same thing. For a malfunction of the brain will just as surely mark its path on the so-called body, since it IS body itself.
Leyla: 5. Thus, transcendence would be defined as having achieved the sentience of cognizant people, initially through the value-fogged feeling/emotion.
That value-fogged feeling/emotion will always be there. Its quick rise to consciousness could not happen without it. It's a scale of all the same thing. People who practice their scales get better and better at their sentient performance :)

The perceived battle between emotion and reason has a long history in philosophy (no time-space for such a digression here!), but few people account for the separation itself as an error. Some very early thinking people simply understood that emotion was not the best they could do with their sentiency - that there were higher notes to be reached on the scale. And if they stayed with emotion, they could not reach those higher notes.

I recall one eastern philosopher (I think it was Chogyam Trungpa) referring to emotions as "cows" grazing in the field of the mind. The point, for him, was not to "kill" these cows and their mooing, but to expand the field in which they roam. Eventually, they wander off so far as to be mere specks, or disappear from view altogether. One has to give them room, rather than holding them close. In doing so, they wander off of their own accord.

Not quite my view, but it makes much more sense than trying to shoot them all. Like you say here:
6. Thus, emotions/feelings serve the purpose of bringing values into consciousness and the act of “squashing them” represents, therefore, a destructive emotion/feeling since it serves only to subvert (a value seeking) consciousness.
Yes. Just let them move off. That's what they're meant to do, so to speak. They'll move off quicker and quicker the sooner one draws them up to the higher end of the scale (making sense of them). In a clumsy inclusion of the cow-thing, let's just say you get the milk from them, but let the cows themselves go. They've delivered what they were meant to deliver.
Leyla: 7. Thus, there is an even greater sentience whereby cognizant people know nothing but (a majority state of? Again, see 4.) consciousness.
This is not how I would say this. I would say they know nothing but their own existences, as fully as possible. There's the return of the mountain.
Leyla: IF 4, 5, 6 and 7 are essentially (as in, in the essence of the statements) true, then:

8. “But unless they are completely removed from a world of stimulus, cause, and effect, they can hardly declare themselves done with feeling. There will always be more to sense for the sentient being; more to make-sense of.”

…is false and cognizant people don‘t really exist. And so, too, is:

9. "One takes note that those who declare they are 'done' with feeling and emotion, also appear to be completely done with thinking, too. They're, well, done! (whilst they're not done at all!)"

…false.
There is nothing but this person! This is a very grounded thing. I am not aiming for any abstractions such as "pure consciousness" or no-body!
Leyla: *If a value is something sensed in feeling/emotion, then it is necessarily unconscious and necessarily existing prior to the feeling/emotion - Pye: Okay - regardless of any particular full or partial state of consciousness, no?
The "full or partial state of consciousness" means it will have been made sense of.
Pye wrote: In enlightened terms, such a sensation is immediately transformed to consciousness, thought-based or otherwise.
Leyla: **Otherwise? What possible otherwise?
:) You are very alert. That "otherwise" is what I call non-linguistic consciousness (and I should have said that here). Just as emotions/feelings are non-thinking (if you will) until we progress them to their reasons for being (values: which will have to be linguistically grasped), I think in the well-tempered being, long practice of the motion of sentiency enables us to move, act, and be in the world - without need of the words themselves in our minds telling us what to do. We just simply know. It's sort of like Nietzsche's belief in knowledge becoming as instinctual and natural as instincts themselves. How's that for a loop :)

You have a fascinatingly Pythagorean mind, Leyla. There's no need for you to "excuse" how you grasp things in this way.
Leyla Shen
Posts: 3851
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:12 pm
Location: Flippen-well AUSTRALIA

Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by Leyla Shen »

Hi, Pye:

I’d like to specifically explore this, for the moment [or movement, as the case may be :)]:
This is good that you are beginning to bridge the gap between 2 perceived things, because in the end, they are actually part of the same. That's basically what I've been saying, but I am stuck with traditional linguistic usage in discussing parts of it.

In fact, most of what confuses us is the linguistic tradition of separating one grade of feeling (emotions) from another grade of feeling (reason i.e. making sense).
And yet we have no choice but to do it:
Thinking is feeling - the high note of the scale of [human] sentiency.
Compelled, here, to express a unified form of thinking and feeling ("sentience") in terms of a pitch on a scale upon which we humans move as humans. We have not really done away with graded distinctions, only further limited them in a certain way; we have integrated them (passively) in such a way as to give sentience, the movements--and the composition of life itself--universal pitch, rather than in such a way as to be able to discern the notes and write the music.

Limitations not only determine our boundaries, but our freedoms as well.
You have a fascinatingly Pythagorean mind, Leyla. There's no need for you to "excuse" how you grasp things in this way.
Why, thank-you. :)
Between Suicides
User avatar
Kelly Jones
Posts: 2665
Joined: Wed Mar 22, 2006 3:51 pm
Location: Australia
Contact:

Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by Kelly Jones »

(Pye): Cognizant people know instantly what's been felt; what's been delivered; why they feel the way they do. As Kelly mentioned elsewhere, as soon as you can identify an emotion, you've begun to think about it. That's right.
I'm not sure how much of that is Pye's and how much is Leyla's, but I'll respond as it is written.

I think you've taken my quote out of context.

If an emotion arises, then it may be identified consciously as a compulsion, and then it may be reasoned that the compulsion is a sign of false-thinking. That is, if an emotion arises, it is evidence of reduced consciousness and faulty reasoning.

As I see it, emotions are like smoke arising from a fire. They're produced by a fire. The fire is a type of thought.
If the fire is not there, the smoke is not there either.

The aim is to have no fire at all, but lucid reasoning all the time. In a way, Pye's cow analogy is right: the fire is helped to go out by diminishing the room given to emotion (false thinking).

It is also very helpful to differentiate between intuitions and emotions. That's why I try not to use the word feelings - it doesn't bring out the difference at all. Intuitions are thoughts that aren't consciously reasoned through. Intuitions in a highly rational mind would have a different kind of emotional content: a subtle beclouding of the mind, but in a fully rational mind would have no emotional component.


KJ
onlyatheistinhere
Posts: 5
Joined: Sun Nov 25, 2012 5:34 pm

Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by onlyatheistinhere »

no they are not. They don't meet the requirements for a seperate species. Seperate species cannot breed and produce fertile offspring. They can breed with males (human) and produce a fertile offspring, therefore they are the same species. If you mean species as in are there vast diference between males and females then yes of course but species seems innapropriate here,,,
SeekerOfWisdom
Posts: 2336
Joined: Tue Sep 25, 2012 12:23 pm

Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by SeekerOfWisdom »

Yes
Locked