That was a load of rubbish Jamesh
I don’t think so, well except the end bit about bohemianism.
In any case only a person with an attachment to their self would make such a comment.
Ego is a designation one has for oneself. A story one has of oneself. A belief. It's out of causes/conditions. That's what empty means. Lacks inherent existence. It doesn't mean what you make it mean
I’m not going over that again.
Emptiness does not mean a lack of inherent existence to me, as I don’t give a damn whether any existence is permanent or transient. For me both are caused existence.
Also, I certainly do not see ego/self as a belief, but a necessity. The ego is the program that tells you how to react to events, totally necessary for survival and growth. It’s routines are learnt by experience.
It is true that our ego program is almost always faulty, as its initial routines are developed when young at a time when emotions play a stronger role than logical assessment, and these faulty routines are difficult to replace. Normally only repetitive thought experience will cause permanent changes to these programs, as per this quote - “Only one thing registers on the subconscious mind: repetitive application - practice. What you practice is what you manifest” – so I do understand your persistence on the issue of emptiness.
I am a Commanding Personality he says. To get the feeling of being Commanding,
he has an MO which is to ridicule and trash other people. That's all the pattern does.
Strut about sneeringly with the occasional flourish of insight
He is only ridiculing you and the QRS, so whats the big deal? Surely being ridiculed means nothing to you. If it does then you are not actually demonstrating this emptiness thing you believe in.
In my view Alex is being rational and you and the QRS are being fundamentalist. All I ever see is base level stuff –setting on the right path sort of stuff. Well I’ve taken that base level stuff and rejected it as being incomplete.
An outcome of fundamentalism always seems to be a desire to command others. As in – YOU WILL LEARN TO THINK LIKE ME OR YOU ARE NOT WORTHY OF COMMUNICATING WITH. Well bad luck, I’ll think how I’m caused to think.
I’m a fundamentalist to, as I’m never going to change from looking at everything stated as an absolute as being at most only half right, as to be a true statement it must be dualistic, with the truth residing in the middle so that absolutes are united as one. For example Existence = Temporary AND permanent, Every thing is caused AND causal, Every thing is interconnected AND not connected. Everything has Mass AND Energy, I am Self and Not Self, things evolve and devolve, Time is linear and non-linear etc.
Alex did annoy me with his repetitive, long, often tangential posts a few years ago, but now that I’m far less attached to this forum, I quite like the Talking Ass posts.
Come-on even if you don’t agree with him, surely his posts are better than much of the meaningless fluff this forum generates these days. You must agree as you have persevered with responses for so long.
If you get trashed by Alex it's actually a compliment.
He doesn't go after weak bastards because he's looking for worthy scalps.
Only worthy scalps increase his sense of I am in Command.
Getting trashed by Alex is endorsement
Again this all sounds very egotistical to me. Though what you say is perhaps dominant, might it also be that weak bastards are just too inane or boring to bother with? Is it better that QRS concentrate these days on "philosophically weak bastards"?
He has the same justification to dismiss your views as you or the QRS dismiss his. As I interpret matters he does what he does for three main reasons:
a) Self learning. When we write things down that helps to clarify our viewpoint. It helps to trasnform ideas from subconscious intuition to clearer, more coherent and more certain reasoning.
b) Self aggrandisement (as you have stated, but I say is common for everyone). He enjoys being clever and receiving compliments. We all often enjoy communication for the same reason.
c) He feels the philosophy here leads to a sort of death of spirit, in more people than it does not. It leads first to nihilism, then to the prison of fundamentalist ideas, where the outcome is a regressive rather than an advancing personality open to new ideas.
He can justify everything he does here by point C, even though point B may be a more important factor in causing him to keep trying to make others see his light.
His delusion is that he is over and above. The pattern is common as muck
True, but in some ways I don’t think it is just common, but it occurs in everyone. After all, it is true by necessity. Reality is always only yours, and thus we cannot help but to value our own INTRINSIC self (a tautology!) above the selves of others as those others selves only affect us in a transient, intermittent and competing fashion.
Although in terms of knowledge we may recognise greater depth or breadth in others, and determine our knowledge is lesser, or we may care for others and put them above ourselves in times of danger, that is not the case in relation to how we apply values. Only we individually can make determinations relating to values.