What is reality, what is a 2x4?

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Ah, yes, I had fogotten: the 'spiritual one-upmanship of the ultra-rational'. I suggest that in your specific case, Diebert, you are not really in conversation, not learning or questing, but attmpting to assert your ascendency.

Only when really low hanging fruits are offered. But is it so hard to imagine someone might be lightyears ahead in one or two aspects? I guess it is. You're sensitive to even the slightest hint.

[Talking Ass]

It is indeed possible to imagine someone lightyears ahead. But it is hard to imagine that 1) you think of yourself in that way and 2) even harder to imagine you as that person! To me, you're simply Diebert, or Deebs. Sometimes Deebee.

I would suggest that---just perhaps---you suffer from a mild delusion. ;-) That's okay. I will tell you sometimes about the Novel I appear in! I prefer to keep it [for now] on the hush-hush, you understand...

Here, as it was for Nash at Princeton, your eccentricities are accepted. And with me, most of all.

As Nash said:

"It's just a question of leading a quiet life".

Breathe. Take long walks. Read poetry. Know you are loved.

Then all we get is a string of bad reading and insane conclusions which others have to clean up for them to no avail.

Would you be so kind to elaborate, citing examples? At your leisure of course.

[Dennis Mahar]

Kunga,

I felt a hot flash of love just now. What was that ???

Self-love.
love of self.
Direct experience, not the mindless chatter of quoters, incessant wordsmithing addiction, entanglement in concepts.
You are the Truth.
Re-cognition of True Self.
Re-connection to Truth.
Integration.
Inner healing.
Centredness.
Sure ground.

Identification as worldly being collapsed.
Light came in.

Whatever anyone says to you or about you is irrelevant.
You have no worldly pecking order ranking.
Free.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Then all we get is a string of bad reading and insane conclusions which others have to clean up for them to no avail.

Would you be so kind to elaborate, citing examples? At your leisure of course.

Again you prefer to go into the wrong type of detail which will obviously bog down any possibility the discussion might have with inanities and relativism. Then again, it seems your preference to have it this way. You love the process and the exchange itself but stopped believing in a goal or even essential progress. You want the discourse, the rehash, not going really anywhere since you have arrived, you think, somewhere you cannot learn any fundamentally new "trick". And perhaps you're right but only in your very own personal sense. Which is all there is for you of course at this stage. Apart from fighting the boredom perhaps...

As to not avoid your question entirely, your last post has all the properties. Bad reading like about "light-years in one or two aspects" becoming subtly the more brazen "being light-years ahead". And insane conclusions like Nash his eccentricities being accepted while of course Nash was hospitalized against his will until he denounced his more extreme thoughts. Or that this has something to do with your opinion of me. Or that a quiet cow life of breathing, chewing grass and reading lines would be something "higher" or advisable in this context, especially knowing Nash talks about the opposite in most of his comments on his life.

This has all nothing to do with the discussion while it's nevertheless presented by you as something concluding from what was said before. It's perhaps more inane than insane? And that's how it always tends to end in our discussions but it's not unexpected.

[David Quinn]

Ah, yes, I had fogotten: the 'spiritual one-upmanship of the ultra-rational'. I suggest that in your specific case, Diebert, you are not really in conversation, not learning or questing, but attmpting to assert your ascendency.

Only when really low hanging fruits are offered. But is it so hard to imagine someone might be lightyears ahead in one or two aspects? I guess it is. You're sensitive to even the slightest hint.

Yes, Alex is so sensitive to that sort of thing, so obsessed with it, that it causes him to continually swirl around and around in the same eddy. His whole life, year after year, round and round, continually tethered by the paranoia that some fellow or other is going to get the better of him.

Perhaps that is why he reads so many books - just to take his mind off the sheer tedium of it all.

Total obsession with the one-upmanship game, leading to an obsession with sociology - that is to say, with grinding everything and everyone into the oblivion of the historical process. His own form of one-upmanship.

Individuality, genius, personal understanding, direct relationship with truth - all these must be ground down into oblivion. Only then is he content. Such is Alex's way.

-

[Talking Ass]

1) All of your recent comments, Diebert, have been nothing more than an effort to bog down the conversation. I think those were your actual intentions in fact. I think a little critical self-examination is in order.

2) Nash is irrelevant to me, and irrelevant to this conversation [sic] and to the forum. If you think he can be an emblem for the sort of spiritual work you see yourself as doing [however you define it], that is fine I suppose. But I saw it as 'paja'. Bullshit plain and simple.

3) And yet you are wrong about details of his life. When I saw the movie I read up on him if only on the Wiki page. Nash got out of the hospital by feining to cooperate with his doctors. And he himself has described that he was still indulging in his mental illness, whatever it was, but was able to do so in the relatively supportive and protected environment of the campus where he managed to get along.

4) I say what I want and need to say, and am comfortable doing it, but 'even I' don't make quite these arrogant assumptions of you as you do of me. I try to speak generally about the 'errors' as I perceive them in the GF philosophy. Your assessments about having stopped believing in a goal or goals; about 'essential progress', et cetera, these are thing you really don't know anything about. The final comment: 'Which is all there is for you of course at this stage' crosses a border of arrogance. The point here is the following: you cannot really know this, about me or about anyone, but you seem to have set yourself up to make these sorts of claims. I suggest to you that this is where your mistake lies. There is a 'core' here that can and should be looked into, on your part. No one can help you with this. It is something you'll have to deal with---or not---yourself. Myself, I'd watch out for this.

5) You have no idea, because you have no interest, in what I have learned or am learning. But what do you say to a person who says, as you have, 'You have gotten nowhere' and 'You will get nowhere'? [Aside of course from a hearty Fuck you!] On what, I'd ask, do you base your right to decide? It is hubris, Diebert, and I think it may have a link to your specifically 'rational' processes. But I know you better than to believe that you really DO feel you can make these assumptions. I have more faith in you. So, give it up...

[Talking Ass]

And as for YOU, David.

Naw, it is not really worth going into.

Books are really cool though. I think you should read more. I don't read as much as you might imagine, or I read quite slowly.

It was a nice try though...

;-)

[Bobo]

I'm not sure what is your point Diebert, but I've heard that Nash was pissed when it was found that Nash equilibria in noncooperative games had Godel incomplete theorems, for example. That would be deluded by this forum standards, no?

[Liberty Sea]

I think sometimes 'you' are some.sorts.of 'spiritual nazis' or is that too.strong a word?

If a grammar Nazi is someone who is correct about grammar and try to correct other people's smallest grammatical errors, and correspondingly a spiritual Nazi is someone who is correct about spirituality and try to correct other people's spiritual errors, then I am pleased to be a spiritual Nazi, because no error is in so much urgency to be fixed as spiritual errors.
I, however, would prefer not to identify myself through such words. It is one of those traps of language that force one into thinking in a certain pattern. No description could ever pin down my personality, no analysis could ever catch my character development.
Regardless I take your criticism. Perhaps I was coming off as a bit bossy and pushy, or even seemingly elitist and dogmatic in my behaviors. But to be sure I was not, and am not forcing you in any way to accept anything. So, remind me what it is that you disagree with me again.

it is impressive to be so clearly fired-up about anything.

I am fired up about pretty much everything I do. I am pure fire. I am a mariner of Odysseus with a mind ruthless and a heart afire. And this fire should not be confused with mere juvenile enthusiasm or sentimental frivolity. It is deep-rooted passion, and my passion is to transcend myself each and every day. That is what I call living.
I apologize for talking about myself, so I will leave this with a quote from Krishnamurti. You may or may not give a rat's ass about him, and I may never talk about him again, but personally I think it is part of a genius's duty to appreciate genius in others.
"Without passion how can there be beauty? I do not mean the beauty of pictures, buildings, painted women, and all the rest of it. They have their own forms of beauty. A thing put together by man, like a cathedral, a temple, a picture, a poem, or a statue may or may not be beautiful. But there is a beauty which is beyond feeling and thought and which cannot be realized, understood, or known if there is not passion. So do not misunderstand the word passion. It is not an ugly word; it is not a thing you can buy in the market or talk about romantically. It has nothing whatever to do with emotion, feeling. It is not a respectable thing; it is a flame that destroys anything that is false. And we are always so afraid to allow that flame to devour the things that we hold dear, the things that we call important.
For most of us, passion is employed only with regard to one thing, sex; or you suffer passionately and try to resolve that suffering. But I am using the word passion in the sense of a state of mind, a state of being, a state of your inward core, if there is such a thing, that feels very strongly, that is highly sensitive—sensitive alike to dirt, to squalor, to poverty, and to enormous riches and corruption, to the beauty of a tree, of a bird, to the flow of water, and to a pond that has the evening sky reflected upon it. To feel all this intensely, strongly, is necessary. Because without passion life becomes empty, shallow, and without much meaning. If you cannot see the beauty of a tree and love that tree, if you cannot care for it intensely, you are not living." (Krishnamurti, the Book of Life)

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

Elizabeth,

"Evil isn't so much permitted to exist". So, I take it you have no belief in a higher power capable of eliminating evil through an act of will or anything like that. I kind of had that understanding of your world-view already, but you do seem to have sympathies for paranormal phenomena - I guess those sympathies don't extend to sympathy for (literal) divinity. Would it be fair to say that your world-view is naturalistic?

"Evil exists because it is good at what it does. It provides short term pleasure for those without a conscience, and those who are especially skilled at evil have no consequences. Evil is fought, but good never has won to the point of stomping out all evil, and evil keeps cropping up where certain desires exist. The desires themselves could also be classified as evil, but it is the more solid manifestations that are problematic."

That all seems accurate to me as far as it goes, which - it seems to me - is a naturalistic explanation of evil. Perhaps you would advance that evil traits, rather than having any spiritual source/mapping, evolved in the natural world as permutations or perversions of more wholesome or moral or social traits.

Yes, I believe that all of the above are fair statements.

Families are the source of all evil, aren't they?

-

I'm not sure how you came up with that David. Causality is the source of all evil, as it is the source of all good. You know that, so I suspect this may be a test of some kind, or a prompt to answer in something more in-depth.

To go further, selfishness and greed are further causative factors of evil. I would not call the tsunami evil because it is not caused by that agent that is often mistaken for free will. That agent is necessary in the immediate chain of causality in order for me to classify something as evil. Exactly how far up the chain of causality that agent is would be a little hazy on secondary and tertiary effects, but if a reasonable being of equal intelligence would have known that the action would cause suffering without sufficient positive mitigating results of the action, then that action/event would be evil.

I do not limit the definition of selfishness to monetary or capitalistic manifestations; it is also selfishness to torture a puppy just because the person felt like it. If the torture turned the puppy into a mean dog, turning the puppy into a mean dog would be a secondary evil. The dog then biting someone simply because the person was there would then be an additional evil, though caused by having been turned into a mean dog. More culpability is placed on the torturer because the torturer had more of that agent mistaken for free will, but that doesn't erase that the dog's action was evil as well.

By "hazy" above, I exemplify it in the puppy example to show that although it was the dog's evil that bit the person, it was also the evil of the torturer that bit the person indirectly. If then that person kicked another dog because now that person hates dogs due to having been bitten, The evil of the torturer is still there but greatly reduced, and due to the person having more of the agent mistaken for free will than the dog had, the amount of evil from the dog who bit him is much lower in the evil of kicking the next dog than the amount of evil transferred from the torturer into the kick of the dog three links in the chain of causality later - even though the space from human action to human action is the same three links as dog action to dog action.

[Talking Ass]

Hello Liberty Sea. I am curious if you see such formulations about 'passion' (which was quite nice I thought) as being harmonious with, say, the declarations in Poison for the Heart. It is true that passions can be---often are---tainted in this world. But I wonder (since Krishnamurti is on the table) if he would have recommended some process of 'poisoning' one's own heart to.drive away taint, or love even if tainted. My intuitive sense (be ause I have not read him except quotes people.offer) is no.

Careful, I.am.attempting to draw you.into controversy... ;-)

To.be a skilled teacher or one who roots out 'spiritual error' is a pretty fraught occupation. If one really had the skill and the calling, it would.seem to.me that it would require an almost uncanny knowledge of human types. A wide familiarity with people. Much tolerance and respect.

Transcending self has never quite.worked for.me so I am having to develop other strategies: immanenting! No.risk of failure! Huaaar huaaar....

[Diebert van Rhijn]

I'm not sure what is your point Diebert, but I've heard that Nash was pissed when it was found that Nash equilibria in noncooperative games had Godel incomplete theorems, for example. That would be deluded by this forum standards, no?

But it was Alex who started to discuss Nash as person or potential 'wise' whatever, sweet Bobo. My point was merely about an illustration how the mind can overcome dillusion by simply striving for rationality. A general point was made. How hard can it be?

[guest_of_logic]

David,

If I wanted psycho-analysis then I certainly wouldn't come to you. You show no genuine understanding, and even when you might approach understanding, you perform your usual trick of "contort and exaggerate". It's pretty lame stuff.

It is like I have discovered a fantastic jeweled city and I want to say to the world, "Hey everyone, come check out this amazing city!" But alas, I can only alert people to the existence and whereabouts of this city by way of maps and black-and-white photos (i.e. abstractions). And then Laird comes along, looks at the maps and photos, sniffs them, chews them, throws them about - and decides: there is nothing of value here.

I have never seen any evidence that your talk of a "fantastic jeweled [sic] city" is anything more than bluster intended to engage the curiosity of those who might be tempted into following your reductive path.

guest_of_logic: As for a "medieval" view of good versus evil: my view is not as stark and black and white as you might be implying. I recognise that it is not always useful to view human affairs through the dichotomy of good and evil (even though that dichotomy could always be applied). Life is nuanced, and human motivations are complex; I recognise this.

David: That's good. So the more rational part of you realizes that the behaviourisms that are usually umbrella-ed under the term "evil" are in fact multi-complex processes that involve many different factors, nuances and psychological attitudes - and that in fact the term "evil" is such a broad, unscientific term as to be meaningless. But then the battle between good and evil kicks off again inside your head, all rationality is forgotten, and you're squarely back inside the medieval world again.

I recognise, David, through experience and through reading, that there are metaphysical forces beyond humanity that wish it ill. Whether those forces are, as TA suggests, and as some of the reading material Kunga provided in another thread suggests, "predatory" (perhaps feeding unavoidably on human misery as a carnivore feeds unavoidably on the flesh of its prey), or whether they are more properly seen in the manichaean context of plain opposition to good I am not sure, although I suspect that there may be elements of both involved. You, simply, are unaware of these forces and thus are unwilling to explore the possibilities. That's understandable - not everyone is aware of all of metaphysical reality (I am not either) - but it does mean that in your ignorance you misunderstand and mischaracterise.

Liberty Sea,

@Guest_of_logic: Don't humans cause pain to other sentient beings for their benefit? Who has given humans the right to eat other animal? If a lion catches a deer, who has the right to save the deer and let the lion starve? Who has created the lion to be carnivorous? If human-eating giants suddenly appear, who has the right to save humans and let the giants starve?

There is one theory that consciousness is vibrational, and that the level of vibrations of our consciousness lead it to its place in reality, and that the vibrations of our region of reality (planet Earth) are low enough that such things (preying on others for food) necessarily occur. In other words, in answer to your questions: these "rights" might in fact be consequences of our level of spiritual development, non-existent at higher levels of development. I'm sure there are other theories though.

I don't defend evil. I prefer to go beyond [human definition of] good and evil. That is what I call 'goodness', if you like that word.

This is a Quinn-like contortion, and ultimately I'd ask you a similar question to that which cousinbasil asked David: what does this mean when the rubber meets the road? If you found proof that a young man you knew was trapping women and children in his basement and raping and torturing them slowly before slaughtering them painfully, would you take action to stop him or would you shrug and say, "Oh well, it's only evil by the human definition"?

[Liberty Sea]

these "rights" might in fact be consequences of our level of spiritual development

In other words, it is relative. And ultimately it is meaningless.

If you found proof that a young man you knew was trapping women and children in his basement and raping and torturing them slowly before slaughtering them painfully, would you take action to stop him or would you shrug and say, "Oh well, it's only evil by the human definition"?

From an ultimate perspective, all will die, all will pass away like specks of dust. The devil, who think of himself as good, would ask: does it matter if you die now or 50 years later? Does it matter if you die painfully or pleasurably? Why shouldn't the strong get their pleasures, at the expense of the weak's pleasure? From the Devil's perspective, the rapist is the strong one, and it is fair that the strong ones get their pleasures by dominating the weak, by robbing pleasures from the weak, which are the women and children in this case. He would ask, who gives the weak the right to take pleasure away from the strong?
If I can stop him, it mean I am stronger than him or supported by a force stronger than him, which might be current normal society in this case. Then it is also for the pleasure of my side, the strong ones, that I must stop him, the weak one.

Good and evil is a matter of value. What is good is what's valuable. Yet in the face of Nothingness, of Nihilism traditional values no longer stand, though up to this point it has always been the strong that decide what is valuable, it is always those who stand in the top that determine what's right and what's wrong. Will to Power, you see.
I will discuss the problem of Nihilism later in this post in answering Talking Ass, and don't worry, I am no devil's advocate.

Hello Liberty Sea. I am curious if you see such formulations about 'passion' (which was quite nice I thought) as being harmonious with, say, the declarations in Poison for the Heart. It is true that passions can be---often are---tainted in this world. But I wonder (since Krishnamurti is on the table) if he would have recommended some process of 'poisoning' one's own heart to.drive away taint, or love even if tainted. My intuitive sense (be ause I have not read him except quotes people.offer) is no.

Careful, I.am.attempting to draw you.into controversy... ;-)

To.be a skilled teacher or one who roots out 'spiritual error' is a pretty fraught occupation. If one really had the skill and the calling, it would.seem to.me that it would require an almost uncanny knowledge of human types. A wide familiarity with people. Much tolerance and respect.

Transcending self has never quite.worked for.me so I am having to develop other strategies: immanenting! No.risk of failure! Huaaar huaaar....

Poison of the Heart is a bad title. And poison is a bad metaphor.
The book itself is pretty good, though nowhere near the greatest book in existence. The title, however, reminds me of some sorts of pulp fictions or trashy sensational books. Most intelligent people these days (the young ones) tend not to take a word as cheesy as 'heart' seriously when it is used as a metaphor, whether poison for the heart or medicine for the heart. As for those who take the word heart seriously, the book is too cynical for them anyway. And poison, too, increase that sort of cheesiness. "Poison" suggests something petty, sneaky, and bitter, rather than sublimity.
Timelessness doesn't spill from it as titles like: "Human, All to human", "The Gay science", "Thus Spake Zarzthustra" (Nietzsche), "A sickness unto death", "The crowd is Untruth" (Kierkegaard), The savior of God (Nikos Kazantzakis), "The first and last Freedom", "The Ending of Time", "You are the world", "The only revolution", "Urgency of change" (Krishnamurti).
If it is placed in a bookshelf in some bookstore I don't know if it will get noticed by anyone worthy. And I don't know how he is going to get it published as the chance is likely to become even dimmer after his death. He has not an organization that can support him financially, or rich devoted followers, and he refused a scholarship that may help him publish it.
The metaphor suggests the book will destroy the falsity of the heart and that an intelligent man will take the poison and then grow immune to it. But does that describe his size?
According to Krishnamurti, the flame of passion is "a flame that destroys anything that is false. And we are always so afraid to allow that flame to devour the things that we hold dear, the things that we call important", something that is not "respectable", i.e. not likely to be respected by society.
That is a better metaphor to me. Whether or not they mean the same thing, and 'flame' may sound too 'orthodox', the latter suggests significance and positiveness. The man of intelligence must kindle in himself an all-consuming flame that will destroy all that is rubbish inside him, and from the the ash a new man will be born, a new life will begin. And he himself will become a flame, a phoenix with wings of fire that will purify the world.
Is that a great responsibility? Who can be that phoenix? Who can be the Atlas that will shoulder this fallen world?
Martin Heidegger is remembered for his appeal for the revival of Being of the Western world which has been forgotten in Western philosophical tradition from Plato to Nietzsche. And here in the Eastern world, Being is also forgotten, yet which man has thought of reviving it?
Is it true that if you praise, if you exalt the Eastern cultural and philosophical tradition you will understand the Being of the Eastern World? Is it true that you appeal for the revival of the ancient Eastern wisdom, you will comprehend the Being of the Eastern World? All our theories and opinions, no matter how “Eastern”, would still be stuck in the West's conceptual network, even if we don’t use a single word of Western languages, because in the 21st centuries the footsteps of Western civilization has gotten carved deep all over the Earth. The air has been polluted, we have no choice. The Eastern man today, any Eastern man who has thorough and clear awareness of life in all facets, must bear in himself two destinings (destining, a Heideggerian term, not destiny): first, the destining of a man living in the 21st century, namely the destining of the West, because to live in the 21st century is to live with and within and by the Western table of values; second, the destining of the blood flowing in his veins, namely the destining of the East.
Any man who has deep philosophical interest will inevitably stumble upon Nihilism, and he will either be consumed by it or conquer it. Nihilism, according to Nietzsche, is the devaluation of the highest values. The highest values are The True-All that which really is; The Good-All that upon which everything everywhere depends; The Beautiful-The order and unity of All that is in its entirety, and God stands for those values. Nihilism to Nietzsche and Heidegger is a historical movement that did not begin with them, but has been set into motion since antiquity. Disbelief in God is not the ground of Nihilism, but rather a consequence of it. Christendom itself is a consequence of Nihilism, as opposed to Christianity. Christianity already ended with the crucifixion of Christ, the first and last Christian. Christendom and the organized system of belief in the Christian God-the highest value- have been used as a mean to power, an exercise of power and a disguise for power, which signified a disbelief in a good god itself. God is dead, i.e. the authority of traditional values is dead. God in this sense if the super-sensory world, which is metaphysical, hence Nietzsche's metaphysics is the metaphysics of value. This analysis may not help you to fully understand it without firm knowledge in metaphysical tradition, but I hope you get the main point. Men have to become Gods themselves to recreate values. A full, accomplished, finished Nihilism is not only the devaluation of all former values but also the transvaluation of all values, and not just a simple task as putting value in Reason. Nietzsche's maintained that Will to power must be the ground for this transvaluation, but Heidegger suggested that Will to Power only strengthens Nihilsm, not overcomes and finishes it.

The nihilism that is originated from ancient Greece is the destining of the West. The nihilism that is originated from ancient India is the destining of the East, which Nagarjuna has struggled against. The Western man today may only face his Western Nihilism, but the Eastern man with his double destining must face not only the Nihilism of the East, but he must also embrace the Nihilism of the West, to take upon his shoulders the two streams of historical destining. Hence, the mission of the Eastern Thinker today is twice as heavy as his Western counterpart’s, as he is bound to track back to the origin of Being of not only the East, but also of the West, to complete his double destined existence. In other words, the modern Western man might have only forgotten the Being of Greek origin, but the Eastern man has forgotten twice as much, hence the Eastern culture is increasingly collapsing. And it has collapsed even more pitifully when people desired to revive it, because it is not a true revival, only a revival of a symbol, which has no real significance. The Being of the East can only be revived in the 21st century when the Being of the West is harbored and embraced in the former's destining and existence.

This is his task:
1. To redetermine the limit of Western thinking (represented through philosophy, metaphysics, psychology, sociology, logic, all sciences and technology)
2. To redetermine the limit of Eastern thinking (represented through the system and mysticism of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism)
3. To redetermine the limit of limitedness/finiteness, and set the new table of values on the ground of infinitude.

In the modern Eastern World, who has the size, the ability, the genius and preparation to carry out this historical mission? Who has the vision, the charisma, the insight and the strength that can overcome the two Great waves of upcoming Nihilism? Can one accomplish it by simply living a so-called 'philosophic life', by writing a book that is not read anywhere other than the Internet, by withdrawing from social and political activities?


http://i.imgur.com/uiruC.jpg

[David Quinn]

I recognise, David, through experience and through reading, that there are metaphysical forces beyond humanity that wish it ill.

It's all in your head, mate.

-

[Liberty Sea]

Traditional notion of good and evil is surely a central theme that Nihilism seeks to destroy, but not all. I think Nietzsche's prophecy that within two hundred years Nihilism will cover the Earth is not far-fetched, and even if it does not occur within two hundred years, I can see its growing influence in the new generation.

Not to mention humanity will soon wipe itself out of this Earth with the destruction of the ecological system, which is one of Heidegger's concern. Nature, and natural environment, play important role in Taoist philosophy, and Paul Hsao records Chang Chung-Yuan saying that "Heidegger is the only Western Philosopher who not only intellectually understands but has intuitively grasped Taoist thought."

Heidegger commented on Nietzsche's word "God is dead" as follow:

“In "God is dead" the name "God," thought essentially, stands for the super-sensory world of ideals that contain the goal that exists beyond the earthly life for this life; they determine it thus from above and so in certain respects from without. But when the pure faith in God as defined by the Church fades, when theology in particular, the doctrine of the faith, finds itself curbed and forced to one side in serving its role as the normative explanation of beings in their entirety, then in no way does that fundamental structure break down in accordance with which the goal set on the scale of the supersensory has dominated the earthly life of the senses.
The place of God's vanished authority and the Church's profession of teaching has been taken by the authority of conscience and, forcibly, by the authority of reason. The social instinct has risen up against these. Historical progress has replaced the withdrawal from the world into the supersensory.
The goal of eternal bliss in the hereafter has been transformed into the earthly happiness of the greatest number. The diligent care that was the cultus of religion has been replaced by enthusiasm for creating a culture or for spreading civilization. Creation, once the prerogative of the biblical God, has become the mark of human activity, whose creative work becomes in the end business transactions.
Whatever is thus going to be put in the place of the supersensory world will be variations of the Christian-ecclesiastical and theological interpretation of the world, an interpretation which adopted its schema of the order, the hierarchical order of beings, from the Hellenistic-Judaic world and whose fundamental structure was established through Plato at the outset of Western metaphysics.
The realm for the essence and event of nihilism is metaphysics itself, always assuming that by "metaphysics" we are not thinking of a doctrine or only of a specialized discipline of philosophy but of the fundamental structure of beings in their entirety, so far as this entirety is differentiated into a sensory and a super-sensory world, the former of which is supported and determined by the latter. Metaphysics is the space of history in which it becomes destiny for the supersensory world, ideas, God, moral law, the authority of reason, progress, the happiness of the greatest number, culture, and civilization to forfeit their constructive power and to become void. We are calling this essential ruin [Wesensze$all] of supersensory its putrefaction [E.'envesug]. Unbelief in the sense of apostasy from the Christian doctrine of faith is therefore never the essence or the ground of nihilism; rather, it is always only a consequence of nihilism: for it could be that Christianity itself represents a consequence and a form of nihilism."

"...However, so long as Nietzsche grasps nihilism as the intrinsic law operating in the history of the devaluation of the hitherto highest values, but takes devaluation in the sense of the revaluation of all values, nihilism in his interpretation derives from the rule and breakdown of values and so from the possibility in general to posit values. This possibility is itself based on the will to power. This is why Nietzsche's concept of nihilism and his statement "God is dead" can only be adequately understood on the basis of the essence of the will to power. Let us therefore take the last step in shedding light on that remark by explaining what Nietzsche is thinking with the title he coined, "The Will to Power."
...
To will is to will to be master. Will thus understood is found even in the will of him who serves. Not in the sense that a servant might strive to emerge from the role of vassal to become a master himself. Rather, the vassal as vassal, the servant as servant, always has the will to have something else under him, over which he has command in the course of his service and whose service he makes use of. Therefore, as a vassal he is still a master. Even to be a vassal is to want to be master.
The will is not a desire and not a simple striving for something; rather, will is in itself command (cf. Thuss Spoke Zarathuswa, parts I and in addition, The Will to Power, no. 668, from 1888). Command has its essence in that fact that the commanding master is conscious that he has at his disposal the possibilities of effective action. What is commanded in the command is the realization of this disposal. In the command, the one giving the command (and not just the one carrying it out) is obedient to this disposal and to the condition of having at his disposal: this is how he obeys himself. In this way, by continuing to risk himself, the one giving the command is superior to himself. To command, which is to be carefully distinguished from merely ordering others about, is to overcome oneself and is more difficult than obeying. Will is gathering oneself together for the task at hand. Only he who cannot obey himself must continue to be specifically subject to command. Will strives for what i t wills not just as for something that i t does not yet have. Will already has what it wills. For will wills its willing. Its will is what it has willed. Will wills itself. It exceeds itself. In this way will as will wills above and beyond itself, and therefore at the same time it must bring itself beneath and behind itself. This is why Nietzsche can say (The Will to Power, no. 675, from 1887/8): "To will at all amounts to the will to become stronger, the will to grow… " Here "stronger" indicates "more power," and that means: only power. For the essence of power is to be master over the level of power attained at a particular time. Power is power only when and only for as long as i t is an increase in power and commands for itself "more power." To halt the increase of power only for a moment, merely to stand still at one level of power, is already the beginning of a decline in power. Part of the essence of power is the overpowering of itself. This overpowering belongs to and springs from power itself, since power is command and as command it empowers itself to overpower the level of power it has at any time. So power is indeed constantly on the way to power itself, but not as a will available for itself somewhere, not as a will which is trying (in the sense of striving) to come to power. Nor does power empower itself to overpower its level of power merely for the 'sake of the next level, but rather for this one reason alone: in order to seize hold [bemiichtigen] of itself in the absolute character of its essence. To will, according to this definition of its essence, is much less a striving than striving is the residual or incipient form of will."

That is the deepest analysis of Nietzsche I have ever read, as an extremely small part of Heidegger's incredibly profound thinking. I however think this little comic has demonstrated Nihilism better than any literary works or philosophical treatise:
http://i.imgur.com/f6LNk.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/0zsi9.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/WErIV.jpg

[guest_of_logic]

guest_of_logic: these "rights" might in fact be consequences of our level of spiritual development

Liberty Sea: In other words, it is relative. And ultimately it is meaningless.

Don't be too quick to conclude that: who's to say that the spiritual scale does not have an absolute beginning and end, or at least an absolute middle? In any case, why would one's level of spiritual development be "ultimately" meaningless? Isn't what's "ultimately" meaningful/meaningless in this case (by your way of thinking) a matter of (relative) opinion? How could you, given the viewpoint you're espousing, establish a truly objective (i.e. independent of personal perspective) basis for "ultimate" meaning[ful/less]ness?

guest_of_logic: If you found proof that a young man you knew was trapping women and children in his basement and raping and torturing them slowly before slaughtering them painfully, would you take action to stop him or would you shrug and say, "Oh well, it's only evil by the human definition"?

Liberty Sea: From an ultimate perspective, all will die, all will pass away like specks of dust. The devil, who think of himself as good, would ask: does it matter if you die now or 50 years later? Does it matter if you die painfully or pleasurably? Why shouldn't the strong get their pleasures, at the expense of the weak's pleasure? From the Devil's perspective, the rapist is the strong one, and it is fair that the strong ones get their pleasures by dominating the weak, by robbing pleasures from the weak, which are the women and children in this case. He would ask, who gives the weak the right to take pleasure away from the strong?
If I can stop him, it mean I am stronger than him or supported by a force stronger than him, which might be current normal society in this case. Then it is also for the pleasure of my side, the strong ones, that I must stop him, the weak one.

Good and evil is a matter of value. What is good is what's valuable. Yet in the face of Nothingness, of Nihilism traditional values no longer stand, though up to this point it has always been the strong that decide what is valuable, it is always those who stand in the top that determine what's right and what's wrong. Will to Power, you see.
I will discuss the problem of Nihilism later in this post in answering Talking Ass, and don't worry, I am no devil's advocate.

"Good and evil is a matter of value": I've already argued to you that they are more than this; much more so they are matters of definition. I don't accept as valid your contention that the devil "think [sic] of himself as good" - to be good means to behave in a way that is opposite to how the devil behaves. The devil knows he is not "good"; he might believe he is "justified" though; civilised people know that he is not. Shall I take it from your assertion, "I am no devil's advocate", that you are civilised, and that you would act in the case I presented?

You raise the interesting point, albeit that you have framed it in terms of strong and weak, that evil gains pleasure from the suffering of others. This, I have often thought, is the definition of evil. You suggest that the devil asks, "who gives the weak the right to take pleasure away from the strong?". I wonder whether you have a personal answer to this question. Surely, if you are no devil's advocate, you do. Care to share it?

My own answer is: consider the ultimate consequences of the two world-views, and which results in the greatest overall pleasure. If one is trying to justify oneself, as you suggest the devil attempts to do, then surely one can do so no better than on those terms. The "might makes right" world-view is mostly a zero-sum game: one man's pain is food for another man's pleasure; the total sum is neutral. The "Golden Rule" world-view is a non-zero-sum game: it increases the sum of pleasure without limit.

This brings me back to my original question: if the one world-view can be so much more readily justified than the other, then why does the other persist? Several answers have been suggested in this thread already; another possibility is: short-sightedness and non-rational thinking.

--

I recognise, David, through experience and through reading, that there are metaphysical forces beyond humanity that wish it ill.

It's all in your head, mate.

Oh dear, David. If you were a guest on the QI show, you'd just have been buzzed for offering an answer that's commonly touted but factually incorrect. Do a little research, my friend!

[Diebert van Rhijn]

"there are metaphysical forces beyond humanity that wish it ill"

"offering an answer that's commonly touted but factually incorrect. Do a little research"

Brilliant! The sound of false fundamentalism clapping hands at happy witchin' hour.

Ever participated with a real exorcism Laird? Or are you still in book research?

[David Quinn]

I recognise, David, through experience and through reading, that there are metaphysical forces beyond humanity that wish it ill.

It's all in your head, mate.

Oh dear, David. If you were a guest on the QI show, you'd just have been buzzed for offering an answer that's commonly touted but factually incorrect. Do a little research, my friend!

Regardless of what a bunch of comedians think of the matter, it still remains true that it's all in your head.

Perhaps you need to research the subject of collective hysteria, in which people collectively take on the same paranoic fears and irrational visions - such as when whole villages profess to have seen the Virgin Mary. Such people mutually reinforce their collective delusion via their interactions with each other and I dare say that the same is happening in the case of your "research". (Let's at least hope that the people you research have better credentials than celebrities who appear on a TV panel show.)

The mind is a very powerful thing, and the ego's need to believe that it is in the centre of everything is even stronger. This should never be underestimated.

I think you vastly underestimate it.

There is as much chance of metaphysical forces wishing humans ill than there are metaphysical forces wishing ants ill. We are just not that important. As I say, your human-centered world view comes straight out of the Middle Ages, in the days when people believed that the earth was at the centre of the universe.

Note that it's always the flakes who go in for this sort of thing. Their psychological flakiness evidently requires a strong fundamentalist belief in their own inherent God-blessed specialness.

The only real difference between ants and people is that ants don't have delusions of grandeur about their own place in the scheme of things. Humans could learn a lot from them.

-

[Bobo]

But it was Alex who started to discuss Nash as person or potential 'wise' whatever, sweet Bobo. My point was merely about an illustration how the mind can overcome dillusion by simply striving for rationality. A general point was made. How hard can it be?

Since the question was how logic is put to use it was not clear if Nash was an example of "one's intuitive powers and a wholehearted desire to banish all delusion from the mind". And even if it is an example it may be not a good one, as you stumble upon a miraculous prescription. Paranoid thinking, hearing voices, (jesus cures), reason is the medicine.

The point is set to be as hard as it's all or nothingness, but under what context are David's words to be read? That of "how the mind can overcome dillusion by simply striving for rationality"?

[guest_of_logic]

Brilliant! The sound of false fundamentalism clapping hands at happy witchin' hour.

Diebert, I'm not sure why you refer to me as a "false fundamentalist". I know what I know through personal experience; research has only shown me that others have had similar experiences and can prove that those experiences are not "all in the mind".

Ever participated with a real exorcism Laird? Or are you still in book research?

I haven't participated in an exorcism, Diebert, no. Traditional exorcisms aren't the only approach anyway, and in any case, I'm more interested in learning how to protect myself and others. The basics seem to be pretty commonsensical: healthy diet, balanced life, avoiding drugs and alcohol, avoiding seances and other invocations of spirits, and avoiding repetitive and/or aggressive rock music. I've also seen it suggested to look into (and avoid) earth currents. There are different herbs that might assist in individual cases. I'm sure there's a lot more - I'm still learning.

Regardless of what a bunch of comedians think of the matter, it still remains true that it's all in your head.

To clarify: I don't know what the actual producers of the show believe, I was simply using it as a rhetorical device to indicate that, rather than thinking dangerously and truthfully, you are kow-towing to conventional (and false) thinking.

Perhaps you need to research the subject of collective hysteria, in which people collectively take on the same paranoic fears and irrational visions - such as when whole villages profess to have seen the Virgin Mary. Such people mutually reinforce their collective delusion via their interactions with each other and I dare say that the same is happening in the case of your "research". (Let's at least hope that the people you research have better credentials than celebrities who appear on a TV panel show.)

The mind is a very powerful thing, and the ego's need to believe that it is in the centre of everything is even stronger. This should never be underestimated.

I think you vastly underestimate it.

Actually, I think you ought to do less recommending and more considering. I don't say what I say without solid reasons.

Note that it's always the flakes who go in for this sort of thing.

David, your bias betrays you. Clearly, you don't know very much about this subject and the people who research it, but that doesn't stop you from making your usual pronouncements.

[Talking Ass]

David wrote: "The mind is a very powerful thing, and the ego's need to believe that it is in the centre of everything is even stronger. This should never be underestimated. / I think you vastly underestimate it."

This declaration, and the many like it on this forum by persons hammering and drilling on a certain 'rationalistic' mode of dealing with life and all life's issues, complications, uncertainties, and open questions, is the one that I MOST listen to. It is like getting it right from the horse's mouth. However, I am naughty and don't take it as I am s'posed to take it, I take it as an almost perfect testimony about the program of those who offer it! Nifty psychology, huh? And therefore, I never do underestimate what this mind and ego can do and how it can deceive us.

Diebert wrote: "Brilliant! The sound of false fundamentalism clapping hands at happy witchin' hour."

In the same way that it is almost impossible to rationally believe in God [for how will one work out one's definitions?], similarly it is quite hard to 'locate' nefarious entities. I would resort to a sort of back-stepping and defensive maneouvre and refer to Jung's 'psychoid' to point in a certain direction [the psyche] as a region where it is possible there 'exists' in some way autonmous or semi-autonomous entities. However, in the same sense that David says 'It is in your mind', I would also say 'It is in your psyche', except that the 'psyche' is a larger and vaster and more unknown 'thing'. How it is that this 'psyche', which cannot be located anywere specifically, is an entity of such vast power? And growing stronger and more capable.

Another possible angle of argument would revert to the fact, in our world, or predatory life. Is there a possible corollary in psychic life? There is certainly a form of psychic predation [or vampirism, and also symbiosis, etc.] between humans [that occurs on many levels].

The Jungian back-flip is fraught, I admit that. It is a quite intangible and mystically metaphysical group of presumptions [organized by a man with deep familiarity with the Medieval world]. But it is a way to assess and to some extent also to deal with the notion both of 'magical helpers and guides', 'dangerous demons and oppositors', roads in and out of dangerous psychological swamps, etc. Jungian symbolics are also a way to think about and understand mass hysteria.

To say 'it is all in your head' is too simplistic. You'd have to say 'it is all in your body-mind-psyche problem' which is another way of admitting you don't really know what it is.

Still, one has to point out that David is being true to his Buddhist fundaments. The Buddhists have developed (though this varies from school to school and there is great variation in interpretation) a unique psychological system for dealing with existence, the self, the mind, etc. He is repeating a convention.

[Liberty Sea]

Don't be too quick to conclude that: who's to say that the spiritual scale does not have an absolute beginning and end, or at least an absolute middle? In any case, why would one's level of spiritual development be "ultimately" meaningless? Isn't what's "ultimately" meaningful/meaningless in this case (by your way of thinking) a matter of (relative) opinion? How could you, given the viewpoint you're espousing, establish a truly objective (i.e. independent of personal perspective) basis for "ultimate" meaning[ful/less]ness?

Well, the rapist can reason that he is more spiritually developed than the victims, therefore he has the right to abuse them, as do humans the beasts.
He can reason that to be more spiritually developed is a form of being stronger. That that would give the giants who are more spiritually developed the perfect right to devour human beings.

"Good and evil is a matter of value": I've already argued to you that they are more than this; much more so they are matters of definition.

Yet good cannot exist without evil. Then why choose one and not another? Why not both? Why not none?

I don't accept as valid your contention that the devil "think [sic] of himself as good" - to be good means to behave in a way that is opposite to how the devil behaves.

The devil behaves like God, in the sense that God seeks to destroy devils and devil seeks to destroy God. Both are self-righteous and think badly of each other. You are framing this in an unrealistic, metaphysical sense, that God is pure good and the Devil is pure evil, whereas any living being would contain both elements of what you call Good and evil, and ultimately, there is no good or evil, just conditioned points of view.
Why don't you pray for the devil?

The devil knows he is not "good"; he might believe he is "justified" though; civilised people know that he is not.

What if Lucifer says he is good?


http://i.imgur.com/MHSEh.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/oGBzn.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/zsw7s.jpg

Shall I take it from your assertion, "I am no devil's advocate", that you are civilised, and that you would act in the case I presented?

You raise the interesting point, albeit that you have framed it in terms of strong and weak, that evil gains pleasure from the suffering of others. This, I have often thought, is the definition of evil.

But don't humans gain pleasure/benefit from the suffering/death of animals?

You suggest that the devil asks, "who gives the weak the right to take pleasure away from the strong?". I wonder whether you have a personal answer to this question. Surely, if you are no devil's advocate, you do. Care to share it?

My own answer is: consider the ultimate consequences of the two world-views, and which results in the greatest overall pleasure. If one is trying to justify oneself, as you suggest the devil attempts to do, then surely one can do so no better than on those terms. The "might makes right" world-view is mostly a zero-sum game: one man's pain is food for another man's pleasure; the total sum is neutral. The "Golden Rule" world-view is a non-zero-sum game: it increases the sum of pleasure without limit.

Yet a lion cannot have any pleasure if it is not at the expense of a deer's pleasure. The carnivorous beasts are not responsible for their carnivorousness more than a pedophile is responsible for his pedophilia. If God wants the greatest pleasures for all he wouldn't have created a world of suffering and beings that must struggles against each other for their own sake.

The Earth is a planet abundant of life because of "Survival of the fittest" and "Law of the jungle". The only ones who advocate the equality of life and happiness for everyone are those human beings who have been born in too fortunate circumstances. Have they ever struggled for their lives?
I dislike the word 'civilized'. It just mean that you protect what is beneficial for you, namely civilization, and it is no nobler than a beast protecting its horde. I claim neither goodness nor evil. I am neither for nor against. To begin to choose any side is the beginning of self-righteousness. I am neutral. I am absolutely amoral.
Social life is matter of benefit, whether emotional or physical, sensual or spiritual. I would save the victims, but would not consider myself good for doing it, but rather a challenge I want to overcome, in any case my feeling doesn't matter. I often choose to do what's more difficult to do.

[David Quinn]

David, your bias betrays you. Clearly, you don't know very much about this subject and the people who research it, but that doesn't stop you from making your usual pronouncements.

I wonder what mainstream science thinks of it all? Not much, I suspect.

I must say that in twenty five years of introspecting and opening my mind to the Infinite, I have never encountered a "metaphysical force" of any kind that wishes to do me or the human race any harm. Not even the slightest hint of one. So you can see why I have very little interest in the subject.

Perhaps my experience is limited, but all I've ever encountered is the joyousness of Nature.

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[David Quinn]

One other thing. As a rule, I never bring this sort of thing up, as I usually consider it to be irrelevant and in bad taste, but I will do so now because it is pertinent to the matter at hand and Laird needs to be confronted with it. I am talking about his schizophrenia.

Getting involved in apocalyptic medieval dramas in the belief that things are out to get you is a classic symptom of schizophrenia. So Laird, in what way have you have established that the entire medieval drama you're absorbed in is not just another paranoid delusion of a schizophrenic?

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