Are "women" a different species?

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
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Alex Jacob
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Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by Alex Jacob »

David writes (to Iolaus):

"Good for you, but Alex has described the very desire to escape the cave as neurotic. It forms the basis of his entire discourse. So by what stretch of the imagination are we to regard his words as "pearls" and ourselves as "swine"?

Here, you are dealing with an old language construct, an allegory, a story. Is this, perhaps, the basic core of your idea about reality? Plato's Cave? If so, you are certainly not the only one down the echoey halls of history.

Escape. It is a word with a good deal of tension in it. It seems, perhaps, operative for you, an operative word. But, it is couched within an old story. That story may not in fact be a map of reality, but the expression of certain ideas about reality.

My 'discourse' here, on these subjects, is more often than not a negation of what I consider to be unhealthy ideas and attitudes in you-plural. You take speculative philosophy and concretize it in what appears a very religious way, such that you distill a doctrine. Yert your religious doctrines, dressed up with pseudo-intellectualism, is a bizarre strain of 'atheism'. I listen to this doctrine, I examine its elements, I compare it with what I have seen and what I know and also feel, and it does not ring out as 'truth', but as something else. To assert that, does NOT mean that I do not consider it possible that there may be some kind of ultimate reality or a way to understand it, or live in accord with it. The actual truth is that I personally feel a sense of that, but the ethic that 'it' inculcates in me is radically different from what you assert.

A line from a song I once heard:

'All the detours taken never lead you home
What a maze you find yourself in and still alone.
You thought it would be easy
But the truth eluded you,
The only way out is through'.

---Julie Snow song sung by Lui Collins.

I think it requires other skills to know who we are and what we are doing here, and what we shall do here, and even what we are supposed to do here, than can be gained by intellectualism alone. It is a fundamental difference between us. You seek to characterize it as 'foggy' and 'teenage-girl-like' or perhaps you see it as 'female' or Heaven only knows what. And though I cannot ultimately know anything about you-plural in any ultimate or definitive way, what I can do is tell you why I think your doctrines are flawed, and why I think they will not and cannot lead to positive results.
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Trevor Salyzyn
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Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by Trevor Salyzyn »

Alex Jacob wrote:I listen to this doctrine, I examine its elements, I compare it with what I have seen and what I know and also feel, and it does not ring out as 'truth', but as something else. To assert that, does NOT mean that I do not consider it possible that there may be some kind of ultimate reality or a way to understand it, or live in accord with it. The actual truth is that I personally feel a sense of that, but the ethic that 'it' inculcates in me is radically different from what you assert.
You are putting a lot of emphasis here on your feelings. In your experience, how often does someone's feelings accurately reflect reality?
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maestro
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Re: Are "women" a different species?

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Kelly Jones wrote:I don't think Australians (generally) are more likely to be wise, or even partially wise.
Forget mere wisdom or enlightenment. In Austrailia lives a man, who is the first person in the history of the universe to have
achieved an "Actual freedom surpassing any spiritual enlightenment"

http://actualfreedom.com.au/introduction/index.htm
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Alex Jacob
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Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by Alex Jacob »

Trevor asks:

"You are putting a lot of emphasis here on your feelings. In your experience, how often does someone's feelings accurately reflect reality?"

I would not describe it quite in that way, but I would describe it as subjective experience, or my experience, or my sense of things. The way you-all use the term 'feelings' is like the worst of all bad things. No one here---of the TBs---can use the word except in a negative sense.

The term 'accurately reflect reality' is odd to me. I don't think that feelings, except perhaps as hunches, have any place in the science of discovery about the nature of physical reality. Do scientists base their understandings on 'feelings' Trevor? You know they do not.

But the living of life from the moment of conception, one's womb-existence, one's birth into the world, one's upbringing, life, and death, and the so many different paths of life that one may take, which is never a singularity but a vast plurality of experiences, choices, activities---it does not seem to me that one can do without 'feelings'. But I define feelings quite differently than you. I think ideas work in conjunction with feelings. I think that ideas have effect on feelings.

So, while I would never say that someone should exclusively feel their way through life, or decide all things on the basis of feelings, I could honestly never represent that anyone could live without 'working with his feelings'.

I would answer your question a little differently by saying that I don't think we can really understand life if our feelings are not also involved. (We could do science though without feelings).
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Trevor Salyzyn wrote: In your experience, how often does someone's feelings accurately reflect reality?
I'd say a feeling is inaccurate by definition, the inaccuracy might be called its very function, like in 'global indicator', 'sense of direction', 'color coded alarm status'. If it would get any more accurate it might turn out to be a thought after all, but accuracy is not always desired, or achievable, or efficient.

It's all mentation to me but it could be interesting to see how a thought, when dissected, might be seen as a twisted feeling biting its own tail off!
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Ryan Rudolph
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Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by Ryan Rudolph »

Sher,
If indeed the Aussie pop. is 20 million, and assuming a 50% male ratio, that would leave 10 million women. Two enlightened women out of 10 million means if you are a female and were born in Australia, your odds of being enlightened are one in five million. Holy land indeed, if you keep in mind that in the rest of the world the odds of a woman being enlightened are one in three billion.

Maestro, if you are still in your child-bearing years (and I'm pretty sure you are), you might want to consider moving to Australia so that your offspring stand a much better chance of becoming enlightened. This advice is also good for Trevor and Alex.
I think part of it has a lot to do with environment. For instance: North America, Europe and Australia have produced far more rational secularists than Africa, South America, Central America, the middle east and even Asia.

The west enjoys the best living conditions in the world, and also has easy access to the best wisdom ever created. On the contrary, in places like Africa, they fight to find clean drinking water devoid of their own feces and urine, so picking up Nietzsche’s will to power is probably the last thing on their minds.

And then there could also be a genetic link that has not yet been empirically proven or disproven, as no scientist would dare tackle that research topic if he values his career.

Moreover, with enough research, you could come up with realistic probability figures on a global level, and then on a national level, where some areas would score much higher. For instance: the odds of an enlightened philosopher emerging in Africa might be 1 out of 100 million, whereas the odds in Canada might be 1 out of 5 million, just as an example. And over time, these numbers should get better as living conditions improve, technology advances, and higher numbers of humans slowly warm up to reason.
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Jason
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Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by Jason »

Australia did have some auspicious beginnings, its first church was allegedly burnt down by convicts in response to the Governor's decree that all residents in the colony, including officers and convicts, were to attend Sunday services.
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Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by Iolaus »

You are putting a lot of emphasis here on your feelings. In your experience, how often does someone's feelings accurately reflect reality?
Whereas, I consider the feelings to be the rudder of the ship. They work together with thinking like the pole star and rudder.

Feelings can be deranged and influence thought, thought can influence feelings, (but only in the more honest) but always feelings are in the driver's seat.

Oh, you will dismiss this as only true for me, because I am a woman, that feelings are in the driver's seat. But it ain't so.

Women may not have many talents, but it's not for nothing that justice and judgment is archetypally portrayed as a woman. The men who pretend not to be operating with feelings are kidding themselves, something men can sort of do, and women, I think, are virtually unable to do - to really lie to themselves and believe the lie.

The male gift of mental compartmentalization comes with its price.

And here, people aspire to robothood, which is impossible and therefore means that, by definition they are spinning.

The difference between living and nonliving things is will. And will is a feeling. Without feeling, you could not even desire enlightenment.

This business of 'having a conscience' is a refinement of feeling.

So this is why I go for purification, not elimination.
Truth is a pathless land.
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Alex Jacob
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Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by Alex Jacob »

So, the first impulse of the Australian ruffians was to burn down their first house of worship. One wonders if they undertook that radical activity in theological opposition, or if they more resented being forced to dress in their Sunday best and being doused with sweet-scented colognes? Kind of a rural Australian Huckleberry Finn syndrome.

Ryan, what are the odds of you getting an erection one fine day and boning some hot chick from your neighborhood? Is it greater or lesser than that of a Canadian attaining enlitenment?

In honor of the burnt Sunday School: Goldia Haynes (Clean link, click without fear).

Here's one for Trevor (no dancing buddy! keep those toes still!)
Last edited by Anonymous on Mon Aug 04, 2008 4:20 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Iolaus wrote: The difference between living and nonliving things is will. And will is a feeling. Without feeling, you could not even desire enlightenment.

This business of 'having a conscience' is a refinement of feeling.

So this is why I go for purification, not elimination.
Not sure what or who you're aiming at here Iolaus

Nobody as far as I know is disputing feelings or preaching the abandonment of all feeling. How could enlightenment be about never experiencing hunger again or disabling of senses? Actually it's reasonable to suggest that without delusion to clog up our senses, they will function in a more sharp, alert way. This includes any 'sense' we can have of situations or people.

So as you equal feeling with the general work of senses you progress to call will a feeling too. And as we can 'sense' our thoughts, why not call thought a feeling too? This is becoming very vague and that's exactly what feelings are designed to be.

Refinement of feeling results in generating thought. Happens less than you think! Refining thought can result in pure logical abstracts which can function as razor blade to cut away the endless mindless growth of ignorance. Enlightenment is a very precise business, that's why it's being said the road toward it is always the narrow path. In German you have this beautiful word: eng, which can mean: narrow, tight, intimate, dense and in Dutch is also can mean: scary.
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Alex Jacob
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Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by Alex Jacob »

Here's one for you, Diebert old buddy. Cool Down Yonder

When the feelings expressed in this soulful song is redirected through the most precise and cutting thought, what comes out the other end? Is it a 'thought' per se, or some elaborate arithmetical scribble?

;-)
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Alex Jacob wrote: When the feelings expressed in this soulful song is redirected through the most precise and cutting thought, what comes out the other end? Is it a 'thought' per se, or some elaborate arithmetical scribble?
Do you mean with feelings the emotions the song could invoke?

I'm not sure you can "redirect" a feeling through a thought. The feeling itself could be twisted, turned, seduced, raped, genetically enhanced even to become more like a thought. It has a different function now, a different raison d'être.
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Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by Shahrazad »

Alex,
Ryan, what are the odds of you getting an erection one fine day and boning some hot chick from your neighborhood? Is it greater or lesser than that of a Canadian attaining enlitenment?
Lesser than the odds of enlightenment, but if the "chick" was male, the odds would go up considerably.

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Alex Jacob
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Re: Are "women" a different species?

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Diebert asks:

"Do you mean with feelings the emotions the song could invoke?"

Is there a confusion about the use of the word 'feeling' in these conversations? I am now getting the impression that you may mean feeling as pertaining to somatic sensations, whereas when I use the word 'feeling' I refer to something, I think, rather difficult to define. 'Feelings' for me have to do with sentiments that are right at the core of one's being, but very distinct from 'mere' somatic sensations (hunger, cold, warmth, etc.). The 'feelings' I am referring to are deeply wedded---integral---to consciousness and awareness. In cultivated and sophisticated persons (excluding, by that, the QRS and hangers-on) these 'feelings' become very sophisticated, and there is perhaps less of a distinction between what is a thought and what is an emotion. It is, I assert, in the nature of human sophistication to open up, open into, know and explore, and give voice to, this unity of thought and emotion.

I don't want to burden your soul with more than it can handle at one time, but will you allow me to include here a poem by Juan Ramon Jimenez? It is not that I want to do you or your mind any damage, or to set you back, I only want to demonstrate a way among so many ways that sophisticated feeling can function within higher thinking:

Around the Treetops

Around the treetops
Of a tall tree
My dreams are flying.
They are doves crowned with
Pure lightrays
And as they fly they scatter music.

What a going and coming
From a single treetop!
How they enmesh me in gold!
Last edited by Anonymous on Mon Aug 04, 2008 5:19 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Shahrazad
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Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by Shahrazad »

I love the direction this conversation is taking.

Alex,
'Feelings' for me have to do with sentiments that are right at the core of one's being, but very distinct from 'mere' somatic sensations (hunger, cold, warmth, etc.).
Can you please explain what is so very distinct about them? I don't see it at all.

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Trevor Salyzyn
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Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by Trevor Salyzyn »

Alex Jacob wrote:I would answer your question a little differently by saying that I don't think we can really understand life if our feelings are not also involved. (We could do science though without feelings).
What parts of life need feeling for understanding? Since you said that science without feelings is possible, and the biological sciences are science, you must have something special in mind.

On that note, why is science possible without feelings, but philosophy not? I don't think, say, Darwin's theory is any less true no matter how you feel about it, and something like the Tao is even more abstract.

Iolaus wrote:Women may not have many talents, but it's not for nothing that justice and judgment is archetypally portrayed as a woman. The men who pretend not to be operating with feelings are kidding themselves, something men can sort of do, and women, I think, are virtually unable to do - to really lie to themselves and believe the lie.

The male gift of mental compartmentalization comes with its price.

And here, people aspire to robothood, which is impossible and therefore means that, by definition they are spinning.
I know full well that feelings have more than a little influence on my decision making. They make it phenomenally easier for me to understand other people's motivations, as well.

But my question was not about the value of feelings in all contexts. My question was about the relevance of feelings to what is true, nothing more.

Alex seemed to be implying that he didn't feel as though this forum dealt with truth -- and I was reacting to that. If this forum doesn't deal with truth, that is one thing, but I expect that someone who says that there is a lot of delusion going around would base it on more than a feeling, and a few old songs they used to play.

So, um... the question had some context. I wasn't sniping at feelings, only at how useful they are in one area.
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Alex Jacob
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Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by Alex Jacob »

Shah,

Because a person with no 'mind' as we know it has bodily sensations---say someone mentally deficient, severely retarded---but they don't seem to have higher consciousness. They surely feel a burn, or cold, and react somatically. But the 'lofty emotions' that cohabit with 'lofty thinking' are really of another order.

In saying this, I am banking on the hope that, among the low-lifes and Church-burners here, maybe once in some remote past, there arose inside them, some 'lofty feeling' that they might remember, even vaguely, as if in a dream, like an image of a loved one seen through a mist.

This Christian idea of agape could be such a feeling, even if it is woefully rare in our tragic world.
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Carl G
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Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by Carl G »

Hey!

QRS is all about lofty and agape!
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Shahrazad
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Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by Shahrazad »

Alex,
Because a person with no 'mind' as we know it has bodily sensations---say someone mentally deficient, severely retarded---but they don't seem to have higher consciousness. They surely feel a burn, or cold, and react somatically. But the 'lofty emotions' that cohabit with 'lofty thinking' are really of another order.
We were talking about feelings, not emotions. Please leave emotions out for the time being.

Many animals have feelings, and even major emotions (fear is the best understood of all), yet they don't have higher consciousness. Are you saying "higher consciousness" is necessary for feelings to arise?

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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Alex Jacob wrote:'Feelings' for me have to do with sentiments that are right at the core of one's being, but very distinct from 'mere' somatic sensations (hunger, cold, warmth, etc.). The 'feelings' I am referring to are deeply wedded---integral---to consciousness and awareness.
So you're talking about sentiments, emotions that arise when you, or poets and artists and the like are exploring 'deeper lying' issues around experiences, our consciousness or awareness. Has it ever occurred to you that these sentiments aren't belonging to the core, to the vision at all? That they arise as reaction when you get overwhelmed and certain blocks or 'neuroses' are hammered upon? Just like visions, tremors, Siddhis and such things (which could be seen as incarnated sentiments, in a way)? That these might define the limit of your 'wedding proposals', as they are part of the mist, a defense mechanism and not part of any 'core' truth about yourself unless it's the truth of not being able to carry the burden?
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Alex Jacob
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Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by Alex Jacob »

Definition of feeling.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Alex Jacob wrote:Definition of feeling.
Yes, don't you find it the most ironic thing that it's close to being the worst defined word in the dictionary?! Apart from god and love, that is.
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Alex Jacob
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Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by Alex Jacob »

Diebert writes:

"So you're talking about sentiments, emotions that arise when you, or poets and artists and the like are exploring 'deeper lying' issues around experiences, our consciousness or awareness. Has it ever occurred to you that these sentiments aren't belonging to the core, to the vision at all? That they arise as reaction when you get overwhelmed and certain blocks or 'neuroses' are hammered upon? Just like visions, tremors, Siddhis and such things (which could be seen as incarnated sentiments, in a way)? That these might define the limit of your 'wedding proposals', as they are part of the mist, a defense mechanism and not part of any 'core' truth about yourself unless it's the truth of not being able to carry the burden?"

No, Diebert. No! I knew you would almost explode under pressure from that poem! But try to keep your consciousness in one piece, for God's sake man!

For the time being, go easy on yourself! Today has been a big, BIG day! You are actually thinking about the core human being, the basic shared experience of humankind, this nexus of feeling and thought that, indeed, makes us human! You will find, little brother, that it will take you a while to find the vocabulary that you can attach to it, and you won't only find it among 'poets and artist' (so cute!) but among many grand thinkers who were not, like yourselves, calculating cogged robots!

Next, I fully expect to be asked how to kiss a girl, or what should you do when you DO get an erection.

We'll get to all of it, by and by....

PS: Yes, it is indeed ironic that the word 'feeling' is multivalent. And it does not surpise me, among the various recently-civilized apes of this academy (thinking of Kafka's A Report to an Academy), that we'd have to spend time rolling back and forth, back and forth, over a definition.

A feeling! Yes! I had one of those once...
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Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by David Quinn »

Feelings tend to be valued by those who cannot bring themselves to experience anything greater. If one doesn't have a mind that consciously connects to ultimate reality, then feelings naturally become the baramoter of what is fine and good in life. In such a situation, one feels closer to God, say, when one's feelings are sublime and elevated.

Elevated feelings are like little echoes or whispers of a greater reality beyond. Experiencing them is all well and good if you lack the means to consciously ascending to this greater reality, but it is small fry compared to the real meat of spiritual endeavour. They are like little consolation prizes for those trapped within the limitations of animal consciousness.

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Re: Are "women" a different species?

Post by Steven Coyle »

Yeah, but wouldn't it agree that it is plausible that a Buddha could have a glorious feeling once in a great day? Damn, man.

I mean, damn!
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