Then what is a human being? Is not freedom what human seeks, if not what do they seek for.
i think the ultimate goal of a human being depends on the human being in question. don’t we all have slightly differing ultimate goals?
Hi Dan
This question is the purpose of the “Simone, Plato,and the Cave” thread. Freedom for man is coming into contact and acquiring the consciousness for participating with the awakened life outside of the cave. Unawakened man limited to habitual reaction to external circumstances but believing himself awake is prison life in the cave. Freedom for man is escape from this prison but it is first necessary to realize that we are in this psychological prison the ancient traditions speak of in one form or another.
This is what Plato is getting at. The large cell prevents the person realizing that they are in a cell. This realization is the first step towards true human freedom.
Anyone one is pursuing philosophy will surely will be reading about Plato’s allegro of the cave. Since you calmly believe in the allegro of the cave, can you tell me what is, that goal out of the cave? What is this light or conciousness? Is the goal or out of the cave truth. Then truth is the ultimate goal for human beings. Then what is truth? Is truth science, if so, then man is a scientific man. It is said that something that comes into being or it has a body it will die, and religion states you can live eternally.
And they confidently believes in the soul without knowing what the hell it is.
Aristotle states, " Plato is thinking in a fantasy world that does not exist". And Aristotle states that the soul is a mind, and plato like other religious people believe the soul is a human being but without a flesh.
In conclusion, I am dissatified in your response.
Hi Dan
All I can explain is what the analogy means to me in regards to have I’ve come to appreciate the human condition.
A person is born with a mixture of essential qualities. To make it simple, call this their unique “essence.” this begins to grow as the child grows but at the age of about five or six something curious begins to happen: they begin to develop a personality. This essence begins to “fit in” or acclimate to their family and society in general by developing reactive patterns. Gradually because of these pressures, the essence of a person stops growing and this function of growth is adopted by our personality which becomes dominant and our essence is pushed into the background.
This personality of ours is like a machine. It lives unconsciously through mechanical habits. It is like us being in a car but instead of us driving the car, the car drives us in accordance with its programming. The living essence part of ourselves remains at a very infantile level but this essence is what can really grow and evolve in man because it can become conscious. Our personality is incapable of and has no need for consciousness. It functions in psychological darkness yet it is what dominates our life.
We can become aware of our situation through the inner exposure to the light of consciousness and desire to awaken since awakened life is natural for it. This creates the struggle between this essential part of ourselves that desires to awaken and the dominance of our habitual programmed patterns that would die as a result and strives to retain its dominance.
Life in the cave is the unconscious interaction of our personalities. Lacking consciousness it thrives in the darkness of the cave. The light is the attraction of higher consciousness inviting us to become open to and receive it.
When one does, the idea is much like the parable of the burning house in Buddhism where one becomes able to compare the darkness with the light and become aware of what is lost from cave life, From this perspective, the question isn’t which form of cave life is better and worse or as Simone says, which cell is bigger, but the experience of darkness in contrast to the light which reveals the true direction of freedom where the infintile essence can mature to become what it is capable of.
This is the beginning. All talk of truth or the soul etc. is meaningless in my understanding without first appreciating these relative states of being depicted as life in darkness in the cave and the conscious life in the light outside of it which man has the potential for.
I’ve found that once this distinction is truly understood, these apparent contradictions natural for our normal cave perspective, begin to make perfect sense.
I will tell you the truth Nick
Your response was definetly a good scientific response, and if it were brought to a debate in a convention it would be a liable and convincing argument and easy to understand. Yet, it is debatable because of this,
I cannt feel the confindence to believe in the whole claim, only half of one extreme.
Bahahaha!
What is it that makes the “goal”?
What ever makes the “goal”, is greater then the “goal”!
The “goal” is the will and the dream and the plan.
The “goal” is a construct. It is a structure made by the one who comprehends.
The ultimate “goal” is nothing compared to the creator of the goal.
Being alive is more important then any one thought or feeling.
What we realy need is immortality.
If science cured old age, then we would see a revolution because of all progress within the individual not being lost prepetualy. Also the cure of decay would shortly fallow, or be part of the cure for old-age, and this would stop memory loss.
“The will to power” is our true principal above our goals.
Cycles of birth and mutation were crude prepetuations of nature that took millions of years to ever get anywhere Evolution was an accident! Cause and effect, trial and error, all organic life is a saddening oxy-moron. Conflict is everywhere!
The ultimate step of the human spirit is to overcome death.
You know I’m right!
The ultimate goal is for the goal to preserve the maker of the goal.
Hi Dan
It would be bad for you IMO if you did just blindly believe. This is a slave mentality and we have enough of that already. If we do exist as previously described and in opposition to ourselves, only a small part of you has any interest in such ideas. The rest just finds it a nuisance. It is no wonder than that we should lack confidence.
For some reason, it is commonly believed that spirituality is by definition illogical. My attraction to spirituality is precisely because together with scientific logic, their complimentary knowledge is capable of revealing the ultimate goal and purpose of humanity.
Putting it into a diagram, the results of scientific logic occur and develop along a horizontal line spanning the gap between before and after. It is a result of measurements and comparisons.
Spiritual logic,comparing “above and below”, occurs along a vertical line in relation to it, our quality of which intersects the place along the horizontal line which represents the totality of our scientific logic.
Where scientific knowledge is dual, spiritual logic is triune and reconciles the totality of a level of dualism. Where scientific logic is verified externally, spiritual logic is verified internally.
Philosophy theoretically is the love of wisdom which is knowledge of relationships from a higher perspective. The balanced blend of the results of scientific and spiritual logic would reveal wisdom. But if you consider this is a philosophy site, how many threads do you see that reflect a love for wisdom? It is the same in the real world. Only a minority will make the efforts to not only verify what justifies their opinions of themselves but to verify internally the nature of our continually changing inner emotional states at the expense of our self esteem? Only then can the realities of the ideas included within the broad concept of Plato’s Cave begin to reveal themselves.
I’m not bright enough to think of these things on my own. Fortunately my path includes the concern for reconciling the quality of our knowledge with the quality of our being in order to develop understanding in the real meaning of the word and not something defined by secular standards. I’ve been fortunate to read the efforts of some truly, for me, extraordinary people in regards the common goal of appreciating human potential within a universal scheme.
So by all means doubt. But at some point doubting becomes useless and the only way to proceed if there is such an urge, is to begin to learn how to impartially verify what exists both internally and externally in relation to ourselves in pursuit of the ultimate goal or “pearl of great worth.”.
The ultimate goal of every human is to exist forever. So are no one has done it but we all keep trying.
The goal is to create more humans. To continue life. To replicate. Just like every other carbon based life form on the planet.
This is the practical solution to living forever.
Hi Phaedrus
I am curious why your ultimate goal is to “exist forever.” Doesn’t this get in the way of the normal chances you take as you consider indulging in life’s enjoyments that include some dangers and jeopardize your existence?
Hi Dr.S
If this is true, why do women have abortions and why does our species partake in war?
The capacity for abstract thought, and teritorialism, respectively.
It’s all geared toward reproduction. Everything is.
Dr.S
I would agree in part but this question of reproduction is not so simple. It is not the most pleasant thing to admit so people avoid it but for most I believe the drive is more for egotistically determined selective convenient reproduction which is not the same as valuing reproduction.
Most wars are fought because the continuing results of opponents reproducing has become inconvenient. Abortions are mostly performed because the young life is inconvenient. Killing becomes directly related to reproducing.
It seems necessary for birds to kill their young for objective reasons such as preservation of a strong gene pool. We kill in wars and abortions mostly motivated by subjective egotism manifesting as image compelling us to destroy the offending images.
From your perspective of the importance of egotism manifesting as self image, and the need for destruction of other life for its preservation, do you as a Satanist find it equal, superior to, or inferior to the animals need to destroy for the preservation of objective qualities of their species?
This is what I one, simple, clear and direct.
Nick, if whatever thing you say is correct try persuading the priests and then the scientist. One will laugh and one will listen, because they are humble, even though you are wrong.
The ultimate goal of every human being is to realize all that which we can in this human form.
The Ultimate “goal” of human beings
IF we did not do something we would ‘freeze’. Energy would remain in the precise same location and state as it did at the moment of freezing.
Since there are other objects in the universe exerting forces on us, forcing us to do something, the ultimate, fundamental and generally “conciously” unaware “goal” (if you could call it that) for any human being in this universe is to do something.
The ultimate goal of a human being is to do something.
In doing that, their “life” will have a duration ie they will manipualte and be manipulated by the universe, which incidentally brings us to the nature of the universe.
(to manipulate energy)
I have lately been re-considering the concept of morality. It is about foresight. We want to have the most possible mass of pleasure, satisfaction and existence [whilst avoiding pain, stress and damage]. Religions promising eternal life after death causes an imbalance within the moral judgement, and they want heaven and there is “prof” that “heaven” will be their reward, so they make sacrifices.
Dr.S, If it were medically possible to stop old age/decay, how much would you be willing to do in order to gain this? I would be very VERY willing to do a lot of work in order to gain eternal life somehow.
The problem with religion is that they claim we can get eternal life and happyness by doing what we are told. =(
The temptation is too great for people to handle, but religion [in general] is still gradually losing it’s power over minds, isn’t it?
Kind of like the movie stars who strive to become famous, then beat up the papartizy who “spy on them”?
It is like their goal becomes a nightmare to them.
there is a fine line between “spying” and “worshiping”. What is the difference anyway?
It always leads to imprisoning oneself, or “protecting” oneself. Is there any way to have “success” and “freedom”? How could THAT be accomplished? 
.
.
On second thought, lets be simple.
Step1:
Have all human needs met.
Step2:
Terriform the universe into animate matter/life, 1 atom at a time.
[that would take a long time]