a man amidst mankind: back again to dasein

[b]Bret Easton Ellis

The images I had were of people being driven mad by living in the city. Images of parents who were so hungry and unfulfilled that they ate their own children.[/b]

Folks living in a world that might be described as, say, less than zero. And only some of them have access to Rip.

A child should never even think about being a “good son.” A parent decides that fate for the child. The parent encourages that. Not the child himself. And the “perfect dad”? I shudder at thinking what that may be.

Besides, a lot of them just make it up as they go along.

The newspapers kept stoking my fear. New surveys provided awful statistics on just about everything. Evidence suggested that we were not doing well. Researchers gloomily agreed. Environment psychologists were interviewed. Damage had ‘unwittingly’ been done. There were ‘feared lapses’. There were ‘misconceptions’ about potential. Situations had ‘deteriorated’. Cruelty was on the rise and there was nothing anyone could do about it. The populace was confounded, yet didn’t care. Unpublished studies hinted that we were all paying a price. Scientists peered into data and concluded that we should all be very worried. No one knew what normal behavior was anymore, and some argued that this was a form of virtue. And no one argued back. No one challenged anything. Anxiety was soaking up most people’s days. Everyone had become preoccupied with horror. Madness was fluttering everywhere. There was fifty years of research supporting this data. There were diagrams illustrating all of these problems – circles and hexagons and squares, different sections colored in lime or lilac or gray. Most troubling were the fleeting signs that nothing could transform any of this into something positive. You couldn’t help being both afraid and fascinated. Reading these articles made you feel that the survival of mankind didn’t seem very important in the long run. We were doomed. We deserved it.

Still, don’t forget to vote!

I’ve been accused of being vain about my apathy.

Must be like those who accuse me of being vain about my cynicism. But how close to or far apart from each other can they be though?

Open the hood of a car and it will tell you something about the people who designed it, is just one of many phrases I’m tortured by.

Trust me: it’s not even close to being one of the worst.

…if you’re alone nothing bad can happen to you.

Wanna bet?

By “you”, I meant the rhetorical “you”. I actually find it necessary to be true to myself. Some may say that looking back it’s entirely opinion whether one has been true to himself. – You’re opinion, they’re opinion; yes. My opinion?? – No it’s not my opinion, and that’ll be my opinion for as long as I can opinionate, or should opinionate; that being about as long as I’m true to myself.

Okay, give me a specific example of when you were true to yourself. True in what way…in what sense? This is just way too abstract for me.

I’m not sure what it is you are suggesting here. Are you saying that, based on the manner in which you have come to understand “who I am”, you choose to do one thing rather than another? That this is a necessary choice lest you not be “true to yourself”?

That, in other words, no matter how many existential variables had been different in the life you have come to live, there is still this “core self” that somehow transcends [among other things] historical and cultural parameters…contingency chance and change?

I hesitate to respond to iamb above, but I want to confirm that one can know this. It is by intuition one decides, though reason may be able to help. One can ultimately feel when something that does not fit or suit us has been shoved into our minds. Getting an experience to compare with that is the tricky part, often. One must experience how others lives and how others Think. Like I know damn well that I do not like wearing wool. There’s a chance, if all the clothes in my Culture had been made of wool, including the ones like underwear and shirts that directly touch the skin, I might not have known that my core self is happier with cotton, but can tolerate a woolen sweater over a long sleeve shirt.

This is not cultural. This is me, period. Given that I grew up where I could choose and hence had experiences of wool and not wool, it was easy for me to know. If not I might simply have felt that somethign was wrong, perhaps with me, since other people seemed ok or less whiney about wool. The water we swim in and all.

With many facets of Culture, family, psychology, language - we have nothing to compare it too. If one really trusts oneself - not easy to do, even brave - one may take seriously the feeling that somethign is wrong, things do not need to be like this, that sounds logical but I have the gut feeling it need not be the case or something better suited to me is out there. But it is hard to know…

If however one engages deeply with and in other Cultures, learns other languages, goes into altered states, is drawn to outsiders or alternative communities, radical thinkers, criminals, anything outside or different, one can begin to actually notice what one is ‘wearing’ so to speak, and see it as not simply the way things are, but one cultural garb amongst others. (If one is lucky and one’s parents are from different Cultures - not just different sexes from which one can also learn a lot - and who are fairly open to you exploring, this can get you off on a good start).

Nothing perfect or infallible in this, but one can feel when one is aligned or not aligned. There is a core self.

But one can Think one’s way out of respecting it.

Another way to put it is that a body has a most pleasant set of cognitive ‘part’ and sensory experiences/relation with the Environment. Intra-relations and inter relations can run smoothly and feel right or not.

Now, it’s true, some people can be made to Think that what feels bad is good. That’s why you need to trust your intuition. If you cannot suss out what does not fit, you will find excuses for it and reasons not to notice what you feel.

It transcends nothing, that’s why it’s true. I determined who I am, and it happened to be through nature; what I assumed to be natural. Now I continue to use the same criteria to determine who I am.

In the film The Hairdresser’s Husband, the protagonist has an aversion to wool. Why? Because as a child his mother made him wear woolen bathing trunks at the beach and, as you might imagine, the experience was rather tortuous. Now why do you have an aversion to wool? Is there a “wool gene” that some folks get and some don’t? Maybe. But I suspect that if hypothetically someone followed all of us around from the cradle to the grave recording all that we have ever experienced we might be able to pin down the variable[s] that cause us to think, feel and do a lot of things that we attribute to a “core self”.

But, sure, it can be construed as a “core self” in the sense that you did have these experiences and as a result of them you were predisposed to one frame of mind rather than another.

But when others speak of a “core self” they link it to necessity…or to a “soul”. That somehow they were “destined” to be who they are and that no changes in the past would have made any difference.

And then how does this work with respect to value judgments? Are you in alignment with your “core self” when you are opposed to rather than in favor of abortion?

But folks have conflicting gut feelings about the same thing. One person rushes towards it, another person feels compelled to flee. Okay, let’s bring out those recordings and see if we can spot the variables that created this “intuitive” self choosing to embrace or to reject particular behaviors. But unless the variables are there of necessity the things we choose to do are buried deeply in a past we may have had litte or no control over and/or have only a subjective capacity to understand.

Yes, but this can only unfold in a particular way. It is existential. And depending on how it unfolds for you [in a world of contingency, chance and change] we will merely be adding more footage to the recordings.

Depending of course on how you have come to understand the meaning of it. Now, is there a way in which all rational people must understand it?

Again, give me some examples of this in your interaction with others. In particular, interactions that revolve around a conflict such that you are confronted with “how ought I to act” here.

What behaviors did you choose because they are in alignment with your core self? What behaviors are “naturally” in alignment with it?

Reminds me of the Mu response in Zen, I may be repeating myself.

I have not had a ‘now Stuart seems different experience’. I would probably take your posts in the context of what I read before, in ways that may or may not be fair. And I may also miss things because this format leads me to shorthand my experiences.

Can you sum up your more naturalistic philosophy or link me to posts where it has come out.

Your question is similar to those of Iam. There would be no use linking you to any given posts, because it’s a philosophy that I have not yet grounded completely. Not long ago I would have just given you a link to an essay that was one of my major influences, but there’s too much in it that I don’t want to associate myself with just yet, if ever.

The naturalistic philosophy doesn’t really lend itself to summarized form but I’ll try.

There’s a line between the natural and the artificial. The natural includes everything that is without the influence of humans, it also includes somethings that are. In other words, all that is artificial is human, not all that is human is artificial.

What may seem a minor difference may actually have major implications, so all things must be discerned with care and without exception. When one personally does this he is living naturally even if in an artificial environment. An environment itself, if built by those who do that, can be actually be said to be a natural environment.

There’s the existence of what I refer to as ‘base’ and what I’ll refer to as ‘noble’ and of course all that is in-between. I also refer to the two sides as that which has low quality and that which has high quality. Complexity itself is one of the major criterions for determining this, but I’ll omit any more detail on that for the sake of brevity.

All those who’re natural are seeking to become of higher quality than they are. It doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily of high quality, but that they don’t disassociates life and the act of becoming of higher quality. They don’t necessarily actively risk death to become more; the distinguishing character here between them and those who’re unnatural is that those who’re unnatural openly oppose becoming higher quality in order to pursue a longer life or empty purposes such as ill-defined ‘pleasure’.

Though those who are already of high quality do actively risk death to achieve even higher quality.

Those of high quality must respect those large number of those of low quality, but they have little or no regard for them

Everyone is born with a certain degree of potential. We can never know what potential one has, or has had, for certain, but through honest consistent discernment we can make a good estimate. I have yet to establish significant criteria for this. Whatever one’s full potential may be, it’s already indicative of some degree of high quality if one aspires to reach it.

With you so far and I think I could say the same thing, though I haven’t thought of it in those words.

Can tyou get concrete? LIke is getting better at an intrument an example? Clearly it is not morally better. Noble is a trigger word for me. I have noticed how when most people use it - those who have spent some time in some nihilist niche - tend to mean some classical (as opposed to romantic) bullshit presentation of a part of the self at the expense of others. Here I was pleased to see it as characterized (merely, I could say) by complexity. That carries none of the bagage of words like ‘refined’ and does not immediately bring up images of upper class greeks or white wigged court members in 17th century France. But what does it mean, concretely, for you?

Can one improve artificially?
(I ask this to clarify)

What did nihilism prevent that this naturalistic philosophy allows?
or what does the latter foster/inpsire that the former did not (as well)?

I like the below question, I’ll address your other questions in more detail later, I just want to give a quick answer to this.

If I were to answer from the perspective of one fully and unapologetically immersed in the naturalistic philosophy then no those artificial people could not. But, obviously one who is very artificial has goal he sets for himself, base goals that usually revolve around a long pleasurable life, whether he would admit to it or not. If he makes it so that he has abilities that make him more able to live such a life, then he would certainly call it improvement and it would be so to him.

From the perspective of one who is natural and of high quality, he would also be able to see improvement in those who are artificial and are not making any progress on becoming natural. But, it would be a very cold impersonal perception of improvement, as in; the natural person may find the artificial person to be of more use to them or of less a nuisance than before.

Of course the purely natural or purely artificial person is just a conceptualization. People can of course be anywhere in-between and developing a criteria for determining this is the challenge. Your other questions relate to this criteria which I’m studying and developing.

I moved this discussion here:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=185039&p=2448554#p2448552

Thanks. I mean the last thing I wanted here was for this thread to evolve [devolve] into an exchange of serious philosophy!

Still, the invitation stands:

[i]Again, give me some examples of this in your interaction with others. In particular, interactions that revolve around a conflict such that you are confronted with “how ought I to act” here.

What behaviors did you choose because they are in alignment with your core self? What behaviors are “naturally” in alignment with it?[/i]

You’re asking me to take knowing myself to a stage that I’m far from ready for. My philosophies over time have always been interwoven with my actions, I’m not a text-book philosopher. Follow my new thread over time and you may find your answer eventually as I develop my ability to express that philosophy.

I’ll make an effort now, but I know you well enough to be certain that it won’t be enough.

I know someone whose very intelligent, but a jackass, in fact I know many such people, in this case I’m not talking about anyone you’d likely be able to predict. I know that naturally I’m extremely ambitious and that I will ‘sub-consciously’ sabotage any base success I may be making progress towards, because my ambition is towards quality works. When it comes to that person, I’d like to say fuck off, but I know that if I don’t deal with those I can use now, I’m going to have to take more risks later on than I normally might have, and deal with even less pleasant people.

What really is “enough” down here? I just prefer that when ideas relating to identity or value judgments or politics are broached that they be grounded [eventually] in actual existential contexts. Or in personal experiences.

It is only a matter then of probing how and why you became this way and then probing further the extent to which the intelligent jackasses you encounter are willing to do the same. But if both of you conclude that how you are around others is somehow reflective [or indicative] of your “core self” then what would be the point of going further? You are who you are and that’s it.

I just don’t think like this about human identity.

I realize that I must choose my essence or core self and that it must always change, and so I try to adjust my behavior accordingly – if that’s your only objection.

No, my objection is that you are not situating the concept of a “core self” in a particular circumstantial context [in an experience you have had] whereby I can more readily understand what you are trying to tell me about it. What does it mean existentially to choose a core self that must then always change. And in particular with respect to an experience in which your behavior came into conflict with another as a result of values that were in conflict.

sorry, wrong thread.

wrong thread