the psychology of objectivism - one possible narrative

When we are 10 or 20 or 30 or 40 years old etc., we think about moral issues like abortion in particular ways. And, for some, it’s the same way. But, for many of us, our point of view will evolve. At times into its opposite. Why? Because [again, for most of us] we come upon new experiences and/or new relationships and/or new ideas that prompt us to change our minds. And in a world [especially the modern world] bursting at the seams with contingency and chance and change, this becomes more and more common.

Then it comes down to rationalizing our new point of view. Again, most of us will tell ourselves that even though we did change our minds [meaning that we might well change our minds again], that’s okay because we have simply become more sophisticated [or progressive] in our capactity to think things like this through. But we are still convinced that what we do think [here and now] corresponds to the most rational and ethical manner in which to think about it.

Well, that doesn’t work for me. Why? Because contingency, chance and change are at the very heart and the very soul of dasein. And because my new point of view is no less entangled in the manner in which I construe conflicting goods.

Yes. I am not able to imagine an argument [here and now] that would allow me to extricate myself from either dasein or conflicting goods. Such an argument may in fact exist. But that is for all practical purposes irrelevant if I am not able to come across it.

If this frame of mind works for you, I’m glad that it does. If you are able to convince yourself that objective moral values are within your reach, okay. But it does not work that way for me. And that is because it changes nothing about the dilemma as I perceive it to be.

And we do not really have personal values that are “thoroughly subjective”. Rather, in living in a particular community [rooted in historical and cultural parameters], our values are always intersubjective. After all, who really has the capacity wholly extricate “I” from “we”?

But, given the manner in which I construe our value judgments as being profoundly and problematically intertwined in dasein and conflicting goods, this too can only be particular point of view – one ever subject to change in a world of contingency chance and change.

I just think about these relationships in a considerably more precarious manner than most others seem to.

With Nietzsche [who views these things in a world where “God is dead”], one can embrace the brute facticity of might makes right or [as many of his champions/sycophants seem inclined] concoct an elaborate philosophical matrix for behaving in a manner which, through one or another rendition of “will to power”, the strong are able to devise arguments that are said to be rooted in Reason and Virtue and Nobility. Call it the Know Thyself Syndrome.

Thus you rise above the herd not only because you are stronger, but because your behaviors are Just and Righteous. By definition as it were.

On the other hand, to what extent did Nietzsche himself embody the “will to power”. He spent much of his life stumbling into one or another psycho-somatic abyss…and he died insane.

In the universe of flux, nothing is position-less, nothing is neutral, nothing is standing still, everything is moving, everything is continually interacting with everything else.

You may choose not to have any values, you may freeze parts of your brain that deal with values, but since you cannot freeze yourself in entirety, since you will be acting and interacting no matter how much you resist activity, you will always be attempting to impose your own values onto the world around you in one way or another.

Do you understand that?

Your brain may be saying “I have no values” but since you are acting, and can do no other than act and interact, and since activity is a manifestation of value, an attempt to impose one’s values onto the world around you, that does not mean you have no values, it simply means you are delusional and hypocritical.

You do have values, as all people do. You may not be conscious of them, or you may choose to refuse your body, your unconscious activity, as valuing, but that does not make them go away.

Besides that, activity is change. To act is to change. To change is to say “this shouldn’t be like it is, it should be like this, because it is better to be like that”. Change implies rank.

When you come here, you imbecile, and tell ME that I should not impose my values onto the world around me, what you’re doing is trying to impose your own values onto the world around you, in this case, that would be me.

Can you see the hypocrisy in the whole business, you cretin?

Successful imposition of values, pure might, does not make things right, which is to say, does not make the imposed values the superior ones. And it certainly does not render all values equal before they are successfully imposed.

Democratic values have been successfully imposed, you retard, does that make them superior to my values? Does that make them equal to my values? And if someone developed a technology to implant democratic values into people like me, that won’t make them superior either.

Now let’s see what you value and let’s compare it to what I value.

You value peace, you value comfort, you value pleasure, you value friendship, you value fame, in one word, you value weakness.

Truth, honesty, excellence, self-assertion, honor and freedom – all the things I value – are of lesser value to you, they are to be sacrificed for peace/comfort/pleasure/friendship/fame.

That is the inverse of my attitude. I would gladly sacrify peace, comfort, pleasure, friendship and fame for truth, honesty, excellence, self-assertion, honor and freedom, in one word, for power. My real name might be a combination of words peace and fame, but these are not my values.

You love communes, don’t you? You are the kind of guys who considers friendships to be natural and enmities to be unnatural, aren’t you?

Humans are naturally friends, brothers, everything else is unnatural, wrong, evil.

Now, there are two theories attempting to explain the origins of evil.

These are objectivism and daseinism.

According to objectivism, the source of all evil is difference. People are different because they are not objective, because they are uneducated about the divine law. The solution to the evil is to educate people about the divine law. This will lead to an increase in overall happiness of the population. Of course, since education is imperfect, and since evil can never be completely eradicted, this is an ongoing process.

According to daseinism, the source of all evil is objectivism. It is not the difference which is the evil – people are naturally peaceful, friendly and altruistic – it is the objectivists who try to change people and make them all the same that are the evil. The solution to the evil is to educate people how to tolerate difference. This will lead to an increase in overall happiness of the population. Of course, since education is imperfect, and since evil can never be completely eradicated, this is an ongoing process.

The daseinist way of thinking, taken to the logical extreme, is an impossibility, since the universe is continual interactivity of distinct values, each value trying to impose itself on all other values at every single point in time. The daseinist himself, then, is forced to impose his values on the world around him, no matter what he thinks or desires.

No such thing as total, unlimited, tolerance. Tolerance is always selective, limited.

Nonetheless, the daseinist can still distinguish himself from non-daseinists, in that, the daseinist is attempting to tolerate as many things as possible, whereas the non-daseinist, the selfrespectfulist, is not bothering with stupid shit like that.

The daseinist’s distinction lies in the fact that he prioritizes tolerance. He is a hyper-omnivorous creature who eats pretty much everything . . . He knows very well that he will never reach total tolerance, so he is not bothered by counter-arguments reminding him of this impossibility.

Logically, you cannot prove him wrong. He is logically safe.

His problem is physiological, not logical.

His problem is psychological.

He is denying himself, and self-denial has some pretty interesting long-term consequences, among them, for example, mental illness . . . he may not feel the consequences, but that does not save his descendents from not feeling them either . . .

Your point is confusing universal with objective. A practical issue with an epistemological one. They may be relations between the practical/universal issue and the epistemological/objective one, but you are confusing them. To react to my point that this means you are not being a serious philosopher turns it into an ad hom issue. Was Moreno insulting or condescending to Iamb or using a fallacy? One could translate any criticism of confused thinking as this, or take it in the spirit it is meant: I think your thinking here is confused. I might be right, I might be wrong, but I am doing exactly what you do when you see other people, objectivists, responsing to you with confused thinking.

But we do not all agree even in those cases. I stated this clearly and it is the case. This is not only in philosophical discussions.

Iamb, I don’t know how I could possibly be more clear in the two posts I wrote about this. Yes, you are making a category error. You’ve heard of solipsism, idealism, Zeno and Parmenidies thought motion was not real, some physicists think there is no universe but rather a hologram on the outside of an empty sphere, Feyarabend and others are very critical of scientific empiricism, some people think they are Jesus or inanimate objects and so on. GEtting arguments to go away is a practical interpersonal perhaps rhetoric/power focused issue. And a radically utopian one, though it is the category issue I am focused on.

Love to thump you with. Unlike most serious philosophers or even serious amateurs - which is generally about the most serious category we have here - is that I focus on what people are doing. This should be clear in our exchanges. How does the what of Iamb is doing relate to his position? Does what he is doing make sense and does it fit with the proposed goals. You have stated that you want to know, objectively, if that were possible (and you doubt it is), how to act morally in the world.

Asking for arguments that eliminate other arguments is not going to arrive at that goal because it is a different issue.

I didn’t forget to mention it, what you are saying here is not relevent to my point.

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Discussions like this, especially in the way they are prioritized by most modern educated people are not a good way to arrive at new positions. One can see this in the repetition of statements over what I would guess is approaching a decade of online stating. I have made suggestions for how one might approach learning in other ways.

You are a postmodernist - as far as epistemology. You are using a modernist, logocentric approach in the use of language and learning. You state that this way of learning is inevitable. This idea that the process you are engaging in is a useful one or the only potential useful one is a product of your dasein. I have tried to give you an experience, via my posts, of another way of looking at learning and interacting - likely too much on my side in a modernist format - and you keep presenting your process as, essentially, the closest to objective we have. I disagree. You are not will to focus your postmodern nihilism at the processes you use to learn. You take this as given, just as much as other people take their modes of learning and interacting as given. There is no scientific consensus to support your position on the best way to learn/interact with others, and in fact most cognitive science related to learning speaks against the way you approach learning. That we must have new experiences to change our minds and this must prioritize new experiences beyond new words and new orders of words. (not that there has been much change in the order of words you use and given that most of the minds you will encounter (and the format of an online forum) will be modernist, logocentric, beliefs are changed via rational argument types you are not even getting new logocentric experiences.

Get the irony. I keep trying to get you to look at the possible assumptions coming from your dasein as it relates to the way you approach things here and you come back as if it is the only way to do things.

I understand that your health makes it more of a challenge to try anything else. But it does not preclude it. And some of it can be done online even in discussions.

I understand that you cannot imagine how some other process might resolve an issue, including moral ones, but isn’t that the case with any culturally embedded belief, that it seems inevitable and all others a waste of time or worse. I am focused on process. You want me to give you an answer and then prove it regarding specific content (and choose a worst case example, abortionists, as if a worst case example disproves the objectivists). If I do that it would affirm your choice around process and all the assumptions there.

When I do this you turn my post into an ad hom insult, that I am merely making some technical philosophical point rather than taking your own goals seriously. I take you seriously also because I have in me both modernism and postmodernism and even your particular form of postmodernism. So running up against it outside me helps me understand my own issues. And in fact I could see ways I may have been getting stuck by a reliance on modernist ideas of learning/interacting, the contradictions in myself when I allow postmodern insights to eliminate some things, but not my dependence on modernist approaches (a contradiction in you also). So this last interaction has even helped me, though it did not reach you in the slightest, since you took what is different from me from other posters here as merely condescension and not a useful point at all and you will clearly not evaluate the process of your thinking and acting and continue stay, it seems to me, in a deadlock focused on content as if this was the only way to reach your purported goals. I may be wrong in this assessment, but it would have been better, it seems to me, if you could have responded to what I wrote, instead of classifying it as insult and not responding to it. Showing me you understood, but disagreed because of X. A process that fits your modernist approach. Instead you actually fell back on the Traditionalist response to modernists. You reacted to the enemy by pejoratively calling me intellectual - the serious philosopher attack. Which is also ironic. The postmodernist overvaluing modernist rational approaches defending this muddle by attacking someone who points out the dasein in all this by implying they are a (godless) intellectual. Just like a conservative fundamentalist, supposedly the opposite of you, would do. You do not recognize your own objectivism, nor the contradictions in your approach and your postmodernism. Read some of the postmodernists and see what their texts are like. They are not like yours. They challenge modernist approaches to learning.

So I’ll take a break. But I do want to emphasize that this has been useful for me and while you likely don’t give a shit, however much I can find this process irritating at times, I like you and respect you and my frustration comes, likely because in the complicated mish mash of epistemologies and positions inside me (no one else seems to admit this since they are all monads) I have these patterns myself. I saw how some of the people over at KTS reacted to you. And they have no idea what you have lived and how stupid some of their assumptions about you are, I might add, the pussies, little armchair ubermenshen.

And I suppose I gotta say, I do not consider myself serious philosopher. I have not read too many of the core texts and lack the expertise on all sorts of process levels. My strengths, whatever I might have, come from other areas of expertise that I bring into amateur philosophical discussion. I do make an occasional technical point when it seems important to me and I have learned some over the years in these discussions. The universal/objective confusion is one such. Amazingly, though, I have found that many of these technical points actually are important. The incredible long term focus on thinking has actually accomplished some insights into problematic thinking.

I won’t claim it is always in this spirit but it is a part of my motivation: you seem to be hitting your head against a wall and react to suggestions there might be a problem in your approach by saying there is no other possible way to reach your goal, even if you consider reaching your goal unlikely, so I feel the urge to say that this process and your sense of its inevitability is a dasein contruction and you don’t need to bang your head against a wall. And mulling on this has helped me bang my head on the same wall in the same way less.

as far as this

then you should shift away from abortion or at least mix it up with other issues. Why? Well, it functions as a kind of cherry picking. I believe Von River went down this line with you, so I am not optimistic, but the basic point is you are generalizing that we cannot reach such conclusions because we have not reached it around abortion. Foot binding however seems to be a cultural pattern that has moved from being moral to immoral, and I while certain groups have moved from thinking it was OK to not, none have moved in the other direction. WE can see similar process with cliterodectomies. The arguments against are winning against those for and people from traditional religions, modern scientific perspectives and from other paradigms are more and more coming out against it. We see groups moving away and likely cultures doing that, and I think it is pretty unlikely that any modern society will move back to cliterodectomies and other FGM. IOW it will meet you criteria.

Understand, even if some issues are resistant (potentially merely so far) to meeting the criteria you put forward, there are many that are not resistant.

If some morals do meet your criteria, then there is a weakness in your dasein based position, even if some do not (yet).

I feel I have to repeat that this does not mean that the conclusion that footbinding is wrong is objectively correct, but as an example it meets your criteria.

I think Von River used the example of forks in the eye of children, but I am trying to pick issues more parallel to abortion and more common.

It should also be pointed out that the word ‘rational’ is stacking the deck, since this is not an empirically testable adjective.

I also think it is a healthier issue to see if you can be convinced rather than if anyone who MIGHT be considered rational is convinced, unless you do not want to have a position on something.

Chattel slavery like that in the US -and certainly where there is not extreme scarcity so that what the chattel slavery is doing is moving people from being haves to having even more, rather than somehow merely helping them get by - is another example where societies are not moving backwards towards, but are moving away and it could be argued meets your criteria.

Adults having sex with children is another one. Certainly coerced sex with children.

Human sacrifice and torture as entertainment.

Some things die out and consensus is reached even cross culturally.

All of my examples happen, still, but the moral authority and legal support is disappearing or gone.

And really, because it is rather important, this does not mean that we or Iam know objectively how to live morally even around these issues, but since your definition of objective seems to be more consensus, it should work for you.

Magnus, I can’t tell if you’re trolling or serious.

When did I say I hated emotions? Like as in, never. I was trying to help Matt gain his emotions back, not continue along his anhedonia?

Creativity is a misnomer, it’s just regurgitated lego bricks regurgitating lego bricks. Also liking bananas does not make you a chimpanzee, am I supposed to take you seriously? Humans are a primate, some act like chimps, some act like monkeys, some act like apes, and some act like bonobos, which have distinct personalities.

Lolworthy post. You don’t seem to understand the path of natural selection, which is simply those who reproduce, carry on their genes. There is no moral high ground, people who carry on their genes are not moral, they have usually violent rape mentalities actually, which is why they survive and carry on their genes. There are no “teams” and “agendas”, no 'traitors" to the cause, because there is no cause. You sound silly and deluded my friend. Destroying the universe is only a last resort also, if human life gets too miserable. No plans or means of doing it in this century anyway.

I am trolling want you to be lolling don’t be upset a man who does not desire to make you wet thinking you are a degenerate hyper-rational brunette does not exist that is what is correct.

When did you say you are a transsexual? When did you say you are a tomboy? When did you say you are a braindead imbecile?

When did you, can you please remind me, will you?

Are you so stupid that you think that the only way one can reveal one’s nature is through self-report, through conscious effort, and that nothing automatic, nothing unconscious, can possibly reveal who you are and contradict what you think and report you are?

Are you that stupid, is your intelligence still undisputed?

Who gives a fuck what you think you are when it’s plain obvious what you really are?

Who gives a fuck, you degenerate, it is obvious, you are desperate, you hate emotions and you love them motions, hate them cause you cannot have them and love them cause you do not own them.

It’s not misnomer, you cretin, it is what creativity is, you shithead.

You are abusing theory of evolution in order to deny your feelings, not a rare thing today.

Who will want to marry you, transsexual?

Survival, you pussy-powered imbecile, does not mean superiority.

Flux, chaos, utter randomness that the universe is, does not mean there are no values either, you stupid fuck.

Sure, you can act any way you want . . . still, does not mean there are no values.

Nice way to get rid of responsibility for your own desires, though.

What is this i don’t even. You seem aware of flux yet unable to apply it to situations. Everyone “fluxes” from hating things to loving things. Because I had a minor outbreak of hating emotions doesn’t make it valid. It’s also irrelevant whether I hate something or not, it doesn’t matter to the cosmos actually. Values change. Noone wants to marry me because I dont want to marry anyone, that is a value. It only matters in the instance you worry about it, once you stop worrying about your love life it is irrelevant to the cosmos until you return to the frame of mind where you worry about it again.

“What you really are”
You seem to be of the ilk that defines a person in antiquated means. People are simply a combination of lego bricks and forces. They are streams and transient entities. Thoughts are (usually) without weight. I have a responsibility only because it suits this current instance’s goals. If the current instance goals change my responsibility fades away or morphs. Beliefs change goals change. I am aware survival doesn’t mean superiority I don’t know why you are arguing about that ideal. As for your current values, you don’t seem to have anything except being a rude cunty mccunterson.

As far as childs play, chasing desires, there’s no reason to in a world where all the odds are against you. You learn to just call it quits after years of dealing with uncooperative homo (sapiens.) Eventually you evolve into a god who’s only desire is to rid the world of uncooperative sapiens.

Not everyone “fluxes”, stupid, only stupid people “flux”, smart people do not “flux”, “flux” is the enemy of the healthy and it is the friend of the sick, the universe is flux, you Great and Wise Fluxy, does not mean people should be flux. Flux it? How fluxful you are . . .

Religious people do not flux and they are quite closeminded. Flux is the state of openmindeness. My guess is you have some kind of philosophy which causes you to resist the flux. Why do you resist the flux? Probably some goal, some plan, which you worship and adore. What is this plan you adore, my guess it’s something stupid and worthless, and couldn’t even please anyone, not in this life or the next. Tell me what it is.

I resist flux because that’s my nature, stupid, I did not and I do not choose to resist it.

The same goes for you. You do not resist it because that’s your nature.

As for religious people, fluxy, you have to be really fluxed to think that religious people are not flux . . . religious people are THE DEFINITION of flux. To force yourself to change to such an extent to deny your nature, the way religious people do, is fluxful.

When one becomes too strict with oneself one becomes flux . . .

i don’t see how. i see that religious people’s arguments are flexible and fluxy but the people themselves stick to one base core ideal their entire lives never changing from it. Then they die believing they made the world a “better” place when usually they made it worse by their own definitions.

Flux means change, fluxy, and when you start willfully changing you become flux. The opposite of that is not changing, or only changing in order to nullify change.

And what is Christianity? Christianity is hatred of one’s past, of who one is, it is a desire for change. Christians might be closed-minded, resisting specific forms of change, but in relation to their past, to their instincts, they are liberal, open-minded . . .

Humans are only the sum of parts, lego bricks. Fluxy doesnt seem very fluxy if you limit it to one change only. Flux seems like a constant flow of change, not a single change that never changes after that. The word you seem to be looking for is mutation, not fluxy.

As far as human nature, loving thy neighbor is part of human programming but prudeness and assexuality is not (except for asexuals.) Question is, why does following simply DNA routines bring about pleasure? Brain is only a maze. Simply walking through a maze in the right order brings about magical things.

You are focusing on ideals, fluxy. Just because someone sticks to one ideal their entire life does not mean they are not fluxy. The ideal, after all, is just a logical construct, just a bunch of thoughts in one’s brain . . . they are not the root itself. The fact these thoughts do not change does not mean the individual is not fluxy. What matters is how this logical construct is related to one’s past, to one’s instincts, to one’s genes . . . does it deny one’s past, forcing a miraculous change on the organism, or is it in tune with one’s past, doing its best to preserve it? This is what matters.

Your concept of fluxfulness is limited to one’s thoughts . . . but thoughts are shadows. What matters is how these thoughts are related to the root of the organism, which is its past.

I think that applies to Christians who are closet homosexuals, constantly overriding their nature because of text dogma. Or preteen frequent masterbater christians. However, mature adult christains I wouldnt say deny their base DNA instinct, it’s chimpanzee instinct to place value on family, religion, and herdism. So Christianity feels very natural to them, especially with all it’s contradictions. For humans who are more monkey-like religion becomes tedious and boring, and conflicting. Not so for the chimps.

“Free will” is invented in order to make people fluxy. With “free will” people can easily disconnect from their roots, from their past, and attempt to become whatever they want to become. Quite liberal, isn’t it? Whether the individual will be sticking to a single artificial identity or moving from one to another is a different thing, in fact, quite insignificant thing, considering that the main problem, which is the disconnection from one’s past, is never addressed.

Once fluxfulness becomes a habit, it becomes difficult to tell what is natural and what is artificial . . .

Christians go to the local churches to reinforce their broken beliefs and traditions, which feels very natural for them to congregate and do so. Its no coincidence that christians are sports fans, because its the same mentality of going to the pub and celebrating your local team. Such behavoir is healthy for them and their tribe. However it irritates the monkeys who are more independent and don’t derive satisfaction from such repetitive nonsense. Chimps also form warring parties and go on war runs against other primates, so the chimps (Christians) are somewhat threatening and violent at times. It is monkey nature to flux, therefore flux is natural behavoir for monkeys. It is difficult for chimps to recognize the illusion of free will because they like to run away from thoughts and concepts which give them unusual feelings they rarely feel, the closeminded routine.

Chimps do flux but its more like a repetive predictable sine wave with a very low width of variation, almost a straight line.

I make a difference between natural and instinctive/habitual, fluxy. We aren’t born with perfect instincts and our ancestors weren’t gods. They made mistakes and we carry these mistakes with ourselves.

Natural, for me, in the context of behavior, means coordinated. It means that the strength of connections between instincts is good, it means that they are in tune with each other.

Love your neighbour is an instinct but it is an unnatural one, because it disconnects from all other instincts . . . our ancestors adopted such a behavior without first integrating it within our system of behavior. They couldn’t integrate it, because they had no time, or because they had no courage to do so.

This is why it is necessary to detach from one’s mind and reprogram it by strengthening the connections between various automatic mechanisms. This is what reason does.

The hyper-rational folks, on the other hand, do not fix what they have, they are installing new software on top of the malfunctioning operating system, thus creating further contradictions . . . they do not know how to fix what they have and they do not know because they cannot accept how broken they are . . . so they simplify/falsify their problems, and then they proceed to resolve these problems which were never there to begin with, while in reality creating further problems . . .

My opinion is that the hardware and software is broken. The majority of humans act like chimps, it is in their nature. However chimp society is not really a sustainable or courteous way of living. Being a monkey they don’t accept me in their social circles and most of the games and activities they do are boring anyway. I’m just grateful I wasn’t randomly born in africa.

You say I betrayed my ancestors grand plan? What was their grand plan exactly? They didn’t include me in any of it, so if anyone’s been betrayed, theyve betrayed me.

It’s evolutionarily advantageous to love thy neighbor, I don’t see how it’s unnatural to love thy neighbor, especially if thy neighbor is the milf sort.

Advantage is a relative term. Love thy neighbor is advantageous if you want to remain alive at all costs, disregarding the consequences, but it is disadvantageous if you want to remain alive with your brain in your head on your shoulders.

A man cannot adopt any sort of behavior that provides survival advantage without suffering certain consequences. In order for the brain to maintain its integrity, it must adapt properly, which is to say, the foreign activity it considers adopting must be integrated within its system of behavior before it can be made use of. Otherwise, the brain disintegrates.

This is what courage is all about.

Either you strive to identify, register, every single problem that you have, that pops up in your mind, manifesting as a psychological disagreement in the form of negative reaction to your actions and external stimuli, or you close your mind to the existence of your problems, sweeping them under the carpet, hoping you will be able to deal with them at a later point in time. The former requires courage, sacrificing short-term survival for long-term survival, the latter requires nothing, for it is an absence of courage, a cowardice.

Love thy neihgbor is (or was) not a thought-out behavior, it is not a product of reason, it is a product of fear, it is a product of mental reflex.

There are no laws to the universe, Fluxy, nothing is striving to survive, things are simply drawing their ultimate consequences, and they either survive or they do not. Don’t be confused by evolutionary theory . . .

And here, we are discussing values, and as I’ve explained earlier, survival does not indicate superiority per se.

What matters is whether the organism is asserting itself or denying itself. Not whether it survives or not. Survival is not the goal, it is a symptom, a consequence. Sometimes it is the strong, self-asserting, who survive, and weak, self-denying, who die. But sometimes, it is the reverse.

Advantage, then, should be understood in terms of self-assertion. Activity is said to be advantageous if it promotes self-assertion, even if it means death. Similarly, activity is said to be disadvantageous if it promotes self-denial, even if it means survival.

Domination is much more important than mere survival.