Anyone here seen a ghost, UFO, or other strange entity?

Philosophy Forums Psychology and Mind
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I’ve suffered from those too, except mine has nothing to do with visiting sacred places. I once quite audibly heard an impish laugh outside my window as clear as day, during daytime, while somebody was revving their outrageously loud engine. I’m pretty sure I had my window shut when I heard it. I have exceptionally good hearing, but not necessarily clairaudience.

When you visit these sacred places, have you ever fallen asleep in those sites? The Christians would lie down near cemeteries in hope of receiving visions while the ancient pagans would visit caves and natural places.

Do you often lose track of time, was there an eerie silence? Did you pay attention to the wind, was it blowing or not? Have the birds ever freaked out, are other living beings present or absent?

Which places in nature are you drawn to specifically? Also, were you ever drawn to the stars as a youth before learning astronomy?

Interesting, I thought Fall and Spring were the best times to go out into the mountains. Doesn’t it get snowy during winter?

Was it like the lullaby from Pan’s Labyrinth by any chance? Ever listen to Debussy’s compositions?

That’s odd, I’ve come across cases where group activity, particularly when saging and praying, seems more effective. Perhaps it means that the participants aren’t synchronized in their intent or there is an incompatibility with their wavelength. There’s also the possibility that some individuals unconsciously drain people they come into physical contact with rather than giving their own energy freely. Ever since Covid distancing, have you noticed any improvements in people’s physical vitality or more exhaustion?

I was under the impression that bad spirits preferred shewing themselves to skeptics. Religious people feel comforted by their indoctrination, by leaving them be, it makes them believe they’re specially protected. Skeptics are also more likely to receive actual inexplicable healings compared to religious people, who are conducted by a combination of suggestion, placebo effect, and the atmosphere of their worship (see Benny Hinn).

How would you explain the thought-form concept to a layman?

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+++True, but some of us have more options than others in being able experience certain things. My own in regard to exploring the existence of ghosts, ufo and strange entities is particularly limited. So basically I can only rely on those who do share their experiences and are able to provide me [and others] with an actual accumulation of evidence able to demonstrate that these things exist.+++

To be honest, I doubt if there’s anything that anyone could say that would convince you.

+++Well, my question is how certain can you be about Paganism when recognizing that there was always the possibility it would never have been a part of your life at all; and in recognizing that new experiences might convince you to abandon it altogether? You can think that it has made you a “moral person” but there are many, many people who are on completely different paths – hundreds of them – who are just as adamant that it is their path which makes someone a moral person.+++

I’m not sure what you mean by how certain I am about Paganism. I’m as certain about Paganism as I am about anything else that my senses tell me. Paganism is not a belief system, but rather, a way of interacting with the world.

+++And that with Paganism, it’s the same Mother Nature [and maybe the same God/Goddess] resulting in moral convictions that can be very much in conflict. I just have trouble wrapping my head around how you acquire a strong sense of moral rectitude when there are so many variables out there that could have led you, can lead you, might lead you to so many different paths instead.+++

While Paganism has certainly influenced my morality I like to think that I would be a pretty moral person anyway. Paganism is not an essential factor in making someone a good person, and probably isn’t even sufficient to do so.

+++I can only react to your posts as I do. I don’t think that I am consciously attempting to be antagonistic and accusatory. But there it is: my own spontaneous, subjective reaction to what I construe to be answers from you that don’t seem [to me] to be nearly as thought out as I was hoping for.

Though, sure, if you sincerely believe that my reactions to you is the actual problem here [and it may well be], we may be not be able to move beyond that. Lots of people here have problems with my posts so, yeah, I may well be the obstacle to better communication. But I am also inclined to think that the reaction of others here to a philosophy like mine revolves in turn around their discomfort that my “I” in the is/ought world, may be applicable to them as well.+++

While I wouldn’t want to speak for anyone else, I can assure you that I’m not in the least bit disturbed by the idea that I might come round to your way of thinking, because I know it’s not going to happen.

+++“In your nature” in the manner in which, say, Satyr might encompass it. That, in fact, genes trump memes and those that do become moral nihilists are somehow contradicting the “natural order of things”?

Is there some genetic predisposition that particular individuals have to eschew nihilism. It’s in your genetic code not to be?

That for you it is simply not possible that new experiences, new relationships or access to new information and knowledge can ever alter the deep down inside Real You?

In other words, you just know this in the same way that you just know that your own personal experience with nature makes you a “moral person”.

Okay, there is certainly no way in which I can argue [let alone demonstrate] that this is not correct. Only the future itself will either bear or not bear this out.+++

Well, from a strictly scientific point of view, yes, a person’s genetic make up can indeed decide whether they are predisposed to all sorts of character traits, including, one must assume, optimism and pessimism. And again, I think I would be a moral person anyway, regardless of my connection to nature.

+++…“I” am not anchored to one or another moral font such that I am obligated to ever and always do “the right thing” or risk offending my God or Goddess or guru or comrades or mates or anyone else who is said to show me “the way”. The one true path either to enlightenment on this of the grave or to immortality and salvation on the other side of it.+++

I’m not either. I do what I think is right because I want to, not because I feel obliged to.

+++And I’m “stuck” in my flat for health reasons that are “beyond my control”. And quite the contrary, the things that I do here are hardly “never doing anything”. The things that I do – philosophy, watching films, listening to music, reading books, exchanging emails with my virtual friends etc. – bring me enormous satisfaction.

Someone might just as well say that you are “stuck being blind”.+++

Someone might indeed say that, if they didn’t know me. Being “stuck” with being blind makes it sound like I’m somehow unhappy with it.

I think this is the first time, however, that you’ve mentioned that you have health issues, at least as far as I recall. May I ask what they are?

+++Okay, I hope it doesn’t come to that. I just know from vast experience over the years that my own philosophy of life often does disturb people. It’s not so much what I believe about identity, value judgments and political economy at particular existential junctures, as it is the concern that they might come to believe the same thing about their own now fully anchored Self. I meeting “I” for the first time and beginning to have doubts about just how solid their own sense of reality is.+++

I suspect it’s not your philosophy that annoys people, but your apparent over riding desire to convert them to it. That’s how it comes across, anyway.

+++Again, that’s your assessment of what I am doing here. My own assessment is considerably more complex and convoluted. And certainly more ambiguous. My “win/win” approach to these exchanges always takes into consideration both sides. Me coming up out of the hole because of something you convey to me or you coming down into it because of something I convey to you. Same with all the others here at ILP that I respect the intelligence of. Those like Bob and Felix and phyllo and pood and peter and zoots and Mr. Reasonable and Ierrellus.

Polemics aside of course.+++

Has your approach ever worked?

+++No, not at all. And certainly not here at ILP. As I note over and again, my interest in philosophy – and ILP is a philosophy venue – revolves around…

1] the question, “how ought one to live [morally] in a world awash in both conflicting goods and contingency, chance and change”?
2] connecting the dots between “morality here and now” and “immortality there and then”
3] the truly mysterious “Big Questions”: why something instead of nothing? why this something and not something else? Also things like determinism, solipsism, sim worlds, dream worlds, the actual possibility of a Matrix reality.

Okay, I try to imagine taking “correct” to all of the members of the community, and then noting how “for all practical purposes” their community could sustain itself in regard to all of the many, many moral issues in which each member on his or her own personal path comes to completely conflicting ethical convictions.

Again, what was crucial in the Wicker Man was us against him. What if it becomes us against us?+++

There is no unity of purpose in Paganism, and it is riven with countless factions all arguing against each other, but these arguments hardly ever centre around the sort of moral questions you are bringing up here. Probably because morality is regarded very much as a matter for the individual. As for connecting morality to the afterlife, I can safely say that I’ve never heard any Pagan talk in this way, nor read anything written by Pagans that mention it. A lot of Pagans (though probably a minority) don’t even believe in an afterlife, and of those that do, most would probably say that we can’t know for sure about it. Many accept the idea of reincarnation in some form, though it’s not regarded as something that needs to be escaped from, as in the Hindu or Buddhist concept of it, but rather, as a joyful thing. Your third point, about the nature and purpose of reality, is probably discussed a bit more than the others, but I’ve never heard anyone being dogmatic about it or arguing about it.

+++Okay, would you recommend one. Are you involved with one. That way I could come to them through you…and not as just someone out of the blue.

On the other hand, I’d probably feel uncomfortable interacting with them virtually only in order to question their beliefs. That’s not what most such communities form for. Many are like families and the last thing they want is an interloper among them.+++

It’s been some time since I’ve bothered with any of the Pagan networking forums and much prefer practicing on my own these days.

+++From my frame of mind there is not a human community on the face of the Earth that doesn’t deal with conflicting ethical opinions. And that is because conflicting ethical opinions often lead to conflicting behaviors that bring about very real consequences. To suggest that with Pagans this is somehow different doesn’t really answer my specific question of how this can even be possible.+++

It’s possible because Paganism is not an organised community. All of those issues are dealt with at group level, if at all.

+++They have to deal with situations in which members on their own personal paths with nature might come to opposite moral convictions in regard to abortion or gun ownership or gender roles or animal rights or the use of drugs or what constitutes criminal behavior or all the issues that revolve around human sexuality or what to teach kids or capitalism/socialism or where the individual stops and the community begins or issues of immigration…and all of the other moral and political conflagrations we hear about “on the news”.+++

Yes, as I said before, every group will have its own way of dealing with all these issues, including the option of not dealing with them. The leader of the Wiccan group I used to be in had strong views about abortion, for example. Gun ownership isn’t an issue in the UK, though. Gender roles are pretty important in many Pagan traditions, but not in others. Most Pagans would probably support the idea of animal welfare (to varying degrees), and while vegetarianism is more prevalent among Pagans than the general population, it certainly isn’t universal. Most Pagans have a relaxed attitude to soft drugs like cannabis, and smoking it is very common indeed at almost all Pagan events. I’ve tried it myself a couple of times but it did nothing for me except induce coughing fits. Some Pagans, however, are against the use of any artificial stimulants. As for sexuality, lesbian, gay and bisexual people are represented in Paganism to a greater degree than the general population, possibly because of the more accepting attitude of Pagans to that sort of thing. On the other hand, political issues such as capitalism or socialism are hardly ever touched upon. Most Pagans are probably fairly liberal, though there are also some far right groups too.

+++It would not seem [to me] that Pagans are exempt from the potential for turmoil of this sort.+++

One of the reasons I became disillusioned with going to Pagan events was because of all the gossip and backbiting. Pagans are people, and are not immune to acting like everyone else in the world. But the arguments don’t usually involve the issues you’ve brought up.

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Quite the contrary, over the years others – in the flesh and in books – have said things that helped convince me to abandon, among other things, a gang life, Christianity, religion, Objectivism, Marxism, socialism, anarchism. Even existentialism when the focus is on “authenticity”. So, sure, why not someone able to say something that convinces me to reject moral nihilism and a fractured and fragmented “I”.

But it’s no less a way of interacting with the world that is derived existentially from the life you’ve lived, live now or will live. So, in being this “moral person” that was, is and will be no less subject to change. After all, all those folks on all those hundreds and hundreds of alternative moral, political and spiritual paths end up interacting with the world as well. Only for the objectivists those interactions are often subsumed in one or another Scripture. Sacred or secular.

When they speak of being a moral person prompting them to interact ethically with others their font of choice is often quite solid. I’m just grappling to understand how your moral convictions might be deeply felt but anchored only to your own personal experiences…experiences which might have been, can be or will be very different.

This part:

Again, to me, you speak of being a “moral person” as though in regard to conflicting goods, being moral is just something you know that you are. Like saying you just know you have a soul. You recognize the role that your past played in merely predisposing you to think that these things are moral and those things are not, that had your life been very different, it might have been the other way around, but [unlike me] you are able to tamp that part down and feel more comfortable in accepting that, in being a “moral person”, it’s closer to some necessary truth.

That’s the frame of mind I’m most interested in. And not just you but anyone here who is able to anchor their moral and spiritual convictions in an understanding of the world that is not nearly as drawn and quartered as mine is.

Back again to that. You just know something that, in my view, you can’t really know at all because you have no way of grasping what new experiences, relationships and knowledge might be on the horizon. It would be as though someone totally unfamiliar with Paganism, and found it so alien they said, “I know I would never become one of them”. And then one day because of experiences they never imagined they would have, they become one.

I’m thinking: how on earth can she not grasp this?! When, in my view, this is precisely the frame of mind that the objectivists cling to in order to anchor their own comfort and consolation in their very own moral, political or spiritual path.

On the other hand, the closer we come to believing it’s genetic, the closer we come to accepting that, basically, it’s “beyond our control”. I’m an optimistic moral person because I inherited that from my parents. Or, perhaps, genetically, this can be taken all the way back to everything that we think, feel, say and do: determinism.

But there’s still this: Optimist and moral about what? And, given a Pagan’s individual interactions with nature, is that all too largely just a manifestation of biological imperatives?

And, of course, my point is that you come to want these things and not those things because the existential trajectory that is your life itself, nudge or propel or compel you to want them. It has less to do with what is necessarily or inherently right and what has, instead, just come to “seem” right to you because your life has predisposed you to feel this rather than than about one or another moral conflagration that rends the species.

Exactly my point about your reaction to what you suppose it must be like being me. Though, sure, just as I wish I was able to get up and about as I once did, I can’t imagine a part of you not wishing that you could see. And then for you of course what would it mean to be unhappy regarding something that you never once had and then lost. Being blind is you. From birth.

Mostly they revolve around a swirl of psycho-somatic symptoms derived from the fact the my life had often been bursting at the seams with one or another traumatic “stresspool”. My nerves became “shot” and I found myself less and less able to interact with others. My world imploded for all intents and purposes.

That’s always possible of course. But I do genuinely believe that it is my “philosophy of life” that most perturbs others: the part that revolves around an essentially meaningless and purposeless existence one day tumbling over into the abyss that is oblivion. The part pertaining to “the gap”. The part pertaining to determinism. The part pertaining to a fractured and fragmented “I” in the is/ought world.

Yeah. I’ve still got a handful of “virtual friends” I’ve exchanged emails with for years now. I managed [more or less] to “reason” them down into the hole with me. Just no one [yet] who has managed to “reason” me up out of it.

And, I believe, that is because my own moral philosophy is just so much more radical. Even Pagans are able to believe that given their interactions with nature they arrive at a point where they can think of themselves as a “moral person”. That’s no longer an option for me. Moral convictions for me are not rooted in God or spirituality or ideology or deontology or nature. They are subjective/subjunctive existential “contraptions” derived merely from the life I happened to live at a particular time historically and a particular place culturally and given the particular trajectory of experiences I had. I can no longer find a “font” to anchor a Self to.

This makes sense [to me] because if, through nature, you can think of yourself as a moral person and yet believe that morality itself can be embodied given convictions and behaviors all up and down the moral and political spectrum, then what determines your fate in the afterlife? After all, for most religious and spiritual paths, what that fate will be very much depends on the behaviors you choose on this side of the grave.

Here though I can only come back to this: the gap between what someone believes about the afterlife and what they can actually demonstrate is true about it. And then the part where what they believe, they believe because believing it makes them feel better…comforts and consoles them. Never ever underestimate psychological defense mechanisms.

Well, even if there were only a handful of Pagans that did spend a considerable amount of time together, I can’t wrap my head around how, for all practical purposes, they can be on separate paths with nature, come to conflicting moral convictions that prompt them to behave in ways the others did not approve of and not have a lot of turmoil. Other than by way of “moderation, negotiation and compromise”. But how is being a “moral person” really squared with that?

Thus…

Well here it seems that Pagans, just as with all the rest of us, have wide and varied opinions about these things. I’m just unable to really grasp how, being out in nature, the interaction with nature itself can lead a particular individual to a conviction about all of these things. Convictions that can then be in conflict with others generating conflicting behaviors and yet everyone agreeing that the other is still a “moral person”.

I think I’m going to explore this further. If only through the internet.

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+++Quite the contrary, over the years others – in the flesh and in books – have said things that helped convince me to abandon, among other things, a gang life, Christianity, religion, Objectivism, Marxism, socialism, anarchism. Even existentialism when the focus is on “authenticity”. So, sure, why not someone able to say something that convinces me to reject moral nihilism and a fractured and fragmented “I”.+++

Ok, fair enough. But I must say again that it’s not my job, nor anyone else’s, to pursuade you of the existence of ghosts, etc. I don’t even know what they are myself.

+++But it’s no less a way of interacting with the world that is derived existentially from the life you’ve lived, live now or will live. So, in being this “moral person” that was, is and will be no less subject to change. After all, all those folks on all those hundreds and hundreds of alternative moral, political and spiritual paths end up interacting with the world as well. Only for the objectivists those interactions are often subsumed in one or another Scripture. Sacred or secular.

When they speak of being a moral person prompting them to interact ethically with others their font of choice is often quite solid. I’m just grappling to understand how your moral convictions might be deeply felt but anchored only to your own personal experiences…experiences which might have been, can be or will be very different.+++

Yes, there’s no doubt that had my life been different, I would probably have had different opinions, including about moral issues. I don’t regard this as some sort of profound insight, though, just an obvious truism.

+++Again, to me, you speak of being a “moral person” as though in regard to conflicting goods, being moral is just something you know that you are. Like saying you just know you have a soul. You recognize the role that your past played in merely predisposing you to think that these things are moral and those things are not, that had your life been very different, it might have been the other way around, but [unlike me] you are able to tamp that part down and feel more comfortable in accepting that, in being a “moral person”, it’s closer to some necessary truth.

That’s the frame of mind I’m most interested in. And not just you but anyone here who is able to anchor their moral and spiritual convictions in an understanding of the world that is not nearly as drawn and quartered as mine is.+++

Well, I like to think I’m a moral person but I know full well that I’m not perfect. Perhaps I’d have been a more perfect person in a different life. Who knows? As it happens, though, I have indeed lived the life that I’ve lived, and so I’m the person that I am.

+++Back again to that. You just know something that, in my view, you can’t really know at all because you have no way of grasping what new experiences, relationships and knowledge might be on the horizon. It would be as though someone totally unfamiliar with Paganism, and found it so alien they said, “I know I would never become one of them”. And then one day because of experiences they never imagined they would have, they become one.

I’m thinking: how on earth can she not grasp this?! When, in my view, this is precisely the frame of mind that the objectivists cling to in order to anchor their own comfort and consolation in their very own moral, political or spiritual path.+++

I do grasp it, I just don’t think it’s any sort of revelation. It’s just obvious, really.

+++On the other hand, the closer we come to believing it’s genetic, the closer we come to accepting that, basically, it’s “beyond our control”. I’m an optimistic moral person because I inherited that from my parents. Or, perhaps, genetically, this can be taken all the way back to everything that we think, feel, say and do: determinism.

But there’s still this: Optimist and moral about what? And, given a Pagan’s individual interactions with nature, is that all too largely just a manifestation of biological imperatives?+++

The sensible option is surely not to believe one extreme or the other. Genetics undoubtedly influences us, but then so does environment, and all sorts of other factors, including free will.

+++And, of course, my point is that you come to want these things and not those things because the existential trajectory that is your life itself, nudge or propel or compel you to want them. It has less to do with what is necessarily or inherently right and what has, instead, just come to “seem” right to you because your life has predisposed you to feel this rather than than about one or another moral conflagration that rends the species.+++

Yes, I agree. But, again, it’s just obvious.

+++Exactly my point about your reaction to what you suppose it must be like being me. Though, sure, just as I wish I was able to get up and about as I once did, I can’t imagine a part of you not wishing that you could see. And then for you of course what would it mean to be unhappy regarding something that you never once had and then lost. Being blind is you. From birth.+++

A part of me does indeed wish that I could see, not least because of a sense of overwhelming curiosity. But this is not the same as saying that I’m unhappy with my life as it is.

+++Mostly they revolve around a swirl of psycho-somatic symptoms derived from the fact the my life had often been bursting at the seams with one or another traumatic “stresspool”. My nerves became “shot” and I found myself less and less able to interact with others. My world imploded for all intents and purposes.+++

What have you done to try and work round these issues? Thinking back, I believe this was one of the first questions that I asked you.

+++That’s always possible of course. But I do genuinely believe that it is my “philosophy of life” that most perturbs others: the part that revolves around an essentially meaningless and purposeless existence one day tumbling over into the abyss that is oblivion. The part pertaining to “the gap”. The part pertaining to determinism. The part pertaining to a fractured and fragmented “I” in the is/ought world.+++

I think you should seriously entertain the possibility that this is not the case.

+++Yeah. I’ve still got a handful of “virtual friends” I’ve exchanged emails with for years now. I managed [more or less] to “reason” them down into the hole with me. Just no one [yet] who has managed to “reason” me up out of it.+++

Isn’t it a bit selfish to want to bring people down into your hole?

+++And, I believe, that is because my own moral philosophy is just so much more radical. Even Pagans are able to believe that given their interactions with nature they arrive at a point where they can think of themselves as a “moral person”. That’s no longer an option for me. Moral convictions for me are not rooted in God or spirituality or ideology or deontology or nature. They are subjective/subjunctive existential “contraptions” derived merely from the life I happened to live at a particular time historically and a particular place culturally and given the particular trajectory of experiences I had. I can no longer find a “font” to anchor a Self to.+++

I’m not sure I would call it radical. Nihilism and despair are pretty mainstream, I would say.

+++This makes sense [to me] because if, through nature, you can think of yourself as a moral person and yet believe that morality itself can be embodied given convictions and behaviors all up and down the moral and political spectrum, then what determines your fate in the afterlife? After all, for most religious and spiritual paths, what that fate will be very much depends on the behaviors you choose on this side of the grave.+++

Why assume that your fate in the afterlife, if there is one, is connected to your own morality? If it takes fear of punishment for someone to be a good person, then they’re not a good person.

+++Here though I can only come back to this: the gap between what someone believes about the afterlife and what they can actually demonstrate is true about it. And then the part where what they believe, they believe because believing it makes them feel better…comforts and consoles them. Never ever underestimate psychological defense mechanisms.+++

As whith ghosts, no one is under any obligation to demonstrate the truth about the afterlife. And definitely not me, because I don’t know what the answer is.

+++Well, even if there were only a handful of Pagans that did spend a considerable amount of time together, I can’t wrap my head around how, for all practical purposes, they can be on separate paths with nature, come to conflicting moral convictions that prompt them to behave in ways the others did not approve of and not have a lot of turmoil. Other than by way of “moderation, negotiation and compromise”. But how is being a “moral person” really squared with that?+++

If it were only a handful of Pagans, spending considerable amounts of time together, then you are almost certainly talking about a group, and groups do indeed have codes of morality, usually decided by the person who runs it (though not always).

+++Well here it seems that Pagans, just as with all the rest of us, have wide and varied opinions about these things. I’m just unable to really grasp how, being out in nature, the interaction with nature itself can lead a particular individual to a conviction about all of these things. Convictions that can then be in conflict with others generating conflicting behaviors and yet everyone agreeing that the other is still a “moral person”.

I think I’m going to explore this further. If only through the internet.+++

Good luck.

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Well, if you think that I think that coming into this particular philosophy venue means it’s someone’s job to persuade me to think a certain way about things like ghosts, you really do not understand my point at all. Instead, my point is that in regard to human ghosts, you have your experiences and others have theirs. And only by coming together and sharing what experiences we do have is it likely that our understanding of their existence [or lack thereof] will be enhanced.

And that this is of particular importance to me because “here and now” I believe that death = oblivion. So, to the extent that others can demonstrate to the world that human ghosts do in fact exist, they’ve got my rapt attention.

Whether it is a profound insight or not, how can it not trouble someone convinced that they are a Pagan only because they just happened existentially not to have not become one and that, since there is no way for them to demonstrate that Paganism is the most reasonable frame of mind for becoming a “moral person”, any new experience, relationship or access to information and knowledge could knock them right off this particular path altogether. And, instead, they find themselves on one of the zillions of other paths there are to choose from when taking on the task of being a “moral person”.

Then this part:

Again, to speak of moral perfection at all suggests the gap between us here. You are who you are basically because the life that you lived could not have resulted in you being other than you are. Though you agree that had any number of variables in your past been different you might be here arguing as I do and not as a Pagan.

For me it’s the manner in which, from my frame of mind, you fail to grasp just how precarious and problematic “I” is in the is/ought world that reflects the greatest challenge for me. Is it possible that I might succeed in making you understand it? Or, instead, will you succeed in making me understand that, in regard to moral and spiritual value judgments, I am the one unable to “see the light”. If not yours than another’s.

Especially in regard to this:

So, that’s your answer and you’re sticking to it?

Seriously, though, while I suspect I am unlikely to change your mind, I’m not altogether convinced of it. And, ironically enough [again, from my own subjective perspective], it is because I do have such respect for your intelligence. And ultimately your curiosity about these things. It’s just a matter of convincing you that Paganism is but one of hundreds and hundreds of moral and spiritual fonts “out there”, all convinced that on their path one truly can become a “moral person”.

Also, a miracle might happen and we actually do end up becoming “virtual friends”. :astonished:

No, for me, the most sensible option of all is that, in regard to nature and nurture, as with in regard to Paganism and moral nihilism, we accept the staggering gap between what we think we believe about them and all that must be known about them in order to know for sure what to believe about them. Rummy’s Rule in other words. In the interim, all we have is our more or less educated wild ass guesses.

I know, I know: Let’s not go there.

You agree, but our understanding of the “for all practical purposes” implications of that in regard to becoming a “moral person” are very different. Paganism has come to “seem right” to you but from my frame of mind only because you didn’t live the sort of life whereby it would not “seem right” to you at all. You might have lived a life that predisposed you to think it is ridiculous.

But [it seems to me] you’re okay with that.

Yes, I understand this distinction and it is a very important one. And I am truly happy that you do live a happy life. And that comes through loud and clear here in many of your posts. You are comfortable in your own skin as few of us are.

But I am curious about one thing.

In your exchanges over at Know Thyself, I recall a discussion that revolved around your interactions with others who have “disabilities”. How, for example, if I am remembering this correctly, you would prefer a romantic relationship what someone who was not “disabled”. And in our own exchanges, I sensed that you were more comfortable interacting with others who were not blind. And that in fact most of your relationships are with sighted people.

Is that something you would feel comfortable discussing? Or am I completely wrong in my understanding of this?

To be perfectly honest, I have actually come to take advantage of it all.

In other words, all my life I have surrounded by people: a large extended family, gang members, friends I met working in the shipyards and steel mills, friends from the church, army buddies, a zillion relationships in college, getting married, interacting with my daughter and all her friends, countless interactions with men and women as a political activists. But now in my imploded interactions with almost no one, it has given me the sort of time I need to dive deep down into philosophy and music and films and books. I live alone and while it can be painful not having others around to share my life with, I am now in a situation where I only choose to do what I and I alone want to do. And it’s a trade off that I have come not only to accept but to relish.

Well, all I can really go by is the reactions that others have to me here. My own interpretation of them. That’s honestly and introspectively the way it seems to me.

Only if you were down in a similar hole yourself, might you be less inclined to think like that. Your own hole might not be the same as mine, but when you’re in a philosophical hole like mine, it can be particular unnerving. Also, given my win/win scenario, there’s the other side of the coin: that someone might actually succeed in helping me to extricate myself from it.

Okay, but I suspect there are few who root it in philosophy itself. For many it revolves more around circumstances. Their own life is in the toilet and they see no other option but to flush. It’s the combination of being “fractured and fragmented” on this side of the grave and being eyeball to eyeball with oblivion re the other side that I see separating me from others.

But “here and now” nihilism brings me not despair but options. Options that those who anchor their Self to one or another font often don’t have.

Fear of punishment and anticipation of rewards.

Let’s face it, millions and millions and millions around the globe do link their fate on the other side to their behaviors on this side. After all, for all practical purposes, what else is there?

Am I demanding that they do? Yeah, it might be construed by some this way. But mostly what I’m after are those who recognize that just believing in the afterlife is no where near the same as demonstrating that it does in fact exist. And that, in a philosophy forum, providing evidence for something that you do believe is far more important than a discussion about among family and friends at the dinner table or around the campfire or at the local bar/pub.

I’m talking about a community of Pagans. Any community in whatever demographic configuration it might take. How can each member be on their own path, come to their own moral convictions, have those convictions clash and still create the least dysfunctional community. If the person who runs it decides what the codes of morality are then his or her path would ever and always take priority. And how is that different from might makes right?

I’ve already found a couple of websites that explore this. When I do get around to it I will put it on my morality thread: ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 1&t=175121

Edit [a couple of hours later]:

Let me add this…

The thing I least understand about Paganism and morality is how Pagans connect the dots between their experiences “out in nature, with nature, through nature” and moral convictions themselves.

How in particular does nature through the Goddess convey this to you?

Most Pagans can see nature. You cannot. But in in other respects your other senses might be enhanced. So you hear nature, smell, nature, touch nature…feel nature’s “energy” rise up and become a part of you.

But how does this then configure into to your thinking about the moral issues that impale the human species?

When I went out into nature a few months ago and tried to experience it more deeply that’s what kept coming back to me. I’m sitting there focusing my senses on the woods around me and I kept wondering how this can possibly impact on my moral narrative. Especially given my own conclusion that nature itself seems utterly amoral in regard to us.

True, my own attempt here was shallow. I barely gave it a chance. But how do your own exercises and rituals out in nature translate into a moral experience?

146

There was a very strange entity floating in the toilet this morning, but I do not want to describe it in detail.
If fact I wish I could un-see it!!

147

Again, as Magnus pointed out, with you it’s not what you post so much as why you seem compelled to go after others who refuse to think exactly as you do. Your own take on why you have become a fulminating fanatic objectivist. The evangelical equivalent of an atheist.

This part:

Come on, let’s go there. :sunglasses:

148

Have you had a humourectomy??
:laughing: :laughing:

149

This is YOU.
As is evidenced by your own post.

Pure projection.

If I had to describe what was floating in the toilet I’d have to call it iambiguous.

150

Oh, right: you were just trying to be funny.

Come on, even you know that’s bullshit.

Then the part you left out:

So, tell us what’s behind your contempt for anyone who refuses to toe your line. Was it one experience in particular or a whole bunch of them.

I suspect there must be something or someone in your life that absolutely infuriates you…but you can’t [or won’t] do anything about it.

So you need to come in here and use us as the targets.

Virtually only of course but it’s better than nothing? :-k

151

Note to others:

Over and again I point out that in regard to that which is of most interest to me philosophically – connecting the dots existentially between morality here and now and immortality there and then – my own arguments are no less embedded in, well, my own arguments.

Never in a million years would I suggest that how I think about these things others are obligated to think the same way about…or be mocked and ridiculed. I’m the first to admit that “I” am but an infinitesimally tiny and insignificant speck of existence in the vastness of all there is.

You know, like Scripture.

And that’s before “the gap”! :sunglasses:

152

+++Well, if you think that I think that coming into this particular philosophy venue means it’s someone’s job to persuade me to think a certain way about things like ghosts, you really do not understand my point at all. Instead, my point is that in regard to human ghosts, you have your experiences and others have theirs. And only by coming together and sharing what experiences we do have is it likely that our understanding of their existence [or lack thereof] will be enhanced.

And that this is of particular importance to me because “here and now” I believe that death = oblivion. So, to the extent that others can demonstrate to the world that human ghosts do in fact exist, they’ve got my rapt attention.+++

I’m inclined to think that ghosts are unlikely to be the spirits of humans who have passed on, though I suppose some might be. For a start off, I’ve heard stories of ghosts of people who are still alive. This seems a lot more like astral projection. But most ghosts, I would say, are more likely to be something akin to nature spirits, or spirits of place. This would tie into folklore about other non-corporeal or magical creatures.

+++Whether it is a profound insight or not, how can it not trouble someone convinced that they are a Pagan only because they just happened existentially not to have not become one and that, since there is no way for them to demonstrate that Paganism is the most reasonable frame of mind for becoming a “moral person”, any new experience, relationship or access to information and knowledge could knock them right off this particular path altogether. And, instead, they find themselves on one of the zillions of other paths there are to choose from when taking on the task of being a “moral person”.+++

I don’t believe that Paganism is the most reasonable frame of mind for becoming a moral person. It all depends on the individual, and indeed, it also depends on where that individual happens to be on their path. One can be moral without being a Pagan, and vice versa. This doesn’t trouble me in the slightest, because it just seems perfectly natural.

+++Again, to speak of moral perfection at all suggests the gap between us here. You are who you are basically because the life that you lived could not have resulted in you being other than you are. Though you agree that had any number of variables in your past been different you might be here arguing as I do and not as a Pagan.

For me it’s the manner in which, from my frame of mind, you fail to grasp just how precarious and problematic “I” is in the is/ought world that reflects the greatest challenge for me. Is it possible that I might succeed in making you understand it? Or, instead, will you succeed in making me understand that, in regard to moral and spiritual value judgments, I am the one unable to “see the light”. If not yours than another’s.+++

It’s no more precarious and problematic than anything else in the world. I fully understand what you’re saying, I just happen to disagree.

+++So, that’s your answer and you’re sticking to it?

Seriously, though, while I suspect I am unlikely to change your mind, I’m not altogether convinced of it. And, ironically enough [again, from my own subjective perspective], it is because I do have such respect for your intelligence. And ultimately your curiosity about these things. It’s just a matter of convincing you that Paganism is but one of hundreds and hundreds of moral and spiritual fonts “out there”, all convinced that on their path one truly can become a “moral person”.

Also, a miracle might happen and we actually do end up becoming “virtual friends”.+++

You don’t need to convince me that Paganism is only one of countless moral and spiritual systems out there because I already know it. And indeed, have said it often enough, namely, that everyone has their own path.

+++No, for me, the most sensible option of all is that, in regard to nature and nurture, as with in regard to Paganism and moral nihilism, we accept the staggering gap between what we think we believe about them and all that must be known about them in order to know for sure what to believe about them. Rummy’s Rule in other words. In the interim, all we have is our more or less educated wild ass guesses.

I know, I know: Let’s not go there.+++

Indeed.

+++You agree, but our understanding of the “for all practical purposes” implications of that in regard to becoming a “moral person” are very different. Paganism has come to “seem right” to you but from my frame of mind only because you didn’t live the sort of life whereby it would not “seem right” to you at all. You might have lived a life that predisposed you to think it is ridiculous.

But [it seems to me] you’re okay with that.+++

Yes, I’m very much ok with that.

+++Yes, I understand this distinction and it is a very important one. And I am truly happy that you do live a happy life. And that comes through loud and clear here in many of your posts. You are comfortable in your own skin as few of us are.

But I am curious about one thing.

In your exchanges over at Know Thyself, I recall a discussion that revolved around your interactions with others who have “disabilities”. How, for example, if I am remembering this correctly, you would prefer a romantic relationship what someone who was not “disabled”. And in our own exchanges, I sensed that you were more comfortable interacting with others who were not blind. And that in fact most of your relationships are with sighted people.

Is that something you would feel comfortable discussing? Or am I completely wrong in my understanding of this?+++

Yes, that’s right, I would not consider dating anyone who’s blind, or who had some other disability. And yes, it’s also true that all my close friendships are with sighted people too. With only a small number of exceptions, I’ve had little personal interaction with the blind community since leaving school. I find its insularity and petty political bickering completely stultifying.

+++To be perfectly honest, I have actually come to take advantage of it all.

In other words, all my life I have surrounded by people: a large extended family, gang members, friends I met working in the shipyards and steel mills, friends from the church, army buddies, a zillion relationships in college, getting married, interacting with my daughter and all her friends, countless interactions with men and women as a political activists. But now in my imploded interactions with almost no one, it has given me the sort of time I need to dive deep down into philosophy and music and films and books. I live alone and while it can be painful not having others around to share my life with, I am now in a situation where I only choose to do what I and I alone want to do. And it’s a trade off that I have come not only to accept but to relish.+++

As long as you’re happy, or find it fulfilling, then that’s fine. I live alone too, but that’s where the similarity ends, since, as you know, I’m a pretty active sort of person, both at work and in my social life.

+++Well, all I can really go by is the reactions that others have to me here. My own interpretation of them. That’s honestly and introspectively the way it seems to me.

Only if you were down in a similar hole yourself, might you be less inclined to think like that. Your own hole might not be the same as mine, but when you’re in a philosophical hole like mine, it can be particular unnerving. Also, given my win/win scenario, there’s the other side of the coin: that someone might actually succeed in helping me to extricate myself from it.+++

I would always try to drag myself out of any such hole, without hoping that someone else might do it for me.

+++Okay, but I suspect there are few who root it in philosophy itself. For many it revolves more around circumstances. Their own life is in the toilet and they see no other option but to flush. It’s the combination of being “fractured and fragmented” on this side of the grave and being eyeball to eyeball with oblivion re the other side that I see separating me from others.

But “here and now” nihilism brings me not despair but options. Options that those who anchor their Self to one or another font often don’t have.+++

Can you give me an example of any such options?

+++Fear of punishment and anticipation of rewards.

Let’s face it, millions and millions and millions around the globe do link their fate on the other side to their behaviors on this side. After all, for all practical purposes, what else is there?+++

What else is there in what context?

+++Am I demanding that they do? Yeah, it might be construed by some this way. But mostly what I’m after are those who recognize that just believing in the afterlife is no where near the same as demonstrating that it does in fact exist. And that, in a philosophy forum, providing evidence for something that you do believe is far more important than a discussion about among family and friends at the dinner table or around the campfire or at the local bar/pub.+++

While I accept your point that we’re on a philosophy forum and not down the pub, I’m far more interested in the sort of philosophy that deals with how we percieve the world around us and interact with it.

+++I’m talking about a community of Pagans. Any community in whatever demographic configuration it might take. How can each member be on their own path, come to their own moral convictions, have those convictions clash and still create the least dysfunctional community. If the person who runs it decides what the codes of morality are then his or her path would ever and always take priority. And how is that different from might makes right?+++

I can’t think of an instance where a small group of Pagans would regularly hang around together over an extended period if they were not members of some sort of organised group. I suppose they could be regulars at a moot, but even in that case, the moot will have a leader. Within groups, it is indeed very much the leader who decides on the codes of conduct. I know of examples where some groups have attempted a more democratic type of structure, but these almost always fail, because no one takes responsibility.

+++Let me add this…

The thing I least understand about Paganism and morality is how Pagans connect the dots between their experiences “out in nature, with nature, through nature” and moral convictions themselves.

How in particular does nature through the Goddess convey this to you?+++

The simple answer to this is that it doesn’t. Morality is a personal thing, and nature does not directly influence it.

+++Most Pagans can see nature. You cannot. But in in other respects your other senses might be enhanced. So you hear nature, smell, nature, touch nature…feel nature’s “energy” rise up and become a part of you.

But how does this then configure into to your thinking about the moral issues that impale the human species?+++

It doesn’t, at least not directly. Through experiencing nature, I know that all life is connected, which is probably as close as it comes to influencing my thoughts on matters of morality. Nothing specific, in other words.

You’re right to say, of course, that being blind has caused me to experience nature, as indeed everything, in different ways to most people. Which is one of the many reasons, incidentally, why I wouldn’t change it.

+++When I went out into nature a few months ago and tried to experience it more deeply that’s what kept coming back to me. I’m sitting there focusing my senses on the woods around me and I kept wondering how this can possibly impact on my moral narrative. Especially given my own conclusion that nature itself seems utterly amoral in regard to us.

True, my own attempt here was shallow. I barely gave it a chance. But how do your own exercises and rituals out in nature translate into a moral experience?+++

My exercises and rituals are not moral experiences. Their purpose is primarily about communing with nature, and they have no direct bearing on my moral stances on any issue, or my morality in general. I do not become a more moral person by doing these rituals.

I must point out though that I’m only talking about my own experiences here. Other Pagans will have different opinions on the matter. And while Paganism as a whole has no moral stance on anything, certain traditions within it do. Wicca, for example, has something called the three fold law, which states that whatever you do, good or bad, will come back to you with three times the force. You’ll find this written about a lot online, ad nauseam in fact, but as a former member of a Wiccan group I can tell you that in practice, they often ignore it. They have another one too, a sort of mantra, which goes, an it harm none do what ye will. Again, in practice, this is often ignored too. But even if it were properly adhered to, it seems pretty selfish and self-indulgent to me. But then, I’m no longer a Wiccan, anyway.

153

Yes, people down through the ages have called them different things. But what they call them based on what they believe they are will always pale [for me] next to what they can demonstrate to me such that I am actually able to hope that death does not equal oblivion. On the other hand, if my life were to become a living hell, I might find myself begging to die. It’s all profoundly embedded in our individual lives. And how different they can be. Thus the need to share experiences in order to acquire more pieces to the ultimate puzzle that death is.

How you have come to understand “natural” here is not the same as I have. For now, that may be as far as we can go in communicating each other’s understanding of it. Though Paganism is not seen by you to be the most reasonable frame of mind in regard to morality, it certainly must seem reasonable to you “here and now” to be a Pagan. But my point is that had your life been different, you might well be arguing here instead that Paganism – given the amoral nature of nature itself – would be the last place one would go to acquire a belief that one is a “moral person”.

This part:

Well, from my frame of mind, “I” in the is/ought world is considerably more problematic than [b][u]I[/b][/u] in the either/or. world. Think about all the variables in your life that come together to make you who you are. Your gender, your age, your health, your blindness, your parents, your community, your job, your day to day routine. How problematic are they until something dramatic in the either/or world changes? Moral and spiritual values on the other hand seem [to me] considerably more open to ambiguity and confusion and uncertainty. That’s why in my view so many people do embrace objectivism: it makes “I” on par with I. And that’s the source of their comfort and consolation. Not what they believe so much as that what they do believe they believe emphatically.

I suppose that’s the part I struggle most to grasp. It’s like you are telling me something important about yourself – about me – but I can’t figure out exactly what it is. If I came to believe that I am a moral nihilist only because my experiences did not predispose me to believe I am something else…and that something/anything else in my life down the road might yank me off that path altogether, the first thing I’d think is, “okay, what about philosophy?” Can philosophy provide me with a methodology such that I can know – rationally – what it means to be a “moral person”? I have come to conclude that it cannot. And if it [or science] cannot than I’m back to dasein…to the profoundly problematic and precarious “I” that I understand differently than you do.

Indeed, indeed. But I suspect because to go there confronts each of us with just how infinitesimally insignificant we are in the staggering vastness of “all there is”.

Just out of curiosity, does the fact that you and I inhabit this teeny, tiny rock orbiting a Sun that is part of a galaxy that is but one of hundreds of billions – some say trillions – of other galaxies in what may well be and infinity of other universes even come up between you and the Goddess?

Of course as soon as I think of a Goddess I am left with all of the bewildering questions I might ask regarding how on earth you interact with her. I’m still confused as to the extent that this is literally.

Well, right now, there is no way I can understand that. If I were to one day come to believe that moral nihilism is ridiculous, it would be precisely because new experiences, relationships, information, knowledge, ideas etc., led me to it. And if I believed that, well, I would be all the more intent on pinning down whether I am on the right path. Through philosophy among other things. Otherwise I am admitting to myself that the only reason I am a moral nihilist at all is because I “just happened existentially not to have not become one”.

That doesn’t work for me.

Okay, I was just curious. But sometimes we can’t help who we fall in love with. And I am curious how others who are blind from birth might react to that. How, perhaps, they might be configure it all into any number of directions. Critical of that point of view. After all, it’s hard to believe that most blind people are insular and politically petty.

But, okay, true: what the hell do I know about that?

Or maybe it’s just how I tend to go in the opposite direction. I always seek out those who are most like me.

In any event, you still have 3+ years to honor your commitment to the Goddess in embodying celibacy. At least insofar as romantic relationships go.

The important point is that each of us in our own way is happy with the life that we live.

True enough. That would certainly be the best of all possible worlds. Hole wise.

Mostly in my imploded world, they revolve around not second guessing myself in choosing what I do. As opposed to my own many, many years as one or another “ist”. Back then it was always…

“Is this the right thing to do?”
“What will others in ‘the group’ think if I do this?”
“Will others shun me or punish me for not toeing the “ist” line?”
And when I was a Christian:
“Will I go to Hell if I do this?”

How about with you among other Pagans?

Well, here you are on this side of the grave. You don’t want to believe that death = oblivion. So, for all practical purposes, it’s not just what you believe about the other side but what you have to do in order to get there…as you most want it to be. That’s how literally hundreds of millions of people think about it.

For me, how we perceive the world and then interact with others based on that perception can only be enhanced all the more if we are able to demonstrate that what we believe is a rational belief.

That’s my beef with many members here. When it comes to connecting the dots between morality here and now and immortality there and then many [to me] seem quite content to let it all revolve merely around what they believe.

And that might be okay [in any given community] if they all came to agree on what to believe. But in most communities there are many hopelessly conflicting assessments of that. And if it just then comes down to what you perceive/believe, what happens when those with the most power get to call all the shots?

This part:

Again, I have no practical experience with such groups/communities. So it is hard for me to grasp the points that you are making. Perhaps when I begin to explore it more in probing morality and Paganism on the internet, it might become clearer. Though, sure, to the extent your own interactions might allow you to provide me with insights please send them along.

Especially this part…

Then that just baffles me all the more. You seem to put so much weight on your interactions with nature, it’s hard for me to understand how morality is separate from it.

And if that is the case it just convinces me all the more that your own moral convictions are no less rooted in dasein than my own fractured and fragments “I” is in turn. Different lives, different conclusions. And any new dramatic changes in those lives “down the road” and…and who knows?

Life is connected. But it is connected in different ways for different people. Historically, culturally, experientially. Then when you add a never ending conveyor belt of contingency, chance and change, you get, well, what I get anyway.

Maybe I will come closer to understanding what you mean. There’s a part of me that is drawn to it…but I’m not sure why.

Still, what makes your own life what it has become is that you were born blind. Why would you change something in that regard when you have no real understanding of what the alternative is? Thus, for someone who spent a good portion of their life sighted and then went blind at or around your age…how might their own reaction be very different. If it would be.

Then that’s the part I failed to understand correctly. I thought that nature and being a moral person were more intertwined for you. Now I’ll have to give more thought to the way you have made me understand it otherwise.

In one way it is all the more mysterious and in other ways I just go back to attributing it all to dasein.

Here though Wiccans would need to provide me with specific examples of how this played out in their own lives. Otherwise it just becomes a “belief” that is largely abstract to me.

154

+++Yes, people down through the ages have called them different things. But what they call them based on what they believe they are will always pale [for me] next to what they can demonstrate to me such that I am actually able to hope that death does not equal oblivion. On the other hand, if my life were to become a living hell, I might find myself begging to die. It’s all profoundly embedded in our individual lives. And how different they can be. Thus the need to share experiences in order to acquire more pieces to the ultimate puzzle that death is.+++

You may find the following interesting. It’s a very famous experiment.

liveabout.com/how-to-create-a-ghost-2594058

+++How you have come to understand “natural” here is not the same as I have. For now, that may be as far as we can go in communicating each other’s understanding of it. Though Paganism is not seen by you to be the most reasonable frame of mind in regard to morality, it certainly must seem reasonable to you “here and now” to be a Pagan. But my point is that had your life been different, you might well be arguing here instead that Paganism – given the amoral nature of nature itself – would be the last place one would go to acquire a belief that one is a “moral person”.+++

Indeed. Had my life been different I might have ended up a fundie Christian, for example.

+++Well, from my frame of mind, “I” in the is/ought world is considerably more problematic than I in the either/or. world. Think about all the variables in your life that come together to make you who you are. Your gender, your age, your health, your blindness, your parents, your community, your job, your day to day routine. How problematic are they until something dramatic in the either/or world changes? Moral and spiritual values on the other hand seem [to me] considerably more open to ambiguity and confusion and uncertainty. That’s why in my view so many people do embrace objectivism: it makes “I” on par with I. And that’s the source of their comfort and consolation. Not what they believe so much as that what they do believe they believe emphatically.+++

And all those variables just so happen to have come together to make me who I am, but in this I am no different to literally everything else in the universe. Far from regarding this as in any way problematic, all we have to do is try and imagine the alternative, a static universe in which nothing ever changes, to realise how lucky we are.

+++I suppose that’s the part I struggle most to grasp. It’s like you are telling me something important about yourself – about me – but I can’t figure out exactly what it is. If I came to believe that I am a moral nihilist only because my experiences did not predispose me to believe I am something else…and that something/anything else in my life down the road might yank me off that path altogether, the first thing I’d think is, “okay, what about philosophy?” Can philosophy provide me with a methodology such that I can know – rationally – what it means to be a “moral person”? I have come to conclude that it cannot. And if it [or science] cannot than I’m back to dasein…to the profoundly problematic and precarious “I” that I understand differently than you do.+++

I think that if philosophy had been able to provide a rational system of morality, it would have done so thousands of years ago. In my opinion, morality is inherent, and that we know right from wrong intuitively. In other words, it has been given to us by nature, by evolution.

+++Indeed, indeed. But I suspect because to go there confronts each of us with just how infinitesimally insignificant we are in the staggering vastness of “all there is”.

Just out of curiosity, does the fact that you and I inhabit this teeny, tiny rock orbiting a Sun that is part of a galaxy that is but one of hundreds of billions – some say trillions – of other galaxies in what may well be and infinity of other universes even come up between you and the Goddess?

Of course as soon as I think of a Goddess I am left with all of the bewildering questions I might ask regarding how on earth you interact with her. I’m still confused as to the extent that this is literally.+++

Since I don’t have actual conversations with the Goddess, the answer to that is no. The Goddess is Mother Nature. By using this term I recognise the sacredness of nature, and this feeling of sacredness, or numinosity, is derived from my own experiences within it.

+++Well, right now, there is no way I can understand that. If I were to one day come to believe that moral nihilism is ridiculous, it would be precisely because new experiences, relationships, information, knowledge, ideas etc., led me to it. And if I believed that, well, I would be all the more intent on pinning down whether I am on the right path. Through philosophy among other things. Otherwise I am admitting to myself that the only reason I am a moral nihilist at all is because I “just happened existentially not to have not become one”.

That doesn’t work for me.+++

I wouldn’t call moral nihilism ridiculous, just depressing. To me, it seems to bear all the negative hallmarks of a religion, without any of the redeeming qualities. It comes about through a certain type of philosophy, but as I’ve said, philosophy itself cannot be sufficient for getting at the truth.

+++Okay, I was just curious. But sometimes we can’t help who we fall in love with. And I am curious how others who are blind from birth might react to that. How, perhaps, they might be configure it all into any number of directions. Critical of that point of view. After all, it’s hard to believe that most blind people are insular and politically petty.

But, okay, true: what the hell do I know about that?

Or maybe it’s just how I tend to go in the opposite direction. I always seek out those who are most like me.

In any event, you still have 3+ years to honor your commitment to the Goddess in embodying celibacy. At least insofar as romantic relationships go.+++

True, but there’s a difference between dating someone and falling in love.

In terms of romantic relationships, most blind people end up with other blind people, because those are often the only people they socialise with to any great extent. Instead of that, I chose to go my own way.

But you’re right about seeking out others most like me. Other Pagans, in other words.

Yep, just over three years to go now.

+++The important point is that each of us in our own way is happy with the life that we live.+++

Absolutely.

+++True enough. That would certainly be the best of all possible worlds. Hole wise.+++

Indeed.

+++Mostly in my imploded world, they revolve around not second guessing myself in choosing what I do. As opposed to my own many, many years as one or another “ist”. Back then it was always…

“Is this the right thing to do?”
“What will others in ‘the group’ think if I do this?”
“Will others shun me or punish me for not toeing the “ist” line?”
And when I was a Christian:
“Will I go to Hell if I do this?”

How about with you among other Pagans?+++

When I first joined the Wiccan group I was pretty worried about doing or saying the wrong thing in ritual and making people think I was stupid or something. Wiccans go in for quite theatrical rituals with lots of words that you have to memorise, or so I had assumed, anyway, from what I’d read. It turned out, though, that they didn’t worry too much about exact wording and so on. But, even so, I gradually came to realise that it wasn’t for me.

I’ve never believed in the Christian hell and I find the emphasis on eternal punishment by certain branches of Christianity to be quite repugnant.

I do sometimes wonder, though, if the afterlife we end up in is the one that we expect to.

+++Well, here you are on this side of the grave. You don’t want to believe that death = oblivion. So, for all practical purposes, it’s not just what you believe about the other side but what you have to do in order to get there…as you most want it to be. That’s how literally hundreds of millions of people think about it.+++

I suppose they do. A equally large number might have different ideas though. Reincarnation is a pretty widespread idea in many parts of the world, and lots of Pagans believe it too.

+++For me, how we perceive the world and then interact with others based on that perception can only be enhanced all the more if we are able to demonstrate that what we believe is a rational belief.

That’s my beef with many members here. When it comes to connecting the dots between morality here and now and immortality there and then many [to me] seem quite content to let it all revolve [/i]merely[/i] around what they believe.

And that might be okay [in any given community] if they all came to agree on what to believe. But in most communities there are many hopelessly conflicting assessments of that. And if it just then comes down to what you perceive/believe, what happens when those with the most power get to call all the shots?+++

Within Paganism, at least, you just find another group that’s more in tune with your opinions.

+++Again, I have no practical experience with such groups/communities. So it is hard for me to grasp the points that you are making. Perhaps when I begin to explore it more in probing morality and Paganism on the internet, it might become clearer. Though, sure, to the extent your own interactions might allow you to provide me with insights please send them along.+++

Let me know what yoy find.

+++Then that just baffles me all the more. You seem to put so much weight on your interactions with nature, it’s hard for me to understand how morality is separate from it.

And if that is the case it just convinces me all the more that your own moral convictions are no less rooted in dasein than my own fractured and fragments “I” is in turn. Different lives, different conclusions. And any new dramatic changes in those lives “down the road” and…and who knows?+++

Yes. It’s all very exciting.

+++Life is connected. But it is connected in different ways for different people. Historically, culturally, experientially. Then when you add a never ending conveyor belt of contingency, chance and change, you get, well, what I get anyway.

Maybe I will come closer to understanding what you mean. There’s a part of me that is drawn to it…but I’m not sure why.+++

A question you can only answer yourself.

+++Still, what makes your own life what it has become is that you were born blind. Why would you change something in that regard when you have no real understanding of what the alternative is? Thus, for someone who spent a good portion of their life sighted and then went blind at or around your age…how might their own reaction be very different. If it would be.+++

I’m sure their reaction would be very different indeed. I can’t begin to imagine what it must be like to lose your sight, but having known many people who have, I know that it’s extremely traumatic.

+++Then that’s the part I failed to understand correctly. I thought that nature and being a moral person were more intertwined for you. Now I’ll have to give more thought to the way you have made me understand it otherwise.

In one way it is all the more mysterious and in other ways I just go back to attributing it all to dasein.+++

My connection to nature is not really about morality, which is not an important issue for me anyway. I regard myself as a moral person, but it’s not something I need to think about very much in everyday life.

+++Here though Wiccans would need to provide me with specific examples of how this played out in their own lives. Otherwise it just becomes a “belief” that is largely abstract to me.+++

You would have to ask them. What I can say, from experience, is that they tend to have a rather more nuanced attitude than they would often like to admit.

155

Thanks. But I’m confused about this part:

“The idea was to assemble a group of people who would make up a completely fictional character and then, through séances, see if they could contact him and receive messages and other physical phenomena - perhaps even an apparition.”

Create the ghost of someone they make up completely in their head?

As for the seances themselves, everyone from Harry Houdini to James Randi has explored how these can unfold fraudulently.

But then the whole point was to explore how things like ghosts are in fact created entirely in our minds. Philip and Lilith and Skippy are born there. Live there.

Raps on the table and scratching sounds?

The conclusion was that while “they prove that ghosts don’t exist, that such things are in our minds only, others say that our unconscious could be responsible for this kind of the phenomena some of the time. They do not (in fact, cannot) prove that there are no ghosts.”

What then to make of it all?

Then we are back to how we construe our moral convictions “for all practical purposes” very differently. If I convince myself that my own moral and spiritual values are by and large “existential contraptions rooted in dasein”, how much commitment to them can I sustain? Well, not much. Thus my “fractured and fragmented” assessment instead.

But, for the overwhelming preponderance of matter in the either/or universe, it all comes together re the “laws of matter”. The “brute facticity” of its existence. With the human brain, however, once we make the assumption that free will is the real deal, that in and of itself brings into play the parts that are problematic. We can change who we are. But if, in the is/ought world, “I” is the product of the assumptions I make in my signature threads, then what we choose is profoundly problematic. And, at times, precarious. We are lucky to be dynamic, self-conscious, self-actualizing matter only until we find our lives have fallen apart at the seams and the pain outweighs the pleasure. Just talk to the millions who are victims of the covid pandemic about “luck”.

I’m confused again. If I understood you, you said that your interactions with nature and the Goddess are not the main reason you embody the behaviors you choose as a “moral person”. But here you seem to suggest that through nature itself you came into this world with an inherent sense of right and wrong.

And yet in turn you say that you are willing to agree that had your life experiences been different you might well be here espousing the moral and political convictions of a “fundie Christian”.

How is that not seen to be contradictory to you?

Here of course we will need our “machine”. The one that enables me to be inside you and you inside me, allowing us to think and feel as the other does.

You may interact with nature in this manner, but that is only after the “you” that you have become is the embodiment of the “I” as I construe it in my arguments above.

Unless of course I’m wrong. But that’s the beauty of thinking like I do: there’s no way for me to pin that down.

This part…

Okay, scrap “ridiculous” and use the word “wrong” or “unreasonable” instead. But the result is the same. The “new experiences, relationships, information, knowledge, ideas etc.,” lead me to a different, existential configuration of “I”.

Just as in the case with your life having led you to Christian fundamentalism and not to Paganism had, say, something happened to your parents when you were just a baby and you ended up being raised by different parents and came to live a very different life.

And moral nihilism can be both depressing and liberating, depending on the circumstances of the life you live. It doesn’t seem redeeming to you because you get your redemption “here and now” from nature and the Goddess. But that can change. And you acknowledge this. But, at the same time, you insist that you just know that it won’t change.

Well, if there’s one thing I learned from my relationship with Supannika, it’s that love revolves most intimately around the sort of thing that for six years you have allowed nature and the Goddess to deprive you of.

Though, of course, as soon as I note this, I am forced to admit that there is simply no way that I can even begin to truly grasp your own “sense of self” here. The profound mystery embedded in why and how we become who we think we are.

Yes, rituals are everywhere. Historically, culturally. And from the cradle to the grave. Of course how I understand them now is entirely different from how I felt about them when I was actually participating in them myself. Now I see them more as a way to make an essentially meaningless and purposeless life transform into the opposite. If you do something over and over again and in the same way it adds “weight” to your existence. You do them because it is necessary to do them. And it is necessary to do them because it’s all connected to that part of you that is comforting and consoling. Then around and around it goes.

Only we have thousands upon thousands of rituals being performed by communities that attach them to many completely conflicting expectations.

Well, being reincarnated doesn’t seem as appealing to me as Heaven, Nirvana, Zion, Valhalla, Elysium etc., but next to oblivion, I’d settle for it. Unless of course I come back as a dung beetle or a slug.

On the other hand, these opinions themselves are on the slipperiest of existential slopes for those like me. So I go on pursuing my own “win/win” approach to it in places like this. Finding someone able to bring me up out of the hole, or finding someone to come down into it empathically.

Will do.

True, we both come back to this. If only in our own unique ways.

Ultimately, yes. But I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t recognize that these relationships are so complex…so mysterious…so “human all too human”, that only in seeking out the thoughts and feelings and experiences of others am I likely to get closer to, well, something.

I wonder how many of those who have lost their sight might be thinking, “she was lucky…she was born blind”.

But that’s the way it is. In regard to any variable in your life, there are those who perceive one life as better or worse than another life. Again, however, if I were blind myself, I would seek out others who were like me. I’d have to have others around me who experience the world at least in some ways the same as I do. Especially in regard to something so crucial as our sense perceptions of the world around us.

Only I can only note [once again] that I don’t really have any true understanding of the world you live in at all.

That’s true. To the extent that morality is something that we think about a lot [spiritually, philosophically or otherwise] is going to depend on the life that we do live from day to day. If we are not often confronted with others who challenge our beliefs and behaviors, we can go days, weeks, months or years with no need “for all practical purposes” to dwell on it.

I do of course because my own frame of mind in relation to others is particularly estranged. Or often is. Though, ironically enough, I myself am not in contact with situations in which others challenge my own value judgments. Other than here virtually.

But since I am preoccupied with connecting the dots between morality here and now and immortality there and then, it always comes back to me.

156

+++Thanks. But I’m confused about this part:

“The idea was to assemble a group of people who would make up a completely fictional character and then, through séances, see if they could contact him and receive messages and other physical phenomena - perhaps even an apparition.”

Create the ghost of someone they make up completely in their head?

As for the seances themselves, everyone from Harry Houdini to James Randi has explored how these can unfold fraudulently.

But then the whole point was to explore how things like ghosts are in fact created entirely in our minds. Philip and Lilith and Skippy are born there. Live there.

Raps on the table and scratching sounds?

The conclusion was that while “they prove that ghosts don’t exist, that such things are in our minds only, others say that our unconscious could be responsible for this kind of the phenomena some of the time. They do not (in fact, cannot) prove that there are no ghosts.”

What then to make of it all?+++

It was a controlled experiment and all the participants were researchers so I suppose the possibility that the sceance could be faked is much less likely.

What to make of it all is that there are many far more likely explanations for ghosts than them being the spirits of the departed.

+++Then we are back to how we construe our moral convictions “for all practical purposes” very differently. If I convince myself that my own moral and spiritual values are by and large “existential contraptions rooted in dasein”, how much commitment to them can I sustain? Well, not much. Thus my “fractured and fragmented” assessment instead.+++

I’m not sure why you wouldn’t be able to sustain much commitment to them. Commitment, after all, is an act of choice.

+++But, for the overwhelming preponderance of matter in the either/or universe, it all comes together re the “laws of matter”. The “brute facticity” of its existence. With the human brain, however, once we make the assumption that free will is the real deal, that in and of itself brings into play the parts that are problematic. We can change who we are. But if, in the is/ought world, “I” is the product of the assumptions I make in my signature threads, then what we choose is profoundly problematic. And, at times, precarious. We are lucky to be dynamic, self-conscious, self-actualizing matter only until we find our lives have fallen apart at the seams and the pain outweighs the pleasure. Just talk to the millions who are victims of the covid pandemic about “luck”.+++

We are still much luckier than the alternative, not existing at all. But the laws of matter include randomness anyway, which may be where free will comes from.

+++I’m confused again. If I understood you, you said that your interactions with nature and the Goddess are not the main reason you embody the behaviors you choose as a “moral person”. But here you seem to suggest that through nature itself you came into this world with an inherent sense of right and wrong.

And yet in turn you say that you are willing to agree that had your life experiences been different you might well be here espousing the moral and political convictions of a “fundie Christian”.

How is that not seen to be contradictory to you?+++

My interactions with nature are not the source of my morality because that is already inherent. Nature has provided us with this inherent morality, as well as everything else, through evolution. My own personal interactions with nature do not affect what is inherent in me, and that is not their purpose.

+++Here of course we will need our “machine”. The one that enables me to be inside you and you inside me, allowing us to think and feel as the other does.

You may interact with nature in this manner, but that is only after the “you” that you have become is the embodiment of the “I” as I construe it in my arguments above.

Unless of course I’m wrong. But that’s the beauty of thinking like I do: there’s no way for me to pin that down.+++

Yes, you’re right. There’s no way I can really convey to you what it’s like unless you experience it yourself. Fortunately, since nature is all around us, we don’t need that “machine” for you to do that. All you need is a frame of mind.

+++Okay, scrap “ridiculous” and use the word “wrong” or “unreasonable” instead. But the result is the same. The “new experiences, relationships, information, knowledge, ideas etc.,” lead me to a different, existential configuration of “I”.

Just as in the case with your life having led you to Christian fundamentalism and not to Paganism had, say, something happened to your parents when you were just a baby and you ended up being raised by different parents and came to live a very different life.

And moral nihilism can be both depressing and liberating, depending on the circumstances of the life you live. It doesn’t seem redeeming to you because you get your redemption “here and now” from nature and the Goddess. But that can change. And you acknowledge this. But, at the same time, you insist that you just know that it won’t change.+++

You seem to be saying that while nihilism is better than some things, for me at least, it’s not as good as Paganism. If that’s what you’re saying, then I agree. For others, perhaps those with a pessimistic personality, nihilism will suite them.

+++Yes, rituals are everywhere. Historically, culturally. And from the cradle to the grave. Of course how I understand them now is entirely different from how I felt about them when I was actually participating in them myself. Now I see them more as a way to make an essentially meaningless and purposeless life transform into the opposite. If you do something over and over again and in the same way it adds “weight” to your existence. You do them because it is necessary to do them. And it is necessary to do them because it’s all connected to that part of you that is comforting and consoling. Then around and around it goes.

Only we have thousands upon thousands of rituals being performed by communities that attach them to many completely conflicting expectations.+++

And you are free to join whiechever community’s rituals appeal to you the most. The Wiccan rituals, in the end, were not to my taste.

+++Well, being reincarnated doesn’t seem as appealing to me as Heaven, Nirvana, Zion, Valhalla, Elysium etc., but next to oblivion, I’d settle for it. Unless of course I come back as a dung beetle or a slug.+++

To me, the idea of the Christian heaven, completely static and unchanging forever, just doesn’t seem right. Change is fundamental to everything we know.

+++On the other hand, these opinions themselves are on the slipperiest of existential slopes for those like me. So I go on pursuing my own “win/win” approach to it in places like this. Finding someone able to bring me up out of the hole, or finding someone to come down into it empathically.+++

My advice would be to pick one or the other and stick to it. Otherwise, it’s going to be lose/lose. And if you’re going to pick one, don’t pick one that involves trying to change someone else’s path for reasons that have more to do with your own comfort than theirs.

+++Ultimately, yes. But I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t recognize that these relationships are so complex…so mysterious…so “human all too human”, that only in seeking out the thoughts and feelings and experiences of others am I likely to get closer to, well, something.+++

At the end of the day, though, you need to experience things yourself.

+++I wonder how many of those who have lost their sight might be thinking, “she was lucky…she was born blind”.

But that’s the way it is. In regard to any variable in your life, there are those who perceive one life as better or worse than another life. Again, however, if I were blind myself, I would seek out others who were like me. I’d have to have others around me who experience the world at least in some ways the same as I do. Especially in regard to something so crucial as our sense perceptions of the world around us.

Only I can only note [once again] that I don’t really have any true understanding of the world you live in at all.+++

Some of them do indeed think that because they’ve said it to me. It’s not at all an uncommon opinion. All I can really do to help them is offer practical advice and suggestions on how to live one’s life being blind.

+++That’s true. To the extent that morality is something that we think about a lot [spiritually, philosophically or otherwise] is going to depend on the life that we do live from day to day. If we are not often confronted with others who challenge our beliefs and behaviors, we can go days, weeks, months or years with no need “for all practical purposes” to dwell on it.

I do of course because my own frame of mind in relation to others is particularly estranged. Or often is. Though, ironically enough, I myself am not in contact with situations in which others challenge my own value judgments. Other than here virtually.

But since I am preoccupied with connecting the dots between morality here and now and immortality there and then, it always comes back to me.+++

Perhaps there are no dots to connect between those two things because they’re not related.

157

Still, I would have preferred to have someone like James Randi around to insure its authenticity.

Another take on them: psmag.com/social-justice/scienc … ance-75109

Also, the main reason that séances are deemed authentic by many is that they want to – yearn to – believe that they are. Who wouldn’t want it to be true that they were in touch with a long lost loved one.

Well, whatever other explanations there might be, demonstrable proof can be provided or not.

But that choice itself is no less rooted in dasein. Why do you suppose that the preponderance of those convinced they are in fact a “moral person” need a font to anchor that conviction to? It can’t be just a “personal reason” derived existentially from dasein. That makes the choice profoundly problematic. Instead, the Self itself needs to be embedded in something “bigger than me”. In God, or in ideology, or in philosophy and reason. Or re Satyr and his clique/claque at Know Thyself their own arrogant and authoritarian rendition of Nature.

But what puzzles me is how you put so much weight in nature as well. But in such a way that it is largely personal. Unlike Satyr…in regard to things like race and ethnicity and gender and sexual preference…it’s not Nature My Way Or You Are Wrong, but nature my way and nature your way.

But I react to that skeptically as well given all my arguments above. I come back to dasein here. But what you come back to “for all practical purpose” still escapes me.

So I accept that your frame of mind is just as intelligent and believable as mine…but that our individual lives were/are so different we may well never have a communication breakthrough.

On the other hand, in just America alone, there are over 45,000 recorded suicides each year. The alternative can become the only way out when your life becomes a living hell. I tried it once myself. And my daughter’s boyfriend hung himself in New York. As well as Danny, the best friend I ever had in the world.

And I’ve never understood the idea of “random matter”. As though out of the blue bits of matter simply defy the laws of nature. Though, sure, in regard to the profound mystery of human brain matter, all bets are off. In fact, over and again I come back to dreams here. The things I have “done” in my dreams are beyond comprehension in that I “did” nothing at all. It was entirely the work of my brain itself!!

How is what is inherent in you on the day you were born not derived from nature itself? What are you saying here, that you are born with a genetic code that determined right from the get-go how you would think and feel about abortion and Brexit and vaccinations and all other moral issues that rend the species. And that those who think the opposite of you were in turn all born with the same inherent moral compass?

That your indoctrination as a child and all the personal experiences you had – the stuff I derive from dasein – were basically moot because the evolution of matter into life into human beings into you was already, what, destined? That even your interactions with nature today are extrinsic?

But even if I experienced everything that you did, I would have already come into this world preprogrammed by nature to have become a moral nihilist? Even if somehow I were able to be inside you, nature would have already set everything for both of us in motion given the laws of nature that are beyond our control.

What confuses me further is how your understanding of nature here is “for all practical purposes” different from determinism. Even our value judgments are locked in at birth? Again, to the extent I understand what you mean about all this.

First, let’s go back to this…

“Just as in the case with your life having led you to Christian fundamentalism and not to Paganism had, say, something happened to your parents when you were just a baby and you ended up being raised by different parents and came to live a very different life.”

Are you saying that even if this had happened, you would still be the same “moral person” you are today because nature made you as you are here right from the start?

And, given how I think about all this, we do not come into the world hard-wired by nature to think and feel as we do about “conflicting goods”. Instead, nature becomes profoundly intertwined in nurture, and, given particular historical, cultural and experiential contexts, our experiences predispose us to certain moral and political prejudices. I have merely come to reject even that given my “fractured and fragmented” sense of “self”.

But I am “free” only to the extent that, existentially, my lived life predisposed me to want to join one set of rituals/prejudices over the others. And my point about rituals themselves adding weight to what Milan Kundera called “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” seems the most important factor here.

Something I explored on this thread: ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … e#p2186671
[/quote]

On the other hand, if a Heaven there be, what can mere mortals possibly know about it. For me it’s always the part about disembodied souls in Heaven. How do souls with no bodies actual interact at all? Or, upon arriving, do the souls acquire new bodies. Just ones that don’t have, say, libidos?

I’ll stick with both. I’ve already found a few people who have come down into the hole with me. And together we are always on the prowl for those who might actually bring us up out of it. And empathy pertains to the comfort of us all, not just me.

What, in my imploded world? And at the end of each day it’s still imploded. And for now I’m sticking with the conviction that [to the extent we are able] only in sharing experiences do we come closer to something that really is “bigger than ourselves”.

In the end of course you can only choose what you have come to believe are the best options for you. No one knows you better than you know yourself. Again, as you note, you have a happy life…and you are comfortable being who you are. And in being who you now are [as we discussed on another thread] you bring no harm to others. That’s great.

Still, that doesn’t mean you don’t come into places like this to interact with those who might have different opinions about things. And sometimes we get so wrapped up in being ourselves that we don’t have the “broader view” that others might observe. They can offer suggestions that might make our life even happier.

Well, given that “here and now” I don’t believe in either God or the afterlife, the connection lies only in the possibility that someone might convince me otherwise.

And I can always fall back on accepting that what I do believe can always change. Over and again I remind others that I do not exclude myself from my own point of view.

158

+++Still, I would have preferred to have someone like James Randi around to insure its authenticity.

Another take on them: psmag.com/social-justice/scienc … ance-75109

Also, the main reason that séances are deemed authentic by many is that they want to – yearn to – believe that they are. Who wouldn’t want it to be true that they were in touch with a long lost loved one.+++

This sceance, if it proved anything at all, proved that any entities apparently contacted need not be spirits of the dead. It had no members of the public present.

+++Well, whatever other explanations there might be, demonstrable proof can be provided or not.+++

Not, is probably the answer to that. What sort of demonstrable proof would you consider acceptable?

+++But that choice itself is no less rooted in dasein. Why do you suppose that the preponderance of those convinced they are in fact a “moral person” need a font to anchor that conviction to? It can’t be just a “personal reason” derived existentially from dasein. That makes the choice profoundly problematic. Instead, the Self itself needs to be embedded in something “bigger than me”. In God, or in ideology, or in philosophy and reason. Or re Satyr and his clique/claque at Know Thyself their own arrogant and authoritarian rendition of Nature.

But what puzzles me is how you put so much weight in nature as well. But in such a way that it is largely personal. Unlike Satyr…in regard to things like race and ethnicity and gender and sexual preference…it’s not Nature My Way Or You Are Wrong, but nature my way and nature your way.

But I react to that skeptically as well given all my arguments above. I come back to dasein here. But what you come back to “for all practical purpose” still escapes me.

So I accept that your frame of mind is just as intelligent and believable as mine…but that our individual lives were/are so different we may well never have a communication breakthrough.+++

I don’t know if it’s true that the majority of people anchor their morality in some fixed set of beliefs. Most people, I would say, regard themselves as moral people without having any particular religious convictions.

+++On the other hand, in just America alone, there are over 45,000 recorded suicides each year. The alternative can become the only way out when your life becomes a living hell. I tried it once myself. And my daughter’s boyfriend hung himself in New York. As well as Danny, the best friend I ever had in the world.

And I’ve never understood the idea of “random matter”. As though out of the blue bits of matter simply defy the laws of nature. Though, sure, in regard to the profound mystery of human brain matter, all bets are off. In fact, over and again I come back to dreams here. The things I have “done” in my dreams are beyond comprehension in that I “did” nothing at all. It was entirely the work of my brain itself!!+++

They don’t defy the laws of nature. Randomness is an essential aspect of quantum physics, for example.

+++How is what is inherent in you on the day you were born not derived from nature itself? What are you saying here, that you are born with a genetic code that determined right from the get-go how you would think and feel about abortion and Brexit and vaccinations and all other moral issues that rend the species. And that those who think the opposite of you were in turn all born with the same inherent moral compass?

That your indoctrination as a child and all the personal experiences you had – the stuff I derive from dasein – were basically moot because the evolution of matter into life into human beings into you was already, what, destined? That even your interactions with nature today are extrinsic?+++

No, I didn’t say that at all. Our genetic code, that is, nature, gives us a sense of morality, but how it’s expressed is determined by all sorts of other factors too, such as upbringing.

+++But even if I experienced everything that you did, I would have already come into this world preprogrammed by nature to have become a moral nihilist? Even if somehow I were able to be inside you, nature would have already set everything for both of us in motion given the laws of nature that are beyond our control.

What confuses me further is how your understanding of nature here is “for all practical purposes” different from determinism. Even our value judgments are locked in at birth? Again, to the extent I understand what you mean about all this.+++

No, our value judgements are not locked in at birth, and this is not at all what I said.

+++First, let’s go back to this…

“Just as in the case with your life having led you to Christian fundamentalism and not to Paganism had, say, something happened to your parents when you were just a baby and you ended up being raised by different parents and came to live a very different life.”

Are you saying that even if this had happened, you would still be the same “moral person” you are today because nature made you as you are here right from the start?

And, given how I think about all this, we do not come into the world hard-wired by nature to think and feel as we do about “conflicting goods”. Instead, nature becomes profoundly intertwined in nurture, and, given particular historical, cultural and experiential contexts, our experiences predispose us to certain moral and political prejudices. I have merely come to reject even that given my “fractured and fragmented” sense of “self”.+++

I think that for this discussion to progress, you’ll need to stop asking the same question over and over again.

+++On the other hand, if a Heaven there be, what can mere mortals possibly know about it. For me it’s always the part about disembodied souls in Heaven. How do souls with no bodies actual interact at all? Or, upon arriving, do the souls acquire new bodies. Just ones that don’t have, say, libidos?+++

Do souls exist at all? I prefer the term spirit.

+++I’ll stick with both. I’ve already found a few people who have come down into the hole with me. And together we are always on the prowl for those who might actually bring us up out of it. And empathy pertains to the comfort of us all, not just me.+++

Where do you and these others go, together, on the prowl, to find people who might bring you out of the hole? I’d be interested to hear what sort of success, or otherwise, you’ve had, as a group, so far.

+++What, in my imploded world? And at the end of each day it’s still imploded. And for now I’m sticking with the conviction that [to the extent we are able] only in sharing experiences do we come closer to something that really is “bigger than ourselves”.+++

If it works, stick to it.

+++In the end of course you can only choose what you have come to believe are the best options for you. No one knows you better than you know yourself. Again, as you note, you have a happy life…and you are comfortable being who you are. And in being who you now are [as we discussed on another thread] you bring no harm to others. That’s great.

Still, that doesn’t mean you don’t come into places like this to interact with those who might have different opinions about things. And sometimes we get so wrapped up in being ourselves that we don’t have the “broader view” that others might observe. They can offer suggestions that might make our life even happier.+++

And sometimes we just end up going round in circles.

+++Well, given that “here and now” I don’t believe in either God or the afterlife, the connection lies only in the possibility that someone might convince me otherwise.

And I can always fall back on accepting that what I do believe can always change. Over and again I remind others that I do not exclude myself from my own point of view.+++

A few months ago, when you were monitoring my conversations over at Know Thyself, and reproducing part of what I was saying along with your own comments, at one point you made a disparaging remark that my discussion with Satyr had turned really trivial. I’d like you to consider that it wasn’t trivial at all, and that when I talk about banal, everyday things, what I’m actually doing is taking the measure of a person.

If you have any questions about pretty much anything to do with my life, opinions, etc. then I’m more than happy to address them in as much detail as I can, but I really don’t wish to keep going over the same old ground with regard to morality.

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Whatever demonstrable evidence they can provide. Imagine for example someone making the claim they they are in contact with the dead. They invite scientists and skeptics and magicians from around the globe to an actual séance in order to provide proof of their claim. Now, if this had ever been done and the proof was there, would it or would it not be “big news” around the world?

Okay, perhaps, but very, very few think “I” through here as I do. If you come to believe that you are this particular moral person only because existentially your life led up to it, that a different life might have led to very different moral convictions, and that given new experiences you may well come to believe that moral behaviors do revolve around just the opposite point of view, how much weight can you put on your moral values here and now?

We simply think this through very, very differently.

Actually, that may well be construed this way only because science has barely scratched the surface in understanding QM. Given this…

“It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the universe.” nasa

…what on earth do we really know about randomness at all? Or even all the other the parts that add up to less than 5% of the universe. And that’s before we get to the multiverse. Let alone the explanation for existence itself.

But one reaction I have encountered over and again in regard to this and morality: it means absolutely squat to the objectivists. Nothing, and I mean nothing, comes between them and their own “one of us” vs. “one of them” mentality. Especially those like Adam/Ur Wrong If You Don’t Think Like Me here. He’s still around pummeling us with his own “Coalition of Truth” fulminating fanatic dogmas.

Now to the part that still most puzzles me about you…

Okay, in regard to a particular issue like abortion [or one that is important to you] what does an inborn “sense pf morality” mean to you? What part of your conviction do you feel is derived from that and what part from your upbringing?

And if your upbringing had been very different and you came to reject Paganism in favor of say, Christianity or moral nihilism, how crucial could that inborn sense of morality then be?

Then, again, given a particular situation in which you see yourself as a moral person, what parts are locked in and what parts are not?

I do that only because from my frame of mind [and that’s all it is, my own personal opinion] you are not addressing my points in depth. You respond with one or two sentences. I think you can do deeper and I’m trying to bring you to that. Or, sure, you may well become “bored” again with what you construe to be just the same questions, and this exchange too will “collapse”.

If it happens it happens. I don’t want it to but that part is only so much in my control.

With either one, from my point of view, their existence is either demonstrable or not. What’s crucial for me is the extent to which, given either one, re “I” in the is/ought world, is thought to transcend dasein.

Again, these are all virtual e-mail exchanges. Including one with someone who used to post frequently here at ILP. Two from the old Ponderer’s Guild and one from the old Existlist back in my yahoo group days. And where we go are to other philosophy venues. No success yet in finding others able to provide us with a path up out of the hole, but the empathy is still there to share. Even though we think about the “hole” itself in different ways.

True, but some circles are considerably more rewarding than others.

I wasn’t monitoring your conversations so much as being enthralled by the fact that, each in your own way, you put a lot of stock in the role that nature plays in our lives. Only, again, for Satyr it’s “Nature my way or the highway” while for you it more “nature my way and nature your way”. That’s why he is the fulminating fanatic objectivist to me and you are not.

But I’m not sure what you mean by my “disparaging remark” regarding your discussion being trivial. Can you note the specific instance of this?

What I recall noting was Satyr’s own disparaging remark that “you are no Lyssa”. If it was Satyr who noted it. And that revolves around the extent to which you dive down deep into the philosophical pool. He has his rendition of that and I have mine. Lyssa – phoneutria?/Lys here – was often way, way out in the deep end of the pool. And in that respect we somewhat overlap. But from very different frames of mind.

Well, in that case, this exchange too may well “collapse”. And that is because for me philosophy does revolves around “morality here and now and immortality there and then”. And any specific questions I might ask you [or anyone[ will eventually get back to that. Or in regard to the “big questions”.

So, if you would prefer to move on to others instead, no problem. My respect for your intelligence, your opinions and your curiosity about the world around us will still stay the same. We’d just have different priorities.

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+++Whatever demonstrable evidence they can provide. Imagine for example someone making the claim they they are in contact with the dead. They invite scientists and skeptics and magicians from around the globe to an actual séance in order to provide proof of their claim. Now, if this had ever been done and the proof was there, would it or would it not be “big news” around the world?+++

Yes, which is why it’s probably not possible.

+++Okay, perhaps, but very, very few think “I” through here as I do. If you come to believe that you are this particular moral person only because existentially your life led up to it, that a different life might have led to very different moral convictions, and that given new experiences you may well come to believe that moral behaviors do revolve around just the opposite point of view, how much weight can you put on your moral values here and now?+++

As much weight as we wish to.

+++Actually, that may well be construed this way only because science has barely scratched the surface in understanding QM. Given this…

“It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the universe.” nasa

…what on earth do we really know about randomness at all? Or even all the other the parts that add up to less than 5% of the universe. And that’s before we get to the multiverse. Let alone the explanation for existence itself.

But one reaction I have encountered over and again in regard to this and morality: it means absolutely squat to the objectivists. Nothing, and I mean nothing, comes between them and their own “one of us” vs. “one of them” mentality. Especially those like Adam/Ur Wrong If You Don’t Think Like Me here. He’s still around pummeling us with his own “Coalition of Truth” fulminating fanatic dogmas.+++

As I understand it, randomness is an essential part of quantum mechanics.

+++Okay, in regard to a particular issue like abortion [or one that is important to you] what does an inborn “sense pf morality” mean to you? What part of your conviction do you feel is derived from that and what part from your upbringing?

And if your upbringing had been very different and you came to reject Paganism in favor of say, Christianity or moral nihilism, how crucial could that inborn sense of morality then be?+++

Humans, unlike animals, have an inherent sense that there’s such a thing as morality. How this sense manifests, however, can vary quite considerably.

+++Then, again, given a particular situation in which you see yourself as a moral person, what parts are locked in and what parts are not?+++

What is locked in is an innate sense of that there’s such a thing as morality.

+++I do that only because from my frame of mind [and that’s all it is, my own personal opinion] you are not addressing my points in depth. You respond with one or two sentences. I think you can do deeper and I’m trying to bring you to that. Or, sure, you may well become “bored” again with what you construe to be just the same questions, and this exchange too will “collapse”.

If it happens it happens. I don’t want it to but that part is only so much in my control.+++

My answers will get shorter and shorter, down to nothing at all, if I think I’m repeating myself. This is not a police interrogation, where the truth is approached by asking the same question over and over again in slightly different ways. It’s a discussion, which will only continue if it remains interesting.

+++I wasn’t monitoring your conversations so much as being enthralled by the fact that, each in your own way, you put a lot of stock in the role that nature plays in our lives. Only, again, for Satyr it’s “Nature my way or the highway” while for you it more “nature my way and nature your way”. That’s why he is the fulminating fanatic objectivist to me and you are not.

But I’m not sure what you mean by my “disparaging remark” regarding your discussion being trivial. Can you note the specific instance of this?

What I recall noting was Satyr’s own disparaging remark that “you are no Lyssa”. If it was Satyr who noted it. And that revolves around the extent to which you dive down deep into the philosophical pool. He has his rendition of that and I have mine. Lyssa – phoneutria?/Lys here – was often way, way out in the deep end of the pool. And in that respect we somewhat overlap. But from very different frames of mind.+++

The point isn’t really important enough for me to go through that whole thread of yours to find it. What I remember quite distinctly is that almost nothing that you said about my conversation was complimentary.

+++Well, in that case, this exchange too may well “collapse”. And that is because for me philosophy does revolves around “morality here and now and immortality there and then”. And any specific questions I might ask you [or anyone[ will eventually get back to that. Or in regard to the “big questions”.

So, if you would prefer to move on to others instead, no problem. My respect for your intelligence, your opinions and your curiosity about the world around us will still stay the same. We’d just have different priorities.+++

As I said, if the conversation remains interesting, I’ll carry on with it.