Arbiter of Change's Sandbox

Philosophy Forums The Sandbox
1

In this thread I’ll post the daily thoughts/observations that cross my mind mostly as I walk around/take a shower and do other such simple, casual daily activities which allow me to simultaneously wander off in my own mental world and, well, think about stuff.

The transition from verbal to physical conflict is an interesting subject I’ve been thinking about. Another interesting thing to notice is that it is rarely the other way around unless in a form of an apology.

Why does this transition occur? Why doesn’t it go the other way around?

Carefully observing a person in a verbal conflict can give away relevant traits of their character – pay attention to what they are saying, how they are saying it and their physical gesticulation.

You’ll notice that most conflicts transition from verbal to physical when a relevant trait of somebody’s character, something personal, something they hold dear and try to keep secret/unmentioned is exposed. The exposed one then, feeling vulnerable, seeks to avenge himself and obliterate the other, the one who exposed him at all costs. Feeling cornered, having no other recourse of action available to preserve his dignity, he temporarily loses control and descends down to the level of an animal, showing his true self, unrestrained by the fake human facade he otherwise puts forward.
Such people are closer to animals, more animalistic than other humans – they are usually of lower intelligence and shorter temper, allowing instincts/intuition/emotion guide them since they lack the higher faculty characteristic of more intelligent humans - reason.
Or is it a coincidence that more fights occur among the degenerate fans of the degenerate sport that is soccer than among the academics?
Or that more fights occur in places such as bars than in colleges?

I have never succumbed to the animalistic/physical conflict myself, nor did I ever provoke a person to such a degree that they would attempt to do that – such people are usually irrelevant anyway, as are their words and thoughts. Admittedly, I do remember an occasion when I had an emotional outburst. It was when I was called a loser once. The exact reason I had an outburst was that I thought of myself as one, so I felt exposed and saw no way to honestly counter-argument it – I was enraged, embarrassed and bitter. My introspection on that event is what provoked me to think about it and notice the similar pattern in other people as well.
After becoming intellectually honest with myself and seeking to improve myself and overcome my flaws instead of lash out on other people because of them I have become more acceptant of criticism and almost emotionally indifferent towards it. That’s the attitude one takes when one is intellectually strong, honest and independent.

It is those whose intellect is weak, who are dishonest and ignorant who will easily perceive the other as a threat.
A lion doesn’t care about a little kitty pestering him by gnawing and biting at its foot, trying to provoke him. He knows it is of no serious threat to him.
The little mouse feels threatened by almost everything, even the little kitty. It is small, with a fragile frame, easily torn apart… even by the kitty.

By now, the reason the transition rarely, if ever, goes the other way should be obvious - anyone can descend to the level of physical fighting… ascending back to a higher, more evolved state, the human state is not as easy. It is much easier to embrace the animalistic and the degenerate, and the animals and the degenerates are precisely the people who do it, and it is rare that such a person will ever improve themselves… they’re more likely to stay retarded for life.

(mod edit: title change)

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Another important contributing factor aside from the above mentioned insecurity is emotional investment in and attachment to beliefs which come under scrutiny.

Notice how scientists and religious people, and then moderate religious people and extremists/fundamentalists relate to one another. There appears to be a sort of hierarchy when it comes to the way they emotionally respond to such subjects.

The dumber, the more ignorant, usually more extreme and fundamental will be the most easily offended because of their insecurity and emotional investment in those beliefs. Those are the terrorists and hardcore fundamentalists. Sure, there’s a distinction, fundamentalists aren’t as bad, but I don’t feel like going into details. Because, let’s be honest, who the fuck can rationally defend the banning of a picture of a middle eastern man with a beard? Such silliness is bound to breed insecurity.

The more intelligent religious people, usually more educated as well hold slightly more profound and modernized beliefs and due to being capable of defending them better aren’t as emotionally offended and invested in them. They don’t engage as much in silly old rituals, only going to church perhaps once a week and saying a prayer or two from time to time, they certainly don’t bow down to the invisible sky lord couple of times a day.

The scientist, whose methodology produces such reliable results that only the blind, deaf and stupid can deny them, is the calmest of the three and the least likely to resort to the physical. With little to no emotional investment in beliefs, they rarely, if ever, get offended, and when they do get a little emotional it is usually out of sheer awe and disbelief due to hearing stupid bullshit. When asked, they will back up their claims with explanations and evidence. If the explanations are dated or inadequate and evidence is lacking, they won’t deny it and become all physical with you, but admit they’re wrong and try to improve/change their explanation and come up with better evidence.

3

It’s interesting when free-will advocates tell determinism advocates that according to them there is no choice, we aren’t free, we’re all nothing more than robots and animals, there is no meaning and we might as well do nothing else but eat, fuck, fight and sleep. Interesting because, personally, I’ve observed precisely the free will advocates living such intellectually/spiritually empty, hedonistic lives they accuse determinists of.

Take for example this Christian guy I once used to know. Plain normal guy, big advocate of free will. He produced some sorts of animalistic noises, like grunts and laughed moronically when he perceived the female form or even something resembling it. The purpose of his life was to chase a ball, eat, masturbate and sleep, eating and masturbating being the highlights of the day. The idiot thought that going to church 1 hour per week and talking to himself (praying) makes his existence less irrelevant and insipid. The big advocate of free will living like an animal and acting on instincts, unable to think beyond his belly and genitals. Oh the irony.

The other free-will advocates I know IRL are similar aside from the highly educated ones. Not to mention how horrible Christians they all were - even at that time I was a freaking atheist and I knew the bible and the Christian arguments better than all those fucks combined, but they remained shameless and felt no need to improve.

The reason that the free-will advocates appear to succumb to the animalistic and instincts, I think, is that they think they are so beyond it that they can’t possibly be affected by it. In other words, they’re ignoring the problem, unaware of it or even denying that it exists. The determinism advocate realizes that we, our will and our choices are determined, which expands his horizons and allows him to manipulate, to an extent, his will, to assume better control of himself. He recognizes the problem and seeks to overcome it.

To be fair, I know at least 2 free will advocates on this forum who aren’t like that, so I could be wrong about this generalization, or it could mean that it only applies to people uninterested in philosophy and/or intellectual development.

4

Reading philosophical texts is a lot like sex, especially continental philosophy because it tends to reflect the deeper, more personal thoughts as opposed to the more formal and logically structured analytical school.

There’s foreplay in form of reading an introduction to the said philosopher before reading any of his/her works.
Mutual penetration occurs - you penetrate the mind of the philosopher you’re reading and, in return, his/her mind penetrates you.
Finally, an orgasm takes place when you comprehend the ideas central to the said philosopher and reflect on them, an instant moment of excitement/exhilaration as you understand you’ve just learned something new.

So, I can safely say I’m a ‘philosophysexual’ :smiley:

5

I think philosophy, due to its emphasis on the pursuit of truth, can often be anti-survival because certain psychological biases and lies can serve us well and contribute to our survival. Though of course, there are a few philosophies which advocate in favor of them and against truth.

6

Clubbing

No, I do not mean the brutal and merciless act of pounding somebody with a club.

I’m talking about nightlife, social gatherings in clubs. I cannot comprehend how anyone intelligent and sane could actually enjoy such a mindless, loud and hedonistic atmosphere.

It’s usually dark, to provide a sort of a shallow, pseudo romantic atmosphere and conceal people’s aesthetical imperfections.

Through the darkness shine bright lights of various different colors in an attempt to artificially raise the atmosphere and make it lively.

The excessively loud and unpleasant noise of the repetitive techno music (or even worse shit, depending on where you live), renders all attempts at actual communication and dialogue pointless, not only because you can’t hear what the other person is saying, but because you can’t even hear your own fucking thoughts.

Couple that with careless drug/alchol (ab)use and you have an entire mass of people indulging in the most primitive pleasures, satisfying their fundamental desires in an animalistic fashion – hedonism at its peak. Everything human, such as common sense, reason, communicating and creating ideas, and any higher mental functions characteristic of humans must be dulled and detached, temporarily, so as not to disturb the now exposed animal and remind it of how inferior it is and how degenerate it’s behaving.

All those elements fit in with the brainless modern culture of mindlessness and the animalistic, contributing to and promoting the global intellectual decay. It’s much easier to control dumb, obedient drones and make them do your bidding than people who actually THINK and QUESTION.

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Me in this thread:

8

I spent some time in my twenties going to clubs and the like.
I found them interesting in their own way if you think of them as a
badly light, very loud experiments. Watching the actions and interactions
of men and women were very interesting. For the most part, women going into
the club already knowing if they wanted to go home with someone and men were
more opportunists, seeing what would happen. I did poorly in these situations,
never getting the girl and getting discouraged by the whole thing and I stopped going.
These clubs and pickup joints are very instinctive places, where the ones who did
best were those who could by instinct, spot and get the girls. My need to get laid overcame
my shyness but my shyness stopped me many a time from even talking to someone.
Today I would never go into one of these places, (having been married almost 20 years, having no need)
but even not being married, I would never go into such a place besides being way, way too old, is because
those dynamics don’t interest me anymore. I have no interest in seduction or flirting anymore.
I simply want to be left alone now.

Kropotin

9

Precisely, that’s what I used them for. It’s incredible how much you can learn about an average human by just observing them when they are least likely to expect to be carefully watched and observed, where most social restrictions they otherwise abide by are ignored and forgotten for the time being.

Food, body and mind

After about 6 months of eating junk food and not exercising, I finally started eating healthy again and exercise from time to time. I find that there is some truth in the “You are what you eat” proverb.
While I ate junk food I felt like junk, I was constantly sleepy, physically tired, weak willed, undetermined, unfocused, apathetic and also tended to indulge in other primitive forms of instant satisfaction as well such as video games much more.

Since I started eating right and exercising from time to time, I finally feel that I’m regaining my shape and intellect. I’m more capable of working, physically and mentally, during the day, not constantly sleepy and and I just overall feel better. I still have enormous urges to eat unhealthy when the opportunity arises, but I manage to suppress them because I’ve found that in the long term it’s better for me, even if at the moment it feels like torture to turn down freshly made spaghetti, or pancakes with nutella.

Which leads me to…

Instant gratification or long term, genuine happiness derived from a virtuous life.

The animalistic, instinctive in us, chooses the former, not having the capability to think of the future and comprehend virtues, or not possessing the necessary willpower for the latter.
The animalistic is stronger in some people than the others and it’s a force to be reckoned with and overcome. The more of the animalistic you overcome the more of a human you become. You can notice that every relevant person who has actually contributed something of practical relevance to the civilization, evolution of mankind didn’t spend their days feeding, fucking and fighting but dedicated their lives to intellectual work.

Of course, not everybody has the same mental capabilities. Most of us couldn’t accomplish what the greatest geniuses have even if we did dedicate the entirety of our life to that particular area of study. I’m very much aware of the fact that I’m not the next Einstein, Tesla or whomever, but if you ask some other people, they will resort to transparent excuses, such as:

“Well, I’m just not that interested in those things”(possible, then again, one of the contributing factors to why you’re not interested is that you lack the necessary intelligence),
or even
“I could do it if I wanted to, I just… don’t” (so you do other, equally relevant things (everything is equal), like eat, masturbate, watch TV, shit, and sleep, not always in the same order)
Coming to terms with reality shouldn’t discourage people, it’s merely a necessary step in intellectual development - to know your own limits. Everybody has them. To a small extent you can break away from them and set new ones somewhat higher, but that again is not the same with all people, IQ and creative potential is for the most part predetermined.

If everybody strived to be as good as they can be (emphasize the human over the animalistic), we’d make progress much faster as a species, but it’s easier to descend (become animalistic) than to ascend. It’s also crucial to realize that some people are just too fucking degenerate to ever do anything even slightly intellectually relevant and can do nothing but slow us down if their intellectual degeneration is accepted as desirable and virtuous.
Instead of discouraging degeneracy, our culture is praising it because if you elevate a retard to a position of fame the other retards and average people (who the majority consist of) gain hope that they, too, have a chance of becoming famous.

This is how you intellectually numb the general population and make them more easily controllable - lower the standards so that everybody is convinced they are the greatest thing that has ever happened to humanity, that the world revolves around them, and almost everybody is therefore satisfied and feels no need to improve themselves. Add to that religion - the poorer you are, the more you will be rewarded… when you die. And the rich person who is exploiting you, they will be punished for their wickedness and material wealth… when they die.

Life after death, death being the end of life translates to life after the end of life. What the religious won’t buy just to escape reality.

10

You’re going to post your thoughts while you take a shower? What, do you bring your laptop into the shower with you?

11

… Yes.

It’s waterproof so I might as well take advantage of it. It can also fulfill the function of an umbrella when it’s raining, and in the pool it floats on the water so you can sit on it and meditate, and since it has these stabilizers, you can’t fall down if you wanted to.

12

It’s all the same. Life, I mean. Experience. An intellectual would go their to take a break from thought in sort of hyper meditation. To feed the inner animal now and then. It’s the same reason humans do drugs when they are feeling negative and surrounded by negative thoughts.

Only interesting in the sense of watching a PBS rerun about apes. It’s not really that interesting in an intellectual way, only a brief whisk of the animal world, which the added benefit of a few extra “perks”.

The sad creatures are probably going to make a metropolis utopia like in this film, and call themselves wise.
youtube.com/watch?v=EdqGySMrCoc
Except such a world is no utopia of mine.

That’s just it. This society is the best they can do. They are simply not on our level. That is why I have been saying the DNA must be changed. No amount of teaching a device can make it learn if it has no will to learn.

That is why I say they are from the past, and I am from the spaceage.

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[size=150]Reason, Emotions and Morality[/size]

Emotions are a person’s most primitive desires deriving from instincts, the animalistic. They are divided in 2 categories, emotions of approval (positive emotions), and emotions of disapproval (negative emotions). Approval/disapproval is of reality itself when juxtaposed with our ideals and fantasies – when reality corresponds to our desires, fantasies, ideals to a sufficient degree we approve of it and ‘feel’ cheerful, exhilarated, happy. When it doesn’t, we feel angry, distressed, miserable. Those mental feelings and states are followed by appropriate expressions.

Reason is a human faculty/capability to explore reality sincerely and ultimately the exercise of such a capability, applying logic to our thoughts and sensory experiences. The primitive, the emotions need to be disregarded in the process of reasoning to avoid them clouding judgment, as the structure of the world does not bend to our desires and wants so they would do nothing but mislead us.

The result of reasoning is the construction of a mental model of reality, and as previously established, emotions are our desires, instincts, ideals, the fantasy, how we want things to be. If we are concerned with truth, how things are, and want our mental model of reality to be true (to correspond with reality) to the highest degree possible, it’s necessary not to mistake our emotional projections upon reality for reality itself.


Morality

It is therefore impossible to base one’s morality, of how one ought to do something, on reason, as reason alone can merely explains how things are/were, and possibly why. How things ought to be, in what direction do we think the world should move, is inevitably determined by our emotions, the primitive. The best we can do is to rationally justify it, which means to try and base our ethics on facts, and have the change we want to introduce be consistent with facts and within reason, practical, achievable.

14

If one knows oneself, one knows his emotions and what they will be later. Thus through reasoning, one can choose what behavior to lean toward such as to satisfy the greatest of his future emotions, regardless of any emotions he might be feeling at the moment. Thus from reasoning and the knowledge of oneself, one can establish logically justified morals.

15

How can you know what emotions you will have in future? Reasoning has its limits, it doesn’t grant omniscience, or an insight into future.
I’m not denying morals can be logically justified, I’m denying that they are derived from/based on logic or reason.

16

I don’t think that james was so much speaking about what emotions we would have later. We all know the emotions which humans experience, which we’ve experienced. We’ve pretty much run the gamut of all of them. I think he was more speaking about how those emotions would be responded to.
Do we respond by not taking things personally no matter what has been thrown at us thus making ourselves the master of them or do we react and make ourselves slaves to whatever emotion has cropped up. You wisely touched on it in your writings.

I think that for the most part we as particular individuals can know how we will respond and/or even if we would allow ourselves to be emotional. Observation and practice makes more perfect. It’s a process of development as to how we choose to treat ourselves emotionally or how we choose to be treated emotional. That comes with awareness/c of self and