I’m a new poster here and I’d like to make my presence known. Will be nice getting to know everyone. 
Welcome PhilosopherWCU21,
Are you suggesting that unless we fixate on a career then we’ll have a worthless life?
Regards,
Michael
Of course not. But whatever you do, do it the best of you ability because if you dont, you sell yourself short.
PhilosopherWCU21,
Don’t you think that’s an overstatement, WCU21? I’d wonder about the sanity of any man who did everything to the best of his ability. For example, I might need ten minutes in the morning to tie my shoes to the best of my ability, but don’t you think that whatever bow I can make in ten seconds is good enough? If a shoe comes untied then I just take five seconds to re-tie it.
I don’t normally do things to the best of my ability; instead, I do things as well as I think they need to be done.
Cheers,
Michael
Haha I understand your relative thinking on this, BUT Coach Lombardi says career. He dosen’t mean be a slave to your job and become a machine. He means dont half “ace” the things you do in life. It’s like Philosophy. It is one’s duty or one’s will to become “enlightened” you might say. If they go about things blindedly and are a social conformist then they will never know what it means to think. A good man will never know what it’s like to work and gain something from hard work. It says something in the bible, forgive me bc i dont know it, but it goes something like from the sweat of your brow you will be rewarded. Believe me my friend this is truth. Finding simple ways around it, like the shoe example, only provides comfort for the lazy, dont be lazy.
PhilosopherWCU21
Welcome to the site!
Great to have one here who admires Henry David Thoreau, Socrates, and Jesus ben Pantera!
Did you ever read Thoreau’s, “Cape Cod?”
One of America’s greatest sons.
Why? What absolute is this you speak of? One’s fulfillment in life is inextricably linked to their level of success and activity? Oh how you must pity the Buddhist monks of Tibet, wasting their lives with their lazy meditation. They only have total enlightenment! It’s not a philosopher’s place to moralize other peoples’ life choices. Reflect only on your own.
Welcome to ILP!!!
Michael, thanks for this quote:
Hey Smooth,
Don’t thank me. It was in WCU21’s signature until a few hours ago. I merely questioned him about it. 
Ciao,
Michael
LOL Furious it was not meant to be like that. Obiviously there is much confusion on this matter so I’ll just let it go.
Lombardi had a lot of energy. I think people like that have such a different point of view, others can’t even understand them. I’d bet he only slept about three or four hours/night. He probably actually had time to do everything to the best of his abilities (I know I don’t). The quote says “whatever you do…,” which sounds like there is room to choose what you do before you do it (to the best…) I don’t think he meant that someone should rob banks to the best of their ability. On the other hand, Lombardi’s idiocy was shouted from the mountain top when he said “Winning isn’t everything, it is the only thing”-not a direct quote
Thank you PS.
Absolutely.
Philosopher,
First off welcome. I hope you enjoy yourself here in these discussions.
Secondly, I have to say I don’t like your philosophical positions. I saw your previous post in another list on Nietzsche and your disdain for “relativism”. I was hoping you might be able to explain what you mean by relativism, why you disagree with relativist philosophers, why Nietzsche is seemingly such a hack for you, what “absolute” means, and why you enjoy reading Socrates, The Gospels, and Kant.
As for your interest in epistemology, cool. Epistemology is some cool bid-ness. Check out William James, GH Mead, and my overhyped favorite Greg bateson
Well when you take a relativist view you say that there is a meaning within each culture, but then overall there is no meaning; it is very self defeating. Going as far as saying you cant judge anothers morality or actions bc you cannot perceive their perception of reality is crazy. That would be like saying we cannot judge Osama Bin laden because he is following his religion. There is a difference between tolerance and acceptance. As far as Nietzsche, I think his ideas of the “will to power” are being to concerned wit the individual and not enough with community. As I said before, I look up to Socrates and Jesus because they did not hold “the self” higher than the “horizon of signifigance”, this is why Nietzsche had a problem with Socrates. Kant’s kingdom of ends theory is great. Treating others and ourselfs as ends and not as means.
Yes! Stupid Westernised misconceptions of success…
I was an unfortunate westernised sole, but rejected its ways and came up with my own, only to find later on that they were exactly the same as eastern ways. Not meaning to discriminate or anything…
How is this self defeating ? The idea behind historically rooting ideas and concepts is the obvious point that EVERYTHING has a history - God, snakes, Socrates, the Greeks, Justice. Hell even history has A history. This is that thing that Einstein would not speak of. Einstein someplace says that if we truly understand what relativity theory meant we would go mad. What he says is that when you go to measure something, not only are you measuring where you are, relative to a point that Is also moving, but that the very tools you use to measure are also moving. Does this mean something so asinine as there's no reality or some stupid Punk no-work lazy idea like let's all be Zen and never read a book just smoke dope and think cool "philosophy"!!?? NO!!!!!!! What it means is that the human mind is a powerful thing and categorizes the world in ten thousand ways and we have nothing else to do but read read read and keep reading.
A question for you to consider. How is it that things are so absolute when there are no muscles in Chinese medicine? there wasn't even a word for muscle in mandarin chinese until like 1915. How is it that when you compare the texts of Classical age greeks like Hippocrates and the sculptures from the same time period with contemporary Chinese texts and medical treatises you find such redically differing conceptions of the body? How is it that when I talk to my friend Master Charlie Chen,a degreed Chinese Doctor and Tai Chi instructor that he speaks of the body with such differing terms and concepts? And when he fights a man with real taiji he kicks ass, meaning that his theories work when they're applied?
Does relativism mean that everything is as good as another? hell, no. It only means that if you're getting your philosophical information from some Enlightened source like the SW Baptist theological Seminary or Chuck Colson. If you're going to criticize something get it right, be fair and respectful to your enemy. Don't mock a straw man.
What then does relativism mean? It means that everything man thinks and does has a history, that stuff doesn't fall from the sky handed to us by some God, god or Culture Hero. Everything comes from someplace, even the idea that everything comes from someplace. The corollary to this idea is that attempts to tie everything up in a big closed absolute totalizing theory are usually done at gunpoint. Less dramatically, when a group says that our god El Shaddai, the Lord of the Mountain, is the God of all creation and we are his chosen people, these folks are trying to pass off their local ideas as universal and press their idea on other folks. The idea that professors shouldn't have Sex with their male students has only been discredited for about two hundred years. For 1500 years it was accepted that your philosophy prof was going to bugger you. This whole thing is something we can discuss further if you'd like.
Frankly, if bin Laden had never taken up arms agains the US, hollered his guts out from Kandahar that we're the great Satan, and structured his perfect society around the Wahhabi model (like the Taliban) there wouldn't be a whole helluva lot we could do, nor should we. The line that's crossed is that Bin Laden attacked us, multiple times. Now how is this NOT okay in a relativist, historicist universe ? Well honestly I can't fully explain that right now. MY sketch explanation is that when one force or will-to-power attempts to take its historically rooted perspective and universalize it, as Bin Laden Is trying to do by trying to turn the Whole world into a fundamentalist Caliphate (that for the record, contrary to Al-Qaeda's Claims has never ever existed in the whole history of islam, nor could it), they damn well better expect those other particular perspectives to hit back. Much as I didn't like your philosophy of absolutism PhilosopherWCU and your attempt to universalize your particular perspective and I therefore countered with my particular perspective and now we're rumbling and fighting out our perspectives, SO shall Bin Laden and the US.
this leads me right into Nietzsche. Number one, you need to read the Geneaology of Morals and think hard, because frankly you don't understand the Master of Sorrento. Nietzsche is not some punk I'm ok you're okay new age weakling who advocates do what you feel, dammit. Nietzsche's will to power is not so pathetic as a subjective license to "slap bitches and start Wilin'" (as the eminent poet Marchall Mathers once said). What Nietzsche means in the will to power is that EVERYTHING in the universe attempts to make its surroundings more comfortable to them. Lava does it, lichen does it, alligators in the everglades dig Mud wholes to catch fish and prey in the wet season (during the dry season this alteration of the water concentrates all the wildlife for miles around into an area the size of your living room) humans do it, ideas do it. The will to power is the fundamental will to grow and survive in Life, not some fascist rationale to kill Down's Syndrome kids.
Finally, Kant’s moral theory, the categorical imperative is literally written a little More cryptically. He says all your actions should be done as if they were universalized. That’s exactly what he says. Now, the easiest and most clear interpretation is the Golden rule. but Kant is a lot more complex than that. you can also interprete that rule as a guide to creating a pathological super villain. No where in Kant’s Categorical Imperitive does he explicitly say only act for good. He says only that you shouldn’t use people, but treat them as an end in and Of themselves. What if your end is to kill them? For no other purpose than the pleasure of killing and blood? (Check out Rene Girard and Cormac MCCarthy for theories of human violence) What if you’re strong enough to deal with the universal consequences of your local action? What if you always deal in lies and expect that action to be repeated by everyone so that nothing is true? Wouldn’t you come to expect the false and then base your actions accordingly? Remember that the dark negative of Kant’s happiness in Konigsburg is the Marquis de Sade in France.
Alright I’m done
hermes the thrice great
“stuff doesn’t fall from the sky handed to us by some God”
It most certainly does!
It’s called, Manna from Heaven, (otherwise known as the logos spermatikos.)
ahhh good old logos spermatikos. DNA for the ancient mediterranean
I think you should change your name from, ‘hermes the thrice great ,’ to, ‘Hermes Trismegistus.’
Do you not think the latter has a better, ‘ring,’ to it, as it were…?