+++Again, fair enough. You think about these interactions – past, present and future – differently than I do. From my frame of mind, we work with what we think we have…given all the variables we do not either fully understand or fully control.
Once I myself came to recognize the extent to which my own value judgments were not able to be anchored objectively to a God or a Goddess or a political ideology or a school of philosophy or a deontological assessment or to nature, I came to the conclusion that in the absence of such fonts, it was reasonable to conclude that “I” in the is/ought world is just an “existential contraption” ever subject to change given new experiences, relationships and information/knowledge/ideas.
Whereas you have your spiritual Self and gib his emotional Self to anchor I to. Good for both of you. But those things are still understood by me to be just adjuncts of dasein. And thus profoundly problematic. Even precarious eventually.+++
You continue to talk about Paganism as if it’s a religion, or some sort of fixed ideology, though as I’ve said many times, it isn’t. Pagan gods, or whatever you want to call them (e.g. aspects of nature), don’t care if you believe in them or not. To me, Paganism is a way of interacting with the world. I have no beliefs, as such, other than what I can experience with my own senses.
+++It’s not a description of reality that most intrigues me. It’s the extent to which you or I or gib is able to demonstrate that our description of it [in a world of words] is able to be confirmed empirically, materially, phenomenologically.+++
That’s easy to answer. I can’t, and nor can anyone.
+++You can speak of a Goddess, I can speak of dasein, gib can speak of emotions…but how do we go about connecting the dots existentially between them and the behaviors that we choose?+++
No, it’s you who speak of those things, in that sort of way.
+++Sure, as long as we acknowledge the possibility that we don’t. And, as of now, the fact that we don’t have access to a demonstrable argument – scientific, philosophical, theological – establishing it either way.+++
Yes, absolutely.
+++Perhaps because by your own admission, you’re not a philosopher. And, given the “soul-crushing tedium” attached to philosophy by you, you never will be.+++
For which I’m eternally grateful.
+++There are two-kinds of optimism. One revolves around a frame of mind, another around actual sets of circumstances. If your life itself is filled with lots and lots fulfilling and satisfying experiences, what does it really matter if your philosophy of life is rather glum. But you can have the most upbeat outlook possible about life and then fall into a circumstantial hellhole that really crushes your soul/spirit.
In other words, far from being eternal, optimism itself is just another existential component of your life. And to the extent you have doubts about an afterlife, it crumbles into nothingness along with everything else.+++
That’s just your pessimism speaking. Frame of mind is a conscious choice.
It doesn’t bother me that I don’t know for sure about an afterlife. We should make the best of what we have right now.
Just for the record, I tend to talk negatively to and about those I construe to be fulminating fanatic objectivists. The ones in particular who were inclined to treat those who did not think exactly like they did as though they were idiots. Pinheads I call them.
In part because I thoroughly enjoy going the polemics route. In part because I had no respect for their intelligence whatsoever.
I just tried to make it clear this was a reflection of my own subjective “personal opinions”…political prejudices rooted existentially in dasein. Of late however I simply do not respond to them at all anymore. Instead, I go that route [from time to time] over at the Philosophy Now forum. Sure, there are fulminating fanatic pinheads there as well. But the level of discourse over all is substantially higher in my view. More like what ILP itself once was when I first joined.
Then there are those like you. You’re not a pinhead in my view but you are one of those who avoid like the plague bringing their moral and political philosophy down out of the scholastic clouds. Or, rather, that’s been my own experience with you and your “serious philosophy” ilk.
Thus…
That doesn’t surprise me.
Why would I ask when over the years I could never get you to bring your abstractions down out of the technical clouds.
Unless you can provide me with examples to the contrary.
You are just another Satyr to me. For him, serious philosophy is almost always up in the academic clouds. The only time he brings it down to Earth is to confirm his own caustic dogmas regarding blacks and women and gays and Jews and the Abrahamic Communists.
Though, sure, if this…
…is how you actually think about me, what on earth are you doing responding to anything I post here at all?
Just move on to others here or go back to Know Thyself again.
I never read any of your posts here…unless I’m the topic.
Do us both a favor and avoid the things that I post here as well.
Let’s just say that when you say it, it doesn’t register to me quite the same as when I say it.
See, there you go again. You note that I note that in regard to certainty, I make a clear distinction between the either/or and the is/ought world in my discussions with Maia and MagsJ. Yet here you are claiming that I disavow all certainty!!
In other words, something I’d expect from oh, I don’t know, the pinheads?
So, maybe this all revolves around your recent exchanges with the pinheads over at Know Thyself.
Perhaps thinking of becoming one of them yourself?
Well, in your culture above, is not anger often displayed when someone behaves in a way that pisses others off? Doesn’t the display of human emotion often revolve around conflicting goods? Yes, anger as an emotion is hard-wired into each and everyone of us. But context and point of view here is everything.
Again, I’m just grappling to understand how you connect the dots between 1] the anger you feel at the Canadian government’s policies prompting the protest…anger as an emotion per se derived genetically and biologically, and 2] the extent to which you believe that you were hardwired specifically to feel this particular anger.
In other words, you lived a different life and came to think that the truckers were wrong to protest…but, genetically, you were programed biologically to feel that they were right?
Note to others:
Again, a little help here. How exactly am I proving his point? He notes what I posted but he doesn’t include what he posted. In other words, what prompted me to post what I did.
Again, what on earth does this have to do anything I noted?
Note to origami, Meno, Ecmandu and her:
Did you put him up to this?!!
Okay, fine, if you prefer your rendition of it, then that works for you. But it’s certainly not how I construe experiences of this sort in our lives. They can be of fundamental importance in impacting our lives in what can sometimes precipitate excruciating consequences. The smallest of things…and everything changes.
Instead, what I hear from you and Maia is the philosophical equivalent of a shrug: yeah, things could have been dramatically different in my life at dozens of particular junctures but – yawn – they didn’t so here I am.
But: it’s a good thing I have my emotional Self and my spiritual Self to anchor I to. Nothing much relating to dasein is applicable there.
That’s how you feel, right? But how you think of course is moot because had your life been different you could be thinking, well, practically anything.
Thus…
Note to the fulminating fanatic objectivists and pinheads:
You do grasp this don’t you? And, say, the implications of it for your own rabid moral and political dogmas.
Why should you feel guilty when, in regard to the truckers protest and the Canadian government, your emotional Self or your spiritual Self or your intrinsic Self provides you with the next best thing to being absolutely certain about them.
Even if you bump into others who think just the opposite about the protest, you can remind them that none of that really matters. You feel the truckers are right and want them to win, they feel that the truckers are wrong and want them to lose.
The nihilist and the objectivist/essentialist both agree what the voluntarist doesn’t see is a truth is only real, a fact only refers as true, so long as it anchors/sustains as/in reality.
The voluntarist and the objectivist/essentialist both see what the nihilist doesn’t see is that hole/hunger for anchored/sustained truth/fact points to something that should be real.
The mistake the nihilist makes is limiting the real to what can be fully grasped. The mistake the voluntarist makes is trying to reverse-engineer reality while denying the ground that anchors/sustains it.
Objectivists/essentialists sometimes fall into one of those two errors when their thinking is inconsistent.
Now that it has been established that origami, Meno, Ecmandu and her are one and the same person, let’s explore the implications of that for the future of The New ILP.
_
Let’s just cut to the chase, why don’t we… what are these farces all about? historical beef, but minus the Yorkshire-pudding roast-potatoes and gravy… save me! save me from da drama… spare me! spare me further ennui!
I could add more names to the ‘who’s who’ list of characters, but I’ll refrain… to cauterise the lies from propagating further, but who really is who.
…or is this all just a storyline, for a script(s).
Well, I can agree that you talk negatively about people who are rude. However, my general impression is that you talk negatively about anyone whose posts you do not like. One example would be those who have firm beliefs but who are unable, for one reason or another, to immediately convince you that they are right. They are not rude, they just have strong beliefs that they aren’t able to immediately prove to you to be true. It seems that it’s enough for someone to come along, declare that abortion is always wrong and fail to convince you that such is truly the case, for you to then immediately proceed to accuse them of being afraid of facing the truth that there are no moral truths, only arbitrary moral opinions. I may go through your posts at some point, and when, and if, I find examples of you doing precisely that, I will point them out to you in this thread.
If you’re spreading them, which is what you’re doing, it does not matter what you think of them (i.e. whether or not you hold them to be true and with what certainty.) The point is that you’re spreading them, and by spreading them, you’re creating a particular social atmosphere that isn’t conducive to healthy conservations. Now, I generally do think that each person should be allowed to voice their opinions, whatever they are, but I don’t think they should be free to present them in any shape they want and to push them as hard as they want. As an example, I’m perfectly fine with Ecmandu voicing his opinions, as crazy as they might sound to around 99.9999% of the human population, but what I do have a problem with is him voicing his opinions in places where voicing them distracts from the healthy flow of the conversation and him starting the same threads over and over again in an effort to draw attention to himself.
That would be you saying that I “avoid like the plague bringing [my] moral and political philosophy down out of the scholastic clouds”. It’s an obvious expression of your dissatisfaction with what I’m doing without being particularly clear about what is it that you find dissatisfying. In a sense, it is an empty complaint, basically “I don’t like it” with no reasons given as to why you don’t like that something. It also appears to be stating – albeit this isn’t quite clear – that I have limited or no interest in justifying my beliefs and that I am under some sort of obligation to justify everything I say, and more importantly, to satisfy you. To you, such complaints may seem innocent. To me, they don’t. They are nowhere near being something horribly harmful but they don’t seem to be entirely innocent either.
It’s showing respect when you ask. It makes it clear that you have no desire to force or manipulate the other person into what you want them to do. It says “Can you do this for me, but only if you want to do it freely of your own will?” There’s a difference. A subtle one, but it’s there.
People come to this forum to fulfill their needs, whatever they are, but in order for it to remain a civilized place where everyone respects everyone else, and thus a fruitful place, no forcing of other people to act against their will (“manipulation”) should be allowed. It must be strictly prohibited. So if someone isn’t willing to justify their beliefs, you are free to state that you’d appreciate it if they sat down and made an attempt to do so, but if they refuse to do so, you’re not free to complain about it mercilessly and to try and manipulate them into doing it by using shaming tactics and other devious means.
Yes, but examples of what? Examples of me “bringing [my] abstractions down out of the technical clouds”? The problem is that I do not understand what “bringing [my] abstractions down out of the technical clouds” really means to you. So I can’t do it, regardless of how much I want it. I’d have to figure out what it means, and I have trouble doing that on my own, so I need your help, which you’re not willing to provide.
Isn’t Satyr “fulminating fanatic objectivist” according to you? If so, given that you said I’m not a fulmnating fanatic, that would make me a bit different, wouldn’t it?
My first post in this thread was a response to Gib. It wasn’t a response to you. But you responded to my response to Gib, so that lead to me responding to you. In other words, if you don’t want me to respond to you, you can start by not responding to me. Not that you have to – I’m fine with conversing with you.
Oh, so it’s all just sort of, uh, “mystical”? Down the road you have new experiences, meet new people, come upon new information and knowledge and you find yourself thinking that the trucker protest was actually wrong. But you still feel it was right? You still want such protesters to win?
Is that what I am making up? Or is that how it all really works for you given your own understanding of your own thoughts and your own emotions. Me, I’m just trying to grasp this “anomaly” Self of yours. I don’t know what the fuck you are talking about here. Why? Because for most, it just doesn’t work that way. What they think about things like the truckers and abortion and guns usually is more rather than less in alignment with what they feel and what they want as well. The fulminating fanatic objectivists and the pinheads here just take it to extremes.
No, I note time and again that given how, subjectively, “I” understand these relationships “here and now”, this is what makes sense to me in regard to the existential relationship between identity, value judgments, conflicting goods and political economy. On the other hand, in the past I thought quite differently about them. And down the road I might come to think quite differently about them again.
But the one thing I lack here is an emotional or a spiritual or an intrinsic Self that makes all that “existential stuff” moot:
“A Self that ‘intuitively, viscerally’ is able to ground me in one or another God or No God font. And in being grounded, I avoid feeling ‘fractured and fragmented’ like Biggy. And I can’t tell you how comforting and consoling it is to ‘just know’ that human existence is not essentially meaningless and purposeless. And, for the luckier still, they can even convince themselves that after they die, there’s still Paradise to look forward to.”
Well, as long as they abide by their own rendition of “What Would Jesus Do?” on this side of the grave.
Okay, let’s make this applicable to the trucker protest. You first.
Though, sure, if anyone actually thinks that I am comforted and consoled given my own understanding of “I” in the world around me, how futile would it be for me to attempt to dissuade them of that?
Given the sheer complexity involved in grappling with all of the variables involved in creating anyone’s “sense of self”, how sure can anyone be? In fact, that, in my view, is why objectivists and pinheads abound. They need something – anything – they can anchor their own I to.
It’s also why, in my view, people like you and Maia and MagsJ come up with their own more sophisticated rendition of a foundation as an anchor.
Or, sure, they take it all up into the “general description intellectual/spiritual” clouds:
No shit, it registers as the exact opposite of what I said in your brain. I say “I was talking about the I in the is/ought world” and you hear “I was talking about the I in the either/or world.” ← That is mind bogglingly bizarre. What you call “not registering quite the same” I call a brain disorder.
I have to say it… so… fucking… what?
What difference does that make to my point? Why do you have to cherry pick the least relevant particle of the point I was making to call out? So let’s say I concede that you made a good point–sure, you don’t disavow certainty in the either/or world… still… the certainty that you do disavow, you disavow so pretentiously that you’d rather misinterpret your contender so badly that you come off looking like you have a brain disorder rather than honor your disavowal and admit you got it wrong.
First of all… COUGH goalpost COUGH change COUGH
Second, you don’t grapple to understand shit. You go out of your way to avoid understanding as much as you can.
Third, you can scratch out 2] 'cause I don’t believe that.
When I said “Now dasein plays a huge role in what we react emotionally to…” you must have heard “dasein plays absolutely no role in what we react emotionally to. It’s all genetically hard-wired.”… didn’ya?
OMG, you’re literally asking people to go back in the thread to find what you were posting in response to… you lazy fuck… I mean, I always suspected you had a kind of short-term amnesia but you just outed yourself!
Um… you’re the one who segued… I should be asking you that.
Uh… yeah… exactly… in both senses. It’s trivial in the sense of being something everybody knows and in the sense of being boring–not to you obviously, but to me and, I guess, Maia.
No, it’s actually a fact. That’s not how you define a strawman.
Exactly.
There are more of us “anomalous” folk than you realize, Bigs (enough of us to not really be anomalies). Take anyone who has every felt loathed to do what in their heart they know is right. ← Right there, a schism between emotions and thoughts, the ol’ familiar “I don’t want to but I know I should.”
Anybody here ever felt that way? 'Cause Biggy hasn’t.
I doubt that.
No, you first. You show me how it’s done, ‘cause I have no friggin’ clue how your efforts to fit square pegs into round holes is made applicable to the trucker protest.
Again, I wouldn’t know where to begin. Can you please provide an example of what that would look like? What would my contrasting and comparing of your rendition of your conception of self and my rendition of the same look like if it were plugged into the trucker protest? Just a hypothetical example will do. It needn’t be how I would actually do it (in a world where I understand what that even means), just something that would satisfy your request. Please and thank you.
From my frame of mind, to the extent that someone is able – religiously, spiritually, emotionally, ideologically, deontologically, philosophically, etc. – encompass a sense of Self enabling them to feel anchored to moral and political values they reason or feel or “just know” are the right ones, is the extent to which they are able to avoid becoming fractured and fragmented.
“I” construe them as experiencing one or another embodiment of what I call the “psychology of objectivism”. And that revolves [for me] not around what they believe in, but that they believe it.
Simply note all of the hundreds and hundreds of ofttimes hopelessly conflicting “isms/ists” there are to choose from. Why mine? Why yours? Why gibs?
And how do we come to embrace one rather than another? Do we sit down as young men and women, study each and every one of them thoroughly, and think our way to the most rational and virtuous point of view? Or is it more likely that the manner in which I construe the “self” as situated out in a particular world at a particular time, accumulating particular sets of personal experiences and relationships and access to ideas a more reasonable assumption?
Okay, then back around to what I note above. How each of us as individuals come [existentially] to acquire one rather than another description…in a world where apparently no one is able to actually establish that their own “rooted existentially in dasein” description is demonstrable for all rational and virtuous men and women.
No, I speak of those who, as the embodiment of dasein, are able to choose one set of values and behaviors because they are able to link them “in their head” to an ideological or deontological or religious or spiritual or emotional or intuitive or intrinsic Self; and those who are not able to. And I suggest that those who are embrace this because it comforts and consoles them to have one or another overarching sense of personal identity able to provide them with an access to the Real Me in sync with the Right Thing To Do.
But, think about it: what are the odds that your own “ism” comes closest to the way things really are? I certainly have no illusions about mine.
Or “absolutely not” as the Satyrs among us will insist. Whether in regard to religion or morality or politics or the biggest of the big metaphysical quandaries, there is nothing that they are not able think and to feel certain about.
Just ask them.
Only here you are back among those of us who, each in our own way, are grateful – if not eternally? – that the world is still able to produce a teeny, tiny fraction of men and women who still think and feel that philosophy has something to contribute to the “human condition”.
Again, from my frame of mind, it is as though we are in two completely different exchanges. As though optimism and pessimism themselves are not rooted subjectively in dasein. You seem to acknowledge that, yes, had your life been different you might be here noting a view of all this even more pessimistic than mine.
But: in however you have come existentially to understand Nature and the Goddess, you possess this spiritual Self that, what, makes pessimism impossible?
Only right now you are not actually eyeball to eyeball with the Grim Reaper. Death, I suspect, is still somewhere far down the road for you right now.
Though, sure, on the day you are just inches away from what may well be oblivion, you might consider all of the many, many people and the many, many things that you love dearly…gone forever and ever. And still not be bothered about an afterlife.
That would make you an exceptionally rare human being. Or, rather, so it seems to me.
I Googled “do pagans believe in an afterlife?” and got this:
“For many modern Pagans, there is a somewhat different philosophy on death and dying than what is seen in the non-Pagan community. While non-Pagans see death as an ending, some Pagans view it as a beginning of the next phase of our existence. Perhaps it is because we view the cycle of birth and life and death and rebirth as something magical and spiritual, a never-ending, ever turning wheel. Rather than being disconnected from death and dying, we tend to acknowledge it as part of a sacred evolution.”
Or for others:
"In The Pagan Book of Living and Dying, author Starhawk says, ‘Imagine if we truly understood that decay is the matrix of fertility… we might view our own aging with less fear and distaste, and greet death with sadness, certainly, but without terror.’”
Again, though, how close to their actual existential death is someone who thinks this? And how much do they have to lose when the time comes? After all, it’s not for nothing that, for some, the pain of living itself becomes so excruciating they take their own life.
Okay, that’s your own subjective “rooted existentially in dasein” take on me here. It’s not mine. This thread alone is an example of the sort of exchange I have often pursued at ILP. Especially in the past when ILP actually revolved around philosophy.
I respect gib’s intelligence and I recognize that his frame of mind is worth pursuing. I just don’t understand the manner in which he makes a distinction between his thinking about the truckers, his feelings about the truckers and his wanting the truckers to win.
The thinking part we seem to overlap regarding, but not the feeling and the wanting. Here he is a self-professed “anomaly”.
Also, gib, like me, is a polemicist. He enjoys wielding words as swords in exchanges like this. Sometimes we’re taunting each other, sometimes we’re not.
But here’s the thing…
Over the years, I have contributed hundreds and hundreds of posts on these threads…
…at ILP. The preponderance of which were aimed solely at keeping ILP up on the path to actual philosophy again. And when others here played it straight, I played it straight. When, however, they started into “huffing and puffing”, sure, I can go there too.
Again, in regard to assessments like this, you need to add – as I often do – “or, rather, so it seems to me”.
Though, sure, find the examples and point them out.
And the main thing I “accuse” others of being here is an objectivist. Some of them pinheads some of them not. But even then I often note that this is predicated only on my own subjective assumption that they have convinced themselves that, in regard to their moral and political and spiritual value judgments, they are in sync with the Real Me in sync further with the Right Thing To Do.
Then, given a particular context, I invite them to defend that frame of mind.
Thus…
Note to others:
Spreading them? What on earth does this accusation of his even have to do with the point I made that he is responding to?
Look, I’ve made it abundantly clear that philosophically my main interest [by far] revolves around the question, “how ought one to live – rationally, morally – in a world awash in both conflicting goods and in contingency, chance and change”?
Again, the existence of this very thread revolves around that!!! Gib, saying, “hey, Biggy, you want a context, I’ll give you one!”
Right?
But in regard to that context, you inform us, “I am not interested.”
Prompting me to inform everyone, “That doesn’t surprise me.”
Why should I respect someone who does not respect my wishes to bring their own moral and political value judgments down to earth?
Then straight back up you go into a cloud of accusations about me…
Like I’m forcing or manipulating you and your ilk to come down out of the didactic – pedantic – stratosphere in discussions of the “self” at the existential juncture that is “identity, value judgments, conflicting goods and political economy”.
Then, further, what this…
…means to you and only to you. Like your take on me here nails it for everyone.
Telling us what must be “strictly prohibited”. Telling us elsewhere that I should be banned. Just not permanently.
Huh?
Gib and I have been bringing our own “general description intellectual contraptions” down out of the clouds now for 14 pages in regard to the trucker protest in Canada.
But, again, that doesn’t interest you. Okay, what moral and political issue is of particular interest to you?
Let’s start a new thread and explore our differences there.
In the interim…
Well, if you do have caustic, dogmatic, authoritarian convictions that blacks and women and gays and Jews and Abrahamic Communists are worthy mostly of contempt and derision, sure, you might be one too.
Or, rather, if I do say so myself.
Please. I don’t care who anyone here is responding to. If I’m the subject of their remarks I’m – gasp! – likely to respond.
Now, start that new thread where we explore each other’s take on all of this regarding a conflicting good that is of particular importance to you and let’s converse.
Yes. What that means is that, if you were posting on my forum, your posting privileges would have been restricted until you started playing by the rules.
I think I did, didn’t I? I started that sentence of mine with “It seems that”.
Sure, you try to soften the effect of your accusations by adding that they are “predicated only on your subjective assumption” but in reality that makes no difference. The effect remains a negative one, even if only in perception. And how exactly do you respond to such feedback? How exactly do you respond to people who say that what you do is not welcome? Do you try to converse with them in an attempt to find a solution that will make everyone happy? Do you even care? What I’m seeing is “Sure guys, that I am a nuisance is merely your OWN opinion rooted subjectively dasein. MY opinion, on the other hand, which is also rooted subjectively in dasein, is a different one, so I’m just going to stick to what I’m doing and ignore all of you.” And at times, it gets worse than that.
What I am not interested in is discussing the trucker protests in Canada. And the reason I am not interested is because I don’t know much about it (since I don’t see much of a need to care about it.) In other words, I did not form a belief on that particular subject. And yet, you’re asking me to justify it. Doesn’t that strike you as a little bit odd? You’re asking me to justify a belief that I do not possess.
My own impression as to what you’re looking for on this forum is for someone to demonstrate to you how to resolve disagreements that revolve around value judgments. You want for someone to come along and tell you something along the lines of, “Okay, this is what you have to do so that one of the parties that are in disagreement with each other will recognize that they are wrong and that the other party is right”. That much I understand. However, in order for such a demonstration to be successful, it has to be tailored to what’s already inside your mind – to your “mental situation”, so to say. Because of that, it’s absolutely necessary to understand a little bit of what’s inside in your mind. And it is here that I, as well as many people I am sure, are stuck. They simply find it somewhat difficult to explain things to you. And then, to make an already difficult problem even more difficult, you have a tendency to respond in a rude manner. Many a man on this forum have attempted to use their free time in an effort to help you only to be met with your rude expressions of dissatisfaction.
He who is genuinely interested in solving his problems has no incentive to personally attack those who can potentially help him – assuming there aren’t too many of them out there. And given that you’re helpless on your own, and that you do not have lots and lots of people willing to help you, it is expected that you will be grateful for every single attempt. But you aren’t. You have personally attacked every single person who has tried to help you. And when you personally attack people, they become less willing to help you. How is that something desirable if you’re desperately in need of help? It isn’t. It implies that you’re either blind to the consequences of your actions or that you have a different goal in mind (e.g. to demean.)
I had to turn the above question of yours into an image so that everyone can see it.
Basically, what you’re saying is that you think it’s perfectly fine for you to disrespect other people because they are not obeying your wishes.
I am of the opinion that, on a forum, as elsewhere, people shouldn’t be doing anything other than what they want to do, so as long it’s not against the rules (which means, it does not sabotage the fulfillment of the purpose of the forum.) This means that, if they want to make posts without “bringing things down to Earth”, and if it’s not against the rules, they are free to do so.
Well, in real life, when you want someone to do you a favor, such as to watch on your luggage while you’re away, you will ask them, right, you won’t just issue a command. When you ask them, you’re making it clear that you’re giving them a choice to say “No!” (unless you’re one of those manipulative people who ask without allowing that choice.) When you don’t, you’re not making it clear. That’s all I am saying.
What’s the purpose of nagging if not to distract the other person until they get tired of distractions and finally do what you want them to do so that they could get rid of all those distractions?
Whether you’re doing it intentionally or not is beside the point.
The very fact that you’re proposing the above tells me that you’re either not listening to what I’m saying or that you don’t care and that you merely want to paint a negative picture of me.
+++From my frame of mind, to the extent that someone is able – religiously, spiritually, emotionally, ideologically, deontologically, philosophically, etc. – encompass a sense of Self enabling them to feel anchored to moral and political values they reason or feel or “just know” are the right ones, is the extent to which they are able to avoid becoming fractured and fragmented.
“I” construe them as experiencing one or another embodiment of what I call the “psychology of objectivism”. And that revolves [for me] not around what they believe in, but that they believe it.+++
Well, that’s just your frame of mind and your opinion. I think differently.
Paganism isn’t a belief, and I don’t “just know” it’s right.
+++Simply note all of the hundreds and hundreds of ofttimes hopelessly conflicting “isms/ists” there are to choose from. Why mine? Why yours? Why gibs?+++
My ism is no more valid than your ism. It simply works for me.
+++And how do we come to embrace one rather than another? Do we sit down as young men and women, study each and every one of them thoroughly, and think our way to the most rational and virtuous point of view? Or is it more likely that the manner in which I construe the “self” as situated out in a particular world at a particular time, accumulating particular sets of personal experiences and relationships and access to ideas a more reasonable assumption?+++
You’re absolutely correct. This is not in any way problematic, in my opinion.
+++No, I speak of those who, as the embodiment of dasein, are able to choose one set of values and behaviors because they are able to link them “in their head” to an ideological or deontological or religious or spiritual or emotional or intuitive or intrinsic Self; and those who are not able to. And I suggest that those who are embrace this because it comforts and consoles them to have one or another overarching sense of personal identity able to provide them with an access to the Real Me in sync with the Right Thing To Do.+++
Again, this is not any sort of issue.
+++But: in however you have come existentially to understand Nature and the Goddess, you possess this spiritual Self that, what, makes pessimism impossible?+++
No, of course it doesn’t.
I’ve always had a pretty optimistic outlook on life, long before I’d heard of Paganism. Just lucky, I suppose.
+++I Googled “do pagans believe in an afterlife?” and got this:+++
Since there is no set of rules about what to believe in Paganism, that may have been a fairly fruitless, or at any rate, misleading exercise.
To me, Paganism is all about how I interact with the world in the here and now. It has nothing to do with any sort of afterlife.
There’s still how I make that distinction and how you do. And how things here are often considerably more problematic in one world rather than the other. Not being in possession myself of an emotional anchor that allows you [in a way I don’t fully understand] to weather the moral and political and spiritual storms that, over and again, tear “me” to pieces.
Note to others:
Actually gib wrote that. I wrote this:
You’re point that I disavow all certainty? Well, all the difference in the world if I don’t.
Although, admittedly, from time to time, I come back around to “the gap” and Rummy’s Rules and solipsism and determinism and sim worlds and dream worlds and the Matrix. In other words, what we can possibly be certain about way, way, way out there on the metaphysical limb.
The least relavant point to you may well be the most relevant point to me and others. And when it comes to what we both think about this, aren’t we still basically on the same page? Had things been otherwise in your life you might be here disavowing the same things that “I” do. Only unlike “me”, you will, what, ever and always feel what you do about all this? Biologically? Mr. Chickenshit and his genes?
On the other hand, maybe I’m moving the goalpost to where it should have been in the first place.
On the other hand, maybe when someone insists I am not understanding shit, it’s because I am refusing to understanding it as they do.
That’s what I am grappling to understand: what you do mean by the feelings you have toward the tucker protest. The “anomaly” self that allows you to think existentially about it, while your feelings seem anchored to something more…substantial?
But: if your emotional reaction to the trucker protest is also embedded “hugely” in dasein, then how are you not concluding that had your life been different you might in turn feel hugely differently about it. And in fact want them to lose? In other words, for all practical purposes, making you like me: fractured and fragmented.
Note to others:
Again, I don’t grasp how I am proving his point. So, perhaps, others here grasp it better. It’s not about laziness it’s about soliciting other perspectives.
Also, note how much more personal, scoffing, disdainful his reaaction is to me here.
Okay, fine, we think – and feel? – about this differently. That too however I suspect is embodied in dasein.
Exactly indeed! Your emotional self, while, as with your thinking self, being “hugely” embedded in dasein, still provides you with the next best thing to absolute certainty. You feel that the truckers should win. You want them to win.
So, okay, given how your emotions and wants are “hugely” embedded in dasein, where exactly do you draw the line “for all practical purposes” here? When did your emotions and your wants regarding the truckers stop being hugely embedded in dasein and start being more hugely closer to certainty?
The “anomaly” part I’m grappling to understand. Again, with me, I once thought as a conservative about most political issues. Then Song Be and my thoughts shifted to the left…way to the left. But then [eventually] so did my emotions. So did my wants. Yes, going down deeper into the brain, emotions and wants can be trickier. But I have never been such that I thought as a conservative but felt and wanted as a liberal. Or then thought as a liberal but felt and wanted as a conservative. Or not for very long.
And I suspect few objectivists and pinheads here are in your boat.
So…
Note to others:
Okay, regarding the trucker protest, who here among the objectivists felt loathing in their heart for supporting the truckers even though in your head you knew they were right?
Also, how man objectivists here admit that to the extent they recognize the role that dasein plays in establishing what they think – feel? – about the truckers, they could be here embracing just the opposite of what they think – feel? – here and now.
Though, sure, I admit the problem here might be my inability to grasp just what gib is telling us about the distinction he makes between thinking and feeling and wanting. That and the behaviors we choose.
Okay, but I also strongly doubted myself that I would ever stop thinking and feeling as I did about Christianity, Unitarianism, Objectivism, Marxism… and then all the rest of them.
Huh?
How am “I” comforted and consoled feeling fractured and fragmented about the trucker protest, abortion, guns? You seem to agree that you can’t take much comfort in what you think about them either but then there’s the – to me “mystical” – manner in which you seem more securely anchored to a Self emotionally. Despite admitting that even your emotions as well are “hugely” embedded subjectively, existentially, experientially in dasein.
How about this: “Sure, it works in practice, but does it work in theory?”
