looking down to climb up

[nategargano]

it seems that we all have the same goal in mind which is to reach the top of the philosophical mountain and look out on all reality with a perfect understanding, and thats not your goal i certainly dont mean to offend you. They way to do this, it seems to me is to unlearn things taught to you over the course of life. by that i mean very basic ideas and principles like right and wrong. i would just like to hear some thoughts.

[Three_Times_Great]

Now it is plain to me, first of all, that in this theory the source of the concept “good” has been sought and established in the wrong place: the judgment “good” did not originate with those to whom “goodness” was shown! Rather it was “the good” themselves, that is to say, the noble, powerful, high-stationed and high-minded, who felt and established themselves and their actions as good, that is, of the first rank, in contradistinction to all the low, low-minded, common and plebeian. It was out of this pathos of distance that they first seized the right to create values and to coin names for these values: what had they to do with utility! The viewpoint of utility is as remote and inappropriate as it possibly could be in face of such a burning eruption of the highest rank-ordering, rank-defining value judgments: for here feeling has attained the antithesis of that low degree of warmth which any calculating prudence, any calculus of utility, presupposes—and not for once only, not for an exceptional hour, but for good. The pathos of nobility and distance, as aforesaid, the protracted and domineering fundamental total feeling on the part of a higher ruling order in relation to a lower order, to a “below”—that is the origin of the antithesis “good” and “bad.” (The lordly right of giving names extends so far that one should allow oneself to conceive the origin of language itself as an expression of power on the part of the rulers: they say “this is this and this,” they seal every thing and event with a sound and, as it were, take possession of it.) It follows from this origin that the word “good” was definitely not linked from the first and by necessity to “unegoistic” actions, as the superstition of these genealogists of morality would have it. Rather it was only when aristocratic value judgments declined that the whole antithesis “egoistic” “unegoistic” obtruded itself more and more on the human conscience—it is, to speak in my own language, the herd instinct that through this antithesis at last gets its word (and its words) in. And even then it was a long time before that instinct attained such dominion that moral evaluation was actually stuck and halted at this antithesis (as, for example, is the case in contemporary Europe: the prejudice that takes “moral,” “unegoistic,” “désintéressé” as concepts of equivalent value already rules today with the force of a “fixed idea” and brain-sickness).

Nietzsche, On The Genealogy of Morals, First Essay, II

[Nah]

@nategargano

it seems that we all have the same goal in mind which is to reach the top of the philosophical mountain and look out on all reality with a perfect understanding, and thats not your goal i certainly dont mean to offend you.

I’d say that we do have the desire for the “absolute certainty”.
(I think what you call as “perfect understanding” is the understanding that yields absolute certainty.)

They way to do this, it seems to me is to unlearn things taught to you over the course of life. by that i mean very basic ideas and principles like right and wrong. i would just like to hear some thoughts.

To be more precise, what we need to “unlearn” is the beliefs and mental fixations that gives false sense of absolute certainty.

Most of us seems to be born with the tendency to mistake something relative as if it were absolute.
When we are done with this tendency, we can start to think logically and have the freedom to adopt different perspectives as we like.

Before that, we live in the cage or a fish tank constructed by the belief/delusion of fake absolutes like gods/moral/religion/science/ideology/etc.

All concept/notion/value/logic are relative.
The absolute cannot be defined in affirmative manner.
Only the total lack of all affirmation, hence nothingness/emptiness/void is the absolute.
I don’t think we can get any closer to the absolute certainty other than this absolute negative definition of The Absolute.

In other words, all positive notions/perspectives are relative, limited, and arbitrary.

If we do deeply understand this, somehow, we will unlearn all silly bullshit, sometime lots of them and all the sudden, sometime slowly and gradually.

And it’s more of loosing the ground we stood and believed to be be solid (and absolute) than climbing a mountain.

[nategargano]

i agree, obviously, that the way to gain absolute certainty is to loose it. i hadnt had the words to say it until now but its a feeling i’ve had that the end was a dark and peacful hole. its interesting still, the way to climb the mountain is to rip the ground out from under yourself. but im just blowing wind and not really going anywhere.

[SavageBeast]

@nategargano

i agree, obviously, that the way to gain absolute certainty is to loose it. i hadnt had the words to say it until now but its a feeling i’ve had that the end was a dark and peacful hole. its interesting still, the way to climb the mountain is to rip the ground out from under yourself. but im just blowing wind and not really going anywhere.

but im just blowing wind and not really going anywhere.

In all actuality there really is nowhere to go we just think and believe there is.

There is no final destination or divine providence waiting for us that will somehow justify everything we have done in the past,present, and what we prepare to do for our make believe future.

There is no mystical sphinx at the end of the tunnel where all truth will somehow magically be revealed.

Truth is invented. Truth is make believe. Truth is irrelevant.

There is only our absurd journey that goes absolutely nowhere at all but since we think and believe we are going somewhere by liking to think that we have some unique purpose which is also make believe we try to rationalize our expiriences or actions that we take in life most of time with childlish naive ambiguity.

It seems we as human beings are incapable of anything else and in the end it is quite amusing.

[nategargano]

i light of that the only logical out come is hedonism, a philosophy which i have find more and more appealing as time goes on.

[SavageBeast]

@nategargano

i light of that the only logical out come is hedonism, a philosophy which i have find more and more appealing as time goes on.

I can definately concur when it comes to living for hedonism.

[gib]

@SavageBeast

@nategargano

i agree, obviously, that the way to gain absolute certainty is to loose it. i hadnt had the words to say it until now but its a feeling i’ve had that the end was a dark and peacful hole. its interesting still, the way to climb the mountain is to rip the ground out from under yourself. but im just blowing wind and not really going anywhere.

but im just blowing wind and not really going anywhere.

In all actuality there really is nowhere to go we just think and believe there is.

There is no final destination or divine providence waiting for us that will somehow justify everything we have done in the past,present, and what we prepare to do for our make believe future.

There is no mystical sphinx at the end of the tunnel where all truth will somehow magically be revealed.

Truth is invented. Truth is make believe. Truth is irrelevant.

There is only our absurd journey that goes absolutely nowhere at all but since we think and believe we are going somewhere by liking to think that we have some unique purpose which is also make believe we try to rationalize our expiriences or actions that we take in life most of time with childlish naive ambiguity.

It seems we as human beings are incapable of anything else and in the end it is quite amusing.

I like your thinking SB, and I argued something similar here.

Although I agree that there is no absolute destination for mankind or that the path he walks is always, and will always be, straight and narrow, I think there is a right course of action for his current place in history and in the midst of current world events (and that’s a pragmatic sense of ‘right’). This may have been true of times past as well. Man very well may have needed religion in times of scientific ignorance and political waywardness, but his religion would hardly proove to be the guiding compass for all time and for all societies and under all conditions. There came a time (we are entering into it now) where religion became rather archaic and indeed more debilitating than helpful, and thus no longer needed. But this is just as true for whatever replaces religion. Whether that be science, democracy, nihilism, or whatever is established in religion’s place, its time too will come to step down for something different.

[nategargano]

oh absofuckinlutly have you ever played civilization?