Mastriani's Intervention

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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From another thread:

And so it is time to get started. Who will help me with my project? Who will help me rescue this self-described misanthrope from a continued life of distrust, pessimism, cynicism, and overall negativity?

Let’s start slow. Let’s begin with this basic premise that I think describes in a nutshell Mastriani’s overall position: “Life sucks.” Destroy this, and I think the misanthropy begins to crumble like the false facade I suspect it really is.

Okay, who wants to start? Why does life not suck?

Anybody.

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whenever you realize that some horrible, pain in the ass, unnecessary thing that is directly the result of dumb jerks wont happen to you, your brain spews the relaxing chemicals that a caveman feels when he realizes the lion is no longer chasing him. pay attention to them. love the chemicals.

if you help the dumb jerks to prevent their stupidity, you will either help their involuntary problems and their effect on you, or you will alleviate any hatred or lack of respect they have for you that would result in them purposely annoying you. plus, the empathy section of your brain spews noticeable reward chemicals like a monkey who grooms the backs of his neighbors, pleasure that causes the motivation for a behavior that causes survival and therefore the brain chemical spew was naturally selected.

you are a robot who triggers enjoyable brain chemical rewards for accomplishing things that accomplished the survival of your dna in caveman times. in case youre skeptical, you also have to believe that youve accomplished those survival objectives, and that those objectives are important. and sometimes what appears to have accomplished the goal in the short run creates a worse situation in the long run.

but uh ive kind of lost myself. basically you decide which things are important and worthy of feeling pain and pleasure about, or they were selected by evolution, or both, i forget. i find it very easy to decide that pretty much all of the things that might upset me should not do that, and all of the things i end up doing are things that i should value and enjoy. sounds too easy. :confused: . but im happy.

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Hello Jerry:
I am curious of why you’ve taken up this crusade against “pessimism”? I mean that if someone wants to be pessimistic, i do not seek to bring them out of it. They do so by themselves with every breath they take.
They are like actors. Their parts, or the parts that they have chosen, have a scrip that calls for tears, but an actor is usually not able to cry on command and needs a few eye drops.
Likewise, the pessismist might say that life is not worth living only to take breath after breath. Life is inherently optimist.
Perhaps the reason a pessismist persist in living in a meaningless existence is that he hopes for one just like you to be his prophet and quiken once more his violet heart.

For me, life is often hard, but it is with the greatest of all vanities that one can conclude that his life is the worst life there is or ever was. I can imagine, for example, being confined to a wheel chair and paralized from the neck down and an iron lung to breathe for me. I can imagine me saying that I would rather die than live as such. But once that day came about, if it was my fate, I could also imagine the strongest desire, the desire of self-preservation, pushing me to devise strategems to find meaning in tragedy and a purpose for breathing again.
The true pessimist, for me, are those that don’t romanticise their tender hearts, like Cioran, but have courage in their convictions.
If life sucks, then don’t waste time telling the living, but expediously kill thyself. Don’t tell me life sucks, just show me.
How’s that Jerry?

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I remember when a group now ex-friends held an intervention for me. hick I showed them, I did I did.

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Life is only as good as you can enable yourself to believe it to be. Our freewill in this comes only to a choice of what colour scales you wish to place over your eyes.

Life sucks as a default setting. To un-suck it requires a degree of effort, and courage.

And sacrifice, always sacrifice.

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Ah, let the misconceptions begin Mr. Jerry.

Facades, ey?

It is not I that has placed the veil of ignorance across the eyes of humanity.

It is not I that decided that to be “politically correct” exceeds where truth fails.

It is not I that has enforced the primal barbarism of the masculine as exceeding the fineness of quality of the feminine.

It is not I that has drawn the pissing lines in the sandbox of the world and stood mankind against mankind saying “The colors of our homeland will be the stain of blood upon all who do not bow low to our greatness”.

It is not I that has decided that there is no cost too great to ensure profit, be it at the expense of all.

It is not I that has decided for those that choose to not take responsibility for their actions, handouts must always be readied.

It is not I that has the individual races suppose superiority based solely upon race alone.

From here I will say, you shall not pass, and to this, the conqueror will be as the conquered.

I am a misanthrope because the quality of humanity is ever diminishing, and it is to me to maintain myself, and let those that must fall, fall.

No matter how the wind howls, the mountain cannot bow to it.

You have chosen, freely, a road of misery here. I wish you well.

P.S. It’s not life that sucks, it’s the involvement of HUMANS in life that sucks. This is misanthropic. Eliminate the human factor, and all will balance itself, as is the way of the natural order.

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I can see I have my work cut out for me.

Fortunately I appreciate a challenge.

Stay tuned…

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Jerry,

All noble causes end in… well,

Mastriani,

Knock it off. The world and humanity are part of the harmonious whole. You know that. That which is good gives rise to its opposite. You know that as well. You and I have talked about the illusions. Let them go. Life is celebration in being. All else is ego-driven illusion. To say that something isn’t, implies that we know in the most complete way what it should be. Ego talking.

There should be some gaggy homile I could insert here to prove the wisdom of the ages, but none come to mind.

JT

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Oh FFS … now you too will stand against me here, my brother, tenative.

An individual for whom no end is seen in admiration, and thusly, you side with the enemy camp. Scorn, scorn of infamy and ages for this … this … this insult.

Awareness of the illusion for the minority, avails us of naught brother tenative. It is not as it should be, thus glorious and courageous is the endeavor of the misanthrope, to avenge this suffocation by illusion, the asphyxiation of being, the carte blanche play of idiocy with the ego as the master puppeteer.

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in ILP, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender!!!
(gross and shameless bastardization of the immortal Churchill speech, my apologies)

(mild sarcasm and due irony should be noted!)

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Mastriani,

Damn! I almost got a nose bleed from your speech. “It is not as it should be.” ??? My friend, it is exactly as it should be. It simply isn’t as your ego-self WANTS it to be. Fighting??? Fighting what and for what purpose? Please, pretty please, step back and see. Defend the beaches? You are the beaches…

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The greatest war that will ever be fought, regardless of weaponry, venue, or any other illusionary source:

Human petty ego. The Dark Master itself, the representative Lucifer, the abject, the demoralizer, the boatman of despair.

There is no defense, other than to shatter the illusion. Nothing is as it “should” be.

“And when I awoke, I did not know, was I Quanzi the man, who dreamt he was the butterfly, or was I the butterfly who dreamt of being man?”

Do you really believe that your existence is of that which is without the illusion? Now you are giving me a nose bleed.

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Boys boys…

How arrogant of you to feel that you can ‘save’ Mastriani, a messianic complex anyone?

A

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Mas,

Of course not. We all exist within the manifest. What is manifest is how we choose to see and be within it. Black or white? A choice made.

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brother tenative, perhaps a point of experience may be necessary here.

Saihung illuminated my mind with the fact that he was not only a scholar and a monk, but a veteran warrior of many battles, and wars. I questioned him, just as you now question me.

“The watercourse way is neither known, nor fixed. It is the unforseen path of the entity, the shattered vessel, that seeks in darkness to find the origin, and be once more, whole. Many a twisted, gnarled route do we travel, and as it should be, for the heaviest burden of the form is the illusion that the ego is what is real.”

“My time in war taught me to use the power of spirit to overcome form, and humble myself before mystery, as a quivering child.”

You say there is no war, I say it is my path, who are you to tell whither it is that my spirit travels? Saihung admonished me, at times with a heavy hand, that I did not take care of those around me, supposed to levy some great affirmation of secret wisdom against others. He taught me well, as I was no more than the mirror of his youth, and then it became clear. So as in him, so as in me - so as in you, Mr. Jerry, Future Man, liquidangel, Bessy, ben, Impenitent, Skydaemon, saitd, and forever on.

None are so complete, and bereft of ego, as to stand against the kindred spirit, as above. This is not messianic principle, this is mystery upheld.

Neither above you, nor below you brother tenative, but rightfully, at your side. As you lift me, so I lift you, and neither are lost. Without which there is no “One”, but many. But as we can both admit, we are still many.

I supplant the misery of your reality, and uphold the unity of mystery.

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Just trying to help a friend. He’s free to take or leave whatever I offer here. The issues are bigger than either he or I. And this is a philosophy forum, where the discussion of the issues is what concerns us most. Maybe I can impart a point of view that would be interesting to him. Maybe even helpful. Maybe he can do the same with me. Maybe the thread will be interesting to others. Maybe the thread will be worthwhile. Maybe not. Let’s see.

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Everything is larger than any of us, until there is no us, and that is why we are all here.

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Then do you mind if I continue the thread, Mas?

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I am not in the habit of “instructing” any of my elders as to what they may or may not do, but I take no offense to continuation, if you are asking as a matter of courtesy.

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Well I was accused of arrogance. It was not meant to be such. For the record, my position is that you are as much of an elder to me as I to you.

I’m interested in this negativity of yours. This site is up to the gills with angst. You seem to me fairly representative of it. Better actually because I think you’re the best at verbalizing it and arguing on its behalf. I respect that.

And so you seemed like a challenge and a good place to start. The thread was meant good-naturedly and if it was taken in any other way I apologize.

The attitude(s) we adopt as we go through life is an important subject to me. Very much so. And the thread may prove itself worthwhile.

Thank you for not taking offense. I’ll be back in time.

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Mr. Jerry, and anyone else who is interested in my mundane existence,

I am not so arrogant as to presume, and therefore be offended. Summarily, it does not happen.

Apologies are only necessary for intended offenses, IMMHO.

Seeing me as a challenge … LOL, thats a good one Mr. Jerry. An irritation, I understand, but I am only a challenge to my own existence.

I have no reason to take you at other than your word, and it seemed a priori that the intent was genuine natured, with a hint of the comedic.

Attitude? I am all about attitude!!!

Intelligent discourse can hardly be considered a waste, even when I prove you wrong on this account … LOL, score!!! (Mastriani: 1 / Mr. Jerry:???)