Moral Truth Litmus

Hi Ichthus!

I think I’m getting to the difference between things here: you’re convinced truth is defined. I’m not so sure. I suspect, rather, it’s a process, a verb, a perpetual creation. It is only discovered after the fact, and is no longer truth, as such…

So truth is what you end up doing in accordance to what you abide by at the moment. The moral issue comes in when you question your actions before as well as after you do them. It has a lot to do with what you want and what you have to use to get it. Targeting your predilections, is what you call truth the vehicle to take you there? Targeting truth, do your predilections have to be censored or controlled to arrive at it?

As I’m presently conceiving it, truth is rather what occurs out of what occurs, if you will. Truth is the (temporary) product, not the guide.

No. Accuracy/aim is not the criterion. Rather, development of predilection(s) (as a flow) is at issue. Perhaps as contests of contradictions, where contradiction is never absolutely resolved, and concommitant tension remains (if thought persists) as the indication that the issue is “alive”.

My aim is not some comfy dialectical thesis but the total negation of everything that can be expressed.

You will find truth if you do not deliberately try to seek it out. There may not be anything as ‘truth.’ If there is, it’s already in operation in you. Looking for truth takes you away from the way truth is being carried out. The harder, more sincere you look for it, the more conflict, tension there is in you. It’s the thought of a better ‘truth’ that keeps you from coming to terms with truth as it is.

This can not make sense?

No oughtist, that has to go too. :angry:

Hmm. Are you expecting to obliterate expressibility by means of rational argument? :confused:

Right … sorry for misleading … didn’t mean to be rational, my bad #-o :slight_smile:

pfffew. Thought I was misunderstanding you there for a moment…

Inasmuchas there is a normative bent to your perceptions, would you consider it to embrace nonsense? O:)

There are more norms in the books than there are people to break them. A little nonsense indeed is to be considered, but only a kind of nonsense that bends the rules enough to expose the absurdity of them. :unamused:

Absurdity need only be exposed, not demonstrated? Danced with?

Heck … that’s the best way to expose it. I suggest a buddy system though so two or more can corroborate the demonstrativeness. It could alter the course of fastidious behavior to get the sticklers to lighten up a bit. (I was gonna put that dancing banana here, but i thought it might be too ridiculous for my serious demeanor) :wink:

Perhaps we ought to dance again with the (revised) OP, then?

If reality permits diction, how can it not permit contradiction? I thought the purpose of Theory was to contain contradiction. How can theory not be contradictory? It would be voiceless!

Are we not first to permit reality? Who knows what reality is? All we have is theories for IT.

Supposing I tell you “This is the way,” – then where are you? You experience what I tell you. This knowledge you are going to use and create a state of being and think that you have experienced reality or that you have experienced truth. But that is not the truth. That is not reality.

When you say, “This is the way,” how am I not to know it is simply a reverberation of my own thought? In a site such as here, we hone our own echos, is how I’ve come to think of it. It becomes a curious opportunity of & for Personal Identity, where everything to be considered must take on personal dimension, I feel. Thus it becomes real, and I permit myself. For one must always have a permit before engaging in major renovations.

The only change takes place in your thought structure, you begin to think differently and therefore to experience and feel things differently. Basically however everything remains exactly as it was. Wanting to understand is only useful for changing small things in yourself. There is nothing you can do to change the past. In the hope of changing things in the future, you remain stuck with the present, which is in fact the past.

The past is always active. If the past ends, you end. That is the reason why you will never allow that, no matter how hard you try. The past is everywhere in you. Every cell in your body is permeated by it. Every nerve is involved in it. The past has this body so much under control that it will not let it go. The past will not come to an end through any effort you make or whatever will power you effect! The more effort you put into it, the more willpower you use, the stronger it becomes. You came across many insights in this process, but every insight reinforces the past. It does not in any way help to understand anything and to thus free yourself from whatever. Every insight that you obtain with your investigations only strengthens and solidifies that.

Thus… what should you try to do in such a situation? NOTHING, NOTHING AT ALL! Nothing, no power in the world can help you, period. Thus, as long as you remain dependent on any authority outside of you, you remain hopeless. Once you understand this clearly, there is no more helplessness, your helplessness no longer exists. Then you actually don’t know what to do.

I totally agree about the “dependence” on authority thing. But can we still allow “reference”? I can’t recall if I’ve flogged the following on you yet, it’s one of my favorite references:

Such seems to reflect the notion of doing nothing which you refer to, no? (We leave aside, of course, what is God) I’m a big believer in doing nothing, though it tires me a bit when I do it too actively. :smiley:

Whether you do something or do nothing. How much do you move from what you are? Why should you move?

I’m not sure if it’s that I move, or I am stretched. Insofar as I (" ") do move, it is because, for instance, I’m a father, a husband, a teacher, and am firmly attached to Samsara. No questions there. :wink:

That is a lot that you do. Trying to figure out where the ‘shoulds’ and ‘musts’ in life have placement I suppose is the job of society. I wonder how significant society is? Wadda you think? Hard to answer that from the standpoint of the fact that we are society, isn’t it? Everything seems so automatic. Would we agree that its evolving is a natural occurrence. But then nature is a curious thing. A good thing probably. I mean if you notice, there is no model in nature: no two things of her creation are the same – even within the same species. Every amazing creation is different and unique. But what’s up with human nature? Does nature form man’s nature or just provide a vast consciousness for him to experiment in? I would suggest that we bear in mind that nature’s laws know no reward only that we live in harmony with them. Does the litmus test involve an evaluation of how closely we honor nature’s ways? Is there a moral implanted in assessing our relationship with nature‘s laws? Does the whole establishment of morality lie within nature‘s laws, or do morals come from something even greater than nature? Is there some potential in human nature to arrive at ultimate moral comprehension and implementation? … Last question I promise … or, is nature controlling things so subtly, surely and creatively that it wouldn’t care if defects persisted in the way man thinks? If man violates natures laws and consequentially receives punishment to the eventual point that it results in the demise of the human race, nature can start all over go again and create a new kind of ‘human’ species.