You know this kind of jibe is pretty unnecessary, but perhaps making it increased the probability of your continued Life, so I will cut you some slack.
Sanity to me means that one’s understanding of the World works. Compared to some humans, apes have limited understanding of the World, but in their niches, this leads them to find food, avoid predators, mate, etc. I see Little insanity. They make mistakes and compared to humans there are greater limits on their Learning. Of course this latter quality protects them from some of the mistakes of humans - like, say, riding motorcycles - though some human has likely made some ape do this. Apes were generally doing fine until we started destroying everythign and using more and more of the Resources of their lives up. The fact that they cannot deal with this well is not due to their being insane. In fact some really rather sane humans have been killed by other humans. I Think there is even a bit of a habit around that pattern.
Insanity, as the term is generally used, requires global dysfunction. Apes as a rule do not suffer from global dysfunction, or they would be extinct, and would have been Before we encroached on their ecosystems.
Most of you seem to agree that there is something off about humanity. Something is wrong with it. I’m not talking about moral “wrong”, I’m talking about wrong compared to other animals. Some animals are tards, but they seem to have their life in a stable cycle. For example a deer will never eat another deer. But there are cannibals in some tribes. Self destruction seems to equate to the highest illogic of life. So that when one species, humanity, destroys other species and itself, then it is the highest illogic. And on the other hand, animals seem more natural and long term. They seem more logical. Not in every way, but in some ways. That is probably why moreno talks about apes being sane.
Love is highly associated with pro-life ism. It focuses on the emotional drive for pro life deeds and actions. Idle love would be useless. Love with action is what is best. Imagine if the doctor loved you but didn’t give you treatment. Same deal. So I’m going to say that love is a form of pro-life.
Well I’ll have to take this up later the Mods are waving Mjolnir around like Thor on crack. Cya next week/month/year and have a great Christmas and a better new year everyone.
I think we all have our own version of what it means to be sane or insane, smart or stupid. But it’s usually reducible to right and wrong. It’s duality. It’s what we try to do to live. If will didn’t have morals, it wouldn’t have preferences. The meaning of life is to reject insane and stupid things, and to embrace and develop wise, intelligent, sane things. We’re talking about moral definitions of good and bad thought.
Dan, I am having trouble putting stupid things on the same plane as insane things. We may extend meaning to include more then what was intended, but then we may faLl into the grey area of ambiguity, I would think. However, it is true, that it is at times comforting to think in this manner, and simplify insanity in terms of a rational, binary solutions of morality.
But aren"'t we supposed to be above these? And then doesent"t rising above tantamount in holding that we run the risk of insanity in doing so?
It’s an ideal. Ideals are images of a better self or world. They are the basis of moral thinking. And as morality categorizes stupidity and insanity as bad, it goes to the ideal of rising above the crap.
There is risk in almost anything. But we counter the emotions of avoiding risk, with the emotions of acquiring and gaining things. Desire, 101.
Right and wrong are relative to one’s goal or objective.
People may say a certain goal is insane. People may say a certain method of attaining one’s goal is insane. Both are used to discern sanity from insanity.
Can there only be one sane goal? Can there only be one sane method of attaining a goal?
What if one doesn’t comprehend another’s goal? Does that make the other’s goal insane? Or their methods insane?
Is it insane to die for the life of one’s child? Is it insane to suicide before decline into severe illness? Suicide before torture as a prisoner of war?
I believe there’s a question of quality of life, as opposed to life irregardless.
The odd thing is one can be deluded about a great many things, but still not be insane. You can Believe all sorts of weird stuff and still function really quite well. If you Think religious beliefs are weird, then you likely also know that someone can go to a big building once a week, drink the blood and eat part of the body of a deity and then go home and be a good parent, go to work and build, for example, ship motors that work, and function in hundreds of other ways extremely effectively. If you Think scientists are weird, you know that someone can Believe there is no free will, that the self is a quale, that we are biochemical Machines, and that no self persists through time
and be a good parent, perhaps even someone to go to when you have problems with your spouse.
Our lives can tolerate a great deal of delusion, whatever your pet peeve delusions are, it is likely that some people have many of them and yet still manage to function.
Insanity is when you cannot function well.
the down side of this is some extremely deluded people can manage to get a lot of Power - entitlement can be one kind of delusion.
I do Think most people are deluded about a lot of stuff, all at the same time.
But not so many are insane.
And even the insane may be right about some things I think the deluded powerful and masses are deluded about. It’s just they have some core delusions that take them out of the game.
One quibble is: you can have a break, where you are temporarily insane, say with PTSD, and then come back. Really this is not insanity, its just the present moment is being flooded by other moments from the past that need resolution.
Most life forms have common goals and objectives. From man to bacteria, we want to eat and reproduce, or we do it even if we don’t think about it or realize it.
I think there is objective sane and insane, even though this all has to do with how knowable reality is. Some people say that objective morality is not possible to know. Epistemics are either negative or positive. If you are positive, you think things are knowable, and you make something of it. But if you’re negative, then truth is impossible and it’s time to sit on your ass complaining and never do the job as it was meant to be done. When I say “you” I’m referring to general stereotype people, not you personally.
It doesn’t actually need to be one. Absolutes are not natural. It is basically one and many, at the same time.
Not comprehending doesn’t make anything insane. The majority of things we could do are either neutral or good.
None of that is insane. Death isn’t evil. The worst stuff we experience is caused by our own body generating pain. People project that, but they can’t control how their body works, so they have to consider suicide to end suffering.
That’s true relative to those who claim to know what sanity is about. You can be without conflict while not knowing what sanity is. If you are not in conflict with yourself, you cannot be in conflict with the society around you. As long as you are not at peace with yourself, it is not possible for you to be at peace with others. Even then there is no guarantee that your neighbors will be peaceful. But you wouldn’t be concerned with that. When you are at peace with yourself, then you are a threat to the society as it functions today. You will be a threat to your neighbors because they have accepted the reality of the world as real and sane, and because they are also pursuing some funny thing called “peace”. You will become a threat to their existence as they know it and as they experience it. So you are alone.
However, to those who are caught up in their pursuit of how to be sane, they remain the opposite of that until such time as they can achieve it. The creation of the goal makes one feel as if he is not sane at the moment.
I did say “one of the greater things”, not “this is a universal truth…”.
But then you have stated that as though a universal truth when it clearly is not. A bullet headed toward your head doesn’t really care how sane or in touch with your inner self you might be. I would call that a “conflict with your environment/society”. Wouldn’t you?
And a person suffering miserably from a headache but keeping to himself about it isn’t exactly what I would call “being in conflict with society”.
Except for that stray bullet.
…slightly disturbing to your bliss.
That seems to be an unfortunate truth with which I have serious personal experience.
Umm… the “opposite” of what? Peace? Sanity?
You speak as though you already know what defines “sane”.
Exactly how do you surmise that definition and know that you are right?
Perhaps the notion of a person who is not quite sane begins when that person’s uniqueness is judged against what society claims is sane. Yet, even though nature creates unique individuals, the blossoming if individual uniqueness is obstructed by the artificial encasement of societal mind which we as individuals continually pass down to the next generation.
For anyone who would entertain working out knowing about it, first of all, there is an assumption that there is sanity, and then, that there is something that can be done to experience it. Without the knowledge about what is sane there’s no experience of sanity that is for sure. This raises the question, “if this knowledge is not there, is there any other way of experiencing sanity?" The question goes with the answer.
If one were to get out of this confining knowledge, the question of sanity is not there anymore. The question arises from this knowledge, which is still interested in finding out how a particular way of living becomes sane and to experience in every respect what that sanity is all about. When the knowledge is not there, the question is also not there. Then there is no need for finding any answer. Posing the question is born out of the assumption that there is a kind of sanity, and that assumption is born out of this knowledge had of and about it. … The knowledge is the answer that’s already there. The question automatically arises from that.
If almost everybody in the whole world thought that the Earth revolved around the Sun except for you, that would be good evidence that you were wrong, and it would take extremely good counter evidence to justify you going against this consensus- extremely good counter evidence which, in fact, exists.
In the other thread the issue being discussed is an ethical issue, and that you aren't going to dig something out of the earth or measure the distance between planets to resolve an ethical issue, so getting past the 'everybody is crazy but me as defeater' thing is going to be very very hard. Impossible? I dunno. Waiting to be convinced.
And yes, as you pointed out, there’s a big difference between “almost everybody is understandably incorrect about this point” like the earth/sun thing and “almost everybody is a completely immoral sociopath”, which is just obviously incorrect, and so any argument that entails it must be incorrect.
