I gave up on fairy tales a loooong time ago.
I figured that when a man grows up he should at least take full responsibility for his own plight and his own destiny.
I leave such happy myths to children and to imbeciles.
They most deserve the comforting embrace of a parent and the soothing melodies of a lullaby.
Growing up is hard to do.
Not for all.
Don’t know why - but this strikes me as apt.
Why, oh why, could it not have been a hawk sitting there?
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Afternoon ,
Satir , Reason I asked about spirituality was because you said this ;
And ;
What Im trying to find out is why you would seek to test your perspective against others in such a challenging , philosophical way as you clearly like to do if life has no meaning . Surely then when you die , all you,ve learned dies with you and thats it . So there,s the pointlessness to wanting to learn a lot in a short unpredicatable life , which could by all means end tomorro , compared to a life free of worries , enough money to pay the bills , food , some romance and the good times .
I doubt its a good thing to be preoccupied with philosophical & abstract thinking , especially if the purpose to life amounts to nothing more than simply carrying on genes , and being inately selfish somehow , and a handful of man made ethics .
Also You say you find most people tiresome , even calling people that are spiritual imbeciles .
You must believe you know better than them then , but if I were you , and I was so sure about " the truth " , I dont think I,d feel the need discuss it with others who didnt know , especially if its no big deal anyway because we are only evolved animals who will all die shortly , and our world ends with us , leaving no trace of mankind , and if ;
That would be a waste of my time
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Life, my existence, has the meaning I give it.
If it had a meaning, on its own, I would be determined by it and so not free to choose it, on my own.
It is I who decides what my life means to me and I do not need another to tell me.
Yes. The world you live dies with you.
But that’s not an excuse for doing nothing – it can be if you choose it to be but it is not necessarily.
Furthermore, you can choose to pass on your life, in the form of knowledge and experiences to others, and give your life an added meaning in posterity.
It is “pointless†to live, unless you give living a point.
If you possess enough to live out a pleasurable life, then you give yourself the point of living, to the best of your abilities, the best and worry free life you can or you give meaning to hedonistic pursuits with no concern about the end of your life.
That is your choice.
Mortality, as a limit to human potential, makes vanity a motivating force for most.
It infuses existence with a sense of urgency and forces purposes – such as procreation.
Philosophical thinking is how a mind recognizes itself and then chooses which “ethics†best serve his purposes.
To choose an ideal, is to choose what one wishes to become, in recognition of what one lacks in relation.
This does not mean the ideal is achievable but that the individual identifies himself with its attainment and finds purpose and nobility and dignity and honour in trying to live up to its demands.
If life is an absence, a lack, then it is a perpetual becoming of something. This something is what makes a life worth living.
I declare no “truthâ€, nor do I claim to know it.
I only declare my truth, in relation to my experiences, my awareness, my preferences and my ideals.
I only strive to be more aware than the next man, so as to make my experiences more profound, my preferences more efficient and my ideals more rewarding.
In debate we compare all these things: experiences, awareness, preferences and ideals.
All of us associate themselves with particular ideals and we find kindred spirits amongst those that aspire towards the same ends or that posses a similar awareness or share some of our experiences.
It is towards those that we feel some sense of responsibility.
No entertainment is completely a waste of time.
We learn vicariously through the errors and dilemmas of others.
We laugh when faced with the anxiety of their plight.
It is obvious that we all feel the tinge of compassion when we witness a baby gazelle being eaten alive my a pride of lions.
We recognize aspects of our own helplessness in the gazelle’s predicament and suffering – its tragedy.
Some of us might even dare to share in the lion’s victory and contentment.
But no matter how much we would like to help, we understand that this outcome is inevitable and part of a scheme of things, we call natural or natural selection, which ultimately results in the beauty around us.
Stupidity, like any weakness, is its own punishment. Saving it from itself will only postpone the inevitable. It will not avoid it.
For example:
Protecting your child from its ignorance and sheltering it from the world’s unpredictability, indifference and suffering will not avoid the inevitable.
Suffering is either paid in small increments or in lump sums.
I can avoid physical suffering, for a time, choosing to indulge in comforts and pleasures but I will pay for it eventually through disease or weakness.
I will make myself a victim of myself, by allowing immediate needs to dictate my actions while projected needs are left up to chance.
YES. YES IT IS SO TRUE.
I don’t want to be pedantic, but you can find evidence of female homosexuality in an entirely unaesthetic manner in the old Chinese empires; you are right, it is separate from the straight ideal of marriage and courtship, but particularly within the ‘harems’ of the old Chinese emperors you find a good deal of female passion, and this acclimatises itself in the peculiar manner with which homosexuality is treated in Asian culture. Until it is named or publically uttered it is easily acknolwedged and accepted; it’s when this individual in turn refuses to marry and procreate for the sake of devotion that it becomes a problem.
I’m not fundamentally disagreeing with you, but offering a more… shall we say… ‘gender neutral’ ideal on ancient homosexuality.
If people are only evolved animals without a divine spirit . then there is no real profoundness in this world the way I see it , only us observing chaos unfolding , and the illusion of order , in a planet which will cease to exist in the future , and its sun burn out . All that has been learned here , all traces of mans philosophy of the mind will be gone .
If People are selfish at the core , and have no special purpose on a social & emotional level except to behave ethically amongst each other , and these ethics are only man made , then these ethics are flawed also , since humanity is flawed . So I would,nt take them too seriously if thats the case . I would,nt delve into the psychology of behaviour too much since it really does,nt matter . I,d learn as much about people from having friends , a family , a Job and just in general interacting with folk .
Why would I want to listen to someones philosophy of the mind unless it was extremely practical ?
Buddhist philosophy for example is practical , a complete system for body and mind , straight forward , Buddha & the Boddhidharma have helped many millions on the road to peace & longetivity , healthier lifestyles . I dont believe the same can be said for the philosophies of Hegel , Plato , Hume , sartre , Kant or anyone like that .
A very different type of philosophy they present us with , not usually practical in any clear shape or form , their students seem more about discussing a lot to either get no clear answer to what they ask and then admit they know nothing , which they could have just done anyway without asking the question in the first place , or they just agree that all we can do is be good people . But my old aunt could have told me that .
At one stage we see a mountain as simply a mountain , after inspection we see it is far more than just a mountain , but at a later stage we realize a mountain only ever was just a mountain .
Its my belief that although sometimes we must seek , and ask , we will only ever find ourselves , and the answers we always had within us , this is the final irony for those who have found . Nevertheless those who have found the truth are by no means finished with it .
We live such a short life , the importance of love , food , clothing and shelter to deal with = in my opinion no reason at all to be interested in wanting to further my understanding of what would essentially only ever be , if your right , a shower of clowns , the human race , greedy , petty , & destructive , with the occasional good bloke thrown in . The only real reason to do it would be to make money at teaching philosophy .
But then I,d be left with the pointlessness of getting my phd in philosophy only to teach others that life has no purpose . I would,nt waste 4-8 years like that , then a further 20 - 40 lecturing to people , like Richard dawkins does .
On Doing nothing , Naturally in a Godless , meaningless world , we would still most of us do the right thing , try to preserve the natural world , protect animals , be generous and kind to people for kindness sake . But I doubt very much in the same world that I,d have any practical reason to extend my concern for humanity during my fleeting existance , and study it philosophically , to pursue degrees of understanding . Remember the most important thing , A degree in philosophy or psychology does,nt always mean your clever , a lot of times highly intellectual people with Phd,s lack common sense and cant operate in the world quite as normally as the rest of us .
Agreed
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And if man had a “divine spirit†he would be confined by it.
A “spirit†trying to rediscover itself; being lost to itself in existence for no apparent reason.
But what clever ways man has of comforting himself and what methods he employs to escape the responsibility of his own existence.
The meaninglessness of life shouldn’t distress us but it should be appreciated as an unrealized possibility; the very thing that gives us a choice, that gives us breath, that makes our life our own.
The absence of an absolute is what produces existence and so we reflect it in our very being, as need, as hope, as purpose that motivates us, as a projected purpose we wish to realize.
We then become aware that our every desire is often the secret desire of our own cessation, through completion.
We seek self-realization knowing full well that it if it were possible it would mean our own obsolescence.
We dream of an ultimate end, a perfection, an absolute that would make existence meaningless; it exists, it must exist, to guide us towards its end so as to escape from the despair of our own culpability, to escape from the solitude and emptiness of our ‘self’.
We dream of enslavement in a prison we characterize as “divine†because it absolves us of our burdens.
Our “spirit†or essence must be characterized by an otherness, so that we can turn away from the horror of the void we peer into every time we seek a self.
The creation reflects the creator.
Existence is absurd.
When we observe it in the other, we call it comedy.
When we observe it in ourselves, we call it tragedy.
And isn’t all philosophy, basically, a “learning of the human condition�
The practicality or impracticality of information isn’t a given in the information itself. If it were then there would be meaning there already.
Information is given practicality or impracticality by the mind possesing it.
Any abstract philosophical construct is useless if it is only used as mind-candy where we sit around deconstructing it endlessly, analyzing it over and over again and from different perspectives repeating catch-phrases and pointing back to others who have done a better job of describing its patterns and parameters, parroting them and simply acting as mouthpieces for what we believe they said or what they meant, like academicians and institutionalized minds do, or it can be related back to our own living experiences and we can find connections with other existences and we can construct strategies to facilitates the purposes we give to our own everyday living.
Or unless I can assimilate it into my own reality and make it practical.
The practical applications of knowledge are up to you to find and to create and not the responsibility of the other to give them to you. Although, most often, the other does so as to realize his own purposes by assimilating you into their structures.
It is obvious that in our present educational system knowledge is given and the purpose of the knowledge is given along with it, as well.
(What to think not how to think)
This is what creates an institutionalized mind.
Information is offered and then the premises within which this information is to be used or allowed to be used is offered as being a part of the information itself.
Then you are a prejudiced mind, contained within the meanings and purposes offered by the system of thought you call Buddhism and which is the “relief†all religions offer to weary, fearful minds who need concreteness and absolutes so as to not feel the despair of their existence.
It is, I think, what Heidegger was referring to with the concept of “theynessâ€.
We humans lose ourselves in the “they†so as to escape from the “Iâ€.
It is the fundamental principle behind mass psychology and population control.
It is the Will to Power through other means. Slave mentality, seeking strength through unification.
And why is “being a good person†a given for you as the “only thing we can do�
Or, why is asking what “good†means and whom does this “goodness†serve, seem to be questions you’ve already sufficiently answered?
The attraction to finality is the mind’s outer projection.
It wants to be given a final destination so that it ceases to feel lost and unsure.
What something is, in relation to us, is decided by us or we are told by another.
A mountain is nothing and we decide or are taught that it is a challenge or an obstacle, that it is suffering or a pinnacle, that it is good or bad.
There is no “truth†to find, either in us or in the other, we call outside us.
What there is is a constant striving towards a truth, our truth, which gives purpose and meaning to our existence and which constitutes our freedom to choose a purpose.
What you find in you is a reason to persist towards a goal you designate as your truth, knowing that you will never attain it and coming to terms with this unrealizable realization.
So, for you, the unexamined life is the only life worth living?
How quintessentially religious of you.
It is, in my experience, an integral part of every meme that it should include in its dogma and insinuations a discouragement of espace.
Religious memes, in particular, contain elements for their own preservation – call it a survival code – within them which prohibit or limit the amount of resistance the mind’s infected by them are allowed.
Just as my identity, my character, is determined by the limits I place on my being, on my acting, so too an ideology finds an identity by placing self-imposed limits on itself.
If, for you, this constitutes “wasting your timeâ€, then it will certainly be a waste of time.
If anything in a “Godless†universe you would have all the more reason to comprehend humanity.
If the only purpose to life you consider meaningful is its continuance, after death, (which is a contradiction in terms) then you will certainly require the existence of an absolute being to give you purpose.
Good thing then that, for people like you, religions do just that.
Therin rests their power of persuasion.
If your vanity is so large as to be contented only with infusing your ephemeral existence with holiness or with an absolute sense of purpose or with the possibility of eternity, then how much of a Buddhist are you really?
How free are you, really?
I don’t know who “the rest of us†are but I agree that a degree means little except to the imbecile that is so obtuse as to glorify anything possesses more information than it is or that takes communal decrees of quality as being superior to its own.
The error of confusing information for awareness is a very human one.
One reason why philosophy professors are not, necessarily, philosophers or why art teachers are not, necessarily, artists.
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Is,nt it
Im not religious , I dont have a religion
Extremely free , such are the blessings in my life
Im not Buddhist . I dont believe you understand what I,ve been saying .
I examine life yes , but I dont need to know the exact reason for why Im here or what I am . Bottom line is Im here , and Im content , happy much of the time
Of course you do . You call people that believe in heaven imbeciles . That means you think you know the truth of the matter , that there is no heaven , and this is what makes them imbeciles to you , the fact that in your head you think you know the truth . Nothing wrong with that , but then admit that you do " declare truth "
I have no responsibility to you or anyone else in a godless world .
Philosophy is part of life , not life itself , nor does it answer anything about what life is really . It is relevant , but there are so many other more important things
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I think that Satyr fella has his own personal philosophy, a lot like that uni guy. He don’t have to splain himself according to you ideas only to his.
Read me?
If somethin don’t make sense according to the man’s own internal logic then call him on it. Yah can’t say though that your internal logic doesn’t go along with mine, because who gives a flyin shit!
You can only contrast his world to yours.
Don’t be a bousouzee fascist.
Peace.
I said earlier that I had thought of the femminization of man before. I just re-read Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind and believe that the original idea that came into my mind came from this book.
A few months ago I came to the conclusion while on the way home from college that what we need in the world is the ressurection of meaning, but all I could get to was we ourselves give meaning. I could not answer the question about if this meaning we give ourselves was right or not. I don’t know if you can or how that could be done. 
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These are only your experiences as a man , I dont or have,nt experienced this " flattening of gender differences . I in no way feel threatened by women . The facts are we are equal in very different ways .
I think it could actually be fun having a beer with you " the levelling of man " , thats funny .
" In truth " ? There you are , this is what I mean when I say you must at least admit you " declare truth " , since you denied you do . Even so , I dont believe what you,ve said is the truth . I suggest this is why your opinion about homosexuals perplexes you .
What feeling do you have towards gay men when you meet them ? Do you feel revulsion or indiffence ?
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And we are all here discussing our experiences.
Well, some come here to only discuss another’s experiences and so shed light on their own but the primary motivation is of trying to comprehend the experience of existing.
I haven’t experienced racial discrimination but I imagine it still occurs and I have observed others experiencing it or claiming to have experienced it.
If you have not become aware of any gender flattening where men and women are made indistinct through institutionalization, then that is your experience.
If it soothes your ego to feel courageous in the face of women, while imagining me cowering behind my analysis, then continue doing so.
=D> I enjoy it.
All pursuit of knowledge is spurred on by an anxiety concerning the unknown. The unknown is that which we fail to find a pattern to and so feel its unpredictability as undesirable. It, the other, the unknown, is not controlled by us and so it limits our actions (freedom).
To know is to cease being threatened and determined by what is known.
Is that the same as being the same in equal ways?
I wonder if you perceive your own anxieties behind your opinions.
I wonder if your need for equality is not rooted in some concern about inadequacy or being worthy or being alone and shunned.
Isn’t it? 
I declare a perspective that is more able to explain the phenomena that confront human existence.
It is spoken as my truth but not held as absolute since it is doubted and only thought of as superior than another.
Shall I include a disclaimer with every statement of opinion?
Every opinion uttered is uttered as truth by the mind stating it.
And this is your truth.
If it is superior or inferior to my own is yet to be decided.
And I would suggest that what originally is perplexing to me is made less so or it is made mundane and predictable and comprehensible by exploring and understanding it.
Women no more threaten me than homosexuals perplex me, these days.
Then again human behavior in general is made ordinary and understandable through observation, just like a bear’s behavior is made predictable and understandable when one grasps the patterns that dictate its actions.
This does not mean that the bear has become less dangerous to me but that in knowing its patterns of behavior, the needs that motivate and cause it to act, I can construct strategies of avoiding it or of controlling it or of placating and evading it.
My original anxiety is turned away from hatred, as a bear can only be a bear and would require an act of Will to escape the genetic patterns that govern its existence (an act of Will guided by self-awareness), and becomes concern or indifference or entertainment, as the case may be.
In all honesty I feel indifferent towards all men that show few signs of self-awareness.
What another does to his body or what he finds pleasurable is only interesting to me from a behavioural perspective.
But if one chooses to identify himself, as a being, with a sexual act then I would say that the act of allowing another man to penetrate him, with no procreative probability, I find degrading and something that points to deeper psychological and existential weaknesses.
I have said this before.
Sex, like feeding and drinking and breathing, are all biological functions revealing the fundamental lack in every existence, which both facilitates and makes life possible and necessary.
Sex and sexuality is a result of an inherit weakness; a method of dealing with an absence in the hypothetical unity of the self, held together and finding identity through consciousness – consciousness of the Other.
I am that which I am not or I am that which I participate in or associate with or idealize or hope for, or act upon.
Sex is an answer to mortality, which points to an instability, a lack of permanence and which, in turn, mirrors the environment, the universe, the creator which produces it or allows it to be possible or makes it possible.
{Sartre’s Nothingness – It is my Nothingness which allows me the choice of choosing my identity}
As such it demands a sacrifice from the individual faced with its own mortality and lack as a single entity. One does not procreate or indulge in sex reasonably and willingly. He is coerced and forced into the option by the limitations of his biological existence.
One can deny this biological imperative. {Asceticism – the dominance of reason over need}
I am male because I am fundamentally flawed and have been manipulated by multiple environmental conditions into playing a biological role within a specific environment.
An environment I find myself in but I do not choose.
My identity then is constructed by how I choose to deal with my predicament and how I pursue my own completion.
{Nietzsche’s Will to Power – completion is improbable but it becomes the ideal which characterizes me as a being. I am what I hope to be.}
This forces the need for tolerance of the other and a unification with the other. The offspring becomes the other, which is partly a self, made necessary by the original self’s lack. It is a desperate projection of self (partial self) in time.
Love then becomes the inebriation of the mind that defines identity so as to facilitate this sacrifice of self. It is a way of making the individual, isolated, imperfect mind identify with a larger unity, within which it escapes its individual despair within a hoped for larger identity with a greater probability of correcting or filling this inherit absence.
{Religion, Nationalism, Holism}
The need for anything is an expression of a lack that requires correcting or fulfilling.
If this need is not corrected or fulfilled it grows until it reaches a level of consciousness experienced as suffering and pain. If it is still denied it results in the disassimilation of the unity that experienced it. The placation the fulfillment and the correction of the disturbance/imbalance, we call need, results in the lessening of the conscious apprehension of the lack and is experienced as pleasure.
Pleasure is the alleviation of the sensation of one’s own lack.
{Schopenhauer}
Life then becomes a lack perpetually feeding on itself in a loop of dependence. Lack feeds on lack and is never satisfied because it seeks fulfilment in the lacking.
This loop is thought of an meaningless. The more aware eventually realize the futility of the enterprise {Job} they are involved in and either long for their own termination or find everything unworthy of effort {Nihilism}or come to terms with it or turn to an imagined escape out of the puzzle {God}.
For these reasons I believe that sex not only exposes an existential anxiety and fundamental lack but it also exposes individual anxieties and lacks, in particular.
Someone enjoying bestiality or coprophilia or pedophilia or whatever, is indubitably exposing a deeper existential and psychological weakness which can also reveal experiential effects on how this weakness has been shaped and directed through time; how this inherit lack has manifested itself in a particular existence.
Just like life is a product of conflict and flux, creating the infinite construction and deconstruction of ephemeral forms and unities, we can call relationships, so behaviour is created by how a living entity is shaped by this conflict and flux, we can call experience.
I have come to realize that the only response to an indifferent universe is to reciprocate with indifference.
This does not mean the total detachment from life but an unconcern with the outcome.
The more one reaches for the less one becomes worthy of what is reached for.
It’s one of those paradoxes of existence which makes it absurd.
Tedious Old Fart,
Lately you have a theme that might be expressed, “Indulge yourself” Or maybe, “If it feels good, do it.” Is this a life long path you have walked or more of a recent discovery?
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Male and female are equal in my opinion . Any woman I,ve been out with , we have been in a relationship where we are both equal . If you think the majority of men are now experiencing a distinct feeling of having no role to fill , and are unequal to women , then your only speaking for yourself and those like you is,nt it
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I feel no more “threatened†by a female other than I do from a male other.
The element of the unknown and unknowable is present in both cases. The added alien characteristic of femininity is no longer a mystery to me.
It is another one of those myths that is perpetuated through cultural and social prejudices.
At its core the feminine mystique is driven by a need to make something appear more than it really is. It is a way of insinuating that there is much more going on there and so something much more powerful and unknowable.
The mystique of femininity is one that has been created during a romantic age when females had to be placed on a pedestal which would justify romance as a magical force of nature.
Love, in general, has been mystified so as to alleviate human existential insecurities and the inherit isolation of consciousness.
But your need to scale my emotions is telling.
How threatened do you feel by reality and distinction and conflict and competition and inequality?
The popular method of dealing with an uncomfortable perspective by insinuating some deviance or some illness or some insecurity greater than the popular norm, is often used when arguments cannot be found and all that is left to the one feeling attacked by an opinion, is to cast aspersions about the opinion holder’s mental stability and objectivity.
It is easy to dismiss racism, for example, just by playing upon the popular cultural sentiments concerning equality and human dignity and the sanctity of life and to insinuate that the racist is sick or a product of dysfunction or suffering from irrational emotional upheavals.
Then again we never recognize how adhering to popular beliefs and acceptable norms can be also the product of the same forces upon the human mind.
Fear is a fundamental motivator behind all human action. To pretend that it participates in greater amounts behind someone else’s opinions than your own is to submit to its terror.
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Sorry about that , I edited the post after you replied without seeing your reply first
Understand I can say exactly the same things about what your words tell me
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That was ….beautiful. sniff sniff
Funny how the universe is governed by the creative and destructive interactions of unequal phenomena and yet you’ve managed to participate in harmonious, perfectly balanced relationships.
I wonder how aware you are of what is occurring or how you, subsequently, explain the failure of these relationships
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Your theory about the world being " governed " by destructive interactions of unequal phenomena may have an element of truth , but for some reason your failing to look at the opposite side of the coin , there is chaos and destruction but there is also harmony , equality , relationships which are as close to perfect as they can be .
Understand that what you think is occurring may only in fact be an illusion , as I am willing to admit that some of what I believe may be an illusion also
My reality is most excellent , what a splendid , unthreatened life I have
Distinction is good
Everyone fears conflict to a degree , nothing unusual in that , but some more than others
Competition is natural , nothing to feel threatened about by competing
Im treated by people I meet as an equal , no matter if they are man or woman
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