To all concerned - Congratulations on a ‘fine’ thread. It has motivated this 32 year old male to join ILP, and this shall be my first contribution.
Pleasse excuse the brevity of my posts… I’ve always been more of a poet than a prose writer. ( I’m also a lousy typist ).
To the one who calls himself Satyr - Is it the job of a philosopher to simply spell out the way things are, and how they came to be? If this is so then you have done a fine job, but what of ’ Solutions '? You have offered none, short of waiting for ’ World War III ', ’ The Colonisation Of Space ’ or ’ The Next Ice Age ’ to roughen up the world in which we live, in order for REAL men to rise to the top again ?
Peaceful Solutions ( if that’s possible ). First, let’s pick a time…
Let us take the optimistic/pessimistic view, that within a couple of hundred years or so, all the countries of the world will be labelled as ‘developed’… the whole world will be like one big ‘Sweden’ ( sounds boring, I know), the world population will have stopped rising and may even begin to decline, all our industies will be ‘green’ and the planet will slowly start to heal itself… This, perhaps (in my view), is the time to put into effect the social changes necessary to increase men’s sense of worth.
Some suggestions ( some may appear funny, but that is not my intention ) :
All minor legal disputes between men are to be settled in a state-run boxing/wrestling ring.
All children to be ‘home schooled’ by both parents. This will be made possible by job-sharing (each parent working three consecutive days, with four days off, one of which would overlap, creating one ‘whole-family-day’).
A total removal of ‘labour-saving-technology’ from the home, excepting the internet for home-schooling/tele-working ( live like the Amish, when not at work ). This would involve a return for all to small farming homesteads. ( Are there any gay Amish? )
… I could go on, and perhaps I will, if someone is ‘MAN ENOUGH’ to continue along the lines of ’ REALISTIC SOLUTIONS '.
P.S. - I consider MYSELF to be more of a ’ REAL MAN ’ because I have never been to college or university.
To comprehend a phenomenon one must first analyze, deconstruct and dissect it.
How precise and thorough his analysis is and how he can cope with what he finds there will determine the extent and quality and success of his response to it, if and when he chooses to do so.
Yes, assuming that this philosopher believes that his primary responsibility is towards others rather than towards himself.
I am not claiming that this phenomenon is “negative†or “positive†– even if my personal biases might show through the words and phrases I choose to describe it – and so I am not advocating a change.
I have come to believe that both a negative or a positive stance is a sign of weakness and dependence and that the only adequate response to an ever-changing, indifferent universe is adaptive aloofness.
A more practical, if not idealistic, response is that of greater discrimination.
A sensitive palate is not satisfied with any swill but requires a certain quality of wine, even if it can settle for just about any other kind if need be.
A discerning palate seeks out the best grapes, from the best regions, during the best years, to savor.
It is only the taste-impaired that cannot tell the difference and so are satisfied with anything.
As I see it there is no need for mass ascension. The enlightenment of the masses is not necessary nor is it productive.
The slow eradication of external predators has made humanity a predator and victim of itself.
It is now conforming but also fragmenting, in retaliation, creating stresses and fault lines.
The secondary duty of any mind is towards its own kind.
Only they can appreciate and benefit from him as he can only learn from and understand them. The rest are but means to an end. One does not owe them anything.
The solution is parasitical.
One does not free the enslaved or strengthen the weak.
One uses them.
Besides the only power one has is over self.
If this inspires, helps or teaches another, then it is but a happy by-product.
I believe the latter, and that this construct you have named ‘Satyr’ is a nihilist… Is Satyr a nihilist?
The only service that Satyr (your ‘old-hat’ nihilistic puppet?), could provide for me is by acting as a ‘virtual-punch-bag’ comprised of the ball-of-bitterness that exists within myself… In defeating/changing your point of view, I may make myself a happier person.
I know this doesn’t bother Satyr, but does it bother YOU ?
P.S. - All the philosophers of the 19th Century, and previous, most likely knew little or nothing of ‘Prehistoric Anthropology’. Do you not feel that this makes most of their work redundant ?
In what way does the quote you cite support your opinion that I’m a nihilist?
Do you believe that the welfare of the other is a needed ingredient in a purposeful life?
I would admit that the other is through what self is realized or into what one flees or what one uses to create, but this does not presuppose caring for his/her welfare, even if this ingredient has been raised into a holy status by certain religions and cultures, concerned with their own continuance and stability.
So your battle to become ‘happier’ consists of you placing yourself in a position of superiority and casting me – or anyone that confronts or contradict it, for that matter, as the ‘evil’ you must overcome.
Sometimes when we speak of self-overcoming we are merely speaking of overcoming the other, in whose eyes we perceive ourselves.
We overcome in the other what we fear we are ourselves, creating the possibility of escaping the responsibility by both insulting the other and flattering ourselves in the process.
The reasoning is religious.
A religious mind posits a hypothetical to help it cope with its own uncertainty and anxiety.
Fear is a fundamental part of consciousness and a product of need seeking absolute fulfillment.
It is the self seeking oblivion, yet concerned that this will also render its existence superfluous.
It calls it its hope, faith, God, happiness, power or whatever.
It thinks of these terms ambiguously and yet presupposes their absoluteness as a given, against which its own value and possibility is reflected.
The mind wants to maintain consciousness and do away with its necessity.
It then supposes that the non-possession of this beacon of light in the fearful darkness is unbearable, because it is so for itself, and projects this upon the other who appears to not need as much of it as it does.
It supposes that, because life would be intolerable for itself, if it thought as the other does, that it is so for the other, who must be unhappy or bitter or suffering from some illness or dysfunction due to some past experience or inability to cope with this experience.
It imagines the other’s suffering by taking itself as a template.
It questions not its own coping mechanisms, deeming them necessary or preferable to the alternative.
It posits its own methods of coping as superior or preferable to the other’s because it failed at or because it never tried the other’s.
This is often used as an argument for conformity.
Because going against the norm (collective belief) is detrimental to the individual, to varying degrees, the preference is to simply give into it and choose comfort to the uncertain.
Those that choose some degree of the uncertain are considered ill or they are chastised with scarlet-lettering: Unhappy - Cynical - Nihilist.
Inebriation is preferred to lucidity in a room full of drunks.
The drunks seem ‘gay’ and full of life and absorbed by the alcohol, sharing in mass hysteria where each acts as a means for escape for the other.
They appear …happy.
They laugh and sing and back-slap in a Dionysian haze, their reason clouded and completely engaged in the exuberance of sensual life.
In such a room the sober one will appear cynical and serious and no fun at all.
“What’s the matter with him?†the ‘brothers in booze’ will whisper to each other, instinctively knowing that they are brothers only because they share in each others reality, for a moment, and would soon become mortal foes if they were to loose the buzz.
“Why can’t he just loosen up and have some fun?†they will mock him to each other, their voices purposely rising above the noise to become audible.
They will become each other’s support group, casting enemies from their midst.
“This is a party!!!†….after all.
“Who invited him? Jeesh…â€
“Some people just can’t have fun….killjoys!â€
But the next morning a hangover awaits them and their self-medication could not help them escape from the indifferent universe but only make them insensitive to it.
In the end you must decide: Do you want to have fun or to see.
What is “happiness†anyways?
I would submit that happiness, if it is synonymous to power, is just an illusion.
We feel the happiest when we feel we possess choice or our basic needs are met or when we escape ourselves, through the other(s), into a greater scheme or a larger whole which possesses what we lack and where our individual limitations are completed in a unity we think as superior to our own.
It depends on the day and my motive.
Their ignorance is no different than our own.
Knowledge is information which is used to reinterpret and explain a shared and common experience of living.
a small apology… regarding my last post in general, which was a little OTT / personal *
Satyr
For your information… I am not a ‘church-goer’ of any kind. I would, however, describe myself as an ‘optimistic agnostic’… In other words, I believe true knowledge about the existence/non-existence of an after-life is impossible to obtain, which sounds like a ‘definite-maybe’ to me.
To totally deny the existence of ‘any’ spiritual after-life (and I’m not talking about a ‘God’, of which I am much less inclined to believe) without proof is exactly the same as faith… In other words, Satyr, your apparent total belief in it’s non-existence makes you no better than someone who goes to mass every Sunday.
So what are you Satyr, an atheist (with a blind faith) or (much smarter) an agnostic ?
P.S. - Regarding ‘happiness’… What I said was “happier” but I should
have put ‘contented’ ( for that is all any one person deserves ).
Also, to get things back on topic (if you wish), a question :
Isn’t the world of competitive sport (not necessarily team or professional
sport) a ‘real enough’ window into a non-feminized world ?
I don’t know about Satyr but I would agree with the quotation. Man on earth needs these complimentary essential differences between the sexes to help in the cause of collective understanding.
Differences, distinction, discrimination is what constitutes identity.
We define ourselves by what we are not.
Losing identity for the sake of social harmony amounts to sacrificing one’s self for the other(s).
Equality is another word for indistinctness; the creation of a whole within which no diversity exists, besides the one essential for the function of the whole.
Those more willing to do so only expose how little they think of themselves.
Truth is, nobody is like anyone else….yet.
We act, dress, think alike, under the pressures of culture and social living – which itself is a product of fear and insecurity in the face of the unknown.
Nobody is anyone’s equal no matter how you choose to measure it.
Evolution is about differences being selected for fitness or advantage within a given environment. Differences is what makes adaptation possible.
If we choose to think of ourselves as equal under the law, this does not make us so and is quit naïve since even under the law we are not so.
Just a random thought that popped into my head… Guns, or a gun, ‘the great equalizer’, which enables a
four foot tall pin-head to enter into battle with a seven foot tall genius [unarmed]… the small idiot simply
bends his finger onto the trigger and then walks away… the victor.
I know this has ‘something’ to do with the feminization of man… or maybe it’s more the devolution of our
species… same thing really.
[ Note to self: this post is lame… must try harder… less masturbation ]
Of course, a four foot tall genius can also triumph over a seven foot tall pinhead. The reality is that violence doesn’t exactly work that way, and a firearm doesn’t make you a god. It’s just a tool- the only real weapon in a fight is the brain.
American “equality” means that the lessers bitch about and hate the highers, because the highers are seen as perjudiced, evil, bad-guys.
American extremist non-predjudism culturally manifested itself after the propaganda against Adolf Hitler, during and after the world wars.
In opposition to Hitler’s predjudisms, leftist to Hitler, American became an extremist opposite, claiming that all persons were equal, and then bitterly inforcing synthetic equality through cultural, dogmatic ideology.
American femanists are bitch shit. They are not really “Female” or “Femanin”. Don’t let them fool you. They are simply extremists of a flawed and distorted, American ideology.
Bitch shit!!!
Take a flight to Italy, and get away from damned american bitch!
[demote, lots of women in America are still good people, but not all! Don’t start to bitch about what I said!]
You cannot fault someone for striving to attain his/her own perfection.
Soon you realize that it is all part of the inexorable drive to become more, manifesting itself in multiple ways; weakness striving to become strong.
Females, not unlike men, seek to overcome themselves: their individual failings and the absence inherit in being an embodiment of a specific form, evolved and adapted to function within particular environments and defined by a particular role there.
In her striving a woman uses all the arsenals at her disposal and so becomes a part of the cycle of life, the grand scheme of turmoil and conflict, the vast spectacle of change.
God as an authority and conscious otherness, judging and dictating and rewarding/punishing? No.
God as a concept denoting a totality of consciousness? Yes.
God as an unattainable absolute making us feel ashamed for not being able to reach, a magical creature living outside human reality and forcing discipline and worship out of us? No.
Jesus?
Just another idealist, brave enough to die as an example, a naïve idiot, a sublime sage being used and abused by men with none of his simplistic beauty.
