I mentioned once that a less pleasant part of using the army as a stepping stone out of Britain was spending 3 months in Northern Ireland, driving a Saracen armoured vehicle around.
It introduced me to how mean people can be, though that was in training more than in Ireland. It also taught me something about dealing with stress, which came in handy in emergencies as a nurse.
Just goes to show you learn in all circumstances, whether you like it or not.
Ironic. Arent you too just a âpowerâ who wants to tell me things? Who wants to suggest to me what is right and wrong, and what should and should not be?
You dropping this sentence on the wrong person Bob. I have been abandoned by humanity and i abandoned humanity as well. I do not conform to anyone.
Neither left or right, religious or atheist, heaven or hell.
And Iâm sure you do, man. Would you like to mansplain it? For a moment there I thought you were having reading comprehension problems. Not very practical for a âphilosophy forumâ.
I think itâs highly relevant, considering your âholier than thouâ moralising and nauseating virtue-signalling. So you brutalised the Irish as a âstepping stoneâ out of England. How very self-sacrificing of you.
Lol, I am a seventyone year old who just spent two months recovering from cancer. Not much power in that, Iâm afraid.
Now the pity card and guilt-shaming. Shameless man 
Explain it to you? Heavens no. From what I can tell from my extremely limited perspective, you always bring the right balance between bile and substance to the threads you participate in. Sometimes you even focus on the topic. You have nothing to learn from anyone. Thatâs why I was asking you questions. And look now Iâve hijacked the thread with my admiration. Iâll stop fanboying here.
Not through the means of physical force or insisting. Just by declaring moral frameworks. What is good, what is bad, how things are supposed to be and how they are not supposed to be.
I respect your own choice and belief.
I do question larger frameworks like your image however. Specifically because i do not conform.
I respect Jesus and his teachings too. I think he reached a level of enlightenment, love and grace as an individual, which is almost a one of a kind level rare with the entirety of our species.
But when that stops being and individual thing, and becomes a teaching and framework for the masses, i will not conform to that either because its a bit of an insane thing to tell your followers to never fight back, turn your other cheek and if push comes to shove, then die and watch your entire family die because the physical is temporal and the spiritual is permanent.
He is. And in being so, he is also completely detached from what it means to be human or a living being.
And the OP qualifies as âphilosophyâ? Ok 
Followers? Or do you mean the people I speak to who are intelligent and independent, and in no way under instruction. I voice an opinion based on observations and experience, but you add some idea of me having followers.
Life is impermanent, but suffering is real. Thinking about ways to reduce suffering isnât power, that is your realm. My realm is one of solidarity and care, each according to their needs and preferences. I donât command, I suggest. Take it or leave it.
Glad you find terrorising Irish children so hilarious Bob. The hysterically laughing emoji was noted. Now go back to preaching about Jebus and âinclusivityâ.
Go and look for someone else to annoy, itâs not working on me.
Removed as premises do not yet justify conclusions
Removed for not adhering to boundary specific limitations.
Sorry Bob for the subsequent removal, but I do have a copy, for further expansion or editing, on request
Many influences shape our lives, and through them we develop relationships with particular people, communities, beliefs, and ways of seeing the world. Most of us nevertheless wish to regard ourselves as normal, because our way of relating to life feels natural to us, and we are understandably reluctant to be labelled as abnormal. Such labels often reveal more about social expectations than about the individuals to whom they are applied.
Yet human beings display an extraordinary range of variation. There are deviations from statistical or biological norms, but these are not necessarily signs of illness or defect. Rather, they remind us that each personâs character and outlook emerge from a unique combination of temperament, relationships, and lived experience, beginning in early childhood. Whether someone is introverted or extroverted, heterosexual or homosexual, to mention only a few well-known examples of human diversity, these traits occur with sufficient frequency that they form part of the normal spectrum of human variation.
At the same time, there are experiences that leave a more disruptive imprint. Trauma, neglect, chronic stress, and other adverse circumstances can contribute to phobias, anxiety disorders, obsessive patterns, neurotic tendencies, and other psychological characteristics that make it more difficult for people to function within what society regards as the norm. These are not simply personal failings but human responses to particular life experiences, and they deserve understanding rather than condemnation.
Beyond these more familiar psychological patterns, we can also observe attitudes that gradually shift from healthy commitment to unhealthy fixation. A deep interest or enthusiasm for a cause, ideology, celebrity, religion, political movement, or even a hobby can enrich a personâs life. Yet there appears to be a point at which enthusiasm crosses an invisible threshold and becomes fanaticism. At that stage, critical reflection gives way to unquestioning certainty, disagreement is perceived as hostility, and oneâs identity becomes inseparable from the object of devotion. The ability to see complexity or to empathise with those holding different views begins to diminish.
Whether this impression is entirely accurate remains open to debate, but it seems that such forms of extreme identification have become increasingly visible in many Western societies. The combination of mass media, social media, algorithmically reinforced echo chambers, political polarisation, and the search for identity and belonging appears to amplify tendencies that have always existed. If so, the challenge is not merely to denounce fanaticism but to understand the psychological, social, and cultural conditions that allow it to flourish. Only by understanding these underlying dynamics can we hope to cultivate healthier forms of commitment and ones that retain conviction while remaining open to dialogue, humility, and the recognition of our shared humanity.
Religion appears to be one of the areas of human life in which particularly intense forms of commitment can emerge. Without making premature judgements about what is normal from the standpoint of any particular religious or secular worldview, it is nevertheless possible to recognise that there comes a point at which certain forms of behaviour begin to undermine the peace and well-being of the wider community. Deep conviction, even when passionately held, need not be a problem in itself. Difficulties arise when conviction becomes so absolute that it leaves no room for disagreement, mutual respect, or peaceful coexistence.
At that stage, the expectation is no longer simply that others should be free to pursue their own beliefs, but that they should conform to the convictions of a minority or accept its standards as binding upon everyone. Such attitudes can erode the trust and reciprocity on which healthy communities depend. A pluralistic society cannot flourish if every group insists that its own worldview must prevail over all others. It requires the more demanding virtue of learning how to live together despite profound differences, protecting the freedom of conscience of all while recognising that no individual or community exists in isolation.
People often find themselves confronted with what appears to be a stark choice: either to follow a deeply held conviction at the risk of alienating themselves from the majority, or to remain with the majority at the cost of suppressing that conviction. Yet the dilemma is seldom as straightforward as it first appears. Our decisions are often shaped by external circumstances, whether family expectations, social pressures, political climates, religious traditions, or the desire to belong, rather than arising from careful introspection. What feels like a free choice may, in reality, be a reaction to forces that have been influencing us for years, often without our conscious awareness.
History also reminds us that the majority is not always right. Many of the moral and social advances we now take for granted began with individuals or small groups willing to stand apart from prevailing opinion. There are times when stepping away from the majority is not an act of rebellion but of integrity, allowing a person to preserve an inner equilibrium that would otherwise be lost. Ironically, what initially appears threatening to the established order may, in the long run, prove beneficial for society as a whole. Reformers, prophets, philosophers, scientists, and advocates for justice have frequently occupied this uncomfortable position.
The challenge, therefore, is not simply whether one belongs to the majority or the minority. Both can be mistaken, and both can become captive to prejudice, ideology, or self-interest. The more fundamental question is whether oneâs convictions have been honestly examined, tempered by experience, informed by compassion, and held with sufficient humility to remain open to correction.
How, then, is one to orient oneâs life amid a bewildering landscape of competing opinions, philosophies, ideologies, institutions, and power structures? When every voice claims authority, every tradition claims wisdom, and every movement promises a better future, by what standard can we discern which path leads towards a fuller humanity? Perhaps the answer lies less in finding a system that claims absolute certainty than in cultivating the qualities that enable genuine discernment: intellectual honesty, humility, empathy, courage, and a willingness to follow the truth wherever it leads, even when that path is neither comfortable nor popular.
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How, then, is one to orient oneâs life amid a bewildering landscape of competing opinions, philosophies, ideologies, institutions, and power structures? When every voice claims authority, every tradition claims wisdom, and every movement promises a better future, by what standard can we discern which path leads towards a fuller humanity? Perhaps the answer lies less in finding a system that claims absolute certainty than in cultivating the qualities that enable genuine discernment: intellectual honesty, humility, empathy, courage, and a willingness to follow the truth wherever it leads, even when that path is neither comfortable nor popular. ( at this point the following morning, now, sat. July 18, 2026, I was able to repeat this question and connect it to the wider malaise of modern Western man, that identity has progressively plays out in day to day life.
Itâs telling that such progression is set doubly modeled, after all and in light of Castorpâs reticence to regress fully descend from the magic that the mountaintop secures, a mysterious summit, a European model of the repeated overview of the chronic mess that can be simplified by an antifragility, produced by getting to higher plateau.
But do we or better said, can we ever get off from the citadella of reason which got us up there in the first place? So notions of existential return haunts us to the end, and it is that cataclysmic terminal that prompts us, as actors caught near a presupposed ending to a human conclusion , an seismic unanswerable question to Darwinâs question that perhaps he couldnât answer the WHY, to,
Why? And then after that, the question of how to do it, becomes possibly more intelligible.
The more thought about, the more the conviction that these are rational questions that could be raised, immediately as frames, frames into which answers could be left hanging, like daliesque crucifictiins apparently left gracelessly hanging in the air, to be filled in why? Before making a choice of the reason for asking the questions in the first place; which way to go,
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Otherwise ones tend to deconstruct themselves in line with the receding fashion allied to the myth of consumption, one simply is stuck in the myth of consuming himsel, in the shadow of doubt.(uncertainty=death to progressive choice.
I think the qualities that enable genuine discernment that I named above, such as intellectual honesty, humility, empathy, courage, and a willingness to follow the truth wherever it leads, even when that path is neither comfortable nor popular, have been identified very early in human history, and perhaps they had a non-literary equivalent in pre-history.
The problem seems to be that to develop a society in which a majority of people engage in this way, it may have to do with literacy, despite it being counterintuitive. Literacy, though gaining great importance, divided a community into two groups, but also slowly took over from the ability to âread the landâ or intuitively understand situations far more spontaneously than we can today.
We tend to call non-literary religion spirituality, but in fact, it comes from literacy and not the unity with our natural environment, where major influences were physical and less spiritual. Sometimes, our ancestors are said to have regarded the sun, thunder, or other physical phenomena as gods, but more probably, it was part of the storytelling that millennia later, we still engage in because thatâs what human beings do. The stories associated natural phenomena with their predicament, but their stories tried to find meaning.
Western manâs predicament, I believe, is all the more problematic, not just because we have forgotten the past and lost abilities we once had, but also because we donât even know or take note of what we have lost. It is not that we are discovering more questions as we go along, but many of the answers that distant ancestors found are lost or disregarded because we misjudge their presentation. It is always about embodying ideals, not believing in them.
I note your allusion to the story we have spoken about in the past, but I would disconnect my answer from that, while acknowledging the metaphor. Your central question seems to be whether we can ever leave the âcitadel of reasonâ that brought us to our present level of understanding, or whether we are forever imprisoned by it.
I think that, though we cannot simply leave reason behind, neither can reason, by itself, complete human development. Our development appears to move through several stages. From a world largely we experience largely through instinct, imagination, emotion, and immediate experience, reason gradually emerges and becomes our primary means of navigating reality.
Though for good reason the Enlightenment elevated reason to an almost sovereign position, and liberated humanity from superstition, enabled science, and fostered remarkable technological and political advances, reason still has limits. Of course, reason excels at analysing, comparing, measuring, predicting, and organising. It can explain how things work with extraordinary precision.
But just as you ask WHY, reason struggles with questions of meaning, value, beauty, love, purpose, and wisdom. It can investigate why a bridge collapses; it cannot determine why a human life is worth living. Those are different kinds of questions, and we seem to have difficulty differentiating them. Contemporary thinkers such as Iain McGilchrist mentioned that we have to differentiate between rationality and reason.
I donât think that maturity requires abandoning reason, but rather, maturity involves integrating reason into a larger way of knowing, just as many traditions describe in various ways of being âreasonableâ.
As you imply, Darwinâs theory brilliantly addresses how species evolve through natural selection, but it intentionally says little about why existence itself should be, or whether evolution has any ultimate meaning. Those are philosophical and theological questions rather than biological ones. Confusing the two has caused much unnecessary controversy.
You seem to be suggesting that before asking how to do something, we must ask why, which is a profound observation. Human beings can become extraordinarily effective at pursuing goals without ever examining whether those goals are worth pursuing. We possess unprecedented power, but not necessarily corresponding wisdom.
Perhaps, we can understand the âcitadel of reasonâ not as a prison but as an essential stage. We build it because, without reason, we remain vulnerable to illusion and impulse. Yet if we mistake the citadel for the whole kingdom, we become confined by our own achievement. The next stage is not to demolish reason but to open its gatesâto allow reason to serve wisdom rather than to reign over it.
From that perspective, the deepest human development is neither irrational nor merely rational. It is the gradual integration of reason, imagination, compassion, intuition, embodied experience, and moral insight into a coherent whole. Only then does the question âWhy?â become fertile, and only then does the question âHow?â become genuinely intelligible.
You can expect an answer already sent but since there is. I Wi-Fi in the motel weâre staying in, it didnât go through. In addition it does not allow copying so that I could paste it here, and Iâll will just wait until I can get with until I can send a reasonably clear similar content.
If that is not possible, I will try and recollect what I answered, because early mornings are my best days to think through âthingsâ and your suggestion that analogically metaphysics needs to be transposed, transcended , is a very fitting observation indeed.
The only reason for sending this in advance , is to not to be looked on as an unkind , unappreciated soul , inconsiderate of othersâ work regarding which way to go.
That being the main reason, others I wish I could attain the format for in a subtextual, more articulate processing formal description, but Iâm afraid that is not possible at the present time, for other underlying developmental issues.
Again Iâm much obliged.
Oh just woke up still in this WiFi lacking place, though soon can move into another, : a preemptive conditional is defaulted relative to the neuro plastic practice I have been doing for the past 8 months, since the start of my illness. Quite aware of your determined struggle to overcome your own illness, I must set the following limit within the growing boundaries evolving herewith.
Bob, we must at least I am, to de-differentiate my idea of cultish magical practices as they relate to the minimal extent which the âcitadellaâ is sustained/ and in conjunction to the supports which buttress my marital relationships, given me excruciating lean to ward the analytical-analyses â- reductive as it will always be in a north mic against a logarithmic one.
To be clear, in order for that view to join in rhythmic variance ( as an oscilloscope could represent wave functions in an interference pattern). I feel that Your wife, has much less clarity that I can actually imagine, as being more or less spiritual. As you may feel along the same extent, the reason behind not indulging and furthering our beginning conversations years ago about TMann, and what I felt to be extremely more than probabilistic occasion to begin our conversation; much more than coincidental
Is telling that there was something incredibly pulling, a magnetic force perhaps, I forget this guys name back a few who really started up on a hypothetical process proven to be factual ( will remember for sure but he is still kind or revelatory)
So whatâs going on then?
Is it, does it revolve around suppressed emotions which relate to these plastic neurons about which recent advances have borne more and more Oandoraâs boxes to open?
Those are not self inscribed limits, conditioning our correspondence doggishly , but real concerns pulling and pushing in a simultaneous synch that severe from reductive analysis .
Could this growing chasm be remarried within/without drastic modification of some rhetorical-stylistic revisionary process?
It has to be of a condition which has grown side by side with the above, that the security issues to do with with what has become = downtradeable , defaulted options, have a necessary edge to them, as an Ochamâs razor required, so thatâs where we both stand- an epochs , a level mutually agreeable as far as clarity is concerned.
Given all that, lastly, that a master/mdkave relationship does need a. Subtle prioritization here, because obviously, You are admittedly a master rhetoraticion merely by what I have read , whereas me, being menoâs slave can only be a sub in a sub in a stack, that limits my role astoundingly.
I write this in all honestly, for me, there is no getting around the truth.