I’ve become exceptionally tolerant over the years.
I hate winking… it implies exclusive knowledge and is used to assert dominance.
I also hate peace signs… there’s no peace here! It’s another form (like winking) to assert taunting and provocation.
Knowing what sends people to hell has relaxed me substantially … I almost feel like smirking when someone does these things because I know everyone will eventually be spiritually awakened and I know they’re going to have to regret all those memories or be sent to hell to be forced to regret all those memories.
Sometimes I get furious at people because they don’t know their hells, I dig into them, they think I’m a jerk, what I did to you emotionally doesn’t remotely resemble hell. As I grow wiser,I realize nicer ways to try to explain things. It’s a process to be sure.
Just for the record, I’m the one here who has managed to think himself into believing that what he does think, feel, say and do is just another manifestation of “I” as an existential contraption rooted in dasein. “I” embedded in an essentially meaningless world edging closer and closer to the abyss that is oblivion.
I don’t even know for sure if I am not compelled by the immutable laws of nature to post this. Let alone the extent to which my understanding of all this is even remotely close to the knowledge it would take to understand my existence in the context of all there is. Going back to the explanation for existence itself.
On the other hand, Ecmandu strikes me as among the least “fractured and fragmented” posters here. Ever and always he is haranguing us with all that he claims to know is true about…everything?
I’m just ever curious about the extent to which he has come to embody a mental “condition” that propels what “I” construe to be these fierce flights of fancy in his brain. After all, there are so many of them. People come to believe all sorts of things. Some hear voices, some hallucinate, some think they are somebody else…some historical figure perhaps. There are so many different ways in which chemically, neurologically our brains propel us to think, feel, say and do things that, in many crucial respects, really are “beyond our control”. I’m certainly no exception.
What does “trudging away” consist of? I don’t really see any sincere effort on your part to really close the gap, more of an attempt to keep discussions like this within the parameters of your game. Hence, my question “What is that?” Hence, why none of the above answers it.
You certainly haven’t made any bones about it. I just think it’s all a bit disingenuous.
But that’s just the thing. My whole aim here is to try to align my interests squarely with yours. I’m trying to play your game. With anyone else on this board, I’ve never had any trouble staying on topic and making progress. Only with you have I repeatedly experienced minimal progress conforming to your own agenda before you bring the discussion back to vague generalities.
And are you saying you have a similar reaction to what I said about Buddhism and its take on the ‘I’?
Yes, this is generally how it ends with you. But this is precisely what I want to understand. Do you consider this a failed attempt at bridging the many gaps you aim to close (between one’s beliefs and moral behaviors, between what we do “here and now” and the fate of the ‘I’ “there and then”, between what we think we know and all there is to know, etc.)? Do you consider this closure on your inquiries (as in: ah, I finally understand what gib believes, though it’s still just another existential contraption)? Is it your way of saying “Not good enough; try again”–as if to insist that all responses from those with whom you engage must fit the mold you expect of such responses? Is it something you could persue further if you felt so inclined, or is there literally nothing you can do with this insofar as your agenda is concerned?
And what do you want people to do with this scenario? Are you trying to extract how they think they would handle such a situation? How they would resolve it once and for all? What they think is the “right” thing to do? What kind of a response would satisfy Biggy here?
As an aside, I must say that you make it out to seem like high stakes interactions like what you describe are not only inevitable and commonplace, but fatally irresolvable. But I think the scenario you describe is actually a rare occurence. Sure we live in a world where people disagree on all manner of important issues, and indeed the stakes do get high, enough to sometimes resort to violence and war, but I personally find this kind of experience extremely rare. Maybe if I were living in a different part of the world, and I felt my convictions were worth standing up for in the face of incredibly dangerous opposition, but to say that “all men and women who choose to interact with others are going to find themselves confronting conflicting goods…” seems a bit hyperbolic, at least for most people here.
This seems a bit more honest, but I think you left out the aspect wanting to challenge others.
Well, if you say so. But there are still millions upon millions of actual flesh and blood human beings around the globe who see the behaviors they choose “here and now” and the fate of their soul “there and then” as anything but a game. And not just in the theocracies.
Now, my own aim on this thread is to explore the Buddhist rendition of it. Buddhists here will either go there or they won’t. Though, again, I’ll admit that my motivation here is, at least in part, embedded in my own murky understanding of this:
“He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest.”
Okay, whatever that means. Though what are the odds it will mean the same thing for both of us? For me, philosophy is as much about what we seem unable to understand as what we can and do. Mostly regarding “I” in the is/ought world. And “I” going back to a complete understanding of existence itself. Though for some here these seem to be trivial pursuits.
If I do say so myself.
What else could it mean given the gap between what any of us think we know about all of this and all that there is to be known? I mean, come on, please, what would a “sincere effort” consist of here? All I can do is to note the conclusions that I have come to “here and now” in my signature threads and then connect the dots between them, morality here and now and immortality there and then.
Given the fact that 1] we all have to confront conflicting goods on this side of the grave and 2] that the spiritual/religious among us connect the dots here to one or another ecclesiastical scripture anchored to one or another rendition of “I” on the other side, what would the least disingenuous approach to this be?
What is your own? Given a particular context.
Again, this is an intellectual contraption.
Choose a particular context that will be recognizable by most of us here. A set of circumstances in which mere mortals connect the dots between morality/enlightenment here and now and one’s fate there and then.
What in this discussion would constitute “progress”?
What are you and others saying about Buddhism in regard to the existential relationship between enlightenment, karma, reincarnation and Nirvana — as this pertains to the lives that they live from day to day?
Again, let’s bring this “general description intellectual contraption” down to earth. You choose the context. Then with more specificity you can note all the instances in which the points you raise here about me become clearer.
The distinction I always come back to here is the manner in which “I” as a moral nihilist have come to understand human interactions when confronting conflicting goods as dasein out in a particular political economy, and the objectivists – God or No God – who insist that the manner in which they have come to understand it is in turn obligatory for all others who wish to think of themselves as rational and virtuous human beings. A further distinction here being those who insist that if one chooses to live one’s life in accordance with rational and ethical and enlightened truths, they will be rewarded on the other side given one or another religious dogma.
But, again, it’s straight back up into the clouds of abstraction:
What on earth are you talking about here? Note an example of what you construe to be behaviors in which moral and political value judgments come into conflict. Reconfigure your words into this discussion.
Just follow the news. You want conflicting goods? How about the coronavirus, the economic crisis, the social unrest? Hundreds and hundreds of issues in which both religious and nonreligious objectivists are hell bent on yanking everyone else onto their own “side”. And then the nihilists who own and operate the global economy. What of their “convictions”?
Hyperbolic? What planet are you living on?
Challenging others is all there is if I have any chance at all of being yanked up out of the brutally grim hole that I have thought myself down into. Only I suspect the more others become queasy about me yanking them down into it instead, the more they react by making me the issue instead.
On the contrary, if the discussion revolved around whether Communism or Capitalism best reflected “human nature”, my argument would suggest that any particular individual’s answer would be rooted in how I construe “I” here to be an existential contraption rooted in dasein; rather than in anything philosophers or ethicists or political scientists can conclude about it.
As for “progress”, that’s easy. For the moral and political objectivists among us – all up and down the ideological spectrum – progress would revolve solely around the extent to which you agreed with them.
So, let’s go back to the points we discussed about Communism on earlier threads.
Let’s see if one of us is now better able to pin down that which would encompass progress here.
‘Progress’ would be pursuing points of mutual interest, dropping points which are not interesting, agreeing on points, conceding points to the other person, reaching new conclusions based on the ideas that come out in the discussion, movement on to new points …
Sure. But since I’m not talking to them, that’s irrelevant.
Yes, you’ve made that abundantly clear. Given that description, you wouldn’t call it a game. I do. I see philosophy, or at least debate, as competition–competition between two contenders over their conflicting views–each one making moves and counter-moves with the goal of “winning”–if not in the eyes of each other then in the eyes of other readers.
For starters, stop being so resistant to the offers of help and suggested solutions to the gap problem that others here bring to the discussion. This is what I’m calling disingenuous. You say you’re trying to close the gap, but I think the impossibility of this task is precisely your point in all your posts, and you’re trying to demonstrate this by challenging others to make the attempt–dressing it up as a plea for help–and then putting every effort into tearing apart and rejecting those attempts with response like “well, that to me is just another intellectual contraption”.
^ Similar response to this. A more “ingenuous” approach would be to be more honest about your true motives. I don’t think you’re simply trying to connect those dots the same as everyone else–as if once you’ve made the connection, you could save the world by offering it to all those seekers–but an attempt to prove that it cannot be done. I think your motive runs opposite to trying to connect the dots, but to dismantle any attempt by others to do so.
What? My least disingenuous approach to 1) and 2) above? I live a relatively peaceful lifestyle and engage with people with whom any “conflicting goods” (whatever that means) are minimal and trivial. (This is why I described your earlier statement on this front as hyperbolic–though I know for many others it’s not.) I don’t feel a pressing urgency to deal with 1) all that much. I feel like I’m lucky enough to have a life and live in a place in the world where 1) more or less deals with itself. As for 2), I have my beliefs about the afterlife, but again, I don’t feel this is a pressing urgency that demands a kind of rigorous and serious approach. I don’t even feel I have to justify it with flawless logic and objective demonstration. It just sort of sits there in my mind as what I currently believe for the moment.
I’ll give you a particular context if you want, but we already tried that with my Buddhist persona, and that seemed to lead nowhere. I’d prefer to resume that than start a new one with respect to my approach to 1) and 2).
So if my interests don’t align with yours, you don’t see the point in pursuing the discussion further, but if they do, it’s just another intellectual contraption? Is there space here for a win?
Well, let’s resume where we left off with the Buddhist scenario. You gave the context–a murderer on death row–how do I as a Buddhist alleviate the suffering involved in this scenario when it seems the alleviation of each party’s suffering is mutually exclusive with the other’s? My response wasn’t so much to address how I would alleviate everyone involved’s suffering but to do what I can (as a Buddhist) to offer a bit of alleviation to whichever party is willing to lean on me for such alleviation–regardless of which party that is–the only caveat being I don’t think it would be a good idea to engage both parties at the same time. I’m not a perfect person (whether as this phony Buddhist I’m pretending to be or IRL) and I can’t resolve the grand scale problems you seem to be interested in–but I can do whatever’s in my power to move a bit closer.
Admittedly, this focus on a particular scenario seems to lose focus on the broader question you asked–morality/enlightenment here and now and one’s fate there and then–but maybe that’s the problem with particular contexts–being particular means coming down from the vagueries of abstract generalities. Nonetheless, I feel we can still connect this particular scenario with the other points you asked about if we give it a chance at least for a few iterations.
^ A few more iterations and a response from you that shows me you’re sticking to your claimed agenda is what I would call progress.
I actually answered this question in several places above. I prefer not to find the quotes and paste them here (I’m lazy) but you know we’ve gone into very specific details about what I’m saying about Buddhism in regards to [yada yada yada]. Not that you’re obligated to understand them, but you could reference specific things I’ve said and ask what I meant by those.
I didn’t raise any points about you. I asked a series of questions (which you’re not answering ← a lack of progress). I’m trying to understand what it means to you when you say things like “that’s just another intellectual contraption” or “well, if that’s what you believe in your head, I guess that works for you; as for me however [yada yada nihilism yada meaninglessness yada other side of the grave etc].” Does it meet your goals? Does it frustrate them? Does it confuse you? Is it just a comment on where we are in conversation? I don’t even understand what it means to bring these questions into a particular context, especially given that they come from a particular context–the discussion that invoked them–so why don’t you look at that to understand their context?
Again, back to vague generalities. ^ I call this a lack of progress because it doesn’t answer my question. You’re pointing out a couple distinctions you focus on when you ask others for particular contexts, but I’m asking what a response from them would look like such that you get a clear picture of the distinctions you’re looking for. You know what would help? If you gave a hypothetical example of what a discussion between you and an objectivist would look like. You pose your questions, and then write a response from a hypothetical objectivist that would satisfy your inquiries.
How 'bout the BLM movement? That’s a prime example of moral/political value judgments coming into conflict if there ever was one. My point is that most people on this board (I could be terribly wrong here) typically aren’t forced to engage in the thick of the conflicts surrounding the BLM movement on a regular basis (though this movement and others related to it seem to be picking up momentum pretty fast and I’m not sure how much longer most Americans, or even Canadians, can stay out of it).
What of their convictions? I assume when you engage others on this board with your questions, the focus is on their convictions. My point was that when you bring up the point about having sooner or later to engage with particular people out in a particular world over particular conflicts [yada yada Biggy-talk yada], you make it out to seem like unless we figure out how to connect the dots once and for all, we’re all doomed–doomed–to get pulled into these conflicts with such intensity that we’ll have a major crisis on our hands–violence, war, oppression, death, you name it; again, I’m not saying this isn’t commonplace throughout the world or throughout history, just not as commonplace amongst most of the members on this board with whom you engage (hence, my describing it as a hyperbole).
And rightfully so. When people recognize what you’re trying to do (in addition to the points you’re making), you are an issue. Not that they have no choices, but they have options on how to react, and making you the issue is one of them. This is different from throwing ad homs when you don’t like what another is saying, it’s a response to your “disingenuous” posturing.
To tell you the truth, I wasn’t 100% sure about that term myself. I’m not sure what I experience with most others here that I don’t with Biggy I’d call progress. I just meant most people are able to keep the discussion on track no matter where it goes. So if it starts with questioning the existence of God, it could end with a discussion on the corruption of the health care system. With Biggy, it could start with questioning the existence of God (because that falls within the domain of his interests) but as soon as the conversation moves outside this domain, he loses the ability to focus and returns to his own familiar waters.
The irony is that this seems to happen most notably when you actually give him the particular contexts he asks for.
The Role of Karma in Buddhist Morality
Barbara O’Brien
So, what do both wisdom and compassion share in common here? Exactly: They are discussed and assessed solely in a world of words.
Is this the “core of Buddhist morality”?
What examples of wisdom and compassion in what set of circumstances? Examples that eventually come around to how Buddhists link that to enlightenment, karma, reincarnation and Nirvana.
Now, myself, I am far more interested in taking wisdom and compassion – construed by me to be psychological triggers – and examining them in regard to situations that most of us will be familiar with. Thinking about them in ways that either comfort and console us more or less.
In other words, for the Buddhists among us, what does it mean to embody wisdom and compassion when immersed in a context in which different sides are tugging those words – morally and politically – in very different directions? In regard to, say, abortion. How are wisdom and compassion understood by Buddhists here. And how is this frame of mind [and the behaviors that follow it] intertwined in an understanding of enlightenment, karma, reincarnation and Nirvana.
Just a comment on this quote–another one of the bones I have with Buddhism, or at least modern day interpretations of it–particularly this part here:
“Our lives are interconnected with the lives of all beings. And it is this sense of interconnection,coupled with an appreciation of cause and effect, that is the true core of Buddhist morality.”
^ Is this what the Buddha meant when he said all is one? (Did he say this? I’m assuming all the core tenets of Buddhism came, in one way or another, from the teachings of the Buddha.)
I hear this interpretation often–that what “all is one” means is that we are all “interconnected”, that everything we do affects other people. Or this: “all is one” means cause and effect pertains to everything in the universe, that there is no action that doesn’t invoke some reaction in some (or all) other things in the universe (think Newton’s universal gravitation, or quantum entanglement). Did the Buddha have advanced scientific knowledge? Was he 2000 years ahead of Newton? Did he somehow have insight into the reality of quantum entanglement?
If this were all there is to “all is one”, why aren’t we all enlightened today? These aren’t hard concepts to grasp today. Scientists today understand cause and effect, universal gravitation, quantum entanglement, and so on, and it just seems common sense that we are all interconnected in the sense that everything we do will have some affect to one degree or another on others. Yet I don’t think this makes us any more enlightened than we would be if we weren’t aware of these things, at least not in the original Buddhist sense.
I think “all is one” means something a little deeper than this, something not nearly as obvious. I think we’re grasping at straws when we interpret it in cause/effect terms, or as “interconnection” with each other–these are just the closest things we have in the modern day to the idea that “all is one”; the part that annoys me is when people take these shoddy approximations and talk about them as if they truly grasp the ultimate meaning of the Buddha’s original insight. ← Yeah, right. You have no idea what “all is one” means.
I have a theory of consciousness that offers another interpretation which has nothing to do with cause/effect or the interconnections we share with others. My theory is that consciousness is a facet of all physicality–everything experiences, not just brains–and therefore the universe has consciousness–it is its own being; it gets even more abstract than this: the consciousness of the universe is experienced as a single thing–“uniform and homogeneous” as I say–not a complex multitude of things–it is one; furthermore, this consciousness is the core of its being, just as all consciousnesses, those of individual beings, is the core of our being, and physical reality is a projection of the experiences that come out of consciousness; in other words, consciousness is the true reality and the things experienced–physical reality, the material world–is only a by-product of this true reality. And just to take it one step further–I have this concept I call “equivalence” which is to be contrasted with “identity”–so whereas we could say a rock is identical to the collection of atoms that make it up, we wouldn’t say this about the average test score of a class in relation to each student’s individual test score, or the color orange we see on a screen in relation to the red, green, and blue we would see if we zoomed in on the individual pixels (physical pixels, not digital); orange is a different color than red, green, or blue–even the group of red, green, and blue. Not one student may have gotten the average test score. So identity doesn’t work here; but equivalence does. We can say the average test score is equivalent to the students’ test scores taken collectively. Orange is equivalent to mostly red, some green, and a tiny bit of blue. The concept of equivalence, at least my rendition of it as it applies to my theory of consciousness, says that while it doesn’t connote identity, it still shares the function of interchangeability with identity–a rock can be interchanged, at least in words, at least conceptually, with the atoms that make it up. And so can the average test score with the whole collection of individual student test scores (in fact, that’s the whole point of deriving an average). This works to connect the singular experience of the universe as a whole to the multitudinous experiences–non-uniform and heterogeneous–that individual beings experience. I don’t think the oneness that the universe experiences itself to be (and is) can be said to be just the collection of individual experiences we and everything else in the universe have–I think the whole is more than the sum of its parts–but it is equivalent–and it can be interchanged with it in the sense that there is no fact of the matter whether we are really this one thing the universe ultimately is or we are really these individual beings we experience ourselves to be. We are part of a collective of beings, and this collective is equivalent to, and therefore is interchangeable with, the universe as a singular thing.
^ That’s kind of a ramble, but I present it to show there are other–not-so-obvious, not-so-common-sense–ways to interpret “all is one”. I have no idea if this idea is what the Buddha had in mind–I derived it through a completely independent process of thinking than whatever the Buddha underwent (or maybe not; I have no idea what the Buddha underwent); the point is, we have no way of knowing what “all is one” really means, and I have serious doubts it’s as simple as universal gravitation or our emotional connections to other people.
Fine. But given my own interest in religion, the fact that the overwhelming preponderance of religious adherents around the globe clearly are intent on connecting these dots existentially…? This [to me] speaks volumes regarding the nature of religion itself. It’s not a game to them and the manner in which you presume this is all a game to me encompasses only the gap between us.
I’m not suggesting I’m closer to the truth than you are, only that our motivation and intention seem to be trekking down different paths. And that, for any particular one of us, truth itself here is always subject to change given new experiences, new relationships and access to new information, knowledge and ideas.
Again, fine. But the bottom line [mine] is that, to the extent we choose to interact with others, rules of behaviors are a necessity. Call them morality, call them something else. And millions of us do connect the dots between them and the fate of “I” the other side. So there is certainly a gap between the word games that philosophers might play on threads like this and the manner in which religions out in the world precipitate very real conflicts, precipitating very real consequences, that often have a profound impact on the lives of millions.
Introduce the intellectual construct of “games” to these folks.
What can I say: let’s focus the exchange here on a set of circumstances relating to morality/immortality in which you can point out specifically the suggestions of others. And the manner in which I refuse their help.
Also, over and again, I aim my arguments here at those religious objectivists who insist that others can only be helped in connecting the morality/immortality dots by embracing their own dogmatic/denominational agenda.
I’ve already acknowledged the embodied complexities here:
Tell me this isn’t the embodiment of dasein. Given the life that you have lived and the circumstances in which you now find yourself, this is how you have become predisposed to think about the world around you. Here and now. And, like you say, “[t]his is why I described your earlier statement on this front as hyperbolic–though I know for many others it’s not”.
That’s basically how it works all right. At least until you become a religious objectivist/zealot. Then it’s also how it ought to work for everyone else too. I’m mainly curious as to how Buddhists connect these dots given a No God religion.
As for the meaning of “conflicted goods”, well, I took that from the manner in which William Barrett described “rival goods” here:
I merely deconstruct the “self” here more radically still: as a “fractured and fragmented” frame of mind.
No, I would just prefer that when we discuss “aligning our interests” or “making progress”, it be in regard to an actual set of circumstances involving morality/enlightenment on this side of the grave and immortality/reincarnation of the other side of it. How are these words fleshed out given a situation that most here would be familiar with.
This part:
Okay, you “alleviate” suffering. But how is alleviating the suffering on one side not probably going to aggravate it on the other side? And if you are a Buddhist confronting a context of this sort, how is enlightenment, karma, reincarnation and Nirvana understood given the very, very real intertwining of “I” here and now and “I” there and then. Once we move beyond Buddhism’s capacity to offer up the sort of stuff that Karpel Tunnel and others here focus on.
Again, the stuff – morality —> immortality – that most interest me about religion. The stuff that, if not the most important thing to others, would/should/could incline them to ignore my posts.
And I’m certainly not arguing that they ought to be interested in my own propensities here, only that these are the things that do interest me about religion most of all.
But my point in regard to the Buddhists among us is to focus in on sets of circumstances in order to illustrate texts of this sort. I have made any number of attempts involving any number of moral and political conflicts to describe why “I” am fractured and fragmented in regard to both morality and immortality. In fact, I created a whole thread of my own in order to explore this very thing: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=186929
And then to everyone I always request that they choose a context involving behaviors that are of particular importance to them.
Instead, the “question” you want answered here…
…pertains to no particular context at all.
Again, my own interest here in regard to Buddhism revolves around individual Buddhists who find their own lives becoming embedded in actual contexts that do involve race relations…how is their understanding of enlightenment and karma on this side of the grave factored into the behaviors they choose in regard to what they believe regarding the fate of “I” on the other side of it.
The role that religion plays in their day to day lives. My “thing” here.
This part:
No, my focus revolves around the extent to which the moral, political and religious convictions of any particular individual are derived more from the manner in I construe the “self” here as an existential construction/deconstruction/reconstruction rooted in dasein from the cradle to the grave; or, instead essentially in a scientific or philosophical or theological assessment able to be demonstrated as obligatory for all rational/virtuous human beings.
Again and again and again: we need a context here. What particular conflict in this particular world [our own] construed in what particular way?
You choose it. And, then, when you do in regard to an issue like capital punishment above, I react insofar as my own interest here revolves around how individual Buddhists address it in terms of the main components of their own religious denomination.
