Scouts

In response to the last paragraph first. In any single moment or event all degrees of the spectrum are present. When you look at a ray of sunlight, all the colors of the spectrum are present although you don't recognize it because the light hadn't yet been polarized through your lens of personal attention. The degree that appears to you, high or low, is the degree you focus on. Everything you see is reflected light. Phenomena have no anthropocentric value apart from the evaluation. You give the world all the meaning it has for you.

In respect to yin and yang there is one reality perceived through a mind of divided attentions and affections. You can never really be sure if this moment is friendly to you or not and from this split state of mind, you do not feel free to love but have at your disposal suspicion at best, to viciousness at worst.
(A note: My pronouns are meant as generalities and it is true for me as I claim for you.)

I do not believe that this world is a test for your development into some superior thing. I believe that idea to be purely vain apprehension and a degree of self loathing to say that if you didn't have something to learn you wouldn't be here. That opinion doesn't really value this life.

From the perspective of a split mind there is good reason for contention. To it, wisdom is good judgment. To those who see real things wisdom is knowing that we don't have enough information to reliably arbitrate life's repute. Good and bad are accusations only. The measure you give, measure being, relative value, is the measure you receive.

 

I agree with your last (first) whole paragraph and see that and live in that way. That's the spectrum I was talking about a few pages ago.

I'm not suggesting this life is a test of any sort. This isn't a rehearsal.

I only suggest we embrace all aspects of being human which include the fact that we can choose right wrong an in between which is ego which is judgement. It is useful. And that's all. People think ego isn't useful should rather not be human. Because all human have ego. And to say they don't is rather a denial or they have reached a state that the body isn't needed. Nether is arguing etc. and death and fear don't exist . Understand?

 

See I don't think nor has it been my experience that the perception of good and bad or right and wrong, in a moral sense as opposed to sensing phenomena, is any kind of accepting all degrees. As it practically plays out, you embrace that which you find pleasing and are averse to what you find unpleasant. Taste is traffic control for the unaware.

It is true that everyone has an ego but the mind is master of both body and ego and you can put the ego to a different use. At large the small ego, that is vain apprehension of self, identifies self by special interest. That ego has special relationships requiring different levels of consideration.
There is another application of ego where all relationships are whole, or holy and so in everyone is completion regardless of special circumstance.
That ego identifies itself in how we are the same.

 

I suppose the Id, Ego, and Super-Ego mean nothing.

The Id is unconscious by definition, which means there is no way you are going to be able to attempt to control that. It is the dark, inaccessible part of our personality.

The Ego reacts according to the ego principle, realistically seeking beneficial pleasure for the long term rather than bringing grief. If Ego's purpose is to not bring grief, why is it so bad to have an ego? Ego, after all, is what we refer to as reason and common sense, the counter to Id, which I will reiterate that one cannot control under any circumstances due to its unyielding rigidity.

The Super Ego aims for perfection, especially in concern to spiritual ideals and goals. It is the part of the mind that punishes misbehavior with guilt. What is wrong with that? Without guilt, one is essentially a sociopath or a psychopath.

 

Right. I don't create my own parents. My body is the common currency of the species. That is why I am able to donate body parts and have them be useful to others. Our id is genetic code, the self organizing principle of life. Ego at any level is self identification.

What super ego? That we aim for any kind of perfection is a vain dream. Pride and humility are poles of the same vain apprehension of things. The perception is part and parcel of relative evaluations. To label a world without guilt as sociopathic is simply the inability to imagine the world without vain self image. You are not responsible for making yourself what you are but you have an opportunity to experience your creaturehood from any temperate perspective you can bring yourself to embrace. We all have the same mammalian brain chemicals coursing through us.

There are no idle thoughts and everything arises from conception.

What is wrong with guilt? To accept it is simply to deny your innocent inheritance. From the perspective of guilt, life is only an opportunity to soil yourself form the birth of an innocent child to decrepit old age.

 

I get the sense you think my perspective to be somewhat less than reverent of our humanity.

I am good naturedly embarrassed when I overstep my authority and make a mistake, but to be guilty is downright criminal.

 

Okay, I'm sorry I haven't the time to read through all that's transpired in my abscence, but storch wanted me to give a definition of evil, and I will give one: violating another person's right to do with themselves as they will.

It's a working rough and ready standard, and of course we're going to find all sorts of conundrums and loopholes, but, hey, life is complex, and that's the foundation of my whole point in refusing to listen to all that mystical crippy-crappy.

Life is complex. I treat each rising situation as one more experiment from which to cull data to be better informed on how to handle similar situations, and to be ready to face each particular in turn with some general theory which is of course modified by the entrance of new data. If this sounds like the scientific method, that's because it is. It's the best I can do.

 

You have to understand there is something wrong with the world when bad things go unheeded because wrongdoings are not real conditions but mere misunderstandings of poorly loved souls that need hugs as though they were kittens instead of dangers to society.

 

Something wrong? What is right about the way we respond when our response at large has changed nothing? There are no dangers to society. We will continue to socialize no matter what. There are elements of society that some other elements of society object to. It is the offended who take offense. The offender never feels he is in the wrong because it is not his intent to do wrong but to do right by himself.

It baffles me that people defend their right tooth and nail to preserve and uphold criminality.
As if we didn't act like judge and jailer all civilization will crumble. It is said that it is insane to keep doing the same things producing the same results and expecting at some point it will be otherwise. If you want a future different from the past then make a different choice in the present. Having and being are the same truth.

Mankind's decent and natural response to the stimuli of the world is being usurped by the requirements of accusation. The devil means slanderer.
The effort is to crucify elements of humanity to appease the god of cultural normalcy. It is a vulgar superstition we entertain about the special qualities of men. In the end and as we see unfold in the present, our prisons grow larger and the world more dangerous from a certain perspective in every proceeding moment. We would have far greater success if we understood processes instead of judging behavior.

If we understood that there is no variety of motive in life, that all life shares a singular moral bent and that is the instinct for self preservation/extension. Then we could find novel creative responses to help the troublesome find what they are looking for. Nothing teaches like success. No matter how altruistic one might appear, all actions are extension of the effort to extend our good self. There is nothing that we choose to do that is not motivated by that driving moral imperative.

 

Every parent then is evil toward their child. It is evil then to incarcerate any individual who would rather be free to come and go.

It is a sliding arbitrary metric. Helpful is a matter of time and space.

It sounds not at all like the scientific method in practice but you aspire to a good theory about yourself. As we grow and learn we retain some of what is old, and some of what is new, that is we modify our position. What you describe is being habitually judgmental, mystical crippy-crap and all.

 

Provision: anyone who violates another person's right to do with themselves as they will abdicates their own. Incarceration, or some other form of punishment, or retainment, is then necessary.

Provision: children should be recognized as beings in formation and needing the time to develop into cognitively aware beings.

Provision: a person who bears a child should recognize that they have taken it upon themselves to provide the necessary protection and sustenance to the child for the above mentioned time. The difficulty is deciding a.) when they are unfit to care for the child, how this is decided and by whom and b.) who should care for the child in their place and c.) when is the right time for such care to end?

Like I said, it's a rough and ready standard.

I keep my silence as to your judgements on my habitual judging.

 

For what reason? Does it restore those violated to wholeness? Does it redeem the violator. It certainly doesn't prevent the violation of rights, one by another.

By the way, there is no right or guarantee of long life or free life, or life of any sort of quality at all. You have a right as you exist to try and create temporary conditions for yourself and possibly someone near you and you only have that right, if you in fact are able to do it.

How much time?

All of those difficulties are arbitrary judgments, that is why they are difficult to make. The strain of perpetual arbitration weighs heavy upon the world. This strain is friction which spills out into conflict as one another of the rough and ready attempts to have their standards, come into ascendance.

And it is obvious that the arbitrary, as in rough, is not standard. There are circumstances for which you may conceive should be's for that you haven't even encountered yet. Further at different times of your life you will modify your ready standard depending upon your affections at the moment. Perhaps you had a good meal and being satisfied you are particularly generous with your provisos, or maybe contrarily you haven't had sufficient sleep and your perspective is tinged with grumpiness.

A lapse of self control then that you were not able to? Or are you suggesting it is something you will do in the future, that is keeping your silence on an issue? Smile, you're on cosmic camera.

If I suggest to you that you are spilling cake when I see the cake on your clothes that means I had observed a phenomena. Whether or not you care or choose to do something about it is entirely up to you. I offer no should be that you should satisfy to make you worthy in my eyes. I make no estimation of relative worth, I observe only energetic phenomena, functioning smoothly in the estimation of men or not. I ask myself the question, what is it for, and on that basis determine whether it is meeting it's function or not.

Consciousness arose for the purpose of determining direction, where da food at. What does punishing people have to do with determining direction? The idea of guilty responsibility causes us to use our powers of distinction to look for conformity to a culturally induced ideal rather than to apprehend the environment.

Your perspective is not ground breaking as much as it churns the substrate for no real reason. Your perspective is the most popular on the planet and the reason the problems it seeks to address remain intractable. The lack of success over ages in altering the pace of hard hearted expressions is evidence that our previous learning has been inadequate.

If you want to have a different result in the future you must make a different choice in the present.

 

By the way osiris, i thank you for gracing me with your considerations.

 

Shrug. The primary point of contention between us is that you are not participating in the human experiment, but deferring participation on the grounds that it runs itself (or perhaps is not run by humans?) a view with which I absolutely disagree. Your attitude, which seems to you to constitute a cosmic view, is actually a neurotic double standard. As I said before, you are mixing up the planes, and it makes your replies unanswerable, because they are not on the same ground. It's as if you wanted to make a point about aeronautics by appealing to the experience of a sanitation worker whose never even rode in an airplane.

Your epistimelogy needs an adjustment. My definition of "evil" and its requisite provisions are an attempt to grapple with the complex and ever-evolving facets of human life on a daily basis. I am not suggesting it as an a priori cosmic law , but rather as a philosophical base from which people can work more freely to make life better for them and their fellows. We are, after all, conversing in a philosophy forum.

 

At least someone besides me understands that. Of course, you conveyed it all so much more eloquently than I ever could.

 

Far be it from me to say anything in defense of thedope, so . . .

 

No, that is not my view.
I don't see how you have come to that conclusion from anything I have said.
Define participating in the human experiment. What level of participation do you require from me in a philosophy forum as you point out this is?

Be specific about what double standard you think I demonstrate. And why neurotic? What is mixing up planes? What planes? What kind of superstition is that? It seems to me we are talking about the phenomena of being human and beyond that how we apply our energies in life and my view being far from cosmic, is practical and tested to true in life's circumstances. I can provide references if you like.

Why?
My epistemology is knowledge is, being shared.

My ontology is all life, including human life, has a singular motive and that motive is self preservation/extension. We have natural defenses to preserve the integrity of self. The extent of our natural protections are equal to those things we call me or mine. My instinctual response to an attack on me or mine is defense. I don't have to decide on the basis of good or bad but on the basis of preserving personal integrity. Biologically we are equal to the true environmental challenges.

The thing that makes possible mans inhumanity to man in violation of community regard, is that one tells oneself that the mark is not me nor mine.
Thus the prescription for peaceful human relations is love thy neighbor as thyself , as we extend our native impulse to self protection to each other.

As it stands now we are educated to be suspicious through the idea that reality itself can't be trusted, some elements being good and some elements being bad. This is what I mean by habitually judgmental. You are damned if you do and damned if you don't in this scenario.
None of our moment to moment sorting out can establish any certainty whatsoever as each new moment is like a toggle switch intoxication in that you don't know if you experiences of this day will present themselves to you as good or bad.

Unconditional regard of phenomena makes you an objective observer of phenomena. Good situational awareness makes you more adept at finding satisfaction because reality supports it's constituents. Temptation is the desire to have illusion be real.

There is no human nature apart from our biological nature. The behavior of men is activity and not indicative of an individuals native worthiness.

Yes I know that, an attempt. It is not a new attempt and it has never been anything other than an attempt because it is nothing more than perpetual arbitration, perpetually reactive as opposed to setting tone through effort toward a desired aim.

Perhaps I don't have enough details about your philosophy to really comprehend it but my difficulty as I interpret it thus far, is that I don't see how it is fundamentally different from anything anyone else practices as far as it is reactive as opposed to proactive. We are slave to our conditional evaluations.

I work to become the world I would like to see. If I want world peace then I must be first at peace. Peace exists where and when the conditions of peace are met. Become then, a locus of peace because knowledge is being shared.
In my neighborhood I am looked to for calm reason and patient attention and am known to diffuse personal chaos. Who needs me to arbitrate? Who needs you to arbitrate? When I die life will continue, having no need of any particular perspective.

 

"The thing that makes possible mans inhumanity to man in violation of community regard, is that one tells oneself that the mark is not me nor mine.
Thus the prescription for peaceful human relations is love thy neighbor as thyself , as we extend our native impulse to self protection to each other."

This worked well for Jeffrey Dahmer, and I'm sure the Marquis de Sade would have had a field day with it. The good ol' golden rule.

The two parts of your point of view which are primarily incompatible with mine are these: That there is anything unconditional. That there is any possibility of true objectivity. Judgements are inevitable. It is the judgements you make which are arbitrary, because you intend not to make judgement, and judgement without intent and uninformed by a proper epistemology -- i.e., one in which an individual has a good working understanding of the conditions, so far as their subjective experience will allow -- is dissociative. I used the term neurotic. Sorry, that was exhaustion (though considering some of your earlier tirades about killing racoons and whatnot I can't help but wonder if being faced with your own dissociation makes you neurotic). I meant dissociative. You are making judgements about people making judgements while not realizing that you are making judgements. That's a dissociative double standard.

Whether or not the human experiment is strictly biological is up for debate, though it is the tack I tend to take, generally speaking. Nonetheless, strictly biological does not mean strictly determined. It's funny, though, that you should harp on about all this unconditional understanding crap and then evoke biology, any and all information about which is determinedly conditional, based on conditional experimentation.

When I say the human experiment I mean taking account of the conditions and acting according to what we know in order to extend our knowledge. No superstitions. And to refer this back to the original point of my thread:

Should Gotama never have sought enlightenment? Should Socrates have never questioned his fellow citizens? Should Martin Luther King, Jr. never have orated his Dream?

And to use Mr. King as a specific example, do you not realize that there were many more who suffered and died, in the abolitionist and civil rights movements, people unnamed and unhallowed, but nonetheless courageous and indignant, that paved the way and set the stage for him to present his beautiful oration? These are the scouts of which I speak, sir, and your mumbo-jumbo belittles their efforts.

 

I doubt that either Jeffrey Dalmer or the Marquis de Sade had an expanded view of self. I would be more inclined to think they had no secure idea of self at all.

There is more than one way to use your powers of distinction, the ability to tell things one from another. It is part of your epistemology that you must distinguish between god and bad or you are not regarding the world properly or as above you suggest that I actually do make those kind of judgments while in a state of denial about it, (dissociated), and further I do it lacking a proper epistemology, which makes my decisions appear neurotic. You come to this conclusion because that is the way you use your powers of distinction and you have conceived of no other way to use your mind and has nothing to do with what I practice.

I use my powers of distinction to tell one thing from another or if a thing is the same or different and to determine the function of a thing. In concert with determining function the comparison for usefulness is, does it function according to purpose. I learn to ask what a thing is for and if what is suggested doesn't fulfill it's advertised or conceived purpose then it is not useful. It lacks consistent premise.

The comparison I make for philosophical theories is, does the premise of your justifiably true statements remain consistent from the beginning of the statement to the end. That is to say, an exception to your rule means there is no rule. A contentious view can apprehend only contention.

My raccoon tale far from speaking of neurosis, demonstrates consistent and avowed premise. I had adopted a flock of chickens as my personal sustainable resource and the raccoon had decided that my rooster was this evenings dinner and as it went about it's preparations by tearing feathers out of the roosters back, I bashed him to preserve my rooster. My natural instinctive protections are extended to me and mine.

I think you are amusing yourself in this instance. By strictly biological I mean no matter what we may imagine or conceive about our lives they are sensational via our vital senses and we will die no matter our good or bad efforts in life. Our complaints about life are luxuries we think we can afford because we tell ourselves today is not our day to die. This superstition about the special nature of human being robs us of inherent vitality.

Our condition is biological. I do not put conditions on the apprehension of phenomena. That is the condition I accept for myself in the apprehension of phenomena is, if I experience anxiety it is the result of the misapprehension of what is so. As such I suspend reaction until I am able to regard the subject with a clear and undistracted mind. Because if I have misperceived the actual dynamic of a situation my reaction is likely to be misguided, or short of that at least unguided in the way we might imagine.

For example the statement, You say to me, you belittle the efforts of these men. It is far from my mind or purpose to belittle anyone. What standard are you using to suggest that I am trying to damage anyone's reputation? You are using some kind of invisible arbitrary condition you think should exist to apprehend the meaning of my words. As such, thus far the meaning has escaped you.

As to the point of your thread, it is vain apprehension.

There is a difference between grandiosity and grandeur.

My view is no heroes, no villains, or any grandiose estimation of human value, only the invaluable inestimable grandeur of being.