↪180 Proof
I think you mentioned Nietzsche in some post, so I'm not surprised. That's my jam too. When I'm (godlessly) up, I'm way up. 'I' am 'God' (along with everyone else who knows they are.) It's all connected in my mind with personal mortality, the facing of death. Clinging to the afterlife is clinging to the petty ego. But anti-ego talk is often suspect. It's more like a larger ego eating a smaller ego. Magnanimity from a sense of power, the ability to ignore parasites, the spirit as a stomach than can digest difficult experience. 'Our god is a devouring flame.' — jellyfish
So I guess I see only transformations of the concept of God (an image of transcendence and autonomy) along with what the community appeals to in order to ground its violence. — jellyfish
'm telling nobody to "get over it." I'm simply noting that the spiritual crisis is due to an assumption, and that the assumption need not (and i think should not) be accepted.
That it need not be accepted is established by the fact that millions of people, some of them very wise and highly intelligent, some of them very accomplished, some of them happy, lived before the advent of Christianity and other religions which posit the existence of a personal God who must be accepted if life is to have any significance and without whom all is meaningless Probably, such people live now as well.
This indicates there is nothing about being human which requires us to experience a spiritual crisis of the kind which, it seems to be claimed, must result in nihilism. And this understanding presents us with an opportunity to assess, as others have, being human free of the assumption from which the spiritual crisis derives. — Ciceronianus the White
eah, I feel you. But a pack of wolves has a certain cohesion. So maybe we're more complex wolves. We love and hate. We assert status with words. We're never done inventing ourselves or figuring out our place. Everyone cobbles together their own post-religion. Some go to more trouble articulating a philosophy or an anti-philosophy.
Even if everything is 'really' empty, our animal minds mostly distract us for this. If we do remember, then there are some twisted pleasures to be had. The individual is more godlike beneath an empty sky. — jellyfish
Consider: We exist, and are part of a vast universe that is wondrous; fearing and desiring what is outside of our control causes us pain, and causes pain to others, and is to be avoided. That, for me, is the essence of Stoicism. Most if not all of what we consider bad or evil conduct results from the fear of or desire for things or people which we do not have but want or want to avoid. The only thing we can know (not that we know, completely), that is worthy of reverence is the universe, which we can experience. A simple ethics, and a simple "religious" feeling. — Ciceronianus the White
Tranquility through detachment perhaps? What I was aiming at was the ideal human for the stoic against a background of the ideal human of other life philosophies and religions. Stoicism seems like one response to the breakdown of community among others.I think the Stoics sought tranquility rather than detachment (I think there's a difference). — Ciceronianus the White
Some of the ancients thinkers had more sense than we do; they were more sensible than we are when it comes to considering how to live. They didn't allow speculation regarding the transcendent to clutter their thought. It's that speculation, and an inflated sense of self-importance, which creates despair when shown to be dubious at best. — Ciceronianus the White
Consider: We exist, and are part of a vast universe that is wondrous; fearing and desiring what is outside of our control causes us pain, and causes pain to others, and is to be avoided. That, for me, is the essence of Stoicism. Most if not all of what we consider bad or evil conduct results from the fear of or desire for things or people which we do not have but want or want to avoid. The only thing we can know (not that we know, completely), that is worthy of reverence is the universe, which we can experience. A simple ethics, and a simple "religious" feeling. — Ciceronianus the White
I now believe that I am a biological process, who's primary driver is a brain. I am no means a coherent whole but rather a collection of competing desires, interests and emotions. These are ultimately the causal forces that result in my behaviour. And you can see the incoherence of this collection in the incoherence of my thoughts and behaviour. — dazed
And so when the brain described as "I" is faced with options it previously used reason to arrive a reasonable decision, relying on deep theistic structures to reason a way through. And I was pretty good at this kind of reasoning, a public speaker and debater who sometimes won! — dazed
But now I am a muddled mess, there is no underlying deep structures that the brain can rely on to reason its way out. There is no room left for "ought", just "is". I have recognized my brain to be the animal brain it always was. But the animal brain really ultimately only pursues self interest. — dazed
So I try to avoid those confused states, I practice mindfulness and stay in the moment and in the micro. But this doesn't leave one very engaged in a deep level in life. It's all just process, I am part of it, but it has no clear direction and no underlying principles. It's just random causality let loose. — dazed
But how do you make sense of the world with ourselves as ultimately incoherent random states of mind? — dazed
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. — Shakespeare
There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it I have now surpassed. My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape, but even after admitting this, there is no catharsis. My punishment continues to elude me and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself. No new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing. — A P
289. In the writings of a recluse one always hears something of the echo of the wilderness, something of the murmuring tones and timid vigilance of solitude; in his strongest words, even in his cry itself, there sounds a new and more dangerous kind of silence, of concealment. He who has sat day and night, from year's end to year's end, alone with his soul in familiar discord and discourse, he who has become a cave-bear, or a treasure-seeker, or a treasure-guardian and dragon in his cave—it may be a labyrinth, but can also be a gold-mine—his ideas themselves eventually acquire a twilight-colour of their own, and an odour, as much of the depth as of the mould, something uncommunicative and repulsive, which blows chilly upon every passer-by. The recluse does not believe that a philosopher—supposing that a philosopher has always in the first place been a recluse—ever expressed his actual and ultimate opinions in books: are not books written precisely to hide what is in us?—indeed, he will doubt whether a philosopher CAN have "ultimate and actual" opinions at all; whether behind every cave in him there is not, and must necessarily be, a still deeper cave: an ampler, stranger, richer world beyond the surface, an abyss behind every bottom, beneath every "foundation."
...
292. A philosopher: that is a man who constantly experiences, sees, hears, suspects, hopes, and dreams extraordinary things; who is struck by his own thoughts as if they came from the outside, from above and below, as a species of events and lightning-flashes PECULIAR TO HIM; who is perhaps himself a storm pregnant with new lightnings; a portentous man, around whom there is always rumbling and mumbling and gaping and something uncanny going on. A philosopher: alas, a being who often runs away from himself, is often afraid of himself—but whose curiosity always makes him "come to himself" again.
... — Nietzsche
Alas! what are you, after all, my written and painted thoughts! Not long ago you were so variegated, young and malicious, so full of thorns and secret spices, that you made me sneeze and laugh—and now? You have already doffed your novelty, and some of you, I fear, are ready to become truths, so immortal do they look, so pathetically honest, so tedious! And was it ever otherwise? What then do we write and paint, we mandarins with Chinese brush, we immortalisers of things which LEND themselves to writing, what are we alone capable of painting? Alas, only that which is just about to fade and begins to lose its odour! Alas, only exhausted and departing storms and belated yellow sentiments! Alas, only birds strayed and fatigued by flight, which now let themselves be captured with the hand—with OUR hand! We immortalize what cannot live and fly much longer, things only which are exhausted and mellow! And it is only for your AFTERNOON, you, my written and painted thoughts, for which alone I have colours, many colours, perhaps, many variegated softenings, and fifty yellows and browns and greens and reds;—but nobody will divine thereby how ye looked in your morning, you sudden sparks and marvels of my solitude, you, my old, beloved—EVIL thoughts! — Nietzsche
Well I do have a grim sense of humor. It seems that existence is a strange dream, but it does have a continuity (it mostly coheres). It's a story. We are thrown into a play without an author, or that's what some of the characters say. — jellyfish
People without God [ ... ] in the face of absurdity and mortality. MacBeth suits up for the last battle, knowing that all his charms and prophecies have failed him. A little before that he says:
"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
— Shakespeare
There are equally dark lines in King Lear and Hamlet. So a grim sense of humor and a realization that I'm not alone helps me. In some ways I'm less alone than ever. Our common fate is to live this absurd dream without foundation or excuse. It's hard to talk about, because it's dangerous. Even though our culture pretends to respect Shakespeare and so on, all this 'high' culture is creepy. It puts one outside of life, with one foot in the grave. — jellyfish
For witless or thoughtless "Last Men", vapid days & nights without consolation of the fetish-rattle of a liturgical g/G reduces their vacuous lives to, in effect, just killing time on a chinese water-torture rack till they expire. — 180 Proof
The presentation of itself, however, as pure abstraction of self-consciousness consists in showing itself as a pure negation of its objective form, or in showing that it is fettered to no determinate existence, that it is not bound at all by the particularity everywhere characteristic of existence as such, and is not tied up with life....
And it is solely by risking life that freedom is obtained; only thus is it tried and proved that the essential nature of self-consciousness is not bare existence, is not the merely immediate form in which it at first makes its appearance, is not its mere absorption in the expanse of life. Rather it is thereby guaranteed that there is nothing present but what might be taken as a vanishing moment — that self-consciousness is merely pure self-existence, being-for-self. — Hegel
Or worse: nothing but g/G-shopping like an interminally bored trophy-wife who sloppily stumbles along in the always-fading light from one pharma pill mill to another pronouncing each new fix "holy" ... until the next PCP dealer* comes along and scripts a new fix. — 180 Proof
For this consciousness was not in peril and fear for this element or that, nor for this or that moment of time, it was afraid for its entire being; it felt the fear of death, the sovereign master. It has been in that experience melted to its inmost soul, has trembled throughout its every fibre, and all that was fixed and steadfast has quaked within it. This complete perturbation of its entire substance, this absolute dissolution of all its stability into fluent continuity, is, however, the simple, ultimate nature of self-consciousness, absolute negativity, pure self-referrent existence... — Hegel
I'm afraid my worldview would not be very comforting for most people. It doesn't "justify" evil, but merely accepts that both Good and Evil are inherent in a dualistic dialectic universe. It's the bible-god who needs some rhetorical help to justify a world that goes off the rails after a perfect beginning. No sooner than the first moral agents exercise their free choice, they discover that knowledge of good vs evil doesn't mean that they have the wisdom to see the long-range consequences of their choices.Your attitude is of course reasonable, but it's also familiar in terms of the emotional comfort it offers. I don't know exactly how far the idea goes back, but justifying evil in terms of a future to come goes back at least to Hegel. — jellyfish
Sounds like Adam Smith's theory of the "invisible hand" of free-market Capitalism. So, is G*D a capitalist? I don't know, but freewill Agents, serving their own interests, inadvertently serve the general interest. This is an intrinsic principle of the potential order within randomness : that free individual "choices" add-up to a stable pattern when viewed as a whole : The Bell Curve. So, in the game of life, some players are winners and some are losers, but the game goes-on, and the "house" (G*D's plan) always wins in the end. Unfortunately, you and I didn't choose to play the game, but maybe like fatalistic Greeks, we accrue honor by playing nobly. "It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game". So, "live for the moment", nobody has promised us an after-party in heaven.These vast congeries of volitions, interests, and activities constitute the tools and means of the World Spirit for attaining its purpose, . . . on the part of individuals and peoples in which they seek and satisfy their own purposes are, at the same time, the means and tools of a higher and broader purpose of which they know nothing, which they realize unconsciously. — Hegel
I'm afraid my worldview would not be very comforting for most people. It doesn't "justify" evil, but merely accepts that both Good and Evil are inherent in a dualistic dialectic universe. — Gnomon
Hence, unlike the dueling deities of the Bible, in G*D's "world" there can be no Good versus Evil, but in an all-things-are-possible sense, you could say that G*D is BothAnd, i.e GoodEvil . — Gnomon
Sounds like Adam Smith's theory of the "invisible hand" of free-market Capitalism. So, is G*D a capitalist? I don't know, but freewill Agents, serving their own interests, inadvertently serve the general interest. — Gnomon
I suspect that you suffer from the Philosopher's disease : you overthink things. If you focus on the minor details, you'll miss the big picture. If you are insane, with "incoherent random states of mind", then of course the world won't make sense, and you need to be institutionalized. But, you seem to be only slightly insane, in the sense that a depressed brain can cloud your thoughts. You are obviously sane enough to write lucidly, despite the clouds. So you need to allow your rational "self" (ego) to regain control over the emotional reptilian brain (id). That won't be easy, and many people drown, sinking into despair. It will take motivation (your posts indicate that you have enough insight and ambition to seek text therapy), self-discipline, maybe some drugs, and perhaps the discipline of others. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can help slightly insane people to think more rationally about their negative thoughts. And to take responsibility for their own agency. Look it up.But how do you make sense of the world with ourselves as ultimately incoherent random states of mind? — dazed
Many philosophers also tend to compare their life conditions negatively against an ideal model. But that's not realistic, by definition. Who told you that you are not a freewill agent, and that, not only do you not have a Soul, but not even a mundane Self? Have you been reading Daniel Dennett? His analytical methods dismiss the obvious fact that all of us behave as-if we have a subjective perspective and clearly exercise some agency in the world.How do you navigate social discourse with a loss of the concepts of agency and selfhood that permeate all our human political and social structures? — dazed
So you need to allow your rational "self" (ego) to regain control over the emotional reptilian brain (id). That won't be easy, and many people drown, sinking into despair. It will take motivation (your posts indicate that you have enough insight and ambition to seek text therapy), self-discipline, maybe some drugs, and perhaps the discipline of others. — Gnomon
The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.
It is the omnipresent affirmation of the choice already made in production and its corollary consumption. The spectacle’s form and content are identically the total justification of the existing system’s conditions and goals. The spectacle is also the permanent presence of this justification, since it occupies the main part of the time lived outside of modern production.
The spectacle presents itself as something enormously positive, indisputable and inaccessible. It says nothing more than “that which appears is good, that which is good appears. The attitude which it demands in principle is passive acceptance which in fact it already obtained by its manner of appearing without reply, by its monopoly of appearance.
The basically tautological character of the spectacle flows from the simple fact that its means are simultaneously its ends. It is the sun which never sets over the empire of modern passivity. It covers the entire surface of the world and bathes endlessly in its own glory. — Debord
I'm suggesting that theodicies allow us to hide from ourselves as a species. We fantasize that we are rational, that the world is good, and that dissatisfaction is a malfunction rather than a virtue. — jellyfish
Quite evil, isn't it, to rationalize atrocities and needless suffering "in the name of" some other cunt's CAUSE or PLAN? (All is forgiven - "I was just following ends-justifies-means Commandments, sir".) Fuckin' theIDiocies ... :shade: — 180 Proof
Maybe "rational" was the wrong term. Perhaps I should have proposed that the "conscious" self (pilot) should retake control from the "subconscious" (autopilot). That's what Cognitive Rational Therapy (or Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy) attempts to do. Most people think their conscious mind is in control of all they do, when in fact most of our behaviors operate on cruise-control, so we don't have to pay attention to what's going on. When the "pilot" is weakened by stress (doubts, depression, drugs, etc), it's easier to "veg-out" and offload your responsibilities to a mindless machine ("let go, and let God"). But, even when he is handicapped, he needs to see the danger signs that "autopilot" is about to get him into trouble, and know when to take-back the controls. After disaster has been averted, he'll be happy to still be alive.You pose the rational self against the old lizard. If only we are rational enough, then surely we'll be happy. — jellyfish
And what else can you tell a person wrestling with a spiritual crisis but some version of 'get over it.' — jellyfish
In converse, feelings of existential dread or horror, ontophobia, not only make us feel awful about things that we would otherwise be able to accept and live with or move past, but also floods our minds with clouds of stress and drowns us in despair, so we are functionally less able to think clearly and act decisively. — Pfhorrest
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.