Forcing people to anything is bad and immoral. We do it sometimes because we can’t escape doing it, like when parents force children to obey, to help them grow. The fact that forcing a child to study gives good results does not mean that forcing them is a good thing; rather, it is because we are unable to find better solutions. If we were able to obtain results without forcing anybody, there would be no reason to force anybody. We can choose to force ourselves and even find pleasure in it, like when we force ourselves in practicing sports. But in that case it is not a real forcing, because in that case you are 100% free not to do it and the experience of forcing yourself becomes 100% positive. So, in those cases like sport and games I think the word “forcing” is just instrumental, not really philosophically, existentially meaningful identify the radical problem of constraint in human existence.

It seems clear to me that we are considering here the bad side of the question. From a very radical philosophical point of view, we could even say that the tiniest evil, or suffering, in existence is enough to make existence philosophically problematic, let’s say unacceptable, just because it is not entirely positive. The passion of philosophy is trying to understand, to explain, and I think the hardest thing to understand and explain is the presence of evil, suffering, in life. I think we need to abandon the way of trying to understand and explain, because it doesn’t work. So, it seems to me the only philosophical alternative is the subjective perspective.

I see your point in terms of conflict between objectivity and subjectivity. Objectivity forces us to a lot of unwanted things. Subjectivity is when we are able to freely express ourselves, like artists do. We can use creativity to change some objectivity aspects into positive resources working in favour of subjectivity, like artists do.

Itself judges itself. The psychiatrist is trying to cure the psychiatrist and the patient is trying to cure the patient. We desperately need objectivity but can have no objectivity because objectivity comes from the outside and we have no outside. — Ken Edwards

At least you have understood this! It seems to me that a lot of philosophers and deep thinkers have not realized this at all.

Thus our inner worlds can believe and say or deny whatever nonsense that they like with no disapproval except from us in other, similar, inner worlds. — Ken Edwards

I think it depends on us: if we consider that disapproval, disagreement, instead of being a threat is a resource, a stimulation for progress, further research, then we will look for it like a treasure. It is hard, obviously, our nature drives us to dominate, but we can try to do something. So, I think we have at our disposal several sources to appreciate disapproval: other people, experiences, books, reflection, and even ourselves. We just need to cultivate an attitude of listening and appreciation for disagreement.

The world's scientists once had similar problems but, perhaps a hundred years ago, they solved those problems and today, science not philosophy rules the roost. — Ken Edwards

I agree about this as well: it seems to me that today a lot of philosophers, instead of doing philosophy, they use their rationality in a way that is just an attempt to change philosophy into science. The reason is clear: such a way of doing philosophy gives us a perception of power and control.

For instance I am trying to look at what "objectify" is and to try to imitate it. I and others, have even partially succeeded. — Ken Edwards

I disagree about this. In my view objectivity is evil, because everyday and every moment it forces us to think according to certain necessary criterions: objectivity forces me to think that I cannot fly, I cannot go through a wall, I cannot do this and that, because otherwise I would just put at risk mine and others’ life. Since we cannot ignore objectivity, we cannot get rid of it, we can try to build some kind of good relationship with it. But wanting to imitate it seems excessive to me: why should I imitate evil? I prefer to use it as a possible instrument, a vehicle able to carry something good.

You seem to be "Comparing" the two worlds, one with another. Is that possible? — Ken Edwards

I agree: according to what I said about objectivity as evil, subjectivity and objectivity are enemies. But, as I said, since we are forced to live together with it, I think we can develop an extraordinary ability that we have as humans: you said

We are bright. We are incredibly smart and our thinking can sometimes do the unthinkable. — Ken Edwards

I think our great ability is to change, at least to some extent, evil into good, lack into resources. Aren’t artists those who transform a defect of a piece of marble, a bad shape of a piece of wood, into an inspiration for an amazing artwork? Aren’t great musicians those who transform noises and dissonances into new styles of music?

This means that the serious problem that you expressed, about which I agree

Itself judges itself. The psychiatrist is trying to cure the psychiatrist and the patient is trying to cure the patient. We desperately need objectivity but can have no objectivity because objectivity comes from the outside and we have no outside. — Ken Edwards

is to be faced not by trying to find, obstinately, some kind of strong objectivity, some undefeatable stable reality, but by using it as a real resource. The artist, in trying to depict a tree, is defeated by the perfection of photography. How does the artist answer to this defeat? He changes his problematic point into a resource: he renounces to the aim of painting a tree as similar as possible to the real tree, he abandons totally this purpose and rather he follows the opposite way; this way a total new universe is opened: he discovers that, rather than showing other people the draw of a tree, he can show other people his soul, his heart, just by painting the tree not as similar as possible to reality, but as connected as possible to his emotions, his heart.

I think we need to do the same in philosophy: rather than looking for objectivity, we should use the weakness, the contradictions and paradoxes of our thoughts as positive resources to open completely new universes of philosophy, that are just waiting for us to explore them.

1. Get some idea about what other philosophers thought before you, throughout the history of philosophy, including the present, including living philosophers
2. Get a critical mentality: get aware of how philosophers have always been very critical about everything
3. Get awareness of yourself as a human, your uniqueness in the history of this world, get familiar with literature, art, sport, religions, life, news, history
4. Use your self awareness, together with all other knowledge that you have acquired, to criticise everything, including your own criticism, including the algorithms that you are using, consciously and unconsciously
5. Now you are, presumably, hopefully, in the ideal maturity to create your own philosophy and contribute to the growth of humanity.

I think your thoughts are metaphysic, which is, they try to work out how thing are. I want to work on how things are perceived by us. Nothing to do with phenomenology; it is, rather, an emotional, spiritual interest.

I have seen in your words an attempt to show how great our inner universe (which you call the second universe) is and I appreciate this very much, because I think that today most philosophers all over the world, professionals or not, give too little importance to this. But, at the same time, you still perceive the phisical universe as the real one and the big one. This makes me think that your mind is, like most philosophers, still slave of a perspective that gives too much deference to the “real” universe. Instead, the task of artists should be, in my opinion (and you are an artist), to show the world that what deserves to be considered “real” is our inner world. The phisical world, the external world, is just a crumb: its phisical vastness is nothing compared to the depth of our inner life. Actually, what gives depth to the phisical universe is our human perception. We see depth in the universe, because we have depth inside us. So, the real deep universe is the one inside us. Our inner universe is what makes everything real, worth consideration. Our inner universe makes possible the existence of the external universe.
When I die, the external universe ceases to exist, while instead all the emotions that I spreaded in life will keep their mark in the emotions of other people.
Seeing that, when other people die, the universe is still there should not make us conclude that the remaining universe is the phisical one. Instead, we should realize that, when somebody dies, the external universe has lost a big chance of being something to somebody, the external universe has become less meaningful, because now there are fewer people able to give meaning to the universe.
The universe is just an instrument to let our depth to show itself, otherwise it is nothing.

I like your appreciation for what you call 'the second universe', I think it is full of potential, but the way you organize and manage this concept doesn't seem to me very smart, despite your conclusion about smartness . After all, it looks just like a materialistic conception of what you call the "real" universe. Calling it "real" looks metaphysic, so that the wonders of the second universe are totally slave of the big real universe, totally unable to do anything really new, really different from the big universe. But I appreciate your effort to find a difference, when you try to find things that the seconds universe does and the first one is unable to do.

A suicide like a kamikaze might think that he is going to get the real life, while other ones who are too scared or decide not to sacrifice their life can be considered cowards by the kamikaze, remaining in a kind of life that actually is death. So, in that case, from that perspective, the coward who doesn't sacrifice his life like the kamikaze, is tbe one who is committing the real suicide, which is, depriving himself of the real true life.

I agree, and this is what makes the concept of knowledge full of problems.

I thinkn it shouldn't be difficult to imagine situations perceived this way. Do I need to make examples?

It depends how you conceive them. Anything can be considered self-destructive from perspectives that, in turn, can be considered self-destructive as well. As a consequence, even your OP can be considered self-destructive. The same way, somebody who is going to commit suicide can think that the real self-destructive ones are those who are going to stay alive. This is relativism, that you considered suicide.

What criteria you think we should use to answer your question?

This is a kind of mathematical reasoning. I was talking in an existential way. Besides, with your reasoning we obtain the paradox that, if evil is needed to make possible good to be distinguished, then evil is not evil; however, it is evil, because it makes a difference from good; so, the logical conclusion is that, in order to make good distinguished, we need something that is evil and is not evil at the same time. Actually, this contradiction comes out because you are applying some sort of mathematical logic to the ideas of good and evil. But in strict logic good and evil just don't exist: we cannot say that 2 is good and 3 is evil. The ideas of good and evil come from a human, subjective, emotional, psychological experience, so, it is nonsense dealing with them with a theoretical logic that says that something needs an opposite to make it distinguished.

Is buffone really bad? — Hillary

Yes, don't use it with Italian people, even when you are joking. It's not like saying "you are ridiculous, you are funny"; it expresses an explicit intention to stop joking and offend seriously, it's like saying "you have no dignity, you don't deserve respect".

Ok, I see you are not familiar with the Italian language, maybe you just used Google translate. That's fine, I see it was not your intention.

Sei un buffone! — Hillary

I assume you don’t know that this Italian expression is quite offensive, in Italian it has never a friendly meaning.

What’s the problem with giving me the power of creation? Why things would have gone out of hand? Isn’t it assumed as working very well with the three persons of the Trinity? What’s the problem with having some billions of persons, let’s say “the Billionity”, rather than just three, or just one? Why should we impose limits to the ability of God to make Gods all of us?
It would be similar to making all of us owners of this forum, with the difference that, since all of us would be perfect Gods, we would act in total love, total harmony, total perfection. Where is the problem?

I am not asking God to make me as an image of him. I am asking God to make me 100% God as well. Why doesn’t he do it?

How is this supposed to answer the question “Why didn’t God make us Gods, since he has power to do it and absolutely no problem would have been raised by doing it?”.

if we fathom God, that is, God's wisdom, it would make us gods because we would have all the knowledge God has, making us omniscient.

Therefore why do you consider evil to fathom God? because it would not make us Gods or something else? — SpaceDweller

What’s the problem with making us Gods? After all, at least according to the Christian doctrine, they are already three persons in the Trinity, and they all love each other; what’s the problem with making everybody God? We would be all happy, all loving each other, maybe even all being one God, like the Trinity is considered. So the paradox becomes: has God the power to make all of us Gods as well? Or, in terms of theodicy: if making all of us Gods would make a perfect world, with all people loving each other, in absolute perfection, no evil, no suffering, where is the problem?

because we can't fathom God's wisdom — SpaceDweller

Being unable to fathom God's wisdom is evil, so it leaves us with the same question: why doesn't he delete the evil of our inability to fathom his will?

In theology there is an answer, all wisdom comes from God and people cannot fathom the wisdom higher than that of God. — SpaceDweller

This changes the paradox this way: does God have the power to make an explanation of his mysteries easy to understand for us? Ultimately, the paradox can be reduced to the fundamental problem of theodicy: does God have the power to destroy all evil now, immediately?

1) Evaluation about good and bad, worth or not worth, is a subjective matter: a calculator will never tell you that 2 is better than 3 or viceversa. This means thst dealing with the question by relying just on reasoning and syllogisms is a mistake. In any reasoning or syllogism about this question we just need to find the subjective elements and it is automatically demolished.
2) We can deal with the question by mixing subjective and objective elements, hoping that other subjects will agree with our own feelings.

A mixed reasoning that I consider very strong, if we agree the subjective elements, is this one: the tiniest amount of evil, or suffering in existence is enough to reject it as valuable. There is nlo reason why evil should exist in this world. Actually, the existence of evil makes the worl impossible to understand, to conceive.

I don't think that power is a good way to find what we need: God has power to destroy all the evil in the world, but he doesn't do this. Society, governments, have power to protect the planet, but they don't protect it. Medicines that are very good frequently reveal uneffective. In other words, potentiality or possibility don't guarantee at all that something will happen, so, what's the point of relying so much on power?

What do you mean with this jump? — Haglund

Sorry for my bad English, perhaps I should use another word. By “jump” I mean discontinuity, point of discontinuity, the point where something ends and something different begins.

I agree but don't see the link with objects — Haglund

The same problem applies between objects and living things: where is the point of discontinuity? Is a virus a living being or just a complex organizations of molecules? If we are unable to determine the point of discontinuity, then there is no exact difference between objects and humans.

Why not? It is, of course, a very limited kind of imagination, but, about this, we have, I think, two only choices:

1) there are infinite degrees and qualities of imagination. The consequence is that what we call “imagination” has no limits, no boundaries, so it must be referred even to stones and single atoms. In atoms, obviously, imagination happens simply in the form of phisical things that can happen in atoms, I am not referring to anything special or supernatural; my human imagination is just more complex.

2) There is a jump, a difference, between human imagination and any other kind of phenomenon that we would like to compare to human imagination. The consequence of this is that it becomes impossible to define where and how the jump happens, considering that animals, or new born babies, or even babies that are not born yet, can show signs of imagination. If it is impossible to define where the jump happens, how can we say that there is a jump?

Neurons can’t be made in the lab that you can imagine, but maybe they have been already made in the lab that was able to build your brain. It is the same way my laptop is unable to imagine the kind of intelligence that is in my brain, because I have built it in a way that makes impossible to my computer to imagine my intelligence.
So, the same proportion between the limited awareness on my laptop, built by me, and me, might exist between me and somebody who built me, endlessly. Who knows?
My laptop has no idea of the quality and level of my awareness. The same way I have no idea of higher level and quality of intelligence that might have built me.
What I am saying is different from Matrix, because I am also considering that even those who built me can be in the same condition towards an hypothetical superior intelligence that built them, and so on, endlessly.
The final result of this infinite matrioska is that we don’t know anything, we can’t know anything, we can only work with ideas, play with them.

How do you know it?

Maybe they have already done this on you: you have no way to know it. Whatever you think of as evidence to deny it can be considered part of the way you were programmed. It is the old problem of Descartes, that he thought he solved, but he didn't realize that it is impossible to solve problems we are part of.

it will require serval cultural revolutions — Constance

I don't think it is such a hard job, because something like religion of philosophy, with spiritual exercises, was already practiced by the ancient Greek philosophers: Pierre Hadot has shown us this. Today there are several movements, like philosophy experienced as life, secular spirituality, atheist spirituality, postmodern religions, atheist Christians and so on. I think they just need to clarify their positions, to gain awareness of what the core of their tendency is. I think all of this can be fruitfully embraced by the umbrella term "spirituality", once it is cleaned from its confusion and ambiguities.

I agree that affectivity has a great importance in whatever is human. But it needs a language, we can say a language made not only by words, but made by life, by everything. This language has never been clarified, so that today affectivity is exploited in many ways to deceive people and make pseudo-science, pseudo-philosophy, pseudo-everything, that essentially means industrial, commercial science, commercial philosophy and so on. Is affectivity a good place to work on a meaningful, expressive and efficient language? And, after all, if we give so much importance to affectivity, what is the difference from psychology? These are some more reasons why I consider spirituality more suitable: it is philosophy practiced as an experience, involving the whole of our humanity, rather than just as reasoning. As such, it includes in itself the whole universe of affectivity, and we can also include love, passion, emotions, empathy. This way we are like a step forward from a purely rational philosophy and we don’t fall in the confusion with psichology, because psichology is not philosophy practiced as an experience. Spirituality (secular spirituality) is philosophy practiced as a human experience.
In the context of spirituality, language can be studied, settled, to avoid ambiguity and confusion. Today the language of spirituality is extremely confused and ambiguous just because common people understand it as belief in supernatural realities. But, once we clarify that spirituality is not a belief, but rather philosophy practiced as a whole human experience, the language of spirituality is automatically set in the context of philosophy, and philosophy has in itself a long and strong tradition about cleaning language from confusion.

I see the Japanese concept of death more authentic — javi2541997

I showed evidence why I see the Western concept more authentic. I would like to understand the reason that make you see the Japanese one more authentic, despite not reflecting what we can see in plants, animals and children.

I think that, in this context, the Western perception of death is more authentic, more human, because we have the objective witnessing coming from living beings that are not, for sure, conditioned by culture: plants, animals, children: they don’t want to die, they don’t like dying, they hate dying. Why should we superimpose cultural conceptions that make us separated from nature, humanity, authenticity?

Is religion, essentially, just about systems of organizing our thinking about metaphysics? Or is it revelatory, and deeply profound? — Constance

Surely not “just about systems of organizing our thinking about metaphysics”, but nonetheless it is an aspect that is needed. The only alternative for a religion, to having “systems of organizing our thinking about metaphysics”, that, as such, need to be conceived as perfect, would be to conceive its roots as a human creation.
For example, let’s think about the faith in God that is in Christianity. In this context, God cannot be conceived but perfect. The only alternative, in order to conceive God as not perfect, would be to conceive God entirely as a human creation. If God is not a human creation, then he must be perfect. If God is a perfect being, he is exposed to all the contradictions implied by perfection, that are, in a synthesis, all about being not human. But we, as humans, need something human. This is the problem of all religions: they have depth, profoundness, they are revelatory, but they lack humanity, exactly because they need to be based on something conceived as perfect, otherwise, if it is not perfect, it cannot escape being a human fantasy.
This problem is solved by (secular) spirituality: it is revelatory, deeply profound, it is human, there is no problem at conceiving it entirely as a human fantasy, it doesn't need any metaphysics, it doesn’t need any kind of perfection.

I agree, essentially. At this point, the problem is to find a good way as a continuation of philosophy. You said “religion”, I think that the concept of religion is too connected to an idea of perfection, referred either to God or to something else. I cannot Imagine a religion having something limited, imperfect, not completely consistent, as a central reference point. Isn’t actually metaphyisics a quest for a system of ideas that is expected to work with absolute perfection? I cannot conceive a metaphysics of something imperfect. In this context, I think that “spirituality” is better, because it has more human connotations, although a lot of people conceive it as a belief in some kind of transcendent realities. Hadot has already shown us that the first ancient Greek philosophers conceived philosophy as a spiritual experience, rather than an abstract, detached reasoning about the basic questions of the world.

For me, philosophy's world is the most basic questions — Constance

Philosophy's real job is to "reduce" the world to its essential presence so that it may be encountered. — Constance

We cannot say what philosophy is before doing philosophy. What philosophy is is determined and evolved in the course of doing it. What the most basic questions are is determined and evolved while we deal with those ones we think they are.

I think that now philosophy is more and more realizing that the basic questions are about humanity, how to be human, rather than trying to understang how things work to master them, that is metaphysics.

When science is seen as all important it can lead to people losing touch with the mythical aspects of thought and even scientific models may have mythical aspects too — Jack Cummins

I would like to point out that, actually, ignoring the mythical aspects of the text, is not really respectful of science: in order to be fully scientific, it should be obvious to consider the historical and cultural context of the texts: this is normal practice in the science of history, archaelogy. So, I think that people who ignore the myths, the symbols, the literary value of religious ancient texts, in favor of what they call “science”, actually behave against science.

It is here we have reached the end of philosophy — Constance

I think we need to be always careful in proclaming the end of things such as philosophy, literature, art, cinema, that I have seen proclaimed in several contexts: we should, more humbly, talk, if anything, of end of one kind of of philosophy, not of philosophy as such. It is the end of philosophy meant as domain over concepts, things, but actually, surreptiously, domain over people. In this context, the choice to teach literature, be interested in poetry, or in politics, can considered a symptom of need for a new way of meaning philosophy. The way Kierkegaard talks about time or eternal present is not a metaphysical way, is not a language organized in a dominating way; he talks in an existentialist way.
After realizing that we need a weak philosophy, we need to build a good relationship with metaphysics, because the things of the past cannot just be put in the bin and forgotten. I think that a good relationship with metaphysics should be in the form of a dialogue, rather than adopting passively metaphysics as if it was contraditions-free and well working to get domain over things, reality and people. Metaphysics can be helpful to tell literature and poetry that, even if we have a certain human ability to shape and even create reality, nonetheless we cannot ignore that we need to face humanly humiliating experiences, such as suffering, death, contradictions, inconsistency, forgetfulness. At the same time, we cannot be just pessimistic, because weak or postmodern philosophy, as well as art, literature and a lot of other human experiences, are able to show that we can make miracles, unpredicted wonders.
In this context philosophy ceases to be the place where people look for conclusions, answers, solutions, formulas, that is all stuff to exercise domain, and becomes instead perspective to work, do research, open dialogue, plan comparisons, explore horizons. When we realize this, we can see that philosophy is far from beind ended, there is lot to do and to work on, and it doesn’t need to retrieve any disguised metaphysics or masked realism to gain reputation or to keep afloat.

In itself, language says nothing but nonsense. Meaning is primarily conventional, except for what little is natural (like imitative sounds) or comes from transcendent sources (as recollection). But once there is established meaning it is as fixed as their related Forms are. — magritte

If meaning is conventional, it means that what you wrote has a conventional, which means an agreed meaning in your perception. If you perceive that your words have an agreed meaning, how can you say at the same time that language says nothing but nonsense? Does what you wrote have an agreed meaning or is it nonsense?
Then you referred to an established meaning: how can we realize that it is established, since our mind is part of all the things that are subject to change?