Something I may not have gotten across in my initial comment is that Nietzsche definitely felt the world was heavily lopsided towards the Apollonian (masculine) over the Dionysian (feminine). The two don't exactly equate to being "male and female" though. So whatever gut feeling you're getting about this notion, I'd say, run with it, thats your intuition leading you down the path towards the edge of what is known, towards that precipice where one builds their own bridge to a new world to share with others. To new vistas. — Vaskane

No, do not denigrate war.

War is a synonym for change. War is morally acceptable. I lose a lot of people there and I am fine with that. Wisdom is universally denigrated.

Growth comes from suffering only. The wise wisely inflict necessary suffering upon the unwise to give them opportunities to grow. If you walk through a field on a sunny day without a care in your heart, you are making cosmic war on the creatures that live in that field. Your obliviousness to this truth is all that makes you careless. Peace is the greatest delusion there is. War is fine. Loss is fine. These are not immoral in and of themselves. They are consequences. Consequentialism is a lie. Morality is all deontological. Intent is what matters. The direction and strength of choice is what matters. — Chet Hawkins

You cannot escape change/war. Peace is a delusional immoral aim. To maintain proper balance war is required morally. You may prefer to call this struggle or effort, and that is fine. War is the real name. I do not shy from naming something what it really is. I accept war and prefer it. I do not mean unnecessary violence which many people would foolishly demand is the real definition of war. — Chet Hawkins

I think we are on a vast pendulum swing from right wing or fear oriented societies to left wing or desire oriented societies. It's also clear that although the value-added portion of desire side orientation has already been accomplished, that we have gone well past balance and clearly the inertia is going to take us further into desire-side failure before the metronome uses up the swing energy to oscillate back towards balance. — Chet Hawkins

Fear and Desire, yang and yin, both require the balancing foundational force of anger to balance them. So the yin/yang model is woefully incomplete. Add in the third force and you start to make sense.

But even then there is another issue. I mentioned it earlier in this post.

The good is MAXIMIZED and balanced fear, anger, and desire. The higher the moral agency the more of each is expressed. And the good only happens best in perfect balance. That means yin and yang MUST be equal in all things. And the balancing foundational force must also be equal. That is the only path to the good. — Chet Hawkins

From what I take to be the Taoist perspective, or at least my own take of it, the good is found in harmony between yin and yang which then serves as a return to Wuji—Wuji being in the Taoist cosmology the nameless Tao which produces the One, from which is produced the Two, from which is produced the Three, from which all things are produced. Bad, and by extension evil, for me is then a discord, or disharmony, between yin and yang.

To say that good is a harmony between yang-as-good and yin-as-bad, or similar takes, to me so far makes no sense. As though too much good is then bad? But good is a balance between them? — javra

Polemic, yes — Chet Hawkins

Here is another one for you, and these are all from me, pearls cast, and hopefully not before swine, 'The one-eyed man is king in the land of the blind!' Nope! Not even close. He is deemed insane for speaking about 'visions' and 'colors', delusional things that do not exist to almost everyone. See the series 'See' with Jason Momoa as Baba Voss for confirmation of this anti-wisdom aphorism as nonsense that most people would still say is wisdom. Real wisdom is hard. It's esoteric and full of strangeness that in the end is truth. — Chet Hawkins

What about this: (politically incorrect warning)
Cold climates that are yin in nature give rise to their opposite, yang investiture.
Warmer climates that are yang in nature give rise to their opposite, yin investiture.
Nature is nothing so much as a force always aiming at least energy balance. — Chet Hawkins

I cannot find that yin or yang is more foundational.

In fact the third force that binds them is the only real foundational force. That is anger/essence/being.

Yin is desire and mystery, enveloping and dark.
Yang is fear and excitement, pointed and bright. — Chet Hawkins

This is what is hard to relate, but I think you touched on it well here. No matter how you wedge the sphere, all wedges partake of the north pole. Finally then, all paths lead via desire to understanding. The trouble is that there is always a more direct path. Or, let's say only one path is direct from any location in the sphere. That path is then, the 'best' one. — Chet Hawkins

Exactly! How to get the science types off their high horse though, serving the elites and control rather than ... love ... for lack of a better word. Even love is conflated so badly. I prefer the 'Good'. — Chet Hawkins

Knowledge is mostly a yang thing pulled into being by the third force — Chet Hawkins

Anger-infused fear. This is where the patterns of the past have already combined into a present. That is the case for knowledge. — Chet Hawkins

So what is this flimsy knowledge thing anyway? I still prefer the term and the meaning of awareness to knowledge. It seems more accurate and humble, a state, rather than a final destination. — Chet Hawkins

I also wonder about the ideas of Hegel on 'spirit' here. His understanding is not simply about the 'supernatural' as separate from the nature of experience itself, but as imminent in the evolution of consciousness on a collective and personal basis. It may be that mysticism itself was a problem because it tried to separate the nature of experience and reason as though they were different categories of knowledge and understanding. — Jack Cummins

Understanding is meta-level more important than knowledge. Thus, 'understanding' is clearly both yin and yang. It is all. — Chet Hawkins

The standard definition of "Esoteric" is very unusual and understood or liked by only a small number of people, especially those with special knowledge:, which suggests intentional hidings of their knowledge into their own circles, societies or cults. Therefore demonstrating the intentionally hidden knowledge for the circle members or initiated followers only to the uninitiated, outsiders or public would be contradicting the meaning of the concept as well as their intentions, gist, purposes and ideas for the esoteric and mystic knowledge. — Corvus

For these reasons, Wilber subsequently deduces that "sensory empiricism" cannot be included as one of "the defining characteristics of the scientific method", arguing that the "defining patterns of scientific knowledge" instead, "must be able to embrace both biology and mathematics, both geology and anthropology, both physics and logic—some of which are sensory-empirical, some of which are not." In this same regard however, he notes "there is sensory empiricism (of the sensorimotor world)" or empiricism in the narrow sense, "mental empiricism (including logic, mathematics, semiotics, phenomenology, and hermeneutics), and spiritual empiricism (experiential mysticism, spiritual experiences)" or empiricism in the broad sense. "In other words, there is evidence seen by the eye of flesh (e.g., intrinsic features of the sensorimotor world), evidence seen by the eye of mind (e.g., mathematics and logic and symbolic interpretations), and evidence seen by the eye of contemplation (e.g., satori, nirvikalpa samadhi, gnosis)" [emphasis in original].[36]

Wilber then outlines what he states as believing "are three of the essential aspects of scientific inquiry"; referring to them as the "three strands of all valid knowing":

1. Instrumental injunction. "This is an actual practice, an exemplar, a paradigm, an experiment, an ordinance. It is always of the form "If you want to know this, do this."
2. Direct apprehension. "This is an immediate experience of the domain brought forth by the injunction; that is, a direct experience or apprehension of data (even if the data is mediated, at the moment of experience it is immediately apprehended)."
3. Communal confirmation (or rejection). "This is a checking of the results—the data, the evidence—with others who have adequately completed the injunctive and apprehensive strands" [emphasis added].[37]
Advocating that science "expand from narrow empiricism (sensory experience only) to broad empiricism (direct experience in general) [emphasis added],[38] Wilber similarly reasons that religion too "must open its truth claims to direct verification—or rejection—by experiential evidence." He subsequently asserts that "(r)eligion, like science, will have to engage the three strands of all valid knowledge and anchor its claims in direct experience" [emphasis added].

Authentic spirituality, then, can no longer be mythic, imaginal, mythological, or mythopoetic: it must be based on falsifiable evidence. In other words, it must be, at its core, a series of direct mystical, transcendental, meditative, contemplative, or yogic experiences—not sensory and not mental [emphasis in original], but transsensual, transmental, transpersonal, transcendental consciousness—data seen not merely with the eye of flesh or with the eye of mind, but with the eye of contemplation.

— Ken Wilber, The Marriage of Sense and Soul (from Wikipedia)

As with the arts, some sometimes find metaphors to be the optimal means of conveying deeper, sometimes hidden (esoteric) truths. This then works well for conveying these truths to others who already are of a common enough mindset in many other respects. But it will backfire whenever others hold different foundational semantics, for the latter will at times drastically misinterpret what was intended to be conveyed.

Then there’s the analytic approach to philosophy. The leading benefit to this method of conveying truths is an improvement in clarity as to what is being addressed. But this comes at the cost of dryness, which serves as a big impediment to conveying what was intended. And, unlike the former method, it also limits what is conveyed to concepts that are already commonly known, making it that much more difficult to convey new ways of understanding or else realities that are not already publicly accepted and acknowledged. Here, then, the metaphors employed will be static in already being common standard, rather than being dynamic and new.

They mythical (and, by extension, much of the religious) can thereby be interpreted as the metaphorical, with Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell coming to mind in this field of study. Hence, as attempting to convey deeper, and at times hidden, truths or else realities. — javra

Just as I have consistently argued for the existence of a spectrum of consciousness there is also evident a spectrum of knowledge (possibly there is a connection). Individuals with certain mental capacities are capable of grasping complex mathematical concepts far beyond the ken of most folks. Savants can have incredible mathematical (and other) skills, often with minimal formal training.

Given the breadth and depth of human knowledge and experience, I don't find it in the least surprising that people of varying constitutions and varying experiences have a variety of different types of knowledge, or that some people have intuitions and awareness that some others do not share. In fact, it would be surprising if there were not such a variety. Brain scans of Buddhist monks exhibit a variety of unique features, including enhanced neuroplasticity. — Pantagruel

Of course not. In none of this am I putting myself forward as an exemplar or possessor of esoteric knowledge. But I've studied comparative religion, Mircea Eliade, William James, Evelyn Underhill, and I don't believe it's all moonshine. Whereas, seems to me vital for a lot of people to believe it must be. It's what Max Weber calls the great disenchantment. — Wayfarer

Perhaps the challenge is knowing in the face of uncertainty, in other words, belief. For me, the notion of spirituality aligns precisely with the noumenon-phenomenon (mind-body) problem and is to that extent "de-mystified", although it is still mysterious. Yes, we can have some certainties of the material world, which are in a sense trivial. These form the framework of our human existence, the stage whereupon we live our lives. And those human truths are not so easily acquired or proven. And of course, when human knowledge has reached a high level of sophistication, we begin to discover that the so-called simple truths of the material world are not themselves straightforward, when we finally reach the horizons of the quantum and the cosmic. — Pantagruel

Well said. — javra

Yes, it probably says so much about Western culture and the nature of consumerism and shallowness. It all comes down to money and images for so many, to where it turns the initial ideas of esotericide upside down and inside out. — Jack Cummins

What a crock of idealist poop — Vaskane

The United States has had fascist movements in the past. The KKK is an example. Father McLaughlin had a popular radio show during the 1930s, reaching up to 30,000,000 a week. "The broadcasts have been described as "a variation of the Fascist agenda applied to American culture". Coughlin died in 1979. — BC

We need to keep an eye on Christian Nationalists (they're a thing in the US -- another abomination) — BC

I also saw that the American cockroach eats bedbugs, so you may want to introduce them into your home if not already there. — Hanover

I found two solutions: heat and alcohol — Hanover

For anyone else who is experiencing bed bugs, I am also wondering about the actual risk of harm of bed bugs versus treatments for it. — Jack Cummins

It sounds like my words bounced off your consciousness and left no trace. — frank

So who are you in the story of your society? — frank

You can open your heart and love all of it. — frank

Childhood experiences probably play an extremely significant role in forming the core frames of emotions. There does appear to be a link between childhood trauma and mental illness, including PTSD and many other issues. Stress at all times is a major trigger for becoming mental ill, but the first years may be at the core of emotional life and defense mechanisms. It is likely to be linked to the plasticity of the brain.

With healing, there are so many approaches. Some people found it in religion and this may go back to the shamanic aspects of the origins of religion. So much was projected outside onto the gods. In secular society, so much understanding is based on understanding of biochemistry. Of course, the neurochemical aspects are important, such as Serotonin, but, often, chemical treatment alone is often one dimensional. It can be complimented by the talking therapies and the creative arts. The arts therapies make this connection and the arts may involve a form of transformation. Shamanism and religious experiences were a means of this for the ancient people. A lot of people who are not religious transform emotional suffering into healing for oneself and others, like the role of the shaman, often understood as the 'wounded healer. ' — Jack Cummins

As Trump is poised to once again become president of my country — frank

I feel challenged by my own theory that social "winners" are sort of naturally selected and serve the larger social life cycle, whether the people on the ground understand that or not. — frank

I believe this about leftism: whatever its merits may be, it lost. — frank

The western world turned away from it. The opposing perspective didn't win by a blitzkrieg, but by giving the people what they wanted. — frank

To arrive here, you have to stop being sanctimonious and see a social group as it is: a naturally evolving being, playing out it's own story. — frank

Personally I view emotions as akin to the other senses. In my count, there are 7 senses: the 5 traditional senses, the bodily sensations (pain, pleasure, heat, thirst, etc), and emotions. Notice that each is a phenomenal dimension orthogonal to all the others: content in one is incommunicable in terms of content in another. — hypericin

I want to be biased - in favour of kindness in favour of care, and small birds, and this and that, tasty food, good music. I want to be angry when children die needlessly, I want to cry at all the terrible things humans do, and cry again for joy at all the beautiful things they do. I don't want to be some super chat robot. — unenlightened

Is it to be expected that there will be much, or anything, common to all emotions?

It does seem to me that I discover my emotional condition from outside. When someone says "I feel angry", they might do so with sadness, or with surprise as often as they say it angrily. The tone of the discussion is thus far neutral to the point almost of indifference, as if emotion is too near, even for the most myopic self observer to bring into focus. Rather as one has to take off one's spectacles to see whether they are rose tinted or some other colour. — unenlightened

As the old joke has it, when two psychologists meet on the the street one says to the other, "How am I?" - "You're fine, how am I?" That's not much of a bridge over troubled water, is it?

Is it even possible - and this is a heresy - but has philosophy any business to have a view at all? Might one not be just slightly inclined to tell Sophia to butt out of one's sensibilities and mind her own business? — unenlightened

I find Matthew Ratcliffe’s work to be among the best of the current crop of writings on affectivity, mood and emotion. He combines the phenomenological work of Sartre, Husserl and Heidegger, the Pragmatism of James and Dewey and cognitive enactivist approaches like that of Evan Thompson. — Joshs

They aren't made of anything. In the sense that walking isn't made of legs. — fdrake

Yet this Sufi understanding of love would then be entirely contingent on what one makes of, else how one interprets, the term “God”. For instance, if "God" is understood in a more Brahman-like way, then a mutually shared romantic love (with its erotic sex included) will be one aspect of love thus understood. — javra

At any rate, the video presents what is to me a pleasant alternative to the often-touted motif that one ought to have “fear of God”. Love as longing for unity with God, as the Sufis can be said to hold, and, on the other hand, the need to constantly hold a fear of God will generally lead to two very disparate and in many ways contradictory worldviews. (Via a very rough analogy, loving one's parent is a very different form of respect than that which occurs via fearing one's parent.) — javra

Apropos, what then do you make of the proposition that "love obliterates ego in due measure with it's strength"? Otherwise stated, that one looses oneself with the attribute of love in due measure to the love's strength. This furthermore varying with the type of love addressed. — javra

I am glad I just watched an explanation of a map of life and an explanation of Socrates's cave because that leads to me seeing so much more in your explanation than I would have seen an hour ago, before the philosophy video I just watched. You did a very good job of picturing the concepts and how they work together. — Athena