Everything having meaning and everything having a reason are separate questions so I was far off the topic. Sorry amigo!

I remember on some older thread I tried to explain something @180 Proof had said about, I don't remember exactly. Ordinary vs extraordinary or something? Something like things are ordinary individually, and extraordinary all together. I had said that, eating a sandwich in itself is pretty ordinary, but if you think about everything that had to happen for the sandwich to come to be, and what had to happen for you to be able to be there to eat it, it is extraordinary.

Meaning is the opposite. Individually things have meaning. Eating a sandwich is meaningful when you are hungry or desiring pleasure. But compared to infinitely, every limited meaning loses its meaning.

Its interesting that we should want meaning, when meaning is limiting.
Consider if we combined all meanings of words together. It would lead perhaps to "all meaning" which has no meaning.
Its like how if you combine all colors you have no color: White

Within the web of life, everything is interconnected, nothing to chance. So everything in the context of the web of life is full of meaning. Outside of life there is obviously no meaning, for there is no consciousness to create it.

Is banning harmful things the most effective way to make long term positive changes in society?

I think kids that are persuaded to do good and abstain from bad grow up to have internalized values.

While kids that are just told to do good and abstain from bad "because I said so" and at the threat of violence, often will do bad behind the parents back, and bad behind the police's back when they grow up.

Sometimes prohibition even increases the attraction to "forbidden fruit", creating a sense of scarcity and adventure in its attainment.

And repression leads to all sorts of problems. Eg, sexually repressed priests molesting children. (Probably not proven that repression is the cause, but it's possible it is a factor)

I think the same of adults. The best way to make long term positive changes in society is by being a good example and promoting good values. Then rules and laws are less necessary.
Strong rules and laws usually cover up rather than solve a problem.

I think it's better to work at influencing the social climate rather than trying to police everyone like you are their daddy.

And I think it's best to treat both children and adults as much as possible like adults. For treating people like children is likely to reinforce childishness. (I mean explaining things to children like you would to an adult)

I might be wrong about the disc earth idea. Apparently, flat earthers see that as a straw man.

Haven't figured out what they think yet.
They bring up some interesting issues at least. Like, why going south or north beyond a certain distance is restricted. They think its because there is more land. While hollow earth believers think there are entrances into the earth at the poles. Something is apparently being hidden, whatever it is.

The sun is round, the moon is round, the planets are round. Why should the Earth be flat? — Agent Smith

The FErs I know about online believe the earth is a disc. So circular circumference and flat surface. At least disc earthers and globe earthers share a belief in round circumference, eh?
Maybe they think the same about the planets?

An ocean planet

Where's Elon Musk, the world's richest man, when you need him? — Agent Smith

Do you want his counsel or monetary support?

If counsel, here is a clue:
"Should prob articulate philosophy underlying my actions. It's pretty simple & mostly influenced by Douglas Adams & Isaac Asimov." E. Musk.

And his number 1 life tip:
"I think that's the single best piece of advice: Constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself."

What are you reading? — Yohan
Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy by J.G. Fichte. It basically picks up where Kant left off. — Pantagruel

Thanks sir. Does it make good sense?

If you really want to explore that, the book I'm currently reading is all about it. — Pantagruel

What are you reading?

Objective and subjective on a spectrum is maybe not so bad a way of looking at it.

Maybe better still is to forget about the distinction altogether, they are just words.

We view things from a perspective, and those are at best partial views of "reality"... some are a bit wider and a little less partial than others. — ChatteringMonkey

I think there is something to what you say here.
I think objectivity is actually when the subjective is included in statements.
For example: "I like apples" (if its true) is more objectively true than "Apple's are tasty". The latter, I would call pseudo-objective. The first can be self evidently true, depending on the person. But to try and prove the second is true is absurd.
Likewise, "Apples appear to me read" is a more objectively sound claim than "Apples are red". The first can be self evidently true. The latter is impossible to prove. As are all "objective" statements. (Statements that don't include the subject's experience)

it seems to me that objectivity is more problematic than subjectivity — Manuel

It seems so to me too. The hard problem is objectivity or matter, not consciousness. Consciousness is only a problem if one assumes consciousness has to have an external cause, especially a material cause.

The search for objectively is hard because it seems to lead to an infinite regress of justifications for concluding that something is in fact objective...which means what? Independent of a subject? But what does independent of a subject mean? In language its easy to throw away a subject. In experience, impossible.

Subjectivity on the other had is readily apparent.
In my opinion, objective matter is an invention by subjects requiring the use of double think. It is when on imagines or experiences something existing while at the same time imagining that one is not imagining or experiencing it subjectively. Or it is, at best, a shared inter-subjective reality, like people agreeing to the rules of a card game or the meaning of words. Or the rules of the world or nature are, at their root, rules of mind.

I don't think its necessarily so complex as it is hard to go against the tendency to believe in the objective world which is hard wired into most of us from living in a highly materialistic, or thing-focused society.

PS. I'm pretty optimistic about using E-prime, though I have yet to make it a habit.

unfortunate

The unexamined self is not worth being?

.

nice sparkly music. I see you a man of diverse taste.

The former is of the subject viz. you, me, us and the latter is of the object viz. the thing that's under examination. — Agent Smith

And what happens when the subject makes itself the thing that's under examination?

Causing harm unintentionally is bad. But is it immoral?

If I push a button that says, "Push button to save an innocent life" and I push it, and it turns out that pushing the button actually kills an innocent life. How could it be argued that I behaved immorally?

Sometimes unintentional harm is due in part to negligence of using one's critical thinking or not paying attention to one's conscience.

Did slave owners honestly believe using slaves was not bad, or were they just rationalizing out of convenience?

I think it's also a matter of scale.
Doing wrong based on being too lazy to determine it's wrong might not be as immoral as doing wrong with full conviction that it is wrong.

One other thought. Wise vs foolish seems easier to determine or more objective than morality. Can right and wrong be replaced with wise and foolish?

I'm addicted to the first.

The sexond one doesn't work in my opinion. Brown is on a higher level of raw intensity than try hard poser boys Judas Priests. :lol:

heh you inspired me to delete my last post too.

yeah not as catchy.
die antwood is not my favorite. I think it takes some skill to be edgy without crossing the edge and being just weird for the sake of being weird. I don't like to be too critical of art though.

Deleted

Warning. Contains animated twerking by not entirely human creatures. Viewer discretion.

The current strategy I am trying is asking myself
"Is this worth suffering for?" to make less horrible decisions.

Suffering will happen no matter what choices are made.
And if something is not worth suffering over, it's not of much worth to an individual.

We all suffer, but if we suffer over something worthy, the suffering doesn't have to be for nothing.

And whether you go along or not, your will will be affected by causes. — god must be atheist

Until causality is proven to be real, I will doubt it is real.

When we watch a movie, nothing we see happen in the movie is caused by what happened just before. The whole movie exists at the same time, but we experience it in a linear sequence.

This may be how time works. All time might exist at once, but we experience it in a linear sequence.

(Edit. A counter argument could be that a movie is created sequentially, and so its still record of a sequential events)

At any rate, I can't see how it can be proven that causality is real. It seems impossible to connect two moments.

This means I don't believe in pre-determination, since pre- signifies that something was determined in the past. Rather, I believe everything is determined NOW. Not that some factor or factors in the past cause or predetermine the future.

Yes, you explained yourself very well. Thank you very much, I appreciate that. — god must be atheist

great

This is patently false. You can't oppose and succeed in defeating the rules of determinism. — god must be atheist

I meant that if I do not resist the rules of determinism, then I will no longer feel like the rules of determinism are subjugating my will. Not that I can go against the rules, but harmonize with them.

If you oppose the rules of determinism, then you are a slave to (i.e. must always obey) the rules of determinism. — god must be atheist

Yes, if the rules of determinism go against my will, I will feel like a slave to them. If I am willing to go along with the rules, then it will feel voluntary.

Also, unclear what you mean, because the word oppose means any one of these three things: successful resistance, or staging an impedance, or protesting against. Which do you mean? — god must be atheist

I simply mean desiring that something not be so. The three options listed come after the initial desire. I see now that oppose may mean more than desiring that something not be so, so I'll drop that word.

What's negative will? How does the love of one's fate free someone from this? — god must be atheist

I think by negative will I mean the same as what I meant by being opposed. A will that stems from having a negative opinion about something. In this case, having a negative opinion about the inevitable. Loving one's fate doesn't free one from one's fate. It frees one from having a negative opinion about one's fate.

This post of yours does not explain itself at all, and it states things that are not intuitive, so you NEED to explain them if you want to make others understand what you mean.

Please also iron out the difficulties in composition that I unfortunately had to point out to you. — god must be atheist

I hope I have done so.

Good luck understanding me. I suspect we are not enough on the same page here! We don't have to continue.

Edit: There are different ways to explore the question.

For example, lets say I am on a trajectory based on a self-fulfilling prophecy. I think I am bound to fail at everything in life, and so this belief self sabotages me. I try hard to push away or suppress this belief that I will inevitably fail, but the harder I try and suppress it, the more strong it gets. Finally, I stop resisting and accept that maybe I am fated to fail, and am ok with it. Then, I start to stop self sabotaging myself and as a result start meeting with "success". I have changed what I BELIEVED by fate was. But all along, it was my fate that I would eventually succeed (if I did in fact succeed...and if fate is real).

It is behaving in a predictable way, and therefore it follows the rules of determination. — god must be atheist

This is the point I want to explore. Do the rules of determination subjugate the will. I don't think they do.
I think analogy is the best way to understand these sorts of things is why I brought up prison.
How would you describe, by analogy, how the rules of determination determine what we will?
When you said they "dictate our behavior", it sounds to me like a master and slave relationship. And that, to me, as anthropomorphizing. I'm worried I am not getting my point across.

I am not a slave to the rules of determinism unless, like a prisoner who opposes walls and prison bars of a prison, I oppose the rules of determinism. Amor Fati, the love of one's fate, or the rules of determinism, frees one from "negative will". When a man "knows his limitations" and accepts them, he frees himself from banging his head against the wall of limitation.

On the other hand, a defeatist resignation is as much of a trap as willing what one cannot have.
This is why the stoics say to focus on what you within your control and accept or be indifferent to what is not.

You've addressed the analogy well, yet not tied it in to the question we were discussing:
Can our wills be dictated/subjugated by external things.
With the prison example, we agree the answer is no.

Are our preferences, maybe rooted biology or whatever else, whatever it is we attribute as the cause of our will.... Can and do such things "dictate" our will?
Are our preferences biological(or metaphysical?) prisons?

Is the freedom that you seek as opposed to being in prison subjugating your will? You bet. — god must be atheist

Interesting. Isn't seeking freedom the same as having the will to freedom? And so, my will would be subjugating itself?

It's you who is in the prison, not your will. Your will's function is to motivate you to get out of there. — god must be atheist

This is interesting too, compared to the statement that the will to freedom is the subjugation, and here the will to freedom is a motivation to get free.

On the one hand, if one does not have a will which opposes being in prison, one would not be subjugated.

On the other hand, if one doesn't oppose being in prison, one will not try to leave prison.

Edit: I think I am forced to believe there are two wills.
One is negative desires, proclivities to addictions and such, which may be inherited genetically or else created by unconscious negative reactions to unwanted experiences.

Another will is to be free of unconscious habits.

You are mistaken in believing that everything that subjugates your will has to be human-like. — god must be atheist — Yohan

Lets take an example of being thrown in prison. Then all the people that work at the prison leave with the keys. There is just me and the prison. Assuming I want leave the prison, and can't, is the prison "subjugating my will"?
Is the number two "dictated" by arithmetic to be 2? Like 1 and 1 are FORCED to be two?

You are mistaken in believing that everything that subjugates your will has to be human-like. — god must be atheist

Dictate: Lay down authoritatively. That is something only a being can do. An artificial intelligence can be made to seem to do this.

You are also mistaken by thinking that preferences are part of your will. — god must be atheist

I agree we have to define will, and perhaps preference.

They are not separate things subjugating my will. — Yohan
So.. preferences are not separate from what? Your will? You did not say what they are separate from. You need to state that to make sense. — god must be atheist

Are they separate? Its a big jumbled.
Lets consider the body. It is a single system, and at the same consists of many subsystems, and is itself part of a larger system than itself.
I don't believe any one part of my body "dictates" what another part does. Presumably, my preferences are a subsystem of my over all being. They don't rule me, but are a part of me. Hmm, not sure that is exactly right, but am I making any sort of sense?

cause and an effect are separate phenomena? — Yohan
they are separate from what? Each other? or from everything else? You need to say to make sense. — god must be atheist

I am asking if they are separate from each other. I'm wondering if all arguments that X causes Y are essentially post hoc ergo prompter hocs.
Edit: For example, if everything is predetermined, you can't say "You crashed the car because you were drunk", because crashing was already predetermined before I got drunk. Even if there is a "first cause", what this first cause will cause is, according to predeterminsm, predetermined.

It is your preferences that dictate your behaviour. — god must be atheist

You are anthropomorphizing preferences. They are not separate things subjugating my will.

I am free to follow my preferences. I am not free to choose what my preferences are.

The first part is free will. The second part is destiny. We are all destined to freely choose to follow our predetermined preferences.

Is that really what you experience or are those your fears about what will/would happen if......? — Bylaw

The last one may just be a fear.

I feel trapped.

If I focus on avoiding suffering, I suffer from being too preoccupied with suffering.

If I focus on becoming happy, I suffer from feeling not happy enough.

If I just enjoy the moment, I suffer later from not considering the future enough.

So basically there is no point, and worse, it doesn't even make sense, to look for a purpose or meaning in suffering.

So then I suppose stoping looking for meaning in suffering is the solution to much of suffering. As its a desire that can't be fulfilled.

So the purpose of suffering is to avoid suffering. — Banno

When we look for meaning in suffering, we are looking for some use in it, are we not? Looking at suffering as a teacher about what not to do seems very practical.

Sure, not an objective purpose. But there is a reason the brain causes pain to the consciousness when it is being damaged.

Hunger, a form of suffering, has no ultimate purpose, but it certainly has a purpose within the the context of ones bodily health.

To clarify, I don't think there is a purpose to causing oneself suffering. Only there is a useful way to look at the suffering one is already feeling or may feel in the future.

I am ok with calling this a way of making use of suffering.

Through collective action. It's not necessarily but is usually violent collective action. — Moliere

I don't know what violent action means if there is not yet any rights or property.
I do admit rights and property are hard ideas to comprehend, but I think they are based in instinct prior to the arising of some being governing another being. Even dogs defend what they see as their territory and their autonomy.

In a sense before monopolised government we were all equally the government. And arguably, even now we are all members of government, as supposedly we the people control the government. They work for us, not we for them, at least thats the claim. But really its a trade, and in trade each works for the other as well as for themselves, so we employ the government and the government employs us.

Sorry this isn't really specifically about what capitalism is. To me capitalism is the default when there is property. People trading whatever they want to trade for whatever someone else wants to trade.
Can people be sneaky and trick you into a bad deal? Yes. Capitalism is not to blame for that any more than free thinking is to blame for bad thoughts.. And the solution is education and better self-government. Not electing others forcefully restrict how we trade.

My belief is that markets cannot exist without a government -- they are as artificial or natural as any other social arrangement. That's because property rights are not naturally endowed upon us — Moliere

How do you form a government without a market?
Do you realise government is a product that is marketed and sold?

Government means you sell your self-sovereignty, freedom, rights to someone else, who in return gives you a sense of security by making your decisions for you and telling you what you want to hear.

Every virtue has shadow vice, and vice versa.
So that freedom is branded as "chaos" and slavery is branded as "security"

Each person is their own state, own governor, but other insecure beings sell you the lie that they can do a better job governing you than you can yourself.

Sounds like classical liberalism. In which case, Marxism's description of capitalism is apt. — Moliere

All these different terms get confusing, but the basic idea is free trade vs forced community sharing. When government interferes with free trade, then the problems of capitalism emerge.
Communities sharing is good. Thats the positive value communism is based on. But when its FORCED it leads to unintended consequences.
Trying to control nature always leads to unintended consequences. We have to work WITH nature, not against it.