Hell in a Handbasket - an experiment

[Deleted Member 1643]

Your thread is about Candida, but didn't Voltaire write Candide?

There IS hope!

Apologizing to your child for having brought him into the world is the maximum of mental sadism.
And then apologize for what? I can only apologize for my responsibilities that I have not respected.

But apologizing makes little sense, we must change.

I believe instead that we need love, presence, responsibility. Towards children and the world, which is the same thing.
We are creators of what we do and the world is a projection of ourselves.

Do you like?

What's not to like?

Hairless ape???
Do you think to be an hairless ape???

That's right - it's hairless, talking ape. And we're not completely hairless, just hair-challenged.

With global warming, it's a good thing we don't have built-in fur coats. ​

 

[TiSteamo]

However I don't think that an hairy or not monkey is able to enroll in jurisprudence, nor to compose the Air on the G string…
On the other hand, not even being a dishonest banker or a pedophile priest.

 

[Deleted Member 1643]

However I don't think that an hairy or not monkey is able to enroll in jurisprudence, nor to compose the Air on the G string…

Careful, you're starting to sound like @OldNewbie.

What about animals and agency? Not so much as a nibble on that one. Does their ability to feel guilt (for example, when a dog accidentally bites her guardian's hand) imply that they have some idea of right and wrong, even if it's not as highly developed? Degree versus kind. And what of it - does that have any bearing on their worthiness for moral consideration? If anything, it would seem to argue for it, not against.

 

[TiSteamo]

I will try to exemplify my thinking.
I'm not saying that a man's life is worth more than that of an animal.
Yes, perhaps "legally" this is the case. But every life is inestimable.
I say we have more "possibilities" than an animal and therefore even more "responsibility".
My last post in the thread "child birth is gross ..." explains it well.
But after that post, we stopped discussing. Too bad.

 

[Deleted Member 1643]

I will try to exemplify my thinking.
I'm not saying that a man's life is worth more than that of an animal.
Yes, perhaps "legally" this is the case. But every life is inestimable.
I say we have more "possibilities" than an animal and therefore even more "responsibility".
My last post in the thread "child birth is gross ..." explains it well.
But after that post, we stopped discussing. Too bad.

Regarding our greater degree of responsibility, no argument, but saying that non-human animals are motivated solely by instinct perpetuates the idea that we are different in kind. Better to say that animals do indeed make moral choices, if only sometimes. It's likely accurate and doing so in no way excuses us of our responsibilities toward them while acknowledging yet another important similarity between us. Early on (1980s), it was fashionable to describe animals as moral "patients" only, never as moral agents.

@TiSteamo, is there no existential crisis that worries you? Germs, EMPs, artificial intelligence...

 

[Tranquility]

 

[TiSteamo]

@TiSteamo, is there no existential crisis that worries you? Germs, EMPs, artificial intelligence...

More than external threats, I worry about the inner crisis of values.
We must take care of our mind and aspire to a higher state of consciousness.
I believe that spirituality is fundamental for the human beings.
(I'm talking about spirituality, not religious bigotry)

 

[Deleted Member 1643]

Where do all of those memes come from?

More than external threats, I worry about the inner crisis of values.

Would you say that as the prominence of faith has diminished in many of our lives, we've become increasingly materialistic? Is that the crisis of values you have in mind?[/QUOTE]

 

[TiSteamo]

It is something more. The power of the consumptions civilization hates religions, hates the spirituality that could elevate the human being, because it wants to replace God. And it has succeeded.

Not by chance in Nietzche's "Gay Science", the death of God is announced by the madman in a very specific place: the market.

All evil arises from not believing in anything.
Can heads of state who bomb unarmed civilians believe in something?
Can they follow the precepts of Christ
or an ethics other than the dollar?

But I guess they go to church every Sunday ...

 

[Ramahs]

Meh...No god(s) or "spirituality" for me, thank you very much. I prefer to focus on what's real.

 

[Deleted Member 1643]

Meh...No god(s) or "spirituality" for me, thank you very much. I prefer to focus on what's real.

The evidence of our senses gives us a shared "consensus reality", but is that all there is to reality or is it just the most reality creatures like us can handle?

For example, because we're bound by time, we see causes as always preceding their effects. We think that effects are caused, but in what sense? General relativity, while arrived at empirically, predicts that time is only an equal coordinate in a four dimensional "block universe". The events of the past haven't gone anywhere, it's we who have, because we can move only forward in the time dimension. Likewise, the events of the future are already here, we just haven't arrived at them yet. In what sense then are effects caused in the way they seem to us to be?

If our own science predicts such a strange version of reality, isn't it at least possible that there are other things, very different from us, that we simply can't perceive due to our own limitations? Maybe a spiritual realm including a creator who isn't bound by time in the way we are?

This provides a perfect opening for reviving a favorite battle: agnostic deism versus atheism. Agnostic deism, arguably the "religion" of the Enlightenment, posits that we do not and cannot ever know if there is such a creator, all we can say is that this creator does not, or perhaps cannot, act in our consensus reality. There are no miracles.

Of course, it's possible that the creator disguises miracles so they look just like predictable natural phenomena. Believe that bit of shaky rhetorical ground has already been staked out by the Pastafarians.

It is something more. The power of the consumptions civilization hates religions, hates the spirituality that could elevate the human being, because it wants to replace God. And it has succeeded.

So, shall we say the forces of capitalism actively seek to usurp those of spirituality in our lives? And this change underlies at least some of the many problems we face? An example might be helpful.

There's a lot to work with here - definitely existential crises, IMO, especially time travel. That's bound to seriously muck things up.

It's also worth mentioning that science fiction exists to imagine such possibilities. Time travel, obviously, but also soulless capitalist dystopias in which purchasing has replaced praying.

Addendum: As if that weren't enough, can't resist linking to this thoughtful piece from the morning newspaper, germane to many threads on this forum.

The End of Satire
The toxic disinformation of social media has rendered traditional forms of humor quaint and futile.

By Justin E.H. Smith

...Both sides missed, in particular, that satire is a species of humor that works through impersonation: taking on the voices of others, saying the sort of things they would say, using one’s own voice while not speaking in one’s own name. It is not surprising that this craft is so often misunderstood, for when satirists do their job convincingly, when they get too close to their target, it is easy to hear them not just as the channelers of the views expressed in the satire, but as defenders of these views as well. It is at such moments that critics like to exclaim that a satirist has “gone too far,” while it would be more correct to say that the satirist has only done his job too well.

Today, with the pollution that new technologies have brought to our information ecosystem, this distinction is no longer so easy to make. And this is the real problem, and danger, of satire: not that it mocks and belittles respect-worthy pieties, not that it “punches down,” but that it has become impossible to separate it cleanly from the toxic disinformation that defines our era...

In early 2018 the Twitter account known as PixelatedBoat offered what it claimed was an excerpt from Michael Wolff’s recently published Trump exposé, “Fire and Fury.” It was related that upon arriving at the White House, the new president complained that the television options there did not include what he called “The Gorilla Channel.” So the staff began transmitting gorilla documentaries from a makeshift tower outside his window, until he complained that these were boring, that the gorillas were not fighting enough. So they edited the documentaries down to the fight scenes, at which point the president was appeased, and knelt in front of the TV from morning until night...

I began to notice the way in which new media blur the line between satire and propaganda. Alt-right personalities were now gleefully acknowledging that their successes in meme warfare relied precisely on the inability of media consumers to distinguish between the sincere and the jocular, between an ironic display of a swastika and a straightforward one. At the same time artificial intelligence was increasingly producing texts and images that, whether overtly political or not, contributed to the general sense that we cannot possibly know the ends for which media content is being churned out...

 

[TiSteamo]

Nice post, Accept!
In addition, I add that the ways of mysticism have met those of science, for example we think of quantum physics.

Science, when it is pure and not also manipulated by external interests, is a wonderful expression of human intelligence.

Since medicine is a compendium of the successive and contradictory errors of doctors, appealing to the best of them there is a good chance of imploring a truth that will be recognized as false a few years later. So to believe in medicine would be the supreme madness, if not believe it was not even greater, since from this heap of errors some truths have been released in the long run

(Marcel Proust)


Yeah...

However, mysticism always came before "official" science.

The Jewish qabbalah had discovered the splitting of the atom 4000 years before us.
But at that time scientists said they were crazy…

Who "sees" knows much more than those who are "in search"


Aboriginal people communicated with telepathy, we with smartphones. Who is more advanced?





As for the cause-effect discourse, what you said made me think of the concept of Karma: every action, thought remains imprinted in reality, to manifest itself in a subsequent cause.
The awareness that we "chose" to be born, that we wanted our own life, that the joys and sorrows depend on how we behave.
So we live every day what we have done, and what we do will determine what we will do.
We can also replace the verb "to do" with the verb "to be".

Now, the problem is that many people, instead, not only do not "believe", but do not "see".
They think that in life, everything happens "by chance".

If everything happens by chance, I have no importance, I have no use, so no responsibility whatsoever.

That's why the evil happens.

And in this feeling of depression, of helplessness, we feel lost.

But nothing happens by chance and when you begin to see the world like this, magical things happen, the magic of existence is revealed. And you understand how it works.

Things take color, shape.

And every moment, every action, thought, is very important. Fundamental. Unique and unrepeatable.



As for the discourse consumerism-lobotomy, I answer you this way:

Industry certainly doesn't want to have responsible consumers.
Politics certainly does not want to have aware citizens.

 

[Tranquility]

20 minutes max with a torch and I am in there..........most security is a illusion.

Took me a while to find it because I couldn't quite remember it. But...

 

[Deleted Member 1643]

Nice post, Accept!
In addition, I add that the ways of mysticism have met those of science, for example we think of quantum physics.

Thanks! That's what this thread is for - recreating those late night dorm room cannabis sessions.

Are you familiar with The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism and The Dancing Wu Li Masters? 1970s best sellers. Very popular with the cannabis crowd. Haven't read them, but will add to the survival shelter list. Possibly dated but there might be updated editions, or similar.

Since medicine is a compendium of the successive and contradictory errors of doctors, appealing to the best of them there is a good chance of imploring a truth that will be recognized as false a few years later. So to believe in medicine would be the supreme madness, if not believe it was not even greater, since from this heap of errors some truths have been released in the long run

Something similar might be said of evolution.

The Jewish qabbalah had discovered the splitting of the atom 4000 years before us.
But at that time scientists said they were crazy…

Brings to mind Pi, a 1998 American film by Darren Aronofsky.

Aboriginal people communicated with telepathy, we with smartphones. Who is more advanced?

With you on the smartphones. Still refuse to carry even a stupidphone. Wouldn't know what to do with one, at this point.

As for the cause-effect discourse, what you said made me think of the concept of Karma: every action, thought remains imprinted in reality, to manifest itself in a subsequent cause.
The awareness that we "chose" to be born, that we wanted our own life, that the joys and sorrows depend on how we behave.
So we live every day what we have done, and what we do will determine what we will do.
We can also replace the verb "to do" with the verb "to be".

Did you have a particular, perhaps life-or-death, experience that brought this into focus?

If everything happens by chance, I have no importance, I have no use, so no responsibility whatsoever.

That's why the evil happens.

Disagree. Evil happens precisely because people think they have importance. To accept (hehe) that you may be nothing more than you seem to be is a valuable, appropriately humbling lesson. One that's taken a lifetime to learn.

But nothing happens by chance and when you begin to see the world like this, magical things happen, the magic of existence is revealed. And you understand how it works.

Things take color, shape.

And every moment, every action, thought, is very important. Fundamental. Unique and unrepeatable

It's a hopeful outlook, which is commendable. But what if nothing happens by chance because nothing happens? Everything just is. To us, events seem to happen, but maybe that says more about us than about the events. Maybe every moment is immutable, eternal.

What currently bakes this noodle is the astronomical improbability that the universe would be so ordered at the big bang. It's why time moves in the direction it does - entropy. Of course, if it wasn't, we wouldn't be here in the first place. Still...

 

[Madri-Gal]

Thanks! That's what this thread is for - those late night dorm room cannabis sessions.

Are you familiar with The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism and The Dancing Wu Li Masters? 1970s best sellers. Very popular with the cannabis crowd. Haven't read them, but will add to the survival shelter list.



The same might be said of evolution.



Brings to mind Pi, a 1998 American film by Darren Aronofsky.



With you on the smartphones. Still refuse to carry even a stupidphone.



Did you have a particular, perhaps life-or-death, experience that brought this into focus?



Disagree. Evil happens precisely because people think they have importance. To accept (hehe) that you may be nothing more than you seem to be is a valuable, appropriately humbling lesson. One that's taken a lifetime to learn.



It's a hopeful outlook, which is commendable. But what if nothing happens by chance because nothing happens. Everything just is. To us, events seem to happen, but maybe that says more about us than about the events. Maybe every moment is immutable, eternal.

What currently bakes this noodle is the astronomical improbability that the universe would be so ordered at the big bang. It's why time moves in the direction it does - entropy. Of course, if it wasn't, we wouldn't be here in the first place. Still...

What?

 

[Deleted Member 1643]

What?

 

[Madri-Gal]

I just looked at your brilliant post, and my brain exploded. I need to head over to the not so smart people section.

 

[Deleted Member 1643]

I need to head over to the not so smart people section.

Nonsense, you probably just need to vape a different strain. Everyone's experience is valuable. And you have a sense of humor, as sure a sign of intelligence as any.

But seriously, just grateful to know how unintelligent. As Voltaire says, "“The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.” Imagine how smart he was.

 

[Ramahs]

The evidence of our senses gives us a shared "consensus reality", but is that all there is to reality or is it just the most reality creatures like us can handle?

It's the only thing we've been able to confirm exists...and we are constantly developing ways to detect/test/measure things that exist that our senses can't directly detect. If we can't find a way to verify a claim, there is no reasonable reason to accept said claim. At bear minimum one would have to withold judgement.

For example, because we're bound by time, we see causes as always preceding their effects. We think that effects are caused, but in what sense? General relativity, while arrived at empirically, predicts that time is only an equal coordinate in a four dimensional "block universe". The events of the past haven't gone anywhere, it's we who have, because we can move only forward in the time dimension. Likewise, the events of the future are already here, we just haven't arrived at them yet. In what sense then are effects caused in the way they seem to us to be?

You're getting into an area I couldn't claim enough expertise in to really have a solid opinion on. Go ask a particle physicist.

If our own science predicts such a strange version of reality, isn't it at least possible that there are other things, very different from us, that we simply can't perceive due to our own limitations? Maybe a spiritual realm including a creator who isn't bound by time in the way we are?

Anything is possible. If a spiritual realm exists, great...lets find a way to test and confirm that. If we find reasonable evidence, lets publish it for peer review. Lets see if others can verify our results, lets build a reasonable amount of evidence to show the world that this previously undetected realm exists and thereby open an entirely new fascinating field of study that we can all learn more about!

This provides a perfect opening for reviving a favorite battle: agnostic deism versus atheism. Agnostic deism, arguably the "religion" of the Enlightenment, posits that we do not and cannot ever know if there is such a creator, all we can say is that this creator does not, or perhaps cannot, act in our consensus reality. There are no miracles.

Deists and Pantheists don't have much to argue over with Atheists. But specifically a deist god is a god who may have set everything in motion, but doesn't interact with our reality at all...so it has the same effect on our lives and existence as a non-existent god. There's not much to argue about there.

Of course, it's possible that the creator disguises miracles so they look just like predictable natural phenomena. Believe that bit of shaky rhetorical ground has already been staked out by the Pastafarians.

rAmen, matey

 

[Deleted Member 1643]

This experiment in civil discourse is going so well, don't you think?

Should sleep on this post, but what the hell? Shatter stash is effectively unlimited. Like Beavis on Cappucino...

there is no reasonable reason to accept said claim. At bear minimum one would have to withold judgement.

Agreed.

You're getting into an area I couldn't claim enough expertise in to really have a solid opinion on.

Can't do the math, either, but these predictions of General Relativity appear to be uncontroversial and can be understood at an accessible level. There are alternate theories in which time is special. Can't begin to evaluate these critically. General Relativity has proved to be a very successful theory in predictive ability. It's over 100 years old and we just discovered something else it predicted a few years ago.

Plus, it always just felt right. Have long tried to perceive the world this way, and it's brought considerable peace-of-mind.

If a spiritual realm exists, great...lets find a way to test and confirm that.

It could be possible but extraordinarily difficult. For example, you might need to harness the power of a black hole to power the experiment.

Or it could be impossible. Our instruments may always be too much an extension of ourselves, subject to the same fundamental limitations.

But specifically a deist god is a god who may have set everything in motion, but doesn't interact with our reality at all...so it has the same effect on our lives and existence as a non-existent god.

Ah, but that is the crucial difference. The deist has a god to love and worship. If agnostic, he need have no faith in it, hope will suffice. In any case, he knows his devotion will never be reciprocated, or (perhaps) even noticed. That only makes it more precious. A talking ape doing his best to join in in the eternal song of praise.

Do emotional reasons count at all? Some are inclined to see things in "spiritual" terms, even if it's only "Spinoza's god". Why do you suppose that is?

rAmen, indeed! And to all a good night.

 

[Ramahs]

After all, what really matters is that we've all been touched by his noodly appendages.
Sauce be upon you, my friend, and to all a hearty aaarrrrrgghhh!

 

[Deleted Member 1643]

Back to natalism. Unlikely allies (for both sides)?

Trump Says the U.S. Is ‘Full.’ Much of the Nation Has the Opposite Problem.
An aging population and a declining birthrate among the native-born population mean a shrinking work force in many areas.

By Neil Irwin and Emily Badger

President Trump has adopted a blunt new message in recent days for migrants seeking refuge in the United States: “Our country is full.”

To the degree the president is addressing something broader than the recent strains on the asylum-seeking process, the line suggests the nation can’t accommodate higher immigration levels because it is already bursting at the seams. But it runs counter to the consensus among demographers and economists.

They see ample evidence of a country that is not remotely “full” — but one where an aging population and declining birthrates among the native-born population are creating underpopulated cities and towns, vacant housing and troubled public finances.

Local officials in many of those places view a shrinking population and work force as an existential problem with few obvious solutions.

 

[TiSteamo]

Disagree. Evil happens precisely because people think they have importance. To accept (hehe) that you may be nothing more than you seem to be is a valuable, appropriately humbling lesson. One that's taken a lifetime to learn.

And if we were not what we think we are?
I mean, if we were so much more?
If we could do much more than what we think?

Have you ever heard the story that we use only a small percentage of our brain?
(Okay, there are also those who use less ...)

Humility is necessary to learn but we need to always know that we are infinite beings.


What does system want instead? all the contrary.
I destroy you so I get things for me.

Very elementary, isn't it?

It only believes in the material.
And it believes the material is finite.

Many of us also believe it and this is what makes us slaves.

Did you have a particular, perhaps life-or-death, experience that brought this into focus?

I would say that the only possible experience is life.

The life we live changes according to how we see it.
The observer modifies reality according to how he observes.
From here all the work on ourselves starts.

 

[Deleted Member 1643]

And if we were not what we think we are?
I mean, if we were so much more?
If we could do much more than what we think?

First in line for Bowman's trip through the stargate. Bonus points for visual Arthur C. Clarke reference.

What does system want instead? all the contrary.
I destroy you so I get things for me.

That might look to some as someone asserting his perceived importance relative to others.

It only believes in the material.
And it believes the material is finite.

Agreed, at least as far as there's a real danger that philosophical materialism will lead to economic materialism. Lost another couple of vegan friends over this - bright and compassionate people, but all they wanted to do was buy. (Yes, there also seems to be a thread of atheism in veganism).

That doesn't make philosophical materialism wrong. It doesn't necessarily lead to that other materialism. But we do need to take care in its application.

 

[TiSteamo]

The economy is in itself based on materiality.
And there is nothing wrong.
The evil is to think of replacing God with money.

From here derives all the worst that happens.