No, I'd rather live short periods of time, and then die for a while. Yea. it'd be like a feature made of short psychedelic student films.
Living forever is too difficult, and I have a really short memory, knowing people for more than two years is confusing, and I know too many.
Freedom of Novelty, Complexity of Adjusting process : Freedom of Exile, Continuum Concept (not only in education and nursing but also as a direct connection between act, wish and hope), Sacredness vs. Sarcasm (or localism vs. globalization in cultural terms)
Excluding physical pain, suffering can be felt as many things, existential suffering, boredom, emotional, etc. These aspects of suffering are not physical, at least - we do not accept them as physical as physical pain, which too is not as physical as matter, then we may say that any suffering is quite metaphysical, don't we?
"feel on your skin" is a figure of speech in Hebrew, i wonder how i missed that.. What I meant by that paragraph was that you may say that evolution (the process, the thing which that idea points at) brought us greed and anger, and you may otherwise say that evolution (the theory, the volume of knowledge and its' memes) had us to believe that greed and anger are a nature, as if it is a fact beyond and outside of the theory of evolution.
That doesn't depict an encounter with your nature, what say is "I hurt my self, I feel the pain, every time I did something forceful and indelicate in some measure to my skin, I saw blood and felt pain, thus, I may extend it to a Rule by which I shall live, this and that causes this and that".
Just because you see a pattern doesn't make you a genius, or connected to some universal nature of things, actually, if enough people see the conclusion of your pattern as wrong or unsettling, as empirical as it may be - you are suddenly the official nut-case.
I'm not playing dumb, I can see that your example has some (if not much) Truthiness. But that is exactly the point, you Want to understand the nature of things and you draw your lines of how you are going to do that, you use logic, a scientific approach, but you fail to see that to say something like that about the nature of pain you will have to monitor it constantly, because you cannot ascribe something like that to the future, although you believe the nature of things will always stay as is always was.
Thus, competition is a major one in our surroundings, yes.
A quick review of (inevitably) written history tells that competition has been since the dawn of man, yes.
But to declare it as a part of our nature is to say "I'm not going to change that because I believe it OUGHT to be that way".
"Direct and clear" as in "There's a smaller chance of error"?
I didn't say your examples of the origin of suffering are false, I said it isn't AUTOMATICALLY transformed to suffering. There is a process there, in which a person realizes he is better off in some other condition, other surroundings, other mindset, other way - He says NO to his condition, his fate, what have you.. And only then there is suffering.
One may suffer from pretty much everything, a walk the park while dreaming of sex, a trip to the forest while dreaming of the desert, a visit at the clinic while dreaming of a video game, dreaming of a better world, anything..
And here's the point - one may stop these sufferings if he only accepts instead of strives.
I think that what most eastern philosophy is trying to tell you is "What is is just what is, you may want to change it, you may want to logically reconstruct it, you may want to save it, but all of these are new things, different from the subject that IS, new things that take you away from the what is, into what is not, and there, as all things there, is missing - the way home."
Suffering could be a synonymous to pain only if you refer to 'pain' as more than just physical pain, as in a broken bone, to the metaphysical, as in a broken heart, which you use easily in your arguments without being a philosopher, apparently.
Metaphysical is not Supernatural, you may want to look it up on wikipedia. Both, for that matter.
The problem with talking about our Nature in conceptual terms, or maybe talking about nature altogether is this, that you may ask yourself if Greed and Anger are manifestations of Evolution or it is the theory that built the ground-works for those feeling as you feel them on your skin, and explain them to yourself as "your nature", and "there is no way around it".
In order to use a word as "nature" in an argument, to prove a point, you need it to be treated with some science, is should be empirical, in a sense, and a man does not have any access to his nature, nor to his god, his unconscience, his fate, the metaphysical and all that, why? Because we practically made those things up! In some part of history, there wasn't such a notion, and then - there was, you might as well say that Evolution had a sociological and cultural effect on the so-called Nature of men?!
Prove evolution had nothing to with cigarettes and that cigarettes have nothing to do with evolution.
Where would seek the connection in hopes of not finding any? Within your Mindset or Wikipedia?
This may seem priggish, but it is quite important when we speak of Buddhist's suffering. I believe that in the Eightfold's view, the suffering is the attitude toward reality, surrounding, the happening, however you want to call it.
Suffering of a broken arm is the will to stop pain. Pain in it self is not harmful. And more important - pain doesn't automatically produce suffering, it is the sufferer and his will to go back, to a time which he didn't feel that pain, or toward a time the pain will be no longer. Pain itself is enjoyable, look at BDSM, hard scratching, biting your girlfriend's neck, etc. It is a great experience, wait till you break an arm, lie down, forget about your language, and concentrate in the pain, forget it's p a i n, try to address the thing that the word is pointing at, research the differences of this pain and any other you remember, etc.
Loneliness is not automatically translated as suffering, many people enjoy solitude, they may even say that the state of loneliness is a nature.
I've already mentioned BDSM, enslavement goes the same direction, some people are glad to be enslaved, look at white and blue collar.
I think we should do something about some sort of a protocol, "How to ask a question of dummies", I mean, wouldn't "Would you clone yourself?" or "Your newborn son?", "Would you buy a bunker in alaska to keep all your relative's insurence-clones?", you know - or even "What's the worst thing that can happen?"
The day I saw a friend of mine sitting down on his computer, showing me the new Call for Duty, after five sequential nights he spent in Gaza, killing a sum of eight people he never met before, right there - I just KNEW something got terribly wrong with this story.
Of course, he has the "He wouldn't hesitate shooting me" argument by his side, plus the "They are enemies" supporting from behind, but I say that if you want to stay alive, you do not cross the line.
You do not hold a loaded gun.
You do not invade a man's home for his neighbor's actions.
Obviously, sanity is a social construct - as in - the divider of sane people from the lunatics is created socially and is dependent on statistical opinion and the consensuses of what is real and\or possible. We all have these, one needs only a few days in front of the tv to absorb all of it.
Sanity was constructed in order to put it in a social contract. Since we know the insane are sent away to pure themselves, or just stay away - It is plausible to assume that if you are free to hang around, go to work, and pay your taxes, your mental state and conditioning are most probably acceptable by the people around you. Thus, you are sane.
I'll leave the paranoid thoughts of a self-conscience pseudo-existentially questioning the identity of itself, to those who blindly believe that human broken-by-definition language could possibly reach its improvised rusted phone-lines to a matter we all daily rediscover that we have no stable idea about the nature of, that we will probably never understand how we work.
Only those who believe in an object or an abstract thingy just because there is a word for it could possibly give any meaning to sanity outside of the context of social acceptance.
We try to desperately defy ourselves, to get rid of the mystery, the unknown, the uncertain, to function as a rational, calm, peaceful, human beings. Yet we are surrounded by words like I, myself, self, soul, conscience, concentration, sanity, attention, existence, inner world, thoughts, etc.. What does each point at?
I wouldn't say it's "acceptable", but I wouldn't go the other way either.
Because the problem pops up only when it is a matter of policy of masses. The big no-no of drug prohibition is a simple: "What if everyone start using?" or "What would you say if your son does it?"
Though it is very clear that the majority of illegal drug users are there for the thrill, I wouldn't start categorizing, but most of marijuana smokers wouldn't have smoked at all if it wasn't illegal, because it wouldn't be on the tv, radio, newspapers etc.. There just wouldn't be a buzz around it.
The real question is: Whether one may lock another behind the bars for something that he digested, used, smoked etc.. And to spice things up, one, more likely, will have some a priori quotes of facts he had learnt by heart, while the other one knows that if there is any brain damage related to drugs - it is in the non-user experience.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
A patient may receive a treatment that might harm a system in his body in order to save another system. It is the PATIENT'S responsibility, after the doctor's approval, to decide whether it pays, should he take that risk.
I've heard of treatments that are illegal in the US, so patients that believe in it, travel all the way to chine, to a specific hospital to obtain it.
If it makes people feel better, if it makes some inspire themselves to become a better compound and companion in the psychological \ social \ physical environment, why stand between the man and his fruit?
I'd try to keep things simple this time, because I don't know much about politics since knowing politics has nothing to do with and\or has no parallel metaphor in my experience of things. This one's a little rumor-engaging-strategy game for me. Nobody knows those people anyway, one way or another, to be in it, is to be covered with it.
I believe that the answer of this question depends on who you ask, and how wide is their spectrum of valid opinions, beliefs and ideals.
If your spectrum was X, and then X went up by Gay Rights, and now you have Y which is X plus "There should be a right for people who like to sleep with people from the same sex (too) to have their partner's given name printed into their identification documents".
Whatever X thought of R's and D's, Y knows exactly where he puts his badass finger when he sings the "curse of those who have no dignity, in this country".
Then Y gets shot accidentally, he decides to convert to Z and vote for R's, cause obviously, he's not gay, and for one to be able to carry those things will require one to prove his responsibility and accuracy, Z will say that he is just being rational.
One day, Z might get high, or convince himself that modernism was a mistake, and that when movie met industry went down the whole art with it, and that mass-media is a brainrace of loudmouthing, and none of those videoized bedtime stories are more then a rumor anyway, and that our depart from nature's hands had critical implications on us speedy speeders.
Then he probably converts to @ or what have you, and yes, R's and D's are pretty much the same with some choice over the outcome of some bizarre mental images infra-warfare.
A deed is meaningless. The meaning is in the doing alone.
There is a sense of falling victim of your own goals, but then again - major goal, the one you care about in an unexplainable fashion, has very often something to do with a salvation, somewhat.
And it is always built up upon smaller goals, which is the victimizing factor.
No absolute answer here.
Obviously no absolute for the other side of this argument. Planing on buying another Cola pack is a goal. Deciding to break up with your girlfriend is a goal. Becoming to a better companion for the environment and comrades is a goal.
Doesn't worth giving that up for the sake of not risking security.
The western culture and population are the goals of the past. Successful goals. Isolating humans in a vacuum of financial problems went great. Depersonalizing leaders and financial-problems-related figures went even better.
Dehumanizing thought to a single-story architecture stuffed with matter of social success and "whether I am good enough to be liked" went through the roof - nobody is in charge of THAT anymore, society itself holds those reins now.
Some existentials might disagree with the notion that goals have an essential part in playing out and particularly having a living body, arguing that goals are a distraction that takes you out of the current, out of basic reality.
But as always I'd like those existential madness to have some kind of policy in order to allow every human being into this luxury of dominantless, JUST living, wind hugging, cloud naming, final freedom.
Hillary Putnam once put a great example exactly for this uncertain debate.
He illustrated a computer connected to a brain, feeding it with what we call the sense-feed, whatever the brain saw, heard, tasted, smelled, felt, it was all electronic language translated though electrodes for the brain to correspond to.
Putnam now says that the brain will never get to the point where it is aware of the reality in which the computer stands, if he will not receive a set of organs to do just that.
Which makes me quite antagonistic about the certainty of THIS reality.
What interests me a lot more is that most of our reality, most of everything we experience within and without, is created. Very much like the Brain in a vat thing, but it's our self that creates it. With logos, interpretation, presumption.
As individuals, we somewhat easily comprehend with the 'fact' that realities have always been vastly multidimensionaly-far apart.
Then what is the use of a theory in which all = all?
Is it truth we are searching? Is it a handrail?
Are we so terrified to accept that everything there is, is everything as is it - right now - to me, that we are willing to adapt the necessity for communications as a necessity for the universe?
What is actually going on is that this objective reality, might not seem as far from one's perspective, maybe one, max two tweaks ahead. And when one believes that he has the objective in his right hand, this is where insanity begins.
This way, one may believe, and as everything else around, this one's too a matter of belief, that one is made of glass.
The only logical continuation of this thoughtstray is that one should be careful not to touch anything solid, or he might break.
Another insanity is declaring one's life superior over another's, basing his point of a resource believed to be parallel and permanently connected to the truth and the objective reality.
I have a hard time trying to engage this question if I decide to shove my favorite quotes right back up my sleeves.
I'll try and start from the beginning.
To define something is to say what it is not, rather than describing what it looks it, it is showing the thing itself, rather than fencing it with limits after which it becomes something else.
In this case, reality is more an approach to life, and what life brings with it, than a group of things that could identify itself in contrast to some other scapegoat group.
If you defy reality, than by the definition of what you have decided on doing, you are moving stuff out of the 'everything' to something you do not call 'reality' any more, rather - you call it 'fiction', or 'lunacy', 'blasphemy', 'stupidity'.
This way the notion of 'Betterment' attaches to your idea of 'reality', and you are better off.
Direct experience should be considered here, and everything else as an unconfirmed rumor. Because it is the experience of the information that matters and happens before the describing of it. This way, there is no war in Georgia. I HAVE READ that there is a war in Georgia.
An interesting thought is that while talking on chat, some people won't question the person they were talking to if the conversation was between the allegedly participators, when they meet face to face.
In the first Matrix movie, Neo is summoned into a program with a red leather chair and a TV, and he denies it from being real.
But unlike most of our denials, he is there. Experiencing it in parallel with a murderous disbelief. I believe this is what happens when one refuses to surrender a psychedelic trip. Breath, neo! Just breath.
In the matrix the line between the real and the matrix was a plot tool, a dialogue tool. I don't know for certain if in a different from the Matrix scenario - would I take the red or the blue pill, because it doesn't matter to me what reality I'm in, in a sense that if there is no linear scale, if none of the realities can be fact-based-on called 'realer', as long as your choice reality isn't prohibited or demonized, what difference does it - really - make?
I wouldn't guess who that was but someone said once that if we had any direct use of molecules and electrons, we would've see through matter. There wouldn't even be a notion of matter, density and proportion would substitute space and size. And if we were in the size of the sun, what would be the sense in palpation? The marks on the keyboard are definitely a part of my reality right now, if I allow it to be.
And maybe to 'allow' wouldn't be the best choice of describing the hierarchy between the receiver and the thing that apparently is being received.
And this notion of control over things that are much much greater and much ever more like the raw materials of us humans, to me - has something to do with the identity crises so many of us undergo.
To be a modern man, one should restraint his feeling, in a way that the restraining will not be visible to the subject of desire, and to move it out of the way for modern seducing techniques.
To be a cool man, one should adjust his mind, in a way that the adjusting will not be visible to the co-adjustees, and to move it out of way for cool social techniques.
I would oppose but will not support the other view. The Olympics is very close to the idea of a birthday or a religious holiday, than a political platform that might suggest any effect.
I agree with borme that politics are set aside in the events, but i believe that what might appear as once every four years super human sport values of earth pride via non-violent combatants, is actually another product of a diverting statue-culture.
The Olympic games, as they always were, are aside from the world it is programed, agreed version of events, thus - they are possible in every scenario world.
The opening ceremony was a "one world. brought to you by.." type of thing, covered with fancy modern romance and harmonic duality. Not a word about Burma, not a hint concerning Tibet. The opposite was one with it-ball-vision-self, China was on the good guys' side.
This is not entirely correct, if you aren't sitting on the spanking seat.
Philosophy may not have anything to do with religion, these supergroups, as I understand it, are based upon a close network of activities and practices that their disturbed output is visible a click away. Although, a division in the first, say Determinism or Existentialism or Positivism are much closer to the platform of religion in the cognitive geography.
I believe we should change the name of religion, to something that would include connotations with anything that requires faith to be accomplished. Such as staying up all night to see the sunrise with not a single doubt in mind it WILL rise. Or turning the tv on at the exact time that news are believed to be broadcasted.
And philosophy, on the other hand should be change to a name that will reveal itself as the beforehand of faith. Our ability to imagine, to insert something from nowhere into present presence. To blend truth with language.
I wouldn't go support this view, but don't you think that this abnormality, as any other, especially a biological abnormality, is a deviation of sorts?
And what do we do with deviousness in this part of the spectrum?
Homosexuality is only possible because of the modern situation, even if we ignore the even-though possibilities of raising a child and getting married here and there. In most of normality based cultures, or more like keeping-the-sacristy-distant-from-some-
This is where god dies, once more, and with it our Archimedean point, and with nothing to lever our arrogance, what shall we do with words like diseases and abnormalities? Should we restrict them to fantasy-literature?
Still we all agree there is a system that has built itself through self-purifying, and pedophiles and homosexuals and mormons are just another step, and we.. lucky we.
Normality debates are quite useless, yes. Although this one smells important enough. We have this pedo-problem in which innocent children are being awfully treated by anonymous adults with a bold question mark on their forehead.
The reason we don't like this kind of relationships in our planet, the reason we want to stop hear about is that those kids cannot agree to everything that the adult desires to do.
I don't know anything for sure about any effects of early age exposure to sexuality, but rumor says they grow up to be queer, one way or another.
Unknown's argument states that there is a normal state in which a pedophile cannot take part of. Why? Chicken adds that it is because they do not have the morality to comprehend the effect of their deeds.
And I agree that all knowledge on pedophilia states, not clearly, but heavily suggests, that those people "just can't get it".
Then the thing about them had nothing to do with normality, except to shorten what really bothers, that it is their inability to think out, feel guilt, and control themselves that dazzles our wicked, fake march to purity's whispers.
Your definition of knowledge is quite different of what I referred to in my argument. You are talking about facts, if you put the internet as the upgrading tool of human overall intelligence. Facts are used more like a competitive measure (IQ), in which losers are common people and dumbasses.
This is not what intelligence stands for - an ability, Quality, not Quantity.
Just like your second paragraph.
So, with these assumption built, the internet is more of a manifestation of the world's abundance within the domain of the mind.
So we have more, but all we have is meaningless.
And we know more, but all we know is useless.
And vice versa.
It is in the conversation, the way information flows through us, shared and dealt with. Sadly, most of us are trapped in the commercial and financial, in which things and ideas are simplified in matters of healthy\not, cheap\expensive, cool\not.
Into these binaries, one's cognitive does not require a deeper investigation, each binary is just a point in the map of one's life. And if one activates the overrated style of living, he doesn't really have the time to focus on a point, because one is in a constant process of creating a point, figuring out how cool healthy and moraly it is, and sharing, trading points constantly.
One cannot keep up with creation. Not with his favorite music genre, nor with his friends' thoughts.
Imagine a production line. Naturally, you are standing in the position of where the objects on the rail are entering, through some kind of a screen. Your job is to identify, you have some kind of tool that labels the objects.
Now imagine the objects start flooding your station, they enter in masses and you must label them as quickly as possible, before the next bunch comes demanding in.
People aren't dumber, they just don't let themselves let out a deeper interest, a longer thought. They won't play with thoughts or ask for an evidence of their will power or existence, because there is too much to life, and all these thoughts smell of death.
Taylor Mali, referring to the 'Like' and 'You know', described conversation best.
"Declarative sentences, so called because they're used to, you know, declare things to be true, OK?, as opposed to other things that are, like, totally, you know, not, they've been infected by this tragically cool and totally hip interrogative tone, as if I'm saying - don't think I'm a nerd just because I've noticed this, OK?, I have not personally invested in my own opinions, I'm just, like, inviting to join me on the bandwagon of my own uncertainty."
I wouldn't call it a game, because unlike common schemes, this one is more of a lifestyle to deal with, not a matter of trust and gain, rather the choice between the redemption of being religious or the existential suffering of being an atheist.
The book of genesis tells a story of rebellion. Listening to the advise of a serpent (which has something to do with Christ) and eating from the forbidden fruit or mushroom (which has something to do with Christ's flesh and blood) and gaining the knowledge of good and bad. The big deal sin.
Both Judaism and Christianity present your own life as a cleansing process, that, if successful - will be awarded in the next life. No suicides allowed.
Which, in our modern state is a comforting thought. Isn't it? I mean if we already gave up our own rebellion, if we accept the fact the being born alone doesn't fully justify one's right to live, if we accept a lifetime of self-justification, if we accept the type of authority, trust it blindly from a distance, enough to believe it works for our interests all along the way even though we have only interpretations as a matter for judging, if we consider our leaders as alienated ideals as their campaigns dictate, then we probably rather believe in a life in which we are ought to be punished and regulated, for we have sinned.
But we don't, us, good atheists, are not far from the personalities that occupy the left hemisphere of our western state of rulership.
Just like our leaders, we are pretentious in the way we hold on to the knowledge of the good and corrupt in the way we passively promote corruption, hoping that one day we will live just like our sacred movie figures.
I went too far, maybe, but religion has a lot to do with representative democracy when you judge it by faith matters.
Faith is when I never experienced god to determine whether to worship and promote it and it's values, but I do so anyway. Like pin pointing on an uncharted map a location of the object of desire.
In other words a religion is like saying that a group of people hold an idea for a better reality, a determined static state in which all things are good, justifying it's course of action within it by values and virtues that were given by the pin pointed body of knowledge of good.
I like to imagine those self-assured pretentious business-suit-celebrities as naked men with an egoistic baboon on their shoulder, threatening to reveal their little chit-chats if they won't do exactly as he tells them to.
I hope I pushed the right "view".
There's not a single screen around, you see?
Art. Censorship.
Well, it's like we're going to war, right?
I really don't get those weirdos.
And those rich people should donate instead.
I sure hope this means manson the second is going down, too.
Oh! I heard those blinding porn movies actually have directors and editors.
It's a violation of what?
What the fuck?!
They can have art.myspace.com if they want. It's not like you won't see them on the streets.
How dare you? This statue is our state's history.
History is a another CLASS. Did you even hear the question?
I'm more than willing to sacrifice that, and stop testing me.
Have you ever even sat more than, say, an hour, next to those channels?
I went to my neighbor's birthday, last week, his kid was ordered to take me on a little tour. At first, his room looked like a shire for Captain American with the exact date of his home cometh. And he seemed a bit queer.
I'm really through with you, cause it's not you talking out of that mouth.
Get your hands off me, boy! And listen to me.
If you never wondered what those pricks are actually doing to feed they're friends, you should try it, yea, you know, before you ask any questions.
Those little bustards!
They've breached the huricanwall!
They did what?
A breach in the system?!
Send everything we've got!
I prefer the likes of Oblivion (I ride through the whole trip, picking flowers and loot) and I do have a major obsession with San Andreas (great therapy), but Valve's Portal was a new benchmark for whatever I thought about the capabilities of video games to put a player through.
The game quickly introduces you the big concept of the game, the engine allows portals within a room, or a small area, and the engine has this rule-structure that you bend and abuse to get yourself to the next level. At some point, I began to play with my ability, I felt as if I'm probably doing something that would crash the game or just won't 'work', but the engine was fine with it. And I remember that for the last thirty minutes of the game, I was running away from something and the whole portal thing was part of my instincts, and I was teasing it.
And that was really far from the reality I had to wake up to, the game is about two hours constant. I couldn't take my head off it, I started thinking that most of the games I played weren't really taking things to extremes, so I searched for more concept-based game engines, and I found TimeShift, which was a total hardship, time shifting in time shift is a gimmick.
So it is a fair scale.
I like to look at it as parallel to film or literature + user interference (which usually and unfortunately is there just to replace the luck factor, Rambo wouldn't die in any scene, the movie must go on, but you could die, and you didn't.)
A film can take the role of the story teller, and bore the viewer with some of his morals, or it could realize the new potential experiences, utterly.
This is even not a valid debate, what a tragedy!
Could a nuclear attack be justified? Westerns may well find themselves a justification to cure the guilt away, that's not a valid justification, you wish it could.
Was it a crime against humanity? Yes, murder is a crime, and as Bradf0rd (which is my ally, and he will definitely back me up back if I needed) said it kick started a general approval for any other nation to do that as well, and screw the justification.
It's a bit problematic when the people that hold such options are the people that are throwing their theoretical life span at mastering the old-school of being famous, holding on to the remainders of social status and unjustified power.
