Life Itself

So what's really going on?

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Dontaskme
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Re: Life Itself

Post by Dontaskme »

Relinquish wrote:Thanks for all your replies, people. :)

One of the main things I'm trying to convey here is the basic reasons why we don't ever need to be deeply engaged in any argument with Reality. It's an argument that can NEVER be won, simply because there isn't actually anyone there to win, or even to do the arguing at all. I'm trying to show why it SEEMS as though there IS someone there to do it, and why the belief that 'Reality isn't good enough the way it is' arises, and why that belief is simply false.

Truth is, there isn't actually any real imperfection or incompleteness to be found.

What a relief, right?

:)
Great post.
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Dontaskme
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Re: Life Itself

Post by Dontaskme »

Harbal wrote:
Greta wrote: No offence meant.
Nevertheless, I can't help hoping some has been caused.
One simply cannot cause offence to something that has never been off the fence...or even of the fence.
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Harbal
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Re: Life Itself

Post by Harbal »

Dontaskme wrote: One simply cannot cause offence to something that has never been off the fence...or even of the fence.
But one can't help but try.
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Greta
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Re: Life Itself

Post by Greta »

Relinquish wrote:One of the main things I'm trying to convey here is the basic reasons why we don't ever need to be deeply engaged in any argument with Reality. It's an argument that can NEVER be won, simply because there isn't actually anyone there to win, or even to do the arguing at all. I'm trying to show why it SEEMS as though there IS someone there to do it, and why the belief that 'Reality isn't good enough the way it is' arises, and why that belief is simply false.

Truth is, there isn't actually any real imperfection or incompleteness to be found.

What a relief, right?
Postmodernism won't do, and it never did.

In an existential/universal sense, as Lacewing observed - you cannot get life wrong. This was heavily argued against but I do believe that lives are essentially equal, not good, bad or indifferent - each life is just another life, be it Einstein, Hitler, Gandhi or the families next door.

However, on a practical level we should try not to let obvious untruths go unchallenged and take hold. An example of this kind of postmodernism is in the climate "debate". The media gave "each side equal time, to be fair", but in truth, they gave those with clearly wrong information on climate extra air time because denialism suited the fossil fuel vested interests of media proprietors and their allies.
Relinquish
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Re: Life Itself

Post by Relinquish »

Greta wrote:
Relinquish wrote:One of the main things I'm trying to convey here is the basic reasons why we don't ever need to be deeply engaged in any argument with Reality. It's an argument that can NEVER be won, simply because there isn't actually anyone there to win, or even to do the arguing at all. I'm trying to show why it SEEMS as though there IS someone there to do it, and why the belief that 'Reality isn't good enough the way it is' arises, and why that belief is simply false.

Truth is, there isn't actually any real imperfection or incompleteness to be found.

What a relief, right?
Postmodernism won't do, and it never did.

In an existential/universal sense, as Lacewing observed - you cannot get life wrong. This was heavily argued against but I do believe that lives are essentially equal, not good, bad or indifferent - each life is just another life, be it Einstein, Hitler, Gandhi or the families next door.

However, on a practical level we should try not to let obvious untruths go unchallenged and take hold. An example of this kind of postmodernism is in the climate "debate". The media gave "each side equal time, to be fair", but in truth, they gave those with clearly wrong information on climate extra air time because denialism suited the fossil fuel vested interests of media proprietors and their allies.
Would you think it contradictory of me to agree with you completely, and yet still stand 100% by my OP?
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Greta
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Re: Life Itself

Post by Greta »

Relinquish wrote:Would you think it contradictory of me to agree with you completely, and yet still stand 100% by my OP?
:))) Not at all - any given issue has so many possible perspectives it's dizzying.

Yes, my post could be seen as just adding provisos to the OP rather than contradictory. We are all necessarily wrong almost all of the time, as any civilisation a thousand years more advanced than ours would note. Similarly, we understandingly note the mistakes of our forebears.

Perhaps language is a issue here, locking down multi-faceted concepts with semantics that communicate a single dimension of an issue. This allows for black-and-white thinking, which IMO is a logical error in all but binary machine language. The difficulty comes when establishing when a point is less wrong than another point.

The "more wrong" side can always point to flaws in the "less wrong" side and an uninformed observer will be fooled. An ingenue will just see competing claims without assessing them. Thus political and social influence is retained, because a person who has been completely demolished in a debate need only point to one ostensible positive and suddenly we return to a phony "there's two sides of the story" scenario.

I never made it through Machiavelli's The Prince, but I'd be surprised if he hadn't considered this game.
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