Nick_A wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2017 7:35 pm
Greta
Again, you seem unable to see the difference between observations verified by many and your own subjective observations. Your attitude displays a weak and blinkered grasp of philosophic history, especially the growing need in ancient civilisations to verify people's varied subjective claims.
What are these unique observations many have verified that I have missed?
Might you recognise names like Democritus and Ibn al-Haytham? If not, and if you had any philosophic depth you would understand why those pioneers of reason pointed out the need for proof of subjective claims.
The need for such thinking came about due to people like you who make over-certain claims and use repetition, bullying and manipulation to push your points.
Nick_A wrote:Only recently has the wheat begun to be separated from the tares and preserved for the few willing to experience beyond blind denial.
This is the crux of everything that you say - that you are the wheat and all other forum members are chaff. The king deigning to educate the peasants.
Nick_A wrote:So, when someone chooses not to speak about their subjective stuff (as anyone could), you seem to assume that they don't have any subjective existence like David Chalmer's "philosophical zombies". It's a naive view that underestimates the nature of human consciousness.
No. People prefer to present an image as opposed to admitting what we are. Why is this surprising for you? Jesus accused the Pharisees of hypocrisy because they had become creatures of image who did not feel and experience what they said or how they acted in public. They were zombies trying to appear alive.
No, they were just immature people in positions of power, just as you are an immature person without power. To claim that there's nothing inside of other people is just solipsism.
Nick_A wrote:I am perfectly happy exchanging views with theists and, aside from you, can have a relaxed sharing and comparing of ideas. As it is, you STILL think that it's your ideas that bother others when the problem is simply your aggressive personality. Stop being aggressive and carrying on as though you are The Great King Poop speaking down to his unworthy subjects and you'll find people being a whole lot more receptive to you.
Why would you have trouble with a theist?
That was your claim. I only have trouble with theists (and atheists and agnostics) when they are over-certain, obtuse, hyper-sensitive or unpleasant.
Nick_A wrote:You are apparently unaware of what “being” is. It is more than just being alive or dead. Human being is the same. It isn’t a matter of being alive or dead. You are unaware of both the relativity and scale of human being. The concept is offensive for you and you react to it. You don’t appreciate the value of the message so must condemn the messenger.
A good example of your misguided arrogance. Nobody understands being - and that includes you.
Also, effectively accusing me of antinatalism is just throwing random mud. Why not accuse me of being a murderer, lesbian and baby molester who tortures small animals while you are at it? You can say anything you like - it's a free country - but your reckless and random lying is tiresome and reminiscent of your man, Trump's constant stream of fabrications (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stLwtHEx74A).
Why not stop and consider whether you are speaking with mind or emotions before pressing the "Submit" button?
Nick_A wrote:Nicolae Tanase: Prof. Needleman, what is the meaning of life?
Jacob Needleman: The dramatic effects of the accelerating advance of technology, for all the material promise they offer the world (along with the dangers, of course) are but the most recent wave in a civilization that, without recognizing what it was doing, has placed the satisfaction of desire above the cultivation of being.
The deep meaning of many rules of conduct and moral principles of the past — so many of which have been abandoned without our understanding their real roots in human nature — involved the cultivation and development of the uniquely human power of attention, its action in the body, heart and mind of man.
Nick, old people, theists and conservatives often express disappointment at the way the world changed since they were young. When a person is all three, like Needleman, then one can expect him to see the present through a dark lens.
I also note the superficiality of the observation, as though humans are all doing the same thing. Most are doing the same thing, but some are not - and like Huxley's Alphas - a minority need to act as the "brains of the outfit". Much as I am idealistic about egalitarianism, what I see is genuine differences. There is a growing, poorly educated rump on societies that lacks prospects. That points to instability. Yet, the power brokers have enough technology to augment their minority numbers to control and repel the masses.
So, sure, your "Great Beast" ("society at large" to less crazy people) is exploiting and discarding what it deems as its least useful people, as societies have done since tribal days. The ranks of the "not useful" are growing, though, with much talent going to waste, being dwarfed by the speedy, precise, tireless, cheap and 24/7 work of modern machines.
The Earth is restructuring and anyone who has been through corporate restructures will know that waste and pain inevitably come with change.
Nick_A wrote:Those like you and F4 have no idea what human being is so naturally no idea how and why to cultivate it. The secular answer is indoctrination which they call education for the outer man. Without any appreciation for the reality of human “being” you cannot understand how the narrow-mindedness of secular indoctrination leads to spirit killing. The fact that I realize it and am wiling to discuss it is seen as looking down on people. If we are asleep in Plato’s cave unaware of what we are in comparison to the potential for human “being” it is a very insulting revelation to those with the normal modern belief in the superiority of the Great Beast and all its supporters
Re: your claims that "F4" and I have "no idea" - you have NO IDEA what goes on in our heads so kindly STFU with your pointless accusations, you Nickhead.
Anyway, what you base these grand claims of knowledge on? Seemingly the polemic of ancient people who believed that bacteria were evil spirits.
While you seemingly believe me to have the consciousness of a dead lizard, I actually do experience qualia. Thus, I appreciate the emotional need for a sense of solidity in a sometimes alarmingly dynamic reality. However, I see your interpretation of the situation as neurotic. Like many, you are convinced that humans are acting as a cancer on the Earth and need correction. I am yet to see cancers create structures more organised and sentient than that which they replace. So I see a fully integrated natural system that includes human beings and their works as agents of change, perhaps akin to blue-green algae during the Great Oxygenation event.
For inhabitants of larger systems (like us), restructures are not good news. However, if what emerges from humanity is even half as exciting and profound as what emerged after the Earth was oxygenated, then at least all the torment is in the cause of a better future form some. Who is to say that humanity is the ultimate expression of evolution and must not, or cannot, be superseded?
For all we know, there may be a primary game of life in which we are merely a primitive middling player. It's possible that every humans' moral ideas up to this point in history have all the ontological depth of a three year-old talking about right and wrong. In fact, that seems likely.
If the Earth continues to develop (eg. sans planet-killing asteroids or runaway greenhouse effect) there will come a time when much of the guesswork of morality is replaced by knowledge. For instance, a well-meaning exorcist or healer can do unknowing harm though pointless trauma or impotence of the treatments, while modern healers have the knowledge to avoid that harm and hopefully do some good. The power of knowledge is well enough known, so the more that a population knows, the more effectively moral, or immoral, they are able to be.
So, yes, technological progress is ideally be matched by moral awareness, which of course is largely only happening amongst a minority of well educated and informed people and a spattering of the uneducated and morally gifted in the broader community.
Shifting the mind of a population is a huge undertaking, akin to turning around an ocean liner. I think it necessary and good that people keep trying, and remain interested in maintaining a sense of morality -
real morality, not just attacking easy, highly vulnerable targets like churches, who in chasing easy targets have morally let their flocks down.
However, I don't hold out much hope for the masses, especially refugees and those in developing countries, and not just due to religions focusing on populist issues rather than that which is most morally important. The nations' corrupt and shambling leadership (usually conservative theists) have grievously let them down and now those populations will die like flies this century due to population pressure, climate change, resource depletion and concomitant war and disease.
This is a critical time when societies will either set themselves to persist in the new world, or to fall away into history.