Greylorn Ell wrote:SpheresOfBalance wrote:Greylorn Ell wrote:
I appreciate your unbiasedness. Given my comments, I'm impressed, and will take your thoughts at face value rather than trying to read betwixt the words.
Somewhere amid whatever processes produce consciousness, I've gotten the notion that there is some value in paying attention to what actually happens in life, compared to my programmed beliefs about what should happen.
The NFL (National Football League) offers an example of bullshit vs. reality. (I'm a Green Bay Packer fan, who lived there, saw the transformations to a city, consequence of one hard-assed man.) This year the NFL came down hard, early in season, on players who showed the slightest bit of intransigence to some new rules. But by late season, they've adjusted their enforcement of rules, and are screwing the teams who made the mistake of abiding by these assholes' early-season "rules." Typical of bureaucratic pricks. If you want to win, your hand must enter their pockets with a fistful of large bills, and leave empty.
Philosophy should, ideally, be a hard-nosed conversation without rules. But modern philosophers are NOT related to Socrates, willing to put his life on the line for his ideas. Our "philosophers" are akin to the asshole NFL rule-makers. Their CYA (Cover Your Ass) principles have become their "philosophy." By constructing and abiding by their bullshit rules of discourse, they will secure their comfortable positions in universities, or their assumed position as "philosophers." No risk. No pain. No gain, excepting short-term personal interests.
I've been giving people the "benefit of the doubt" since I was taught that bullshit back in Catholic school. Consequences: loss of money to thieves, loss of credibility to liars. One who managed both was my oldest offspring. The truth is that people will tell you whatever they think you will believe in order to make a buck, or to prove themselves "right."
Greylorn
Well, nicely put! But I see things differently.
To your comment on humans being assholes, I agree that they often are. That often they shall try and take you for anything they can, of course they will, and it's a shame.
That often people decide that they can't beat them so they join them, is also equally a shame. Yet actually I'd like to see that, only in the other direction. That the emotional wrecks join the calm and cool.
Because I see a different kind of Übermensch on the horizon, one that knows the truth, and knows that he knows the truth, is comfortable with it, having no emotional need to shove it down ones throat, instead understanding that it's their loss, not his, if they don't listen.
We're talking mental strength and calm here, of the utmost ability. I hope to finally one day achieve it, as I know it shall pay off greatly! In all kinds of ways. My and their stress level, effectiveness, peace and harmony, a sense of cooperation rather than competition, as well as many other desirable things.
In truth, a need to win at all costs, to loose ones grip on self control, speaks more of ones inabilities than it does their abilities, actually lending to their not being listened to. So in essence they're like a windup walking tin man that can only go straight ahead, not being able to change course when encountering an obstacle, such that they make no further progress, their own worst enemy. It's far better to be like bamboo that bends in the wind, than a tree that cracks. It's far better to go around the obstacle.
One leads by example. So it all depends on what one would prefer they encounter.
Hey, I'll get there one day!
S.O.B.
I hope that you arrive elsewhere than your version of "there." You'll find it less comfortable but more interesting.
Your meaning here is a bit on the oblique side for me, but it looks like you are offering behavior advice to a tree. That is superb advice for a tree, or by analogy a pacifist, or a Republican shmoo, or someone who is content to bend with the wind, and kiss the appropriate asses displayed downwind. Also fine advice for a glider pilot, but not for an A-10 pilot in a war zone.
I'm trying to push a philosophical envelope that conventional philosophers do not even know exists. I would appreciate some competent thinkers to assist the process, and I get annoyed with conventional people for whom thought is merely a process of mimicking. They are like the shmoos in "Sonic" drive-in commercials. I will probably continue to express my annoyance with such shmoos and intellectual phonies. For anyone who takes a new or different position, the huge mass of individuals reiterating opinions that society has programmed them to believe are greater obstructions than any overt enemies of the alternative position taken.
I notice that you speak twice of "shame." That is complete bullshit. Who defines "shame" except a gaggle of pretentious nitwits who have sex with their pets or farm animals when the official spouse isn't interested, and when no one is watching. It is occasionally amusing to ask one of these clowns how often they masturbate. Try it sometime, but not with friends that you want to retain.
I've worked with serious prison inmates, and not a one of them has expressed shame for his actions. Became friends with a few who seemed to appreciate my astronomy lectures. After the release of one, I let him babysit my kids one night. He'd already explained the direction of his next venture into a life of crime, but it was not about child molesting. The kids enjoyed his company and learned a lot of stuff that they could not have learned from me.
Had he ever expressed "shame" to me for the actions that sent him to jail, or protested that he was "innocent," that would never have happened.
Why is it a shame for a person to follow his instincts? I once had a ladyfriend who lived in the desert and cringed at the screams of the rabbits out there as they were being disemboweled by coyotes. Shames was her name. She was intelligent enough to know the cycles of life, the balance between predator and prey, and she understood this. Yet she wanted life to be different. Like the coyotes should become vegetarians, and the rabbits would not eat from a human family's garden. Women actually think like that.
Is it a shame that lots of dogs die every year, instead of being kept alive to bark at the moon all night and disturb the sleep of humans? It is a shame when a bowling pin absorbs a shock from an oncoming ball that would smash a human skull? Is it a shame that in the Large Hadron Collider destroys millions of helpless protons in its search for the Higgs bozon?
Have you been watching a lot of ASPCA commercials of late?
Greylorn
None of that crap impresses me, simply a boy beating his chest. Some it would seem, have 'only' machismo, thus testosterone on the brain, tell me who you are?
It's a
shame when he, through ignorance, sticks a loaded .45 ACP barrel in his mouth, safety off, and pulls the trigger. It's a
shame that he didn't 'know' any better. Care to try it? It's a
shame, as that's also the only thing that impresses me. The only act of a sane mans bravery. Anything else, in dealing death, the mark of a coward. You say you want to change the world, start with you, the only life you actually have 100% dominion over, at least philosophically. But then you're no philosopher are you? To give license for one's own murder, is a fools game indeed. There's always a bigger beast in the woods. One starts as feeble, needing his ass wiped, and ends feeble, needing his ass wiped. There's always a bigger beast in the woods. To beat ones chest as if he's invincible, and that he has the "right" solution because of it, is a fools game. To back any kind of, so called knowledge, with this type of analogy or metaphor, is a fools game. I was once given the key to the kingdoms demise, possession of a live nuclear weapon, me and my fellow keeper that is, knowing full well that if he touched it, I'd have to go so far as to kill him, and he, I, so said the D.O.D.
I learned of the men of M.A.D. in those days, and understand those types all too well, because in fact I am a philosopher. (An A-10 tank killer, or a prison inmate indeed, can you say, "mushroom," but you only have a nanosecond to do so, when you're at ground zero.)
So what you really have to ask yourself is, "are you brave or a coward?" And, "Are you sane or insane?" Choose carefully, as your life here as someone meaningful rests upon your answers. Do you want to be a philosopher or a fool?
FYI, I thought I was sharing my philosophy on progress, personal growth, and the advanced human being, with someone of like mind. That you instead took offense as if it was some sort of put down, as if I was speaking of you personally, says more about you than it does me. You totally blindsided me with that response, I expected far more from you, than what seems to be your guilt, your inferiority complex, your lack of self esteem, or so it surely might seem. You don't understand me very well. But then no one here actually does. Just look at me the same as everyone else does, consider me a babbling fool, and you'll be the same as everyone else here. Who knows maybe I have brain cancer, not quite in my right mind, going to die soon, such that that's the kind of person you're taking way too serious, arguing with one that should be very easy to argue against, yet finding it complicated somehow. If only we were face to face, maybe you could have seen what I really meant. Maybe a dieing man just like you. I believe I can look into peoples soul, through their eyes, how about you? I have tears in mine most of the time, and I don't really know what kind of pain it is, I mean is it physical, is it mental, is it both? Maybe someone can look into them and tell me what it is.
As to the topic at hand:
I believe that to say, "Evolution is False" is way too broad." That instead, some I agree with and some I don't. Nothing is perfect! At least not on planet earth. I guess we could wrestle with specifics, but right now I'm getting tired of typing, Later!
Oh and Happy Holidays to all those that don't want to make a big stink about me wishing them so. Oh to hell with it, Happy Holidays to them too. "You see you, can't please everyone so you, got to please yourself." --Ricky Nelson--
P.S. one last question: Is one that seems to think violence is a viable solution to anything intellectual, a through back evolutionarily speaking? I believe so!
