Individualism vs. Collectivism

[RCSaunders]

Your response to SoB highlights something that I've been trying to express in my communications with Nick. Continually negative impressions about people and life are more of an insight into the mental source of such ideas. (Just as continually positive impressions about people and life reflect the mental source of those ideas.) It seems that what we typically see in people and life... is the kind of energy that emanates from us. Considering how many possible ways there are to see each and every thing, it only makes sense that the mental source is a huge factor in the impressions it sees.

Lacewing, I've not been ignoring your comment. I found it interesting and have been trying to decide the best way to respond. I have no disagreement with you, but you reminded of something I think is important, and I wondered if you'd find what I am thinking as important as I do.

Your observation that how one views others comes from one's own views and attitudes is certainly true, and I think there is a fundamental difference in the way individual's view life itself that determines those views and attitudes. I call the two views I have in mind the banal verses the romantic. The romantic view of life is essentially the view that life is opportunity, that it's purpose is to be lived and enjoyed as a great adventure of discovery and achievement and that happiness consists of achieving and being all one can. The banal view sees life as essentially a problem, something that must be endured and a source of constant threat of danger or suffering and the whole point of life is to solve problems, avoid danger, and mitigate suffering.

The difference between these two views of life will affect every aspect of one's life and what they live for and what they value. It determines what motivates all of an individual's choices in both thought and action. The romanticist lives to achieve values, the banal only seek to evade chronic anxiety about perpetual problems. It is the difference between seeing life as a quest for joy verses and escape from suffering, the achievement of happiness verses evading dissappointment and failure, earning rewards verses avoiding punishment, enjoying joy, beauty, and enthusiasm for life verses hiding from pain, ugliness, and purposelessness, knowing happiness is positive and matters but that suffering is negative and is irrelevant.

It is not so simple as optimism verses pessimism, it is an attitude about the nature of life and existence itself. The difference in each case is not an exclusive difference, it is not either all positive or all negative, the difference is in what is primary in one's life and approach to living; which is important and which incidental; which is the major reason for living and which is truly trivial.

The romantic view does not deny the existence of suffering, pain, punishment, ugliness, tragedy, anxiety, or problems, it denies that they are primary, that they are even important when compared to what is primary, because they are all negative. If there were no joy there would be no suffering, suffering is only what interferes with joy. If there were no beauty, there would be no ugliness, ugliness is whatever distorts or spoils the beautiful. If there were nothing of true value, there would be no tragedies, a tragedy is that which destroys the truly valuable. If there were no hope, there would be no anxiety. Who worries about the hopeless. If there was nothing to achieve and happiness was not to be pursued, there would be no problems.

RC

[Lacewing]

Your response to SoB highlights something that I've been trying to express in my communications with Nick. Continually negative impressions about people and life are more of an insight into the mental source of such ideas. (Just as continually positive impressions about people and life reflect the mental source of those ideas.) It seems that what we typically see in people and life... is the kind of energy that emanates from us. Considering how many possible ways there are to see each and every thing, it only makes sense that the mental source is a huge factor in the impressions it sees.

Lacewing, I've not been ignoring your comment. I found it interesting and have been trying to decide the best way to respond. I have no disagreement with you, but you reminded of something I think is important, and I wondered if you'd find what I am thinking as important as I do.

Your observation that how one views others comes from one's own views and attitudes is certainly true, and I think there is a fundamental difference in the way individual's view life itself that determines those views and attitudes. I call the two views I have in mind the banal verses the romantic. The romantic view of life is essentially the view that life is opportunity, that it's purpose is to be lived and enjoyed as a great adventure of discovery and achievement and that happiness consists of achieving and being all one can. The banal view sees life as essentially a problem, something that must be endured and a source of constant threat of danger or suffering and the whole point of life is to solve problems, avoid danger, and mitigate suffering.

The difference between these two views of life will affect every aspect of one's life and what they live for and what they value. It determines what motivates all of an individual's choices in both thought and action. The romanticist lives to achieve values, the banal only seek to evade chronic anxiety about perpetual problems. It is the difference between seeing life as a quest for joy verses and escape from suffering, the achievement of happiness verses evading dissappointment and failure, earning rewards verses avoiding punishment, enjoying joy, beauty, and enthusiasm for life verses hiding from pain, ugliness, and purposelessness, knowing happiness is positive and matters but that suffering is negative and is irrelevant.

It is not so simple optimism verses pessimism, it is an attitude about the nature of life and existence itself. The difference in each case is not an exclusive difference, it is not either all positive or all negative, the difference is in what is primary in one's life and approach to living; which is important and which incidental; which is the major reason for living and which is truly trivial.

RC

The romantic view does not deny the existence of suffering, pain, punishment, ugliness, tragedy, anxiety, or problems, it denies that they are primary, that they are even important when compared to what is primary, because they are all negative. If there were no joy there would be no suffering, suffering is only what interferes with joy. If there were no beauty, there would be no ugliness, ugliness is whatever distorts or spoils the beautiful. If there were nothing of true value, there would be no tragedies, a tragedy is that which destroys the truly valuable. If there were no hope, there would be no anxiety. Who worries about the hopeless. If there was nothing to achieve and happiness was not to be pursued, there would be no problems.

RC... your response is beautifully expressed and described! I can wholeheartedly agree with your representation of the "romantic view", as it's what I identify with. Your description of the "banal view" inspires me to think about it (and understand it) in ways that I had not before! To me, it has seemed a defeatist and negative-producing "view" that I couldn't fathom -- but somehow you have just shined a different light on it for me. Thank you!!

As you said: "an attitude about the nature of life and existence itself". I can now imagine, that for the banal attitude/view, the things I see and feel really do not exist or matter. Just as I feel no use for the banal attitude/view. These are very different experiences of life on planet Earth. These views are not based on (or born from) hardship or leisure. They are powerful. Fascinating. I'm going to be pondering this further.

[Nick_A]

Lacewing

Your response to SoB highlights something that I've been trying to express in my communications with Nick. Continually negative impressions about people and life are more of an insight into the mental source of such ideas. (Just as continually positive impressions about people and life reflect the mental source of those ideas.) It seems that what we typically see in people and life... is the kind of energy that emanates from us. Considering how many possible ways there are to see each and every thing, it only makes sense that the mental source is a huge factor in the impressions it sees.

You seem to have restricted yourself to impressions you judge as positive or negative. Yet it is possible to become emotionally impartial so as to experience the higher reality we are all part of. Simone Weil wrote

The combination of these two facts — the longing in the depth of the heart for absolute good, and the power, though only latent, of directing attention and love to a reality beyond the world and of receiving good from it — constitutes a link which attaches every man without exception to that other reality.

Whoever recognizes that reality recognizes also that link. Because of it, he holds every human being without any exception as something sacred to which he is bound to show respect.

This is the only possible motive for universal respect towards all human beings. Whatever formulation of belief or disbelief a man may choose to make, if his heart inclines him to feel this respect, then he in fact also recognizes a reality other than this world's reality. Whoever in fact does not feel this respect is alien to that other reality also.

Those like Simone are not caught up in judgement but rather know that we are all slaves to our own forms of delusion. The Great Beast or society itself is the proof that the emotional quality of what she suggests is impossible for our species as it is. The quality of our being prevents such collective awareness.

The process of becoming realistic is neither positive or negative. It requires opening to impartiality which the world caught up in the debates over good and evil has become incapable of. That is why the basic question of he difference between the collective and the individual cannot be discussed. Who knows the difference other than from a societal perspective?

[Immanuel Can]

Interesting, as always.

You may certainly identify all those others things you describe as, "thinking," (most people do)...So you see, what you mean by thinking and knowledge are not what I mean by those very same words. If we are going to discuss either of those concepts we're going to have specify which we mean, I think.

Yes, I think this is so. The definition of "knowledge" with which you are inclined to work excludes pre-linguistic "knowledge." So babies can't "know" anything, if that's true. There remains two difficulties with this. One is that your definition, then, is stipulative rather than normal, for as you say, "most people do" include the sorts of operations babies perform under the definition of "knowledge." But the second is more serious: that without the ability to think, babies could never acquire language at all, so "knowledge" (so defined) would be impossible to us all.

Your explanation is not terribly satisfactory. You write, "baby's' earliest words, which we recognize as words, are similar to (and are obviously attempts to mimic) our own." But this swallows far too much. It slides by, without explaining, how babies "mimic" anything, since they can't know anything!

So I think that needs some further explanation. Absent a pre-linguistic ability to process information, none of us could learn. And I think that's enough to satisfy most people's definition of "knowledge."

...you concede that, by the use of the words "what one is conscious of." If there's nothing to be conscious of, there's no knowledge: and that thing comes from the objective, external world. We don't generate knowledge spontaneously -- that is, without cause, stimulus, or occasion to do so.

The problem with your description for me is that it implies that it is what is available to learn about that makes one (causes or stimulates them to) learn.

I did not imply that. The word "makes" is incorrect. A game of checkers is not possible without some sort of checkerboard, perhaps...but it does not suggest that the checkerboard "makes" the game happen.

So...the ontological reality of the cat being there is the stimulus for your discovery. That's just what I said: "knowledge" does not come spontaneously, but is stimulated by ontological realities outside the knower.

But seeing a cat does not in any way make me learn anything about it.

"Makes," again...I do not say that.

I am able to see all sides of a chair.

Not at the same time, you aren't. By the time you turn the corner to look at the chair from another side, it's a few seconds later. And as you turn the corner, you'll lose sight of the side you had formerly seen, and will stop seeing it.

That's why Cubists like Picasso tried to "flatten out" their images: they were depicting a kind of sight that comprehends more than one side of a thing at once. Naturally, since multi-sided sight is not a human experience, their efforts resulted in rather nightmarish images.

Well I know a little about old Pablo and I doubt very much he was trying to depict any kind of reality and certainly not more than one side at a time. But it doesn't matter, it would not be reality if he could.

That's my point. To say "I am able to see all sides of (anything)" isn't reality.

At the gambling table, one does not have to know what one's precise odds are to know that the game is governed by probability, or to know that some games (like roulette) are associated with lower probability than others (like blackjack). But whichever game one chooses, the important thing is that you know that you are not in an institution in which certainty is being guaranteed, and that some sort of "gamble" is involved in all the games being played.

To think otherwise is simply to be a "sucker."

I'm just asking here. You regard all of life, then, as a kind of gamble, because everything is only, "probable," and nothing is certain?

I know why people are put off by the word "probability." They associate it low-probability situations, like rolling dice. But the kind of probability we deal with in real life is high-probability estimations, for the most part; and when we estimate that something has even or low probability, we say it's uncertain and avoid it, in most cases.

Let me see if I can supply a very "concrete" (pun intended) example, one in which certainty would certainly be a good thing, but high probability is all we have.

When an engineer builds a bridge, he does not know-for-certain that it will stand up. On paper, his calculations reassure him it will -- but calculations are sometimes wrong, when they encounter the real world. He builds the bridge on the supposition that it is highly probable that it will work. If he didn't think it was highly probable, he would not waste his materials or time, and would not risk the dangers of failure. He's very, very sure that his bridge will stand up...and he's very, very probably right, perhaps.

But bridges fail. If he forgot wind shear, or some aspect of bank erosion that was gradual and undetectable beforehand, or the possibility of an earthquake, or frost damage...or any one of a hundred other things, his bridge may collapse. He is very confident it probably won't; but he doesn't know-for-certain. And he's being very foolish, and maybe even dangerous, if he thinks he does.

But high probability estimations are not bad things. They are very, very good, in fact. Without such estimations, we would venture to do nothing at all, out of fear. We live and die by high-probability estimations. That's life. It's inevitable.

And it does not mean that we're merely "gambling." Building bridges is not like playing craps, except that in both there is a measure of probability of failure. In the former, it's very, very, low, and in the latter, perhaps, very, very high. The house may always seem to win, in gambling. But most bridges stay up, as predicted.

IC, I can assure you with absolute certainty that I am not God. If I were God, could I be mistaken about it? Could God doubt his own existence? If this is not true, I'd be lying. Would God lie about his own existence? I think we have found one thing you'll have to agree that I can be absolutely certain about.

Likewise.

Certainty is a judgement about the validity of a proposition, specifically that the proposition is true without doubt or question.

Then "certainty," as you define it, is available nowhere in the empirical world; only in the abstract realms, as in maths. For we have some reason to doubt or question every proposition that we draw from the empirical world.

How odd. After you bang your thumb with the hammer you are not certain you are really feeling pain,

You are correct. Some people have neural conditions which mean they can hit their thumb and feel nothing. Some have "ghost pain" from limbs that have been severed for years. But the highest probability is that that is not what is happening.

But it is what you call the, "empirical," world that all knowledge methods are about. If the empirical world is uncertain, so are your methods, including mathematics.

Mathematics are not "empirical." They are analytic, being operations within a defined system of symbols, rather than operations performed in the world of experience and real life.

If I have three apples and then find two more and count them I will count five apples.

The mathematics part of that operation is certain, because it's non-empirical. Three plus two will always equal five, and you can know that for certain. But is what you have in hand "apples"? That, you are not equally certain about. There is a minute possibility they are, say, unusual plums, or a kind of fruit with which you have not yet had any experience. You are high-probability convinced that's not so, perhaps; and perhaps you're right..but you are not absolutely certain beyond all possibility of doubt.

You bite, and discover that they are made of wax. They looked like real apples, but they were not. That is not an impossible scenario. Just unlikely.

... In regard to ontology, I'm an objectivist. But in regard to epistemology, I'm a probabilist. That is, I do believe in the real existence of the external, empirical world; but I also recognize that human perception of it is mediated by human senses...and that human senses are fallible and perspectival. So while the world is real, our grasp of it is probability-dependent.

Marxists, Pomo types and the rest would say that truth itself was relative. I would never say that.

I really don't see the difference. What difference does it make if truth is absolute if you can never know anything for certain?

It makes a huge difference. Again, the Pomo types want to say that truth is so "relative" that it can be ignored or negotiated infinitely. I do not say that, nor think that's right. I say that we must respect the objectivity of reality, and be modest only about our epistemology of that reality.

Put it this way. If there's a tiger outside my door, the Pomo types think there will only BE a tiger if I believe there is. For someone who does not believe that, there will not be.

I believe there is an objective answer to whether or not there is a tiger out there, and that my belief or lack there of will change nothing. I must, therefore, estimate the probability (perhaps by looking out the window to see if something that looks like a tiger is out there), and then act rationally, in view of what that tells me about the probability of there actually being a tiger.

The Pomo types have no respect for truth or reality. I know very well that reality will "eat" me if I do not respect its ontological reality.

With regard to knowledge, I see no difference in saying, "there is no absolute truth," and saying, "there is absolute truth, but you can never know it."

Reword it this way, then: "There is absolute truth, but our knowledge of it is high-probability knowledge."

You're setting the bar too high, RC. You're thinking that contingent, empirical-world beings are capable of absolutely certain knowledge. They are not. But they are not thereby made blind, either. They have high-probability estimation, instead.

How about concepts? "What is a concept?" would be the question. I think it is fundamental to everything else we have been discussing, but I await your pleasure, sir?

Yes, that's fine. In a way, we're already nibbling around that one. What do you want to say or ask about it? Can you speak in terms of a particular concept, for example?

Back to you, RC.

[Lacewing]

Your response to SoB highlights something that I've been trying to express in my communications with Nick. Continually negative impressions about people and life are more of an insight into the mental source of such ideas. (Just as continually positive impressions about people and life reflect the mental source of those ideas.) It seems that what we typically see in people and life... is the kind of energy that emanates from us. Considering how many possible ways there are to see each and every thing, it only makes sense that the mental source is a huge factor in the impressions it sees.

You seem to have restricted yourself to impressions you judge as positive or negative.

Nope. Wrong again.

[Nick_A]

Your response to SoB highlights something that I've been trying to express in my communications with Nick. Continually negative impressions about people and life are more of an insight into the mental source of such ideas. (Just as continually positive impressions about people and life reflect the mental source of those ideas.) It seems that what we typically see in people and life... is the kind of energy that emanates from us. Considering how many possible ways there are to see each and every thing, it only makes sense that the mental source is a huge factor in the impressions it sees.

You seem to have restricted yourself to impressions you judge as positive or negative.

Nope. Wrong again.

I don't recall you ever writing about emotional impartiality much less what is required for a person to be capable of it. All I know is that you've called yourself happy. Judging some impressions make you sad and others make you happy. The impartial experience of external life is something different and without judgement. How can anyone be expected to judge without experience and restricted to conditioned preconceptions? Yet they do and are called educated.

[Lacewing]

You seem to have restricted yourself to impressions you judge as positive or negative.

Nope. Wrong again.

I don't recall you ever writing about emotional impartiality much less what is required for a person to be capable of it. All I know is that you've called yourself happy. Judging some impressions make you sad and others make you happy.

Nick, please stop adding to your dishonorable pile of inaccurate assumptions and statements, and go answer for/about yourself at the link below regarding projections and false/inconsistent claims you’ve already made:

[Nick_A]

Nope. Wrong again.

I don't recall you ever writing about emotional impartiality much less what is required for a person to be capable of it. All I know is that you've called yourself happy. Judging some impressions make you sad and others make you happy.

Nick, please stop adding to your dishonorable pile of inaccurate assumptions and statements, and go answer for/about yourself at the link below regarding projections and false/inconsistent claims you’ve already made:

There is no link.

This is the sad reality of secular intolerance. you call yourself happy. It is meaningless unless you are never sad. Anyone who is not saddened by what takes place in the world is out of balance IMO. I prefer to believe that you are not out of balance to that degree never to feel saddened. You call it a dishonorable assumption because it just reveals our collective hypocrisy which isn't flattering. It is so offensive that people have been killed for having become aware of the human condition and the ancient ideas which awaken us to its reality.

[Lacewing]

Nick, please stop adding to your dishonorable pile of inaccurate assumptions and statements, and go answer for/about yourself at the link below regarding projections and false/inconsistent claims you’ve already made:

There is no link.

Click on the little "up arrow". If that doesn't work, it's the last post I made to you in the "Free will was given to god by man" thread.

This is the sad reality of secular intolerance. you call yourself happy. It is meaningless unless you are never sad.

Did I say I'm never sad? No, I didn't. PLEASE stop saying stupid inaccurate things, which you then build huge conclusions on, which you then project onto people.

You call it a dishonorable assumption because it just reveals our collective hypocrisy which isn't flattering.

No, I call it dishonorable because you are being dishonest and inaccurate, and projecting that as if it's true, even when people tell you otherwise. Even your sentence above twists and concludes falsely WHY I said you were being dishonorable. Have some accountability, Nick, for the way you are speaking for other people... which is false and deceitful and quite twisted! YOUR creations!

[Nick_A]

Nick, please stop adding to your dishonorable pile of inaccurate assumptions and statements, and go answer for/about yourself at the link below regarding projections and false/inconsistent claims you’ve already made:

There is no link.

Click on the little "up arrow". If that doesn't work, it's the last post I made to you in the "Free will was given to god by man" thread.

This is the sad reality of secular intolerance. you call yourself happy. It is meaningless unless you are never sad.

Did I say I'm never sad? No, I didn't. PLEASE stop saying stupid inaccurate things, which you then build huge conclusions on, which you then project onto people.

You call it a dishonorable assumption because it just reveals our collective hypocrisy which isn't flattering.

No, I call it dishonorable because you are being dishonest and inaccurate, and projecting that as if it's true, even when people tell you otherwise. Even your sentence above twists and concludes falsely WHY I said you were being dishonorable. Have some accountability, Nick, for the way you are speaking for other people... which is false and deceitful and quite twisted! YOUR creations!

If a person with white skin calls themselves white they cannot be black. If a person with black skin calls themselves black they cannot be white. If a person calls themselves happy they cannot be sad. An honest person will admit that sometimes they are happy and sometimes they are sad. The bottom line is neither know what it means to be emotionally impartial. It is a human conscious potential

The only ones who profit from emotional impartiality are the minority who desire to transcend the duality of happiness and sadness in order to experience the quality of evolved human emotion which reconciles and transcends the duality of animal emotion. It is necessary in order to experience the higher quality of emotion which connects us to our source.

[Lacewing]

If a person calls themselves happy they cannot be sad. An honest person will admit that sometimes they are happy and sometimes they are sad.

I'm not interested in the way you twist/characterize things dishonestly when people have told you otherwise.

[Nick_A]

If a person calls themselves happy they cannot be sad. An honest person will admit that sometimes they are happy and sometimes they are sad.

I'm not interested in the way you twist/characterize things dishonestly when people have told you otherwise.

One thing I've verified is that when the omniscience of secularism is questioned it is comparable to the Christian sin against the Holy Ghost. It is simply unforgivable to question its conclusions or suggest a conscious reality greater than the collective called The Great Beast.. Just invited to drink the hemlock is getting off cheaply

[Skepdick]

If a person with white skin calls themselves white they cannot be black.

I have white skin. My national ID says that I am black. I can call myself either depending on circumstances.
My gender (where I am allowed to choose it) is Ammosexual.

Is just words. We assign them meaning.

If a person with black skin calls themselves black they cannot be white.

Albinos?

[Nick_A]

If a person with white skin calls themselves white they cannot be black.

I have white skin. My national ID says that I am black. I can call myself either depending on circumstances.
My gender (where I am allowed to choose it) is Ammosexual.

Is just words. We assign them meaning.

If a person with black skin calls themselves black they cannot be white.

Albinos?

There is objective human reason which has objective standards at its core and also subjective societal reason which creates its own reality. Seekers of truth who are on the path to becoming individuals further the cause of objective qualities of reason while those existing as part of a collective and define their individuality by the standards of the collective adopt an agenda of subjective societal reason.

A seeker of truth remembers that 2+2=4 while the great collective called "mob" will chant the declaration of its educated leader that now 2+2=5. Who can argue with education? Without it we could never know that there is now no objective difference between black and white so it is politically incorrect to discuss it. Progress

[Lacewing]

I'm not interested in the way you twist/characterize things dishonestly when people have told you otherwise.

One thing I've verified is that when the omniscience of secularism is questioned it is comparable to the Christian sin against the Holy Ghost. It is simply unforgivable to question its conclusions or suggest a conscious reality greater than the collective called The Great Beast.. Just invited to drink the hemlock is getting off cheaply

"Verified" by a man who preaches at others rather than being accountable for his own false words.