Bias Against Transgenders

Anything to do with gender and the status of women and men.

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Nick_A
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Re: Bias Against Transgenders

Post by Nick_A »

Judaka,

I’d like to get your opinion on Plato’s cave analogy. If you agree with it you’ve accepted that the majority live in imagination attached to the shadows on the wall. Defending it is secularism. No third force which enables a higher perspective is necessary. In fact it must be denied to sustain these attachments.

There is nothing either good or bad about the human condition like there is nothing good or bad about a broken leg. It is an unfortunate condition.

If you deny Plato’s cave analogy and just believe the potential for human being is dependent upon the earth like other plants and animals with no connection to any forms of higher consciousness then you are a political secularist. Dualistic political expression is the ultimate secular expression. There is nothing bad about this and nothing to condemn. The ones who are condemned are the ones who have experienced either through the heart or the third dimension of thought that there is a conscious source for our being. Plato explains what happens in the Cave allegory:
[Socrates] And if there were a contest, and he had to compete in measuring the shadows with the prisoners who had never moved out of the cave, while his sight was still weak, and before his eyes had become steady (and the time which would be needed to acquire this new habit of sight might be very considerable) would he not be ridiculous? Men would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending; and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death.
Spirit killers in modern universities will do their best to destroy the results of any third force experience. It is sad but it happens so I support a student’s inner need to awaken regardless of the best efforts of spirit killers to ridicule this need in order for them to become “normal.”

There is no sense in debating the human condition with people who have never experienced it. It would be like explaining what an orgasm is to an eight year old boy. He’ll think you’re nuts. I keep ideas and their sources alive for those who can profit from them. If I’ve profited from reading deep thoughts, why can’t anyone else?

Three young women in the past have sent me PMs thanking me for introducing them to Simone Weil. They felt something genuine they would like to explore. I consider it a good thing though the modern experts may frown. After all, Simone was a highly regarded marxist and atheist who died a Christian mystic. Not very PC
Simone Weil lamented that education had become no more than "an instrument manipulated by teachers for manufacturing more teachers, who in their turn will manufacture more teachers." rather than a guide to getting out of the cave.
Teachers manufacturing teachers to sustain the subjective secular values of cave life including secularized religion are unaware of so unable to teach what is necessary to leave cave life so since we are as we are, everything remains as it is.

Remember, I’m not condemning anything. What sense does it make to condemn an unfortunate condition which only produces misery while denying the potential for human “being”? Buddhists speak of compassion. Maybe they re right.My interest is in what it will take for the majority of our species to experience the third dimension of thought so can establish the complimentary relationship of science and the essence of religion before we kill ourselves participating in a mutual ritual of self destruction. If teachers cannot teach what is necessary to leave the cave, who will?
Walker
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Re: Bias Against Transgenders

Post by Walker »

Nick_A wrote: Thu Feb 07, 2019 3:37 amIf teachers cannot teach what is necessary to leave the cave, who will?
Some people are inclined to the spiritual and some aren’t.
Eventually everyone is, if only for the last second.
For those who are, everything and everyone is a teacher.
Nick_A
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Re: Bias Against Transgenders

Post by Nick_A »

Walker wrote: Thu Feb 07, 2019 5:57 am
Nick_A wrote: Thu Feb 07, 2019 3:37 amIf teachers cannot teach what is necessary to leave the cave, who will?
Some people are inclined to the spiritual and some aren’t.
Eventually everyone is, if only for the last second.
For those who are, everything and everyone is a teacher.
The desire to experience a quality of being greater than our own is one thing but resistance to it is another. The problem is how to deal with resistance that has the power of imagination.

Sin has been defined as "missing the mark" Without an aim sin doesn't exist. If a person is inclined towards awakening, sin will be what prevents it. We live and argue through small opinions. Take this thread for example. The question actually exists in a much larger topic called respect for life. If we had respect for life the transgender question wouldn't exist. Living in imagination we lose respect for life. Suppose some kid asked their teacher what is meant by respect for life they would get some sort of PC answer which the kid knows is meaningless.

Suppose some kid tells their teacher they visited a planetarium and had an impression how vast our universe is and wondered what its purpose is. There cannot be something so huge with no purpose. Again the kid will get some sort of PC answer and know it is BS. He has the need to transcend BS. How can he do it? He needs more than his inclination. How does he develop the power to understand?
Walker
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Re: Bias Against Transgenders

Post by Walker »

Nick_A wrote:Suppose some kid asked their teacher what is meant by respect for life they would get some sort of PC answer which the kid knows is meaningless.
Answer by assigning the kid a 500 word essay on the meaning of The Golden Rule with the reminder that grammar and spelling influence the grade, which you will subjectively determine and which comprises half the final grade, which could affect a timely graduation if the kid doesn’t give it an honest go and gets cute with some one-sentence irony.

Of course, the subjective part is the rub. If you as teacher delay a budding career at TopTierU you could open yourself up to a lawsuit, and the basis of your defense would be subjectivity.

Then if the parent(s) of the kid win their gold-digging lawsuit in court because you unfairly burdened him, thus showing discrimination based on, whatever or possibly even racism, then the kid will be taught a lesson in power, truth, and hypocrisy.

How can a kid develop the power to understand?
A: Same as you.
Judaka
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Re: Bias Against Transgenders

Post by Judaka »

Nick_A
I think you are taking Plato's cave to mean something other than what was intended. The allegory is really promoting philosophical knowledge as being more fundamentally true than what is gained through the senses and this is of course among some other things. What philosophical knowledge is being promoted when the allegory has been appropriated by someone else could be pretty much anything. I don't really know Plato's work very well and I know he had something in particular in mind with regards to his work on forms.

While I can't speak about forms, if you want to say the prisoners are the ignorant ones, the escaped prisoner is you and the outside world is the truth then I don't agree with this version of the allegory. The truth is way more complicated than that and I don't think the allegory when taken outside of the context of forms, is even remotely true or insightful.

I could make exactly the same allegory mine where you're the prisoner, I'm the escapee and the outside world is the truth I believe.

Why do you keep making this about secularism though? I've called you out on how you generalised about the majority of people in the West and call them indoctrinated and you tell us what they do and how much of a problem they are. You say it's neither good nor bad but that's irrelevant as far as anybody involved is concerned. I mean potentially SOME secularists do what you're talking about.... and perhaps SOME secularists have been indoctrinated... the question is why you're acting as though you know all secularists which such specificity? How did you come about this knowledge?
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henry quirk
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when are we gonna get back to pokin' fun at men in dresses?

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:|
Nick_A
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Re: Bias Against Transgenders

Post by Nick_A »

Walker wrote: Thu Feb 07, 2019 7:12 am
Nick_A wrote:Suppose some kid asked their teacher what is meant by respect for life they would get some sort of PC answer which the kid knows is meaningless.
Answer by assigning the kid a 500 word essay on the meaning of The Golden Rule with the reminder that grammar and spelling influence the grade, which you will subjectively determine and which comprises half the final grade, which could affect a timely graduation if the kid doesn’t give it an honest go and gets cute with some one-sentence irony.

Of course, the subjective part is the rub. If you as teacher delay a budding career at TopTierU you could open yourself up to a lawsuit, and the basis of your defense would be subjectivity.

Then if the parent(s) of the kid win their gold-digging lawsuit in court because you unfairly burdened him, thus showing discrimination based on, whatever or possibly even racism, then the kid will be taught a lesson in power, truth, and hypocrisy.

How can a kid develop the power to understand?
A: Same as you.
You've lost me. Some kid asks what is meant by respect for life and you ask him to write an essay on the Golden rule. A firm step on the path to metaphysical repression.

I know all kids aren't the same and most would be content with this association but my concern is for the young very alive on the inside and feel deeper questions beyond self importance.
"Pity them my children, they are far from home and no one knows them. Let those in quest of God be careful lest appearances deceive them in these people who are peculiar and hard to place; no one rightly knows them but those in whom the same light shines" Meister Eckhart
What about these kids who the spirit killers are intent on killing on the inside because they don't understand them

It is normal for such a kid to question what life is. They sense all this life around them and seem to be a part of it but what is it? They feel they are a part of something much greater than ourselves in the world so what does it mean to respect it?

How can a young person be introduced to what it feels like to have respect for life? the answer here is intolerable for the secularists and spirit killers. If we are part of life as a whole in the world which is greater than ourselves the source of life beyond the confines of the world must be even greater. Perhaps just this experience of awe and wonder is the beginning of the human feeling for respect for life. Jacob Needleman describes his first experience of awe and wonder in this interview with Richard Whittaker about his book "What is God?"
RW: Right. Now I'd like to backtrack and ask you to recount that amazing experience of seeing the stars that you had sitting on the front steps of your house with your father. Would you say again what happened?

JN: I don't understand it myself. This is 1943 in a suburb of Philadelphia. But what I saw, sitting next to him was--a million stars appeared. You could hardly see a dark piece of the sky! I don't know how that happened. It was inexplicable. The sky was clear. It was dark. But suddenly I was seeing a million stars! I was just a nine-year old kid. That's what happened. My father was sitting next to me. He would always go out at night and sit on the stoop and look up at night. He was a very quiet, thoughtful guy at certain moments. At other times, he could be very fierce. And I sat next to him, which I'd never done before. And at a certain point these stars appeared. I don't think he saw what I saw. But for some reason he happened to say, and his voice was unusual, saying something from that part of the heart to me. I never had that kind of intimate emotional relationship with him; that was the first time. He said, "That's God." And that was my God when I was a child.
The experience of humility when we suddenly feel that we are a small part of life as a whole much less the source of life is the beginning of respect for life. Jacob Needleman's father helped him to have this third force experience. He was lucky. Kids who are still alive inside kept in secular schools aren't so lucky. They must defend themselves from the effects of spirit killers. Sometimes these effects are too much to deal with so they give up and become "normal."
How can a kid develop the power to understand?
A: Same as you.
But I've been fortunate to have some influences around me which prevented me from going under. Many are not so lucky
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Greta
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Re: Bias Against Transgenders

Post by Greta »

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Nick_A
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Re: Bias Against Transgenders

Post by Nick_A »

Judaka wrote: Thu Feb 07, 2019 1:50 pm Nick_A
I think you are taking Plato's cave to mean something other than what was intended. The allegory is really promoting philosophical knowledge as being more fundamentally true than what is gained through the senses and this is of course among some other things. What philosophical knowledge is being promoted when the allegory has been appropriated by someone else could be pretty much anything. I don't really know Plato's work very well and I know he had something in particular in mind with regards to his work on forms.

While I can't speak about forms, if you want to say the prisoners are the ignorant ones, the escaped prisoner is you and the outside world is the truth then I don't agree with this version of the allegory. The truth is way more complicated than that and I don't think the allegory when taken outside of the context of forms, is even remotely true or insightful.

I could make exactly the same allegory mine where you're the prisoner, I'm the escapee and the outside world is the truth I believe.

Why do you keep making this about secularism though? I've called you out on how you generalised about the majority of people in the West and call them indoctrinated and you tell us what they do and how much of a problem they are. You say it's neither good nor bad but that's irrelevant as far as anybody involved is concerned. I mean potentially SOME secularists do what you're talking about.... and perhaps SOME secularists have been indoctrinated... the question is why you're acting as though you know all secularists which such specificity? How did you come about this knowledge?
Plato’s cave allegory is not about promoting philosophical knowledge but rather the potential for our “being” to become normal. As we are we are unbalanced as Plato describes in the Chariot analogy

Some people inwardly turn towards the light coming into the cave. This doesn’t come from head knowledge but rather from a human need related to the quality of our being

Understanding what I mean by secularism isn’t so complicated. Are you familiar with the Hermetic axiom “As above so below”?

It is nonsense for a secularism which maintains there is no above and below. There is just existence in the world revealed by our senses so opposes whatever questions this blind belief.

I am not an escaped prisoner. I am just a person in the cave who has experienced the prison of Plato’s cave and want to be a part of the great escape
the question is why you're acting as though you know all secularists which such specificity? How did you come about this knowledge?
Being aware of the human condition is not knowing all. It is the beginning of the path to truly human knowledge. I’ve been lucky. What I learned was as a result of need and the help from my talented 19th Century ancestor who has had few peers in the depiction of awe and wonder in his art. This combination introduced me to books where I learned that there have been people of understanding as to what human “being” is and why everything as it is as opposed to the potential for human being through its conscious evolution. I’m invited to verify it thru efforts to “know thyself”.

It isn't good for feelgoodism. A person isn't justified by experiencing the human condition in themselves. But for those with the deeper need to understand the humility of this experience is the beginning for those who need experiential truth of the path leading to the objective GOOD.
Judaka
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Re: Bias Against Transgenders

Post by Judaka »

Nick_A
It is nonsense for a secularism which maintains there is no above and below. There is just existence in the world revealed by our senses so opposes whatever questions this blind belief.
How did you come about the knowledge of what lies past our senses? We can only know that our senses are limited in their perception.

For me to understand what you're talking about, we need to stop with the allegories. It is appearing like sophistry now, you talk about people living in imagination, higher levels of consciousness, spirit killers, the human condition and subjective secular values. I can't understand what you're talking about unless you tell me. I could really apply everything you've said to my own views on things but where I have higher levels of consciousness and you are living in the dark playing with shadows. It's sophistry.

It's also completely separate from the main point I keep trying to bring you back to, which is that regardless of whether you're right or not, people shouldn't be trying to treat individuals as members of groups and ignoring everything about the individual that doesn't fit neatly into the image of the group. Using an understanding about a group and applying it to their understanding of individuals is poor form. It leads one towards incorrect conclusions, acts as confirmation bias and leads to unreasonableness in you and your understanding.

If you are talking about something concrete then maybe this is acceptable, like "atheists lack a belief in God" ok, fair enough. However, you really haven't drawn any connection between secularism and secularists that couldn't involve nuance. Do you really not see the problem here Nick_A? I mean you can think about secularism the worst things imaginable, you can be filled contempt with those who you know do as you describe but don't inform yourself about individuals using the group.

I'm really not some hippy preaching peace and love, I am capable of contempt and anger more than most towards concepts, groups and individuals.
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Greta
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Re: Bias Against Transgenders

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Nick quoting Needleman wrote:And I sat next to him, which I'd never done before. And at a certain point these stars appeared. I don't think he saw what I saw. But for some reason he happened to say, and his voice was unusual, saying something from that part of the heart to me. I never had that kind of intimate emotional relationship with him; that was the first time. He said, "That's God."
The father might have also said, 'Isn't that an inspiring sight now that the cloud has shifted?' or 'Look out there - it goes on forever'.
Nick_A
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Re: Bias Against Transgenders

Post by Nick_A »

Judaka
How did you come about the knowledge of what lies past our senses? We can only know that our senses are limited in their perception.


Initially I became aware from my sources in esoteric Christianity. Then I remembered Plato’s famous divided line. After that I began to understand the profound Hermetic meaning of above and below. Finally I experienced why what Plotinus wrote is true and why the truth of science is verified by the sense while the higher truth of the relativity of being is verified through intuition
“Knowledge has three degrees – opinion, science, illumination. The means or instrument of the first is sense; of the second, dialectic; of the third, intuition.” Plotinus
The senses are limited to experience what is below Plato’s divided line while the intelligible reality above the divided line is revealed through higher mind.
For me to understand what you're talking about, we need to stop with the allegories. It is appearing like sophistry now, you talk about people living in imagination, higher levels of consciousness, spirit killers, the human condition and subjective secular values. I can't understand what you're talking about unless you tell me. I could really apply everything you've said to my own views on things but where I have higher levels of consciousness and you are living in the dark playing with shadows. It's sophistry.
None of this can have any meaning for a person who denies the human condition described by Plato in the Cave allegory. How can spirit killing have any meaning if there is no spirit to kill? If you are closed to the idea of the human condition which forces humanity to live in imagination, then nothing that follows can have any meaning. The idea of conscious evolution into a higher quality of being begins with verifying what human as opposed to animal consciousness is and the loss of our power of conscious attention.
It's also completely separate from the main point I keep trying to bring you back to, which is that regardless of whether you're right or not, people shouldn't be trying to treat individuals as members of groups and ignoring everything about the individual that doesn't fit neatly into the image of the group. Using an understanding about a group and applying it to their understanding of individuals is poor form. It leads one towards incorrect conclusions, acts as confirmation bias and leads to unreasonableness in you and your understanding.
I agree. Progressives define society as collectives while individualists like me define society as a collection of individuals.
If you are talking about something concrete then maybe this is acceptable, like "atheists lack a belief in God" ok, fair enough. However, you really haven't drawn any connection between secularism and secularists that couldn't involve nuance. Do you really not see the problem here Nick_A? I mean you can think about secularism the worst things imaginable, you can be filled contempt with those who you know do as you describe but don't inform yourself about individuals using the group.
A secularist is simply a person only concerned with earthly matters. They are closed to contemplation of our ineffable source and the meaning of the axiom “As above so below.” What could be more concrete?

This doesn’t make a person either good or bad by societal standards. There are secularists who are fine citizens and others who are the lowest of the low. Secularism is an attitude which has nothing to do with how one has been indoctrinated for societal life in the world. Universalism in contrast is the impulse to become consciously free from the psychological limitations of one leveled secularism and become capable of grasping the reality of our triune being in the context of our triune universe in which objective human meaning and purpose can be experienced.

In relation to transgenders, a secularist with indoctrinated beliefs can have either a positive or negative opinion depending upon how they have been conditioned. In contrast, a universalist who has consciously experienced levels of reality from a higher perspective knows what Buddhism means by "life is suffering." The universalist will have respect for life as a whole so has no interest in condemning transgenders. We are all suffering in Plato's cave so rather than condemning transgenders or Donald Trump, the universalist seeks to support awakening efforts in the world as to the reality of the human condition and how we can begin to consciously awaken to it and outgrow it.
Judaka
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Re: Bias Against Transgenders

Post by Judaka »

Nick_A

You are saying that instead of relying on the senses, you relied on other peoples' and your own intuition?

Indeed it may be meaningless to describe spirit killing to someone who doesn't understand what you mean by the spirit. I just wonder that if you described exactly what you meant whether the concepts you're talking about would be as outlandish as they sound or just a different way of looking at the same things I see.

I haven't really seen any evidence so far that your view of secularists is actually generalising against people in the way I was concerned about and until I see evidence of that I can't continue to argue about this topic with you, especially when you're saying you do not actually think all secularists have been indoctrinated and that you recognise a spectrum of individuals within the umbrella of secularism. Sorry for making assumptions, as I can only say that's all I've been doing as I have no evidence of any wrongdoing.
Nick_A wrote: Fri Feb 08, 2019 5:33 am A secularist is simply a person only concerned with earthly matters. They are closed to contemplation of our ineffable source and the meaning of the axiom “As above so below.” What could be more concrete?
Okay, I understand.

Do you object to this practice for pragmatic reasons or do you feel there's something inherently wrong with only being concerned with earthly matters?
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henry quirk
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Post by henry quirk »

Joe wears a dress: what is he?

A man in a dress, of course.

*

Joe believes he is female: is he?

No, he's a deluded guy.

*

Joe submits to extensive chemical, hormonal, surgical procedures to turn himself into a woman: did he become a woman?

No, he mutillated himself in service to a delusion (he's still a guy).

*

Everyone treats Joe (now Josephine) as a woman: is he a woman?

No, he's a deluded, mutillated man surrounded by deluded, weak-willed, or misinformed people.


'nuff said
Walker
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Re: Bias Against Transgenders

Post by Walker »

Nick_A wrote: Fri Feb 08, 2019 1:35 am
Walker wrote: Thu Feb 07, 2019 7:12 am
How can a kid develop the power to understand?
A: Same as you.
But I've been fortunate to have some influences around me which prevented me from going under. Many are not so lucky
It sounds like you’ve already identified the how, namely, see that the children have the same unstated preventions that you had.

And to understand how that works, apply the principles that you see in the specifics of your life to the specifics of other circumstances.

Share the principles you’ve discovered in a 500-word essay, to benefit all who have not yet discovered them.
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