Philosophy Now Forum

Greta wrote:

Greatest I am wrote:

Greta wrote: In developed societies, our organisation and capacity to direct resources to some areas of need gives the appearance of age being able to defy nature in individuals. So, even as they are no longer capable of physically drawing on resources themselves, others help bring them in. While we are defying entropy in the short term on small scales, it's not sustainable.

In the end we will either quieten down and die slowly metaphorically like a red dwarf, or build into a fatal frenzy like larger stars.

All that just makes the state the loser who gives resources away. That is victimizing the state which consists of people who are then the victims.

It's not victimising, it's just life.

Exactly the point of the O.P.

We have to create victims to evolve and thrive.

Regards
DL

Greatest I am wrote:

bobevenson wrote:

Greatest I am wrote:Have you even read the O.P.?

I read where you said, "Cooperation we would see as good because it does not create a victim or loser. Competition would be seen as evil as it creates a victim and loser." In economic terms, cooperation would be seen as good from a socialistic or communistic point of view, and competition good from a free-market capitalistic point of view. If anything, that would mean cooperation is evil, my friend.

Not when the consumer base is happy as they decide what is the fittest system by supporting it.

It's not who's happy, or majority rules, it's what's proper.

Proper's definition is decided on by the majority.

Regards
DL

Greatest I am wrote:Proper's definition is decided on by the majority.

Regards
DL

You can't be serious, that's the most outrageous comment I've ever heard!

Yes, it seems to be, but what is evil but a mentally projected concept?

The 'mind' being the tool used to make knowing known via the conception of an object. To conceive is to make two from one, which is an illusion since all things known are sourced from the same one subjective mind... the 'mind' apparently splits ''knowing'' into knower and known..and that's it's job to know something, but in order to know something it also has to know the polar opposite of what it knows. To know good, there has to be evil, to know right, there has to be wrong.

The 'mind' in a sense is like a knife that divides reality into parts, and like a knife, it can harm, and nothing can stop the knife from not being harmful, and yet at the same time, the knife poses absolutely no threat to anything, the knife has no intent to harm..the 'mind' is simply like a knife.

Dontaskme wrote:Yes, it seems to be, but what is evil but a mentally projected concept?

The 'mind' being the tool used to make knowing known via the conception of an object. To conceive is to make two from one, which is an illusion since all things known are sourced from the same one subjective mind... the 'mind' apparently splits ''knowing'' into knower and known..and that's it's job to know something, but in order to know something it also has to know the polar opposite of what it knows. To know good, there has to be evil, to know right, there has to be wrong.

The 'mind' in a sense is like a knife that divides reality into parts, and like a knife, it can harm, and nothing can stop the knife from not being harmful, and yet at the same time, the knife poses absolutely no threat to anything, the knife has no intent to harm..the 'mind' is simply like a knife.

Indeed. We create our own Gods and moral sense.
Good and evil definitely act like The compliments that Yin and Yang are to each other.

Thatr knowledge is what makes Eden the elevation the Jews saw in Eden and not the fall that Christianity later put to it.

Regards
DL

Greatest I am wrote:
Indeed. We create our own Gods and moral sense.
Good and evil definitely act like The compliments that Yin and Yang are to each other.

Thatr knowledge is what makes Eden the elevation the Jews saw in Eden and not the fall that Christianity later put to it.

Regards
DL

Indeed, but even to elevate implies there is/was a fall. And is why I love Buddha's middle way discourses. It says Everything is Buddha nature (enlightenment) ...and that it's not something 'you acquire', or have to get...it's saying you already ARE Enlightenment.

'' Buddhist teaching is neither a path of denial nor of affirmation. It shows us the paradox of the universe, within and beyond the opposites. It teaches us to be in the world but not of the world. ''

''There is a middle way between the extremes of indulgence and self-denial''

We cannot change the world, we can only change our self.

Life is just so amazingly simple and beautiful really, when it is realised that us as human beings are not the one's living life, rather, that life is effortlessly living us, and that all we have to do is shift our perspective from the personal to the impersonal and accept what happens fully and unconditionally, totally surrendering to every moment, and realise that there is a greater power above and beyond that we have no control over...all we can do is ''let go'' ''let be''... and see what happens.

Our stubborn resistance to what is happening and how we react to what is happening is our own mentally created prison aka the ''other self'' ..aka the ego...albeit an illusory ''other''.




.

Dontaskme wrote:

Greatest I am wrote:
Indeed. We create our own Gods and moral sense.
Good and evil definitely act like The compliments that Yin and Yang are to each other.

Thatr knowledge is what makes Eden the elevation the Jews saw in Eden and not the fall that Christianity later put to it.

Regards
DL

Indeed, but even to elevate implies there is/was a fall. And is why I love Buddha's middle way discourses. It says Everything is Buddha nature (enlightenment) ...and that it's not something 'you acquire', or have to get...it's saying you already ARE Enlightenment.

'' Buddhist teaching is neither a path of denial nor of affirmation. It shows us the paradox of the universe, within and beyond the opposites. It teaches us to be in the world but not of the world. ''

''There is a middle way between the extremes of indulgence and self-denial''

We cannot change the world, we can only change our self.

Life is just so amazingly simple and beautiful really, when it is realised that us as human beings are not the one's living life, rather, that life is effortlessly living us, and that all we have to do is shift our perspective from the personal to the impersonal and accept what happens fully and unconditionally, totally surrendering to every moment, and realise that there is a greater power above and beyond that we have no control over...all we can do is ''let go'' ''let be''... and see what happens.

Our stubborn resistance to what is happening and how we react to what is happening is our own mentally created prison aka the ''other self'' ..aka the ego...albeit an illusory ''other''.
.

No argument.

"We cannot change the world, we can only change our self."

We are of this world and changing ourselves changes everything in the world. Think of the butterfly effect.

We cannot separate ourselves from entropy.

Regards
DL

Greatest I am wrote:We cannot change the world, we can only change ourself.

Please, you don't think the guys from Microsoft and Facebook changed the world, or that the guy from North Korea is in a position to do so?

bobevenson wrote:

Greatest I am wrote:We cannot change the world, we can only change ourself.

Please, you don't think the guys from Microsoft and Facebook changed the world, or that the guy from North Korea is in a position to do so?

I give you that.

Regards
DL

Dontaskme wrote:... and realise that there is a greater power above and beyond that we have no control over...all we can do is ''let go'' ''let be''... and see what happens. ...

Is this a Buddhist teaching?

Arising_uk wrote:

Dontaskme wrote:... and realise that there is a greater power above and beyond that we have no control over...all we can do is ''let go'' ''let be''... and see what happens. ...

Is this a Buddhist teaching?

I guess so.

What 'greater power' is there in Buddhism?

Arising_uk wrote:What 'greater power' is there in Buddhism?

The power to tell those with imaginary Gods, which are followed by the mainstream Christians and Muslims, to kiss of because religions like some Buddhism sects, Karaite Jews and my own Gnostic Christianity are superior religions as we sell the notion of seeking knowledge and wisdom over seeking imaginary supernatural Gods.

Regards
DL

To the question, Is doing evil a necessity of life?

My answer is yes, or more broadly contingency is a necessity of life.

For life to have sense, there must be contingency. Of course, if God created life, then life could have no evil as an option. I agree. However, without free will, which has evil as a side effect, we would be simple automata. You would have absolutely no choice but to decide always what is fatefully correct. Like an ant, that only does what it is programmed to do.

Nothing is granted in life, not even personal decisions.