Christianity

[attofishpi]

How many hookers have you had sex with?
How many cars have you stolen? (or borrowed)
How many anecdotes can you share without boring everyone to death?

For various reasons this caught my attention.

In the course of this *conversation* (quote/unquote) I have had to confront and also to surmount, or perhaps resolve, what Immanuel Can represented to me and represents as a cultural figure, a sort of general trope. I know it is tedious (or seems picayune) that I keep mentioning IC but, in my case, my encounter with him, here, turned out to be momentous, and in relation to my own development and understanding. Remember that this all began with LaceWing many months ago and no part of the extended conversation, and all elements of it, should be forgotten (though some here have no inkling at all of this).

Jumping right into it I have to state, and make clear, that the notion of 'sin' cannot and should not ever be dismissed. Those who confront the myriad *Immanuel Cans* roving around out there will react, as is natural, against 'him'. They will reject 'him' and, perhaps, all that he might present about man's sinfulness and the need for a 'redeemer' and a whole range of different connotations. This is why I say that IC is *wicked* and *destructive* (and I am referring to him now as a symbol for a larger set of conceptions) because he produces, I have even thought deliberately, a sour taste that demands, in order to defend personal sovereignty, to be spit or vomited out. One could say, one might say, that this is the Devil's trick: to cause people to reject an aspect of the message when the messenger is rejected.

We need a different conceptual framework in order to understand 'sin'. True, in developing mine I will refer to a transcendent or perhaps expanded metaphysics -- that of Vedānta which has been enormously developed as an explanatory system and is extremely useful in explaining and clarifying what is valuable in Christianity. I am going to assume that all who write here, and all people generally, have a 'conscience' of the sort that Nick refers to. In thinking about what Nick has attempted to present I am at least clear that I know what he means.

But what interests me personally, and for very personal reasons, has been and is the process through which 'conscience' has been stimulated. The more awareness, the more wakefulness, the more, shall I say, sobriety and seriousness, but also the more awareness of 'higher orders of being', the more that I have been made aware, and unpleasantly, of my own 'sinful activities'.

If you evoke awareness, awareness will make itself known, and 'conscience' will bear down on you. I have had to relive and remember, against my own volition, hundreds of different situations in which wrong turns were taken. Sexual misconduct is not a minor one but these are not the ones that seem to 'haunt'. There are other levels of moral sin that seem more consequential.

But what is the basis of sinfulness? It seems to involve trying to get what one feels is lacking or missing on an internal plane through an ignorant and falsely-based hope, a mistaken wish, that it is possible to get *it* from out of circumstances that can never give it. For 'incarnated entities' such as ourselves, we are stuck in unfavorable and even misfortunate circumstances. I do not see a way around this. The Vaishnavas describe this human condition by referring to the metaphor of 'material entanglement'. The truly ignorant (in the Vedānta sense of avidya) have so little discerning intelligence that, stuck in such conditions, they can do little else but muck things up. Desire, anger, appetite, longing, uncontrolled lust, possess their entire selves. They are trapped and driven along, getting & grabbing. The metaphor is imprisonment.

But this is a condition that is universal and general -- though the discriminating have more skill in understanding their 'condition'. Though it also seems to happen that they get better at concealing the degree to which they are possessed by their longings that cannot ever be genuinely satisfied.

Switching topics, to a degree . . .

Haribal wrote: It's not a question of what I favour, it is a question of what is the case. Although man might search for the "ultimate path to truth", that is no assurance that there is such a path. Perhaps if you could define "truth" we could at least get a sense of whether our ambition of finding a path to it is feasible.

Actually, there very definitely is such a path. It is even I think rather obvious at a simple and undeveloped intuitive level. But getting to the capability of properly conceptualizing it, which definitely involves a grasp of universals (!) and also of metaphysical concepts, is a fraught process with many obstructions.

At the point of realization one will have to make choices, and depending on where one is located (what cultural milieu, moment in history, surrounding religious concept) one will as a result of realization seek the appropriate and available tools in order to extract oneself from the 'mire' (if mire is taken to mean a circumstance of ignorance of causation and consequence). But the process is, I think, universal.

If we do find ourselves wanting to measure anything in the meanwhile, what do we have to measure it with other than the yardstick of our own human judgement?

That is exactly right: at that point there is no other yardstick. But when the larger pattern of what is called, within spiritual traditions, awakening occurs, that the circumstances one awakes from are more or less exactly the same. The human situation, the 'material entanglement', is exactly the same in all relevant senses for all people, everywhere. It is very specific to this realm.

Eh?

I really have an uncouth approach with people of late. A while ago I asked IC to describe what he envisions heaven to be, but he has declined.

I wonder if he would be disappointed if he was told he is already in heaven?

(for the record, I have never paid for sex!!)

[Dubious]

Plato and his forms is just nonsense, so let me stop you right there.

How do we know that nonsense isn't also a form? The container, the superset of all other forms! Maybe that's why Plato didn't include it!

[Nick_A]

It depends what you mean by imagination. If it is just fantasy or wishful thinking then it limits your objective vision. However, when imagination is really conscious contemplation, then it can enhance the limits of your vision

Yes, that's it. You have taken a load of wishful thinking and attempted to dignify it by calling it "conscious contemplation".

There are two types of reason as explained here:

The word 'reason' as used today is used ambiguous in its meaning. It may denote either of two mental faculties: a lower reason associated with discursive, linear thinking, and a higher reason associated with direct apprehension of first principles of mathematics and logic, and possibly also of moral and religious truths.

You support discursive linear thinking as the path leading eventually to truth. However I support higher reason and its goal of direct apprehension along with discursive thought to verify it as the path leading to the truth of the forms. Since you deny the forms and its connection with, higher reason, noesis, and intuition, they cannot exist for you and must be considered fantasy. Why deny higher reason or direct apprehension even if you haven't experienced it?

You don't seem to have the humility normal for those who have experienced a quality of of reason that allows them to experience their nothingness.

You don't know anything about me, yet you implied that sentiments expressed by three heroes of yours are something I should aspire to. I am not saying I am superior to any of them in any way, but I could be for all you know.

No. They open the mind to a higher quality of reason most avoid. How one values it is personal

Knowledge of truth is knowledge of the forms as ideas serving as the foundation of our universe. Consider Diotima's "Ladder of Love"

Plato and his forms is just nonsense, so let me stop you right there.

If you could bring about the world you are consciously contemplating, Nick, and I were to find myself in it, as a tourist, what would strike me most about how much better it is than the world I know?

In modern times , higher reason and the domain of objective values is denied in favor of discursive reason or the domain of objective facts. It would seem absurd to you to enter a world in which a sizeable minority had experienced higher reason and live by its connection with higher consciousness revealing objective values. It would seem even more absurd to see the quality of art which stimulates higher reason since we see how art caters to lower reason for the sake of fame and cash. Then the universe doesn't exist to serve us but man's meaning and purpose is to serve universal needs which in this day and age has been forgotten. It would be an odd experience. Can you imagine living in a world in which people understood each other?

[Harbal]

In modern times , higher reason and the domain of objective values is denied in favor of discursive reason or the domain of objective facts. It would seem absurd to you to enter a world in which a sizeable minority had experienced higher reason and live by its connection with higher consciousness revealing objective values. It would seem even more absurd to see the quality of art which stimulates higher reason since we see how art caters to lower reason for the sake of fame and cash. Then the universe doesn't exist to serve us but man's meaning and purpose is to serve universal needs which in this day and age has been forgotten. It would be an odd experience. Can you imagine living in a world in which people understood each other?

I'ts not that the idea of entering a world where people experience "higher reason" and live by its connection with "higher consciousness" is something I find absurd, it is that I have no idea what those things are. As for objective values, I don't understand how there could be such things. Values are the epitome of subjectivity; we create our own values. What on earth would be an example of an objective value?

Art does not stimulate higher reason in me, you are right about that. If it did I would be aware of what higher reason is, but as I have alredy said, I don't know what it is. In as much as I understand what you might mean by art catering to a tendency towards fame and cash, I can put your mind at rest about that sort of art appealing to me. It doesn't.

I agree the universe is not there to serve us, and I think our role is merely to exist within it. We are not special to the universe, it makes no distinction between us and any other object within it.

[Harbal]

How do we know that nonsense isn't also a form? The container, the superset of all other forms! Maybe that's why Plato didn't include it!

I don't have any interest in Plato's ideas concerning forms. I understand that he thought his forms actually had a literal existence somewhere, and that is a ridiculous notion to my mind.

[Dubious]

How do we know that nonsense isn't also a form? The container, the superset of all other forms! Maybe that's why Plato didn't include it!

I don't have any interest in Plato's ideas concerning forms. I understand that he thought his forms actually had a literal existence somewhere, and that is a ridiculous notion to my mind.

As it is to mine. That's the reason why I thought nonsense should also be a form within his formal structure of forms. In that way it completes the circle of absurdity based on forms which invariably includes sarcasm as a form of comment on the merits of form.

[Harbal]

I don't have any interest in Plato's ideas concerning forms. I understand that he thought his forms actually had a literal existence somewhere, and that is a ridiculous notion to my mind.

As it is to mine. That's the reason why I thought nonsense should also be a form within his formal structure of forms. In that way it completes the circle of absurdity based on forms which invariably includes sarcasm as a form of comment on the merits of form.

Sorry about that. Sometimes I reach for my gun before I've properly identified the target.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Now I turn back to Dubious and his *problem*

The only way you can assume I or others have a problem is to be certain that you don't have any. Ever consider writing you own gospel? I can help you with that. I can turn a theme into a pretzel and still make it come out straight at the end. To convince anyone of anything you first have to confuse them; that's when the pretzel enters the stage purposely causing confusion in preparation for the revelation which casts all doubt into the fire.

You are such a romantic!

My endeavor is somewhat different from yours (and I don't really understand yours except in a shadowy sense). My object is to clarify the perspective that I have, and must live with, in the face of the opposition that I receive. Note that in regard to this (and this will explain what you have described as my obsession with IC) I have to counter-propose and *resolve* each person's opposing viewpoint.

Also note that I put 'problem' in quotes. I certainly recognize that you do not see yourself as having any problem at all. But that means, too, that you do see yourself, and must see yourself, as also being a resolution of the problem that you define as 'belief in something that is not real'. That much I do understand about your viewpoint and orientation.

So as it turns out I have to turn back and examine what it is that I refer to when I insert the term 'metaphysics'. You should know, and I know, that according to the definition of an (odd) religious philosopher René Guénon (who has influenced the intellectual ordering of my ideas to a degree) that he describes metaphysics in the ultimate sense as absolutely beyond physical manifestation and only knowable through allusion or inference.

Essentially (and I am aware of this) I cannot conceptually get around my core conception (which is foundational to my viewing). In the most simple terms, which I have stated numerous times, everything that becomes manifest in our Universe, when it was not manifest, had to contain the potentials that did and do become manifest. In that sense I take the Platonic notion of 'forms'. And in regard to Plato -- perhaps this might interest you -- it is Guénon's assertion that the Occidental philosophers only seem to have a partial picture. Thus he finds fault in their descriptions of metaphysics. And obviously he turns back to Vedānta and to a far more developed system of explaining the manifestation of the world we live in, experience, and see before us.

But we would have to say a few things about that particular vision. It does not share the *function* of much of Occidental physics and philosophy. It is not a tool for the domination of matter and for control and manipulation of the physical, manifest world (what is referred to by the term prakriti). My impression of it? It is ultra-contemplative. So in this sense at least I might agree that it pertains to the 'inner world' insofar as its focus is, ultimately, on the perceiving soul. That is ourselves in a spiritual sense. What then is the function of fortifying the Vedāntic, Occidental contemplative, and spiritual stance or viewpoint?

Obviously for the purposes of orienting oneself *properly* within life, and also it must be said in relation to death and 'life beyond'. It has to be understood at the outset that, for those of Occidental scientific orientation, there is no need to bother to think about 'life beyond' because no 'soul' can be conceived (because of the a prioris of the conceptual system). So 'life beyond' means nothing. It can simply be removed from any consideration at all. It is an irrelevancy. And as you well know, for those with this bent, whatever it is that animates us does simply dissipate when our bodies expire.

There is however a body of knowledge and exposition that flowed out from Vedānta (the Vedas) which deals on social relations, government, military action, medicine, astronomy, architecture, mathematics and all the rest. But its primary question, if that is the right word, or focus (if that is the right word) is in penetrating the mystery of the manifest world and of the consciousness (our own) that perceives.

There would be no reason at all for, let's say, a hardcore Occidentalist and one who is an 'outcome' of those processes that have made us what and who we are to pay any attention at all to the propositions and intuitions of the Vedic sages (Rishis) except where an understanding of those Vedāntic spiritual doctrines could illuminate the Occidental contemplative traditions. But since those traditions of contemplative understanding cannot be employed as tools for the manipulation or domination of material processes -- they have no place or utility -- for one interested in construction and domination (attaining power and control) there would be no reason to deviate from Occidental scientific means.

It is a question then of what one is after.

So there are a few things that now can be said about the present conversation. It should all be clearer. Most who participate on this forum come from an Occidental philosophical-scientific orientation. I would have no choice except to place you within that category. So what are you after? When you explain that (I realize that you have been, more or less, explaining that) you will in that process describe your 'existential relationship' to life in this world. So, with that said I would describe you as a proponent of the Occidental scientific traditions. I am unsure, then, what particular use you would have for philosophy taken as such. It would not be 'contemplative philosophy', and it would not be the sort of philosophy that was original to philosophy in the earliest days (in Hellens) which did have concerns about 'the soul'.

You could not, given your orientation, have any relationship at all to the range of Occidental traditions that I describe as 'contemplative' except one of acute critique. Because all of that is stuff & nonsense.

[Nick_A]

In modern times , higher reason and the domain of objective values is denied in favor of discursive reason or the domain of objective facts. It would seem absurd to you to enter a world in which a sizeable minority had experienced higher reason and live by its connection with higher consciousness revealing objective values. It would seem even more absurd to see the quality of art which stimulates higher reason since we see how art caters to lower reason for the sake of fame and cash. Then the universe doesn't exist to serve us but man's meaning and purpose is to serve universal needs which in this day and age has been forgotten. It would be an odd experience. Can you imagine living in a world in which people understood each other?

I'ts not that the idea of entering a world where people experience "higher reason" and live by its connection with "higher consciousness" is something I find absurd, it is that I have no idea what those things are. As for objective values, I don't understand how there could be such things. Values are the epitome of subjectivity; we create our own values. What on earth would be an example of an objective value?

As I've learned, the universe is a huge living machine. The One, the Absolute, creates a series of ‘worlds, levels of reality within worlds’, living beings of ever increasing complexity and density. They sustain their existence by the complimentary processes of involution or devolution into creation and evolution or the return of materiality to its source. This cyclical flow of forces is sustained by relative consciousness manifesting as objective conscience.

Objective values are those which sustain our universe. Take love as an example. Man and animals on earth are only capable of selective love. A dog may love its master unconditionally but doesn't like other dogs. Higher love is the ability to love life itself which sustains our universe

Art does not stimulate higher reason in me, you are right about that. If it did I would be aware of what higher reason is, but as I have alredy said, I don't know what it is. In as much as I understand what you might mean by art catering to a tendency towards fame and cash, I can put your mind at rest about that sort of art appealing to me. It doesn't.

When Frederick Church painted "In the Heart of the Andes" his purpose was to indicate the relation between the macrocosm and microcosm and help Alexander von Humboldt to awaken the idea amongst people. The mountains indicate the macrocosm while the tiny insects a person observes within the painting reveals the microcosm within the macrocosm. This is real art since its purpose is to awaken. Some are sensitive to it and some are not

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/10481


I agree the universe is not there to serve us, and I think our role is merely to exist within it. We are not special to the universe, it makes no distinction between us and any other object within it.

You've described how mechanical life lives. Its purpose is to transform substances which it does so there is nothing special about it. However conscious life or evolved Man also is capable of connecting levels of reality. The soul of man can receive from above and give to below serving a universal purpose. But that is for evolved man or our future.

[Harbal]

As I've learned, the universe is a huge living machine. The One, the Absolute, creates a series of ‘worlds, levels of reality within worlds’, living beings of ever increasing complexity and density. They sustain their existence by the complimentary processes of involution or devolution into creation and evolution or the return of materiality to its source. This cyclical flow of forces is sustained by relative consciousness manifesting as objective conscience.

I honestly don't know what that means. I accept it must mean something to you, but I simply don't understand it. What do you expect me to do about that? And I'm sure I can't be the only person who doesn't understand it.

When Frederick Church painted "In the Heart of the Andes" his purpose was to indicate the relation between the macrocosm and microcosm and help Alexander von Humboldt to awaken the idea amongst people. The mountains indicate the macrocosm while the tiny insects a person observes within the painting reveals the microcosm within the macrocosm. This is real art since its purpose is to awaken. Some are sensitive to it and some are not

I have never heard of Frederick Church, so this is completely lost on me. I don't want to see the world through the eyes of Frederick Church, or Plato, or Simone Weil, or Einstein.

[Nick_A]

As I've learned, the universe is a huge living machine. The One, the Absolute, creates a series of ‘worlds, levels of reality within worlds’, living beings of ever increasing complexity and density. They sustain their existence by the complimentary processes of involution or devolution into creation and evolution or the return of materiality to its source. This cyclical flow of forces is sustained by relative consciousness manifesting as objective conscience.

I honestly don't know what that means. I accept it must mean something to you, but I simply don't understand it. What do you expect me to do about that? And I'm sure I can't be the only person who doesn't understand it.

When Frederick Church painted "In the Heart of the Andes" his purpose was to indicate the relation between the macrocosm and microcosm and help Alexander von Humboldt to awaken the idea amongst people. The mountains indicate the macrocosm while the tiny insects a person observes within the painting reveals the microcosm within the macrocosm. This is real art since its purpose is to awaken. Some are sensitive to it and some are not

I have never heard of Frederick Church, so this is completely lost on me. I don't want to see the world through the eyes of Frederick Church, or Plato, or Simone Weil, or Einstein.

My interest is in the purpose of our universe and the purpose of life including man within it. There is no reason that this should interest you. You can have a very good life unconcerned with these questions. But at the same time, if these questions dominate the philosophical/religious mind, it would be foolish for a person to ignore them. Who am I and why do I exist? If these questions do not appeal to you, what is the purpose of philosophy for you? Is it limited to how to better react as a society?

[Dontaskme]

My interest is in the purpose of our universe and the purpose of life including man within it.

There is no purpose of life. Life never asks itself, what is my purpose. Purpose is an artificial construct of thinking, 'thoughts' are by-products of knowing consciousness, that can never experience or see itself as a conceptual object.

There is no 'thing' writing this message that can know by informing itself that it is writing this message. There's just writing happening, and the whole of life, aka everything is doing this, not a 'someone'

A 'someone' is just a thought within life itself which is life happening to itself. There is no division or duality there except as concept known - known by life itself, which is everything - all at once, there is no division.

There is no thinker. If you believe there is a 'thinker' then see if you can touch it with your fingers,the way you can touch the keys on your keypad with your fingers.

I'm just being very simple and straight to the point here, I'm not trying to be clever or deceptive, I'm trying to show people there is no independant thing living life separate from life itself living itself, and that every body is being lived by life.

So just ask yourself where is the thinker? that thinks, or believes life has a purpose?
Until you inquire into who is seeking purpose, you'll just keep asking by repeating the same questions over and over.

Like you have already explained to yourself here below >

But at the same time, if these questions dominate the philosophical/religious mind, it would be foolish for a person to ignore them.

Who am I and why do I exist?

When the answer quenches the question, it becomes very clear that there is no one who questions the nature of it's existence, if there was a 'someone' who could question it's existence, then that 'someone' would be known. And that 'someone known' would then be able to touch itself, and say to itself, this is who I am, this is who is asking questions.

So the question is: Can a 'someone' do that? can this 'someone' point to itself and say, this is 'Who' is asking the question 'Who am I and why do I exist'?

So now, we are back to the same old dilemma again...where is the one who asks the question about the nature of it's existence? and it's purpose...can you touch it, and can that thing you touch know it is being touched?

Until you can answer these questions correctly, you will never be able to understand this > ( Who am I and why do I exist? )

My point is...the whole spiritual story of purpose and meaning is only a pretense within the artificial dream of separation where there is none. Spirituality is a mythological idea known by no one.

So yes, within the dream of duality...there is purpose and meaning, but only as a pretense. We can be the greatest species that ever walked the planet, but we are still subject to the same fate which is death, and after the death of the great one, it's as though greatness never happened, because it didn't. Nothing ever happened, just as nothing is happening in any dream.

When you awaken from a nightly dream - you can know that in the dream, nothing ever happened, it only seemed like it did...That's what true awakening is...it's knowing there was no one living life, and that life never happened to a ''someone''.

If these questions do not appeal to you, what is the purpose of philosophy for you? Is it limited to how to better react as a society?

Because actions are Acausal. There are only reactions here that can be known.

[Dubious]

You are such a romantic!

Well that's new! Even my mother called me, when quite young, a "cold fish". In all the intervening years there was no sign or hope of becoming defrosted. In fact, the opposite was true. During my middle teens I even tried writing romantic poetry in emulation of Christopher Marlowe's Passionate Shepard. It was a total fiasco! I still recall two lines within it which still make me cringe or break out in laughter...

then waste not your loveliness on mere sheep
for such wastage your image will not keep.
...not realizing what lonely shepards do to sheep!

Did I ever get that wrong! So instead I thought it best to return to my customary deep Miltonic sternness as a permanent home. So far it worked out quite well!

My object is to clarify the perspective that I have, and must live with, in the face of the opposition that I receive.

Why? Even IC doesn't give a crap about anyone's opposition. The only opposition able to change anything are the insurrections that boil from the inside.

I certainly recognize that you do not see yourself as having any problem at all.

Only the insane on cloud nine have no problems; oh yeah! Let's not forget the dead in that scenario. They both have something in common.

But that means, too, that you do see yourself, and must see yourself, as also being a resolution of the problem that you define as 'belief in something that is not real'.

Why must I see myself thus? Who's to say that different experiences wouldn't have rendered me more amenable to your or Nick's views though not likely to be a perfect fit? To me, thinking is a kaleidoscopic process never fixed for long on one design. When I read anyone it's to examine and criticize which determines whether to accept wholly, partially or not at all with reasons provided. By considering what may, to an extent, be foreign to my nature or new to it, the neurons are certain to receive their regular input of mental energy just as travelling to foreign places would.

Essentially (and I am aware of this) I cannot conceptually get around my core conception (which is foundational to my viewing).

That's another major difference between us. For me there is no "core conception" as if it were some kind of fixed star in my mental horizon which forces me to it. The non-metaphysical speaks to me much louder than any metaphysics my or anyone's imagination can come up with; but as long as it remains fictional, I won't discount it.

In the most simple terms, which I have stated numerous times, everything that becomes manifest in our Universe, when it was not manifest, had to contain the potentials that did and do become manifest.

I won't argue with you there. There is obviously a process of creation manifest or not.

And in regard to Plato -- perhaps this might interest you -- it is Guénon's assertion that the Occidental philosophers only seem to have a partial picture. Thus he finds fault in their descriptions of metaphysics. And obviously he turns back to Vedānta and to a far more developed system of explaining the manifestation of the world we live in, experience, and see before us.

That's interesting. I have heard of him but know little about him. I'll look him up to gather more details. Regardless of what you think of me, I'll never say never even if I know it can't be true. Analogically - though not exactly right to compare it thus - what Vedānta is to Guénon, seems to me, the Core Theory of physics is to reality being a far greater manifestation of what is than any philosophy no matter how brilliant.

All that strives to know create their own mysteries in response to Being, independent of that which created it. His objections to Jung also would be worthy of perusal since there are a number of things about Jung I too consider dubious though still of interest. Paradoxically, truth may be the lesser catalyst of the brain's expansion in attempting to find it. It's the dynamic of the question itself flexing the mind in the slow removal of most caveats.

You could not, given your orientation, have any relationship at all to the range of Occidental traditions that I describe as 'contemplative' except one of acute critique. Because all of that is stuff & nonsense.

That too is not true. It would be silly to object to the metaphysical traditions of the West which often plays out like a grand symphony of thought. It has its own epic cathedrals and temples which doesn't mean that what they contain and signify is the same as that which lies external to it, viz., the created world, the universe we didn't create. The two main kinds of mysteries, the internal and the external, the first being the epiphenomenon of the second. What I object to is using the first to explain the second as if they were the same. The prime example of that on this site is the incorporation of preexisting objective meaning and values as if we are the reason for it being so planned in the first place as "stuff & nonsense".

...and that's all I have time for today.

[Harbal]

My interest is in the purpose of our universe and the purpose of life including man within it. There is no reason that this should interest you. You can have a very good life unconcerned with these questions.

I don't see the universe or life within it as having a purpose. However it all came to exist, I don't have any reason to think it was the product of purposeful intention. Between what the laws of nature allow, and what they forbid, matter just interacts until something results from it, and a temporary state of balance is arrived at. As for the laws of nature, I don't imagine they are conscious of what they are doing, or were put in place by some conscious agent with an intention. It isn't true to say that I'm not interested in the workings of the univers, and what it contains; I'm very interested, but I wouldn't attempt to aggrandise that interest by calling it anything other than curiosity.

Who am I and why do I exist? If these questions do not appeal to you,

The answers to the questions, "who am I, and why do I exist", can only be subjective. What am I, and how did I come to exist would probably be the questions I would ask that come closest to those that you propose. I'm sure I must have wondered about these things from time to time, but I don't remember ever coming up with any conclusive answers. I suppose I am lucky in as much as I don't have a burning desire to know the answers, but not knowing them seems to put some people in quite a state of turmoil.

what is the purpose of philosophy for you? Is it limited to how to better react as a society?

There are branches of philosophy that are solely concerned with how we should live, both as individuals and as members of society. If that sort of philosophy brings about any increase in human satisfaction with life, I would say that its practice is justified. As for philosophy that concerns itself with metaphysics and such, it is harder for me to say what the benefits might be. Don't talk to me about spirituality, though, because that would be like giving a book to someone with severe dyslexia.

[Belinda]

How do we know that nonsense isn't also a form? The container, the superset of all other forms! Maybe that's why Plato didn't include it!

I don't have any interest in Plato's ideas concerning forms. I understand that he thought his forms actually had a literal existence somewhere, and that is a ridiculous notion to my mind.

If by "literal" Harbal means existence in space-time then Platonic Forms are ridiculable. I have just invented a silly word. All manner of sully words may be invented and it's ridiculable that each of them has a referrent in space- time.

However if Platonic Forms are taken to be synonymous with eternal goodness, truth, and beauty then I am a Platonist, not because goodness, truth, and beauty are undiluted by evil, lies, and ugliness in this world we all live in, but because goodness, truth, and beauty can be eternal though invisible standards of comparison. Platonic Forms are at best psychological events not events in space-time.