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4th June 2011, 04:38 AM | #81 |
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It is impossible to tell if you've just been holed up too long, or whether you're feeling so manic that everything connects, everything has significance, everything matters.
You joined JREF in 2008, so you must have done some lurking. You've probably read other threads by self-styled mystics, and how they were received. The problem for people at JREF is that you haven't given them a thesis, an assertion, a nugget, to respond to. If you want to talk about that Nietzsche quote, I did my homework last night. I maintain that trying to understand Nietzsche is difficult but fun, and that quote-mining him is a bad idea. Instead, you have to read at least a whole section of a book, then go to secondary sources for interpretations, and also read whoever he was responding to. Basically, he was substituting a psychological approach for metaphysics. He says, in BG&E, that philosophers such as Kant and Spinoza began with their prejudices, and then built systems that would justify and explain them. Every philosophy, according to Fred, is the personal confession of the philosopher. He sought to understand why people are attracted to metaphysical systems, and why they want to believe that those systems are timeless, instead of based on personal prejudices -- conditioned by a particular time and place. He was concerned with personal cultivation. So he was interested in the consequences of believing in something. He believed that Christianity had turned man's instincts against himself, unlike the Greeks, who were more vital, less sick and world-weary. He was basically attacking Platonism, and Christianity as a kind of Platonism for the masses. The water is very deep. I don't have the discipline or the background to really know whether he was right, but I enjoy his psychological speculation -- a great deal of which has trickled down into our culture, both for better and for worse. When he talks about the "will to truth", he is talking about why we must believe certain things in order to survive. Since self-deception is necessary for survival, why do philosophers revere the search for a timeless truth? His attitude toward science, by this time, is ambivalent, and I'm not sure I really understand it. If you read him as a philosopher with insights into personal cultivation against the background of his life, he appears to be both very strong, very brilliant, and sick, lonely, and doomed. Anyway. I'd be curious what reading him has meant to you. I've got to go rewire my studio today. There's cable spaghetti all over the floor, and my wife will only put up with it for another day or two. Oh, P.S. I had a girlfriend who went to St. John's College. |
4th June 2011, 06:30 AM | #82 |
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4th June 2011, 06:34 AM | #83 |
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4th June 2011, 08:28 AM | #84 |
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4th June 2011, 08:52 AM | #85 |
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You're basing your opinion about what's important, on its popularity in a relatively limited area and time: the last 5,000 years or so, mostly "western civilization" plus a few eastern works.
Of course the works are homogenous. They've been run through a filter that makes them so. The idea that all gods, religions or spiritual experiences are related, doesn't work so well when one has to include belief systems with many local/personal dieties rather than an overall "god," or ones that glorified violence and tribal warfare, or ones that otherwise conflicted with what made it through the western civilization filter. To some extent, we're all hard-wired for similar spiritual experiences simply because of the way our brains work, but the interpretation of those experiences has varied greatly. A local volcano god requiring human sacrifices just doesn't unify well with an omnipresent creator-god expecting love and forgiveness. But if one starts making judgment calls about which great ideas are part of the overall unity and which are outlying mistakes, one can shape a unified religion into anything one wants. |
4th June 2011, 09:56 AM | #86 |
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Well, since you're definitely not the type to take any crap from male chauvinists, be forewarned.
Even those who love him are embarrassed by his writings about women. Sections of great insight and high quality will be followed by mean-spirited and ignorant rants when the subject turns to women or the relations between the sexes. Basically, his father (a minister) and his brother died, leaving him to be raised by women. His sister was a piece of work. Although they had a close relationship at times, Fred never forgave her for meddling in his disastrous affair with Lou Salome. He never had a real long-term intimate relationship with a woman. Richard Wagner thought that Fred's problem was that he masturbated too much, and Wagner even went so far as to tell his doctor his theory. This indiscretion on Wagner's part contributed to the break between them. Several times, Fred would propose marriage to a woman he barely knew, just to get married, and because living so completely alone made him desperate. Lou Salome was a bright young woman who was interested in his work, and this made her irresistible to him. Nietzsche was so naive that he asked his friend (also Lou Salome's lover) Paul Rée to propose to her for him! Obviously that wasn't such a good idea. When Lou Salome rejected him, and further mistrust was introduced by the meddling of Nietzsche's sister, his hopes for a close relationship were dashed, and he seems to have gone into a depression followed by a manic rebound, where he wrote Thus Spoke Zarathustra. This is his most famous, but also his most bombastically dramatic work, and unlike anything he ever wrote before or since. I've never been able to read it -- to my ear it just sounds ridiculous. From Zarathustra on, his remarks about women turn uglier. His personal bitterness seems to have seeped into his writing. Before Zarathrustra, he had friendships with some progressive women, and some of these friendships continued, but his bitterness seems to have influenced him to write increasingly reactionary things about women after that. caveat: from memory of Fred's bios, not fact-checked. May contain minor errors. All views expressed are the personal opinion of the poster, and do not reflect the views of the JREF or, indeed, those of James Randi. |
4th June 2011, 11:05 AM | #87 |
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Yeah, that's the main reason I stopped reading his writing when I did. I like to think I have grown up a bit since then and can separate the interesting bits from the ridiculous.
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4th June 2011, 04:49 PM | #88 |
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Once long ago I read a comment, whose source I cannot now remember, which made Nietzsche much more palatable. The comment was that N's real genius was not philosophy but comedy.
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4th June 2011, 09:21 PM | #89 |
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Ok, so far I understand the OP's position to boil down to:
1) There's a core message to be found in a number more or less hidden in a number of texts, generally prominent religious ones. 2) this core message is highly similar to the christian message of love, or the golden rule, though not dependent on or limited to christian teachings. 3) If adhered to, this philosophy of love allows the adherent to transcend to a higher state of peace and insight comparable to "heaven", a perfect state of being. If I'm not mistaken, this is somewhat of a gnostic teaching with some strong buddhist and mystical transcendent influences. In short, pleasant enough to read but as mentioned above something of a patchwork of quotes from sources cherry-picked to fit a predetermined conclusion. |
4th June 2011, 09:48 PM | #90 |
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Nietzsche is against CONVENTIONAL Christianity, not REAL Christianity. He is a truer follower of Jesus than the majority who study the Bible, which is why there are many parallels between his descriptions of Zarathustra & Jesus. In BG&E 225, he speaks of the need for profound SUFFERING in order to advance spiritually. Compare: "If we SUFFER with him, we shall REIGN with him"-2Tim.2:12 & "be glorified together with him"-Rom.8:17 i.e. "be a name & a praise [FAME] in all the earth"-Zeph.3:20 "set high above all other nations in name & praise & honor [FAME]" -Deut.28:1 & 26:19. That is what it means to "inherit the kingdom" (Matt.25), like Lady Gaga speaks of the "kingdom that is my fans". What I'm sharing with you here-about God's truest elect being the most famous people like Nietzsche who have "power over the nations"(Rev.2:26)-is not known by most people who read the Bible, for few understand its real teachings.
Notice that Nietzsche actually praises the Old Testament heroes and other "saints" in BG&E Section 3 on "What is religious". He is criticising the "small soul smell" of the New Testament, the "slave morality". But here's another curiosity: his "master-slave morality" distinction is actually in St. Paul's letters to the Colossians, Ephesians, etc.! So Nietzsche and his teachings are NOT as contrary to the Bible as they appear on the surface. St. Paul says of himself he is a "DECEIVER yet true" (2Cor.6:8), for he, like Plato with his "noble lie" & Lao-Tzu who says that "the rulers try to keep people unknowing because when they know too much they get too hard to handle", is not being completely forthright about his real opinions about God/Jesus/The Devil & good/evil. "BE A FOOL TO BE WISE"-1Cor.3:18. Ponder that statement very deeply. |
5th June 2011, 02:41 AM | #91 |
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Wait. Shakespeare wrote about people driven mad (through fear or guilt or lust for vengeance or other reasons). How is that proof of great Bible truths? People imagine demons even today, that does not mean demons exist or that hell exists. It is a common theme throughout literature. Common theme ≠ great Truth.
Furthermore, one has to remember that Shakespeare and many of his audience had read the Bible. Therefore, his using themes, motifs, and symbols from the Bible is not evidence of a profound coincidence. It is merely evidence of him using ideas from the Bible because they were convenient, useful, or colorful. .......... Cut to the chase. Have you presented your ideas to any of your old professors? How have they received your theory? ETA: when can we expect to see your work published in a peer-reviewed journal? |
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5th June 2011, 02:56 AM | #92 |
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If you use italics for emphasis, no one will accuse you of using too much CAPITALIZATION.
As for Jesus, he is very much a construct. But you are not concerned with that so much as you are to find essential wisdom across texts, across traditions. So we ought to respond to that spirit, and not nit-pick. The problem I'm having is that your use of Nietzsche, so far, ignores major themes of his, but also avoids specifics. As far as I'm concerned, the good stuff in his writings is the wealth of psychological observations, in particular about art, music, religious belief, and so forth. But as for big stuff, he loved the Greeks, and considered himself a follower of Dionysius -- especially toward the end. Epictetus was another philosopher he admired. I'll try to meet you half-way. Can you either quote the writings of Paul, or give more explicit directions? Can you quote the passages of Nietzsche? It would interest me to know what might have influenced his ideas about the morality of masters and slaves. It probably derived from somewhere. It's quite true that Nietzsche grew up in a religious household, with ancestors that included many Protestant ministers, and that his major influences included Schopenhauer and Emerson, who were also strongly influenced by aspects of Christianity, although Schopenhauer was an atheist. It's also true that Fred respected the Old Testament more than the New. The problem with having a conversation about this is that it's too broad. |
5th June 2011, 03:04 AM | #93 |
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BG&E 225 is against a simple calculus of pleasure and pain, and does praise the benefit of suffering. In particular, he thought utilitarianism was small-minded.
Of course, he had to make a virtue of a necessity, considering his poor health and wild mood swings. But I'd say his illness served him pretty well, until he finally broke down forever -- and that was probably syphilis, more than snapping from the tension of his ideas. |
5th June 2011, 03:12 AM | #94 |
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Here, for your delectation and edification, is Philippians 3:20-21, by The Mountain Goats, (John Darnielle) from: The Life of the World to Come
The path to the awful room that one will sleep in again Was lit for one man only gone where none can follow him Try to look down the way he'd gone: Back of a closets whose depths draw and on and on And nice people said he was with God now Safe in his arms But the voices of the angels that he heard on his last days with us Smoke alarms Well the path to the palace of wisdom that the mystics walk Is lined with neuroleptics and electric shocks Hope daily for healing Try not to go insane Dance in a circle with bells on Try to make it rain And nice people say he had gone home to God now Safe in his arms, safe in his arms But the voices of the angels singing to him on his last hours with us Smoke alarms, smoke alarms |
5th June 2011, 06:05 AM | #95 |
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I've gone back over the thread, and have watched snippets of the linked videos of Mr. gjpogiatzis.
Now it just seems silly to have held forth about Nietzsche, but I tend to do that whenever he's quoted out of context for some obscure purpose, as he usually is. I'll say this: You have to cut out many layers of the onion, in fact all of it, before you get to a Nietzsche who believed in God or was a "True Christian". He is strongest if you interpret him as speaking to artists and individualists, but not to encourage them in their delusions. He had as much to say about artist-types that was critical, even scathing, as he did that was praise for the "free spirit". Bruto is only guilty of a little one-sided pith when he says that Fred was a better comedian than a philosopher. He really did try to cut through German pomposity with his sense of humor. Well, here come the sound of dishes, and my chores beckon. Later. |
5th June 2011, 08:32 AM | #96 |
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I already told you Paul's having distinct moralities for "masters" & for "slaves" is shown in Ephesians & Colossians. Related to this dichotomy is his distinction between a morality for enslaved "children" and for free "sons of God" in Galatians 4, where he says that "the sons of God are not under the law." This is related to Nietzsche saying in Section 4 of BG&E "Jesus said to his disciples: what are morals for us sons of God?" Paul says twice in 1 Cor. "all things are lawful unto me, but not all is beneficial." In the Brothers Karamazov Book 11.9, "The Devil" in his conversation with Ivan Karamazov attributes this kind of philosophy to "the god-man", who is of course related to Nietzsche's "Superman".
you're right caleb. we should make matters more specific, and have a conversation about them. forgive me, this is the first time i've posted in forums for quite some time, because i've been studying in near total isolation for many months now until relatively recently. since the original topic I posted about was the end goal of life, and how one attains it, why don't we consider that, in Nietzsche's views? He says at one place "good is whatever increases power or the feeling of power", because "the will to power is the will to life." [This is related to the Bible, of course, which uses "power" as a motivation many times: e.g. "to him that overcomes I will give power over the nations"(Rev.2:26), "you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you"(Acts 1:8), etc. In fact the Spirit of God-the "Good"- can be conceived of as the sum total of the universe's energy/power; the last paragraph of Newton's Principia, in the General Scholium, compares the Spirit to a subtle force "which pervades and lies hid in all gross bodies; by the force and action of which Spirit, the particles of bodies mutually attract one another at near distances, and cohere, if contiguous; and electric bodies operate to greater distances, as well repelling as attracting the neighbouring corpuscles; and light is emitted, reflected, refracted, inflected, and heats bodies; and all sensation is excited, and the members of animal bodies move at the command of the will, namely, by the vibrations of this Spirit, mutually propagated along the solid filaments of the nerves, from the outward organs of sense to the brain, and from the brain into the muscles." http://www.isaacnewton.ca/gen_scholium/scholium.htm] Nietzsche's ideal powerful being is embodied in his "Ubermensch" (Superman), who is depicted in both Zarathustra & in Beyond Good & Evil (the "philosopher of the future", "what is noble", the "free spirit," etc.). What is your conception of Nietzsche's ideal? Of what he considers "noble" (the last section of Beyond Good & Evil is "What is Noble")? This question is specific, as well as broad to encourage more comprehensive thinking. Perhaps I will start a new thread on this topic. |
5th June 2011, 08:54 AM | #97 |
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so how does one keep going from insane on the path to "enlightenment," when Carl Jung says that kundalini ("the baptism of the Holy Spirit"-"of fire") at its worst is equivalent to schizophrenia? notice the last ten years of Nietzsche's life he was in a mental hospital. In fact, "epilepsy" has been called "the sacred disease" (as well as "demonic possession"!) since ancient times, and is related to the power which the kundalini energy gives to a person.
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5th June 2011, 10:12 AM | #98 |
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yes, sawbones, you have summarized my position well. Love for "God"- i.e. "the all in all"(Col.3:11)- all things in their unity and diversity, is the key to "wisdom"-knowledge of the ONENESS of all things. This state of consciousness could be called "heaven," just as "Nirvana" is not so much a place as a state of consciousness.
I will repeat what I said about Plato's Symposium. In the center of the dialogue, Diotima teaches that to come to know God "The Beautiful Itself" "the Highest MYSTERY" and live the life most worth living, you must follow the "ladder of love" by falling in LOVE with, in this order, all beautiful: bodies, souls/minds, pursuits/laws (like Psalm 1 speaks of always delighting in the "law" of the Lord), and studies (the 6 mentioned in Plato's Republic Book VII as necessary for perceiving "The GOOD"- arithmetic[seeing how things are ONE & Many], plane & solid geometry, astronomy, musical harmony, & dialectic or the art of philosophical reasoning/discussion). Hegel has a similar teaching in the Phenomenology of the Spirit in the last two sections- on "Religion" & "Absolute Knowledge". Here is a video I made on Youtube about Plato's Symposium http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSHVIhHb92I which can stimulate your thinking about the dialogue, which video I will improve on when I get a chance Ladewig, but it is better than nothing. |
5th June 2011, 10:19 AM | #99 |
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Yes, it has been called the sacred disease and has been referred to as demonic possession. But epilepsy is neither of those. It is a neurological disorder that can be treated with medicine. People who lived 2000 years ago had a very ignorant view of disease and its causes. Finding deep meaning in their ignorance is not useful.
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5th June 2011, 10:25 AM | #100 |
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Before I say more, I'm going to read up on Paul.
For Nietzsche, "will to power" was first and foremost something subjective. That is, what are the many things that give someone a feeling of increase, of more? Even asceticism is a feeling of power over one's own self. Priestly power is that, and also the social respect and influence that priests have. So "power" wasn't something physical, it could be completely imaginary. Then, later, Nietzsche tried to turn this psychological idea into something more. In this he was trying to come up with a theory of Everything, to write a Big Book like Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation, which in turn adds this idea of power to a basically Kantian framework. At least one Nietzsche biographer -- Julian Young -- thinks that Nietzsche couldn't pull off his Big Book, for several reasons. One of them was that trying to explain everything as Will to Power didn't work, and he knew it. So he gave up on the Big Project toward the end. As for his madness and the end of his life: Yes, first he was in a mental hospital, then he went back to live with his mother, and with his sister (!) He had only brief moments of lucidity after his collapse, although he could still improvise at the piano quite well, for several years. The details of his madness are grim and sordid. During one period, when he could still speak a little, he took to muttering, over and over, "I'm stupid because I'm dead. I'm dead because I'm stupid." I take the conventional view that this was the result of tertiary syphilis, and not because of what he believed. More on The Mountain Goats -- and why that song was meant in the sincere spirit of ambivalence with which I approach everything interesting, including mystical madness -- later. John Darnielle actually lived on the grounds of a mental hospital in California for several years, so he speaks from first-hand experiences. I'd rather listen to his songs than Lady Gaga. Anyway, I'm off to read Paul. Is his concept of master/slave morality similar to Nietzsche's? Is Hegel's idea of the master/slave relationship related? |
5th June 2011, 11:27 AM | #101 |
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Okay, yes, I'd agree that when humans feel a sense of power or control, it feels "good." The opposite is true: a sense of helplessness or lack of control can cause a person to feel "bad" (depressed).
Religions take advantage of this, giving an illusion of control even when there is none, such as promoting the idea that praying for a specific outcome, in a situation where the outcome is random and uncontrollable, will give the praying person some control over the outcome. I don't think that's necessarily good, since it's a strong incentive that one can use to control others: believe in my god, follow my instructions for prayer, and it'll give you power when you're powerless. Like a multi-level marketing scheme, religions flourish, as the leaders attain power for themselves by promising power to others. But beyond that? I don't see how one can expand it to morality. When an individual gives or attains more power, that's not necessarily morally good, it just is. The power can be used either for moral good or moral evil. |
5th June 2011, 12:36 PM | #102 |
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You might find this interesting.
Friedrich Nietzsche- Fighter for Freedom by Rudolf Steiner http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA005/...005_index.html Steiner had some interesting exposure to Nietzsche towards the end of his life. |
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5th June 2011, 03:28 PM | #103 |
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there's a deep significance to why epilepsy was considered such that you are missing, friend. It is no coincidence that the word "RAPTURE" in the Bible has "SEIZURE" as one of its synonyms. Among the famous epileptics: St. Paul, Mohammed, Dostoevsky, Julius Caesar, Socrates, etc. Dostoevsky said that when Mohammad was having an experience in "heaven", it was actually an epileptic seizure, and said that he himself experienced "heaven on earth" at the start of his seizures. KUNDALINI & epilepsy,schizophrenia,bipolar disorder share much in common. KUNDALINI IS THE KEY TO EVERYTHING="BAPTISM OF THE HOLY SPIRIT"/"BAPTISM OF FIRE".
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5th June 2011, 03:36 PM | #104 |
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That Paul distinguishes between "master" and "slave" morality is much more evident in Galatians 4, though it is hinted at in Ephesians & Colossians by his addressing "masters" & "slaves" separately.
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5th June 2011, 03:36 PM | #105 |
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5th June 2011, 03:43 PM | #106 |
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The problem is: how do you define what is "good" & what is "evil"? Consider that in the Tao te Ching, "virtue" is sometimes translated as "energy" or "power" instead! http://www.taopage.org/te.html So Nietzsche's equation of "good" with "whatever increases power or the feeling of power" has deep foundations.
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5th June 2011, 03:47 PM | #107 |
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evidence? that's not very hard to find: go research stories of people with "kundalini awakening" on the internet. Here are some common symptoms: http://www.elcollie.com/st/symptoms.html. There are definite correlations between KUNDALINI & what the Bible says about the "Holy Spirit," despite what the foolish "Christians" on the Internet who wish to equate the Kundalini Serpent only with "The Devil", for the truth is that Jesus himself is equated with "the serpent lifted in the wilderness"(John3:15), a probable reference to the lifting of the kundalini along the spine, considering a person without the spirit as a metaphorical wilderness.
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5th June 2011, 03:49 PM | #108 |
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You know, the ability to synthesize and see similarities and connections is a great quality of the human mind. It gives rise to intuition, poetry, and sometimes discovery. But you must not let it go too far. If you were looking for a line of products to manufacture out of sheet steel and hardwood, hawks and handsaws would go together quite well, but if you can't recognize the differences as well, you'll always be working with the wrong tools.
P.S. for ikaggen: Steering gipogiatzis, of all people, toward Rudolf Steiner is like telling a morphine addict he can kick the habit by taking heroin. Naughty naughty! |
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5th June 2011, 04:16 PM | #109 |
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Well, yes, that's the problem. I acknowledged that we seem to be hardwired so a feeling of power equals a "good" feeling. But lots of other things produce a similar good feeling: sex, various drugs, or the euphoria of the manic phase of bipolar syndrome, for example.
We're programmed to like sex because those who liked sex were good at passing on the genes that make them like sex. Those who gained power were also successful at passing on their genes, by having access to more mates, and also, to some extent, being healthier and living longer by controlling their environment for their optimum survival. Other ways of activating pleasurable feelings (drugs, mental illness) seem to be incidental effects, that just haven't been selected out, rather than something selected for. Yet I see no reason to declare any of those things, by definition, morally good, simply because of how our brains respond to them. |
5th June 2011, 04:18 PM | #110 |
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5th June 2011, 04:21 PM | #111 |
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5th June 2011, 04:27 PM | #112 |
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5th June 2011, 05:16 PM | #113 |
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that elicits the fundamental question "what is reality?" whose answer is not at all obvious. In Bk.11.9 of the Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky leaves it an open question whether "the devil" Ivan converses with is just a hallucination or is "really" there. The Diamond Sutra of the Buddha says that all conditioned existence (all we experience) is just a dream: http://www.diamond-sutra.com/diamond...xt/page32.html, just as Shakespeare says in The Tempest "we are the stuff that dreams are made of." Consider Don Quixote in light of these statements.
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5th June 2011, 05:42 PM | #114 |
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5th June 2011, 05:51 PM | #115 |
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First off, let me tell you how pleased I am that our friendship has developed so quickly.
Second. No, I am not missing the significance, you are merely overstating the significance. The folks back then had absolutely no idea what caused epilepsy. They made up stories to describe what they thought was happening. They used language related to their made up stories. The idea that rapture and seizure are related is not relevant, because a seizure is a manifestation of a neurological disorder. It is not divine, it is not revelatory, it is not insightful, it is not a passageway to another plane of existence. It is a symptom of a illness of the brain. Third, have you presented your ideas to your old college professors and what have they said about them? |
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5th June 2011, 06:00 PM | #116 |
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5th June 2011, 06:05 PM | #117 |
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5th June 2011, 06:15 PM | #118 |
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This thread reminds me of that Umberto Eco book "Foucault's Pendulum". The characters in that book spent a lot of time reading a whole lot of different texts and finding patterns and hidden meanings. It didn't do them much good as I recall.
Just don't go locking yourself into any museums overnight waiting for the secret masonic rulers to show up. You might get more than you bargained for. |
5th June 2011, 06:37 PM | #119 |
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ETA: follow up question: is New Age stuff good? bad? both? neither? helpful? sinful? salvational? dangerous? enlightening? endarkening? what??
how about all of the above?! the philosophers of the future, as Nietzsche points out, are "beyond good & evil" (this phrase appears in the Dhammapada of the Buddha as well) |
5th June 2011, 07:06 PM | #120 |
Meandering fecklessly
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A government is a body of people usually - notably - ungoverned. -Shepard Book |
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