Pagan morality

[Iwannaplato]

And the irony is the only reason our exchange is now unfolding is because out of the blue you revived this thread yourself. Why? Are there things about Maia that stir you?

Even here, however, I have my own suspicions regarding why you did that.

Well, if you're studying me, I've been inactive for a while. Came back and went through my notifications including that one from Prom. But suspect conveniently away.

Me studying you?

Exactly. Yet you had a hypothesis.

No, it seems more reasonable to suggest instead it's you studying me.

Yes, that is vastly more reasonable. It fits with my assertions again and again that you do not respond to posts and articles that you quote, and that includes my posts. It is truly not clear that you read them or try to understand them. This is a point I have been making for a while. And yes, I have read your posts carefully for a long time. Perhaps not quite with the thoroughness and frequency of Phyllo, but absolutely, I have been studying you (and many others). I do read carefully, and I think I have a good grasp of your positions on a variety of things. I also think my studying you has led to understanding how you interact with others and with what you quote. I have made all this very clear, and while I haven't used the word 'study' or 'studying' in relation to you, it fits with many things I have said. As I said to you in a recent post I tend to be much more focused than other posters on how people interact in philosophy forums and that includes you. And I have found it fascinating to watch and fascinating how impervious you are to change, at least this latter part of your life, dasein notwithstanding.

So, yes, I read other people's posts, especially over time, with some care, and try to understand their positions and the specific points they are making. You can certainly call this studying. With certain posters I have ended up much more fascinated by the way they interact and have examined that with some care also.

After all, I don't follow you around from thread to thread to thread in order to expose to the world what/who you, uh, really are?

That's not what I'm doing. It's not completely wrong and I don't feel defensive about that framing, but here's how I would frame it. 1) for a long time you were the main audience of those reactions. I was sure that some of the patterns of interaction that I and others were pointing out you would, especially given the number of people saying the same things and a subset of these being people you claimed to respect, eventually be acknowledged by you. You seemed intelligent and you seemed to understand that the positions we have, which would include those about ourselves, might be biased by experiences. IOW given your philosophical beliefs and the fact that you said you had changed positions radically over your lifetime, you would be someone who could acknowledge some patterns of interaction you have and patterns of presenting positions more easily than others. In this I was completely wrong. 2) Yes, I certainly was communicating with others about this, but mostly with those like Phyllo who noticed the same patterns. 3) I have been interaction A LOT to see what happens. Can he really not notice what he just did when I quote it. Can he really not notice the hypocrisy if I point out what he says to others and then what he just did? Etc. I became more and more fascinated by this. I really don't think many people read my responses to you. I know some, like Flannel Jesus, read them for a while, but lost interest, which I can certainly understand. I don't have any expectation at all that someone will read my posts and decide 'Oh, I'll avoid Iambiguous, he sounds like an asshole.' I assume, most of the time, that you may read my post, though I doubt carefully, and perhaps Phyllo dips in on occasion.

Do you really think there are people interested in what iwannoplato thinks about what Iambiguous is doing? Really?

Because I don't. I suppose I could be wrong, but I doubt it in the extreme.

And how little you -- meaning me -- seem to grasp regarding "serious philosophy"? That's your thing with me here, in my view. In fact, I read very, very little of what you post here unless it does pertain to me, to something I posted. Why? It's not because I don't respect your intelligence and your commitment to philosophy as you understand it. It's because by and large, in my own rooted existentially in dasein personal opinion, you are much, much, much more inclined to go up into the clouds here with those like VA.

God, I wish VA would take me up on the concrete examples I give him about his positions, but he avoids those like the plague. I just tried again and he did exactly what you do. He rephrases his postions as if this is a response.

Well, we both seem to regarding comparing the other with VA is an insult, so we have something in common!

And, in regard to meaning, morality and metaphysics, my own interest here is always in exploring how those theoretical exchanges bear any resemblance -- relevance -- to actual human interactions.

Except when it comes to your interactions here.

Admitting to what? Yeah, sure, if I wasn't old enough to be her father, and if I wasn't confined to this recliner, I would have no problem at all in contacting her and perhaps even pursuing a relationship. She's very intelligent, very articulate, very quick-witted, very keen on exploring the world around her without any intention of rejecting others who don't think exactly as she does. And, yeah, she's very attractive. The "looks" part.

I don't think you quite understand how those facts about yourself don't keep those patterns from happening anyway. But if you'd read what I wrote with care, you'd know I said it doesn't matter if you're a testosteroned male hovering around a young woman for that reason or not. What mattered was his assumptions. My post was tailored to his position.

Right. My quasi-alliance with Prom. That it doesn't actually exist is, what, moot?

And the thing about Prom75, is that you never really know for sure when he either is or is not just employing a tongue-in-cheek assessment in order to cleverly expose all the more the meatminds here.

That's a great excuse for sexually harrassing someone.

You missed my irony

Link me to that please.

Here's a post of mind where I went into the hypocrisy. You can click on the arrows to find the posts that led up to it. Note, you call people Stooges when they make you the issue and not the topic, according to you. I pointed out that Prometheus was doing that with Maia and suggested, in my first post, it might be time to call him a Stooge. You responded that he might be tongue in cheek, which seems to me irrelevant, but furhter said you'd be afraid to mess with the wittiest person here, or some other compliment along those lines. Feel free to follow Prometheus' continued sexual focused responses to an about Maia. Of course, it's not your job to monitor the thread. But once I raised the issue, you opted to brush it off, a person obviously focused on the person, making the person the issue, and not interested in the least in pagan philosophy. You didn't have to weigh in, but you did and in a complimentary manner and further as motivation for not calling him a Stooge, stating that he's not someone you want to mess with.

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You don't know what bothers me.

well, I have believed you when you expressed negatively about people making you the issue. I noticed your behavior in relation to Prometheus who you not only opted not to call a Stooge, but complimented. Yes, your behavior may not align with your values, but then...that's my whole point.

[promethean75]

"but furhter said you'd be afraid to mess with the wittiest person here, or some other compliment along those lines."

No Biggs is wittier than me, in fact. I could never sustain a mundane irony thread like he does. Some of those (quotes)... i just look at em and my mind goes blank in search of something clever to say. But Biggs will usually find the clever thing to say.

"Feel free to follow Prometheus' continued sexual focused responses to an about Maia."

Here's how that works. First, hell would freeze over before i could ever meet this person. So anything said to her can't be for the purposes of advancing some agenda to 'hook up' with her.

Second, i personally like it that Maia likes it when she is complimented on her looks (or anything else).

Also, homegirl goes years back at ILP, and i recall exchanges between her and i (however brief) or me posting 'seriously' in a thread of hers. So it isn't as if I've never posted to this person and am now spamming her with sexual innuendos and solicitous comments. She knows me, mates. The worst thing she might suffer from reading my posts is the sudden urge to roll her eyes. Because, you see, she knows that my boyish and immature antics are only to impress her, and this is entertaining (to a woman) in its own right.

I can assure you that if there is anyone in any danger here, it is I of being made a fool and a scoundrel, good sir.

[promethean75]

... and now, here's what's happened. It's formulaic to such dramas.

The last two days of Maia posting will seem excessive and patronizing; "my god, will they leave that girl alone," thinks the spectator.

But only because what was originally as benign and superficial as any other small talk - the attention given to Maia in the halloween, travels, and festival threads - was considered in a nefarious and scandalous light, therefore calling upon me 'n Biggs to defend ourselves, does it seem this way. This defense can only look and seem like more excessive patronizing to any critics, and the tragi-comedy continues. The two gallant knight protagonists, Biggs and Prom, are charged and brought before a monty python mob of peasants who curse and throw mud and accuse them of harassing Maia.

Mob: "leave her alone you barbarians! BOO!"

Biggs and Prom: "What... what'd we do?! Please explain yourselves at once!"

Mob: [two peasants briskly walk Maia into the hangman's square] An old ugly hunchback woman named Veg with warts on her nose dressed in what looks like a black burlap sac pushes through the crowd, grabs Maia's arm and yanks her into the middle of the crowd circle. "Tell them what these foul libertine scoundrels did to you, Maia! Tell them what they said!"

[the crowd bursts into a roaring cacophony of boos and hissess... then silence as Maia steps forward. A peasant coughs somewhere way in the back, and the gravel makes an audible crunch as he shifts his standing]

Maia: "well, they did say i was pretty once. Two or three times, actually."

[Crowd bursts into a howl again, throwing rocks and mud at Biggs and Prom, who stand poised on the stand by the hangman's neuse]

[accelafine]

Actually I find the women who post these photos for attention from creeps and then act all innocent just as weird and annoying as horny perverts like the paedophile prom. Why would any woman want him slobbering over them? I don't even know what Maia looks like. The Halloween photo doesn't show her face and I don't use ILP. Is that a dating site?
I just thought she was very foolish and naive for offering to give the men on here her personal information and said so.
Interesting though that the perverted prom is the ONLY man on here who shows us what he looks like-- and on a regular basis (as if anyone wants to know).

[accelafine]

According to misogynistic creeps like prom any woman who offends and enrages him by getting older is a hideous hag with nose warts.

[promethean75]

"I find the women who post these photos for attention from creeps and then act all innocent just as weird and annoying"

You callin' my homegirl Maia 'weird and annoying', bud?

[promethean75]

Two things about the two lovely senior citizens in those pictures.

First, i find them weird and annoying for posing for and allowing pictures of them to be made public for all manner of misogynistic creeps to look at.

Second, i find myself strangly aroused by them, and this confuses me because I'm supposed to be a pedo. I'm going to call my therapist and ask for advice because I feel very uncomfortable right now.

[accelafine]

The women in the photos are public figures. JK Rowling in particular needs security at all times because she gets so many death and rape threats from creeps.

Paedophiles aren't typically into just children. It's a misleading word but does evoke an appropriate skin-crawl reaction in normal people.

Wow. All the builders I've known were really busy all the time. Just saying...

[accelafine]

[promethean75]

"All the builders I've known were really busy all the time. Just saying..."

Yeah, because they were locked into mortgages and high insurance rates and outrageous family expenses that forced them to start businesses to draw profits big enough to cover said expenses.

I, on the other hand, am a peripatetic tradesman/merchant bard philosopher disciple of Diogenes who averages at least a hunerd an hour and spends his money as fast as he makes it with very little concern for the future. The only 'savings' i have is for emergencies, which i don't touch. Other than that, I'm too fuckin old to start saving... especially in this wonky world where now even social social security may be in danger. I don't know nothin' about pensions and 401ks or none of that, and i don't care to either, missy.

This is why i don't have to work as much as those poor fellows. For example, since black friday, I've worked twice. Two small jobs, $500 a pop, about six hours each. Now I'll sit on that until i get bored with the drums and eating out and go looking for work.

My monthly expenses are pocket change to what i make in a month if i wanna. So, instead of working, i can spend all day at the mini golf and arcade with my cap on backward.

Giggity

[promethean75]

Thursday I'm doing batting strips like this pic on a dudes kitchen bar wall. I'm going to rip them out of oak and stain em. Dude said he doesn't want the strips running behind the crown and baseboard moulding. I told him nobody does that and it'll look weird but he doesn't care. So the batting will stop below the crown and above the baseboard.

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[promethean75]

Oh and I told him that that black space between the pieces won't exist on his wall unless he runs a fine black felt covering behind the stips or paints the area black where the strips are going. He said he thinks a shadow effect will be created without doing either and that the spaces will look darkened. Alright man, but don't say I didn't warn you. I'm happy to do it twice. May even give you a discount when you ask me to tear it off and add felt or whatever it is. It's a thin black material that isn't shiny. Like a backer board sheet.

[accelafine]

A bit of CRC should do the trick. I love that stuff...

[iambiguous]

And the irony is the only reason our exchange is now unfolding is because out of the blue you revived this thread yourself. Why? Are there things about Maia that stir you?

Even here, however, I have my own suspicions regarding why you did that.

Well, if you're studying me, I've been inactive for a while. Came back and went through my notifications including that one from Prom. But suspect conveniently away.

Me studying you?

Exactly. Yet you had a hypothesis.

And this means what, exactly?

No, it seems more reasonable to suggest instead it's you studying me.

Yes, that is vastly more reasonable. It fits with my assertions again and again that you do not respond to posts and articles that you quote, and that includes my posts. It is truly not clear that you read them or try to understand them.

Just out of curiosity, please note others here you are "studying".

Then, of course, back to your very own repetitive groot regarding me here:

This is a point I have been making for a while. And yes, I have read your posts carefully for a long time. Perhaps not quite with the thoroughness and frequency of Phyllo, but absolutely, I have been studying you (and many others). I do read carefully, and I think I have a good grasp of your positions on a variety of things. I also think my studying you has led to understanding how you interact with others and with what you quote. I have made all this very clear, and while I haven't used the word 'study' or 'studying' in relation to you, it fits with many things I have said. As I said to you in a recent post I tend to be much more focused than other posters on how people interact in philosophy forums and that includes you. And I have found it fascinating to watch and fascinating how impervious you are to change, at least this latter part of your life, dasein notwithstanding.

Uh, how about this: "If you say so"?

After all, I don't follow you around from thread to thread to thread in order to expose to the world what/who you, uh, really are?

That's not what I'm doing.

Just like you, however, I put my own rooted existentially in dasein spin on all of this. And based on my many, many experiences over the years with those of your ilk, I'm sticking with my assessment of you. At least for now.

As for this...

It's not completely wrong and I don't feel defensive about that framing, but here's how I would frame it. 1) for a long time you were the main audience of those reactions. I was sure that some of the patterns of interaction that I and others were pointing out you would, especially given the number of people saying the same things and a subset of these being people you claimed to respect, eventually be acknowledged by you. You seemed intelligent and you seemed to understand that the positions we have, which would include those about ourselves, might be biased by experiences. IOW given your philosophical beliefs and the fact that you said you had changed positions radically over your lifetime, you would be someone who could acknowledge some patterns of interaction you have and patterns of presenting positions more easily than others. In this I was completely wrong. 2) Yes, I certainly was communicating with others about this, but mostly with those like Phyllo who noticed the same patterns. 3) I have been interaction A LOT to see what happens. Can he really not notice what he just did when I quote it. Can he really not notice the hypocrisy if I point out what he says to others and then what he just did? Etc. I became more and more fascinated by this. I really don't think many people read my responses to you. I know some, like Flannel Jesus, read them for a while, but lost interest, which I can certainly understand. I don't have any expectation at all that someone will read my posts and decide 'Oh, I'll avoid Iambiguous, he sounds like an asshole.' I assume, most of the time, that you may read my post, though I doubt carefully, and perhaps Phyllo dips in on occasion.

...it's still a tossup between 1] psycho-babble and 2] the sort of "serious philosophy" assessments I try avoid as much as possible.

Unless -- click -- I still just don't "get it", of course. But who here more than me acknowledges that in regard to meaning, morality and metaphysics, my own conclusions are about as far removed from objectivism as I understand it as I can possibly take them. While at the same, hoping to bump into someone here able to make this part...

1] that my own existence is essentially meaningless and purposeless
2] that human morality in a No God world revolves largely around a fractured and fragmented assessment of right and wrong rooted existentially in dasein.
3] that oblivion is awaiting all of us when we die

...go away?

And, again, in regard to those 3 points, how do you either see or not see them as applicable to you?

Do you really think there are people interested in what iwannoplato thinks about what Iambiguous is doing? Really?
Because I don't. I suppose I could be wrong, but I doubt it in the extreme.

Some, no doubt, follow our exchanges more avidly than others. On the other hand, is there a philosophical assessment that comes closest to pinning down how one ought to follow or react to them?

And how little you -- meaning me -- seem to grasp regarding "serious philosophy"? That's your thing with me here, in my view. In fact, I read very, very little of what you post here unless it does pertain to me, to something I posted. Why? It's not because I don't respect your intelligence and your commitment to philosophy as you understand it. It's because by and large, in my own rooted existentially in dasein personal opinion, you are much, much, much more inclined to go up into the clouds here with those like VA.

God, I wish VA would take me up on the concrete examples I give him about his positions, but he avoids those like the plague. I just tried again and he did exactly what you do. He rephrases his postions as if this is a response.

Hell, at least up there in the philosophical stratosphere, he'll respond to you. Me?

"I post[ed] as 'Prismatic' at ILP years ago.
I had enough of discussions with your never ending dilemma there [kept digging a deeper and deeper hold] and decided it is a waste of time in responding to you.
I told you sometime ago in this forum, I do not want to enter into a discussion with you here.
You can post anything you want in my threads for your own interests, I will not be responding.

Uh, did you put him up to that?

And, in regard to meaning, morality and metaphysics, my own interest here is always in exploring how those theoretical exchanges bear any resemblance -- relevance -- to actual human interactions.

Except when it comes to your interactions here.

Go ahead, keep telling yourself that.

Admitting to what? Yeah, sure, if I wasn't old enough to be her father, and if I wasn't confined to this recliner, I would have no problem at all in contacting her and perhaps even pursuing a relationship. She's very intelligent, very articulate, very quick-witted, very keen on exploring the world around her without any intention of rejecting others who don't think exactly as she does. And, yeah, she's very attractive. The "looks" part.

I don't think you quite understand how those facts about yourself don't keep those patterns from happening anyway. But if you'd read what I wrote with care, you'd know I said it doesn't matter if you're a testosteroned male hovering around a young woman for that reason or not. What mattered was his assumptions. My post was tailored to his position.

No, what ultimately matters to me is the extent to which assumptions pertaining to meaning, morality and metaphysics are encompassed empirically and experientially. Such that we are able at least to attempt connecting the dots between things we assume are true "in our head" and the lives that we actually live.

Right. My quasi-alliance with Prom. That it doesn't actually exist is, what, moot?

And the thing about Prom75, is that you never really know for sure when he either is or is not just employing a tongue-in-cheek assessment in order to cleverly expose all the more the meat minds here.

That's a great excuse for sexually harrassing someone.

Again, take that up with him.

When I pointed out that Prometheus was focusing on the person not the subject, and sexually, in fact, you defended and complimented him, even though you dislike when people make you the issue rather than the topic of your posts. IOW it was hypocritical.

Link me to that please.

Here's a post of mind where I went into the hypocrisy. You can click on the arrows to find the posts that led up to it. Note, you call people Stooges when they make you the issue and not the topic, according to you. I pointed out that Prometheus was doing that with Maia and suggested, in my first post, it might be time to call him a Stooge. You responded that he might be tongue in cheek, which seems to me irrelevant, but furhter said you'd be afraid to mess with the wittiest person here, or some other compliment along those lines. Feel free to follow Prometheus' continued sexual focused responses to an about Maia. Of course, it's not your job to monitor the thread. But once I raised the issue, you opted to brush it off, a person obviously focused on the person, making the person the issue, and not interested in the least in pagan philosophy. You didn't have to weigh in, but you did and in a complimentary manner and further as motivation for not calling him a Stooge, stating that he's not someone you want to mess with.

Well, if this is actually something that convinces you I am defending anyone who sexually harasses Maia or any other man, woman or child, go ahead, take this to the grave with you.

Besides, in my view, that's not what unnerves objectivists most about me here, is it? Instead, in my view, it's the part where I suggest that in a No God world virtually any and all behaviors can be rationalized as either good or bad or ugly. It's the part where I suggest further that our own personal conflicts regarding these things have, after thousands of years, still never been resolved by either philosophers or scientists. Not even close in fact pertaining to actual moral and political conflagrations. Finally, the part where I suggest that our own personal opinions regarding human sexuality itself are rooted existentially in dasein. That, in other words, the deontologists can only sustain their own assumptions about sex here up in the philosophical clouds.

You don't know what bothers me. In fact, "I" am no less fractured and fragmented myself in regard to that. And, as I noted above, with Prom, you never really know for sure the extent to which he is just bantering or being facetious, comedic, clever.

Or, rather, from time to time, I don't.

And so much more to the point is the distinction I make between those things we believe about others and those things we can actually demonstrate that all other rational men and women are obligated to believe in turn. Also, the part where philosophers may or may not be able to pin down how we ought to react to others.

You bump into someone who was born blind. Okay, what either is or is not appropriate to say to them? Or about them to others? Hell, even Maia herself points out how frustrating this can be for her. Sighted people on pins and needles.

...well, I have believed you when you expressed negatively about people making you the issue.

While, of course, over and over and over again, I can only note that my assessment of Stoogery here is in itself no less an existential contraption.

[Iwannaplato]

... and now, here's what's happened. It's formulaic to such dramas.

The last two days of Maia posting will seem excessive and patronizing; "my god, will they leave that girl alone," thinks the spectator.

Wow medieval crowds and mob justice. You seem rather fragile. All I suggested to Iambiguous was that he call you a Stooge. A Stooge, prom, is someone Iambiguous thinks makes him the issue, rather than the topic. Which, obviously, you were doing with Maia. He managed to deny a wondrous variety of things regarding this.

Don't worry. No one is going to lead you to stocks or pillory. There's no need for hysteria and misrepresenting things.

I know it's hard for you not to keep bringing up her attractiveness. I sympathize with your pain and fear about hallucinated mob justice.

I know it's hard for Iambiguous to not contradict himself or even to read what other people write.

Take it easy guys, nothing here could possibly change anything at all about either one of you. You can't even lead a horse to water here.