God and morality

[Gary Childress]

You may as well believe in the tooth fairy, IC. You're going to die and it will be the end. If you've lived a fortunate life free from mental illness and other afflictions, you'll have been luckier than I and a lot of people who lived and died under worse circumstances. And if you want to believe that your relatively better fortune was a gift from God, and that the rest of us are going to hell for not "believing (maybe even deserved our lesser fortune), then knock your arrogant ass out. Live it up now, because what we have or experience here is going to be it. Enjoy it now while you have it. And if you're eating at a restaurant and a homeless person decides to envy you, then feel free to reprimand him for his impiety and tell him your God disapproves of his envy. Tell him to follow your divine example and not envy people who are able to eat.

[Immanuel Can]

If you've lived a fortunate life free from mental illness and other afflictions, you'll have been luckier than I and a lot of people who lived and died under worse circumstances.

Let me grant you that, Gary. Let's say what you're saying is 100% right.

What are you going to do? How are you going to make your life better? Because for sure, sitting around and complaining about your lot isn't going to do it.

Let's suppose it were immeasurably worse. Let's say Gary is a three-foot-tall, buck-toothed, hunch-backed, mentally ill fentanyl addict, with terminal cancer and a bankruptcy case in the courts. The question is still going to be the same one: what are you going to do?

What are you going to do with the hand of cards you've been dealt, no matter what that hand contains. Let's say it's a two, a five, a nine, a jack and an ace: how are you going to play that hand? You can sit at the table and complain that the dealer has done you dirt. But it won't make your hand any better. Either you learn to play those cards, or you get the worst outcome.

So if you have to lose, find a way to lose less money. If you can find a way to get a good draw on the table, then maybe you can make a hand of it after all. But if you just look at your hand and cry, you're getting nothing.

So play. Stop complaining, and play. Make something of the wretched hand you've been dealt. And in your own small way, you can be a bit of a winner.

Or you can just eat the loss.

Up to you.

[Gary Childress]

If you've lived a fortunate life free from mental illness and other afflictions, you'll have been luckier than I and a lot of people who lived and died under worse circumstances.

Let me grant you that, Gary. Let's say what you're saying is 100% right.

What are you going to do? How are you going to make your life better? Because for sure, sitting around and complaining about your lot isn't going to do it.

Let's suppose it were immeasurably worse. Let's say Gary is a three-foot-tall, buck-toothed, hunch-backed, mentally ill fentanyl addict, with terminal cancer and a bankruptcy case in the courts. The question is still going to be the same one: what are you going to do?

What are you going to do with the hand of cards you've been dealt, no matter what that hand contains. Let's say it's a two, a five, a nine, a jack and an ace: how are you going to play that hand? You can sit at the table and complain that the dealer has done you dirt. But it won't make your hand any better. Either you learn to play those cards, or you get the worst outcome.

So if you have to lose, find a way to lose less money. If you can find a way to get a good draw on the table, then maybe you can make a hand of it after all. But if you just look at your hand and cry, you're getting nothing.

So play. Stop complaining, and play. Make something of the wretched hand you've been dealt. And in your own small way, you can be a bit of a winner.

Or you can just eat the loss.

Up to you.

Is shutting up and not saying a word of discontentment going to make things any better for me? Is a rich person going to look at me hunched over at three feet tall and give me life-enhancing surgery if I accept a shit life cheerfully and don't say anything to him about it? When did rich people start handing out money willingly to the "dregs" of society? Don't they usually donate to the Metropolitan Opera House or something?

[Immanuel Can]

If you've lived a fortunate life free from mental illness and other afflictions, you'll have been luckier than I and a lot of people who lived and died under worse circumstances.

Let me grant you that, Gary. Let's say what you're saying is 100% right.

What are you going to do? How are you going to make your life better? Because for sure, sitting around and complaining about your lot isn't going to do it.

Let's suppose it were immeasurably worse. Let's say Gary is a three-foot-tall, buck-toothed, hunch-backed, mentally ill fentanyl addict, with terminal cancer and a bankruptcy case in the courts. The question is still going to be the same one: what are you going to do?

What are you going to do with the hand of cards you've been dealt, no matter what that hand contains. Let's say it's a two, a five, a nine, a jack and an ace: how are you going to play that hand? You can sit at the table and complain that the dealer has done you dirt. But it won't make your hand any better. Either you learn to play those cards, or you get the worst outcome.

So if you have to lose, find a way to lose less money. If you can find a way to get a good draw on the table, then maybe you can make a hand of it after all. But if you just look at your hand and cry, you're getting nothing.

So play. Stop complaining, and play. Make something of the wretched hand you've been dealt. And in your own small way, you can be a bit of a winner.

Or you can just eat the loss.

Up to you.

Is shutting up and not saying a word of discontentment going to make things any better for me?

How's bellyaching and changing nothing working out for you?

[Gary Childress]

Let me grant you that, Gary. Let's say what you're saying is 100% right.

What are you going to do? How are you going to make your life better? Because for sure, sitting around and complaining about your lot isn't going to do it.

Let's suppose it were immeasurably worse. Let's say Gary is a three-foot-tall, buck-toothed, hunch-backed, mentally ill fentanyl addict, with terminal cancer and a bankruptcy case in the courts. The question is still going to be the same one: what are you going to do?

What are you going to do with the hand of cards you've been dealt, no matter what that hand contains. Let's say it's a two, a five, a nine, a jack and an ace: how are you going to play that hand? You can sit at the table and complain that the dealer has done you dirt. But it won't make your hand any better. Either you learn to play those cards, or you get the worst outcome.

So if you have to lose, find a way to lose less money. If you can find a way to get a good draw on the table, then maybe you can make a hand of it after all. But if you just look at your hand and cry, you're getting nothing.

So play. Stop complaining, and play. Make something of the wretched hand you've been dealt. And in your own small way, you can be a bit of a winner.

Or you can just eat the loss.

Up to you.

Is shutting up and not saying a word of discontentment going to make things any better for me?

How's bellyaching and changing nothing working out for you?

It seems obvious to me that nothing changes in society unless people make a stand and express their discontentment. Of course, we could all be like Trump supporters and whine about Democrats and usher in the worst-case scenario instead. But Trump supporters are real Americans, just like people who whine about the Canadian health care system are probably "real" Canadians. How is your discontentment with the Canadian healthcare system going? Have you sparked riots in the street yet? Are you ready to defect to the US and kiss Trump's ass?

[Alexis Jacobi]

It seems obvious to me that nothing changes in society unless people make a stand and express their discontentment. Of course, we could all be like Trump supporters and whine about Democrats and usher in the worst-case scenario instead. But Trump supporters are real Americans, just like people who whine about the Canadian health care system are probably "real" Canadians. How is your discontentment with the Canadian healthcare system going? Have you sparked riots in the street yet? Are you ready to defect to the US and kiss Trump's ass?

Clearly no one yet has quite achieved the high level of assholery naturally present in Alexis Jacobi, yet when I notice you bending a conversation so that the focus is narcissistically on your own wee self, I am inspired, if only for a fleeting moment, to change my ways! It passes of course and, well, here I am … I just want to make it clear: I will not be upstaged by a mere poseur!

[phyllo]

Just admit that you enjoy beating up Gary. As does Mr Can.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I suggest an interesting proposition. First, allow me to suggest that there is something I think is extremely crucial in the metaphysical appreciation of an encompassing Order offered by way of the Christian picture. (I continue to use that term — ‘picture’ — in the sense of a giant image and sense of holistic relatedness). That essential thing is: relationship to the mystical body of Christ. You can say it is imagined, and you can say that it is real, but when man in his society, and certainly man in his own self, no longer conceives of himself as part of a whole, and indeed a Whole which has as its focus and indeed its purpose his spiritual and material well-being on all possible levels, he falls into anomie, the loneliness of separation, as well as being cast back on the devices of his own individualism as distinct from his flourishing personality.

The Concept of relatedness and participation in mystical union with a high metaphysical and spiritual realness and potency, is obviously a truly sustaining understanding for the individual. And it is in that visualization of everything that could be considered as high and exalted that Christian conception has an unmatched strength. Simply because it regards the individual person and personality as being a manifestation and a part of Divine Being.

At least as far as my own observations go, we are civikizationally in a process of dis-unification, of coming apart at the seams, and this results from a general sense of not being a part on any level of a spiritual reality of the highest conceivable order. Thus, when the sense if relatedness to an encompassing order is disrupted, the individual is cut away from a higher relatedness. He is is left essentially completely to himself. Like a cell in a larger, dying body, he becomes if you will “sick”. In fact he begins to die. But his death is not realized, not understood. He may in the best of circumstances, and if he is strong and healthy, carry on very successfully as an individual, separate self, but in the worst case he becomes mentally and spiritually ill. We see them all over the place up in the States. They are casualties of a larger social illness which, I propose, is ultimately spiritual.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Just admit that you enjoy beating up Gary. As does Mr Can.

No Phyllo. Gary gains something, something quite perverse, from making his sickness (let’s be frank please) the center of conversation. He does this so that he remains in the same defunct position. And every reference — Trump, poverty, social conflict, ‘the way of the world’ — functions as a self-imposed cage. Those things are really not the issue. What is the issue is an inner configuration.

No one should be fooled by the antics of absolute negativity. It is totally self-destructive. But when confronted, instead of responding positively, that consumed individual must double-down on their own method of staying in their cage. They must shriek and complain and “cut themselves” even more so that pathetic sympathy is attained. That enables them to hold on to the neurotic strategy and to remain exactly where they are.

[Alexis Jacobi]

This leads me to continue in what I think is an interesting proposition. Stated plainly it is this (and this is only my own view): Gary rehearses essential sinfulness. I am not talking about those misdemeanors that we might refer to. I am referring to a grotesque crime against the self. And I do not really refer to Gary but to traits that are evident in our modern society. I do not see “blame” as productive, and only understanding is productive. Seeing and stating.

But you see what I think is that when people no longer understand themselves to be part of a Whole (the Mystical Body of Christ) they begin to “dry on the vine”. The ‘vine’ has been severed. And the fruit, the individual, the person, the personality, withers. This is an aspect of “groaning” is it not?

Since this is “our condition”, we can then examine it as pathology. Spiritual ailment. An individual in that condition cannot serve a larger whole, and certainly not a spiritual destiny that is outlined in exalted traditions. He falls into himself. He resorts to “love’s substitutes” because, like the severed fruit, he no longer feels the love of connection.

Obviously, this is a recipe for madness. Slow (spiritual) death.

[phyllo]

Just admit that you enjoy beating up Gary. As does Mr Can.

No Phyllo. Gary gains something, something quite perverse, from making his sickness (let’s be frank please) the center of conversation. He does this so that he remains in the same defunct position. And every reference — Trump, poverty, social conflict, ‘the way of the world’ — functions as a self-imposed cage. Those things are really not the issue. What is the issue is an inner configuration.

No one should be fooled by the antics of absolute negativity. It is totally self-destructive. But when confronted, instead of responding positively, that consumed individual must double-down on their own method of staying in their cage. They must shriek and complain and “cut themselves” even more so that pathetic sympathy is attained. That enables them to hold on to the neurotic strategy and to remain exactly where they are.

For some reason, you forget or ignore that he has had mental health problems which persist, to some degree, even now.

And you post as if he is in complete control of his actions, he can alter his actions at will and he is intentionally doing what he does for some personal benefit.

[Alexis Jacobi]

O, the dark feeling of mysterious dread which comes over the mind, and which the lamp of reason, though burning bright the while, is unable to dispel! Art thou, as leeches say, the concomitant of disease?.. Nay, rather the principle of woe itself, the fountain head of all sorrow co-existent with man, whose influence he feels when yet unborn; ... for... woe doth he bring with him into the world, even thyself, dark one, terrible one, causeless, unbegotten, without a father...

Then is it not lawful for man to exclaim, ‘Better that I had never been born!' Fool, for thyself thou wast not born, but to fulfill the inscrutable decrees of thy Creator; and how dost thou know that this dark principle is not...thy bestfriend; that it is not that which tempers the whole mass of thy corruption? It may be, for what thou knowest, the mother of wisdom, and of great works: it is the dread of the horror of the night that makes the pilgrim hasten on his way. When thou feelest it nigh, let thy safety word be 'Onward'; if thou tarry, thou art overwhelmed.

Courage! build great works — 'tis urging thee — it is ever nearest the favourites of God — the fool knows little of it.

[Alexis Jacobi]

For some reason, you forget or ignore that he has had mental health problems which persist, to some degree, even now.

Then this is not the place for him.

[phyllo]

Last I checked, there is no mental health requirement on this forum.

That aside. Where do you suggest he should go?

[Immanuel Can]

Is shutting up and not saying a word of discontentment going to make things any better for me?

How's bellyaching and changing nothing working out for you?

It seems obvious to me that nothing changes in society unless people make a stand and express their discontentment.

No, Gary...not "in society." In Gary's life.

You're deflecting. Once again, instead of doing something, you're blaming outside forces for where you are in your personal situation. You're taking the victim role.

But you know what the problem is with conceiving yourself as a victim? It totally deprives you of agency. It gives you no responsibility, and no chance to make anything better for yourself. Convenient for self-pity; useless for betterment.

Stop obsessing about what "society" or "politics" are doing. You can't control them. You can only control yourself. And your situation is up to you: again, what are you going to do with the hand of cards you have? That's regardless of how bad you think they are, or who else has a different hand. What is Gary going to do about Gary's situation?