Philosophy Now Forum

What seems to irritate you is that in thinking about what people here say, and what you say, is that thought is then expressed.

“So what” — much what!

Ascending Master: That is one *outcome* of processes set in motion in former times.

Descending Blankness: No, it's the outcome of my opting out.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Mar 23, 2023 3:15 pm What seems to irritate you is that in thinking about what people here say, and what you say, is that thought is then expressed.

“So what” — much what!

Ascending Master: That is one *outcome* of processes set in motion in former times.

Descending Blankness: No, it's the outcome of my opting out.

I don't know what any of that is supposed to mean, all I know is it doesn't matter what it means.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Mar 23, 2023 3:15 pm What seems to irritate you is ...

I can't speak for Harbal but your hubris can be pretty irritating too...and draining.

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Thu Mar 23, 2023 3:57 pm

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Mar 23, 2023 3:15 pm What seems to irritate you is ...

I can't speak for Harbal but your hubris can be pretty irritating too...and draining.

In this instance, Gary, you can most definitely speak for me.

Harbal wrote: ↑Thu Mar 23, 2023 3:24 pmI don't know what any of that is supposed to mean, all I know is it doesn't matter what it means.

I appreciate as always your frank, ignorance-infused statements. You are perfect for all this.

I know that you do not know what anything means, and I know that you do not care. You make the mistake of imagining that I am trying to influence you to see or think differently.

I write in relation to you, not to you.

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Thu Mar 23, 2023 3:57 pm

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Mar 23, 2023 3:15 pm What seems to irritate you is ...

I can't speak for Harbal but your hubris can be pretty irritating too...and draining.

Gary some work on your nomenclature is in order. You used the word sarcasm recently. Entirely wrong idea. And now you refer to hubris but you don’t understand the meaning of the word.

Hubris, said to anger ‘the gods’ and evoke retribution, does so because the one acting with hubris acts cruelly and without regard for the dignity of the one abused. I know that you often think that people are kicking you when you are down, but kicking you, or anyone, is not my objective. Avoid such projection.

My objective is in getting clear about what is going on within us and around us. And the way I do this is through analysis of what people say.

Harbal wrote: ↑Thu Mar 23, 2023 4:05 pmIn this instance, Gary, you can most definitely speak for me.

And yet, no matter what, it means and matters nothing one way or the other.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Mar 23, 2023 4:28 pm

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Thu Mar 23, 2023 3:57 pm

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Mar 23, 2023 3:15 pm What seems to irritate you is ...

I can't speak for Harbal but your hubris can be pretty irritating too...and draining.

Gary some work on your nomenclature is in order. You used the word sarcasm recently. Entirely wrong idea. And now you refer to hubris but you don’t understand the meaning of the word.

Hubris, said to anger ‘the gods’ and evoke retribution, does so because the one acting with hubris acts cruelly and without regard for the dignity of the one abused. I know that you often think that people are kicking you when you are down, but kicking you, or anyone, is not my objective. Avoid such projection.

My objective is in getting clear about what is going on within us and around us. And the way I do this is through analysis of what people say.

Sorry, I didn't realize you had anyone's dignity in mind with your arrogant boastings. I guess as long as it doesn't anger the gods then you can be as much of an ass as you want.

AJ, returning to the reply I owe you in our interesting earlier exchange (emphasis added):

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Mar 16, 2023 10:30 pm So *they* [the Vedic philosophers --HB] proposed, or they *saw* in some internal state of seeing, that if a planet or loka like ours exists, which seems intermediary between hellishness and heavenliness, that there are worlds in other dimensions of being that are far more hellish and far more heavenly.

Re the bit I've emboldened, this only makes sense to me on a truly - theologically - dualistic view, in which the dark pole drags down its victims to depths abhorrent to the light pole.

On a monotheistic view, I can imagine dimensions somewhat more hellish than ours being permitted for teaching and learning purposes ("Man, this dog-eat-dog reality of cruelty and wickedness sucks for all of us - now I get why God wants everybody to be kind and loving, and I'm going to start walking that path as best I can from here on"), but, beyond a certain point, pain and suffering don't have a great deal of didactic value, and - again - become abhorrent to the Light. I can't, then, on a monotheistic view, imagine dimensions far more hellish than this one.

Your own view here remains obscure and unclear to me. You ignored the direct questions I put to you in this respect in the hope that, my having answered as best I could the direct questions that you'd put to me, you would as quid pro quo deign to answer the ones I put to you - but my hope appears to have been in vain.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Mar 16, 2023 10:30 pm But the 'why' of things is of course the problematic question. How did we wind up here? Were we ever in some other condition? Is our being here a 'rise' and an 'ascent' or a 'decline' and a 'fall'? And is there an exit?

Exactly. Those questions preoccupy me intensely at certain times, and I get intuitions which, unfortunately, vary. I'm not sure how to answer them definitively.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Mar 16, 2023 10:30 pm All I can tell you is that I have no knowledge of god intervening in the surrounding world in any way that I recognize as such, but I am aware of something which I do not know how to describe intervening in my world.

First: is there a need to make a distinction? Intervention is intervention, whether it occurs within your consciousness or outside of it.

Second: no knowledge? Then investigate near-death experiences (NDEs) more carefully for a start. There are cases in which, during the NDE, a mortally wounded or ill person is told (paraphrased) "You will go back, and you will be healed", and, miraculously, is healed, to the astonishment of medical professionals, to whom this was impossible according to medical understanding.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Mar 16, 2023 10:30 pm

You ask how I think God would act if God was to act (much more extensively), and the answer is "So as for the lamb to lie down with the lion": so as to reform the cruelty of this system of win-lose-killing-to-live into one of win-win-cooperation-and-symbiosis, as exemplified in the relationship between the bee and the flowering plant; between the fruit bat and the fig tree; between the forest tree and the mycorrhizal fungi.

Well, it doesn't look like that could happen. The natural world is a system which I do not think could change.

Maybe; maybe not - but if, as you accept, it was, in the first place, designed, then what stops the designer from altering the design?

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Mar 16, 2023 10:30 pm We are stuck in this reality, and one false move, one mistake, and we will create 'karma' for ourselves that mires us ever more in the world's cause and effect. So in a sense we must relinquish actions and results, or find a way to surrender the fruit of efforts and then, somehow, avoid accrual of karmic debt.

I have always understood your non-harmfulness doctrines as expressing this philosophy. You are not an 'obligate predator' and of course all of us have choices about what we do and don't do.

I'm not sure about karma - in the strict sense; I really don't know whether or not it's real. It is not, in any case, what motivates my philosophy: I think we are obligated to minimise harm for its own sake, regardless of any supposed personal reward or punishment. Sure, though, my philosophy is compatible with the idea of minimising karma too.

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Thu Mar 23, 2023 12:30 am How about engaging me in straightforward conversation?

I don't think I will, because:

1. I largely lost interest in that when you implied a moral equivalence between a young black woman bravely standing up alone against the structural racism of her society, and a young, angry, racist, white woman vilifying her for it from amongst the safety of a crowd of like-minded individuals, and when you then doubled down and insulted me after I endorsed seeds's post calling you out for that false moral equivalence as well as generally calling out similar objectionable behaviour in the thread.
2. You continue to sling insults at me for no good reason - witness: "Or are you two peacocks not yet done strutting around?"
3. There seems to be no meaningful possibility for conversation anyway. There are essentially only two topics of interest to you (at least in this thread): your existential suffering, and theology. Re the former, you have affirmed that nobody can say anything to help you, and that you talk about it essentially for your own psychological release and comfort. All I can really offer then in this regard is my ongoing sympathy. I don't see fit to repeat it, so, unless I withdraw it, you can simply assume it every time you express your pain and frustration. Re the latter, your thinking is too fickle and variable for there even to be much to grab hold of here. A bland affirmation on my part of "Yeah, it's confusing and we really don't know what's going on" seems to provide little basis for fruitful engagement. I have had my own unusual and difficult life experiences, and I am interested in working out as best I can why I have/had them and what they tell me about reality - including, and especially, theologically - not, as you seem to be, in prevaricating over whether or not a blameworthy monotheistic (Christian) God exists against Whom one can rail over one's troubles. There seems, then, to be little common ground between us.
4. I responded to your post only incidentally anyway, in the course of gently poking fun at AJ and his endorsement of the ideas of Renaud Camus and others like him, while playing along with his (hilarious) spoof of online course salesmanship. AJ gets it (and gives as good as he gets). It only became about you given your apparent (but really deliberate? Or feigned?) obliviousness to the satirical humour, which (your apparent obliviousness), admittedly, was inevitably going to become topical at some point - which AJ chose to make immediate.

Finally: I get that your grumpiness and prickliness stem (largely?) from your understandable frustration with your life situation, so I forgive you for them - albeit that my natural, visceral reaction to them continues to be one of distaste.

I trust that that answers your question straightforwardly enough.

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Thu Mar 23, 2023 4:42 pm

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Thu Mar 23, 2023 12:30 am How about engaging me in straightforward conversation?

I don't think I will, because:

1. I largely lost interest in that when you implied a moral equivalence between a young black woman bravely standing up alone against the structural racism of her society, and a young, angry, racist, white woman vilifying her for it from amongst the safety of a crowd of like-minded individuals, and when you then doubled down and insulted me after I endorsed seeds's post calling you out for that false moral equivalence as well as generally calling out similar objectionable behaviour in the thread.
2. You continue to sling insults at me for no good reason - witness: "Or are you two peacocks not yet done strutting around?"
3. There seems to be no meaningful possibility for conversation anyway. There are essentially only two topics of interest to you (at least in this thread): your existential suffering, and theology. Re the former, you have affirmed that nobody can say anything to help you, and that you talk about it essentially for your own psychological release and comfort. All I can really offer then in this regard is my ongoing sympathy. I don't see fit to repeat it, so, unless I withdraw it, you can simply assume it every time you express your pain and frustration. Re the latter, your thinking is too fickle and variable for there even to be much to grab hold of here. A bland affirmation on my part of "Yeah, it's confusing and we really don't know what's going on" seems to provide little basis for fruitful engagement. I have had my own unusual and difficult life experiences, and I am interested in working out as best I can why I have/had them and what they tell me about reality - including, and especially, theologically - not, as you seem to be, in prevaricating over whether or not a blameworthy monotheistic (Christian) God exists against Whom one can rail over one's troubles. There seems, then, to be little common ground between us.
4. I responded to your post only incidentally anyway, in the course of gently poking fun at AJ and his endorsement of the ideas of Renaud Camus and others like him, while playing along with his (hilarious) spoof of online course salesmanship. AJ gets it (and gives as good as he gets). It only became about you given your apparent (but really deliberate? Or feigned?) obliviousness to the satirical humour, which (your apparent obliviousness), admittedly, was inevitably going to become topical at some point - which AJ chose to make immediate.

Finally: I get that your grumpiness and prickliness stem (largely?) from your understandable frustration with your life situation, so I forgive you for them - albeit that my natural, visceral reaction to them continues to be one of distaste.

I trust that that answers your question straightforwardly enough.

If you want to ask me what I think about something then feel free to ask, if not then feel free to continue worrying about what you think I may or may not think. If you just want to find a whipping post to beat on, then that's fair also. I can't make you interested in a straightforward conversation with me. You'd rather continue strutting around. In that case, I'll wait.

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Thu Mar 23, 2023 4:36 pm Sorry, I didn't realize you had anyone's dignity in mind with your arrogant boastings. I guess as long as it doesn't anger the gods then you can be as much of an ass as you want.

Nice. I admire your word correction. But look deeper! Saints and wisemen operate through spiritual impulses of which average men are rarely aware.

I implore you: consider signing up for the Course! There is one whole segment on the recognition of irony that you will not want to miss!

You’ve got to admit it is pretty awesome!

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Mar 23, 2023 4:12 pm

Harbal wrote: ↑Thu Mar 23, 2023 3:24 pmI don't know what any of that is supposed to mean, all I know is it doesn't matter what it means.

I appreciate as always your frank, ignorance-infused statements. You are perfect for all this.

Spare me the flattery, Alexis, no one is perfect.

I know that you do not know what anything means,

So, presumably, when you say stuff to me that you know I won't understand, it is for the benefit of others. You are using me to channel your drivel to the crowd. I am being used as a sewage pipe.

You make the mistake of imagining that I am trying to influence you to see or think differently.

But no bigger than your mistake in imagining you have any influence.

I write in relation to you, not to you.

And I am not replying in response to what you say to me, but in relation to it.

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Thu Mar 23, 2023 4:48 pm If you just want to find a whipping post to beat on, then that's fair also. I can't make you interested in a straightforward conversation with me.

Apropos of an idea I sometimes think about: that figure Jesus was said to have said:

“Behold, l send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves’’.

Is there really ‘straightforward conversation’. I’d argue there isn’t. But, you have to think or see like a serpent to understand that.

See the section on Argumentative Slither in the 2nd week course material. You’ll not want to miss out!