Is morality objective or subjective?

[Lacewing]

...

Commitment is made to a relationship. You don't need to make a commitment to love... you just LOVE!

What kind of commitment do you think you need to make to anyone in order to love them? Women, men, children... can't you just love them?

[Dubious]

Love has tentacles which reach far beyond the genitals..

It sounds like you're describing an affectionate octopus, and many will be wondering where they might find such a creature.

I should have noticed that myself! What I should have said is something like "love has a radius which reach beyond the genitals."

Octopus is how some gals describe guys who have their hands all over them. I always keep mine in my pocket except when I'm fervently saying my prayers, morning, evening, noon and night pleading for an exemption from Jesus - in case he's still alive and kicking - for all my naughty remarks on IC, his most zealous believer; but worst of all for thinking that Jesus himself was really a non-entity who had no liking for gentiles, working only for Jews who was made into a Christian god by Paul and the fraudulent advertising classics called the gospels. My excuse would be, as a human, I have the right and responsibility to be skeptical...or what's a brain for!

Woe is me if god's infinite love doesn't forgive these minor, human foibles!

[Gary Childress]

No, uncommitted love is actually the opposite of unconditional love. Uncommitted love "loves" only until the object in question displeases it...after that, it has no commitments. So it's not really love at all. It's just lust, or desire, or even narcissism. It has no concern for what happens to its object beyond the present moment, and even in that, only for what it's object can do for it...not what it can do for the object of its attention.

So is "uncommitted love" a form of "love" or is it not?

Well, as the old saying goes, love is measured by what it will do. It is not measured by what somebody says. A "love" that has no commitment to its object is just exploitation, using and discarding. It takes, it enjoys, but does not give of self. So it moves on when the chance for its own enjoyment moves on. There's no real love in it. Love commits.

OK. So if it's not "love" then there's no such thing as "uncommitted love". It would be like the category married bachelors.

[Harbal]

What I should have said is something like "love has a radius which reach beyond the genitals."

but worst of all for thinking that Jesus himself was really a non-entity who had no liking for gentiles

So Jesus's love didn't even reach as far as the gentiles.

Woe is me if god's infinite love doesn't forgive these minor, human foibles!

I'm sure he won't mind too much.

[Dubious]

So Jesus's love didn't even reach as far as the gentiles.

...only for Jews; that much is evident from the bible itself. Christianity is nothing more than an ecumenical brand of Judaism which incorporates the OT.

[Iwannaplato]

Relationship requires commitment. That's different than love. Love can be exchanged freely.

I believe he is more wrong than you do.

Love without commitments.

He thinks there has to be a commitment for love AND for relationship.

He doesn't understand that love itself draws one to the other again and again.

It doesn't need a contract or a conscious decision to love and keep the relationship anyway.

Let's look at the implication of his idea: when someone stops loving the other person, he or she should continue to live up to the contract/commitment.

Ugh. Who wants to be on the other side of that?

In other posts he can only image hedonism as the connection. Implicitly he links loving someone with enjoying them. So, when you stop enjoying them you leave. What a dim view of humans and love: they are rather dumb creatures, not even good at self-interest, let alone love.

I think we all know people who love each other and go through periods where they cannot possibly enjoy the other person - one of them is seriously ill, children are in need, they must live apart for economic reasons, or even just they are experiencing periods where communication/sexual/trust/parenting/economic issues cause strife and the relationship is not fun,etc. - and yet the love brings them back to each other, or better said, keeps them together, and is present even when things are unpleasant. Even for long periods of time. They don't have to think, jeez I wanna leave, but I made a commitment. Or, Jeez I wanna leave but a marriage is a contract (with or without God in mind).

Yes, those people exist people exist. People who cannot choose without an internal governmental authority to manipulate them. People who stay because of ideas, not because of love. And with mixed consequences for all involved, including the children if there are any.

I don't want to be with you, but I made a commitment. Wow, you're so....noble-ish. Thank you?!??

Because of his great distrust of emotions and desire - which is pretty endemic to Christians - he can only imagine people binding themselves with ideas and promises. Ideas...those he can imagine someone being in love with...people's ideas of themselves as good people, he can imagine them maintaining love for that idea. But that love for another would keep them together, beyond the imaginable.

I certainly agree with you that love can happen without binding. And that people can move in and out of connections with each other AND share love, despite a lack of long term relationship.

But I think he is even more wrong.

And he seems unaware of how guilt and shame are not good glues for a relationship - also endemic to Christianity, though certainly not limited to that religion or even religions in general.

Most traditional takes on religion include self-hate that the members cannot see because they've been swimming in it so long. And of course many secular views on relationships and life and emotions and desire have this kind of problem of conflating goodness/love with guilt.

Again: I'm staying with you not out of love, but because I made a contract.

It's such a limited understanding of love - which he seems to think is goo goo eyes smiling and fun - but also something I for one would not want my wife, for example, to 'live up to'. Horrible.

Yes people who do not make commitments can be unloving, insensitive, lost.
But, yeah, people who make commitments can be unloving, insensitive and lost.

How did women do when commitment was dropped?
Well, How did women do before when they were chattel to half chattel? or when they staying in relationships out of guilt or to uphold their commitment?

How did both sexes fare when guilt was completely King over love?

He seems capable only seeing the problems that occur when people are free, but not the problems that occur when they are not. Or whatever the drawbacks of positions other than his own, those he can see, but not those entailed by his own.

Freedom, emotions, desire....these are questionable to him.

And as we move out of having guilt as King, of course problems are going to arise. But 1) we had problems all along which he does not notice and 2) we have to learn to have better relationships with freedom, emotions and desires, things that have been judged and suppressed for so long.

[Dontaskme]

Well, as the old saying goes, love is measured by what it will do. It is not measured by what somebody says. A "love" that has no commitment to its object is just exploitation, using and discarding. It takes, it enjoys, but does not give of self. So it moves on when the chance for its own enjoyment moves on. There's no real love in it. Love commits.

Love is not an action, love is life.
And life is unconditionally free, free of ego. Ego is an illusory appearance of the human mind.
The ego is based on ideas, conditions and expectations of the respective culture, religion and society.

Man's search for love is based on his evolutionary story which the ego takes for real. It's real insofar as the story is believed.
Man's story about love is the search for love between an I and a You which is separation and implies two, where there is none.

TRUE REAL LOVE is the understanding that man is not the doer. As man is not the doer he couldn't be a separate being either. Where there is no separation, LOVE IS and this oneness lacks nothing. Love is life.

Life is an un-conditional play of light and sound projecting a drama between I and You which appears real to the ego though it is totally illusory.
As Life is a singular movement in every moment in life, a beginning-less and endless flow without any separation.

So again IC, you are just simply wrong about what you think LOVE is and is not.

[Dontaskme]

Many women are quite happy and self-sufficient in remaining single...

Yes. We call those women "liars."

Only a liar can know a liar.

There's true love and there's fake love.
Love is life which reflects the entire world through the mirror of knowledge.

There is only love. You are love.

You cannot love another, as another cannot love you, such otherness, would imply separation, which is not real true love.

Love can only be aware of itself, one without a second. Man is a highly sophisticated energy-matter-plant-animal-being with the ability to be aware that it IS love. This being aware is possible because of the mind which has evolved in man as an illusory manifestation of sound.


TRUE LOVE has no cause for cause and effect are absent in the flow of life. Cause and effect exist as illusions in form of sound heard as words in the mind of man.

All conditions about what the other should do or should not do are based on the belief that causality is real in life.
This is why the ego searches for love in vain.

The logic of cause and effect manifests the drama of ego-love and makes man ask incessantly how ''to love'' while love as life happens on it's own.

Feel free to share this invaluable knowledge of what is true love with anyone you like IC

[Sculptor]

So...you're saying you think that sex requires contracts, but love doesn't? Or do you just mean that neither sex nor love require commitment?

Well we all know you would have a problem with unconditional love

I have no idea how you imagine that. And I'm not sure there's a "we," unless you have multiple-personality disorder.

Since you seemed to have a failure of understanding or imagination it is easy enough.
God's love is conditional.
Bw what I say and you get the reward; disobey and be punished.

[Sculptor]

It's called "unconditional love". Contractual love is not for all of us.

No, uncommitted love is actually the opposite of unconditional love. Uncommitted love "loves" only until the object in question displeases it...after that, it has no commitments. So it's not really love at all. It's just lust, or desire, or even narcissism. It has no concern for what happens to its object beyond the present moment, and even in that, only for what it's object can do for it...not what it can do for the object of its attention.

So is "uncommitted love" a form of "love" or is it not? I mean, as a Christian do you "love" Palestinians, or is being "committed" to Israel's 'right to defend itself' a form of "love" of Palestinians?

Good Question.

[Dontaskme]

Commitment is made to a relationship. You don't need to make a commitment to love... you just LOVE!

What kind of commitment do you think you need to make to anyone in order to love them? Women, men, children... can't you just love them?

Relationship implies two which is illusory.

Real true love has no need or desire for commitment as you so rightly say. Real love lacks nothing. True love is the understanding that real love is without conditions.

My cat demonstrates true love to me everyday, which does not involve it to be in relationship with me, or be committed to stay with me, my cat is a free being, and not bound or obligated to love me, it simply shows true love without condition because the cat is an inseparable expression of life which is love.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Indeed, I suspect that what people of color and women and homosexuals and Jews are most interested in, in regard to your own "serious philosophy" here, is what their actual fate might be if you and those like Satyr do acquire the political power to enforce their own pie in the sky dogmas.

It is not what I deign for *them* but what they are choosing for themselves.

People of color -- do you not follow current events? -- are agreeing more and more that relatively homogeneous nations (*white, European* for example) should be allowed to manage the demographics of their own countries. That does mean of course limiting the immigration of great numbers that alter the cultures in question. These people of color (to use your ridiculous phrase) are realizing that just as they desire to hold to their own cultural identity, and also desire to have (and I quote) "children who look like me", that it is morally responsible to get off the anti-white crusade.

Myself, I do not know what to think of this movement (given my inclination to diversity and my grounding within metaphysical righteousness) but I have to respect what they believe is right.

Again do you not follow current events? There are a great number, a growing number, of homosexuals who have come to realize their essential *disordered* state of "perverted orientation" and though they may not be capable of reversing their homosexual tendencies have made many many statements saying that a heterosexual stance and a heterosexual cultural ethic is better and that they have opted to support heterosexuality and heterosexual unions especially those that produce children. Many who were obsessed sodomites are coming to the conclusion that fucking the ass of another man (excuse my unvarnished way of putting it) is actually pretty disgusting. I read one article where one such man quoted Allen Ginsberg" who write somewhere "Who really wants to get fucked int he ass anyway?" I don't know what exactly they do as an alternative but their choice seems at least wholesome from my perspective.

There is a huge movement -- where the heck do you read Iambiguous? -- of anti-feminist women who are rejecting in absolute terms the primary tenets of feminist ideology. Their motto is "Different and not the same". Many of them write persuasively about their desire and need to recover traditional (biological they say) grounding of femininity and motherhood. I don't agree with their choices but again -- what can I do?

Arguing with the Sisterhood is futile -- surely you of all people realize this.

Then there is the movement within the Jewish community to renounce the fundamentals of classical Jewish belief: chosenness, perennial victimhood, the view that *the world* is out to get them and that *Haman* is always out there lurking and hunting. Many have written articles in which they describe their own process of rejecting these arcane, paranoid beliefs. I can link you with DOZENS who say that it is no longer possible to hold the (false) belief that Israel is a unique possession, granted by a supernatural authority, to the Jewish people. And since they do not believe it *right* that a people define themselves through absurd definitions they renounce both Jewishness and Judaism.
____________________________

In related news:

You will eat, bye and bye
In that glorious land in the sky
Work and Pray, live on hay
You'll get pie in the sky when you die

[Will Bouwman]

Let's see that "wealth," then.

A Google search for 'evidence of human evolution'...

You can take the Wikis etc. at face value, of course.

Unusually, Wikipedia is only eighth in the list. Above them are the Smithsonian Institute, the BBC, the Natural History Museum, the Encyclopedia Britannica, Nature and the Australian Museum, all widely respected. The Smithsonian Institute, the Natural History Museum and the Australian Museum are all internationally renowned institutions, that receive funding and support by democratically elected governments of different persuasions over a long period. They are just three places of thousands of places you can visit and see examples of what are claimed to be the remains of ancestral species that evolved into modern humans.

Or you can recognize in them, and in their various and contradictory claims, their shifty rationales and their ever-expanding timespans, a graphic display of how high the stakes are in this question, and of the many convolutions through which people are prepared to go to bolster the project of elimnating God from the universe.

You have one example of actual fraud to support your belief in an international conspiracy involving museums, universities and governments, that has been perpetrated over at least one and a half centuries.

Take your pick, I guess.

Indeed: one ancient text against all of the above.

[Lacewing]

...

I enjoyed reading your insightful, good points!

I think I can better see now, the kind of mindset that I.C. is operating from, which doesn't naturally occur to me (maybe) because it's so unnatural/contrived, and I can't imagine how someone could be so convinced of it.

Isn't it interesting and fantastic how many vastly different points humans can perceive from and exist on?

Like a vast array of evolution and potential. Sharing a planet.

Most traditional takes on religion include self-hate that the members cannot see because they've been swimming in it so long.

Yes, and that's shocking to me. Even incomprehensible. Singing 'Oh, what a wretch am I'... or insisting that ALL are sinners who need to be saved and forgiven... or threatening themselves and others (even children) with ideas of Hell... or, some, even flogging themselves. It made no sense to me as a Christian child -- it seemed to me that the adults were 'going along with it' for some reason, and it was very contrived.

What made sense to me is that there was something much bigger to become more aware of. The religious structures were actually an impediment to broader awareness -- as they continually aimed to keep people within certain expectations and controls. And there was a form of 'brainwashing' that went along with that, even if well-intentioned. Broader questions were discouraged and ignored. Those who went 'deepest' into the beliefs and contrived notions were considered the most 'holy', and closest to 'the truth'. Even as a child it made more sense to me that greater truth was not to be found by burrowing and locking down, but through expansion outward.

How did women do when commitment was dropped?
Well, How did women do before when they were chattel

Yes. How do women do being free rather than not free? How do women do with more opportunity than with limited opportunity? How do women do being self-sufficient as compared with being dependent?

Commitment comes in many roles and for many purposes. Commitment must not be made to satisfy convention.

How did both sexes fare when guilt was completely King over love?

Like primitive and fearful thinking animals.

He seems capable only seeing the problems that occur when people are free, but not the problems that occur when they are not.

Yes. Fear of what's beyond the familiar boundaries which have been fashioned into self-righteous monuments.

And as we move out of having guilt as King, of course problems are going to arise. But 1) we had problems all along which he does not notice and 2) we have to learn to have better relationships with freedom, emotions and desires, things that have been judged and suppressed for so long.

Brilliant!

[Alexis Jacobi]

....or insisting that ALL are sinners who need to be saved and forgiven... or threatening themselves and others (even children) with ideas of Hell... or, some, even flogging themselves.

Scene

Dies Irae [Day of Wrath]