Right, and if we consider alternatives every time, then that allows the inquirer to form their own opinion from both options [yours/theirs]. There isn’t really an opposite to be extrapolated from the above words, but by including the third party in the forms of another persons perspective, then we know the back of the pack of cigarettes exists simply in someone else’s eye.
It is surprising how far away from that philosophy has become, and has instead an inability to accept anything beyond the brain-in-a-vat sentiment [of subjectivity of experience ~ disconnection from the world]. The failure of both philosophy and science to connect us, is I think one of the main schisms of modern society.
We all do things and think things like that! It is I think a process that not only individuals but society is going through. I saw a chap like that on TV and was at first repulsed, then I let the thoughts go [become detached] and let nothing be affecting ~ anything other than that there was a person there. After a while there was only the person. …but that wasn’t a real situation, and one has to often adjust.
Lol, I don’t mind long posts when they have stories and observations. I see what you mean with ‘pleasant thoughts’, the world seems to ugly and contains evil such that a hell-less notion of spirituality appears lacking. However when we look at those evils they are always circumstantial or pertains to mental illness and genetic conditions. We don’t when we understand an evil, find something else that is an evil essence or energy and whathaveyou. So to me there is really no need to dirty up divinity with notions of it containing evil. Satan is the deceiver, no!
I know you want to turn this into self-aggrandizement (Yeah man, my approach to life freaks out the norms!) but that’s not really what it is. Being flaky just means an inability/unwillingness to clearly communicate ideas, stick to a subject, or discern grounded principles from flights of fancy. As such it’s not about being unsettling (which makes you sound edgy and dangerous, a real envelope pusher) as it is about being frustrating and tedious- like listening to somebody with a really bad stutter. We roll our eyes at the flake, impatiently wondering if they’ll ever get to the point or return to what the conversation was about.
Yes, all else being equal…but when does that ever happen?
I know you want to turn this into self-aggrandizement (Yeah man, my approach to life freaks out the norms!) but that’s not really what it is. Being flaky just means an inability/unwillingness to clearly communicate ideas, stick to a subject, or discern grounded principles from flights of fancy. As such it’s not about being unsettling (which makes you sound edgy and dangerous, a real envelope pusher) as it is about being frustrating and tedious- like listening to somebody with a really bad stutter. We roll our eyes at the flake, impatiently wondering if they’ll ever get to the point or return to what the conversation was about.
[quote]
Uccisore … seems you are getting to know me … slowly but surely.
Yes, I worry about my vanity from time to time … a healthy concern … no?
Your comments triggered this memory … “life is useless, it’s like chasing the wind”.
Often when I was on my long walks … +1,000 km … I would visit a church and if there was an open Bible I would read the page it was open to. I read the page of Ecclesiastics containing the above phrase several times. OK … a trivial experience that I might be as you say “aggrandizing”.
I just did a google thing and these words seems descriptive enough …
[b][i]The Philosopher’s Experience
12 I, the Philosopher, have been king over Israel in Jerusalem. 13 I determined that I would examine and study all the things that are done in this world.
God has laid a miserable fate upon us. 14 I have seen everything done in this world, and I tell you, it is all useless. It is like chasing the wind. 15 You can’t straighten out what is crooked; you can’t count things that aren’t there.
16 I told myself, “I have become a great man, far wiser than anyone who ruled Jerusalem before me. I know what wisdom and knowledge really are.” 17 I was determined to learn the difference between knowledge and foolishness, wisdom and madness. But I found out that I might as well be chasing the wind. 18 The wiser you are, the more worries you have; the more you know, the more it hurts.[/i][/b]
Hopefully, readers can set aside the source of the above words and simply ponder the metaphor … “it’s like chasing the wind” …
[quote=“Uccisore”]
Does this fact make one of the minds superior to the other?
Yes, all else being equal…but when does that ever happen?
[quote]
Uccisore … perhaps it would help if wrote a few words describing my intentions using the term flaky mind … from the perspective … it takes one to know one. I have a flaky mind … always have.
First, the flaky mind can not be on a steady diet of mind altering drugs.
The flaky mind is spontaneous … it doesn’t function well “on a leash” … in much the same way as a dog can’t be a dog while on a leash.
A flaky mind has no rules … no electric fences … no boundaries … a flaky mind doesn’t mind bending the rules … jumping over fences … chasing the rabbit when there is no rabbit … going wherever his/her mind takes him/her … at least temporarily. Yes, there is a risk if this flaky mind goes too far for too long it may not find it’s way back home.
I also believe a flaky mind can complement a structured well disciplined mind … no need for an adversarial relationship.
[quote=“Uccisore”]
I’m not sure being unwilling or unable to defend a claim makes it false.
I am sure that I never said it did.
[quote]
Perhaps I misunderstood your intention in this comment you wrote … I have directly stated that your methods involve tossing out poorly-defended falsehoods into a public space which are capable of misleading people
He meant that you display no respect or consideration for the needs of other people. You don’t care if what you say is a lie. You don’t care if you are following any rules of consideration. You just don’t give a shit about others because you are too self absorbed and have lost all sense of cooperation, civility, and hope.
Amorphos … more thoughts arising from your previous post.
Somewhere in your previous post you reminded me of a peasant expression (Chinese peasant) … simple words … yet eloquent in it’s meaning … to me anyway.
" Cabbage farmers are happy because one foot is never more than a spit away from their other foot."
How many people can say this is true for them. How many people have their minds in the clouds while their feet are on the ground. Yes … even cabbage farmers today. For me … this behavior has been helped along by the recent explosions in technology … TV, Internet, Smart Phones, Lotteries and so on.
If the above comments are true … a logical deduction would be that many people don’t see what is happening right in front of their noses … in the here and now so to speak. Some say the small events in our lives are the most significant … if true … there are so many small events in some peoples lives that go (un)noticed.
Some say each day of our lives is a “gift” … some say many of us don’t open these gifts. When discussing this notion with a Chinese lady … her response was something to the effect … birthday gifts would be boring too if we got one every day … and we would likely stop opening them too.
Holy cow muffins! … your response to the Dostoevsky comment opened my eyes … wider
Prior to your comment I only saw the “submission” side … the kowtow. You introduced a whole new spin … an energy dynamic of sorts.
My first thought was that of Roman Citizens in the countries under Roman administration … they enjoyed privileges (a form of superiority) not granted to the indigenous people of the particular region/country.
Pondering this idea more I remembered some of my own experiences. As a Canadian I have enjoyed friendly receptions in all the countries I have traveled … particularly here in China. In relative terms there are few foreigners (Western) in China … I suppose this has always been the case. Many many times when Chinese children see me they gawk and stare … sometimes with a frightened look … sometimes with a friendly look … sometimes with a look of superiority … sometimes a giddy expression on their face. For that matter … I get the same reception from most Chinese adults.
The occasions where there is a verbal exchange … always very limited because I don’t speak Chinese … the first question is usually “Where are you from?” One might assume this is normal “small talk”. My experience tells me it’s something more.
They know from my skin colour that I’m a Western foreigner … yet it seems important to them to know which Western country. The Chinese peasant … Chinese village people … are the most interesting … perhaps because of their simplicity … perhaps they are not so well schooled in the art of deception and manipulation.
Often when I respond to a Chinese peasant that I’m from Canada I get a friendly smile and sometimes a thumbs up … and sometimes they will attempt to speak the name Bethune.
Bethune was a Canadian doctor … likely a name not recognized by most of the 35 million or so Canadian peoples. Yet a name recognized by upwards to a billion of the people in China … and a name deemed respectful by many … what percentage I have no idea. Mao Zedong wrote a book about Bethune’s experiences in China and the book was part of the education curriculum for the past 70 years or so … still today? I don’t know.
Communist propaganda to be sure … still intriguing that a Canadian individual would be given such prominence.
I digress …
Seems to me the Bethune story elevates my status as a Western foreigner( a form of superiority) … vis a vis non Canadian Western foreigners.
The energy dynamic I mentioned above … how to reduce my thoughts to written form??
The notion of team spirit comes to mind … occasionally in sports … a team with inferior technical skills defeats a team with superior technical skills … some attribute this surprising outcome to the notion of team spirit. An example of this energy dynamic ???
Where an individual voluntarily directs their energy to the ‘collective’ and in return the individual receives energy from the ‘collective’ with the result being the individual has more energy than before. A circular energy dynamic. Synergy??
Me: I’m not sure being unwilling or unable to defend a claim makes it false.
UCC Response: I am sure that I never said it did.
Perhaps your implication(s) with your choice of the word “lies” is different than my intention(s) with the use of the word “false”. I don’t know.
Perceptual set has been demonstrated in many social contexts. People who are primed to think of someone as “warm” are more likely to perceive a variety of positive characteristics in them, than if the word “warm” is replaced by “cold”. When someone has a reputation for being funny, an audience is more likely to find them amusing.[35] Individual’s perceptual sets reflect their own personality traits. For example, people with an aggressive personality are quicker to correctly identify aggressive words or situations.
Hardy, Malcolm; Heyes, Steve (2 December 1999). Beginning Psychology. Oxford University Press. pp. 24–27. ISBN 978-0-19-832821-6. Retrieved 24 March 2011.
In any event, the expression “perception is reality” has been kicked around for a while … albeit (un)proven … yet not necessarily totally false.
Irrelevant. The fact that you cannot prove that infinity / infinity is finite is irrelevant to whether it is.
A lie is till a lie even if you don’t try to know the truth of it.
And I am sure that he was right.
When one doesn’t even care to try to discern if he is lying when he tells many falsehoods, he is “one who lies”.
I am well aware of child’s psychology. But I am curious what relevance you interpreted into that bit.
It is false and proven so. The problem is merely that you can’t understand proofs and don’t care to try to.
You simply babble because you can’t think of anything else to do and don’t care what harm it might cause. Empathy Deficit Disorder
The interesting thing about this is that a person can be as you describe while still having a very convincing veneer of benevolence, open-mindedness and such. I’ve encountered a lot of people (as you say, too many of them on here) that say sweet-sounding things because they like how it makes it appear, but show no ability or interest to take the perspectives of other people to heart when you scratch the surface.
You really need this clarified? Do you not understand that there is a difference between “False, poorly-defended claims” and “Claims that are false because they are poorly-defended?”
And the counterpart, the person who presents as sure and cranky when they are in fact unsure or afraid. (not a jab at you, your crankiness always has the timbre of authenticity) And then you have the implicitly ‘superior’ who do not get angry. The internet makes these patterns harder to disrupt since the things these patterns hide often pop through in body language or voice tone when one is in person, not that there is any guarantee in person that the facade will fall.
Personal attacks here discourage me from posting. I see Pilgrim’s responses as a breath of fresh air among stodgy schoolmarmistic opinions about what can be said. He’s young and attempting to describe here his spiritual experiences.
Tom, beware of the thought police!
WEll, we are all young in some way or other, but I am pretty sure he is middle-aged. I don’t think the issue is what can be said. But when he attacks without taking responsibility, this has gotten pointed out. When he makes statements that make no sense and is questioned or critiqued, he has often attacked - though I am not sure how conscous of this he is - by making it seem like his pure, non-flocklike, better than the intellecturals mind is being excluded. His actual beliefs, when presented clearly are not the problem, though they may elicit disagreement. It is all the assumptions about who he is talking to and what they should not say that is the problem. Schoolmarms come in many forms. IOW I experienced many of this posts as personal or general attacks, sometimes it was implicit.
Yes, my crankiness is sadly authentic. Most of the cocksure and cranky people I meet aren’t unsure or afraid I don’t think, I most often find them when they’ve puffed themselves up winning arguments on the internet with inferior sources. I.E., that atheist or that believer who gives monologues on YouTube refuting words he puts into other’s mouths, until he’s argued himself into thinking he’s educated. Dealt with one of those just yesterday in fact. Not on here.
I try to be anti-facade. I come across as cranky and mean and dismissive and all the rest because I have some instinct that it would be somehow worse to pretend that I’m not that way. There’s something more, too. Maybe a lack of expectation of courtesy over the years, and a distaste for false courtesy. It seems like, these days, so much ‘politeness’ amounts to nothing more than masked and sophisticated ways to be a dick.
Thanks Ierrellus … you know me well. Sometimes sharing spiritual experiences elicits jealousy … especially among a crowd who view themselves as spiritual people … Joan of Arc comes to mind.
If 65 years old is young … much of this community is 80+ ??? I was raised to respect my elders but that doesn’t include being a doormat for elders in hiding.
I offer the following comments in the spirit of humility and generosity.
Moreno … for some people there is no facade … facades are like body armor. Some people outgrow the need for it. Usually, these same people do not foolishly engage in what you refer to as “attacks”.
UCC … some people don’t reach out for olive branches offered to them.
JSS … sometimes there is a fine line between believing in God … and acting like God. Falling off our pedestals once in a while is healthy.
Faith … hope … and … love.
The first two are useless in the absence of the third.
