The Reasonable Standard

If you’re rubbing your hands together and giggling about the idea of “getting to someone” on a forum, then you’re an idiot.

Read back up there and try and understand that there’s a difference between annoying someone and causing them to have an existential crisis.

You are annoying. I don’t find you to be intellectually stimulating. I think that you are borderline autistic and socially awkward. I do not want to be your friend or a partner in a conversation with you. I don’t think that the subject of inquiry which you’ve centered your life around is relevant to any part of philosophy that I am interested in. I do not know how to be any clearer about the fact that I find your trolling, baiting and stalking to be obnoxious.

If you convincing yourself that you’ve somehow made me analyze my point of view, or that you’ve somehow caused me to question anything at all about myself or the world is important to you, then I’m flattered.

If I tell you that you’ve convinced me of your position and that I’m in agreement with you…would you fuck off and stop harassing me?

MagsJ you’re full of shit, sad to say.
You’ve obviously not done any off the work you’re supposed to do.

Go back and read iamfucksticks last 50 responses to me. If youve got some spine, make that the last 100. Do it, and then you’ll want to apologize for the games youve been playing with ILP.

Shame on you for getting in here and using your authority AGAINST the people who give the site substance.

I just talked to Carleas about the nazis, he has given me some confidence in his intentions. But now with you jumping in to defend the one who ruins the most discussions of everyone, I have no idea what the hell we are supposed to be on here for anymore.

Thanks a lot.

Think of it like this:

What’s more pathetic, someone who “copies and pastes shit a million times” here or someone or who trudges along behind him from thread to thread in order to note that he does this?

Still, I will make a more concerted effort to avoid rankling you.

You know, whatever that means.

Really, I don’t know what to say. Sure, given that part of what motivates me to post here revolves around…

…he was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest…

…it’s possible that on some complex, deep-seated psychological level I go after you.

In the future, please note when you think this might be applicable.

Same thing. Here is a link to your posts: search.php?author_id=37292&sr=posts

Note how I have “constantly” followed you around from thread to thread. And note for us just, say, the three biggest idiotic lies about you that I have concocted so far.

Or is this all just an exercise in irony?

In other words, the mods refuse to react to my words in precisely the same manner that you do.

A classic symptom of, oh, I don’t know, the objectivist mind?

In my own opinion of course.

Still, as with Mr. R., I’m curious to explore what actually might be motivating these tirades of late. Rather than in considering what you claim it’s all about. Which appears patently preposterous to me.

You’re pranking me, right? Or is it punking these days?

Next time, I’ll simply give you a warning, and not allow you to entangle me in your web of…?

Neither Iam nor I are pawns, and I have seen the build-up to your game/this moment evolving… your end goal being? a win? payback? destroying reputations? Step back! =;

You verbally abused another member!

He annoys you and others with his viewpoints, but that does not justify that post. There is no more to this than that! Stop making this into something more than it is.

It’s not his viewpoint that’s annoying. It’s that he derails every conversation that he joins by copying and pasting the same thing and drowning out any conversation that’s not about the same thing he’s copied and pasted 1000 times.

Like no one in this thread is claiming that there is an objective morality that dictates what the right decisions are for any given situation. But that’s what he’s talking about…how there isn’t one in his view. That’s fine. He can think that. Maybe he’s right, maybe he’s wrong. That’s not the point. The point is that the thread isn’t about that and he’s not going to stop until it either is, or until the thread is just dead.

Outlook… viewpoint… call it what you will, but in such similar situations as this… report it.

Magsj: Agreed! Can any one after this, sit down and call this philosophy? Best thing, would be to see how it strayed from rapport and empathy, from properly distanced ‘objective’ conversation.

Course, I am at a point for the opposing reason, of be of being a Kantian, prone to the weakness of being attacked by Humians, a conflict so old, but one that is always able to set the tone and death, over a struggle, which even Marx noted, and eventually cost the lives of countless souls.

Who ever would think that such landscape is not one which would incite feverish and often unmanagmeble debate, as this is?

At times we only appeal to a rhetorical battle on the surface of a tidal wave, and forgetting that Trumpism and all its intricate deep seated, deep state concerns may at some point cause an unpredictable result?

That he, Trump repeats things on a daily basis, has no parallel prohibitive agency with which to appeal to reason!

We often forget that the framework, : set down by Kant, Mills, with such constructs like hidden objectives, predictability, maximum pleasure were set in a time when they appeared as objective measures by which to evaluate and make reasonable assessments , however that time of certainty has been eclipsed , and there is nothing to return to, except return must eternally, into a void, where only fragments remain: fragments of our self, which we can only recapture through broken images of ourselves, images that only an objective reality can try to put together, the ‘look’ or an ‘eye’ a visual search for clues, to try to reconstruct the self.

Who are we, after all, but a collection of clues of signs leading to, or away from who we are or think we are, or should be?
No wonder we have become reticent to look into the mirror, and hide behind masks in changeable circumstances? Surely we did not do this to ourselves , others brought it upon us.

At time like these, the mirror changes as in fun houses all over the world, and often the straight and narrow, becoming flat and one dimensional becomes of more concern then the utilitarian subtle change of images from convex to concave and that con-cave that the mini abyss as the huge Black Holes of cosmological understanding, fears the numerous small black holes of our existence and being, noting that the scholastic had indeed a simple vision of that of illumination through the essential:: the essence. I think it was a Persian philosopher, Avicenna , who saw the real Reason behind the facade.

That’s certainly a reasonable standard. My point is that if you want to enjoy particular things you had best prepare properly to attain them.

For example, Mr. Reasonable apparently wants to attain these things: “money and hos and clothes”.

So he properly prepares each day to make the rational choices necessary to achieve this.

But what if he comes upon folks who prepared an argument that capitalism is in fact the embodiment of evil. That trading in the stock market has to be stopped in order to attain the far more ideal socialist alternative.

Conflicting goods. Are philosophers able to arrive at the most rational answer here? If so, how would they go about preparing to construct it?

Or consider all of the demonstrations today in opposition to the Trump immigration policy. There are all of those rational choices that need to be made in order to make the demonstrations the most effective.

But how does one prepare an argument that effectively establishes the moral foundation of the protestors as in fact “the right thing to do”?

That’s the hole that I am in.

How then are others not in it? How and why are they able to convince themselves that their own point of view is not just an existential contraption rooted in dasein? That it is instead rooted in the “real me” in sync with “the right thing to do”?

That’s why I prefer democracy and the rule of law as the “best of all possible worlds”. Let’s face it, however folks acquire a particular set of value judgments, they are inevitably going to clash. Then what?

From my frame of mind, there is no “best way”. There is only what works and what doesn’t work. And even the “ridiculous” values are just existential contraptions to me.

After all, in the abortion wars, one side sees the killing of babies as a ridiculous thing to justify, while the other side claims it’s ridiculous to force women to give birth.

That revolves precisely around the distinction I make between preparations that can be calculated with some measure of objectivity and preparations that appear rooted only in personal opinions rooted in dasein.

The laws “insist” that you stop doing something or you will be punished. Or, in particular communities like the Amish, you either stop doing something or you will be “shunned”.

But who gets to “insist” on one set of behaviors rather than another? And to what extent are philosophers/ethicists able to construct one or another deontological assessment of any particular context out in any particular world when points of view/behaviors come into conflict?

Where are the lines to be drawn then between existential contraptions here and actual moral obligations?

Where do you draw it yourself with respect to the animal rights wars? Other than as a set of political prejudices rooted in a set of assumptions about what “here and now” you deem the most reasonable relationship ought to be.

Clearly it would be absurd to argue against the killing of animals among those native communities up North who could not survive without doing so.

And what of things like disease bearing fleas and mosquitos? Is it wrong to kill these animals too?

Doesn’t “situational ethics” seem a more reasonable manner in which to approach these things?

Note to others:

Please take note of the two posts that I addressed to Mr Reasonable above this latest tirade aimed instead at making me the issue here.

Over and again I attempted to make actual substantive [philosophical] arguments relating to the points he raised. For example:

[b]Utility? Sure, the aim of philosophy – of ethics – can revolve around dispensing useful information. On the other hand, from my point of view [down in the hole], it is always only useful from a subjective/subjunctive point of view rooted in the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein.

And that can be a truly grim and gruesome frame of mind. Consequently, if “I” am profoundly fractured and fragmented when confronting moral and political conflicts [and “I” am], what practical recourse is there other then to pursue those who are not. [/b]

And:

[b]Okay, back again to the distinction I make between playing the stock market as a rational human being and defending capitalism as a moral pursuit to those who see it instead as the very embodiment of evil.

Why your answer here and not theirs? How can either argument not be predicated largely on a set of political assumptions [rooted in history, rooted in dasein] that revolve around the extent to which human interactions ought either to revolve more around “I” or more around “we”?[/b]

And:

[b]If someone has managed [for whatever reason] to convince herself that there is in fact a “real me” – a “soul” – that they are “at one” with, why pursue philosophy in order to grapple with whether there might be narratives that challenge this?

After all, if they come into places like this, they take the chance they might bump into someone like me.

Right?

And, concomitantly, if this “real me” is, psychologically, able to provide them with the comfort and the consolation of grounding “I” in something substantive, doesn’t this enable them to, in turn, feel in sync with the “the right thing to do”?

What might prompt them then to seriously explore a frame of mind like moral nihilism?[/b]

And:

[b]Well, we’ll see how bored folks are if Trump manages to garner that crucial fifth vote on the Supreme Court. The one that makes abortion and/or gay marriages illegal in America. My dilemma assumes that the choice faced by women saddled with an unwanted pregnancy may well soon be either 1] forced motherhood 2] a back alley abortion or 3] jail

My point then revolves not around vacuums but around contexts in which objectivists from both sides will insist that only their own political agenda reflects the one true moral obligation of all rational and virtuous people.

On the other hand, moral nihilism suggests that both sides are able to embrace reasonable arguments based on conflicting sets of assumptions; and that, in a No God world, the best of all possible worlds when engaging conflicting goods is still moderation, negotiation and compromise. [/b]

This is the philosophy forum after all.

Let him pick just one and we can start a new thread in which we both make a concerted effort to sustain a civil and intelligent exchange.

Again, let’s go back to the OP:

So, others might ask, how do we go about examining the gap between Fixed Cross’s assessment of Mr Reasonable’s subjective standard for living and that which an objectivist might take issue with?

Out in a particular world revolving around a particular context.

Given that, in FC’s view, Mr Reasonable is a philosopher.

What then does that make those who don’t share this standard?

As for Fixed Cross, I am curious to understand how, as someone who is not arguing for an objective morality [as Mr. R suggests], he squares this with the idea of “value ontology

How does that actually work given his own conflicts with others pertaining to moral and political values?

My focus is always on reconfiguring general descriptions like…

Life is good and you need to be powerful to handle that

…by situating it out in the world of actual human interactions. What of those who share Mr Reasonable’s philosophical standard but insist that the pursuit of “money and hos and clothes” is not a reflection of the “good life” at all?

It’s a standard, not the standard. So a discussion about whether there’s an ultimate objective standard is off topic.

The whole point of this and any such standard is that it is better than average. An average person won’t be able to live with such freedom, much less a subaverage person.

Envy is natural before such a standard and as the slaves of ancient times did then, the modern slave does now - lie to himself about the nature of this standard.

So let me be clear: this Reasonable standard is not for just anyone. It is perfectly partial, exclusive, privileged; yet not obscenely so. Reasonably so.

“One law for ox and lion is oppression”
-Blake

This R-standard is a standard for the more lion like. To demand such freedom of the ox-like is not something that would occur to me.

Well, if that’s that case, why bring me into it at all?

Sure, he could have noted that, as a philosopher, you have arrived at a standard for living that revolves around your own personal assumption that “life is good and you need to be powerful to handle that.”

Bringing me into it however invites my reaction.

And he certainly knows that my reaction will revolve around bringing that assumption down out of the clouds of abstraction.

Again: any number of philosophers might argree with that standard. But any number of philosophers might balk at the suggestion that the good life revolves around the pursuit of “money and hos and clothes”.

Okay, how, in a philosophy forum, can one make such a claim and then not expect others to react to it?

Do we or do we not need to connect the dots here between that claim and the life that Mr. Reasonable actually lives?

How philosophically do the choices that he makes actually come to reflect a “better than average” set of behaviors? And what if the freedom that he elects to embody comes into conflict with the freedom that others might choose instead to, say, “occupy Wall Street”?

Clearly you see Herr Nietzsche’s uberman mentality here as a noble pursuit.

Though not as clearly perhaps as, say, Satyr?

On the other hand, I see it as just one more existential contraption rooted historically and culturally in dasein. And in conflicting goods. And in political economy.

And that will always be a numbingly complex entanglement of genes and memes.

Besides, would not philosophers be naturally inclined to probe the meaning of such a standard?

Again, the assumption that the pursuit of “money, hos and clothes” will “naturally” engender envy in the weaker males. The effeminate slaves?

The irony here being that if you and Satyr and Mr. Reasonable were to explore the actual existential parameters of this standard you’d no doubt be pummelling each other with contempt.

You all embrace the same standard, sure. But it had better be understood in the right way. The way that only the truly rational and virtuous manly-men would embrace it.

Yeah, Satyr likes to bring in the lions too. Only he prefers chimps to oxen.

But, in my view, it’s the same existential contraption clothed in the garb of the noble savage.

Meanwhile out in the real world it is still the “show me the money” nihilists that own and operate the global economy that makes the world go around.

At least in his own teeny-tiny way Mr. Reasonable can make the claim to be one of them.

But what about you? How on earth is this standard defended as the embodiment of a “value ontology”?

That in particular is what I would like to explore with you.

A new thread perhaps?

No huffing and puffing, just a straight up exchange of philosophical speculations, brought out into the world of actual conflicting goods.

No. What? I favor iambiguous.

???

Is this challenge still even relevant?

Does mr R shit in the woods?

There, kids.

Life is good. Sorry for any of your missing out on this but that doesn’t disprove the R standard.
On the contrary – it shows that it is a meaningful standard.

No pity on the weak.

As far as lil’ ol’ Penuamtic-coma over there is concerned. I believe this contravention of this ‘lion’ dancing with ‘gazelle’ is, how you say, erroneous?
Had not the lion danced with the gazelle out in some Savannah? Singing old McDonald together for many, a many, of many of plenty of centuries?

One figure of speech I’ve come across, and wish to share is, in my living this 25 years. It’s actually a parable I believe. It goes something like, well if you trusted Jesus enough, (I’m not speaking religiously here) but say for i.e.'s sake. The apostles wished to convey their total devotion towards Jesus. Accordingly at that point to where Peter didn’t involve himself though, exemplified with Jesus’s cruel fate. Regarded that Determinism is totally evident. And that total Fatalism is apparent. At which juncture…We all know what happen. He comes back to life. Resurrected and thereafter being entombed even vanished off the face of Earth. Even though…

For whatever reason somebody has, that believe in the whole apparition-al thought, being that oh, well Jesus either died for something, or for another cause, or that how we feel Jesus shouldn’t have suffered the way he should have, wasn’t in any way, shape, or form, the suitable answer. Never would have not anything else arose later, for whatever eventful action had not transpired. Progressed passed being applied. Have not everybody known that expression? To each their VERY own? Yet MAN, Man was reasonable for MAN. Not one intervening supreme dignitary displayed action among the MEN.

Had not any type of Historical event been added to the Chronicles of Earth. Happening, or is going having to happen already been done? Than the obvious sense of concluding an alibi or to testify with ultimate testimony, relies wholly on oneself instead of an astal-projecting subject convoluting streams of apprehension. Just as much as we can conclude that objects like stuffed animals or plushies could have conversations with human.
Neither was this ultimate Existence ever at the beckoning of a pre-determined will at any standard of being involved in post-determinism. We understood, what we could understand.

Hadn’t humans never broke down an already unstable environmental ecosystem, or cause an already dysfunctional law and order to form lines of discourse, Man as we know it would have no order into absolutely any justice and peace. No existence into the absolute. No reason if you will.
Than it’s for them to ultimately choose?
Whoever be that decider.
Am I wrong in this? (Don’t answer that) I was testing us.
I don’t ask like this very often though. Lmao.

Had not once a mouse stirred into the vicinity of a cheese factory? And had not it caused this whole entire system to view itself in a way that oh, well if we didn’t make the cheese, THIS WOULD HAVE NEVER HAPPENED?
(It’s own opposing subjection of adversarial ‘oppression’.)

For that One gazelle having found the One lion to sing the song along with or whatever man…Reason being, that reason stood and meant something, for someone, if not an entire everything and everyone, in ONE own mind. It plays out the same consequences. The co-existing bonds of total concern like, equilibrium, or chaos. There are always relevant accounts discord or discourse, or love without hate, or justice without the unjust?? ? ? ? And on views when involving that of this, or our EARTH, OUR own Earth. .? Ha. Whoa. Break-through? :astonished: Things needed to happen for a reason. Reason being, is still that in order for stuff to happen, things needed, things wanted, if it breathed, if it even thought, it needed or wanted something.