true enlightened philosophy

there is only 1 rule and it is NOT the golden rule.

rule 1. self harm is wrong unless it is pleasurable.

I had this epiphany when I was thinking about lifeforms. And reincarnation. And that reincarnation is real but the general idea of it is wrong.

It is not so much that you have past lives. But past “sessions”. This resolves the past-future paradox.

Each body is a husk. Think of it like an arcade. Brains, machines, computers. Soul enters a brain like an arcade. And that is your life. It is a “session” at a machine.

It is possible that 95% of all lifeforms are vacant husks. With no soul or consciousness. P zombies.

It is not fully correct to say that backwards time travel is possible through only the soul.

What is more correct is to say that backwards time travel is actually completely irrelevant.

Here are the things that are relevant:

Entropy, beauty, good memories.

People want to time travel always for the same reasons:

To fix something that will cause more entropy and/or less beauty in the future.

The end goal is always the same: Less entropy, more beauty, more good memories.

So back to my original moral code: Self harm is wrong unless it is pleasurable.

So if you murder someone there is a chance it could be wrong, there is no way to know. Because you don’t know if that person is a pzombie. If it is not a pzombie you are litterally murdering yourself. But then another thing. Cops. Even if cops are pzombies, guess what, going to prison is self harm therefore bad. Therefore it is evil to send anyone to prison, in 99% of all cases.

So if you molest someone, make sure it is an adult and it should never be a kid. Because what if that kid is you and not a pzombie. Then you are scarring yourself for life. Which violates rule 1. And there is no way to tell if someone is a pzombie usually. So make sure you never damage anyone to the point of scarring them for life. Unless that person is really bad and deserve it, then maybe.

Anyway I think this is best morality ever made, and I want a nobel prize for discovering this.

Also I want the aliens to beam me up, to paradise, because it feels like this post was my mission and I accomplished my mission on Earth. Thankyou.

Nice sarcasm.

Like I said, in a zero sum world, winning is losing.

Hard concept for narcissists to comprehend.

Wasn’t sarcasm.

And your last statement depends. On whether the person in question is or isn’t a pzombie.

But my philosophy is not shallow, it has even an added layer of depth. I would say it is wrong to ruin the lives of even certain pzombies. Because that is like damaging the machine in the Arcade of Eternities. And that machine always going to be broken and unplayable.

Also, this thread wasn’t about you, but I could see how a narcissist would believe it was about themselves.

You cannot ruin the life of something that is not actually life but just an imitation of life
But you could try to get them to solve the problem of non zero sum reality if you wanted

The word “pleasure” is only a word. What is the subject matter it refers to? In essence philosophy is the passion for going beyond the word to the subject matter itself. That is, put another way, for really knowing what we are talking about as a human group of speakers.

I think your commandment has a difficulty in that many things are unpleasant to acquire, but pleasant to have. Learning is often quite unpleasant, even painful. The subject matter of the unpleasant might be drilling away at a language one wants to learn; this can be a drudging and almost terrible toil. However, having command of a language is often a light and joyful relief. All unseen the threads are knit together, an infinite combination forms! What joy to have language at the ready, what toil to acquire it…

Learning doesn’t have to be unpleasant. It’s most just American schools. Finland (or Iceland, can’t remember) schools only have 4 hour days and hardly homework. And higher IQs over there anyway.

You’re evading the main point. Also, I don’t find what you say about that particular example of pain persuasive. Even Aristotle regarded learning serious things as painful, fancy schemes don’t change that reality.

You have to ask, do yo want to talk about reality or fanciful things? The latter answer produces the idiotic subject matter we have long called philosophy. The former the serious work known since the time of the ancients, such as Cicero, Plato Socrates and Aristotle.

Yours and mine’s definition of pain is very much different.

If learning is painful, then you’re probably not learning the material. Let’s give an example, math.

Sometimes I’m not in math mode, and hearing about math I just want to avoid. And it goes in one ear out the other. But other times I get in a math mode, and doing math feels pleasurable and relaxing, and I actually comprehend the material.

What about this song makes you think learning is painful?
youtube.com/watch?v=kXGJeYWLnFI

If anything, it implies that boredom, not learning, is painful.
And then there’s American schools, teaching you everyone has to be good at “everything”. Teaching them to ignore their natural genetic drives. Maybe your genetic drive isn’t meant to learn certain things. If you don’t, you don’t. If it feels painful then maybe your brain’s just not wired. Maybe art or other things more up your alley. Just find your cutie mark.

lordoflight.

How can the masochist judge what is actual pain or pleasure since he/she thrives on hurting him/her -self - it is all the same to the masochist.

What of the people, the family and friends of the masochist? They are harmed, negatively touched by the masochist’s need for self-destruction and/or to prove inner strength - which is simply a warped sense of self. The masochist becomes the sadist to self and to those close to him.

Anything which causes harm to one’s self and to others is not pleasure and to think of it in that way is a perversion.

lordoflight.

How can the masochist judge what is actual pain or pleasure since he/she thrives on hurting him/her -self - it is all the same to the masochist.

What of the people, the family and friends of the masochist? They are harmed, negatively touched by the masochist’s need for self-destruction and/or to prove inner strength - which is simply a warped sense of self. The masochist becomes the sadist to self and to those close to him.

Anything which causes harm to one’s self and to others is not pleasure and to think of it in that way is a perversion.

Hello Arc :

The clever masochist like the author of ‘Maldoror’ can separate self harm , and exclude others’ need for the opposite.

And a masochist was not entirely instrumental in creating self pain, it was mostly others that it came from.
Its just a case of sustained early development, perhaps.

For instance, Shakespeare’s beautiful tragedies are rather masochistic. But Burger King, McDonalds, is also masochistic too. The difference is one is unhealthy and the other is higher spirituality. McDonalds offers nothing but poison but Shakespear offers something higher. It’s like getting slapped on the ass by a dominatrix may be painful. But it offers so much more.

Hello Lord of Light,

I find the topic of your post rather interesting, unfortunately, the posts are rather disconnected from the title. Nevertheless, you said:

As philosophers we have a duty to define our words prior to their usage, otherwise, we will engage in endless debate about their meanings without ever defining them, as can be witnessed by reading the posts in this thread. With an aim towards organization, understanding and reason, allow me to ask you: WHAT is YOUR definition of self harm?

This entire thread depends on your definition of self harm. More importantly, your definition in connection to life will show that the definition is much more complicated then your arcade game idea where programmers of games have set a basic duality of the player must survive and all others in the game are either there to help your quest or to destroy you. Life, is far from that basic a definition.

You bring up many different topics with various connections, but for the sake of brevity, I will keep it to your one major point.

Let’s provide some basic examples to help your idea along. We can say eating something that doesn’t make us feel good, depletes us, degenerates our cells, makes us vomit or get sick, or even kills us, is wrong. We could then say the opposite, namely, that eating food that energizes us, makes us feel good, enables us to grow physically, provides the nutrients and minerals our bodies require for growth and life are good. All that is fine. But it is important to note a few things. (1) Such a statement is relative to a thing, not an objective truth (which you appear to be trying to claim), (2) such a statement needs further elucidating regarding time, (3) such a statement is also limited to certain states experienced by the consumer of the said food [for example, some foods though normally bad for us, are good for us when we have a specific sickness], (4) etc.

There are many examples in which a thing may appear to be harmful to you at first, but not later.
There are also examples of ‘self harm’ connected to different definitions of ‘self’. For example, if you were brought up in a communist or socialistic system, you were taught to not think of yourself but rather of the country, colony, and citizens as a whole. Hence, ‘self harm’ is seen as what hurts everyone but not necessarily yourself. Sacrificing yourself for the good of the whole rather than discounting everyone else and thinking only of oneself is a problem inherent in your statement.

Without going into after lives, going back to the past, zombies, etc, we have our hands full understanding what you mean by the simple statement of “Self harm is wrong unless it is pleasurable”.

You say that going to prison is bad but the point of prison is to get rehabilitated, which in essence is believed to be good for the person at which point they are released back into society.

There are times when you yourself may not know/understand/believe that A or B is good for you but it is. You may not like broccoli but eating it is not self harm. It is difficult to know other things about a person until years later as to whether something was good for them or not. For example, in some countries men have to do military service for 2 years when they turn 18 years of age. Some people argue that it is good for them because they learn discipline, hygiene, folding their clothing, being organized, going to bed on time, etc. While others believe that it is self harm to go to the army because it builds a mind set that things can only get done through no thinking and just doing what someone else tells you, by being owned by something and sacrificing ones life for a country and an issue that most 18 year olds know nothing about, etc.

So you see, “self harm” is rather a tricky definition that requires specific definition and hashing out certain applications.

You also bring in an additional complicated term, namely “pleasure”. If we apply your principle, and we prove that Cocaine, heroine, mescalin, etc are pleasurable to all people therefore it is right and people should be allowed to do it, society, and the human race would diminish rather quickly.

What’s your take?

~Magius