If you have greatly loved/greatly love and been greatly loved, how can you say that life is really no good – at the end of the day? Because at some point it has to come to an end? Isn’t that a really pessimistic, nihilistic way to look at it? And isn’t the very fact that it has to at some point come to an end make it all the more precious and worthy of BEING and being grateful for it? The fact that “Nothing gold can stay” (Frost) gives us the impetus to focus on the having and not on the losing. That’s not to say that we’ve closed our eyes to the pain that will someday come.
Sadly, not always unless someone has the wisdom to see it.
If it is “real” admiration and love, would it ever be ephemerally insignifcant? All we can do is live in the present moment…not to do just that, we ourselves are making that human experience as insignifcant and robbing ourselves of experiencing that love when it is with us.
I’ve been there. But on the other side of that, it can also be the deepest joy that one has experienced it in the first place - I mean that something beautiful.
Would you yourself, Zooty, if you had a choice, give up the love you have now (I’m not saying you have one) in order to avoid the pain, no matter how deeply felt and agonizing it is?
The saying goes shared victories not shared losses… that’s true for a certain kind of love, what gib means when he says love is selfish. In a shared victory you are interested in the other person and probably have some investment in them. You may love the person as a means and not an end, here.
But to feel sorrow at another’s misfortune… that has nothing to do with you. Evolutionary anthropologists describe that as the altruistic behavior of an animal that has an interest in other’s genes. So then essentially when we feel this sorrow at the misfortune of another we are thinking on an instinctual level: man that’s a good set of genes… hate to see a good set of genes like that have to struggle. This is depressing. I feel sad and discouraged. Why do bad things have to happen to good genes, etc.
Just to be clear, it would be our biology that uses the other person as a means, not us (not us on a conscious level at least). In these kinds of discussions, I always draw a sharp distinction between what we want or what we intend for, and the biological function of our wanting/intending for these things. It’s similar to how a dog, when he’s hungry, eats. The biological function of eating is to supply nutrients and energy to the body, but this function never enters the dog’s mind. All the dog knows is that “I’m hungry; I want to eat.” Just the same, if we feel this burning desire to take care of the one we love, and to make her feel happy, that can be the end goal in itself as far as our conscious desires and intentions go. But the biological function of that, the effect (and you’d really have to think of it as an unintended side effect), is that it forms a mutually reciprocal relationship of love and support, which further leads to procreation and family building.
I know the feeling. Just the other day, I was wearing a wicked pair of denim and they got splashed with mud.
and its really inaccurate to say the gene is ‘selfish’, as Dawkins has done. It’s attributing a complex kind of intentional dennet system to what is only a reflexive biological mechanism. The anthropomorphic fallacy works both ways. People are ‘selfish’, but genes arent… doesn’t matter that the people are made of the genes. A whole greater than the sum of its parts is happening here; the addition of consciousness to the system attributes to it the characteristics of an intentional system… one of which is selfishness, in one’s own interest, forethought and planned intentional action. Genes don’t do this, but Gene Simmons does.
It just happens to be the case that genes do what we want to do. reproduce. But their reproduction is a few simple physical and chemical changes. Ours is all complicated. First dates and a mutual liking of breakfast at tiffanys, meeting the parents, moving into an apartment together, getting the loan for the starter home and a promotion at work, etc.
At any rate it should seem rather peculiar how cellular division occurs like it does… the copying of the genes in the form of chemical statements. Statements that are so eloquent the chances of them occurring twice are ridiculously low… much less occurring over and over and over again.
Some pretty shady shit is going on in genetics I think. We need to get he phonetic numbers dude on this. For real though, what is he deal with monomers turning into polymers? Like, that doesn’t just happen folks.
and its really inaccurate to say the gene is ‘selfish’, as Dawkins has done. It’s attributing a complex kind of intentional dennet system to what is only a reflexive biological mechanism. The anthropomorphic fallacy works both ways. People are ‘selfish’, but genes arent… doesn’t matter that the people are made of the genes. A whole greater than the sum of its parts is happening here; the addition of consciousness to the system attributes to it the characteristics of an intentional system… one of which is selfishness, in one’s own interest, forethought and planned intentional action. Genes don’t do this, but Gene Simmons does.
It just happens to be the case that genes do what we want to do. reproduce. But their reproduction is a few simple physical and chemical changes. Ours is all complicated. First dates and a mutual liking of breakfast at tiffanys, meeting the parents, moving into an apartment together, getting the loan for the starter home and a promotion at work, etc.
At any rate it should seem rather peculiar how cellular division occurs like it does… the copying of the genes in the form of chemical statements. Statements that are so eloquent the chances of them occurring twice are ridiculously low… much less occurring over and over and over again.
Some pretty shady shit is going on in genetics I think. We need to get he phonetic numbers dude on this. For real though, what is he deal with monomers turning into polymers? Like, that doesn’t just happen folks.
Do they? I mean, is that all they do, all they are responsible for, replication?
What about alcoholism and drug addiction - to name two. My thinking may be off the wall here I can’t really decide for sure. I’m not sure if I can evenexplain this as I mean it. But for those who are happy remaining as they are, as alcholics, as drug addicts, causing chaos within their selves and their family, isn’t it possible that there could be what could be named a “selfish” gene or genes - those same selfish genes being replicated? Over time, these genes take on a will of their own, just as the good genes take on a will of their own. It takes a lot of will and struggle to change the patterns within the brain. Perhaps it is this which eventually transforms these genes.
I personally have no problem thinking that there is a selfish gene but I may be wrong in my thinking. Maybe the above is all science fiction or fantasy. But I think it’s plausible.
Aside from that, the word “selfish” and being self-ish is not necessarily a negative whereas being self-less could be. How could we have evolved into the humans we are today had it not been for those selfish genes. Perhaps there are two kinds? lol These are just my musings, not necessarily base in reality but still…
No genes are responsible for all kinds of things, I didn’t mean to say they werent. What I was pointing out is that describing the gene as ‘selfish’ is misleading, and what happens is we eventually start interpreting genetic activity as being something sociological… we color our understanding of evolution and the gene with the metaphors we use to describe human behavior.
So when you have the concept of a selfish Dawkins gene in your head, all the concepts that come with the understanding of ‘selfish’ are there operating as well. Because of this we move the gene into a different language game unwittingly, e.g.; behavior x is rational because genes are selfish, and x is a selfish behavior. We might justify one person eating another person if they were both starving to death on an island by deferring to the fact that genes are selfish.
The point is, if behavior x is rational, it isn’t because genes are selfish. So this pathetic fallacy lends unwarranted support to conclusions that are made in favor of moral prejudices. Racialism, in fact, begins at the premise that the genes reproductive power somehow justifies a teleological interpretation of evolution itself… and that therefore a species should want to preserve and maintain their genotype, etc., etc.
Again, if people should want to preserve their genotype, it wouldnt be because nature proves this is the right thing to do or else genes wouldn’t be selfish (circular reasoning). It’s neither selfish or not selfish… see what I mean?
Women are in need so much money because they have excessive attachments and have a need for drugs and decadence, indeed the man who gets high is a feminine soul indeed. That being said, the fee is not impossible to get around, as a couple homeless guys sleep with girls every week.
That being said, the fee is not impossible to get around, as a couple homeless guys sleep with girls every week. That being said, that picture more or less disgusts me, as condoms are generally disgusting looking things.
