I have . . .
but I also think ‘evolutionary’ works at bigger scales than this here on earth
True, but when most folks use the word evolution they are referring to the evolution of life on earth. Yet this is but an infinitesimally tiny speck in the evolution of the universe itself.
And what if the universe is but a speck in the evolution of something even more unimaginably gigantic still?
Fanflamingtastic, that’s what I say.
Can you spot me anywhere? .
.
Why do the young live? Why does anyone live? Tell me!
You don’t know?
What’s the use of your damn books…
(Would your response be to die to the fullest?)
I believe that you misunderstood what Zorba’s real question was. If death means non-existence, then why exist at all? Everything you know, everything you learned, all your memories, who you are, what you are, is going to cease to exist when you die. Nothing will be left of you but your corpse and even that is not permanent before it turns into dust. So what is the point of living if you are going to lose it all in the end anyway? In other words, why does anyone die is really asking why does anyone live if they are going to die? What is the point of life when we are all going to die anyway regardless of the cause of death? This is the real question that causes a lot of people agony.
Basically, it’s the same thing.
In other words, a question in which there are many, many completely conflicting and contradictory answers. No one answer is really any more reasonable than any other. But, as always, we can easily convince ourselves this is not the case at all. We can choose one answer and believe it is more reasonable than all of the others. And then, for us, it is.
a woman gave me the “zorba the Greek” book
a wise friend said “she restored your faith in living”
Wow, this thread takes me back.
Back then I, among others, used to post a lot of “new topics” in the philosophy forum. And that is because back then there were considerably more folks who actually chose to exchange philosophy at ILP. However we might have construed what that entailed.
Now, of course, the place is veritably overrun with the Kids and the huffers and the puffers and the retorters. And the bullshitters.
But thanks for the memories. 
iambiguous,
Is there a reason for that - an answer?
Perhaps the Second Law of Thermodynamics explains it. Entropy.
Sure, most of us will have an opinion about it. But to pin down the reason, the answer…
The difficulty for me has been that over and again many venues in which folks broached philosophy in a more or less substantive manner have gone defunct: some of the old yahoo groups, the Ponderer’s Guild, ephilosopher etc.
And then there are sites like Philosophy Forums – forums.philosophyforums.com/ – venues where the sort of Kidstuff antics that go on here is simply not tolerated; but they go too far in the other direction: banning [for life] posters like me.
Or maybe we just live in a wholly determined universe. Which gets us all off the hook.
Iambiguous,
Aside from what I previously said, let’s not go and throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Sure, there are a lot or mundane threads and posts in here; for instance, talk of breakfast, lunch and dinner. It seems that all over the internet, people are fascinated with food, what they eat and what others eat. Perhaps those tidbits are simply mini vacations from the mind.
Let’s not forget too that we are social creatures and ilp is in some respects a social forum. Can someone talk philosophy all of the time without at some point becoming a bit unbalanced and feeling like something is “missing”?
I myself am guilty of some 
or more than just some of those mundane threads.
BUT then again, there ARE also some fine philosophical discussions going on in here - intelligent questioning threads…although many are replications of others but still they are resurrected/replicated.
Just how many original ideas/thoughts can come through the human mind.
Remember the past and the philosophers who were here then - some of whom may still be here though undercover - like Tab, Sawelios (sp) Three Times Great, Amor Fati, Faust, Oughtist, Wonderer, Fabiano, just to name a few.
ILP’s landscape has more than changed but it’s still there.
But I do think that there ought to be more quality than quantity.
Life goes on and it changes - it flows and it ebbs - just as the sea does.
But I still think that philosophy is alive and well - sometimes it just needs a kick in the pants.
Entrophy I think.
It’s difficult to find a balance - how much to allow, how much to lose.
There is just no black or white in these things.
I can’t recall the name of the philosophy forum - in that forum you were not even allowed to misspell a word. You couldn’t even give a hint of an insult, et cetera.
I didn’t think that way even when i believed in a personal god or any other god.
I would hate to think that arc who intuits herself to be a pretty autonomous being, or at least strives for the most part to BE one, despite her somewhat and sometimes set patterns and unconscious leanings and behaviors, which she strives to be aware of, is a puppet.
If what you say above is even true on some level, why would it get us off the hook?
Then we would simply have to strive to re-create our lives and universe in self-determined ways. …tumble that determined universe on its derriere. …which when you think about it, doesn’t history already show that we are doing just that?
Down with the Puppeteer God[s] - Carpe Diem! 
Seriously though.
All of this is, among other things, hopelessly subjective.
In other words, we take out of ILP that which we first put into it: “I”. But ILP as it existed when this thread was created is [in my opinion] a very different place. And not for the better.
On the other hand, I don’t pretend that is anything other than a subjunctive prejudice on my part. Rooted in dasein. Rooted in conflicting goods.
I became a member by and large in order to discuss the philosophical implications embedded existentially in the relationship between identity, value judgments and political economy: How ought one to live?
But I joined only because Postmodern Beatnik “banned me for life” from Philosophy Forums. And at one point [with folks like moreno, von rivers, faust etc.] there were plenty of rather sophisticated exchanges here. And I still engage in much the same sort of thing with folks like gib.
But, come on, tell me that the threads overall here haven’t tipped [plunged] considerably in the other direction. However difficult that might be to actually pin down.
After all, talking about philosophy “all the time” is a far, far, far cry from the Kids pumping up the volume here and now.
Of course, my own frame of mind these days revolves as much around waiting for godot as anything else. You know, whatever that means.
I agree. But how else to explain the fact that so many folks with minds more in sync with what is generally construed to be “a serious exchange of philosophy”, have left?
Or, sure, maybe they left because the manner in which I critique “serious philosophy” myself was rubbing them the wrong way.
Entropy, however, connotes as mechanical for some. Like it’s all just built into the way things work so don’t fret it.
But these things are also rooted in “the times”. The extent to which at any particular historical, cultural and experiential juncture, things like philosophy either are or are not deemed to be valuable pursuits. And in the age of pop culture, mindless consumption and the worship of all things celebrity [culminating now in Trumpworld], does philosophy really stand a chance?
On the other hand: For better or for worse. There’s always that debate.
Here’s the thing though: However folks like you and I think about these things “here and now”, we have no real capacity to ascertain for certain what is actually true “objectively”. And we are almost certainly going to the grave utterly oblivious to the “ontological” and “teleological” nature of “existence” and “human reality”.
But things get even trickier because if someone is convinced [here and now] that the manner in which they think about these things is in fact the objective truth – think James and his RM/AO TOE – then for them it is true objectively. And they may well succeed in taking it with them all the way to the grave.
How can you hold anyone responsible for what they think and feel and say and do if what they think and feel and say and do is only ever as they could have thought and felt and said and done?
Without some level of autonomy, “I” becomes just one more mechanism – domino – embedded cosmologically in the immutable laws of matter. Or so it seems to me.
In other words, when some do suggest…
…I am unable to grasp what in the world this can possibly mean [for all practical purposes] out in a world that unfolds only as it ever could have unfolded.
I haven’t forgotten about this.
Ryan is gay as a kite.
Arc, you need to drive your gaydar into a repair shop in 0100 hours.
Also, this is the wrong thread. Mods, move my comment to the thread where Arc says Ryan Gosling is not gay.
Hopefully then we can draw others into the exchange.
It seems to me that everyone is gay to you, Trixie.
I don’t have to do what you suggest either. My focus doesn’t lie within that.
“iambiguous”
True. We all think with different minds, do we not, based on our own life experiences? How can we move away from that? Things are not so clear cut, are they? We aren’t speaking of bare facts here. We’re speaking of how we as individuals view things.
But why does that have to be so hopeless unless you cannot live with questions without answers.
We can probably take more out of it than we ourselves actually put into it at times.
As for your last statement, I can agree with you. I can see your point. I’ve been here since 2008 I think.
Things don’t ever stay the same, do they?
Hmmm…I’ve never quite understood that saying: “The more things change, the more they stay the same”. Is that true?
Anything other then? Are you minimizing your feelings? Don’t we have a right to be disappointed in the way things have worked out?
Do you see the question: “How ought one to live” as one of those questions without answers?
I don’t know what Postmodern Beatnik is. But why were you banned for life? Kind of drastic, I think.
At least you still have gib here.
Sure, when I compare them to the threads of the past. But then what do you want to do about it?
All you can do try to do is to tip the scales in the other direction. Keep writing what you write. You do realize don’t you that others are also somewhat ridiculed for their kind of thinking?
What do you mean by “pumping up the volume” - some of the absurd threads and posts?
Did the greatest philosophers talk philosophy all of the time?
…
Can’t say for sure. People’s lives change. I realize that some of these “folks” have moved on because they were interested in more heavy real philosophical talk. Some have moved on and created their own forums.
We don’t all feel the same when it comes to “How ought one live his/her life” and the answer to that question can change depending on what direction one’s life goes and how their perspectives change.
Right there, doesn’t that kind of show that there is no “ought”?
So what are you saying here? That you are solely responsible for this exodus? lol
Even if that were the case, what would that say about those who left? Not that I believe that that is the case.
There are personal reasons why people leave. Some are psychological, some are about ego, some are about politics and the way in which a place is run…ad continuum.
Isn’t that true though in a sense? That doesn’t mean that we can’t find ways to fight that entropy.
For instance, if we have no energy? What to do? Defy that and get out and run - struggle and transcend. Energy begets energy.
So I do think that it is true in a sense, being mechanical, but we are also self-determined creatures.
We don’t need to make excuses for ourselves.
That’s right. It’s about facing certain realities, right, and realizing that not all people feel the same about things. We are not the Borg.
I’m not a philosopher per se but I love philosophy.
I think that philosophy continues to stand a chance as long as there are people who love it and who remain focused on questions such as “How ought one to live” and all of the other difficult questions. Let’s not forget about all of the books which are being written on philosophy.
.
Speaking in the realm in which there are no real proven facts, this is true.
But I remember that Carl Jung has said that truth is founded (?) within the concert of many voices. But I suppose that that can also be turned on its head and used as a means of destruction.
What I mean is that we can probably say that this is true and that is true (but cannot prove) based on many voices, many individuals, seeing and experiencing the same kind of subjective truth which others have. A common existential experience. If that made sense. I may not have expressed it well.
It may seem like a stupid question but does there only have to be a one-size-fits-all insofar as each individual’s life and purpose goes?
Aren’t we biting off more than we can chew when we put this into such a panoramic landscape as opposed to an individual’s little existential journey and the personal and meaningful questions which crop up through that person’s human experience?
Can we find some answers within the inter-connectedness of others with similar psychic experiences and those which are dissimilar?
Anyway, I often question and reflect on my own existence and reason for being and how determined and not I am…how much of a purpose I have and if I truly have one outside of the one which I’ve created for myself, et cetera.
Can we really determine whether or not there are “real” concrete answers for this? If there are, does this also make me more pre-determined or less pre-determined, if that even enters into the equation.
We may not find all the answers but I kind of think that diving into this human experience is all that we can do.
I don’t know how much of any of that made sense to you. lol
According to law, isn’t this premise something which would first have to proven?
But what if we decided to change your perspective and to see something else as being possible? Not so much of a pre-determined world but one in which the folds of that universe become more open and all-embracing of something New?
Could that alone be the beginning of a world changing? Could that “seeing” differently cause the world to unfold in an entirely different way, a far less determined one - giving us the power to transform it?
Seeing can work in both directions you know. How little we know.
Clearly, there are any number of things that, over the centuries, we have managed successfully to communicate to each other.
I mean, just look around. Are there not countless interactions [relationships] that we have demonstrated to be true for all of us? Obviously. After all, how on earth would we have managed to create the many, many extraordinary facets of our collective civilizations if there was not a common overlapping empirical reality “out in the world” able to be grasped objectively “in our heads”
By, among others, mathematicians and scientists.
The world of either/or.
But what of the world of is/ought? How many questions here are there without answers? Objective answers applicable to all.
And what of the questions that probe the very Reality of Existence itself. The very Existence of Reality itself. Questions like these: youtu.be/lnIlHQLAiTA
Bare facts are, of course, everywhere. But what are the bare facts when our behaviors come to clash over conflicted value judgments? How are answers derived here without taking into account the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy?
That’s the question I always probe here: How ought one to live?
Yes, another question that precipitates conflicting answers. But, from my perspective, “I” is everywhere here. There are fundamental components of human interaction [rooted in nature] that more or less stay the same. But: What exactly are they?
Well, aside from the obvious: the need to subsist, to sustain one’s existence itself. The part that swirls around our biological imperatives: food, water, clothing, shelter, reproduction, defense.
I’m situating my emotional reactions here in “I”, in dasein. We come into the world biologically hard wired able to be disappointed in the way particular things have worked out. But what of those who are not disappointed at all? What of those who embrace the changes here? What of those who helped to bring them about?
Is there a way then to calculate how much one ought to be disappointed by any particular change? Is there a way to calculate whether one ought to be disappointed by a particular change?
“I” don’t think so. But suppose there is? All I can do then is to come into venues like this and probe the arguments of those who have in fact come to a different conclusion.
Yep. And it’s right up there near the top. But there is a clear distinction to be made here between ought as it relates to behaviors that one needs to choose in order to accomplish some task, and ought as it relates to an examination of the task itself as either “good” or “bad”, “rational” or “irrational”, “moral” or “immoral”.
This guy:
forums.philosophyforums.com/memb … 12267.html
I was called a “troll” by him there for posting the same sort of stuff that I do here.
I suspect however that any number of folks there were becoming increasingly more perturbed by the same sort of thing that any number of “serious philosophers” here are perturbed by: my insistence that, with respect to the question “how ought one to live”, philosophy be brought “down to earth”.
You come into ILP and note that 90% of the new posts are from the same poster. And almost all of them are basically retorts, bullshitting, personal attacks and/or spam.
Unless of course I’m wrong. This is, after all, a subjective reaction.
No, but when they did choose to engage in a task or in an activity that revolved around the subject of philosophy, I would imagine that is mostly what they did.
And choosing to come into a venue called “I Love Philosophy” strikes me as qualifying in that same sense.
I can only note my own experiences in places like this over the years. Some folks think about philosophy in a way that brings them closer to the manner in which Will Durant described “the epistemologists”.
And the more effective I am in my attempts to bring discussions relating to identity, value judgments and political economy down out of the scholastic clouds, the more some will head in the other direction.
In fact I can recall my own reaction to the folks that accomplished the same thing with me. You never look at philosophy in quite the same way again.
The point though [mine] is that we will go to the grave never really knowing one way or the other. Or we can go to the grave thinking that what we do know “in our head” here and now is in fact what is true.
I suppose that questions of this sort are going to revolve by and large around just how close we are “here and now” to the abyss. We can probe the answer more “philosophically” when death still appears to be “down the road”. The closer we are to oblivion, however, the more preoccupied we become with the fact of it.
And, in particular, when we are atheists.
I certainly do agree that…
But: first and foremost that has to actually be an option. And each of us as individuals are going to be embedded in a particular context [set of circumstances] in which existentially we will be more or less optimistic about it from day to day to day.
But isn’t that the paradox and/or the conundrum? If everything that we think and feel and do is only as it every could have been, wouldn’t any attempt to prove that this is true merely be subsumed as well in the immutable laws of matter unfolding only as matter can unfold.
I will be the first to admit however that I am not thinking this all through correctly. But those who claim that they are will have to convince me of this. And how exactly would they go about doing that if this too is subsumed in whatever reality/existence can only have ever been?
Again, I am not really able to connect the dots here between these particular worlds and the world that I live in. Or, rather, the world that I think I live in.
How – empirically, phenomenally – could this be demonstrated?
I’m working on it. 