what doesnt kill you makes you wiser, not stronger?

Strength is one of the most minor qualities when compared to virtue.
I’d rather have 1 kind weak person than 10 strong bad people.
Strength directly equates to destruction when in the wrong hands.
Also, strength is generally not that strong. So what if someone can lift 100 pounds? Look how many pounds the sun and earth are. 100 pounds is nothing, and will remain nothing forever.

Obe. Sure, well I understand its your culture which naturally I don’t have a problem with, however…!

your nation was built that way for sure, but how much is it really like it now?

More to the point at hand; ‘the act becomes real’ ~ is that really true? I have believed in it somewhat for as long as I can remember. Yet isn’t it key to what and who we are as humans, that it isnt true, that from birth we act like how we think to, and we even think in a manner of an act. We are subjective [because spiritual] beings, and cannot [?] become our roles, not entirely, how can we if we are our own puppets and all we do is mimic how we assume the world wants us to act!

Every thought is an act, we read things >then< act accordingly. All we really got going on in here is that, the rest is brain function i.e. not who we truly are. We constantly watch thoughts go by in our heads, always the observer, always the actor, never the reality.

In a sense that is our greatest freedom. Albeit mostly delusion build upon the foundation of illusion.

Yes we cannot become as the results of our actions entirely, but, at times the situation, the context within which your perspective of what you have previously thought as absolute truth, adapts to changes. The defense of the truths with which You have been brought up, if they involve others whose safety and security appears to them as consequential to those beliefs, become an absolute constraint of adapting them.

Your thoughts and actions will work in concert, adapting each other to truths which may at this point become less then self evident. The heart and the head in pursuit of these ‘truths’ have to deal a game , like the prisoners’ dilemma, a seeking for truth which has become more of a pragmatic co-ordination then the upholding of immutable ideals.

Your conscience dictates, rationalizes, bargains, and prays, that minimum damage will be sustained either way. At times it’s Your thoughts which predicate, by initiating the right course of action, other times, instinctive, almost thoughtless action has to occur, in absence of any appreciable time to think about what options are available. You just have to follow Your best conscience in a case like that, You have to follow the intelligence of your heart.

I think you are missing a few points concerning owning guns, being a god, and winning, but why did you address all of that to me?

blog deleted.

Strong = good, weak = bad. That’s just ressentiment talking in your post.

It’s true, but only for the strong i.e. if you have that kind of body which can take a lot of damage and end up profiting from it.

Strength is not merely a physical attribute.

Does anyone really grow up? If so, when does it happen?

From what I’ve been able to surmise from talking to people and observing the world, nobody ever really grows up. The things we do change, we go through the motions of being “grown up”. We buy houses, we pay bills, we have and take care of children (if that’s your thing), but mentally…I dunno. Don’t see it.

Do you remember, when you were a child, how you took for granted that the adults around you knew what they were doing and had all the answers? Yeah…when is that supposed to kick in?

Is there anything beyond physics?

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stranger.” - LaughingMan

"If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build’em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!"

  • Rudyard Kipling

That’s really good.

I don’t think you understood what I meant by ‘growing up’.
I should have laid it on thicker.

I mean “adapt to the way things go.”

Part of the definition of a philosopher is that he does not, can not adapt, he has to invent a new way or die.

I knew early on that there were a lot of answers they didn’t have. A lot of questions they didn’t ask.
I’m still waiting for the idea to kick in that there is anyone who has a clue about anything at all.

Can you give me the physical definition of your verbal intelligence?

magnus

perhaps you could define what being strong is?

  • once achieved, could any man take on a lion or a bear without using weapons. how ever strong you are, some weakling can just as easily put a bullet in your brain.

i expect that [certainly in my experience] intellectuals dont majoritively carry guns, not go around acting the tough guy nor cause trouble. …but big tough guys do!

so in short, the ‘strong’ are just the pain in the arse idiots who cause all the trouble in the world.

what good does being a winner or being strong actually do?

wouldnt the world be a better place if people didnt act like that?

I think that would depend on the individual, don’t you?
What doesn’t kill us also has the capacity to make us much more vulnerable than even before - can leave us at the mercy of life at its worse.
What doesn’t kill us can rob us of our desire to be wise - or to see wisdom in most things.

But I wonder if we are already born, certain individuals, with enough resilience to overcome and to transcend what doesn’t kill us? Perhaps as human beings, we are made like all elastic bands, made differently. Some of us can be stretched more without breaking and others, have less resilience in their stretchability. :laughing:

Does it come down to Will or to Resilence? If any of that made sense.

Hi arc,

people seem to use the saying as if to say there is some kind of strength to be gained by successive attacks ~ or resilience to such things. Also it seams more of a justification to be assholes to others, to justify egotism and bullying. I am all for people standing up for themselves, but that’s not the same thing.

I agree there is only so far anyone can be stretched no matter how tough they think they are. indeed it seems as though the culture embodied by such sayings, is stating that we just keep getting stronger and stronger every time we are attacked. In fact we can run through whole armies of people with machine guns, and because we are tough-guys the bullets just bounce off of us. :astonished: :stuck_out_tongue:

  • good point about the elastic.

We have many forms through which we can be strong.

Take sight away from a person.

Their hearing will likely become stronger.

Yet, overall, are they stronger or weaker?

Perhaps being blind broke them psychologically, or, perhaps it initiated a journey of self discovery and well being.

I’d say, if it doesn’t kill you, it has the potential to make you stronger.

I always look at the saying from the POV of one who is wants to make the best out of adverse circumstances.

a certain amount of times, I agree not getting killed will make one stronger. yet we are humans not bears or lions, even the strongest people get broken down by successive misfortune, or even a single terrible instance.

this get on my nerves because people expect too much, they say ‘oh its just psycholigical’ but no, nothing is just that. when things break you down in life [and they do that to everyone] that’s real physical neurons which correlate with every cell in the body, which in turn produce hormonal reactions and the brain produces chemicals accordingly. this is all real shit not some pretend philosophy written by an idiot.

Being able to overcome a resistance? I think it’s pretty obvious what it means to be strong. Either you push against something or the thing pushes against you.

They cause trouble only if you are weak.

The world would be a better place if you were a stronger person who could win against those big tough guys. Certainly, that’s what you desire! But without deifying strength you will never achieve such a thing. On the contrary!

(actually, that’s not really true! you can destroy them through weakness i.e. hypocrisy, but that’s a story for another time.)