The Reasonable Standard

Arc, don’t hate on my white male privilege. It’s not my fault. I can’t help it, nor can I help it that I happen to be good at life and able to be happy. If I were to shed a tear for every injustice in the world, I wouldn’t have time to enjoy myself. Magnus is a young, ideological guy who’s gotten himself a little vocabulary and has read a few books that all told him the same thing. He’ll grow out of it. Don’t worry.

Sure, there are still many gaps between that which science has learned [so far] about the world we live and interact in, and all that would need to be known in order to grasp the very nature of human Reality/Existence itself.

And, in that respect, mathematics, the laws of nature and the logical rules of language may well be just three more illusory houses of cards.

I would never deny that.

But then what would any scientist really have to say if he or she were told that a “reasonable standard” is embodied in this:

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

How, in using the scientific method, would they go about testing it? What sort of experiments could be conducted to confirm it? Which particular predictions might be made regarding which particular life that was deemed to be either “good” or “bad”? And how would they go about replicating results such that, in fact, some were shown to be “powerful enough to handle it” while others were not?

Similarly, how would philosophers, using the tools at their disposal, go about resolving this?

My point however has always revolved around noting that which our five senses do observe – observations applicable to all reasonable men and women. And this seems to be encompassed re the “rational standards” embedded in mathematics, the laws of nature and the logical rules of language.

As opposed to examining Mr. Reasonable’s life and determining [scientifically, philosophically] if in fact it is a “good” life.

Unless of course this is all tongue in cheek. :wink:

In other words, he attacks others only when they wake him up from his dream.

You praise this because you too are a dreamer who does not want to be rudely awaken.

Perpetual dreamers project how they feel when they are rudely awaken onto those who are awake.

The ones who are awake, they think, must be frustrated. They cannot enjoy life.

Only dreamers enjoy life.

I bet you are the first guy to ever leave your village, aren’t you?
It’s great. Just really great.

Go explore.

The world is really great.

Im not in your world though.

You aren’t. You are in a fantasy world. That’s precisely what I am saying.

Who do you think you are kidding with this incessant posturing of yours?

It’s pretty obvious you never say anything of substance. When was the last time you said anything of substance?

You are 100% fake.

Both you, the ass-smoocher, and that zombie, the ass-smooched.

Both of you living in order to run away from your accumulation of unresolved problems that can never be resolved.

The difference lies merely in stability. You call it “consistency”.

Your zombie idol is just a more stable – a more consistent – configuration of life-denying fantasy-affirming pretense.

He’s just a much better dreamer than you are. And you know this. And you admire him for it.

You want to do the same, but you can’t.

Too bad.

You are so fake, I can make you change your opinion about me by simply becoming more friendly to you.

I’ve seen you do this in the past.

I can be friendly to you for a month and then hostile to you for a month. I can keep doing this indefinitely and I am sure that the pattern will never change: each time I am friendly to you, you will say good things about me; each time I am hostile to you, you will say bad things about me.

Your opinions are not a reflection of an honest observation of reality.

Whatever you think, say or do you do in defense against your unresolved problems from the past that can pop up in your mind at any point in time.

Whoever triggers them is evil, whoever helps you deny them is good.

You think someone’s woken me up from my dream? I don’t think you know what it feels like to have thick skin. You could spend your whole life trying to raise my pulse and you’d die just as frustrated as you are now.

This is probably true of so many people that it doesn’t make sense to arbitrarily level is as an insult against just one person.

This is kind of an Archimedean statement. A good example of why this thread exists.

Normal people only talk down on you as you are not a high placed spirit, but I, as youve seen with several posters, tend to compromise myself a bit to see if some mice arent fit to be lions. Usually that is not the case. Erik is the only one that overcame his puny attitude that prevented him from being respectable in my eyes, but then he was already a fighter in real life.

You mistake the internet for easier than the life out your door. But youve been wise enough to seek out people that are above you. This is the only thing Ive ever said about you that is positive. I do not know why you seek me out, but I know that I am good, so I tend to think you have some reason that might make you a valid entity.

And so on. Note that I have never been the first one to address the other in our correspondences, Magnus - there is an iron logic that tells everyone that you need to stop pretending that you dont need something you think I can give you. Power - and I can give it to you. I have. You just need to pick it up.

But then the will to power is only the degree to which we dare to value.

Since we can only react to the manner in which mr reasonable has described the life that he lives here, we can only assume that in fact it is a true and accurate description. He lives a particular life, has accumulated a minimal of frustrations in the act of it, and, insofar as he understand these things “in his head”, it is a “good” life.

This may in fact all be true.

But then this can describe almost anyone. A Nazi, a Communist, a Christian, an atheist, a liberal, a conservative, a masochist, a sadist, a humanist, a sociopath, etc., can all claim this of their own lives.

Right?

How hard can it then be for the serious philosopher to acknowledge that [re each individual] this may well be a reasonable assessment of the facts at hand?

Instead, where things become considerably more problematic is precisely at the social, political and economic junctures in which the life that mr reasonable construes to be “good” come into conflict with the lives of those who construe the behaviors that he chooses to be “bad”.

Then what for the value ontologists? Then what for the serious philosophers? Then what for the moral objectivists?

Then what for those who speak of others as being “spiritually advanced”.

It’s as though to say that as long as you can convince yourself that your own values [and behaviors] are advanced spiritually, that’s as far as you need to go. Let everyone else who chooses values completely at odds with your own embrace the same frame of mind and maybe, if you are lucky, you will never cross paths.

Or, again, am I simply missing the point here?

Existential question (sorry for the ads in between):
Does pussy rhyme to jacuzzi?

If you ask Eminem, then everything rhymes.

That may well be true but how is it related to the OP?

In other words, this being the philosophy forum, I am curious to explore your reaction to the point I raised above with Fixed Cross. How far removed do you suppose I am from understanding the point he makes about you?

Mr Reasonable

#-o I don’t actually see you viewing yourself in that way. But then again, I hardly know you.

Well, I kind of agree with you there. There’s a school of thought which says that some people are just born with a good temperament - more or less happy-go-lucky. Good mix of brain chemistry does that too.

True - this is the thing which I have to learn. I sometimes take too much to heart. Balance is called for BUT at the same time do we want to turn off our hearts to all negative things in the universe?

We, all of us, have to grow out of this and that. What about you, MR?

Again, you will either respond to my points below or you will not. I’m more than willing to allow others to judge for themselves that which you choose to either do or not do.

Hmmm?

Hi MagsJy :evilfun:

Being ironic, eh? :laughing: