Sure, some people would shift, though this doesn’t prove much and it’s abstract. It’s not about you for example or me. Put 100 people in random Woods and some will get lost and some will find their way out. We could conclude that there is no skill involved, no core, just atoms in Brownian motion.
I know you think this way. For you there are no degrees of authenticity. When the gay guy with conservative parents finally admits what he has been feeling all along, he has not come closer to doing what he wants, accepting his emotions/desires, etc. It is an existential contraption. Now he has a new one gayness. For you it is a shift, just like any other, completely contingent, as likely to jump back to being straight again. But if like me you had made this one of the core tasks of your Life - the feeling into myself, noticing the effects of memes on my emotions, feel of myself, feel of unity, you would notice that like entropy there is in fact a direction. There are changes towards what is more stable because it fits my nature. For you there is no nature, just nurture and shifting mental, word based beliefs and contents. But smashing a glass is very hard to undo. Due to entropy, some states are more stable. Similarly some ways of being in the world suit us better, individually and even at the species level. Certain kinds of self-relation are less jumbled, split, self-suppressing…and I could give a long list of other metaphors and words that elicit for those who make this a priority or through circumstance are thrust through these states. This does not mean they are morally better. To Think that if you are not perfect, you should physically punish yourself is nto something I would argue is objectively immoral. But it is damaging for the organism. For me there are qualitative differences between states - unified in a spectrum to shattered/fragmented - and one can come closer to what one is, even if some things will change or can. Just like most people who come out as gay do not go back, especially if they were in environments where this transition brought up a lot of fear, there are facets of being in the world that feel much more natural to me, they fit me. I stop pretending, for example, that I am so nice, and realize where my anger was actually going. That persona that I myself believed was not very real. I may use it now, but I am no longer fooled. I can feel into a way of interacting with others and self-relating and notice what feels more unified. For you this is just Another existential contraption and that is because you see change as via verbal mental interactions and identity as thought content. Sure, experiences change you, but you do not Think you have the ability to test what memes are doing to you. You do not Think you can throw off ideas and/or will only do this when they are proven objectively wrong.
I’ll get a meme off my back if it feels bad over a long time. If I cannot come to some agreement with myself, and must for some reason be split and self-hating, how the hell would I help anyone outside of me? Oxygen mask on me first. And since I do not Believe in objective morals, worrying about them does not help me and has no attraction.
I can feel what is more the core me. You will likely say this is abstract and cannot be done or is Another existential abstraction, blah, blah. But it is actually Concrete and lived.
Perhaps you will think that, OK, gayness, but it’s likely hardwired, and even there some will switch to be trendy - which is why I mentioned a context where one is really motivated not to explore. But I find there is a lot that is temperment, and separated twins studies support this. There are activities and interests that suit us. There are ways of being int he world that feel right. And these will tend to find expression in how we act, what hobbies we choose. What kind of mates we seek and much much more. What we are told we should be like, pressures from family and culture and trends can suppress, turn us against ourselves. And it may not be easy to sort that out, and many are afraid to try and never do.
Further some things this is not individual. There are things our bodies, you could say, prefer and feel healthier doing. The huge rise in cortisol levels should let us know that culture is, by choice, moving in directions that do not suit us.
For you even if I am right, there is no way to know what suits me or us better.
We can only evaluate memes with verbal tool memes.
For me the memes you use to prioritize you activities are very abstract. They leave you out. They are seeking as a cipher. Again, might be just peachy for you and might even be objectively moral for all I know.
I think the reason you cannot grasp this is because you build your identity and hope around what is or might be objective. I ask you if something is working for you and I hear about the world. Like here below…
It doesn’t matter, certainly not to me.
For you there is just this flitting self. And for the Buddhists also. Nothing more real than anything else. Just transient forms.
Maybe it is true for you, but for me: NO there are changes that are towards a more grounded less split me and I can fallibly but clearly move towards a way of being that is less split and feel more correct and from which my organism thrives.
This doesn’t mean I know what yours is.
Some shifts like the move from trying to be attracted to women, while one is trying to be even believing one is straight, to accepting one’s actual desires and allowing the movement towards men are really rather obvious. Startling different experiences of sex and romantic love, I would guess, as a straight guy. A clear sense, now I have moved closer to myself.
A dramatic example. But there are so many other less dramatic examples that one can go through, that are also clearly grounded in the organism. And since most belief systems out there, for example, have built in self-hate as moral (not that they Word it this way), the Changes can be just as dramatic, though often harder for others to understand. Who still Think [i]that ain’t self-hate that’s just common sense, those emotions are bad.
[/i]Just because something is sometimes, often or even usually hard to track, does not mean it is not real. And there are skills involved here. Some people have worked hard on this and some have not, and that makes a difference. I can’t make out precancerous tissue on an MRI image, but some people can.
Most people confuse the contents of their thoughts with themselves or in your case with a mere ‘I’. They identify with the content. You see the content as infinitely flexible. But that is where you both look for identity. And that text based mental, just one portion of frontal lobe activity is the most culturally affected, most easily manipulated portion of the self. You look there, hope to find something there that gets you from the hole - and while you are more alone in relation to this than objectivists, they look in the same place for change or not to change, for the I or ‘I’
I think that his not where the I is. And I think focusing there is to flutter or be always on the defensive of an I one wants to defend.
I know doing anything else is of no interest to you. But if you want to know why I am less fractured than you, it is because of how we have focused differently and what you have focusing on gives you NO GROUND to evaluate. You could be gay in a month, dislike nature or start liking being out in it, suddenly feel drawn to X, and repulsed by Y, be conservative next week, be an objectivist in a year, feel best in Latin culture…and so on.
I have no answer to your objective morals quest. But you are confused about how fluid it all is and it is no coincidence you leave nature off your list of factors in dasein and only have nurture.
Not quite, you are using show me the money nihilists as a perjorative term. You are ranking them. Distinguishing them from other possible nihilists. Ones like you for example. You rank depending on several factors, objectivism, nihilism, moderation vs might makes right, domination vs compassionate community focus and given that you are still an ‘I’ with lefty urges, this too affects your ranking. Objectivists who tend towards moderation rank higher than those who use might, etc. You haven’t sat down and made a nicely number ranking list, but I can easily put them in some kind of order with some rankings being utterly clear. And yes, I know you cannot be sure how you will rank tomorrow or how contingent all this is, but you rank.
Oh, I know some things you have more trouble ranking than others. That doesn’t mean you don’t rank.
I know. I do not think anything will change you now. Not the objectivists and not nihilists. What could you possibly find in yourself to trust. Not your intellect, not your emotions, all changes int he self are merely contingent and your goal seems to be solving all the worlds interpersonal problems that are based on values. I do not think a change is possible with that demand or need as the criterion for what you would trust to make a change. Don’t mean your wrong, objectively or subjectively. But of course what I say does not make ‘that’ go away.
Something always strikes me as odd. Beyond that I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what your motivation is or your intention, however you are distinguishing those terms.
Maybe that’s a better assessment of your mind than mine. You just ranked us by the way…
Meanwhile I am more willing…
You, right here , ranking us. It’s implicit ranking, yes. Often you rank openly and the pejorative is clear. Here it is implied. And notice the contradiction between the act and what you are saying about yourself. Yes, yes. I know, you can now tell me that you know you might be wrong. But you rank and you ranked us.
Can you not see how this is an assessment?
I pointed out something that is not psychobabble. It is a conclusion one can deduce based on your ideas of the contingency of your beliefs and also your judgments of objectivism.
Psychobabble deals with your dad or your inferiority complex etc., not the beliefs you are putting down on the page and conclusions one could draw from them. My deduction may be faulty but it wasn’t about your personality.
No, that’s not the only way. I tried to point out contradictions between your goals and what you think of people who you think are the only ones who can help you, how you rank them in relation to you and where you see the damage coming from in the world.
It was not effective. I see that. And a better word would have been self-contradictory.
Your first reaction to my saying that you rank was to say you didn’t. That you used nihilist sometimes as pejorative. Now you are saying that it is inevitable that one ranks.
I can only try to point out these contradictions and see if you can go into the cognitive dissonance long enough to see what might be going on that you don’t want to notice.
Good.
I’m off. It’s been interesting. I’ve gotten something from it, a bit like, perhaps, arguing with Derrida about whether we are having an argument and him getting angry because clearly we are not because neither of us exists. Which hopefully doesn’t come off mocking. It’s a discussion I would have liked to have had with Derrida. And he too saw text as primary.
And while I love Don Quixote, I don’t want to be him. I accept that I am encountering a transient form here.
But I am not the right interlocutor for your goals. So the discussion will always be skewed. It’s your thread, you have a really rather clear goal. Good luck.