Being great enough to pervade All, imagination should not be inhibited with truths and realities.
Laughter releases the chains of mind.
Nothing is outside the mind.
Self is the vessel of All and thus hidden in it.
Excellent!
Spartan philosophizing.
Lakonizein estin philosophein.
Manly, authoritarian brevity.
None of that Athenian, womanly, verbosity.
yeah he’s a pretty deep dude. when i read his stuff it takes me back twenty years to reading will durant’s ‘the story of philosophy’'. durant would run a quote from some greek philosopher like every other paragraph, and it might take me a week to get though a single page. all i could do was sit in awe at such mysteriously profound and poetic language.
man those were the days. i hadn’t even known of the analytical schools back then. in a way i regret having found them because i can’t feel deep anymore, ya know? it’s like a whole region in my brain has been power-washed and turned from an amorphous mush into stainless steel.
Yeah…but that’s because you are better and can do everything better than everyone else…except the icons and idols you never question, or show any skepticism towards.
I want to be like you, when I get myself into jail - because of my good judgment calls - and then out of it - 'cause of those damn police and judges.
I’ll be innocent…like everyone else in the pen.
that’s actually not a bad thing to aspire toward; being betrayed by your government, wrongfully imprisoned, constitutional rights violated, and stigmatized for the rest of your life. but on one condition; you have to be prepared to step out of the philosophical twilight zone and become engaged with real problems, not theoretical problems (part linguistic nonsense, part irrelevant) you invent in your head to feel as if you are fighting a real war. what i mean is, you have to be sure you want to become a real spartan rather than just imagining yourself to be one at war with the monsters in your head.
if you are prepared to make this sacrifice, you will experience both great and terrible things. with the ascent to such heights everything and everyone you previously found important will suddenly become ordinary and of little interest. with this comes both self empowerment and estrangement, and many will resent and envy you because of your uniqueness.
now of course you wouldn’t purposely go out, commit a crime, and hope you get charged and convicted of something you didn’t do. nobody does that. i mean, c’mon. at best you can only hope that the future has that in store for you. this kind of stuff finds you… you don’t find it… you don’t go looking for it. the fates pick who they smile upon.
You mean I have a choice?
Isn’t it all out of my hands?
Hasn’t it been determined?
I just hope I will be like you…better at everything except staying out of jail and enjoying the consequences.
Correction…you “intentionally” went to jail…so you are even better at that.
It’s a matter of perspective, and the power of the nil.
I’m not a Spartan.
I’m outis.
Haven’t I introduced myself?
well you can’t choose to avoid something it is reasonable to assume wouldn’t happen. no let me rephrase that, because that’s not entirely true; you could choose to avoid getting hit by a stray bullet you wouldn’t expect to come whizzing at you when you walk out the front door… but who does that? we usually place responsibility on people when they are competent of the possible consequences they would normally expect to happen when they commit an act. if you got hit by that stray bullet, we’d probably not blame you and say ‘dumbass. you shouldn’t have walked out the front door.’ in the same way, we’d probably not blame the guy who commits and expects to be charged with cime x, for being charged with crime y instead. that is, his expectation isn’t unlike the guy walking out the front door. it’s more reasonable to assume you wouldn’t get hit by a stray bullet… just like it’s more reasonable to believe you’d be charged with a crime you did commit.
the neat thing about all this is that whether or not freewill exists is irrelevant. ‘holding responsible’ never included a metaphysical demonstration of an act of freewill… only a conventional expectation to share the language involved in discourse about responsibility… the conventional behaviors associated with this discourse. when we say ‘you are guilty’, we can’t mean ‘you are the cause of your actions’, because that’s simply not true… because there is no freewill. so it must mean something else, and that meaning must have become useful to social beings or else it wouldn’t have persisted for so long. in this case we have a very strange kind of illusory notion that still has some pragmatic value in regulating and organizing social discourse. and there are many such illusory notions that still operate today, long after philosophers have disposed of them.
so no yeah. you always have a ‘choice’… which is the mental phenomena preceding a voluntary motion toward what you perceive as a possible outcome. but that choice isn’t a ‘cause’. mental events can’t cause physical events. they are epiphenomena. rather what we do is, post hoc, match mental events up with physical events and explain them in terms of a causal relationship. we do this because without a conception of a ‘self’, we are unable to make promises, to have expectations, to make commitments… all necessary to be social animals.
the good news is, a world void of the illusory concept of freewill wouldn’t be much different in practical terms. really only two things would result; greater attention to external environments (the complex of causes), and less resentment. but ‘the behavior of being responsible’ wouldn’t look any different. only, the language would significantly change regarding the nature of it. we would talk about human action differently… but we wouldn’t observe different human behavior. remember, you’d notice no ostensible difference in a species that believed in freewill and a species that didn’t. the problem of freewill is linguistic, not conceptual. the concept of freewill isn’t possible in any conceivable universe… and so can’t be a real problem. more like a confused emotional defense mechanism that we’ve evolved to utilize in controlling other’s behavior. imposing guilt and shame is an extremely powerful modifier.
You are destroying the thread with your verbosity.
It’s aphoristic.
At least respect the author.
Sheesh…
oh shit… my bad.
um…
in all, mind is in one, and not of mind, in all, is one many, but one, in mind.
If it’s in my stars to shine, I’ll shine.
Be strong, do not succumb to thy creation, but encompass it,
be affirmative in thy actions, do not divide nor multiply,
be as Thou art, praise Thy being, love Thy Self.
Love is blind; it can be blinding.
To know yourself, you must see yourself as you truly are, and still accept it.
strong, to mine creation i will not succumb, but encompassing shall i be. dividing and multiplying not shall mine actions be affirmative, as what i art, will i be in praise and with love.
True or untrue love is binding, reminding of a passionate succumbing.
Will I be mine or will mine will be.
A less stern Stirner, sterner light, ego-stroking in public sight, substituting wooden crates for metal bars, to reveal its scars, as if they no longer ached - baked under the sun, the fatherless son, of none, other than a god that’s gone.
Existence is joy,
it manifests in the fragrance of flowers
and in the tremors of the earth,
in the songs of the birds
and in the dance of atoms.
It sprouts in trees
and rises with mountains,
it swells in the ocean
and vibrates in the light.
And the shadows of the night
the howling of the storm
and the silence of the dead
are to intensify joy through contrasts
in order for the weak to get their fair share of it.
All of this stuff from watcher seems really mystical and esoteric. He/she must be connected to a side of reality that is obvious and transparent to him/her, whereas we struggle in the illusions and deceptions of the senses, unable to penetrate his/her inner world.