duplicate post…
Although my point does bear repeating. 
This is the way that you talk. This how you talk to yourself. This is the narrative that you create.
I don’t talk like this.
When I talk as I usually do, then you are astonished by what I say.
So, no I don’t have an “intertwined trajectory”.
The same goes for “comfort and consolation”. It’s your way of viewing others.
Simply unbelievable!
1] Does someone or does someone not have an opinion about the morality of abortion?
2] Have they or have they not lived a life and had experiences that contributed to that opinion?
3] Have they or have they not encountered information, knowledge and ideas that contributed to that opinion?
4] Is or is not their opinion about the morality of abortion going to be the embodiment of both?
Now, how is this not applicable to you? And how is the manner in which you “talk” about it different from mine? What on earth does that even mean?
Finally, the way I think about the morality of abortion leaves me feeling fractured and fragmented in what “here and now” I have thought myself into believing is an essentially meaningless No God world that will end for “I” in oblivion.
So, how comforting and consoling do you imagine that is?
All I have ever asked of you is to intertwine your own lived experiences with your own access to ideas about morality here and now and immortality there and then by providing us with the equivalent of my own trajectory in the OP here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=194382
Instead, you hem and haw and offer one or another lame excuse for why this is not for you.
Just as I said. 
I have opinions about it.
I don’t write an “intertwined trajectory” narrative around my opinions.
I have no idea. I’m as baffled about the practical aspects of your “fractured and fragmented” state as KT is.
Right. I’m supposed to write about it exactly as you expect. If I write differently, then it’s “general”, “abstract” and “we’ll need a context, of course”. Or it’s “huh?” and “what on earth does it mean?”.
Ironically, when I wrote about contexts, it was still not up to your expectations.
Then we’re stuck.
We have different expectations rooted in different ways of thinking about human morality and immortality: given human interactions in either a God or a No God world.
Or whatever the equivalent of God is for Buddhists.
Of course, you could change your expectations.
I’ll let you know. And I’m counting on you to do the same.
Okay. Give it some serious thought. You have a lot to gain and little to lose.
Phyllo:
The issue of abortion leaves him feelling fractured and fragmented. I still find that odd. I can certainly understand having mixed feelings, or being unsure about whether abortion is alright (in general or in certain instances). I can imagine this causing some anxiety - that one cannot decide or settle the issue for oneself.
I don’t however know what, in this case, fractured and fragmented means. He mentions ‘here and now’. Is it all the time? Or let’s say he checks CNN online or actually reads a physical newspaper over breakfast and see an article on abortion. Does he then feel fragmented and fractured and what is that phrase referring to. He has often spoken about not having an ‘i’. That seems like a similar thing to this F & F state. Is there a real depersonalization?
How is what he experiences different from someone who is simply unsure and wishes they could draw a firm moral conclusion about abortion, but cannot.
If he has a coffee with someone does he feel fragmented and fractured or does the abortion issue fade into the background and d uring that social time does he feel more or less like a whole person? IOW is it only when he is thinking of the issue or is he fragmented and fractured all the time?
Of course those beliefs he mentions are unlikely to be comforting, but a lot of the beliefs he expresses here and the dynamics with others could be very comforting. The way he thinks about other people and what he calls their intellectual contraptions…that can be comforting - iow he keeps telling himself that if people are less fragmented than he is
it is because they are irrationally using intellectual contraptions, whereas he is facing the abyss or some other self-myth.
Having as a criterion that he will not engage in meditation, therapy or any other ‘path/approach’ unless all rational people should be convinced to engage by an online rational argument
can be comforting because it seems like a rational justification for not challenging himself.
That he thinks there is no afterlife I believe does both him. That particular belief is not comforting to him, but this belief is surrounded by a bunch of other beliefs and also interpersonal dynamics that seems most certainly comforting to him.
I suppose that his reasoning goes something like this:
I think that abortion is wrong for some reasons.
I think that abortion is right for other reasons.
I can’t make that go away.
I don’t have a fixed set of values, judgements and evaluations which make one option clearly correct.
I should have that. I would have comfort and consolation if I did.
Who am I? What do I believe? What should I believe?
I feel fractured and fragmented.
Sure. All rather understandible. But to me unclear. ‘Fragmented’ and ‘fractured’ are very dramatic words. Presumably right now there is no abortion choice close to him. IOW he does not for personal reasons right now need to weigh in on a romantic partner or family member’s decision to abort or not. So it is not pressing in that sense.
‘I have strong mixed feelings.’ ‘It truly bothers me that I cannot find a way to resolve this issue.’
Sentences like that I understand in relation to the issue.
If he had a girlfriend right now who was considering an abortion and he felt torn on the issue, I could begin to understand F & F, more at least.
And to be fair it is not a one issue thing, even if what I quoted above might lead one to believe that. I assume he is F & F because he does not know how to resolve a wide range of moral issues, not just the abortion one. Fine, it certainly can be disturbing to feel like one has no way to resolve moral issues WHILE AT THE SAME TIME one feels on must do this - (for moral reasons??? for non-moral reasons???).
But right now I have no idea if this means he walks around most of the time feeling F & F. Or it comes up when he thinks about an issue like abortion.
If the latter then to me he is being melodramatic. To posit his psyche as fragmented and fractured, rather than some other more mundane and concrete way of describing his reaction.
In any context where value judgments clash. He lives in the US I think so if that counts as a context, then there is an ongoing clash between value judgments on the issue. But it’s not really his context anymore. There are political contexts. Of course it is not his job to reconcile these value clashes. One immediate reaction is that if those dramatics words ‘F&F’ really account for his internal state well, then he should withdraw from contexts, if he can, where these values are clashing. Online discussions of those issues, for example. Just out of self-care. Perhaps also start to see what the justification is for the pressure he is putting on himself.
Notice how in his response to you issues like a lack of God and whether there is an afterlife get conflated with conflicting goods.
Obviously God might reconcile conflicting goods. But here he is suffering F & F due to conflicting goods and always trying to get people to prove one side or the other. That is not going to help him figure out the afterlife.
Sitting around thinking about abortion and other value clashes is not going to help him understand the afterlife.
There are two really quite different issues - will his self continue or will it end? and how can be use reason to demonstrate the correct moral attitude on all issues?
He claims that the latter is enough to fracture and fragment him. Not just bother him. Not just something that can, on occasion, raise anxiety or frustration. But ongoing he is F&F. And by the way those terms are the kind of self-description used by people in psychotic breaks. Now we all have different meanings with descriptions of internal states, but he is steadfast in that self-description and uses it instead of more mundane, less melodramatic terms.
And yet, he wants to discuss abortion with everyone.
Right. Abortion is just an example that we should all be able to discuss. He is F&F with respect to all choices in morality.
And I think that it originates in his binary thinking. He wants the choices to fit nicely and cleanly into two boxes. And they don’t.
You mean abortion good or abortion bad?
It’s got to fit into either the “Abortion is good” box or the “Abortion is bad” box and it’s got to be that way for all people and forever.
Otherwise, there is some sort of problem to tackle, which philosophy and philosophers can’t manage to solve. Shouldn’t it fit into one or the other box? Why not? God isn’t around to tell us which is the right box. Now what?
First of all, I juxtapose feeling fractured and fragmented now with those times in the past when, as an objectivist myself, I felt wholly in sync with the “real me” in sync with the “right thing to do.” Both in a God and then in a No God frame of mind. And I clearly remember the level of comfort and consolation that provided me. In particular, I remember how, even when those who were “one of us” lost, I was still able to remind myself that we were the good guys. For example, when I worked my ass off day and night for the George McGovern campaign.
Secondly, my argument is aimed at those who embrace one or another rendition of objectivsim still.
For two reasons:
1] I think moral and political objectivism can be dangerous when those who embody it gain access to power and, as authoritarians, are hell bent on either rewarding those who are “one of us” or punishing those who are “one of them”. The guy in the White House for example.
2] I always acknowledge the possibility that my own frame of mind here is wrong. That in fact there is a way to think myself out of believing that this…
If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values “I” can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction…or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then “I” begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.
…is a reasonable assessment.
Like you said, I have everything to gain.
On the other hand, if you were to come closer to my own frame of mind instead what do you have to lose? A whole lot, right?
But the only way it makes sense to explore this is by focusing in on my own value judgments as an existential construct derived from the experiences in my life coupled with my attempt to understand those experiences through, among others things, the study of philosophy.
Thus feeling “fractured and fragmented” has come to make sense to me, in part, philosophically. Given my assumption that we live in a No God world. Given the manner in which I have come to understand human interactions given the points I raise in my signature threads.
Now, again, you will either examine your own value judgments as a subjective/subjunctive confluence of theory and practice here with me or you won’t.
Yes, I feel profoundly drawn and quartered in confronting the morality of abortion in a world I have thought myself into believing is essentially meaningless. A world in which “I” am obliterated for all time to come in a matter of months or years.
But: You don’t “get” me here. I don’t “get” you there. We’re stuck.
So, we carry on with the discussion or we don’t. Grappling to figure it all out from the other’s point of view.
On the other hand, one way or the other, it’s not like either one of us are going to lose much sleep over it.
Right?
Raises the question : How would non-objectivists be different?
Then why would I come closer to your frame of mind?
The answer can’t be “because it’s the real truth”.
You believe that it’s the only way. But you’re and fragmented so how can you trust that belief?
Let’s just say that I don’t think it’s the way to proceed.
I was thinking that one way to potentially ease this F & F stuff is to focus on issues where he is not F & F. For example the sexual trafficking of children. Now of course he can pull the whole ‘prove to all rational people that children should not be sexually traficked’ etc. but I truly doubt he himself is F & F on the issue. He may have some philosophical asterisk, but I doubt he would truly find himself split if he, for example, put in time fighting the sexual trafficking of children. Perhaps htere are even ways volunteers can, online, participate in investigations or reporting or man a hotline, online, for children who want out or whatever.
IOW the state of F & F must depend on his focus and the time he puts in thinking about an issue. He could prioritize moral issues where he is not F & F.
And yes, again, I get that even on issues that seem clear to many of us, this does not mean one can PROVE that sexual traficking of children is bad.
However we are dealing with a state of mind and this is not digital and not binary. If he focuses on issues that he himself is not so split over, he will experience less F & F.
And while this does not solve the problem of the afterlife, the two problems are not hinged to each other.
The issue I chose, I chose because I assume he is not split and torn and can see both sides in the way he can with abortion. It is however a charged issue and potentially depressing. However there would have to be less charged issues tht he is not F & F over that he could focus on. Helping the poor around literacy. Bringing food to the elderly. Whatever.
IOW reduce the stress around the F & F by shifting his focus from extremely complicated moral issues like abortion to issues where there is vastly less controversy. Of course, he can check in now and then to see if anyone can prove that abortion is OK; but on a pure self-care level, make his main focus issues where he is not F & F.
And, of course, being engaged with life might reduce feelings of F & F even if the entire issue is not resolved.
I already had those discussions with him. I focused on serial killers. He used the “blank slate” argument - “If my life had been different, if I had been raised in some other environment, then I could have been a serial killer”.
So his F&F problem is there no matter what.
That’s not really the same issue. Or to put it another way - if he couldn’t find it in himself to help protect people from serial killers because he is so torn on the issue, then that’s not a good activity for him.
NOTE: I am not saying that sexual trafficking of children in some way refutes conflicting goods problems.
I am talking about what he does with his time. I can see how abortion creates F & F for some people. They want to support the mothers who want abortions. They are not sure if the fetuses are already alive. They find both sides have potentially important points. With the traficking of children for sexual reasons, I really doubt he feels torn. NOTE again: this does nto mean that one can prove sexually trafficking children is bad. My point is that I doubt HE, Iamb, will feel torn on the issue.
Part of what he is doing is complaining about being F & F. His attempt to solve this is to get someone to prove one side of the abortion issue. That is how he spends his time here.
If he chose an issue to focus on - and even better act on in the world - where he, personally, does not feel very split, this is a step up. It is a reduction of F & F. Of course conflicting goods is not resolved, but he could decrease his own suffering.
This has nothing to do with whether he might have been a serial killer or even a trafficker of children. As long as he does not feel torn, trying to help children who have been trafficked, his possibly having turned out in an alternate universe into a child trafficker is a moot issue. He is not proclaiming his actions correct, just hoping to reduce suffering and spending his time on an issue that does fracture him.
If that is the wrong issue, then he could choose others.
Sort of like in CBT where you aim at reducing anxiety. The goal is nto to completely remove it.
And of course he could choose an issue on the side to occasionally focus on, here say, to deal with conflicting goods in general.
But if he has a goal to feel better, this is one way to approach it. Reduction not elimination (in the short term, he can keep his long term goals, but minimize his current F & F. )
And minimizing his current F&F might make it easier to notice/find/create solutions to more of his issues.
Thsi is all taking his F&F and presented goals at face value.
No, I think it is the issue.
Even if he is 100% against trafficking children, he still imagines an alternative ‘trajectory’ where he is in favor of it.
That’s what produces the F&F on literally every moral choice.