You were obeying a kind of legalism that tried to achieve perfection, only that this perfection was defined by what the world considers "best": optimal productivity with minimal waste. This was your moral framework, and a good example of the alternative servitude I mentioned to QQ.water said:
Reflections of a Former Christian
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Quantum Quak
It is Apollo reigning supreme where Dionysus has been denied entrance.
You brought a tear to my eye.
How perfectly you represent that delusional half-wit grasping at his blanky, that feels so soft and warm and that can supposedly stop the freezing cold of the world.
There’s no inner heat in you, only the glow of firelight on your face, finding solace in the burning of the world.
What else can I be than someone with no friends, no warmth, no intimacy, right?
My problem has always been the opposite. I’ve been liked too much and by too many.
You see, you pathetic half-wit, knowing the inner reasons, the underlying elements, the motives, makes me quit adept in understanding others.
For instance your grasp on the pity angle, ‘I see beauty while you live in ugliness’, is a consequence of a deep seated anxiety concerning the maintenance of your self-worth and the intricate safety nets you’ve created around you to defend against that ‘irrational self-nihilism’.
But what is irrational is your dependence on the facades and what is pitiful is in how you cannot deal with all aspects of reality and so you limit yourself to the feel-good, seemingly symmetrical, gushing of your mind that wants to place a barrier between it and most of what it feels but cannot see.
So here you are hugging and back slapping and offering flattery to those that will reciprocate in kind and reinforce your idealized, self-delusional, one-dimensional world. A kind of communal grooming festival where alliances, against the hardness of life are established and comfort is derived through the touch of another, while the actual gesture remains unintelligible.
And what exactly “endures beyond the moment”?
What exactly is not ephemeral and goes on and on and on, through time and space?
Your mind panics at the meaninglessness of it all so it constructs imaginative forces and powers that transcend the feebleness of your flesh and you hold onto it like a life-preserver in the churning waters.
Let no one attempt to take it away from you. You cannot swim in such turmoil. You need support.
This support you call beauty and contentment.
You unleash your fearful fury, masking as feigned pity or as the arrogance of someone who feels safe with his inflatable preserver.
Then you hypothesize that anyone who dares puncture this preserver must be mad or suffering from a suicidal tendency based on self-hatred and despair.
A kind of Pascal’s Wager with a twist.
The destruction of the image in the mirror, you fool, is an essential part of progress and evolution.
If it were otherwise there would only be stagnation.
Paradise is a world in limbo, with no direction or interest, for a mind made for the chaotic world of sensual interpretation.
Hold on to that illusionary piece of eternity you’ve managed to imagine into existence.
You aren’t made for thinking, you are made for knowing.
What do you know about hell?
You have the sleepy-eyed, contented smile of a junky whose blood stream is flooded with chemical joy and you feel pity and you cannot comprehend why anyone would choose to live in lucidity, when being ‘high’ is soooooooooo pleasing.
A part of you is dismayed by the sight of lucidity, it appears ugly. So you converge on the place where all junkies gather to share in the communal buzz and forget that lucidity even exists.
Watch how they support you and flatter you and how they join with you, in a group hug, against this interloper.
Now tell me about your knowledge, and about those quantum phenomena, your name suggests you know so well, and what they say about reality and about human cognition.
Tell me why science must revert back to poetics to explain things it purports to want to know reasonably.
Tell me about the edges of existence where not even the Socratic, prying eye can penetrate and reason is impotent.
But “Hell” is a matter of perspective, isn’t it?
One mans hell is another’s paradise.
What do you know of hell, you child of western luxury and artificiality?
All you feel is that you could not survive it now, that you have been domesticated. No more than a dog, that has been raised in a home, by loving, compassionate masters can survive in the wood with the wolves.
So what you do is you pity those wolves, as you sit by your master’s fireplace awaiting your next meal served in a plastic dish.
You watch the rain hit the windowpane, as you lick his hands and wag your tale and receive a well deserved pat on the head and you wonder:
“How could they live out there in the cold, in the uncertain, in the wild?”
“I pity those poor wretches for never having this warm carpet to lie on and a nice master to be taken care by.”
But part of you wonders about the freedom and dignity of the forest.
So you howl in the wind, in imitation of one of those, and all you receive in return is the echoing returns of the neighbors Chihuahua and that cute poodle down the way.
Once the light is seen one cannot settle for the darkness anymore, no matter how comforting and relaxing it is.
Do you still believe in such contrived concepts?
Were the 9/11 victims innocent?
Is a doe devoured by a bear innocent?
Are you that naïve, still?
The fact that you think I want to “blow myself up, or that I am in the process of doing so, only exposes your ignorance.
I’ve been blowing myself up for decades now. I intend to continue for many, many more.
Joy and love? Only a retarded mind looks around and sees this, besides a few ephemeral instances.
The “legacy” you are creating is that of a cow-like contentment of herd animals that want to only know comfort and contentment and can never appreciate suffering and discomfort and their creative energies.
Your ‘flabby-assed’ ‘oh how delicious this food is and how wonderful it feels to eat it’ mentality is a sign of decadence and degradation. A sign of decline.
Can you appreciate the act of running and feeling every molecule scream out to stop the pain?
Can you appreciate the strength of willing yourself to not succumb to that need?
I see it in adultery and in your need for mental pacifiers.
I know your “joy” you pathetic automaton; the delusional, artificial “joy” of inebriation, because the big, bad world is so frightening.
I’m sure a junky experiences similar “joy” and the mentally retarded must exist in the perpetual joy of being unaware.
I’m also sure that religious minds find “joy’ in their own faith and their childish beliefs must offer them crutches of all kinds to help them cope with what they fear might be true or untrue.
I bet they pity atheists and cannot fathom how anyone can continue existing without belief.
I bet they think the atheist is consumed with self-hatred and is a pawn of the devil and they gather in Church sermons to hear the program that streams through the consciousness and allows them to survive and to explain their woes.
I bet they congratulate each other and find solace in the communion of group inebriation.
Look what one of your own kind says:
Then my job is done.
You can now use this to support your hypothesis.
I “clearly deserve pity” a sentence meant to exact vengeance, incite a response and to offer reasons for future dismissal, if things get uncomfortable.
Why certainly I must live in constant suffering and I am sad and lonely and isolated and unloved.
What else could I be?
The incomprehensible is made clear by taking self as an example, imagining self under these circumstances and hypothesizing about the other.
Man the great anthropomorphasizer. Even science becomes a projection of the self.
How else could the unknown become known than by using self as an example and extrapolating ‘truths’?
If I “deserve pity” then pity me, you people of mirth and naïve gaiety. You people of unbound love and ceaseless joy.
I envy your ignorance, just as that master envies his dogs life, when he must go to work in the morning and when he needs more than a ball to chase, to keep his mind entertained.
You are the one speaking of love and joy and I’m the moralist?
You are the one talking about legacy and I’m the one seeking meaning?
I do dream of self-destruction just as a phoenix drams of the purifying flame.
You dream in Technicolor and are taken by the creations of your own imagination.
You are already happy and content and all you want to do is share that with others.
But why do you want to share? Does this not point to a discontentment?
And this internet environment is where you have “genuine social interactions”?
This is where you find joy and love?
What do you really know about my social interactions?
Perhaps it might comfort you, in your infinitesimal joy, to think of me living as a hermit, lashing out at everyone, being shunned and isolated in a cocoon of self-hatred, but that has nothing to do with actuality.
It’s also amusing.
You come here to flatter the newfound discovery that Christianity is a sham and to proclaim your joyful, loving, socially genuine existence and I’m the one seeking meaning and values?
I am the denier of meaning, stupid I am the one who refuses all value, when both these things come from your canned sources.
I am the one who sees the tragedy and comedy of life and basks in the sight.
I am Silenus’s offspring. I am a Bachean festival.
I am a follower of Dionysus and the lost son of Apollo.
I am a Satyr.
We must keep our reality clean and pure and bright, and forget about the underlying sludge.
How dare this monster challenge our immune systems with bacteria?
We are the bubble-boys of western conformity and science-fiction, simulacra.
We are the contended, the well fed, the privileged, living on the starvation of millions and then offering charity to make-up for our gluttony and to excuse our selfishness.
We are the compassionate, well-adjusted, joyful, because television said we must live this way.
We are the herd finding reasons to co-exist, by hiding selfish motives and by suppressing violence and vulgarity and hatred.
I’m the one seeking meaning, you moron!
How beautifully you expose your quality.
Unnecessary?
Suffering is the driving force behind all human interests.
You know like cows chewing fodder in the fields. Just munching away and regurgitating and munching again, behind the fences.
Look at their domesticated eyes; so peaceful, so calm, so ignorant, so contented to munch away life.
Look how well-adjusted they are. How wonderfully they coexist.
Then a solitary mooooooo, shatters the serene scene.
Wait, a shadow was spotted beyond the fencing; a glimpse of a form streaking through the underbrush.
Another moo echoes in response.
Their “happiness’ has been disturbed.
Speaking of love and compassion, the moral drugs of cohabitation.
Boundless, indiscriminating in all its glory.
You dream of a future where we can live like those cows in the fields.
Corralled, safe, well fed, undisturbed.
Adam and Eve retuned to the Garden of Eden.
Why did Adam bite that apple?
Whereas ‘love’ has the limitless boundless power of an inebriated mind needing to dissolve reason so as to appreciate sensuality.
It is Apollo reigning supreme where Dionysus has been denied entrance.
You brought a tear to my eye.
How perfectly you represent that delusional half-wit grasping at his blanky, that feels so soft and warm and that can supposedly stop the freezing cold of the world.
There’s no inner heat in you, only the glow of firelight on your face, finding solace in the burning of the world.
My, my, what a well crafted prejudiced knowledge you have of reality.
What else can I be than someone with no friends, no warmth, no intimacy, right?
My problem has always been the opposite. I’ve been liked too much and by too many.
You see, you pathetic half-wit, knowing the inner reasons, the underlying elements, the motives, makes me quit adept in understanding others.
For instance your grasp on the pity angle, ‘I see beauty while you live in ugliness’, is a consequence of a deep seated anxiety concerning the maintenance of your self-worth and the intricate safety nets you’ve created around you to defend against that ‘irrational self-nihilism’.
But what is irrational is your dependence on the facades and what is pitiful is in how you cannot deal with all aspects of reality and so you limit yourself to the feel-good, seemingly symmetrical, gushing of your mind that wants to place a barrier between it and most of what it feels but cannot see.
So here you are hugging and back slapping and offering flattery to those that will reciprocate in kind and reinforce your idealized, self-delusional, one-dimensional world. A kind of communal grooming festival where alliances, against the hardness of life are established and comfort is derived through the touch of another, while the actual gesture remains unintelligible.
And what exactly “endures beyond the moment”?
What exactly is not ephemeral and goes on and on and on, through time and space?
Your mind panics at the meaninglessness of it all so it constructs imaginative forces and powers that transcend the feebleness of your flesh and you hold onto it like a life-preserver in the churning waters.
Let no one attempt to take it away from you. You cannot swim in such turmoil. You need support.
This support you call beauty and contentment.
You unleash your fearful fury, masking as feigned pity or as the arrogance of someone who feels safe with his inflatable preserver.
Then you hypothesize that anyone who dares puncture this preserver must be mad or suffering from a suicidal tendency based on self-hatred and despair.
Ah.
A kind of Pascal’s Wager with a twist.
The destruction of the image in the mirror, you fool, is an essential part of progress and evolution.
If it were otherwise there would only be stagnation.
Paradise is a world in limbo, with no direction or interest, for a mind made for the chaotic world of sensual interpretation.
Hold on to that illusionary piece of eternity you’ve managed to imagine into existence.
You aren’t made for thinking, you are made for knowing.
What exactly do you know about where I exist in?
What do you know about hell?
You have the sleepy-eyed, contented smile of a junky whose blood stream is flooded with chemical joy and you feel pity and you cannot comprehend why anyone would choose to live in lucidity, when being ‘high’ is soooooooooo pleasing.
A part of you is dismayed by the sight of lucidity, it appears ugly. So you converge on the place where all junkies gather to share in the communal buzz and forget that lucidity even exists.
Watch how they support you and flatter you and how they join with you, in a group hug, against this interloper.
Now tell me about your knowledge, and about those quantum phenomena, your name suggests you know so well, and what they say about reality and about human cognition.
Tell me why science must revert back to poetics to explain things it purports to want to know reasonably.
Tell me about the edges of existence where not even the Socratic, prying eye can penetrate and reason is impotent.
But “Hell” is a matter of perspective, isn’t it?
One mans hell is another’s paradise.
What do you know of hell, you child of western luxury and artificiality?
All you feel is that you could not survive it now, that you have been domesticated. No more than a dog, that has been raised in a home, by loving, compassionate masters can survive in the wood with the wolves.
So what you do is you pity those wolves, as you sit by your master’s fireplace awaiting your next meal served in a plastic dish.
You watch the rain hit the windowpane, as you lick his hands and wag your tale and receive a well deserved pat on the head and you wonder:
“How could they live out there in the cold, in the uncertain, in the wild?”
“I pity those poor wretches for never having this warm carpet to lie on and a nice master to be taken care by.”
But part of you wonders about the freedom and dignity of the forest.
So you howl in the wind, in imitation of one of those, and all you receive in return is the echoing returns of the neighbors Chihuahua and that cute poodle down the way.
I cannot have, because I can never lower myself to such levels anymore.
Once the light is seen one cannot settle for the darkness anymore, no matter how comforting and relaxing it is.
“Innocence”?
Do you still believe in such contrived concepts?
Were the 9/11 victims innocent?
Is a doe devoured by a bear innocent?
Are you that naïve, still?
The fact that you think I want to “blow myself up, or that I am in the process of doing so, only exposes your ignorance.
I’ve been blowing myself up for decades now. I intend to continue for many, many more.
And here is an encapsulation of your state of ‘high’.
Joy and love? Only a retarded mind looks around and sees this, besides a few ephemeral instances.
The “legacy” you are creating is that of a cow-like contentment of herd animals that want to only know comfort and contentment and can never appreciate suffering and discomfort and their creative energies.
Your ‘flabby-assed’ ‘oh how delicious this food is and how wonderful it feels to eat it’ mentality is a sign of decadence and degradation. A sign of decline.
Can you appreciate the act of running and feeling every molecule scream out to stop the pain?
Can you appreciate the strength of willing yourself to not succumb to that need?
Oh, I see your ‘inner joy’ daily in newspaper and TV reports.
I see it in adultery and in your need for mental pacifiers.
I know your “joy” you pathetic automaton; the delusional, artificial “joy” of inebriation, because the big, bad world is so frightening.
I’m sure a junky experiences similar “joy” and the mentally retarded must exist in the perpetual joy of being unaware.
I’m also sure that religious minds find “joy’ in their own faith and their childish beliefs must offer them crutches of all kinds to help them cope with what they fear might be true or untrue.
I bet they pity atheists and cannot fathom how anyone can continue existing without belief.
I bet they think the atheist is consumed with self-hatred and is a pawn of the devil and they gather in Church sermons to hear the program that streams through the consciousness and allows them to survive and to explain their woes.
I bet they congratulate each other and find solace in the communion of group inebriation.
Look what one of your own kind says:
Isn’t a Satyr meant for entertainment?
Then my job is done.
You can now use this to support your hypothesis.
I “clearly deserve pity” a sentence meant to exact vengeance, incite a response and to offer reasons for future dismissal, if things get uncomfortable.
Why certainly I must live in constant suffering and I am sad and lonely and isolated and unloved.
What else could I be?
The incomprehensible is made clear by taking self as an example, imagining self under these circumstances and hypothesizing about the other.
Man the great anthropomorphasizer. Even science becomes a projection of the self.
How else could the unknown become known than by using self as an example and extrapolating ‘truths’?
If I “deserve pity” then pity me, you people of mirth and naïve gaiety. You people of unbound love and ceaseless joy.
I envy your ignorance, just as that master envies his dogs life, when he must go to work in the morning and when he needs more than a ball to chase, to keep his mind entertained.
A bit of self-criticism here, I see.
You are the one speaking of love and joy and I’m the moralist?
You are the one talking about legacy and I’m the one seeking meaning?
I do dream of self-destruction just as a phoenix drams of the purifying flame.
You dream in Technicolor and are taken by the creations of your own imagination.
You are already happy and content and all you want to do is share that with others.
But why do you want to share? Does this not point to a discontentment?
Really?
And this internet environment is where you have “genuine social interactions”?
This is where you find joy and love?
What do you really know about my social interactions?
Perhaps it might comfort you, in your infinitesimal joy, to think of me living as a hermit, lashing out at everyone, being shunned and isolated in a cocoon of self-hatred, but that has nothing to do with actuality.
It’s also amusing.
Oh yes, wise one, you know so much that I have never seen.
You come here to flatter the newfound discovery that Christianity is a sham and to proclaim your joyful, loving, socially genuine existence and I’m the one seeking meaning and values?
I am the denier of meaning, stupid I am the one who refuses all value, when both these things come from your canned sources.
I am the one who sees the tragedy and comedy of life and basks in the sight.
I am Silenus’s offspring. I am a Bachean festival.
I am a follower of Dionysus and the lost son of Apollo.
I am a Satyr.
But of course we wouldn’t want to sully this quarantined, disinfected environment. We wouldn’t want to blemish these white-washed walls with a speck of dirt.
We must keep our reality clean and pure and bright, and forget about the underlying sludge.
How dare this monster challenge our immune systems with bacteria?
We are the bubble-boys of western conformity and science-fiction, simulacra.
We are the contended, the well fed, the privileged, living on the starvation of millions and then offering charity to make-up for our gluttony and to excuse our selfishness.
We are the compassionate, well-adjusted, joyful, because television said we must live this way.
We are the herd finding reasons to co-exist, by hiding selfish motives and by suppressing violence and vulgarity and hatred.
“Unnecessary suffering”?!!!
I’m the one seeking meaning, you moron!
How beautifully you expose your quality.
Unnecessary?
Suffering is the driving force behind all human interests.
Yes a “more peaceful happier coexistence”.
You know like cows chewing fodder in the fields. Just munching away and regurgitating and munching again, behind the fences.
Look at their domesticated eyes; so peaceful, so calm, so ignorant, so contented to munch away life.
Look how well-adjusted they are. How wonderfully they coexist.
Then a solitary mooooooo, shatters the serene scene.
Wait, a shadow was spotted beyond the fencing; a glimpse of a form streaking through the underbrush.
Another moo echoes in response.
Their “happiness’ has been disturbed.
And how wonderfully you exemplify the inebriated mind.
Speaking of love and compassion, the moral drugs of cohabitation.
Boundless, indiscriminating in all its glory.
You dream of a future where we can live like those cows in the fields.
Corralled, safe, well fed, undisturbed.
Adam and Eve retuned to the Garden of Eden.
Why did Adam bite that apple?
Satyr has pointed to something important though:
A person who is worried about his well-being, is unable to love or have compassion.
A person worried about his well-being will always be able only of conditional love, conditional compassion.
And this seems to gnaw on people, so much so that they make a career out of trying to be compassionate and loving, while fearing for their own life. This is why their love and compassion are so false, and one sees through them so quickly.
A person who is worried about his well-being, is unable to love or have compassion.
A person worried about his well-being will always be able only of conditional love, conditional compassion.
And this seems to gnaw on people, so much so that they make a career out of trying to be compassionate and loving, while fearing for their own life. This is why their love and compassion are so false, and one sees through them so quickly.
Satyr,
1) Dude, that was awesome!
2) You are a complete dick
3) Man, I completely agree. We have fucked up what it means to be that primitive, howling beast that lives in all of us.
4) Did you go to writing camp this summer cause you really can write!
5) You suck ass you dirty excuse for a human! How dare you treat a fellow human that way!
6) Eloquent my friend. Very well done. You cut to the heart of the matter with veiled wit, sarcasm and yes, even charm, all on a very subtle level.
Please pick the one (or the one that is closest) that will make you like me the most. I really do want to be your friend so we can play together.
Seriously, you write damn fine as the lustful, devilish and dangerous woodland satyr. For someone weak enough to take you seriously, you could really do some damage. I try to do the same for arrogant shitwad theists but I'm a bit more crude.
I must now go console my friend QQ as I'm sure he is quite hurt.
Please be my friend,
SL
1) Dude, that was awesome!
2) You are a complete dick
3) Man, I completely agree. We have fucked up what it means to be that primitive, howling beast that lives in all of us.
4) Did you go to writing camp this summer cause you really can write!
5) You suck ass you dirty excuse for a human! How dare you treat a fellow human that way!
6) Eloquent my friend. Very well done. You cut to the heart of the matter with veiled wit, sarcasm and yes, even charm, all on a very subtle level.
Please pick the one (or the one that is closest) that will make you like me the most. I really do want to be your friend so we can play together.
Seriously, you write damn fine as the lustful, devilish and dangerous woodland satyr. For someone weak enough to take you seriously, you could really do some damage. I try to do the same for arrogant shitwad theists but I'm a bit more crude.
I must now go console my friend QQ as I'm sure he is quite hurt.
Please be my friend,
SL
water,
So let's see,
So water. Have you seen through all of the false people (with your laser beams of intuition) who have tried to show you love and compassion so far? Found anyone worthy yet?
Do you have a family water? Children? A husband? Lover? Friends? Just curious as it would be nice to put all this in context. (I wouldn't want to make any unwarranted assumptions about your life in general, since we all scrupulously try to avoid that at all times.)
So let's see,
So water. Have you seen through all of the false people (with your laser beams of intuition) who have tried to show you love and compassion so far? Found anyone worthy yet?
Do you have a family water? Children? A husband? Lover? Friends? Just curious as it would be nice to put all this in context. (I wouldn't want to make any unwarranted assumptions about your life in general, since we all scrupulously try to avoid that at all times.)
water said:
A person is either compassionate and empathetic enough to be capable of strong love or they aren't. Sure they could have that potential but have it all locked up in their neurosis, but then attacking the specific nuerosis is the matter of importance.
So sure, a nuerotic asshat will have a hard time getting over himself enough to give a shit about anything but the nuerosis that consumes him.
Stating an identity is stating nothing, isn't that what you say?
Black and white eh? All love is conditional unless it's completely general as in "you're a lovey person (like warm and embracing, touchy and stuff)."
Calling their love and compassion false is a harsh, unfair judgement, unless somehow you find yourself the standard bearer on the topic. A mind of nuerosis is debilitated in the sense you describe. That does not mean they cannot love or feel compassion in moments of freedom from their obsession. That does not mean the depth of their emotion is somehow invalidated by your judgement. Saying they are "so false" isn't very loving or compassionate now, is it?
Satyr said:
Because he wanted more than the simple life of a cow. Should it be any other way? If one has a child, should not the child honor the parent's wishes? If not, the parent may regret the child and not give the child a place to live, food to eat, and clothes to wear. Doesn't a creator deserve the honor of a parent?
Do you think you will ever find the meaning of life? If there is no God, why continue living for anyone, but myself, in the persuit of being high as often as I can? Why live at all?
Do you hate Christians? Do you hate Americans?
Do you think you will ever find the meaning of life? If there is no God, why continue living for anyone, but myself, in the persuit of being high as often as I can? Why live at all?
The meaning of life is to live, pure and simple.
Religion has p.o.i.s.o.n.e.d your mind so thoroughly that you equate it to "being high as often as (you) can," and can't imagine yourself living in reality - you must have either religion or drugs to fuel your fantasies in order to escape it. Sad, indeed.
The meaning of life is to live, pure and simple.
Religion has p.o.i.s.o.n.e.d your mind so thoroughly that you equate it to "being high as often as (you) can," and can't imagine yourself living in reality - you must have either religion or drugs to fuel your fantasies in order to escape it. Sad, indeed.
(Q) said:
Let's not get defensive, I have an open mind, and me and God aren't exactly buddies right now. I have faith in God, but through my own unbelief, we are not in fellowship.
I'm talking about "high" in a bigger sense. Let me rephrase:
If God doesn't exist, why should I not choose the path of least resistance, that causes the least amount of pain, and most happiness to myself? Why shouldn't I hire a hooker if I have the money and my wife doesn't care? Why shouldn't I lie to get that promotion if no one will ever know? Why shouldn't I make the system work for me? Why shouldn't I sue McDonald's for making me fat? If there is no God, why should I not live the fullest life that I can? If there is no God and we are going to end, I would want to be happy as often as I can, within a reasonable risk of painful consequences (emotional or otherwise).
This is the basis of moral thought for millions, if not billions of lives. This is why there will always be far more cows than dairy farmers (to paraphrase my new favorite guy).
(Q) said:
Right, but with God out of the picture, you have nothing to live for other than yourself. If you say you live for your kids, then you are saying you take pleasure in living for your kids. In the end, we all should live for ourselves, if there is no God. If our central motivation is ourselves, what is the point of living? For the moment of being happy? In the end, nothing matters in our brief existence. Does it?
Is God just the answer to this problem of a human need for meaning of life? If so, I wish I were never born. But, I have hope that God is more than that. If he is just a crutch, at least my life is full and I have made the world better by not living for myself and helping those in need by sacrificing my time and money. Someday, I hope that I can say that I live for God all the time.
Take the whole picture into account:
If you believe that this life is all there is, and that you are what your body is or what emerges from its functions, how do you reconcile (your) love and (your) death?
Can you love and have compassion in face of death?
If all you think there is to you is your body or what emerges from its functions, then the love you are able to give and receive is as conditional as your body, depending on material factors.
It comes naturally that one is concerned about one's well-being, in every aspect. If one thinks all there is to one is one's body or what emerges from its functions, that is, if one perceives oneself to be essentially material -- then once this is threatened, everything about one is threatened, including their ability to love and be compassionate.
It seems obvious that if you are facing a rabid dog or someone pointing a gun to your head or your house burning, that you won't exercise love or compassion, neither will you be able to receive it.
But what about more subtle threats -- like facing someone of opposite convictions like you, the threat of a possible terrorist attack, your children being away on holidays alone, and eventually, the death of those you love, and ultimately, your own death?
Sure, you may tell yourself "Don't worry".
But.
Is your love the same when you are well in comparison to when you feel threatened in some way?
If you believe that this life is all there is, and that you are what your body is or what emerges from its functions, how do you reconcile (your) love and (your) death?
Can you love and have compassion in face of death?
If all you think there is to you is your body or what emerges from its functions, then the love you are able to give and receive is as conditional as your body, depending on material factors.
It comes naturally that one is concerned about one's well-being, in every aspect. If one thinks all there is to one is one's body or what emerges from its functions, that is, if one perceives oneself to be essentially material -- then once this is threatened, everything about one is threatened, including their ability to love and be compassionate.
It seems obvious that if you are facing a rabid dog or someone pointing a gun to your head or your house burning, that you won't exercise love or compassion, neither will you be able to receive it.
But what about more subtle threats -- like facing someone of opposite convictions like you, the threat of a possible terrorist attack, your children being away on holidays alone, and eventually, the death of those you love, and ultimately, your own death?
Sure, you may tell yourself "Don't worry".
But.
Is your love the same when you are well in comparison to when you feel threatened in some way?
water,
I would love to respond to this if I could decipher what you are getting at.
I would love to respond to this if I could decipher what you are getting at.
Well scratch that. I got done with my post waay ahead of schedule so I'm going to delete the previous one and use it instead. It was addressed to members of another forum but I find that the arguments raised here are essentially the same as those so I decided not to be redundant. It's a tad long but very thorough, if I may say so 
, so please read it as a whole before replying. I'm in the bad habit of replying to threads as I read..
, so please read it as a whole before replying. I'm in the bad habit of replying to threads as I read..IvanJames said:
Anat said:
Anat said:
Hello Anat and Ivan James,
I am going to try to answer both your posts simultaneously since doing so will probably cover most of the objections given so far. Sorry for the late reply. I posted one earlier but on second thought found it half assed so I scrapped it (but not before Yahzi intercepted it) and so here goes again.
First, your reasons why my use of feral children is undesirable:
1) I don't think that feral children are a good example of the human "default" mode, as it is obviously not the norm for humans.
2) Feral children aren't a good example of human 'innate nature' because (almost) all humans are descended of non-feral humans
3) Although there may not be any one standard of group behavior, it IS normative for humans to dwell in groups.
The underpinning I note here is that feral children are not "normal" humans. In your replies, I will need for you to further substantiate this by defining what you mean by "normal", "human" and what you consider to be a 'normal human'. Please give each definition distinctly and also, provide the (objective/subjective) standard with which one is to identify that which is "normal", "human" and a "normal human". This will help us get on the same page. As you can see from my current conversation with Yahzi, misunderstanding of terms used into conversation can quickly derail a topic.
In #2, it is false to imply that feral children are born of feral parents. Look at the case history recorded here. Wikipedia also provides a few examples and a case history for cross reference. As far as the current reports we have go, feral children have been born to 'normal' parents of societies. What you have done here is beg the question by insisting a form of the no true Scotsman fallacy. I am not sure what either #1 or #3 have to do with your arguments, for even if they posit that humans who dwell in groups are 'normal', they CERTAINLY DO NOT lead to the conclusion that humans who dwell outside of groups are 'abnormal', or more specifically, less 'human'. That would be analogous to saying because heterosexuality is normal, homosexuality must be anormal; a non sequitur. These objections, which appeal also to loaded terminology, are therefore unsound.
Furthermore, we have:
#1) Their lack of morality might be a negative response to a lack of nurturing, which is not a "neutral" response at all.
#2) Although there may not be any one standard of group behavior, it IS normative for humans to dwell in groups.
I don't know what the current 'mainstream' scientific view is here but I don't readily agree with the statement "it IS normative for humans to dwell in groups"; the meaning is vague. Does it imply that it is "normal" for humans to be born into groups, or does it imply that it is "normal" for humans to WANT to live in groups, or perhaps that it is normal for humans born in groups to stay in groups? The feral child in many cases escapes the society which captures and attemps to 'civilize' or 'humanize' it. I think that humans do not WANT to live in groups but rather ADAPT to groups. Allow me to provide a few examples to clarify what this means exactly:
1) The feral child (see example of 'Gazelle child' in above link) often adapts both physiologically AND mentally to non social life.
Reference here and search for 'Gazelle boys', although any other section will suffice equally. We have reports of a boy who "walked on all fours, but occasionally assumed an upright gait, suggesting to Auger that he was abandoned or lost at about seven or eight months, having already learnt to stand. He habitually twitched his muscles, scalp, nose and ears, much like the rest of the herd, in response to the slightest noise. Even in deepest sleep he seemed constantly alert, raising his head at unusual noises, however faint, and sniffing around him like the gazelles." The boy was able to decipher gazelle gestures and he "proved to possess the unnerving ability to leap great distances—jumping, nearly flying, through the air in the manner of his adoptive parents."
Yet again we have this report of the derisively named 'wolf girls':
Again, I must ask: Can you still say that these children were not "human"? Using what non arbitrary standard and with what non circular logic? Can we perhaps claim that the majority who don't exhibit such behaviors are the 'normal humans'? If so, then surely you must by such reason accept that heterosexuals are 'normal humans'!
If raising a child among wolves does not make him a wolf then how how much more unreasonable is it to arbitrarily say thbe feral child is less of a human! To do so is certainly superstitious and evidently problematic, lending credence to Steeve's observation:
He also notes, "Evolution, though, is a slow process and will not admit the possibility of major change so quickly. Furthermore, evolutionary change is from generation to generation, not within one organism over a few years. An environmental construct is context relative, but this answer will not explain Reverend Singh’s observations and worries."
Unfortunately, by employing circular logic to identify yourselves as human and these children as not, many difficult and insuperable difficulties will be encountered. It is often self reassuring to identify oneself as 'normal' - as the "normative" standard - but such needless dichotomization is unworkable here, as we will continue to see.
Yet again we have this report of the derisively named 'wolf girls':
Again, I must ask: Can you still say that these children were not "human"? Using what non arbitrary standard and with what non circular logic? Can we perhaps claim that the majority who don't exhibit such behaviors are the 'normal humans'? If so, then surely you must by such reason accept that heterosexuals are 'normal humans'!
If raising a child among wolves does not make him a wolf then how how much more unreasonable is it to arbitrarily say thbe feral child is less of a human! To do so is certainly superstitious and evidently problematic, lending credence to Steeve's observation:
He also notes, "Evolution, though, is a slow process and will not admit the possibility of major change so quickly. Furthermore, evolutionary change is from generation to generation, not within one organism over a few years. An environmental construct is context relative, but this answer will not explain Reverend Singh’s observations and worries."
Unfortunately, by employing circular logic to identify yourselves as human and these children as not, many difficult and insuperable difficulties will be encountered. It is often self reassuring to identify oneself as 'normal' - as the "normative" standard - but such needless dichotomization is unworkable here, as we will continue to see.
2) Now that we have seen that feral children can, and do, adapt to their non social environments, it must come as no suprise that so-called 'normal' humans likewise adapt to social environments. I don't believe there is any need to list examples such as the striving to ascend the social ladder for corroboration. As members of society, we can hopefully admit by simple introspection that we are well adapted to our surroundings.
In conclusion,the only reason the majority engages in social behavior is because they are born in and adapt to society. Surely, you understand that if some of the 'normal' humans were born outside of societies they would, like feral children, not exhibit the social tendencies they do but rather evince an adaptation to non-social life. We in the west have adapted to our society; just as cannibals have adapted to the rituals of their society in the wilderness; just as Aztecs adapted to their human sacrifices; just as feral children adapted to non social life et cetera et cetera. Maintaining that humans are naturally inclined to the group is therefore sophistry.
With this conclusion in mind, we can return to topic and tackle point #1: "Their lack of morality might be a negative response to a lack of nurturing, which is not a "neutral" response at all." In saying this, we abandon all sensibility and, with loaded terms at the gun, indict tribes which practice cannibalism for not being "normal" or 'civilized', and do same to the human sacrificing Aztecs for not being 'normal', and also do the same to our ancestors who stoned dissidents, and so on and so forth. Obviously, using loaded terms and subjective language leads to undesirable and extreme implications such as these. Although the statement did not explicitly use the word 'civilized', it was very implicit that the feral child's absence of moral code is a result of their animality, their lack of civilization and the refinements purported to make one 'human'. For one, such a hasty generalization is irresponsible since there are cases of children who were raised and "nurtured" in a society and had learned language BEFORE living in isolation (see cases of Marcos Pantoja and Misha Defonseca). The gamut of peoples and their behaviors throughout history is so vast as to disqualify the arrogant assumption that contemporary society and customs are at all viable standards of "normal". Even members of a society are so varied in culture (and also degree to which culture is applied) so as to disqualify attempts to standardize what is a "normal human". Is the concept of Herrenvolk still in use? You cannot have your cake and eat it.
Anat said:
This is an interesting question and brings to mind the novel 'The Lord of the Flies'. Unfortunately that fiction is of no help since the characters had some sort of training before entering the island. From what we have learned so far, it is by being born into society that humans adapt to it. That is to say, humans adopt the values and beliefs of given culture (to whatever measure or degree). In your scenario however there are no preexisting values to be adopted. The Encyclopaedia Britannica's entry on Prehuman ethics (from ethics)' is a great starting point for answering Anat's questions:
It is true that humans, like many animals, can and do form social bonds. As the entry above affirms, we have always entered social bonds for altruistic reasons (Eg. protection from predators, guaranteed food supply, etc). Unfortunately, I have digressed greatly in order to dispel the seductive assumption that feral children, unlike "us" (just who this 'us' entails, I do not know), are not 'normal humans'. The problem is for those who are born into given society which has settled on arbitrarily set values and customs. As young children we adopt these unconsciously and without much heed to the whys or whens or whats. As adults, when we do get around to those questions, we find that the adults of the society are of no help since they too absorbed the customs of the society from childhood without question. In other words, sooner or later in a society, ALL members come to adhere to values and customs which they did not originate with no sound basis for doing so - except that it seems like the "right" thing or feels like the "good" thing. Perhaps the grotesque circularity of calling morality good or bad is not evident prima facie but we are all guilty either way of doing so. It seems good because we have adapted to it, not because society's customs are intrinsically good. Surely, the wolf-child of Overdyke in Holland is not repulsed like we might be at the prospect of climbing trees to get eggs and birds, "which he devoured raw". Children who are born into societies which practice cannibalistic rituals are similarly not repulsed because they have adopted it from the members of the tribe, themselves having no reason for their cannibalism because they too adopted it in their youth from the members of the tribe who did the same.. (For simplification, I ignore the fact that cannibalism can be genetic since, in any case, you and I reading this are evidence that nurture is capable of supressing nature) Soon, we have an entire society of cannibals who don't understand the reason for the behavior. And this is the problem we have for ourselves.
A society is swift to stone or beat or immolate or imprison dissenters because of handed down customs. Admittedly, this uniformity in custom is the glue which keeps society together. It is rather unfortunate however that
a) morality can only be held in ignorance.
b) morality can not be done away with.
Firstly, we must understand the meaning of and implications of a. Try as we may, we cannot come up with non circular reason why you and I, as individuals, should - and do - adhere to moral systems which we did not even originate, moral systems which we harbor only because we adapt (unwillingly and unconsciously) to environment. We are free of course to insist (rightly) that societies cannot be stable without moral systems but this too is sophistry. Although true, such a response is fully inadequate for justifying why you and I, as individuals, should obligate ourselves to someone else's moral system. This line of reasoning shows what we must do to keep society stable, but it fails utterly in telling you and I why we are obligated to do so. The 'social contract' apologetic is similarly flawed. The social contract, if it at all exists outside the individual mind, is certainly not binding to individuals who have not explicitly accepted them. To insist otherwise is succumb unreasonably to hegemony of the majority, where one is obligated by by "accident of birth" to respect the consensus. Of course, it is not understood how, if at all, the premise of 'acknowledgement by birth' is at all substantiated (or logical) and moreover, the logical consequences of such forced logic is to obligate atheists born in religious households to themselves become religious. Again, you cannot have your cake and eat it. Logical consistency is paramount to me and to arbitrarily defend what you will deny in another scenario is unacceptable. Secondly, saying "if they dont like the social contract they can leave" is acceptable insofar as one ignorantly overlooks the fact that the inherent logical difficulties have not been resolved (the wikipedia link highlights other difficulties with such a 'counterargument'). In protest, some will point out that in either case, no one would find living as a hermit , or in the desolation of a feral child, to be more desirous than living in society and that leads me to point b.
The morality you and I hold cannot be done with. Try as we may, we cannot force ourselves to believe that human sacrifice is the "right" thing to do ,or that there is nothing "wrong" with cannibalism, or that gassing Jewish children is permissible insofar as it serves a higher, more noble goal - just as we cannot make ourselves believe that Jesus Christ is God, or that science is the Devil's way of blinding us. Since we cannot dispel morality - even though we did not choose to learn it, even though we did not choose to accept it or believe in it by our own volition - we struggle severely to justify it. That is, we struggle to justify values we have inherited from someone else. Having imbibed these values as paramount as young children, and having seen 'everyone' else be moral and espouse morality, it becomes impossible to strip ourselves of our society's moral code. Like the theists we have come to pity, we too, have been 'brainwashed' and primed for groupthink that society might persist. It is startling, but ultimately not surprising, to find that nature has given society guarantee of sustenance by making us, the indidividual, a helpless adopter of custom and morality. The problem here is, if we ourselves have no proper reason to justify why we should adhere to given society's morality, how can we, with reason and logic, move heaven and earth to obligate another to be moral? The answer reverts to an earlier point:
We do so because we have a need to feel "normal", deviants from our own moral systems threaten our own sense of security and "rightness" - we (individually) fail to fathom how anyone would do something we wouldn't. The wolf girl and the gazelle boy present a gargantuan crisis for us.
Steeves' poignant accusation of our hypocrisy comes to mind:
... and the same for the common intolerance of 'abnormality', our disgust at ephebophiles, the even more incensed desire to severely punish and put away the incurable 'sickness' of child molesters. It is fashion to live life as if one's own society is 'normal', not 'sick'. This is why the rationalists who defend morality on grounds of reason must provide a standard for that which is - 'normal'.
Because we cannot change our morals, we come to fear the 'dissident', the 'criminal', whose morality differs from ours. They offend our sensibilities and our complacency and most painfully, our sense of normalcy - even as the feral children offend our humanity. But this makes the problem twofold. Not only can we not properly understand morality, but on a larger scale, it means we cannot even understand humanity. Our feeble attempts (so far) with logic and reason have only led to the arrogant, self serving assumptions that "we" are normal and our moralities are normal- albeit such reasoning is demonstrably circular. So potent has the Socratic method been in rendering futile many of the rationalist apologetics that it is found better and safer to say "we are normal", so as to skirt the more troublesome "I am normal", but this sophistry too begs the question. So terrible is our desperation for a satisfying justification of what we have involuntarily ]taken as Gospel (permit the phrase), that there are some who will look to promise of Heaven in order to be "good" and others who will look to evolution, psychology, or sociology for justification of why they, as individuals, are themselves obligated to another's moral code. For a people who wallow in false comfort by swearing that morality is innate, is it not shameful that we should need incentive at all?
Despite these looming hurdles in logic, we console ourselves that we are being 'reasonable' in following another's morality. It is perhaps no surprise that society has given 'reasonable' such positive connotation in light of such hypocritical use.
My two concerns, addressed especially to the rationalists, but also to the religious remain:
a) Is there a logical reason by which one can justify obligate himself to morality?
b) Is there a logical reason by which one can justify obligating another to morality?
Afterthoughts
I would like to remind readers that I am not saying morality should be done away with; it is unwise to call morality 'good' or 'bad'. It came to me after finally finishing this that perhaps you would say morality should be followed in order for one not to be estranged, or so that we have least troubles in our social interactions (with the law and such). This is perhaps acceptable as long as your conscience permits you to adhere to morality out of fear, whether it be of punishment, estrangement (for not being.. normal!), and so on. Similar to all the avenues explored in the post, a fear based apologetic can - and does - lead to unintended and undesirous consequences when applied consistently. It was my hope in writing this that the humanists and rationalists could offer me this hope of consistency.
SS,
I'm sure it was you but I have some thoughts on this.
I'm sure it was you but I have some thoughts on this.
Not hurt but certainly amused after all Satyr holds no monopoly on the right to enjoy the suffering of others. Reading his post was most enjoyable as I see him gasp with delight at his own darkness.superluminal said:
But as I have agreed not to enter into any further personal commentary with him in this thread I shall restrain myself from the temptation to show him how he has only the ability to enjoy half the picture and the worst half at that......