The basic reason that Capitalism has not been overturned is that depending on the immoral but regulatable motivations of humans is much easier than depending on and orchestrating for the expectation of more and more moral motivations. We have to begin to realize first and implement second the kind of system as a whole that catalyzes moral behavior.

This is a sad truth. It is sad because that is exactly what Capitalism is doing so far. The incentive for 'success' is the financial reward, not the moral reward. So immorality is what is driving the system. I mean, I think we all realize how stupid and wrong it would be to let immorality drive any system. So, why does the profit motive persist? It's clearly immoral! But many people would argue that point, foolishly. So, it's a basic trouble in humanity. Admit the immorality of the profit motive or continue to fail.
— Chet Hawkins

it is my aim that we, each of us, live in abundance. That means different things to different people and cultures. But some of us are far too happy with no space and jammed in like ants. How can we design allotments such that space is available in abundance for those that prefer elbow room? These are the REAL questions our societies should be asking. Along with this biggest question of all: How are the rich to be collectively 'taken down' without violent war? Good luck with that one. But it is coming.
— Chet Hawkins

Thanks for your post and ideas. :up:
I admire your radical spirit (looking for and digging toward at the roots) even if I doesn’t always completely agree with some of your theories. — 0 thru 9

That is the most fun, useful, and amazing of the possible responses. Even slack jawed almost worshipful agreement is not as useful because that would almost certainly prohibit or occlude advancement or growth from the admired side. ;) It's why I am here, to refine and grow.

About abundance… I agree that new possibilities have to be explored.
Along with the necessary and obvious physical abundance, we need even more.
Something additional, on another level entirely. — 0 thru 9

I agree and that is really for sure what I am about. Humanity needs a next-level philosophy. We certainly are not getting there following the same tired paradigms. Pressure is building to make a sea change. With any luck and more than a little effort, I could be a part of that. We all could.

People by and large seem psychologically weary, isolated, emotionally undernourished, and creatively unchallenged. — 0 thru 9

For the most part these days, at least in the first world, it is that yin over-expression that is to blame, in general. That is a preoccupation with self-indulgent desires in the time of relative prosperity.

I wonder, will the threat of missing spiritual or meta-level failure of advancement drive us to to it? Or is more incentive required? And upon whom will this motivational incentive need to be applied? The grow or die meme is relevant here. But how long will 'death' take? Is there a point of no return beyond which it is too late to proceed? I don't believe that, but, it is worth noting that at most such moral turning points in history some of the most famous quotes ring true to alignment with my warning to Pragmatism itself, 'It is better to choose to die rather than to be immoral.' "Give me liberty or give me death!' is an interesting and ironic example. It both aligns somewhat with that sentiment and yet shows the cause for being more specific with what is meant, if wisdom is truly at issue.

That means freedom is effectively a synonym for chaos and desire only, an immoral wish. So, being specific about supposed aphorisms of 'wisdom' is super important. It turns out that 'Give me liberty or give me death' is deeply immoral as a statement, unless the intent in the speaker is greater than the moral message of the literal words. Let's hope the speaker meant things the right, wise way. But it's better to say and write and quote actual wisdom, even if the saying is less brief and tidy seeming. That would be something like this: 'Give me maximized liberty within a maximal orderly system carefully and lovingly restricting unwise freedoms!' It doesn't roll off the tongue does it? But if one knows what the objective GOOD is, or suspects many aspects of the limits of understanding it, then one can say instead as a better shortcut, 'Any consequence is acceptable if intent is good!' This is why consequentialism is a lie, an immoral ism, in its entirety.

Everyone i know is trying so very hard, but their eyes tell me (even if they don’t speak) that the joy of life is feeling like an elusive thing… even when the basic needs are met. — 0 thru 9

What is the most elusive thing? Perfection (the GOOD) is the only right answer. Perfection literally causes desire itself. It is the source of desire. The system of love containing the one right path, the GOOD, is in its whole presentation, also that perfection. We deny it some with every failed and immoral choice we make, but, we cannot escape truth. The truth I am advocating for continues to show in the eyes of all, and in the hopes of humanity, of all the universe.

The camaraderie, the trust, the affection, the hope, and possibilities seem like a distant memory. — 0 thru 9

The rich get richer. War still happens regularly with less and less rules. People still believe in Capitalism and Democracy, immorally. Amid this chaos most fall to Hedonism and Cronyism to cope. They 'buy in' instead of mustering the will to make war on immorality. They know that their own immorality will come to be a central issue they must face if they step up. And that terrifies EVERYONE equally. So they close ranks against wisdom and the truth and put off the great fight to the next generation, letting the cup pass to their (maybe hopefully?) more worthy progeny. It's a vast unsettling hypocrisy and not likely to change easily.

But since you and I notice these eyes, and since truth is in fact truth, the struggle is indeed eternal. Nothing but the good can win, finally. Real winning is only found in alignment with the GOOD and by the degree of that alignment.

Or maybe such things are just the silly illusions of childhood that are best abandoned… — 0 thru 9

"All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them!" - Walt Disney
"We will not solve the problems of today with the same (wisdom) that created them!" - OneMug (paraphrased)
"Rule for Happiness: something to do, someone to love, something to hope for!" - Immanuel Kant

Goodness has two historical meanings: hypothetical and actual perfection. The former is perfection for (i.e., utility towards) some purpose (e.g., a good clock is a clock that can tell the time, a good car can transport things, a good calculator can perform mathematical calculations, etc.); and the latter is perfection in-itself (i.e., a good organism, clock, phone, plant, etc. is one which is in harmony and unity with itself). The former is pragmatic goodness; and the latter moral goodness. — Bob Ross

I find this division to be problematic. I agree that perfection of a single purpose (really not a thing per say to me) can be understood at least. I call that functional worthiness.

When you say actual perfection or moral perfection, I can agree with the term moral perfection but the relationship to me seems improperly defined. Moral perfection or simply actual perfection and its relationship to the other kind of perfection mentioned is that moral perfection is functional perfection for all purposes. Do you see how that way of stating the relationship adds clarity?

For those who cannot fathom perfection as it is in-itself, simply imagine a wild jungle in complete disarray, everything trying to impede on everything else, and now imagine a jungle in which everything is in complete harmony and unity: the former is in a state of absolute (actual) imperfection, and the latter in a state of absolute (actual) perfection—it is not perfection relative to some goal or purpose endowed unto it by a subject, nay, it is perfect qua perfection (viz., perfection in terms of solely what it is in-itself). — Bob Ross

And I would surmise that this example of a harmonious perfection is incorrect. That is to say, there is no lapse in perfection within any state of reality. We already have the potential for perfection, moral or absolute perfection, now. It is a tautology that this perfection is all that there is, really.

In our foolishness we deny that this potential is as meaningful as it is. We get confused by the temporary states we see or think we see of imperfection. We then incorrectly theorize some delusional desire as perfection, instead of understanding that we live amid a whole that is already perfection.

I state this all the time and here I will again: Peace is delusional. War or conflict or change, choose your word, is non-delusional. The accompanying delusion of time is also no help to us, occluding the truth of extant perfection from our limited senses. It is perhaps easier to understand that perfection is true if we suppose to eliminate the delusion of time.

So, it is the denigration of war, an immoral act, that causes this goofy desire, this delusion of peace as possible. I do indeed propose that this denigration of change/conflict/war is in fact immoral and the often giddy and foolish wish for peace is likewise immoral. That means that many of our ideas of what perfection really is are wrong (and will continue to be so, hopefully in lesser ways as we earn wisdom).

Each of the two types of goodness has within them higher and lower goodness, each according to their contextual size (viz., a good which is about a smaller context is lower than one which is about a larger context). The lowest pragmatic good is particular utility (i.e., what is perfect for this purpose) and the highest is universal utility (i.e., what is perfect for every purpose); the lowest moral good is particular harmony and unity (i.e., that this is perfect) and the highest is universal harmony and unity (i.e., that everything is perfect). — Bob Ross

I disagree entirely.

The problem is that amid perfection and unity, any is all. The fact that you state the above paragraph the way you do means you do not realize or believe this, or you are again going off on some academic exercise and not stating beliefs which as mentioned in a previous thread is confusing and somewhat disingenuous (even if specifically stated as such).

If any is all then there is no 'level' to goodness. And in fact that makes sense because if morality is objective (and I believe it is) then any aspect of good is only precisely equal to any other aspect of good. Their is no hierarchy. That would be order-apology or believing that order was superior to chaos, an immoral position. Likewise chaos-apology or believing that chaos was superior to order, is an immoral position. Order is often thus immorally conflated with the good, and chaos is often immorally conflated with evil.

You seem to me to confuse or conflate order and lower level good or pragmatism. And then you confuse or conflate chaos and higher level good or idealism. Neither can be correct! Both conflations are wrong.

Moral goodness is higher than pragmatic goodness because it deals with actual (as opposed to hypothetical) perfection; — Bob Ross

This is incorrect to me. Hypothetical is actual to me. Imagination is real. State changes are actually almost impossible to imagine if they are impossible really. Therefore they are not impossible, just improbable. Pragmatism properly expressed is the limit as intent approaches idealism. This has the proper ascetic as asymptotes extend into infinity showing the relative difficulty of perfection.

What is missing here then for clarity is a better way of saying 'every way' in which perfection can be had. That missing element is the list of virtues that are all equal as mentioned in other threads. These discrete virtues each have pragmatic orderly limits within their approach to their specific virtue perfections. The sum total of all of these infinite limits is the elusive total or moral perfection. But see how instead the 'lesser' and 'higher' goodnesses by your description do not fit properly the real world. Instead both pragmatism (fear) order and idealism (desire) chaos both (along with wisdom (anger) balance) must be mixed at all 'levels' of goodness, reaching to perfection.

and the highest moral good is universal harmony and unity (and this is why altruism morally better than egoism). — Bob Ross

This is a false equivalence. Egoism for the good is or can be perfectly good. So say ego alone is not immoral. This is a truism with goodness that is confusing to many. Biased for the good is good. Bias for anything no good is 'evil'. This truth makes things as tricky as they really are because so many incorrect interpretations of what is good and evil abound.

Likewise altruism can be perverted and be for 'evil' causes and often is. The road to hell is indeed often paved with (fake) good intentions. That is to say if the intentions were GOOD then they would not lead to hell. So if intentions lead to hell then they were never perfectly GOOD in the first place. Most of the old aphorisms are horribly immoral and not wisdom at all.

Morality, then, in its most commonly used sense, is simply an attempt at sorting out how one should behave in correspondence to how one can best align themselves with universal harmony and unity; and pragmatism, then, in its most commonly used sense, is an attempt at understanding the best ways to achieve purposes (even if they purposes are only granted for the sake of deriving those best means) so that one has readily at their disposal the best means of achieving any purpose. — Bob Ross

As you probably know, I do not like the term morality used this way. If morality is objective, and I believe it is, then one must learn to speak in terms of morality and what we do. We do not do morality. People do not have morals at all. They have immoral beliefs only. That is true. The question is not if the belief is immoral because it is. No one and no one belief is perfect. It is in the true nature of perfection to remain elusive and unreachable. So discussing belief (and fact also since facts are only a subset of beliefs) is discussing immorality. Notice how a discussion that starts out properly discussing moral agents immorality only, not their morality, is always more correct. I highly recommend we change to that way of speaking and writing about it to avoid other obvious errors.

Neither studies [of pragmatism nor morality] are, when understood as described hereon, non-objective: the best means of achieving a purpose (or purposes) and the best means of achieving (actual) perfection are both stance-independent. — Bob Ross

We agree that the destination of perfection is state independent. Yes. But that is not helpful when you suggest we can be objective. We cannot be objective. We are not perfect. So all assertions, all beliefs, all facts, are immoral as stated and always slightly wrong. It is again better to speak or write in this way, than it is to suggest a comforting lie to people, that they can get to objectivity or perfection. No, that is hubris and makes us all prone to more error.

These studies are as objective as they come, and are both essential to practical life: morality being essential to living a good life, and pragmatism being essential to achieving that good life. — Bob Ross

I disagree. These studies may try to be objective but we must admit that they will fail. Pragmatism is the fear-based cowardice that demands a short-cut to the effort required for moral choice. This is the efficient demand of fear and it is foolish. You say it is essential. It is not.

Courage allows us to stand to the unknown and anger pushes fear aside and into balance, the calmed state. The unknown is tautological because we are not perfect. Anger is required to face the unknown and this is not without fear, but instead in balance with fear. And amid that balance another balance must also be struck. That is the powerful pull of perfection (desire) must also be balanced so that we do not rush over eager into immorality (self-indulgence). That is the tendency of desire. Again anger must balance this and with desire keep us in conflicted balance all the way throughout experience. This conflicted balance is effectively ongoing and eternal war.

Politically, a society centered on pragmatic goodness will tend towards anarchism (i.e., each man is given, ideally, the knowledge of and power to achieve his own ends) and a society centered on moral goodness will tend towards democracy (i.e., each man is given, ideally, equal representation and liberties, but also duties to their fellow man to uphold a harmonious and united state). — Bob Ross

These are heinous Pragmatic lies (of course only in my opinion).

Pragmatism is fear only and an order centric view of moral goodness. You are conflating order and the good and that is immoral.

Idealism is every single bit as needed amid intent as is Pragmatism. Idealism in this sense is the desire side pull of perfection to every ideal. It is chaos because it beckons in all ways at the same time causing people to take rather random seeming paths through intent space towards perfection.

Democracy is an immoral sham based improperly on the intrinsic worthiness of all. The trouble is that is another foolish conflation. In conflating intrinsic worthiness with functional worthiness an unwise person believes that since we are all intrinsically worthy, we are all functionally worthy. In the case of Democracy the presumption is that the functional worthiness to vote wisely is included with intrinsic worthiness and nothing could be further from the truth. Socrates himself warned us against Democracy 2500 years ago and we are still not to that level of wisdom in daily affairs.

Sophocracy, a rule of the wise at least attempts to measure wisdom, allow voting only from the wise, and since there must be some elite, it makes sure that the elites are at least formed using the least corruptible trait in the trait index by definition, wisdom. After you test for and locate the wise, then you can have your nod to Democracy. Let qualified brain surgeons only operate on brains. Let qualified wise voters only vote. Until we all face that truth, human governments are all immoral shams.

Goodness is not normative: it is the property of having hypothetical or actual perfection. Normativity arises out of the nature of subjects: cognition and conation supply something new to reality—the assessment of or desire for how things should be (as opposed to how they are). Moral goodness, for example, is just the state of being in self-harmony and self-unity: it does not indicate itself whether something should be in that state. It is up to subjects to choose what should be, and a (morally) good man simply chooses that things should be (morally) good. — Bob Ross

This is not true either.

Goodness is normative. But one can be excused within reason for saying something as foolish as that goodness is not normative. That is because a moral action or intent is the single hardest thing a moral agent can do or choose. Effort increases as moral caliber increases. In other words it gets harder and harder to make more and more GOOD choices. This is the disguise of non-normative goodness that you missed seeing. I see that disguise.

It is no wonder that people are confused. Perfection is elusive and unattainable. Pragmatism is a tempting cop-out just the same that wishful thinking idealism is a tempting cop-out. But balance and anger are well aware of the struggle and the need to suffer to earn real wisdom.

The 'shoulds' are natural moral laws of the universe, objective and unchanging. Genuine happiness is the consequence of any choice aligning with perfection alone, an intent towards perfection. And lesser degrees of happiness are granted to aims and intents less in alignment or resonance with what is objectively good. Thus unhappiness is the consequence of all imperfect intents which means all intents but the key is that unhappiness increases by the degree of misalignment with an objectively perfect intent (the hardest thing in the universe).

Concerning the above quote, I strongly agree with almost everything you said.

But I’m trying to understand why you now in this latest post seem to overlook (or exonerate? excuse?) that the total economic system that is playing a huge role in the society outside our window, and around the globe.
— 0 thru 9

I see many problems with the system, but I think they do not originate from the system itself. Instead I believe they are a symptom of a deeper issue which I would tie into the Yin imbalance as I have explained it earlier. — Tzeentch

I find the current yin over-expression to be greatly at fault, yes, but a natural occurrence after a great length in time of a similar yang over-expression.

In other words when yang exhausted itself (some time past), yin has crept up in expression to well beyond intolerable levels.

Don't get me wrong though. Both yin and yang elements are always involved and since they possess in every case possible balance in any chooser, it is always the choosers, the participants, that are to blame. That means that all the yin that was weak for so long in Western culture and now the weak yang from exhaustion or cyclic lowering, both, always both, are really to blame. Of course,it seems like a traditional Western thing to blame who is on top calling the shots with over-expression.

The system is a human product, so without looking at the human flaws that create the flawed system, one cannot get to the root cause of the problems. — Tzeentch

I agree entirely but that is a rather disingenuous statement. It is so because that is precisely what we are doing is examining the human motivations. The fact that these motivations exist at the chooser level and at higher levels within any entity representing aggregate choice, is not relevant.

Any systemic or cultural pattern starts with individual choosers. Even if its a trend now with cultural inertia overpowering many even powerful individuals, it still began and can be altered by each chooser within any current state, active choice.

So, again, the look into yin/yang and personality of choosers or motivations of choosers is indeed exactly what is being discussed, cultural or individual notwithstanding.

For example, some may argue that governments need to be given more power to curb "capitalism".

Why does this never seem to work in practice? — Tzeentch

The reasons are many and varied. But to sum it up it really does work like this:
The goals in mind are not the same between those envisioning the change and the changers themselves.

Further:
The goals are often wrong or wrongly understood.

Further:
The type of person that is motivated to understand motivation itself is not the type of person to enact policy and vice versa. This means we must learn or earn the wisdom to control the process from start to finish by a real thorough and long term plan.

The basic reason that Capitalism has not been overturned is that depending on the immoral but regulatable motivations of humans is much easier than depending on and orchestrating for the expectation of more and more moral motivations. We have to begin to realize first and implement second the kind of system as a whole that catalyzes moral behavior.

This is a sad truth. It is sad because that is exactly what Capitalism is doing so far. The incentive for 'success' is the financial reward, not the moral reward. So immorality is what is driving the system. I mean, I think we all realize how stupid and wrong it would be to let immorality drive any system. So, why does the profit motive persist? It's clearly immoral! But many people would argue that point, foolishly. So, it's a basic trouble in humanity. Admit the immorality of the profit motive or continue to fail.

Don't get me wrong. It's not lightly that I say such things. Capitalism is far more immoral at its base than many of the things we today decry as atrocities. We all seem to suffer a simplistic and pervasive delusion where Capitalism is concerned.

I have interviewed many many people on these points. Most of them say the same things, 'If I didn't have to work, I would not work at all.' I find that deeply immoral and these speakers do so in the absence of a system that is like that. I think these people are wrong, most of them. Most of them are actually fairly good-minded and fairly hard working people. They would change in such a system and work because it was less boring than not working. So I am not as worried about that issue. But not working by choice is just laziness and another immorality. If the two choices of sin are offered it might be that laziness seems worse than self-indulgence (greed). That is the nature of reality again, with desire being the fuel of idealism and the way forward into the future, whereas anger is the fuel of balance and the eternal now, the present tense.

In the anger side consideration of progress, after a world of more balance (Communism) is attained, there would still be the desire side truth of more is better. Production would need to be maximized and balanced for growth but not cancerous growth.

But these are indeed the root causes. Emotions as motivations are the roots. Speaking only of basic motivations is as rooty as roots go.

Because man is flawed, and flawed humans that run the government are subject to the same Yin imbalance as the ones that use and abuse the financial system. So it just shifts the problem into a different shape, which rarely solves anything and often makes things worse. (After all, 'capitalism' only controls capital, whereas governments hold the monopoly on violence - pick your poison, I suppose, but it's clear to me which is the more dangerous of the two.) — Tzeentch

And as the speaker for anger, you should not be so quick to assume this. Anger is actually more about balance and so it is not by default sinful via violence. It's default is laziness, and that is the real problem often seen in tyrannies masking so-called Communism that are not actual Communism.

In a real Communist state, everyone must have the same per-capita resources, roughly. Any imbalance would deny the Communist label. Further, private property would be restricted to incidentals only, actual personal items. Homes certainly would be rotated. No one gets a cool lakehouse or beachhouse indefinitely.

Even in Capitalist society the real changes and work are done by very few people. Only grunt work is the real question and as soon as robots are created that can do these menial tasks Communism should be much more easily attained.

There is only 1 real problem with implementing Communism. That is breeding. To manage resources breeding must be tightly controlled. Greedy over-breeding would not be allowed. Further, breeding of sub groups within the whole would have to be watched. The moral aims of the whole could be subject to change if any sub-group over-bred. There are mostly two sides to the overpopulation argument, the deniers who claim that population will decline with education as it seems to and the worriers like me that say we are already way overpopulated as a species on this planet based on sustainable output at this tech level. That debate must be solved.

it is my aim that we, each of us, live in abundance. That means different things to different people and cultures. But some of us are far too happy with no space and jammed in like ants. How can we design allotments such that space is available in abundance for those that prefer elbow room? These are the REAL questions our societies should be asking. Along with this biggest question of all: How are the rich to be collectively 'taken down' without violent war? Good luck with that one. But it is coming.

Attempts at bending flawed humans into a different shape through coercion often fail as well, which is why I believe these issues can only be solved via a voluntary philosophical transformation of the entire system - leading to my thoughts of the Yin / Water element imbalance. — Tzeentch

I do not believe that you can get to volunteerism, but, I am for it if it can be done. I do agree that once a Communist style economic management is put in place, volunteerism would be a huge part of effective local work/activity.

I also do not think we can afford to wait for enough enlightenment. It will be too late if we do. The wise must rule us so first we must discover what wisdom is and quantify it entirely. Of course it will be a changing and growing thing at all times. That in itself is wisdom. But Democracy is nonsensical and always has been. The very idea that everyone is qualified to cast a wise vote is insane. Socrates himself warned us of this truth 2500 years ago and we still act like Democracy is a good idea. It makes one wonder if wisdom is ever going to really be possible.

The philosophical underpinnings of a civilization form the bedrock of everything, just like how all human behavior originates from the psyche. — Tzeentch

Agreed on both counts, but, civilization is really a manifestation of order, first. That ordering was mostly out of balance with nature or natural law or morality, take your pick. We need to remake it.

Luckily, I believe this will eventually happen naturally, as the system threatens to implode and prompts society as a whole to reflect and come up with actual solutions. — Tzeentch

I agree but there is no guarantee at all that reset and fallback are not included in the possible ways the existing system can fare near term.

The real and only question is AI. Will AI transcend human morality in terms of average morality per chooser? I think the answer is yes. But until it does so, the ensuing instability of AI's earning wisdom time might be long enough to wipe out humanity. Who knows? In any case its doubtful machines and AI will tolerate human greed and wanton self-indulgence, because such motivations would use up otherwise useful and needed resources.

Less luckily, things probably have to get much worse before they get better, unless this process of reflection can somehow be expediated (but I doubt it). — Tzeentch

I agree. It's likely that the wise will not be heeded and immorality will continue until any number of inevitable breaking points.

Asian philosophy to me is very Enneatype 9 in almost all ways. I find that an extremely limited point of view. Wisdom should encompass all possible teachers including a challenging 8 like me and a righteous 1 like so many teachers are. Further, Asian teachings in general express a deep and abiding mistrust of desire, which they pretty much view as the only emotion causing issues in many ways. I am not a general expert on it but I have read a lot of the widely known stuff. That's just my current take on it. If you have an Asian source you would recommend, I would be interested. It is a goal of mine to soften my language because I want to reach more people, but not so badly I will detract from the poignant nature of truth in my message.
— Chet Hawkins

Thanks again for your reply. Much appreciated! :up:

About the Eastern view of desire… it’s obviously often a focal point. — 0 thru 9

Yes, focal. But entirely mistrusted, yes? My model does not suggest that as is Eastern (or Western) philosophy has it right. Of course there is more derivation in the West anyway.

Although Buddha discovered the Golden Mean, the Middle Way, and that was a giant step.
There’s some profound balance, and it’s within the grasp of everyone… not just ascetics and yogis. — 0 thru 9

I agree with infinite choice, and I think that is some of what you mean here. But the Golden Mean I find to be mostly in error. That is to say, it is not a low amplitude expression of desire that is wise. It is instead the very thing the Eastern philosophies take umbrage with, the highest or perfect amplitude desire that is the path to wisdom.

The concept of the mean, a mitigation, is still included in a proper model. But the three way derivation of emotion, with desire only as a single path, explains better what truth is, in my opinion.

In fact the Middle Way or Golden Mean as defined by Buddha is exactly what not to do. It's again, very Enneatype 9 only, laziness and clam over-emphasized whereas my model says conflict is good, and that includes conflict and thus balance between the three emotions. So, the much vaunted peace of the East is an immoral lie to me. You and I have already gone a bit round and round on that.

Most mythos I can take apart in this same way. There are always a number of glaring flaws in any other system I have found. They do not match reality unless we are pretending that morality is immoral in some way, subjective morality; or some inherent bent towards immorality (as right) rather than morality. It already is true that immorality (as easy or impactful) can seem like morality.

From what I understand, the Buddha said that the desire that is dangerous is the mental kind… constant wanting while believing ‘more is always better!’ — 0 thru 9

That is interesting, because more is better in many fundamental ways. But the only more that is finally better is more good. And good is objective. So more of many things is not better, if you follow.

There are three things that are better only when balanced by each other. That is the reason this dichotomy/trichotomy exists. They are fear, anger, and desire. This equates to cowardice, laziness, and self-indulgence. So as these emotions increase their 'sin' increases as well. So this shows why increasing desire is better and at the same time worse if its not balanced. So, any single emotion is only better when its more if both the others are also more. Confusing? Perhaps. Not really, if you think about it. But the interaction of emotions can be deemed as a mix or a conflict and either envisioning is accurate.

The point being the East was entirely wrong about two things for sure: desire being mostly bad as it increases, and peace as a desirable concept.

He described greed, hatred, and delusion as the three root poisons. (I can’t argue with that). — 0 thru 9

I disagree. Cowardice, laziness, and self-indulgence are all the three primal sins. Delusion is too wide a category as any of these sins can be called delusion. Delusion is only defined properly as immorality itself. Better, the sense that immoral is moral. That is delusion. Also one could properly say that any over or under expression of any emotion (out of balance) is delusional.

Greed is only over-expressed desire.
Hatred has two forms:
Mostly anger with fear mixed in (fear of the evil other) OR
Mostly anger with desire mixed in (desire of the evil other)
Delusion is really any imbalance between any of the three primal emotions.

So these items as discussed were not equals, a classical mistake in reason.

As for Eastern and Asian teachings that I find powerful… we already mentioned the Tao Te Ching. — 0 thru 9

I have maybe even more than one book on that. I was wondering if there was a favorite. You speak of the original, Lao-Tzu.

To me, it feels like the trees wrote it, like the Earth itself speaking to us humans about how to live. — 0 thru 9

very cool.

A relevant line:
“You can do what you want with material things, but only if you hold to the mother of things will you do it for very long…” — 0 thru 9

I would agree, but, the 'mother of things' makes no sense to me, unless you refer to the only real law of nature, free will. What does it mean to 'hold to' the chaos of free will? I suppose the better explanation/analogy to implement is that 'the mother of things' refers to the GOOD or perfection (converting to my model). That does make sense. Indeed, hold to the objective good.

Choice is infinite. Done. Shown. The point is that choice is all we have and the infinite nature of choice makes blame easy. Everyone is to blame for everything. We are trapped in any state only because we lack the will, the wherewithal to change the state. But infinite choice is a guaranteed law of reality that means we are indeed to blame for any state.

Since you are me and I am you is also a truth, even if someone else caused the state you are still to blame. It makes truth easy to navigate if you believe it. Accepting blame is empowering and reaffirming in all cases.
— Chet Hawkins

Yes. I agree. Choice is infinite. (Or close enough for our purposes). — 0 thru 9

That is an interesting parenthetical addition. Why add it? What is presumed not infinite about choice?

There is one thing in my model. We cannot choose to change the good. That is the only one.

Are there other exceptions for you?

I’d perhaps change your word ‘blame’ to ‘responsibility’, it’s maybe a more positive word? Anyway…

Another Eastern saying that you’ve probably heard:
“All the same are loss and gain, praise and blame, honor and shame…”
Maybe the word ‘blame’ is better after all since it rhymes with ‘shame’. :grin: — 0 thru 9

And this would be another objection from me for Eastern thought. They perceive an unimaginably bad balance that does not exist. That is a balance between good and evil. No, we are aimed and we are supposed to aim at good. So there is no actual balance between good and evil. The successful navigation of being, must finally be, perfect alignment of intent with objective moral truth (the good).

If there is a balance between evil and good then choice is pointless. That makes Nihilism true and morality a farce.

I haven't personified what concepts lie in the field enough into flesh and blood. Nor has a clear methodological motive made itself clear to me. My target hasn't been found through which to intentionally exercise this anger. — substantivalism

Well, you have some, because you exist. That is no simple feat. And the decision to continue involves some of the same, and yes, flesh and blood.

Clarity is not required of the brave. Anger stands to mystery, unready, if need be. That is the requirement. Being is anger, unready and yet involved, in all.

In some cases this being may seem unintentional. That is less than best. The better path involves becoming one with the anger of being and the flip side of that same truth, the so-called 'unity principle', my term, but an easy one with so many others that are the same term, universal consciousness, etc. It does not end up being Wu, although so many Pragmatists will claim it is. What is Wu really but the instantiation of mystery, of the unknown, the parts not yet integrated?

To claim no target is the same mistake, a refusal of being and the choice offered. Free will was already given, and now you want it to provide a target as well? Better to get busy and make mistakes. Choose a target and never claim it has not been found. You are the finder.

But the ‘real world’ consists of a ‘given’ and a ‘possibility’, brute facts and choice.
— 0 thru 9
Oh no! The inevitable backslide to the 'we're only human' position. Nooooooo!
— Chet Hawkins

What position? Sorry, I’m not sure what you mean here. Please expand on this.

I meant simply that (as a very general statement) we have possessions, talents, family, etc and there are many possibilities what to do with that ‘raw material’. — 0 thru 9

Yes you are right. I maybe misunderstood your comment there thinking you were making the Pragmatic, 'Sorry there idealist guy, this is the real world with real people, and real people fail so we let them' type of statement which is really only an excuse. But you were saying from a given state there is (insert clarification here) choice. I agree and my clarification would be this insertion: 'infinitely available but by degrees harder and harder to choose ...'. The meaning of which includes the real world comment a Pragmatist would offer but without making any excuses.

I think we were saying the same thing depending on your insert.

Let me emphasize the quote I gave, and how the translation of the first part is written almost as a challenge.
“CAN YOU love people and lead them without imposing your will?” etc…
— 0 thru 9
No. You cannot.

Action is required of the moral. Inaction is mere laziness the sin of anger. This is why for example enneatype 8 and 1 are more regularly thrashed and anger is denigrated than the enneatype 9 laziness and calm is. Most people would rather be around someone who patients waits for them to 'get it' than to be around those that actively challenge or instruct them to change. But most people are horribly immorally weak in that preference.
— Chet Hawkins

Then I regret to say (and hope that I’m mistaken) that you reject (or possibly that you are overlooking) the teaching of the Tao, which (in this small quote) advises to be like a patient nurturing parent towards one you wish to share knowledge / wisdom with. — 0 thru 9

So I do not reject that ... way. I do embrace it, but, the teaching part, the assertive declarative part is not the soft part. The do it and be judged part is the soft part. Granted, you cannot detect my demeanor in text. I come off mostly calm and humorous in person, but can lean towards forceful and assertive as indeed I am an anger type person and not a enneatype 9 (which would absolutely fit Tao as you describe if you can scrape them off the couch to get them to do something).

Asian philosophy to me is very Enneatype 9 in almost all ways. I find that an extremely limited point of view. Wisdom should encompass all possible teachers including a challenging 8 like me and a righteous 1 like so many teachers are. Further, Asian teachings in general express a deep and abiding mistrust of desire, which they pretty much view as the only emotion causing issues in many ways. I am not a general expert on it but I have read a lot of the widely known stuff. That's just my current take on it. If you have an Asian source you would recommend, I would be interested. It is a goal of mine to soften my language because I want to reach more people, but not so badly I will detract from the poignant nature of truth in my message.

This is opposed to claiming some knowledge (which may be presumptuous) and forcing it upon someone (which is very authoritative and domineering). — 0 thru 9

Yes, well, it can be a leaning of mine. I do try to soften it, but natural tendencies being what they are ... I probably fail often enough.

This usually leads to a battle of wills, instead of surrounding a person with some piece of ‘truth’, but letting them open to it… or not.
You can lead a horse to water, after that it is their choice to be nourished or not. — 0 thru 9

Yes, well, granted in that sense. As mentioned the 'do it' part is much less assertive from me.

To claim wisdom and the right to force it on someone reminds me of the extreme music teacher in the movie Whiplash, if you have seen it. (Please understand that I’m NOT saying that your words are as extreme as the teacher in that movie! Not comparing here. I’m simply against too much force in teaching or leading. Even when one is full of valuable knowledge! Especially then). — 0 thru 9

Well I prefer confident professionals to dithering or quiet types. In my experience it works better. I do not mean overbearing but assertive, yes. It's the same to me as a bridge maker. Do you make good bridges? Do you know what you are doing? ' 'Absolutely! I've studied the relevant science and I take great pride in going beyond specifications! I invest time and energy in understanding and using the materials like no one else I know. I do not invest as much time in flashy decor but rather in long lasting bridges that are engineered for flexible strength.' That by comparison with a bridge guy that is soft and quiet and says things like, 'Try it and see' or 'I've never had any complaints' is better to me. The latter type terrifies me with their lack of forthright and assertive candor.

This fits with my model as well. This may sound like exactly the kind of presumptuous assertion you do not prefer, but, anger is inherently the most honest of the three primal emotions. It is by its nature more interested in balance. And it is usually assertive to some degree. This brutality as a tendency is why it is often called 'brutal' honesty. That is no accident. And I prefer no accidents in my bridges and my wisdom. Too much?

That which is loud and hot and demanding is too Yang, and will burn itself out.
Which is fine in nature, but who intentionally wants to burn out quickly? (not me, anymore). — 0 thru 9

Yes imbalance anger burns up as Yang teaches. But balanced anger and anger is about balance in general does not do this and also broadcasts confidence and serenity. The mixture is delicate and I admit I sometimes rub my audiences the wrong way. But anger is supposed to run over expressed desire and fear the wrong way. Anger stand to their forces, bending them by force back into proper moral alignment. That is why war can be wise in come cases.

Example: Gaslighting is unwise. But gaslighting must include immoral intent. The same attitude exists morally and is called, 'Counseling'. If one is more concerned with justifying one's actual insanity than addressing it, one will call counseling, gaslighting immorally.
— Chet Hawkins

I don’t know what definition of ‘gaslighting’ you are using here, but it doesn’t have much in common with anything I’ve heard. Gaslighting is psychological abuse, not counseling.

From Webster:
gaslighting: psychological manipulation of a person usually over an extended period of time that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one's emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator — 0 thru 9

So the modern community on fb and other social media is chock full of many people, but mostly left wing and desire oriented types, that use gaslighting and condescension and mansplaining all the time, improperly. I gave these examples because of that. I have had extensive debates on each of the terms in many forums because people tend to use them improperly. Further the point being made was that the negative intent is required to use the term properly and therefore some attempt must be made to judge the speaker's intent. When you simply see people saying 'because a man did it it's mansplaining', and then things like 'he told me I was acting too emotionally all the time, so I'm done with that condescending gas-lighter!" you then have great sympathy for the targets of such nonsense.

I think you are saying that the intention defines the morality of an action?
Like murder is wrong, but killing somebody who is attempting to kill others is justified?
If so, then I’d agree in principle. — 0 thru 9

Yes, and murder is a great word example. The word murder is basically defined as immoral killing. The implication of that is that indeed there is moral killing. And I agree.

The good wisely inflict necessary suffering on the everyone as everyone is slightly unwise. Adding wise suffering is always wise, as a tautology. Excuses abound. They are only that and not wise.
— Chet Hawkins

Slavery is certainly choice. The slave is choosing to be a slave. That one will really get people going. I mean, are we to remain timid on subject matter when discussing universal truths? I think not. If there is a person so possessed of rare understanding that they must needs call out dangerous and divisive truths in every situation, what is the label we properly apply to that person? Is the one-eyed man king in the land of the blind? Is she? Really? What is the probability?
— Chet Hawkins

Ok. But you are making sweeping absolute statements again (like in previous posts about ‘war’).
And the meaning of them depends on some irony or insight or knowledge that I’m just not seeing being demonstrated or shown… rhetorical devices aside. — 0 thru 9

It was shown. I will show it again. Choice is infinite. Done. Shown. The point is that choice is all we have and the infinite nature of choice makes blame easy. Everyone is to blame for everything. We are trapped in any state only because we lack the will, the wherewithal to change the state. But infinite choice is a guaranteed law of reality that means we are indeed to blame for any state.

Since you are me and I am you is also a truth, even if someone else caused the state you are still to blame. It makes truth easy to navigate if you believe it. Accepting blame is empowering and reaffirming in all cases. That does not mean you dwell on it or wallow in blame like foolish heroes in every story that thing everything is their fault and will not stop walling in guilt about it uselessly. That is not wise, even though it is wise to accept blame.

I know about ‘crazy wisdom’ being contrary and provocative while making a point.
That’s been done successfully, though it’s tricky. — 0 thru 9

It is tricky! I think I do fairly well. But you are helping by making solid critiques. Thank you.

But I’m not seeing the wisdom here, sorry.
These type of statements just sounds like blunt assertions with some bold attitude, which I’m not inclined to respect or even respond to further. — 0 thru 9

Ah, well, sorry. I tried to clarify again. It's very possible I am not the best writing spout of wisdom for you then.

In my view, a ‘steamroller approach’ isn’t working, and I think you make better points elsewhere in your response. — 0 thru 9

I do not think I'd go that far in characterizing my approach. But confidence can seem too much to some.

It is tempting to think ‘we are civilized, these problems are how civilization works… exactly like it is now, there’s no going back… we are civilized, these problems are how civilization works… ”

This reasonable-sounding lullaby works well for the owners of the global Machine.
We march to their tune by day, and lull ourselves to sleep telling ourselves that there is no other way to be ‘civilized’ but the way we were taught, the way it is now (give or take some window dressing).
— 0 thru 9
This is nothing but order. Order is not the good. That conflation is tiresome to me but I realize that so many people, even Jordan Peterson sometimes, labor under its tiresome yolk. Cattle think and that's casting aspersions on some fairly independent minded bovine exemplars I and my border collie have encountered. Resistance is NEVER futile. The Borg are idiots.
— Chet Hawkins

I think we actually may be agreeing here, but I might have been a little unclear in my initial wording.
I’m saying RESIST the way we are taught, with regards to the idea that the powerful must know what they are doing, and therefore are worthy of following.
To QUESTION everything, and not be lead by appearances and moved by displays of physical or financial power.

(So I’m not disagreeing with you, rather I’m disagreeing with (and trying to smash) the inner recording tape loop playing incessantly inside of my mind, though not in my mind alone).
- 0 thru 9 — 0 thru 9

Oh yeah, sorry. I should have been clearer that we agreed on that one. I just instead stated my parallel and supportive argument and maybe you thought I was disagreeing because I sounded confident about it. I was disagreeing alright, but with the same thing you disagreed to.

And that discipline is the right one, of wisdom. And the fact that you call it out is rehearsing the good, rather than the other way of excusing and thus rehearsing evil. I can only hope I do not sound condescending when I commiserate. I do the same thing. For so long I wondered, 'is this self chiding voice in me self-defeating?' Now I have lived with it long enough to cherish its insistence, in it's small, fragile, yet eternal and unrelenting voice.
— Chet Hawkins

We agree again here, I think. (Feel free to disagree lol).

My statement here was like what I wrote above about “resisting and questioning”.
Question our teaching, keep what seems worthy, discard the unworthy teachings, and keep investigating that which one is still unsure of.

Any find our inner guidance, conscience, moral compass… (however one describes it).
(Oh yes… and actually FOLLOW what the conscience advises one to do. I’m still working on doing that one consistently). :smile: — 0 thru 9

Yes the sword of Damocles is a hard thing to pretend to adhere to. As in let consequences inform your new intents and then pretend that the sword is there. Ignore it at your peril! The sword is your moral compass from an angry threatening point of view. Maybe you prefer the cosmic tickler of Damocles!

↪Chet Hawkins
Thanks for your reply…

I know, I know… the inevitable objection to such idealistic thoughts.
Thanks for not putting it in the usual way, such as “that’s not the REAL world blah blah… ” — 0 thru 9

I am very well aware of the Pragmatic side, fear side failure of the cop-out saying of 'this is the REAL world' or 'we are only human'. I do not use that pathetic excuse. ;)

(So I’m not disagreeing with you, rather I’m disagreeing with (and trying to smash) the inner recording tape loop playing incessantly inside of my mind, though not in my mind alone). — 0 thru 9

And that discipline is the right one, of wisdom. And the fact that you call it out is rehearsing the good, rather than the other way of excusing and thus rehearsing evil. I can only hope I do not sound condescending when I commiserate. I do the same thing. For so long I wondered, 'is this self chiding voice in me self-defeating?' Now I have lived with it long enough to cherish its insistence, in it's small, fragile, yet eternal and unrelenting voice.

But the ‘real world’ consists of a ‘given’ and a ‘possibility’, brute facts and choice. — 0 thru 9

Oh no! The inevitable backslide to the 'we're only human' position. Nooooooo!

Let me emphasize the quote I gave, and how the translation of the first part is written almost as a challenge.
“CAN YOU love people and lead them without imposing your will?” etc… — 0 thru 9

No. You cannot.

Action is required of the moral. Inaction is mere laziness the sin of anger. This is why for example enneatype 8 and 1 are more regularly thrashed and anger is denigrated than the enneatype 9 laziness and calm is. Most people would rather be around someone who patients waits for them to 'get it' than to be around those that actively challenge or instruct them to change. But most people are horribly immorally weak in that preference.

Every immoral tendency in EVERY way is indeed just immoral until you admit there is objective moral truth. When you do so, when you admit that and believe it properly, there is a change. Suddenly there is a RIGHT way to do the previously immoral thing. There is no exception to this being the only exception in all cases. This is the infinite nature of all wisdom, all truth. It is the juxtaposition that evil will try to call out to discredit the good. The good, objective aim, is the hardest thing you can do. Any and every excuse will divert you from it. And if all directions are wrong except perfection and perfection is unattainable, then how easy is it for any immoral aim to suggest that the good direction is just as suspect of being wrong. But good is ok with that and yet seemingly remains the good, perfect in isolation.

Example: Being impatient in the pursuit of the good is wise. Being impatient in any other way is unwise. This juxtaposition is horrific for the unwise and they will deny it and let it rankle them.

Example: Condescension is unwise. But condescension must include immoral intent. The same attitude exists morally and is called, 'Teaching'. 'Mansplaining' is another example of this. If one is more concerned with the source of an action or advice than its intent, one is immoral.

Example: Gaslighting is unwise. But gaslighting must include immoral intent. The same attitude exists morally and is called, 'Counseling'. If one is more concerned with justifying one's actual insanity than addressing it, one will call counseling, gaslighting immorally.

There is no way to properly address these issues without an admission that morality is objective. Once one understands that, believes it, one can earn wisdom and grow. Until that baseline admission is made progress at all is much less certain, haphazard at best.

It hints that there is much we do have control over. — 0 thru 9

Control is an odd choice of words here. In isolation especially this sentence is problematic.

We have 'control' over one thing, choice, intent. Any other control is delusional. So what do you mean?

We live a mortal life in an evolving planet, with some things we can’t change. — 0 thru 9

That is not relevant.

The choice to try to change what is immoral to what is moral is the only relevant thing. Thus your statement, granted in isolation, is immoral. We can indeed in time change all in any way desired. There is however always one exception properly to every such moral statement. What is good is objective and cannot be changed. See how that works?

There will be plenty of suffering and opportunities for growth without adding to them.
(Crisis-opportunities as the Chinese say). — 0 thru 9

Intent to the good is always and only wise and good. Consequences are not relevant except to inform formation of future intents. The sword of Damocles is involved in the formation of intents. Are you honest about including past consequences into your new intents? You do know.

The good wisely inflict necessary suffering on the everyone as everyone is slightly unwise. Adding wise suffering is always wise, as a tautology. Excuses abound. They are only that and not wise.

But we have such powers of choice built into us, even before taking into account technology. — 0 thru 9

I agree. Choice is infinite. But the difficulty of right choice is state dependent in the sense for example that some people can easily hurdle some goals and others can do it, for sure, without exception, but not nearly so easily. The blind can see, they just refuse to. The difficult is too much. They deny in part their connection to all, their oneness with all, and refuse to see only because of the difficulty involved. This is hard to agree with like all real wisdom, and yet remains a tautology.

Slavery is certainly choice. The slave is choosing to be a slave. That one will really get people going. I mean, are we to remain timid on subject matter when discussing universal truths? I think not. If there is a person so possessed of rare understanding that they must needs call out dangerous and divisive truths in every situation, what is the label we properly apply to that person? Is the one-eyed man king in the land of the blind? Is she? Really? What is the probability?

It is tempting to think ‘we are civilized, these problems are how civilization works… exactly like it is now, there’s no going back… we are civilized, these problems are how civilization works… ”

This reasonable-sounding lullaby works well for the owners of the global Machine.
We march to their tune by day, and lull ourselves to sleep telling ourselves that there is no other way to be ‘civilized’ but the way we were taught, the way it is now (give or take some window dressing). — 0 thru 9

This is nothing but order. Order is not the good. That conflation is tiresome to me but I realize that so many people, even Jordan Peterson sometimes, labor under its tiresome yolk. Cattle think and that's casting aspersions on some fairly independent minded bovine exemplars I and my border collie have encountered. Resistance is NEVER futile. The Borg are idiots.

I would like to ask directly to make sure you are not being simply coy and poking fun back at me, 'Do you mean (solely or mostly) me, when you call out idle speculations?' {is that a tongue in cheek dig?}
— Chet Hawkins
I mean everyone here including myself. — substantivalism

Yes, ok, a balanced critique, levelled at all. I agree.

You might have to demystify that sentence for me.
— Chet Hawkins
Any term you or me use is polluted by colloquial meanings and socially present biases. To call something "truth" without further elaboration on what that means or how to methodologically showcase something as such. . . and the limitations of these strategies. . . leaves you open to having your speculations be handled as a hammer by others against 'dissidents'. Whether that is your intention or not. — substantivalism

Yes, well, hammery or hammerish. I am fairly ... confident ... in my statements for some tastes yes, not necessarily implying you. I speak to truth as I understand it, which is not necessarily the same thing, yet, as truth as I might want it, if you follow.

The truth I know is one that requires of all moral agents an uncompromising and infinite amount of effort. The aim of perfection is a complete lack of laziness, cowardice, and self-indulgence specifically; those three being the only cardinal sins or immoral aims from which all others are derived. This can sound like belief and it is but not only that. I do maintain that, in demonstrable ways these assertions match reality in remarkable ways; repeatable, understandable.

When it comes to philosophical speculation we are left with a handful of attitudes with which to motivate philosophical progress on. Pyrrhonean skeptics who seek to passively take a back seat or actively seek for balancing the arguments for as much as against a specific position. Pragmatic fictionalists who see it as merely make believe in a cosmic mental game to play out depending on the accepted rule set. That or become a supremacist. . . what I called a philosophical dominator. . . or it could also be called a dogmatist/fundamentalist. A position, that despite the immediately negative connotations, isn't meant to be seen as purely negative. — substantivalism

I find those three to be a likely match for fear, desire, and anger. As such your separations of the approaches is agreeable and predictable.

I would say though that anger is different in one way to the other two emotions. I admit freely that this difference can be overstated and that is not my intent. Still, the single point in time of the eternal now is the scope of anger. In that singularity, it differs from the possibly delusional gulf or scope of the past (fear) and the future (desire). Also, anger is the neutral force, rejecting the other two as its primary role. The denial/acceptance of fear and the denial/acceptance of desire literally cause what most call 'reality' to exist. The tension of emotive interaction is actually a better description of reality than 'reality'. Again 'reality' as I use it is what most would call reality, incorrectly. There is nothing but emotion in existence.

However, the word "truth" can be used rather loose in a political sense comparable more to a sociological tool to immediately discredit the viewpoints of others to the benefit a given philosophical dominator. — substantivalism

I do engage in forceful discretization of ideas that I believe I have useful and strong arguments against. I will deign to offer those arguments as fully as I can. But, agreed that, at the end of the day, there is no final proof, only belief.

Until there is an admittance that such a word is merely to portray your high sense of confidence or you later present an elaborate theory of truth I hope you don't fault me for my own idle speculations. — substantivalism

Well, the admittance of my confidence is there fully. That is all any of us have. So, I have no choice but to allow free will in others, expressing it egregiously and properly myself. And actually although I do not fault anyone their right to express their ideas on what truth is or might be, I would nonetheless fault their reasoning as needed where it does not agree with reality, which I would find reasonable from them towards my model in turn, e.g. 'to be fair' {Letterkenny}.

Well, correct me if I am wrong. But, you seem to be maligning your suffering state while at the same time actually admitting that it, your chosen state, is at least slightly wrong. Is that a correct assessment of what you were saying here. If so, then I can relax a bit that you are not finding me any more offensive than your own choices are.
— Chet Hawkins
At least in principle I'd consider the opinions of another as their own without emotive objection and unless I have sufficient basis, besides idle discussion, to point out perceived flaws it always seem to be more psychological projection on my part than anything else. — substantivalism

The which is a ... rather observant and uninvolved approach, the path of fear. Do you agree? I might say I find the 'get on the field and participate' advice of Joseph Campbell more to my taste, but it's no surprise I'm an anger type.

I rarely believe I have sufficient basis. . . — substantivalism

Your acumen does not seem wanting at all. The world benefits from people of high ability stating firmly their beliefs. 'Let truth and falsehood grapple! Truth is strong!' - Milton (has a point)

As to 'maligning [my] suffering state', similar to what I've stated before something about taking a position to its breaking point and then realizing the solution with which to gain balance again seems rather appealing. . . but not until a sufficient back reaction sets me free. More so at the moment in principle, not so much in practice. In practice, it may mean that once such a principle has served its purpose it may go into hibernation. — substantivalism

The sleeper must awaken! - Frank Herbert

Rest is acceptable but it seems to me more and more as moral agency increases and time passes more and more heightened (maximized) balanced states are required. This means rest must become more efficient (shorter in duration with a limit of zero). What do you think?

I find that life and ideas have become rather shallow and 'trivialised' in the information age, with clicks of smart phone, Wikipedia and links. It seems to be the opposite of esotericism, with so much information readily available, with often little reference to the specifics of ideas and usefulness of the particular significance for understanding. Of course, I am wary of over generalisations, especially as many people on this forum do read widely, and engage on a deeper level as opposed to some social media sites. — Jack Cummins

I agree entirely.

I have begun in my life to quit games and social circles that despite my insistence on making things harder and thus more meaningful and fun (for me at least), continue to dumb things down and deny the incredible depth required to suffer and grow.

I think Soren Kierkegaard had a similar sentiment to us both, where he was saying like, 'I don't want to make things easier. I am here to make things harder, by choice.' to paraphrase.

It may be about being able to dip into ideas in the information age, but still being able to pursue ideas in a deeper way, and this may be the potential artistry. It may not be easy though, and I have to admit that I still enjoy time alone with a paper book as a companion, as a way of 'tapping into' the creative mindset of the writer. — Jack Cummins

I do as well. But is that not a depth of immersion still in keeping with our increasing of nuances? I think it is.

It is like the tip of the spear, very compact, but it hints at meditation, yoga, your life’s purpose, love, and detachment.
And letting go of accumulating possessions and information.

When one wants to accept the path, the many details and tips can be looked up elsewhere.
If our civilization followed these ideas, my imagination struggles to see and can’t explain…

But I think it’d be radically different, and infinitely better. — 0 thru 9

I enjoy the sentiment and the balance that any worthy model evokes within us to help us cope and understand reality.

In the end, by my model, you are aiming at the being portion, the anger portion, as a consequence. This is great in the sense that it stresses the third force, the consequence, of that model, yin/yang. What worries me is that the details and information and delusional hurdles along that path are required and cannot in any way be circumvented, despite the 'fond' desire that they could be.

One must 'suffer' though them and then hold that suffering present in one's balance to be and maintain wise action.

Ha ha! Well, I get it. That means 'real life' distracts you from the important questions. And, people aren't wearing enough hats!
— Chet Hawkins
I wouldn't exactly say that only 'real life' does so. I've also felt. . . impeded. . . by the idle speculations of others here and elsewhere. — substantivalism

Well, that was kind-of my point. 'Real life' is quoted because that is delusional. Real life unquoted is non-delusional amid real experience. Real life includes speculations, idle and otherwise, that do absolutely have impact upon us, whether we wish them to or not.

What is in the mind's eye of the others is unified with us, as an objective truth. There is no final escape from that trouble. Perfection-aiming involves first admitting that this trouble is part of objective truth, and then striving with effort to overcome the many delusions that tempt us from the great happy resonance with truth.

I would like to ask directly to make sure you are not being simply coy and poking fun back at me, 'Do you mean (solely or mostly) me, when you call out idle speculations?' {is that a tongue in cheek dig?}

Yes, that's the final truth in everyone's case. Of course get on a philosophy site and start going on and on about objective morality and improving more and more to approach perfection and morality being the hardest thing there is, and one wonders, is it worth it? How many converts to truth will there be? Comforting lies has a much longer line to the booth than truth does.
— Chet Hawkins
To call it truth is to commit such a mischievous intuition entrance to the armory of a philosophical dominator. — substantivalism

You might have to demystify that sentence for me.

Again, I sense a kind of dig at me. But, I am often a bit paranoid. So, I try to err on the side of letting slights go unanswered which has, I hope, an effect that means ... hey this Chet guy gave me side-eye so he saw my angle, but he let it pass. I guess that does not affect his position. His idea(s) remain stable despite assault. What does that mean?

Philosophical dominators with committed and mischievous intuition are fun! Right? {I had a cat once, ughhh} That is especially true if the foil is openly accepted and also humble (really) in that truth-seeking remains the final goal however haphazardly we approach it. When one mounts a soapbox or posts on such a site, one is not free of intents, no, and none of those intents are perfect. But, such a proselytizer is either wearing better angle wings than most, or not. Is there a clear assertion of yea or nay in that regard?

I get that also. We are too exhausted to put in more effort to contain others' immorality.
— Chet Hawkins
What spirit I have is exhausted, period. I want such motivations, intuitions, or moral imperatives to cease their chants regardless of my actions. . . or lack thereof. I just want it to simply end. They only bring me heartache and immediate awareness of how I should view my apathy/indifference as mental hypocrisy. — substantivalism

Well, correct me if I am wrong. But, you seem to be maligning your suffering state while at the same time actually admitting that it, your chosen state, is at least slightly wrong. Is that a correct assessment of what you were saying here. If so, then I can relax a bit that you are not finding me any more offensive than your own choices are.

In Arabic, jihad is usually translated as ‘struggle’, meaning the struggle and effort towards God.
Only in certain cases does it refer to actual warfare on infidels.
Not sure where I’m going with that, it just reminded me of that. — 0 thru 9

Then, yes, 'jihad'! I agree. The struggle towards God. Exactly!

I hope to respond more later.

Thanks again for your posts and efforts! :smile: — 0 thru 9

No worries. And you're welcome. Thank you for offering me a chance for clarity.

Sometimes people just misunderstand me despite my painstaking efforts at clarity and ... yes ... spreading my beliefs. But then I just declare jihad! Seriously though, the way to be is jihad by the definition given. And I would change the term 'God' for 'the good'.

And actually by coincidence of timing, this might be a good time for someone to start a philosophical thread about war, since the specific threads about Ukraine, Gaza, etc are now in the Lounge. — 0 thru 9

Well, I tried to be clear. My philosophical definition of war is closer to change than what people will commonly or colloquially recognize as war.

To many and most, war is only some crazy, violent, nation versus nation thing that is often about money or resources one way or another.

My caution is that war is really only change. And suffering itself is indeed the only path to wisdom. Change involving suffering cannot be simply deemed immoral as most people would tend to do in my opinion.

Writers are probably well versed now in/on the concept of the 5 conflicts and I think 'they' have added AI as the 6th conflict, although AI to me is just another chooser, e.g. man v man and not a new category.

All of these conflicts to me are 'war' or 'change' or 'struggle', etc.

If you want to say, 'no Chet, I prefer that the term war always means foolish or unnecessary conflict!' , then there is no point in me bringing up my term shifting.

But my caution is why I bother. If we denigrate war in general, and people also tend to denigrate anger in general, completely misunderstanding its purpose in the grand scheme of things, we also then cannot attain balance and morality and wisdom are thrown out the window. Fear side and desire side aphorisms that are anti-wisdom are then taken as wisdom and humanity all loses. It is better to understand that conflict is morally required and the wise seek out struggle and suffering to test themselves in every way. One less potato chip is war. Challenging your neighbor to stop their dog from barking endlessly is war. Doubting God is war. Posting on a philosophy site is war. Occupying space and having mass is war.

Again, if you wish to split terms on these differing matters you risk misunderstanding the nature of reality itself.

{It's the same with fear actually. The colloquial definition is not useful really. If you insist on the limits of weakly defined terms and or colloquial common nonsense (which I deem to be similar) there is no saving you from misunderstanding. Of course, all of this is said tongue in cheek, my opinion, stated firmly as belief. I do tend to mention almost every time what my changes are from the standard colloquial terms. But I do feel those terms, the old emotional terms, are correct to use for better understanding}

I wonder how all of this stands in the information age. There is more of a demand for transparency and going beyond 'secrecy'. I wonder how this will come into effect, and what will remain 'secret' behind the scenes? Also, the information age gives so much access to knowledge, and how will this affect individuals' understanding? Does it mean that the quest for philosophical knowledge will be about assimilation of knowledge alone? This could be very different from the inner searching for meaning and knowledge. — Jack Cummins

What I am finding is that the information age, or at least this most modern pulse of it, which includes the key piece, the personal smartphone, makes communication trivial, but a burden at the same time.

I remember the first time I felt like I was a programmer and a paramedic at the same time. Some idiotic manager dared to call me after hours for something I had warned management about. I told him exactly how I felt about that. I was too skilled at the time, too clutch for them to fire me, but the writing was on the wall. The proximity of everything empowers the sellouts. I had some half rate hack of a developer in a meeting later that year calling me out for disloyalty. He literally said the company owed me nothing and I owed the company solid 9-5 work. I just smiled at him and it wasn't me that humorously asked if he had his iron cross on his Gestapo badge, but I did laugh a little too loud. Double brownnosing points for delivery of foolishness with a straight face. Crosshair believes it! Good soldiers follow orders. {Bad Batch - Star Wars}

These days I have Gen Z types telling me that I cannot join their facetime groups because I'd just be an old creeper. When all respect for depth is lost, only the trivial versions of success are lauded. Wisdom is easily cast aside as too hard, not for everyone. And today's elites enforce that trend. They have no use for wisdom, or so they think. I guess dog eat dog is fun, until you're long of tooth and tired of fighting younger competition. It never was fun for me. Maybe there is a cycle. Maybe the esoteric mysteries shift in and out of vogue. But I see interest and respect for it diminishing at the same time as almost everyone realizing there is an empty hole right in the center of who they are.

It seems to me one big thing is true, there is no time left for grace. Right when you get the time, the dog eat dog thing will pop and murder you. I guess there is always a meringue though, a froth of excess in the 'winners' win that yields a kind of eddy in which the new version of wise can flourish for a time. But it's no longer enough time to be a wizard on a hill in his tower. These days being a champion of the esoteric truths is more like capture the flag. You can hide and run fast and maybe even be the one who lucks out and gets cover fire from allies you didn't know you had, and then you ring that bell, once.

Well, this word subversion is problematic. How far do you go with it?
— Chet Hawkins
You know, this is something I thought about frequently a good while ago. The answer is still rather indeterminate but my circumstances have always seemed to mitigate against such an extensive investigation. — substantivalism

Ha ha! Well, I get it. That means 'real life' distracts you from the important questions. And, people aren't wearing enough hats!

We are it, the chooser, the speaker. We know of none greater than ourselves in moral agency. Yes, we properly respect all other moral agents, the animals, the planet, all atoms even; but humility can be taken too far. When we deny the infinity of choice within ourselves, we fail morally.
— Chet Hawkins
Humility as forced upon me (ticked into me) or by my own hand? Perhaps much of the former has overflowed but the latter requires further improvement. — substantivalism

Yes, that's the final truth in everyone's case. Of course get on a philosophy site and start going on and on about objective morality and improving more and more to approach perfection and morality being the hardest thing there is, and one wonders, is it worth it? How many converts to truth will there be? Comforting lies has a much longer line to the booth than truth does.

So, instead say, it's the balancing of the ego, with the id and superego; or the balancing of fear with anger and desire that brings clarity.
— Chet Hawkins
I feel that perhaps you have to bring about that state of affairs continually. To have it swing back from a violent perturbation. To embody. . . bear witness. . . mentally to what one is capable of despite our proclivities that we've inherited from modernity. What wrath we can bring about so that we can feel the moment with which to grant ourselves a caring hand to pull us away. To see what lust we possess and grow disgusted at the impulsive drives that arise. — substantivalism

You're quite poetic.

Being 'in it' alive, and balanced feels like being a scaled down version of the Hulk. Raw, unprotected nerve endings, suffering experience, in all its beautiful agony. It actually is poetry in motion, in being, but its not surprising that most of us remain mostly unconscious of the effects, good and bad. The effort is too great. It's just like the choice, finally, to die. The effort is too great to choose otherwise. You do see some though that have an iron will at least, even amid bleak bed-ridden life support. Aberration? Maybe. The only thing I can think of is the internal world must still be rich and fulfilling in some way. Otherwise it's just a powerful circuit. Like the sun, it keeps on burning.

The more extreme the perturbation the more chaotic and beautiful the fall to the minimum is. Put into difficult circumstances it scrambles to find justifications. . . reasons. . . grounding. . . to launch oneself off again. Creativity makes its appearance with open arms for all. — substantivalism

I mean the cycle is real, the oscillation. And it does seem that the swing is wider, corresponding roughly to moral agency. But that is worrying. Anyone, even a child, can tell, ... if the swing is getting wider it's similar to the universe accelerating in expansion. That makes no sense. It will end itself. Unless we can reliably narrow the oscillation by choice, en masse, we may have discovered the real reason for the Fermi Paradox.

Punishment is already included by objective morality. And morality is not punishing you. You are! The chooser is the only one with the power to punish. They punish themselves. But remember, you are me and I am you. So, any evil act in all the universe punishes us all. That is harmonics, out of resonance with the perfect good.
— Chet Hawkins
Without abandoning those intuitions I possess I either have my head painfully throb for the evil others conduct or I see myself as a part of it and somewhat capable. In the end such a punishment shouldn't end if I'm to remain consistent and sane. — substantivalism

I get that also. We are too exhausted to put in more effort to contain others' immorality. Locking them up seems like the only non-tiring option. But, it is not. And it causes more troubles, more immorality. It is not as efficient as a modern alternative to the old Samurai would be. Robots will help immensely. Everyone has an escort robot. Ha ha! Is that free? I think it could be. But will/would it be? Doubtful.

Only the shadow knows!

Our? As in human civilisation? Perhaps Danish civilisation is balanced, being free and developed. But the world in a broad sense surely is not. — Lionino

If we are not perfect, there is more balance to be had. If we are not maximized, there is more balance to be had.

As far as forum writing goes, it is so different from so many other forms. The reason why I have used this forum is because I find that the dialogue with so many people throughout the world makes it so good. When I was on academic courses, there was less, or a different kind of intensity. I never really achieved any clarity of thinking. I still find it hard to pin down a particular perspective above all, but I do find that, in conjunction with my own reading, engagement with TPF enables me to analyse my own thinking more critically. — Jack Cummins

Well, yes, that is the hope. The lay or professional-adjacent thinkers interested in a topic are actually more engaging and less ridiculously critical than academia. Academia is really a servant of the elite trends. In that way, academia always fails us all. The academic rebel is much much more likely to be actually helping society. The heavy hand of order and hierarchy is far too typically strangling truth from academia. The thing that helps real groundbreakers is the very new nature of their work. This is an unforeseen problem for elites, because the rolling up the accreditation of new information to academia is a way to cheat truth, not to help its being revealed. Something new gets out of hand too quick for them to cap by its very nature. It's fun and great for everyone when that happens.

The idea of the imminent may be about the present primarily; it may correspond with Eckart Tolle's argument about time, in which amidst the perception of past, present, and future, it is only possible that perceive in the present 'now' consciousness. — substantivalism

Indeed, but he stops short as far as I am aware of declaring the why of all of that. He does realize the importance of Now.

Both ideas of past and future may be a potential for both romanticism and fear. The scope of eternity may also be seen as being about a static achievement while a sense of eternity as immanence may involve a contemplative picture of blending in with the endless aspects of life and its flow. It may be a way of seeing beyond desire itself. — substantivalism

I call now, the eternal now. We cannot escape now. If there is a new future, then there is a new now. So even though now seems more finite somehow than the past or the future, it is not.

I'll go so far as to say that propositional moral statements are used by people as tools to exert power over other people. As such, moral statements are treated as if they were truth-apt, even though the speaker himself might not actually believe they are. As in, instead of slapping someone in the face or hitting them with a bat, one tells them, "Be the bigger person!" or "It's wrong not to forgive", and it can have the same effect of getting the other person to be compliant and submissive. — baker

I mean, I agree. If you are saying that morality is super hard, I agree. And if you are saying 'The road to hell is paved with good intentions', I agree. But that does not release us from the burden of choice. In fact, it only underscores it.

The trouble with all choice is that there are so very many bad ones and only one perfection. I have found that people that lean in with where you seem to be going are often moral subjectivists. Instead of respecting the objective nature of morality and the good, they just err on the side of doubting everything, even the good. That is not the 'way'. One must morally decide on what good is and stand for that. That means not only making moral propositions as statements but acting accordingly, intentionally, and with force.

Not to get too Nietzschean about it, but if you look at the function of uttering propositional moral statements, it is precisely as described above. The simplest explanation is that there is nothing more to propositional moral statements but that they are tools for controlling others. — substantivalism

I disagree, entirely.

The simplest explanation is that moral statements are intended because they are partial resonances with what is ... objectively good. It is a weak point of view in my opinion that sees control in every 'should'. The point of any valid 'should' is that it indeed points to an intent or suggests an intent in alignment with objective good. That has proper resonance. Many and most choosers feel inside themselves the difficulty of making proper moral choices. And they excuse themselves from those choices by teaming up with all other immoralities. They collectively suggest, oh, see, this is about power. Nope. It is about generating the most happiness for the most people. And that path is the hardest path there is. I get it. It's easy to be lazy or self-indulgent or cowardly, the three main sins. They all team up to make reality easier to handle. This is the Pragmatic short-cut. Lower those expectations! Intentional failure by aiming at less than best is unwise and immoral.

Yes, being strong and not weak is wise. That means you do not turn the other cheek in shame. You do not weaken yourself by so doing. Likewise you do not take the hit that matters, the deep harm. You catch that blow and defend it with everything you have. Misunderstanding the meaning of turning the other cheek is not wise. It is an expression that should be powerful, not an expression of powerlessness.

Suffering is required to stay wise as well as to become wise. The wise seek out greater and greater means of challenging themselves to suffer more exquisitely than others. They could not be wise otherwise.
— Chet Hawkins
Perhaps it's the subversion of the ego then that brings about clarity. If not just by mental will but also by physical action on the self. — substantivalism

Well, this word subversion is problematic. How far do you go with it? To go so far that the Unity Principle is denied in its furthest interpretation, 'You are God, and God is you!' is dangerous. That is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We are it, the chooser, the speaker. We know of none greater than ourselves in moral agency. Yes, we properly respect all other moral agents, the animals, the planet, all atoms even; but humility can be taken too far. When we deny the infinity of choice within ourselves, we fail morally.

So, instead say, it's the balancing of the ego, with the id and superego; or the balancing of fear with anger and desire that brings clarity.

And yes, balance resonates to body from thought and vice versa.

The real problem is now that people think this is prosperity. It will take much monger before the stubborn realize the pain they are in on a daily basis despite oxycontin, porn, cheap whiskey, and other 'easy' addictions.
— Chet Hawkins
Perhaps the lesson to be learned then is to see the signs and pity those that fall for them. Their actions require us, gifted with greater awareness, to suffer for them as they themselves do not know to do so for themselves. Our inaction deserves recognition as the mental parasite it is. As does our personal hypocrisy which, if it cannot be extinguished, should be beaten back. — substantivalism

Well, now! Look at you, willing to beat back hypocrisy? I agree!

I agree as well that society must morally suffer the widest range of free will to its members. There is no choice for society as infinite choice is a tautology in the universe. I could say some very provocative things here, but I will demur for the moment to see how my responses in this thread are handled.

Pity is one good response. Challenge is another.

These days judgement is seen as negative, can you believe it? It is our moral duty to judge literally everything. Desire side chaos thinking, pro-freedom in all ways, even immoral ways, hates to be judged. 'Judgy much!?' is a low-brow epithet often heard these days from the left. A true listing of virtues (and Scotsmen) is needed as a temporary non-conclusion, a state of being, for society, for all human societies together.

Agreed that inaction is merely lazy, implied by your statements.

But the fear side tendency is to go too far, punishment. Punishment is immoral. That one is the one that leaves right side (fear) thinkers reeling, in the same way that when I say war is morally required the left pitches a fit.

Punishment is already included by objective morality. And morality is not punishing you. You are! The chooser is the only one with the power to punish. They punish themselves. But remember, you are me and I am you. So, any evil act in all the universe punishes us all. That is harmonics, out of resonance with the perfect good.

So the right tends to want to punish. But no, the proper moral path is judgment, teaching, and better guardrails until a new moral choice path is established. The greatest freedom must be maintained during this process. As an example the movie 'The Last Samurai' shows the main character kept for winter as prisoner by the feudal Japanese. They do not imprison him. They have a older Samurai, armed escort him around. That is a better way than prison is. Free will and freedom are more respected.

Also right side thinkers have trouble with privacy. Since you are me and I am you, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. But we still act to allow for free will, for little choices unseen. This is the same as allowing freedom in the above example. But, as you can see, and if you can think at all, as you can then realize for sure; if the private home is sacred, then that is where immorality will seed itself. It's obvious.

So, wisdom makes all sides to any argument uncomfortable. It seems to cause suffering by being true. But it is wisdom that is causal. It is (your) choice, always.

Thanks for your many in-depth replies. They were read and appreciated. — 0 thru 9

Your welcome! I love such topics.

However…

But unfortunately, when you write things like you did in the second half of your post…
I don’t feel like responding. But I will because I feel compelled to explain since I started this thread, and feel a little responsibility about it. Otherwise, I’d might just go my way without much comment. — 0 thru 9

Ah hopefully we are addressing the issues. Critique is part of why I post as well.

This for example:

No, do not denigrate war.

War is a synonym for change. War is morally acceptable. I lose a lot of people there and I am fine with that. Wisdom is universally denigrated.

Growth comes from suffering only. The wise wisely inflict necessary suffering upon the unwise to give them opportunities to grow. If you walk through a field on a sunny day without a care in your heart, you are making cosmic war on the creatures that live in that field. Your obliviousness to this truth is all that makes you careless. Peace is the greatest delusion there is. War is fine. Loss is fine. These are not immoral in and of themselves. They are consequences. Consequentialism is a lie. Morality is all deontological. Intent is what matters. The direction and strength of choice is what matters.
— Chet Hawkins

You cannot escape change/war. Peace is a delusional immoral aim. To maintain proper balance war is required morally. You may prefer to call this struggle or effort, and that is fine. War is the real name. I do not shy from naming something what it really is. I accept war and prefer it. I do not mean unnecessary violence which many people would foolishly demand is the real definition of war.
— Chet Hawkins

When I read this, I feel disappointed and somewhat queasy. You have some provocative ideas that I found challenging and difficult, and I enjoyed those. The quoted comments from you crosses some kind of line for me though. And they taint everything else you’ve written, in some way. — 0 thru 9

That is sad and interesting. Hopefully, you explain WHY your line was crossed. I cannot work on vague notions.

Sorry if this sounds offensive… But to be extremely honest or blunt, those comments seem (to me) dangerous, delusional and preachy. — 0 thru 9

OK, but that does not say why they sound that way.

I suppose the idea that the colloquial definition for war is dangerous and all bad or mostly bad. It's why I took pains to link war to the idea of change only, which I do believe. I am not saying that violent war is not mostly bad, but there can be morally necessary violent war. That is really a key takeaway. You cannot defend yourself, your nation, your group of people who choose a proper moral ideology, without violent war as a threat to would be enemies.

The other key mitigation in my opinion is this. Wisdom only comes through suffering. That is a tautology. In every way, most moral agents do not believe in wisdom until they have suffered some along each path of possible suffering, loss or longing for a virtue that is now in a low state.

So, if wisdom comes through suffering only, in some cases the goal of the wise must be to increase suffering. Then the question is how in each case, relative to the virtues.

So, there is resonance. Resonance is the way in which moral strength helps us earn wisdom without much suffering. We have a relative strength and enacting it resonates with objective good in such a way that the reflection upon the moral agent, the feeling is hard to call suffering. Because we are not perfect though our expression is always not perfect, so, there is suffering always. This is why, even amid strength, it is still a tautology that wisdom only comes through suffering.

The real question is where is the line drawn. That is the line between necessary and unnecessary suffering. We could all easily agree that most warfare, heck even most civilizations regular peaceful living, produces a ton of unnecessary suffering. So, my point there is that we as a society have to get much much better at understanding where that line is, for real.

The final example of the need for war exists in every virtue, but, the basic one is this: You are part of a moral society, relatively to the others around you. They are weaker on some virtues by a great deal, each of your neighbor countries or cultures. We are not naming names nor are we suggesting that this is a real world thing at the moment. All similarities between countries past and present, fictional and real, are unintended. Your country faces a dilemma. The immoral expression is rising, different and seen as such in each of the neighboring countries. Many of them have resources you need and they are tired of your (proper) moral proselytizing. Your existence is a challenge to their immoral ways, and frankly their existence is a challenge to your moral ways. I understand it's not a simple case like that. Some of your country's people are immoral as well, and some of theirs moral, but we are talking about sanctioned inertia as law and cultural practice for each country.

The properly moral country has a moral duty to make war on neighboring nations before they can become powerful enough to overwhelm what is of great value. Competition to weaken the immorality is also wise in other ways than war, before the last step of war must be taken. And of course it could be that the more moral country was always greatly lesser in power. And then it must bide its time, building quietly with less bravado, until it has the strength to project. But the virtue of challenge, of external action, what might be called the basic truth of war, is possibly moral. Like all virtues that virtue has both good and bad expressions. The early stages of challenge are writings and rhetoric and the mere presence of the good example for others to see and feel as a neighboring country.

But moral choice is hard, the hardest thing there is. It is understandable that most will fail and although most will also still be able to admit in some way that they are acting immorally and therefore we properly offer them time and relative peace to earn their wisdom without us having to step in, there are also those that double down on stupid. They oppress their people more, and for worse reasons. They do not adhere to any balance between order and chaos as the good. Instead they immorally conflate order with the good (so many examples in fact and fiction). Some even take the stranger step of conflating chaos with the good (so many examples). So, since moral choice is hard and there are even some that would support diversity of belief to include and embrace immorality, the more moral nation must sometimes morally declare war.

It seem to assume that you have an absolute vantage point or a ‘God’s eye view’. — 0 thru 9

Well, the short answer is yes. 'You are me and I am you', the Unity Principle, also states that 'You are God and God is you'. Humility though is a virtue and part of proper moral aims. But so is admitting truth, accepting the responsibility of moral agency. Finally, there is no better approach than to admit you are a part of what is God. That is indeed what offers you infinite choice, really. There is finally no other reason you have it.

If you deny the God in yourself, then you deny what is moral, you deny perfection as a concept. I am not saying it's not a slippery slope. All proper approaches to morality are of course slippery slopes. Morality is the single hardest thing there is. All of it fits. Again part of what is good, is humility and perseverance. But if we are too lazy to take right action, to stand and fight immorality, to challenge it, then that is a moral failure.

To such an extent that I would be greatly surprised if anyone in this forum would agree with them in any way. — 0 thru 9

Well that one sentence is a HUGE, GIANT leap from any other thing you have said.

Still, I welcome all critique. I am offering up my wisdom or lack thereof as something to be tested indeed.

If you lived in Gaza or Ukraine, I might think you really understood the consequences of your statements. — 0 thru 9

Consequentialism is a lie. Deontological intent is superior morally in every way. I know that my intent is good, the best I can make it. I admit that my choices can and will lead to failure. I am not perfect. I will reform new intents and try again. But the goal is to earn wisdom and help other's earn it, and my definition of wisdom only includes the balance that makes it good. Some will describe wisdom in a way that includes only their favorite or easy virtues and in doing so they lack balance and they are immoral (wrong). All weakness, all that is incorrect, is immoral in some way. Accuracy is a part of perfection and morality and it is objective, not subjective at all.

(To repeat: your many other comments were cool, even if I didn’t agree or even understand them completely). — 0 thru 9

Hey, as mentioned, it's intended to the good. I see that you are as well. Any slight, I hope either way, is forgiven and let's then say why it was made.

I took the time to discuss the idea more carefully now. Either you are probably a little more moved, or, you will now think you were more right to object and ask for clarification. There are still more examples I can give to show the concept. Here is one:

Students suffer the learning process. They are properly tested. Testing is suffering, ask almost all students. The ones that think it is easy are not being challenged enough. All testing should be variable to the student's capabilities. That is a test for the system, if you follow. This suffering is required to earn the wisdom of awareness. In many cases this wisdom is refused, or refused in part. The wise society though wisely chooses to inflict this suffering on others in order that they might have a scheduled opportunity to earn a certain set of wisdom. Likewise proper parents will schedule and enact suffering upon their children so that these children may have a controlled opportunity to discuss and show and earn their wisdom. The only question is when does that suffering become unnecessary?

And the more desire side thinking you have the more you will lean towards the immoral position that ANY suffering and ALL suffering is unnecessary. That is mere Hedonism, and it is immoral. Likewise the more fear side thinking you have the more you will lean towards the immoral position that any and all suffering is necessary. Due to the nature of perfection, this is more correct, finally, than the desire side opinion is. Does this mean wisdom should be imbalanced? No. The trick with that revelation is that as time progresses the state from which a choice is made should be improving. And the greater challenges of any and all suffering become more and more required in order to achieve greater balance (to evolve). Likewise, when a moral agent's state is truly in decline we take a softer approach to allow them rest and resonance in order that they themselves say they are ready for a new challenge (and they always will). The escape for those who cannot muster the will to fight again is only one thing, finally, death. Choose.

To be fair, I’ll read your response to this, and take it into consideration. But you seem like you’ve made up your mind about many things, so I’m not expecting a retraction. Like you, I’ve been pondering these issues for many years, so I am probably ‘set in my ways’ about certain things as well. — 0 thru 9

Indeed. No retraction at all.

But, I did explain again for more clarity. My challenges are often met with your response. I am well used to it. At parties I am always the guy who says the provocative things. But I am not doing it for myself (only). You are me and I am you. It worries me greatly that the balance and genuine happiness I feel regularly is not a lot felt out there in the world. All that unnecessary suffering needs a challenger to call it out. C'est la vie! C'est la guerre!

The war is also a synonym for existence itself. The trillions of interactions that happen across your body in any moment are war. The balance that maintains that war properly must continue. There is no effective long term respite from war.

In a nutshell, your quoted statements really go directly against the purpose of this thread, maybe unintentionally. One may say in response that I’m being a woke snowflake who can’t handle another view, or can’t handle unvarnished ‘wisdom’. But that is not really the case. — 0 thru 9

It may not be the case, but it is partially so. That is to say my ideas challenge your comfort with something. It could be your position and you are of course challenging mine then. But let's see how you respond to this post so we will know.

My statements are not, as I understand them, against this thread. They point out the weakness of yin/yang as a model. They explain why it cannot be successfully used without great modification. The effective issue is that chaos and order ARE NOT the good. Order is often conflated with good, and chaos with evil. But those conflations are immoral. What is really needed most is the balancing force of anger. Anger is the only thing that seeks balance. And the peace types get it wrong. The sin of anger is laziness, seeking peace. The moral duty of anger is to seek war. War is right action. It is change. The intent is what is critical. Intend to cause enough suffering to allow for wisdom to be earned and intend not to cause unnecessary suffering.

The dual model does not work, because reality is a three part system, not two. But the balance is the hardest of the three part aims, and anger is first denigrated because of that. So our delusion began and we started it with the duality, the yin/yang, and all such dual systems. I have hard physical evidence that my model is vastly superior to any two part system I have ever heard of. But as mentioned in another thread (esoteric). Hegel got this. Dichotomy that takes a thesis and antithesis (fear and desire) and forces them together (war/anger) into synthesis, does describe reality. We all sort-of know that the left and the right wing are both useful. What is not usually accepted at any time in history is that they must be in perfect balance. Further that there is the third force pushing back and thus bending the egregiousness of both extremes into a new aim, perfection.

If I don’t respond further, good luck to you in all ways. :pray: :flower: — 0 thru 9

All good! Thanks for your comments!

I am sorry that I do not quote in my replies. It is because it does not seem possible on my particular model of phone. I would probably need to be able to connect it to a mouse, like on a laptop. Also, your answers are good insofar as they are detailed but make many varying points so I would probably feel I need to make more than one post to address them. Saying that, I hope that my posts don't come across as totally lacking, as I do see writing on a forum.as being different to fuller forms of writing. Some write extremely short replies and I tend towards neither extremes. — Jack Cummins

Your posts are fine. Yeah, I tried to figure a way to help you quote on a phone, but, the infrastructure to support good quoting is not on this site, as far as I can tell. There should be a ctrl key combination that means 'highlight for a quote everything in this single post'. That is sorely needed. Another function that is needed is a sub-thread list follow function. It would be another ctrl key sequence that first found your first post in a thread and then with repeated presses following any and all replies to that chronologically within the thread. I am a developer with 40 years of experience now. I know the functions a very good app needs to be effective because I use so many apps and get so very very frustrated with them.

I think forum writing for most is most often fairly weak, almost like facebook or social media posts. I am not attacking you, but, really addressing the points in a dialogue has its BEST incarnation in forums. There is no better place to get detailed. You are not going to wrote a book of dialogues, and if you do, you would start with an online forum to collect them. Malkovich, Malkovich!

As far as Hegel and the idea of the imminent I think that there is an ambiguity in how he views it. In some ways, he leans towards naturalism but not in the way that most people do in the Twentieth First century and that is probably a reflection of his own historic context. He was leading the way in coming out of grand metaphysical dramas and schemes but was prior to the paradigm of current scientific thinking. In this, he was involved in a process of demystification but this picture was only just starting to appear. Since then, it has become far more prominent with so many shifts backwards and forwards in many ways. — Jack Cummins

I get it, but, none of what you said invalidates or makes a strong point for imminent not meaning a focus on the present tense. So, if there is some other meaning I missed, let me know.

I get it that anger, the present tense emotion, the emotion of imminent intent, staying present, being, is denying desire-side chaos puzzles of imagination. Imagination is desire side effort. So, of course, part of anger demands that we should not want. Wanting is for someone that unwisely believes that we do not have infinite free will. Wanting is for someone that believes they are insufficient unto themselves. The reflection of desire is thus worthlessness. This is a law of nature.

So, I get it that Hegel used the concept of the imminent to fight off mystery and mysticism's self-indulgent dramas.

Thanks! I feel similar anger and frustration about being stuck on the Titanic with billionaires who don’t care if we hit an iceberg, because they have a personal helicopter to fly them to safety.

Addiction to power is the worst addiction, because everyone suffers for it. — 0 thru 9

The thing is, when the proverbial poo hits the fan, all their workers will realize it and many will step aside from helping them at that time. Some of them are smarter and pay for loyalty, overpay so they are 'appreciated', but even they will be surprised at the backlash in crisis mode.

Still, until the system collapses, and it will limp along almost forever in some cases (just ask Rome), the decadence and top heavy immorality will keep rising and the pressure below will keep building. It's sadly kind of another law of nature.

The real problem is now that people think this is prosperity. It will take much monger before the stubborn realize the pain they are in on a daily basis despite oxycontin, porn, cheap whiskey, and other 'easy' addictions.

I think we are on a vast pendulum swing from right wing or fear oriented societies to left wing or desire oriented societies. It's also clear that although the value-added portion of desire side orientation has already been accomplished, that we have gone well past balance and clearly the inertia is going to take us further into desire-side failure before the metronome uses up the swing energy to oscillate back towards balance.
— Chet Hawkins

Could you please expand on this somewhat?
If I’m understanding correctly, I’m not sure that I completely agree with this particular point, though I agree overall.

I don’t think the situation as a whole has reached a balance point anytime recently, not even for a moment while swinging in the other direction.
I agree that ‘desire’ is the carrot stick to keep the machine running, and the whip is never far behind (from hitting our behinds lol). — 0 thru 9

So, this explanation would take so much more. But hey, you asked and that is the thread topic, so ...

So, what has been described as the Patriarchy or traditional society, etc was indeed a fear-oriented mostly Pragmatic society, or set of cultures. It is in the nature of the world, or the pool of available societies that most express fear mostly. Anger and desire are less openly expressed.

The reason why anger is left behind is simple. Fear is the orderly building force. It causes all identity in the universe. Group together, form a group, become something. Build it. Fear is the integration force. It is also a more male participated thing.

Anger is balance, neither male nor female actually. Tribal scenarios are NOT civilizations. They are more anger and balance based and they get left behind. Big man or egalitarian groups do not give in easily to the building needs of fear. They do not in orderly fashion form militaries. They have true warriors, not soldiers, and they will destroy soldiers one on one. But they will lose against the grouped, orderly, planned based formations of a fear society. Thus is civilization built and one thing above all is denigrated, anger. Random violence and un-random violence both stop a lot of would be 'rulers'. But it is in the nature of things that anger fights too many battles and wears itself out. Fear has more stuff stored up from planning, more time to rest, better at observation, better at finding weak points. Fear is conniving and cowardly. It does not come to fight without overwhelming odds. Anger is courageous. It will fight just to fight. So, early anger loses to fear and anger is denigrated.

After the fear society forms and all, repeat all societies are fear societies. Formation of a society is only ever based in fear and only ever departing from anger. That is how it happens in the natural state. This is the nominal case of such a transition. There are other cases but they are weird, after the fact, and beyond the scope of this post.

Anyway, societies then, once formed go through phases. The identity they formed when they are created will last depending upon its wisdom and power. Both have great inertia but power has much less than wisdom. Thus in Earth's history we have civilizations with great power that nonetheless disintegrate and fail. Wisdom alone, and greater and greater wisdom with each iteration, has real staying power dur to its multi-virtue more genuine balance.

But the reason societies fail is not fear and not anger. It is desire.

Desire is chaos. It is freedom. They are roughly equivalent terms. It does not matter if people want to disagree. It is a law of nature. Like Milton I can wait. Let truth and falsehood grapple, truth is strong. Desire is effectively the force of disintegration, just like fear is the force of integration.

Do not get me wrong. Fear, anger, and desire are all the only three emotions, primal, and they make up everything in the universe. There are no exceptions. And each of these emotions is both moral and immoral showing the infinite power of free will, of choice. So, I am NOT denigrating desire here. But desire is what it is and to mischaracterize it would also be immoral.

Amid human societies once they are formed and built they cause great 'prosperity'. The survival needs of fear are met and fear itself begins to also be denigrated. Just as fear is more a male instantiation, desire is more of a female instantiation. Do not bother me with trivial examples of this statistical fact not being accurate. It is beyond basely accurate and there are so very very many reasons. Amid humanity, one of the simplest reasons is that women must become pregnant. This is the basis for much of their instantiation. Their more restricted and orderly biology causes a backlash of freedom in their manner. Likewise males have the freedom and must therefore balance that with an order attitude. That is one core reason and another is that to prevent inbreeding, the order of the own group, its restrictiveness, must be denied by the privilege of the protected breeder capable group, women. This freedom-aimed, mysterious stranger from over the hill loving manner is programmed into women. It has worked for millions of years to prevent inbreeding. It has to be there.

But that is all the time I will 'waste' on that issue here. Suffice it to say that societies return to idealism from pragmatism and balance and that tipping of the scale is the beginning of the end for them. It seems almost inevitable (it is not) that all societies follow this pattern. My book is first and foremost about realizing that the pattern exists so that we can slow its wild oscillations and stay more centered on balance and wisdom.

Anyway, all desire side efforts, freedom-seeking in any way, often is abused. It is not even realized as abuse. Most of freedom's defenders will proudly die for their foolish freedoms. And I do not mean the support for wise practices like free speech and such. I mean they will die precisely for the freedom to do and do repeatedly immorally addictive and destructive things to themselves and others. Capitalism is an obvious example. Democracy is another, but that is a topic for another thread.

SO, you have to at first admire all the wonderful explosion (chaos and desire are explosive) of wealth and distractions from the real task (gaining wisdom) that happens when a fear society builds itself up. But they started by priding themselves on the denigration of anger, remember. This trend continues. Now the perversity of immoral desire turns that society on itself, from within. Many failed societies, all of them that just collapsed where that collapse was not based on dwindling resources, followed this easy to understand pattern. Desire and 'becoming' within the society, against all balance, against objective moral truth, begins to take over. 'You can be anything you want to be.' is the clarion call of desire, of immoral desire. It is a direct denial of objective morality. Desire to be moral must be bound properly by fear and anger, but both become denigrated, usually.

'The heart wants what the heart wants!' is mostly a dark immoral excuse. It is not a wise statement and it never will be.

And the faded promise for capitalism is that ‘everyone can be successful!’
(Cryptocurrency is the latest attempt to let everyone try to game the system, and is immensely seductive because there is a lack of cash flow is like living in a dry desert). — 0 thru 9

This is nothing more than what my model predicts. New and 'interesting' and more and more convoluted highs of addictive desire. This is the path of immoral desire-side destruction, obvious to the wise. Here I will arm you with a red flag to see it. And you will probably hate it. It is sad to most desire side thinkers. They rail against it. But 'giddiness' is it. If you see giddiness, you see imbalanced probably immoral desire occurring. Even the church-based giddy high of worship is deeply suspect as addictive behavior. Balance is the healthy state. Within balance fear and anger properly calm giddiness. So, you have been warned. Take the advice or do not, but now, you will at least see it and wonder. It will show you what I mean.

So, why is desire so possibly bad? Remember that I do not intend to denigrate it. It is because the feeling desire offers its user is more compelling than the corresponding fear and anger are. Further, it is because people do not realize that desire (and giddiness) should be suspicious on their own. Earlier societies knew this, back when they were too orderly, too fear based, or too anger based. But the direction of all societies proceeds along that path normally from anger, to fear, to desire, and then back again. Keep in mind that the standard 4 part aphorism of hard/easy times and weak/strong men, is, like most aphorisms, a lie. That is because evil and good are not a real proper part of that model. Just like yin/yang as a model the model itself is wrong. That helps no one. In fact it causes more evil. Belief in a wrong model is one of the worst things we can do against wisdom and the good.

Desire is the emotion of the future. Adding to it feels progressive. It is not. That is to say, it is not unless it is balanced with fear and anger, properly. Fear always feels so restrictive and imprisoning. That is some of its nature, yes. But fear is misunderstood. It is all thought, all reason. When it is agreed that these things are fear, and really mostly just fear, fear's value is better understood. That is why I redefined fear to its true definition. 'Fear is a excitable state that arises as a result of matching patterns from one's past'. All awareness, all preparation, and even all joy (from the angry conquering of fear) is fear based. Fear is the emotion of the past. So to most people fear seems old, it seems boring, and it tends to also excite them as they fear fear itself. This is what leads to its denigration, immorally.

A fear side man like most will try to fit in in society and build something. That male will want to impress the best females. That is 'normal'. Normal just means there are far more of these males than the other types. Order builds on itself. But look at what happens naturally! The chaos side females will, amid their order bought freedom, revolt and push back the 'rules'. Some men will also. They will resist pairings with their own society's males in favor of the mysterious stranger over the hill (to prevent inbreeding). This temps the orderly males to use more order to restrain the females. And the cycle goes on and on.

But eventually, freedom has its way with everyone. Disintegration becomes 'fun'. People take it as licensed behavior to pursue every addiction with reckless desire as their 'right'. All bonds within the society are seen as poisonous restrictions of an unnecessary (fear denigrated) order. Every single connection point is assaulted with the boundless expression of desire, pure self-indulgence as the only holy virtue. The balance of wisdom was tossed aside well before the restrictions of order were. That was the losses of anger and fear respectively. This is a law of nature, not just my observations.

When one emotion is running the show it confuses people. They see all the emotions. But they do not realize that anger and fear now serve desire improperly. The anger you see is violence born of tantrums from puerile children not getting their way, including adults obviously. The unwise all seem like children to the wise. Neytiri in Avatar tells Jake 'You are like a child ...' Her mother Mo'at, the wise woman, tells him she seeks to seek if his people's insanity can be cured. That is tribal wisdom, balance, anger. It is closer to real wisdom, balance, that any civilization's can be. I am not saying to go backwards. Civilization must become more intentional. We must become wiser. Again, that is the purpose of my book, and so many others, crying out for more wisdom in this horrid but hopeful reality.

But I think we are prisoners of a system whose rules make it mandatory to consume the Earth for power and profit, not just human need. — 0 thru 9

All blame is accepted. It is my fault. It is your fault. There is no such thing as a prisoner, excepting one that accepts themselves as such. That is wisdom.

To say 'prisoner' about yourself means you have accepted it on some level and I advise you that such a statement and admission is dangerous. It is the part of you that wants to blame others and not yourself. But the truth is finally 'You are them!', and 'They are you!' So, you are to blame no matter what and all imprisonment is self-accepted.

It is a game, pure and simple… a tragic game with all losers (as in war, a key feature of the game). — 0 thru 9

No, do not denigrate war.

War is a synonym for change. War is morally acceptable. I lose a lot of people there and I am fine with that. Wisdom is universally denigrated.

Growth comes from suffering only. The wise wisely inflict necessary suffering upon the unwise to give them opportunities to grow. If you walk through a field on a sunny day without a care in your heart, you are making cosmic war on the creatures that live in that field. Your obliviousness to this truth is all that makes you careless. Peace is the greatest delusion there is. War is fine. Loss is fine. These are not immoral in and of themselves. They are consequences. Consequentialism is a lie. Morality is all deontological. Intent is what matters. The direction and strength of choice is what matters.

Even the winners are tragic selfish scared losers, only with bigger bank accounts. — 0 thru 9

Indeed. The winners lost their humility in most cases. That is an unwise takeaway. The winners that will not discuss what was done wrongly are always the worst kind of fiends. Machiavellian consequentialists are a Pragmatic terror upon this world. Resist the immoral lies of Consequentialism, and renew vows instead to deontological free will.

The masters of war have been ‘in control’ for centuries and millennia, and there’s nowhere left on Earth to escape them as might have been possible in simpler times. — 0 thru 9

Change/war/suffering is inescapable. Only a desire side immoral idiot believes that pleasure is the path to success or anything good. Suffering is required to stay wise as well as to become wise. The wise seek out greater and greater means of challenging themselves to suffer more exquisitely than others. They could not be wise otherwise.

You cannot escape change/war. Peace is a delusional immoral aim. To maintain proper balance war is required morally. You may prefer to call this struggle or effort, and that is fine. War is the real name. I do not shy from naming something what it really is. I accept war and prefer it. I do not mean unnecessary violence which many people would foolishly demand is the real definition of war.

Do you want something to survive? Declare war on it. It's the best thing you can do to cause the survival of what you declare war on. Figure that one out.

We can identify with ‘winners’ and believe their lies, and go along with their plans, and be their prison guards and beat up those ‘beneath us’.
Or we can abandon this toxic dream, even if we have nothing to replace it with at the moment — 0 thru 9

I agree. But this state is always toxic. It is not perfection. So do not hate it. Do not call it toxic, even. No one is toxic to the wise. No state is toxic to the wise. Everything has the infinity of choice amid its state. Free will is the only thing in existence.

Also, sorry for the misquote of the OP. I fixed it.

Lol! Posting again located my first post. I do not know why I could not see it before when I searched like three times, though.

There is gradual impoverishment of the masses and an an overpopulated elite establishment -- too much money, too much education, too much desire for power, etc. and nowhere near enough slots into which all the low level, mid level, and high level elite can fit. The Upshot? On the one hand, upheaval among the fucked over as they attempt to cope with ever diminishing returns for ever greater effort. On the other hand the elite fuckers resort to vicious tactics to grab power. It's a game of musical chairs in which the number of chairs is fixed and the number of chair seekers is enlarged every round. Competition quickly loses any polite formalities.

Donald Trump Silvio Berlusconi, and Boris Johnson are three disgusting examples of the rash extremes chair contenders are willing to resort to.

See End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration By Peter Turchin. Just published today so haven't had time to steal his ideas. — BC

I agree that this is the shortsighted dynamic.

The issue is that real wisdom, balance found amid struggle, is misunderstood. It always has been and always will be.

But the thing is, and it's pressing now, we have to change to a wiser model, by any means necessary, or we are likely doomed. When I say doomed, nothing is final. That to is part of wisdom. But there is a sweet spot in any situation where the pivot to wisdom and balance is still possible, if improbable, at a lower activation energy. It really is a hear me now or believe me later throw-down.

There are so many inherently unwise states present in today's humanity. What I mean by inherently is that the status quo accepts as wise tenets that are fundamentally unwise. I do not want to derail, so I will say only there are glaring examples and the actions of 'leaders' here points out who we tend to empower to make these horrid immoral errors. That means the system is broken, not just those leaders.

My gadfly challenge to humanity is this: Change to wisdom as a base or decline into near insignificance. As is the nature of reality, wisdom is universally reviled as a set of impossible ideals. Sadly, Pragmatism is the worst enemy of all moral agents in this sense. (It is not. Idealism is just as bad, but pragmatic failures are improperly trusted and more in control) This dynamic means that broadcasters of real wisdom are all too likely to be sidelined as sophists. I hate that term by the way. Sophistry should be exalted as an art of wisdom. The art of deception as wisdom is the definition of Pragmatism and Idealism, both, taken alone. We should all aim for a sophocracy, a rule of the wise. But first, we have to declare a credo about what wisdom is.

I originally posted a HUGE post reply to this thread. I cant find it now. I have no idea what happened. I am not debating laziness or re-posting it.

The way in which you combine Hegel and the idea of Hegel is especially useful for considering the concept of the 'supernatural'. It may have led to so so much confusion about an 'out there' zone, separate from experience itself. It may elevate religious and spiritual experiences beyond the realms of nature. — Jack Cummins

So, without a quote whom you are responding to is unclear. I will take this as general discussion then. But your 'you' is no one in particular here.

So, at time you seem to be saying that you think Hegel is onto something (e.g. correct) about the supernatural being imminent (e.g. accessible and natural), in which case I agree. Then at times you say religious and spiritual things are 'elevated' beyond the realms of nature, in the same paragraph even. I disagree. I too realize there is a nature juxtaposition or Hegelian dichotomy here. But, for me, and given what you seem to be saying most, for your interpretation of Hegel as well, there is NOT an assertion finally that anything we experience is not within reality. That is my assertion also. Clearly, any experience we have is within reality.

Dividing 'reality' into parts is always an immoral error of fear. Fear, the limiting force, is trying in its excitement to separate in order to understand. The concept of reduction is a fear process (like all thought). The person at real harmony with truth does not do this willingly except as an experiment, for example. Such a person correctly keeps their understanding of unity in place even as they pretend to separate connected issues. The synthesis is respected before the dichotomy that produced it is examined. There was an origin to reduce from, and the polite and aware observer is not allowed to disregard that unity.

If anything, some aspects of esotericism may seem to reinforce this, such as mysticism as being transcendent, as well as the idea of esotericism as being the 'special' experience of the 'elite' initiates, and detached from imminent experience, including numinous experiences. — Jack Cummins

This is a mistake in thinking, to me. This tendency to separate 'for real' in one's thoughts is dangerous and the immoral error of fear.

Also here again, as usual, is the conflation of the two types of worthinesses, a central error within reality. The intrinsic worthiness of all, of each piece of reality is built in, it being an inseparable part of all. But the functional worthiness of each piece depends upon the locus of choice, the delusional entity we refer to as the self.

When you speak of elites that have a different skillset than ... the non-elites, when you speak even of their special experience, you are not, repeat not, saying anything other than they are more aware of the unity that is the synthesis. Any, repeat any delusional locus of choice (ego, self) is only and always sitting amid the same experience effectively as any other. It is not, repeat not the amount of metichlorians in the bloodstream that are causal to this effect. It is the effort of the execution of free will only. Morality's best indicator is the effort put into the choice made. That is the MAXIMAL part of my argument before.

Further, there is nothing at all magical about this. It simply stands to basic reasoning that the more and more virtues you tie in to a single choice made by the locus of choice, the harder and harder, the more effort, that choice would take. Think of it as a reverse gravity north pole on a sphere and this image is particularly compelling. It works very well as a visual aid. I still think it's too simple but for that you might have to read my book. So, divide the sphere into discreet wedges (also delusional). After all the only non-delusion is perfection, unity, all, God, whatever you prefer to call that thing, all of it. Now draw straight lines up at least, but maybe hyperbolically outward into the void in which the sphere is suspended in your mind. You end up in one case with a cylinder with one half sphere at the bottom, or in the hyperbolic case with a kind of circular pyramidal structure with indeed a partial sphere as its bottom. The length of any line drawn making either is similar to effort in the northern direction. That is the direction of the good. But now the real task is shown.

The original north pole of the sphere, as 'high' as any point in our dual model (straight and hyperbolic paths both shown). But that perfection is only a single point. Now we are left wondering what all that space is around it if that space is not perfection also. It is not perfection is my assertion. Why?

The why is the effort is hard. Think of effort now as gravity, but its clearly reverse gravity is it not? As things or choices, actions, become more and more hard they are less and less likely to be chosen. Your non-elites in your paragraph above are unwilling (not unable finally) to expend the effort to do the right thing. They remain 'blilssfully' unaware. And there are so many of them, that the wise elites, the more aware ones, are thus made rare. Quelle suprise!

The trick is that all, repeat all virtues are required to be at their highest effort to reach perfection. Leave out even one and we miss the point (quite literally in the model and figuratively in speech). That combination of literal and figurative is a hint at that same nature of perfection itself. The nature of the Hegelian dichotomy is another clear hint. Depending on the way a circle is measured how many 'units' are contained in its circumference? We could restate Zeno's paradox here but it to simply follows the demands of my model, of the sphere model. The now "Standard Solution" for that paradox is to accept that the runner can, repeat can complete the effort of passing through all those infinities. This is nothing at all but the infinite nature of choice itself, a law of the universe.

What Achilles needs to run through the infinities is effort. The effort simply must touch on and utilize as many virtues as the hero can bring to bear on subjective experience. Somewhere amid that effort enough is enough and each infinity is crossed. The reason why each limit of fear, each delusional barrier is crossed, is that one virtue is transcendent and unifying to another. When we consider the limit of one virtue, the other virtue makes easy progress. This is the very nature of reality itself.

Thus it is the effort missing in the non-elites that is the immorality. It would likewise be an immoral choice to assume that the non-elites are not capable, them being possessed of the same infinitude of choice, but merely choosing to put in less effort. All of reality fits this model.

When thinking of the concept of the supernatural, one book which I thought to be extremely important is Lyall Watson's, Supernature'. In this work, Watson sees the division between biological nature and so called 'supernatural ' experiences to be be problematic. He argues that sensory and extrasensory experiences may be misunderstood by trying to separate them from the understanding of nature and biology. The underlying idea being that the idea of the supernatural and magic itself may be unhelpful. — Jack Cummins

As mentioned, I entirely agree with this. The problem is that separation, reduction, etc deny the synthesis of unity which is the only thing that really finally is in existence. All the smoke and mirrors of failed choices within the subjective realm cloud the proper grasp of perfection. That is precisely because it takes perfect effort to arrive at perfection. There is no other reason.

Perfect effort is so hard that even the best of us now elite thinkers on it are probably tragicomically wrong in our assessments of it. We should remain doubtful of even our best efforts because the maintenance of that doubt is the fear amplitude necessary for proper awareness and preparation, even joy itself. To seek comfort and lower the excitement of doubt/fear is immoral cowardice defined.

Going back to Hegel, in his writing, including his writing on the nature of mind and history, he may have been such an important thinker as seeing reality as imminent, as opposed to transcendent. — Jack Cummins

Again, I simply agree. There is nothing about perfection that is not accessible to every moral agent. We are to blame for everything at all times without exception. It only takes greater effort from us amid choice to 'get past' our immoral failure of laziness.

PS: Structure often contains a built in ease to facilitate moral agency. This is why humans exist as opposed to only the hydrogen atom. So, my earlier example of mitichlorians may be wrong, probably is wrong. The development of mitichlorians would then be, when they develop, a terrible thing that the observers can find that would then suggest to them incorrectly that only such entities could use the force (infinite choice). What is present in the immoral choice/belief that should not be is again the limited and limiting nature of fear's immoral cowardice. In 'seeing' more, in being more 'aware', the fear type limits all of reality and cut's off the rest as insufficient. This is the cowardly mistake of fear. It's trivial to understand, once you accept it. The 'elite' observer might then proclaim 'These Jedi are beyond normal humans! These elites are superior!' And the elites would be right. But they are only right in one limited and immoral way. That is that functionally there is more agency baked in to the Jedi than to someone without such concentrations of mitichlorians in their blood. And the mistake is that this cannot be then used to declare intrinsic worthiness is some kind of sham, that the elites are superior period and finally (they are not). The infinite choice still exists in the lesser form(s) and must be acknowledged and harmonized with. Drawing the line is the mistake. The limit of fear is the mistake, finally. Respect the synthesis as a first principle!

Is our civilization critically imbalanced? How could applying Yin-Yang concepts help?
(or… ancient philosophy to the rescue?!?) — 0 thru 9

I think we are on a vast pendulum swing from right wing or fear oriented societies to left wing or desire oriented societies. It's also clear that although the value-added portion of desire side orientation has already been accomplished, that we have gone well past balance and clearly the inertia is going to take us further into desire-side failure before the metronome uses up the swing energy to oscillate back towards balance.

The good news is this swing is of course less wide than the previous wing to the fear side. But it's sad for those of us aware of wisdom, of real balance, will suffer more, precisely because we realize when balance was passed and we are left feeling like, 'Wait, those waters were warmer! Go back! Oh shit you fools don't realize it and are actually still fanning the same now stupid flames. Waaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiittttttttttttttttttttt!'

To define the terms of the questions… — 0 thru 9

Oh sh(oo)(i)t, I thought I was already on my groove and you have not even setup the post yet. Damn! I still get points, damnit!

Civilization: our current world civilizations as a general whole. This is somewhat conceptual, owing to the fact that there a many separate cultures, countries, peoples, languages, etc. But here we are talking about the general, popular, industrial civilization which could be said to currently exist as a whole. (To me, “western civilization” no longer seems to be the most accurate term. But use that term if you would prefer.) — 0 thru 9

Like it or not the West had the onus and the drive last wave. Desire always leads the way. Idealism is the path to the future and desire side thinking (motivation) is what takes the helm.

Yes there are sub cultural ruts and eddies (women in Iran were Western dressers with no hijab and 50s conservative clothing and hair styles back the 1970s (compare that to now)). But the WORLD at large was following and ruled by the desire curve. Even now the second or third wave of it from the West is slowly converting Islamic backslide forward again. Yet they remain the most persistent old world male or fear oriented culture(s) on the planet. You have to get deep-fried country within any nation to see that kind of shift. Leadership is all much more on the desire train.

Imbalance(d): unstable, unsteady, unpredictable, and (perhaps most relevant for humans) unsustainable. Unsustainable (in relation to human relationships to the Earth) indicates that resources are being used or destroyed quicker than being replenished. There are perhaps many degrees of sustainability, a spectrum from the sustainable to the unsustainable. The question here is how close we are to being completely unsustainable. Thus precipitating a dramatic change of direction, to avoid the giant iceberg dead ahead (so to speak). — 0 thru 9

I mean you say these words 'unsustainable'. I don't buy it. It's built in that healing can happen and then its also built in that time scales out quite insanely. With each iteration/oscillation of history's major arcs (worldwide expanding soon to interplanetary) the next wave is smaller We are zeroing in on wisdom, balance. It almost seems inevitable. Like barring a world ending event the increasing frequency of the metronome swings will bring us to a perfect(ish) balance in a timeframe that is short order by universal lifetime standards. It is the Fermi Paradox writ small. Other civilizations do not exist precisely because the moral agency curve on those that survive transcends this dimensionality and they need not disturb growing cultures (or perhaps they labor to ensure our growth in an unexperienced way (which makes sense as to why good remains good and is objective and stable).

Yin-Yang: from Wikipedia:
Reveal

Additional thoughts:

As part of the original philosophy, the natural balance and harmony of Yin and Yang can be altered by circumstance or by human actions. — 0 thru 9

So this is just code for me for one word 'Change'. I mean it's kind of boring, if you follow. I envisioned if I were offered Godship and allowed to make 1 rule for reality it would be this one: "Let there be continual change in every way!" That's because with this rule in place you get flux. You get choice.

Very generally, the ancient writings (as I understand) began with a poetic rendering of the cosmic forces at play: sun, moon, and Earth. Fire and water. The seasons. Later, a wealth of literature developed concerning the medical and personal applications of the traditional wisdom, such as TCM and feng shui. — 0 thru 9

The old world thinkers HAD to attach meaning to substance. They slowly realized that meaning does not need substance. But by then the people had already made the icons. Too much work to remake them into ... ideas. This is reminiscent of the Islam and Christian icon-haters that demanded that no image of or representing God could be crafted and to do so was a sacrilege. This affirmation of limits is critical to meaning itself. In not doing by intent, some aspect of infinity is accepted and thus conquered. The certainty is deemed unnecessary if its not possible. You see how that works on so many levels?

This thread takes all of this into consideration. But the focus of the questions are a middle-ground between the cosmic and the personal: society / civilization. And how and why a society can be balanced or imbalanced. Sustainable or unsustainable. — 0 thru 9

Death is a thing. But death is only really relaxing sensation/arousal enough to 'rejoin' all. It's actually kind of a goal in some ways. Get it? So who wins, the society whose individuals live longest or the one that dies the quickest? Tricky questions!

Here’s an article about misconceptions about Yin and Yang. And offers the corrections such as: Yin and Yang are not “good vs evil” (with poor sad beautiful Yin to be unfairly burdened with being called “evil”. Also, sorry Darth Vader... “The power of the overly-Yang” is probably more correct. It’s just not as catchy as “the Dark Side of the Force”). Yin and Yang are not in conflict, nor are they absolute. They are relative to each other. — 0 thru 9

I see a lot of male side consideration being order-related, fear-related because men represent order itself as a gender in general. But this is multi-level deception. Order is not the good and so fear and men are as good as they are evil in agency, in choice. Being order-leaning is dark only, NOT GOOD, because balance is wise.

It is more generally (in the past) conflated that chaos is evil. But this is also deception and a delusion. Chaos is just as good as it is evil. Being chaos-leaning though is dark only, NOT GOOD, because balance is wise.

So, both standard conflations are practical bets, but wrong in their final assessment.

And importantly, they are primarily philosophical concepts and symbols. Any mystical or religious use is a personal choice and/or optional. It’s doubtful that anyone would relegate the concept of Yin-Yang to woo-woo voodoo section of the library. Since, as is commonly known, the worldwide digital network is based on binary theory. Which was based largely on ancient Yin and Yang diagrams. — 0 thru 9

I would deny any relationship between the binary concept and ying/yang. There is too much depth and meaning amid yin/yang. Binary is literally that 0/1. If you are speaking true binary as a concept its JUST 0/1 and only within reality do we always detect the neutral state as well, some 1/3 intersections. This shows the duality and the trinary nature of reality. But binary is not sufficient on its own to capture that system and yin/yang is although it mostly does not choose to.

To which I’d add that although Yin and Yang were first developed in ancient China, they are not limited to that time and place. Study of original meanings and texts are helpful of course. But for us here today, it seems necessary and critical to translate, interpret, imagine and re-imagine these concepts for our circumstances. — 0 thru 9

Agreed as mentioned before, sustainability is always reachable. Matter, energy, and emotion are never created nor destroyed, but, ... change! So, free will. It all flows.

Answer the poll and give your feedback for a chance to win valuable prizes! — 0 thru 9

'Tell im what ees won Jane!'

From what I take to be the Taoist perspective, or at least my own take of it, the good is found in harmony between yin and yang which then serves as a return to Wuji—Wuji being in the Taoist cosmology the nameless Tao which produces the One, from which is produced the Two, from which is produced the Three, from which all things are produced. Bad, and by extension evil, for me is then a discord, or disharmony, between yin and yang. — javra

I agree. It's clear Taoism and my own model are close. I do not know Taoism. But the sort brief you give on it makes this somewhat clear. Thank you.

To say that good is a harmony between yang-as-good and yin-as-bad, or similar takes, to me so far makes no sense. As though too much good is then bad? But good is a balance between them? — javra

Agreed. That makes no sense. ;)

And I so far interpret these latter type of interpretations to be heavily influenced by western or else westernized thought: wherein light (hence yang) symbolizes good and shadow/darkness (hence yin) symbolizes bad. — javra

Sadly, yes, although as anyone with a pulse can notice, things, they are a changing! The move from yang to yin in the West is epic and actually now overbalanced. Chaos/desire is on the rise, and the chaos proponents have no idea where balance is, so they are #ourturn burning the house down also, just with yin instead of yang. Not good! No, not good at all!

But consider snow blindness—or, more technically, any condition where one would witness only whiteness/light in the complete absence of darkness/shadows. This creates an inability to see just as much as complete darkness does. So understood, neither light/yang nor darkness/yin would of itself be bad when balanced with the other: in balance, they are good together. This while both become bad (and by extension maybe evil … such as in causing temporary blindness) when out of balance with its dyad. — javra

Amen my Daoshi brother or sister or they, choose your delusion.

Sorta gets back to the notion of the metaphors one lives by. — javra

And the collective 'we' need to erase these delusions. I do not think they help. True balance is obtained only amid the polarity that leads to the trinary nature of reality. Nature did not specify and qualify diversity in this way by accident. We might do better, but I kind of doubt it. Still, any arrangement of the entities is fine so long as real wisdom is the goal.

I see this is in rough agreement to ↪Chet Hawkins's comments. — javra

Thank you, yes. There is accord.

ps. made a number of typos in haste. Corrected what I've found. — javra

Maybe so, but your meaning is solid and not mistaken.

Anger-infused fear. This is where the patterns of the past have already combined into a present. That is the case for knowledge.
— Chet Hawkins

You somewhat lost me there… seems a tad too absolute or polemic, for lack of a better word.
Is knowledge always tainted and well, bad? — 0 thru 9

Polemic, yes. That is anger, maximized. If it is correctly stated, then it should be fervent and aggressively stated. Mean what you say, because I sure do.

Yes, all choice is partially bad. And as mentioned the word 'knowledge' is already in error compared to the derivative term, 'being aware'. So that is two wrongs already. Both issues relate to the unattainable nature of perfection. The first in that the only certainty we have is that we are never exactly correct (perfect). And the second is, knowing this, we must properly eschew the term 'knowledge' because it implies the immoral certainty of knowing instead of 'being aware'.

Now you might contend I am splitting hairs here, but I have the beer-infused shampoo to handle that. They have to come together. Now we just need a song for that. Oh wait ...

It's the stance, the attitude of wisdom, that is often missing. Even if there is some understanding, it is not enough. We could always do better. And the day to day people go about their business at the mean, and that is not even the Aristotelean mean, sadly. Its more like a lowbrow average, the practical minimum effort required to 'get er done'. So sad!

Knowledge is always incomplete, little bits here and there, maybe it works now.
Maybe everything changes tomorrow, as it often does. — 0 thru 9

Exactly. Openness to change is the actual ideal. It acknowledges that conclusions are immoral. There is only one conclusion in this universe and that is perfection, the good. You could also say love and in doing so you are instead embracing the entire system, free will as a base, that ideally leads to the objective good via wise choice(s).

I love it when people quote the definition for insanity. Clueless people do this all the time. It's a great example of Pragmatic aphorisms that are anti-wisdom, really. You've heard it, surely: 'Doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results' is often called the definition of insanity. Wrong! Doing the same thing over and over again and REMAINING OPEN to possibly different results is called the Scientific Method. Think about it. Honest readers will be shocked. It's true though. So many typical purveyors of wisdom are anything but, and often these same types will declare someone like me a sophist. Hilarious!

Here is another one for you, and these are all from me, pearls cast, and hopefully not before swine, 'The one-eyed man is king in the land of the blind!' Nope! Not even close. He is deemed insane for speaking about 'visions' and 'colors', delusional things that do not exist to almost everyone. See the series 'See' with Jason Momoa as Baba Voss for confirmation of this anti-wisdom aphorism as nonsense that most people would still say is wisdom. Real wisdom is hard. It's esoteric and full of strangeness that in the end is truth.

The wise are deemed insane by the unwise, because they understand in a meta-level way that others simply cannot usually grasp.

So what is this flimsy knowledge thing anyway? I still prefer the term and the meaning of awareness to knowledge. It seems more accurate and humble, a state, rather than a final destination.
— Chet Hawkins

But this I understand and agree with, for what it’s worth.
Regarding knowledge as ‘flimsy’ is a healthy practice.
A skepticism to keep one feet on the ground, and prevent the brain from swelling up with so many facts that one’s head inflates like a helium balloon and floats away to the sky… :starstruck: — 0 thru 9

Exactly! Bring the fear types, the nerds, and double that for any academics, down a peg or two. Doubt is required of the humble. That is wisdom.

Question for you (and anyone else):
How do you see the relationship between good / evil… and Yin / Yang? :chin: — 0 thru 9

It's leading, provocative and the answer is rather dull and obvious.

Fear and Desire, yang and yin, both require the balancing foundational force of anger to balance them. So the yin/yang model is woefully incomplete. Add in the third force and you start to make sense.

But even then there is another issue. I mentioned it earlier in this post.

The good is MAXIMIZED and balanced fear, anger, and desire. The higher the moral agency the more of each is expressed. And the good only happens best in perfect balance. That means yin and yang MUST be equal in all things. And the balancing foundational force must also be equal. That is the only path to the good.

I wonder about the nature of doubt even though many have feared it. I was brought up to doubt, but I committed the sin of being the doubting Thomas or whatever guise. Where would philosophy stand without doubt and scepticism, as recognised by David Hume. — Jack Cummins

Being comfortable with doubt is wise. I enjoy my doubt as it confirms a lack of certainty, and shows us clearly that the courage of anger is required to stand up even when in doubt. You have to choose and act, on less than perfect information. And that's how it should be. They don't call it the burden of choice for nothing!

It is also important to think about desire in relation to esotericism. Some may see desire as a problem, including the basic perspective of Buddhism, which looks at desire as something to be overcome. — Jack Cummins

I agree and that was my point in some other response in this thread. It's clear the East views passion/desire with skepticism. I do, but that's back to doubt.

Still, embracing desire as useful, just like fear, is super important. Each of the three primal emotions is critical to have and maximize. Each balances the other.

Anger and fear are often misunderstood and denigrated. But desire is held in high esteem in the West, where it needs more restraint. In the East I would argue desire is way too downplayed, denigrated, like the West denigrates anger and fear. Anger especially is vilified and that is wrong, not wisdom at all.

To go with cult sentiment (The Bible, ha ha) here is a quote: 'The kingdom of Heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force!' The point (to me) being really, It's not fear, anger, or desire alone that are the issue. Its whether they are in alignment with objective moral truth, the Good, or not, that is actually important.

However, desire may be a starting point for expanded awareness as William Blake argued, especially in 'The Marrriage of Heaven and Hell. Blake even wrote that the reason why Milton 'wrote in fetters' was "because he was part of the devil's party without knowing it'. — Jack Cummins

Well, I confess I have not read that Milton book. And I honestly can't quite get what Blake was referring to. The Devil's party? Is that a political reference or one related to a topic in the book? I just can't connect on that one. Maybe you know?

In other words, desire may be the opposition or 'demon', which gives rise to conflict in the first place, in the ongoing process of the evolution of consciousness. — Jack Cummins

I do not think to vilify desire either. Denigration of emotion does not help. That is the same mistake I just mentioned where in the West anger and fear are denigrated and in the East desire is denigrated. All of that is old anti-wisdom passing as wisdom. We need a better approach to morality and that is what my coming book is about.

The real trick to morality is first admitting that it has to be objective, and then that genuine happiness is the demonstrable evidence of alignment with the good. The takeaway for moral choice is that increasing moral agency is defined as maximized fear, anger, and desire, all three, balanced for wisdom. That is the path, the only path, to the good.

Ok, thank you very much for your reply. :up: — 0 thru 9

No trouble at all. It's what I do. Communication is just not much of an option for me. Are you a kindred spirit?

To expand on my post somewhat…
As you noticed, I play a little game with myself categorizing a pair of related things into Yin-Yang. — 0 thru 9

Yes, a favored model. I do enjoy yin/yang. All things Eastern have that compelling juxtaposition to Western thought. Much more compassion than passion. And boy does the east ever have issues with desire. Sometimes I worry about them. I find my base is more Greek. Passion c'est tout! Not really, but that path comes more naturally to me than sequestering desire and just doubting it.

Summer (to me in the northern hemisphere) is yang. Winter is yin, for example. — 0 thru 9

Well yes, yang is sun, even in eastern thought.

Dogs are yang… cats are yin… lol. — 0 thru 9

Ha ha, the friendship love of dogs vs the aloof prickly nature of most felines does fit, yes.

This is NOT a hard and fast list with absolute right or wrong answers of course… maybe just a metaphysical puzzle. — 0 thru 9

I think these patterns are indeed the norm. I do not think it is unreasonable at all.

What about this: (politically incorrect warning)
Cold climates that are yin in nature give rise to their opposite, yang investiture.
Warmer climates that are yang in nature give rise to their opposite, yin investiture.
Nature is nothing so much as a force always aiming at least energy balance.

But amid that process, evolution and the call of desire pulls us onward to growth.

To me, the concept of Yin is very foundational, like the roots and soil, the Earth itself.
Being foundational, it might be often overlooked or taken for granted. — 0 thru 9

I cannot find that yin or yang is more foundational.

In fact the third force that binds them is the only real foundational force. That is anger/essence/being.

Yin is desire and mystery, enveloping and dark.
Yang is fear and excitement, pointed and bright.

So by saying that ‘understanding’ is yin is no slight or disrespect to understanding’s worth, of course. — 0 thru 9

I would say that it was, as I did, and for the reasons stated.

'Understanding implies wisdom, both yin and yang, and in fact an equal part of that third force that binds them.' But that is just my take on it.

I would say _metaphorically_ that specific bits of ‘knowledge’ grows out of a deep field of ‘understanding’, and is supported by it and depends on it. — 0 thru 9

Well yes.

This is what is hard to relate, but I think you touched on it well here. No matter how you wedge the sphere, all wedges partake of the north pole. Finally then, all paths lead via desire to understanding. The trouble is that there is always a more direct path. Or, let's say only one path is direct from any location in the sphere. That path is then, the 'best' one.

Also, as is commonly known, both yin and yang contain each other in seed form.
(The black dot in the whiteness, the white dot in the blackness). — 0 thru 9

Yes, that is similar in concept to my wedge and north pole comment.

So one could say that “understanding is all, both yin and yang”.
Being underappreciated, understanding could use some love lol since knowledge and information seem to be ruling the world.
(A knowledge that seems to be often lacking context, compassion, and understanding etc, and aims for pure power OVER (as opposed to WITH) everyone and everything around). — 0 thru 9

Exactly! How to get the science types off their high horse though, serving the elites and control rather than ... love ... for lack of a better word. Even love is conflated so badly. I prefer the 'Good'.

But when saying “understanding is everything”, it seems like then it’s no longer TWO complementary parts flowing together like the Yin / Yang symbol.
I wonder where that leaves ‘knowledge’ though? — 0 thru 9

Knowledge is mostly a yang thing pulled into being by the third force. Anger-infused fear. This is where the patterns of the past have already combined into a present. That is the case for knowledge. The future (desire) remains unknown. And of course, as mentioned, we delude ourselves to think we understand the past. Ask any two scientists and they are bound to find some specific point to disagree on. So what is this flimsy knowledge thing anyway? I still prefer the term and the meaning of awareness to knowledge. It seems more accurate and humble, a state, rather than a final destination.

I also wonder about the ideas of Hegel on 'spirit' here. His understanding is not simply about the 'supernatural' as separate from the nature of experience itself, but as imminent in the evolution of consciousness on a collective and personal basis. It may be that mysticism itself was a problem because it tried to separate the nature of experience and reason as though they were different categories of knowledge and understanding. — Jack Cummins

Then Hegel and I agree quite closely. Indeed, there is nothing supernatural at all, to me. It is all here. The unicorns are dreams and dream are clearly real. I concur entirely that the mystery is here, present, and real. Nothing is beyond the infinite nature of choice. The evolution of the body is happenstance and only serves to make choice harder for some, due to this condition or that. In general, let's say, the more evolved form has an easier time expressing greater moral agency. But there is no case for denial of the infinite power of choice. Assuming the effort is put in, anything is possible, just not probable at all.

Your ideas on fear may be particularly important because fear itself may be such an essential trigger for thinking and exploration. In itself, fear may have led to the nature of questioning religion, and its dogmas. — Jack Cummins

Doubt is indeed a core part of fear. It's part of the drive to become aware, this doubt. I love doubt! Absolutely, question the conceptions offered of the absolute, because whoever thought of it, should be doubted! ;) I have to remind my critics that I ask them to doubt me. It's only fair.

On a wider level, fear may evoke so much in thinking, especially the 'lazy approaches' of conventional thinking and logic. At times, this may be a useful basis for criticising the ideologies inherent in religious thinking. Alternatively, it may provoke some kind of response to materialism and its extreme rejection of the idea of 'spirit' itself, as a source of everything, whether it is considered to be 'God', or some other numinous force inherent in consciousness, especially human consciousness. — Jack Cummins

Well, I cannot quite figure your angle on this one. Fear has many great qualities. But amid doubt, many turn to certainty. That is always the failure of fear. Religious dogma often has that quality of nigh unto unquestioning belief. It is a misappropriation of fear as well. Part of the trouble with fear and its need for awareness is that once practiced enough, fear delivers great results. It's the betting man's option, Pragmatism. It only takes just a little while of that before a false confidence develops. Real confidence is born of anger, the toughness to stand against the odds. Fear will say, 'that does not compute!'. Or, 'why did you go all in on a 2-7 hand? That should not win!' {Texas Hold-em} But those used to fear/logic as a path in life often have this delusional sense of worthiness. And since fear is the limiting force, that which separates and categorizes, such types are prone to overconfidence, confidence born of fear. That is delusional.

If you're curious, desire has the opposite effect. It fills its wishful dreamers with troubles aplenty. Amid their low probability efforts life seems cruel and they seem broken, especially to themselves. This then is the reflection of desire, delusional worthlessness. And there again, the mystery is revealed. Balance where it is least expected.

It does seem that some of us are more inclined to pursue the 'hidden path'. Many ways I do try to avoid it, but it keeps rearing its ugly head. — Jack Cummins

Evolution itself, personal growth, will demand that we each face our demons. If a person is sufficiently fearful only, as in (my opinion) not wise, they could go their entire lives and both seek and remain blissfully ignorant of the mystery's call well inside their comfort zone. That is tragic really, to any notion of personal growth. But some of us are explorers on that ocean and some of us stay comfortable and dull (opinion) in 'civilization', coloring inside the lines.

In some ways, it may be better to live a mundane existence of treading the known pathways because the esoteric is a difficult path. It is almost like the 'shamanic call', although there is itself a certain grandiosity to some claims to a calling. — Jack Cummins

Well, I agree that some people have that grandiose affectation thing. And it kind of does overlap with the longing of desire that embodies the mystery. But I think the ones I meet like myself that take on this burden are usually halfway preferring that it would leave them alone, and yet, resigned to do what is necessary to grow if the Kobiashi-Maru keeps putting itself right in front of them. Sometimes the only way out is through.

Further, since I am a broadcaster as well, and not all such called mystics are, I feel it my duty to push people out of their comfort zones and I usually offer to stand beside them as they face their stuckedness. Oddly though, like a Gandalf or the typical wizened type, I find that whereas I am capable of supporting others on their firewalks, few indeed have the capacity to return the favor. The nature of my challenge is always a 'this foe is beyond you' moment. Still, I have indeed been pleasantly surprised by the sudden ally who is often a serendipitous dancer, that while remaining oblivious to the real problem, nonetheless has an instinctual ability to avoid or defeat some of my foes. That 'Lucky Star' type person is very rare though and they tend to be a bit part only and not hang around, which you would want.

That is almost the opposite predicament to the way in which some people stumble upon the 'unknown' through the use of mind-altering substances. I have used them but only as a a means to understanding the nature of the 'doors of perception'. That is so different from people who are partying and using substances as a form of recreation. — Jack Cummins

I was like you at first and then amid the party scenarios I still found that there were more and more often the 'meeting the godhead' moments. I never did Ayahuasca, but I am curious. From accounts I trust as well as many that I do not, it seems that particular experience is rather likely to catalyze the more 'religious experience' type scenarios. Still, it stands to reason that the infinite, the mysterious, the esoteric, is accessible at all times. The movie and story tropes that suggest we must go to Mt Silea on Vulcan or the Eternal Swamp of Doom are just over-blown drama. The Abyss and Elysium both are accessible, to me, everywhere.

That may be why so many end up with drug-induced psychosis. It may involve an 'opening up' which is too dramatic, such as Gopi Krishna describes in his work on the 'kundalini serpent' which can be too overwhelming and lead to 'madness'. — Jack Cummins

Any experience, even daily life, carries the same risks. I would characterize too much fear and safety consciousness as a regular and 'safe' form of madness, if you follow. The 'public mass delusion' of 'polite society' is anything but in reality, for example.

A certain amount of humility is probably worth holding onto as well groundedness in realism. I love the work of Krishnamurti because he rejected the title of spiritual teacher, when that was projected upon him. — Jack Cummins

One of my favorite quotes is apropos at this time:

"It is no great measure of success to be well-adjusted to such a profoundly sick society.' - JK
I paraphrased, but that is the essence of it. The speaker will now apologize. ;)

Part of the reason why I raise the thread topic is because the questions of philosophy are sometimes seen as separate from the esoteric quest. Aldous Huxley was an important writer, including his work, 'The Doors of Perception/ Heaven and Hell', as well as , 'The Perennial Philosophy'. — Jack Cummins

I am not as well read as I might seem to be. I know Huxley of course but have not read most of his stuff. I am wary of being 'polluted' by other creative thinkers. In conversation I have had many many people accuse me of stealing ideas that I thought were genuinely mine. To me, it doesn't matter as much as to them, but, I certainly do not like being considered just a parrot.

A fuzzing of it all may be problematic, but, at the same time some of the issues of philosophy have been approached by many thinkers and artistic people, so it may be an intricate area for thinking about, such as the quest for the symbolic 'philosophers stone', which, hopefully goes beyond the fantasy world of Harry Potter. — Jack Cummins

That's an old one, really, parroted by the Potter books, lol.

The idea of a focus or magic item or thing with the right properties is similar to the Vale of Hidden Treasures as a destination. Such foci are crutches only and never really needed. Truth is ubiquitous. At least that is my opinion. I have never needed quiet or a place to meditate, for example. And the thing people declare to me they get from meditation confused me forever, because it's my waking state. it took decades for me to realize that. So, maybe its not all that.

Fantasy literature explores important themes, but it may lose connection with the basics of philosophy at times, if it becomes too speculative in the grand process of human imagination. — Jack Cummins

I agree, and they take off on limited sets of philosophical frameworks and thus make the same errors as old school aphorisms do, over-emphasizing certain virtues at the expense of others.

One clear example to me is the Jedi in Star Wars. They are so wrong, they almost could not be more wrong. Almost all their aphorisms are terrible anti-wisdom. Don't get me wrong. I love the stories. But their wisdom is pathetic.

Fear is the gateway to the dark side. - Yoda (Nope. Fear is just as moral as it is immoral and all logic and thought are only fear (to me)).
Fear is the mind-killer - Thufir Hawat (Dune) (Nope. The mind is a construct made almost entirely of fear).
In Star Trek the Vulcans eschew emotions for logic. (Nope. The joke is on you, Vulcans (Roddenberry). Logic is only fear).

I probably put everything into a yin-yang relationship, but ‘understanding’ is definitely the under-appreciated ‘yin’ mental ability of the two.
It helps dealing with life and humans, as opposed to things and calculations.
But obviously knowledge is essential and unavoidable, though I tried valiantly to do so in school lol. — 0 thru 9

I have to respectfully disagree as I did in my post.

Understanding is meta-level more important than knowledge. Thus, 'understanding' is clearly both yin and yang. It is all.

Won’t contribute much due to time constraints, but I thought this distinction between knowledge and understanding fits in rather well with what you’ve expressed. — javra

Thank you, yes, just so. I loved the quote by Huxley. He was a far out cat. I am betting he drank more than one pangalactic gargle blaster. And those surely facilitate 'understanding'.

I meant usefulness in a meta sense.

"Be the bigger person and don't hold it against him that he [took your lunch/stole your lunch money/ took credit for your work/...]" — baker

Yes, I get that. I agree.

Uttering moral propositional statements can be used to control people -- for better or worse. My point is that just uttering them often has an effect, and a predictable one at that. — baker

To state the truth is wise, even if people 'use' it the wrong way. You make your choice, and they make theirs. Deception to avoid them suffering or you suffering their bad choices, is just another bad choice, only. There are no real exceptions. If you think you have found an exception, then that is only a case where the utterance of the proposition was taken too singly, and represents only one or a few of the virtues. To utter a wise statement all virtues must be included.

Example(s):
Aphorisms of old and memes are not often wisdom. They are anti-wisdom. That is because of the conundrum you just underscored. That is statements are taken in isolation and defended with all strength. It is included in wise understanding of any virtue that that virtue in isolation or taken too far is actually unwise. But these posters of memes and aphorisms, they fail utterly and their utterances are failures. That is because they want to hang their hat as done on the single virtue they like, while simultaneously downplaying and poo pooing the virtue opposite that would bend this one back to real wisdom. Such is the nature of reality.

I am not sure that a certain amount of common sense and trust in the empirical is not important to avoid confusion. I have worked with people with acute psychosis and have seen the grave dangers of getting carried away with 'delusions', such as belief in magical and psychic powers. So, it may be about holding onto a certain amount of critical 'realism', but also about juggling this with the limits of reason. Also, each person may come to this in a unique way based on personal experiences. — Jack Cummins

Loved your personal history by the way. Very endearing. I had similar experiences. With my rather committed Methodist parents the snooty scoffing at anything remotely interesting was rather epic. My gateway drug was going over to friend's houses to play D&D and eating spicy foods. Ha ha! It opened up my world so much that there was no going back. And all because my parents saw the beginning roots of my old soul loneliness and they wanted me to spread my wings and have friends. Whoopsie!

I quoted only the last part.

The question you ask there is the focal point of wisdom itself. That is 'Where is the line between the GOOD or necessary suffering and evil or unnecessary suffering?' But that line is fluid as well in some senses. For many they are so tough, and toughness is good, that they can dip heavily into unnecessary suffering and still realize it and return to the necessary only. Others prefer to 'find the bottom' and I find that type particularly vexing, especially when you love them. That type is the tragic romantic artist type, in general. They embody mysticism and are considered the tribal quintessential female type, although men can be it as well, like all types.

What you suggest is correct. You say holding on to ... Exactly! One virtue must be used to balance the other. Failure in raising any single virtue is a lack of wisdom and balance.

Granted all our paths are amid a subjective envelope of experience. But the truth and morality, and that which offers us the feedback of genuine happiness are objective. That is covered in another thread.

We are not perfect, so the great mystery remains unconquered. Fear will drive us into the unknown and desire will embody it to pull from the other side. That is how it is.

↪Chet Hawkins The quote above isn't from me. I think I was responding to someone else, citied it and you have picked it up under my name. I don't know if philosophers are elitist. — Tom Storm

Ah, sorry. Not quite sure how that happened.

The idea of the esoteric, secrets and the hidden may be problematic, especially as it involves the mysterious and the unknown. In general, the unveiling of 'the unknown, may be more helpful as opposed to it remaining unknown. The idea of 'the hidden' in philosophy may be problematic, as if trying to go beyond 'gaps', but it may end up with obscurity rather than any meaningful explanabtions. In this way, the ideas of the esoteric may involve more of a demystification rather than clarification of ideas and understanding. — Jack Cummins

Philosophers are traditionally and for the most part elitist. They regard mankind as children that they must hide the truth from. — Tom Storm

My own take on this issue is that it is precisely the unknown that is at issue. The unknown, or mystery, is, in one respect, only that which remains to be known. If there is any confidence in what is known, and I am asking 'is there?' then we can 'safely' continue the practices we have, the Scientific Method, etc. and delve, delve, delve like good little Doozers until we are Margery, the All Knowing Tash Heap (Fraggle Rock).

But what if it is the nature of reality itself to deny knowing? What if what we know is only there to delude us? I am not just being coy here.

Can we really know anything? Is the verb to know different than the verb to be when combined with awareness? How is the difference between those two perspectives treated?

I offer that in the case of 'to know', we do indeed delude ourselves of a certain certainty that in fact is not actually present. What we find in 'science' does not refute this sentiment at all. In fact, science itself is based on making incremental progress towards ... something. We could also debate what that something is. Is it truth? Is it practical success in the world, where truth is not required but instead a fair approximation will do nicely, thank you!

I offer that in the case of 'to be' aware does not specify arrival. I mean, when one is aware of something, it can be discussed. But to say one is aware of something presumes not too much one way or another about the extent of the knowledge had. I do think this distinction is not only relevant, but itself a disposition that can be called finally, wise.

This is not Sparta! This is Philosophy! And I for one prefer the old ways, the mud and the glory! Give me the love of wisdom! And then be about your business, if you claim to be a lover of wisdom. The which means, at least be aware (ha ha) of the difference between 'knowing' and 'being aware'.

This thread, and correct me if I am wrong @Jack Cummins, for I have certainly not read all of it, is about the esoteric, and I myself would put forth that less is understood about wisdom than any other subject possible. That is precisely because wisdom is all other virtues or 'good' traits combined. Leave out even one virtue, among a list whose member virtues are not known, and you fail at wisdom. What, then, must we do? This is at least the thread of living dangerously!

I will spare everyone the arguments along the lines of intelligence and wisdom being two different things. But I did read quite a few posts so far in this thread that suggest to me that argument has not yet been won entirely, a thing of great disquiet for me. Really? Well, I said I would spare everyone, so I will start then with a first statement. Wisdom >> Intelligence!

That means, if the symbolism is not clear enough, that wisdom is superior to intelligence. If there are professional logical symbols that mean 'is only a part of' then I would use those symbols instead. But, the heavy takeaway is that wisdom is a superior skill in every way to intelligence. Some might claim, as I just kind-of did, that intelligence is a part of wisdom, and that is fine. But the real right way to say it for Scotsmen and Klingon's alike is that awareness is part of wisdom. Intelligence is only a personal facility with awareness. One might argue that lessens again the importance of intelligence, but that is not my primary goal.

It could be asserted, and I do, that life's only purpose is the earning of wisdom. The divergent nature of that assertion is epic, but I am not trying to derail the thread. Wisdom is the most esoteric mystery that there is.

So, there seems to be some worry about the relationship between logic and a penchant for esoteric goings on, or interest in the esoteric. I mean is that not obvious? This is where I suppose many and most will be offended or start objecting in earnest and I would not have it any other way. Logic is only fear. There is nothing else to logic but the emotion of fear. I'm sure the anger is welling up against me even now. It's nothing but tragicomical to me when proponents of logic say things like, 'stop getting emotional and instead use reason'. Do not make me laugh! Logic is only emotion, only fear.

{My argument that logic is only fear is much more extensive than this, but this bit will suffice for this thread's purposes}

Fear is the limiting force within reality. It is responsible for all aspects of the drives for comfort and certainty. And why then is fear a limiting force? Well, ask yourself, where do you draw the line on comfort? Where is that border within reality for you? Are we a hive mind? Or do you need to believe that you are a separate individual? Is that more comfortable for you? Fear is talking. Everything we consider identity to be is only a separation born of fear. It is for comfort as a goal. And its rigidity is the limit, the asymptote of that effect. Fear takes short cuts. Fear is Pragmatism. Fear is Logic. Fear is thought itself (more on that in another thread).

There are many words that express fear, whether or not the user is aware of this truth. 'Certainty' is one of them, perhaps the worst. This is the delusion of 'knowing', instead of 'to be' aware of something, which, as mentioned, is to me the healthier, the wiser, response or way to be. Another fear word is the word 'like'. Like is the friendship component of the 3 parts of love. The other two being passion and compassion. We like those that are like us, speaking to identity. 'Comfort' is a fear word. We are comfortable with those that we are not afraid of. But there is more to this.

Fear type people have more trouble socializing than other types do. Why is that? It is because any overt expression of fear spreads fear within the group. So, animated or excited states cause fear and that leads to, one word is best, panic. This gives rise to the more traditional, colloquial, and horridly derivative meaning of the word fear. That definition of fear is entirely insufficient and rather dull-minded. No, fear needs a new better, more primal definition. And wouldn't you know it, I have one handy, for some reason. Here it is: 'Fear is an excitable state that arises from matching a pattern from one's past'.

This excitement of 'knowing' or being aware of something is not conducive in some way to social interaction, and that effect is multiplied when anything serious is being attempted in groups. Sports and especially partying are not great theaters for fear to strut its excitement. Times are changing but nerds the world over were shunned, feared, for this reason. They ruin the comfort of others, often enough. Now get a bunch of fear types together (looks around the forum 'knowingly') and things are fine because that excitement is indeed comfortable to such types. Fear types are good with fear.

Are we getting to the point eventually? Maybe! You let me know!

So, what is the first (and only) fear? It is fear of the unknown. Enter our trusty OP and esoterica. Rare or hidden or unknown knowledge. What could possibly inspire more fear/excitement? It's bad enough getting with a bunch of logicians and nerds of all walks of life and having them regale you, foaming at the mouth, about their subject of expertise. Now, we are adding a new wrinkle and this one folds space. You have to do spice to gaze into the unknown, and we all know the unknown gazes back into you. It's positively terrifying. It's actually like a new stage of fear, the old fear revisited, the unknown as a topic or pattern. And now we are making things up! Because the unknown is still unknown right? Or is it?

Would we even accept a map of the unknown if it were handed to us? Should we? Raise your hand in your chair at home if you really do want to know it all! Although my hand is up, I am one who believes that the wise wisely inflict necessary suffering on the unwise. I understand that more and more awareness means more and more suffering. The more awareness we have, the more we realize that wisdom is the only 'good' path. Is your hand still up? In the amazing and amazingly hokey movie 'Krell' the cyclops race is gifted with foresight at the cost of one of each of their eyes. But the gods were cruel. They only allowed this gift with respect to the individual knowing when and how they would die. The beauty of awareness is thus very well demonstrated.

The OP shows a clear worry about two things in particular to me, the nature and subject of God, and the value of logic and reason versus the mysteries of the unknown. It's of interest in part because there is evidence that the two are related.

I am not saying God is only the mystery, the unknown. God is also that which is already known, both sets of things, combined. But fear and its subset, logic, both, are only ... cowardly responses to all that is, reality. We must look to other emotions to balance fear. And there are only two other emotions, anger, and desire. {All emotions are only a mix of these three} It is desire that represents the unknown. Unlike what people would normally say, desire does not make us go there. It represents it. Fear is driving the need to become aware. Desire represents that which has yet to be tamed, had, known. Desire is mystery itself, chaos. This is in contrast to what fear is, order. And what is logic, if not orderly?

The limiting force (fear) and the limitless force (desire) come together to create this situation where we are aware of things somewhat on one side (still deluded) and aware that we are not aware of things on the other side (also deluded). The dividing line is now, the present.

If we add the conjecture as mentioned that God is only all of it, everything, known and unknown, then the purpose of life seems to be to become God. It's not a new idea, exactly. But understanding the interactions between fear and desire more correctly is a new way of looking at that old idea. Hopefully, that is enough fuel for commentary.