Feeling me some Petty.

Truth is like a big messy poo. Something you have to do alone, you have to clean up your own mess when you're done, no one is going to want to look at it... but if you hold it in, then you'll become increasingly full of shit.

I was attempting to explain my point in saying that happiness and ecstasy are not for anything else, and explain that I don't endorse their pursuit, but nor do I think they're in any sense bad things.

It isn't a noble pursuit. It's base, point was that they were things that tend to be good in themselves. They aren't for anything else.

I wanted a sip of tea, and then I got it. You can't mean that? But there is a hole, a void. It isn't that we don't or can't get what we want, it's that we don't know what it is that is missing, and are attempting to fill it up with what we think it could be. That likely won't work, I agree.

No real use in happiness or ecstasy, they aren't really for anything else, they're awesome possum all by themselves.

I think that want and need are distinct only in intensity. In seriousness. In attachment. You could set some goal already, that you think is objective, like survival, and say that things are necessary for that, or happiness, or whatever. People don't tend to speak literally and robotically like ever though, and say "need" in the context of would literally drop dead without it, is completely necessary for survival, or whatever goal. Contingent on come goal or orientation, it's all a mixture of literal necessity, or importance to accomplishing the goal, or one's intensity and seriousness of desire. They don't just want it, and it doesn't just kind of help...

One may not always get what they want, but they get what they need, not because there is a distinction in kind between wants and needs, but in one's levels of passion and orientation towards them.

I think that it is true in a sense, the implication of which is that one is repeatable as thoughts feelings and actions are repeatable. Though a person could also be described with more unique features, but are less "personal" and about capacity for thought and action. The concept of a person first came about to explain the trinity, and is taken from persona, or the masks Greek theatre performers used to express different emotions. It of course has legal meanings about blood and cultural relatedness and potential for responsibility.

As stands, the implication is that two distinct things at two distinct times and places could be identical people, if the thoughts feelings and actions were identical. So that, distinguishing between persons and objects isn't identical, in that just their physical attributes and circumstances do not constitute personhood, and this is implied in the original purpose for using the word in this context as well. In that the object and the person are distinct, so as on object could contain three persons. Like masks worn by the object.

I think that some may quibble over your characterization of person, but I agree with it, and I think that seems about right to me!

What, don't want to become one with the forest? To be of the prestigious tree people? Highly trained in tree related disciplines, and puns?

Well the only alternative that I can see is shutting up and taking your poison.

It's all China and the US. Stop being rich assholes, stop being super powers, producing everything including all of the climate change. It's meaningless, and empty gestures from everyone else. It's also asking a lot of the super powers of the world. They're protecting us, and providing for us, but also, they're poisoning us all slowly. We must take to the woods, and become the tree people. There is no other answer.

I think 'our intellectual activity' is another abstraction. It's along the lines of a set. I'm pointing to the difficulty in finding a vantage point on abstraction. — frank

Something in your hand or room right now differs from your names for it, and ideations about them. Those are abstract, the thing in your perceptual field is not, and they are about it. Math differs in this though, and has deeper roots. Not as easy to hold in one's hands, to see in one's perceptual field, so far harder to imagine in a mind, or idea independent way, when you have it always at hand with the things in your vicinity.

I think that it is deeper level abstraction from the names themselves, and focus on the grammar or form of language itself, abstracting a step further, and removing the content entirely, and just hijacking the pure form from language and grammar and using it to talk far more precisely, recordably, trackably, and directly about the world.

So that, to speak of mathematical Platonic forms is to say that not only the names or ideas of how they relate, repeat, and can be talked about isn't wholly invented, but the form of language mirrors the form of the world so that language already is grounded in deep mathematical order that is then abstracted from language, and then reapplied in its pure form.

The problem of find with this though, is that it isn't wrong, but it isn't truer than the content of experience, which is where all of the quality is. It is the form of everything, but the dead form of everything, so that language involves the physical likeness, and qualitative likeness, and both have a universal abstractable nature. One into mathematics, and the other aesthetics. The Platonic view is then that these features, are real and independent and not projections by us. What kind of magical dimensions within which they reside, I cannot say, but I do think that language is abstracted in both parts from reality itself, and are real and mind independent.

I think that the problem stems from faulty conceptualization. We do not experience things as discrete things, but as events. Events have duration, characteristics, and a flow of probabilistic indeterminacy throughout its transformations which constitute its potentiality, combined with the tracking of actual manifest changes in reality which constitute its actuality. So that "perceive the present" is not as meaningful as the speed of perception, allowing for a greater more detailed capture of the transformations of events. So that we perceive events at a certain size, speed, wavelength, but time is more relative to these relational factors themselves, rather than "past, present, future".

Yes, we hold various preferences because of what we take causal relationships between things to be, and what kind of outcomes we will imagine ourselves in.

Deeper than this though, ambitions, desires, inspirations write themselves on to your heart. We dream, we aspire. These aspiration give no worry to difficulty, logistics, you have no control of it, and just have to do it. Without doing so, a large part of you will turn its back on you forever.

You can say that there is no real reason to do them, no real motivation, but that isn't at all what those that see think. Conservative values often seem uncompassionate, and really cold about physical violence, and other high risk safety factors. This is because the worst thing to them isn't getting hurt or violated, but damaged, broken, jaded, hateful, spoiled and self-centered... being the types that espouse love of the weak and hatred of the strong. Just those blatant types of twisted -- it's being them that is the worst thing imaginable. The consequences of not following your heart are that dire.

We though, we have destinies to fulfill.

You don't need motivation for things you actually want to do, you need demotivation for those things, and motivation for things that you don't want to do. Which does indeed require a lot of self-deception, a lot of fear and weakness.

Point ultimately reducible to a mode of being, or perceiving. One exclusionary, divisive, hate, doubt, fear based. Identity by what something is not. Not like them, not doing that. It's indicative of constitution. The reverse is inclusion, binding, love, faith, passion based. It's to put one's stake in the ground, to commit. To die on that hill.

I'm not one of us, I'm one of them.

Ironic dogmatism. Or anti-dogmatism dogmatism. It's a virtue.

The thing is, that this is what is good to believe, or supposed to be true. It's ethical in nature, or based in comparative value judgments. It's imposed.

Do you know what self-knowledge looks like? How sure are you that what you take it to be isn't based in hearsay, and amounts to shackles and chains?

I gave clear rebuke, of its self-defeating nature, and also reasons why it isn't true. Don't want to have true believer syndrome, so that all I know for certain is that I'd best not know anything.

No, it is of this "not one of them" sort of signals, and lack of self knowledge.

How certain are you of that? Just guessing?

Isn't this eschewing of certainty just a form of virtue signaling? Assuring each other that we aren't those dogmatic ideological types, we're the open minded ones.

There is no certainty for us. — Pattern-chaser

Are you certain? You'll certainly behave as if you're certain of many things, when the pressure is on, your body will be certain. Everything is dubious while in my recliner though.

"God is being" is vague and unreachable in my view as well. People say that they see God everywhere, because they see order, and significance which isn't imaginary or accidental. Because of the universal principles that underlay all of reality, and one is capable of getting a greater and greater acquaintance with based on particular practices and methods. Because there is truth in the first place. Though what God is specifically, exactly, in all of his grand features is entirely inferred from the apprehension of these universal principles that one can become in greater and greater alignment with. It is ultimately a place holder, and allegorical in representation. A contrast between everything that makes up existence in the singular, or particular. Chaotic, indeterminant, finite, bounded, limited, incomparable, separate, to harmonious, determined, infinite, unbounded, limitless, uniform, togetherness.

Though I would never suggest just "believing" in God, as I believe that this requires a certain level of perceptual prowess. What is ultimately being apprehended is the truth, or underlying principle which connects vast swathes of information.

It is further in this unifying direction which implies that there is one god, just as there is one meaning, one language, one food. The greeks identified many of the egyptian gods with their own, as just being different names for the same gods. Emanationism just goes further, suggesting that all of these gods ultimately derive from, or are forms, manifestations of a greater single god. So that rather than subtracting, or contesting other gods to get the one god, they are unified under a greater, deeper principle which encapsulates them all. This is ultimately the drive to understand, to conceptualize, to abstract. Those that ultimately deny that there are these unifying principles just lack sense and/or experience. So that it is far from an empty intellectual exercise, the principles are literally perceived.

Problem I find though, or think, particularly in modern times, with the insensitivity of stimulation overload, and decadence, the numbing, and dumbing... is that people look to the top of the mountain from the bottom, and say that they can't see it, or it makes no sense. Gotta look to what is just ahead, or similar in height to get a measure...

Though, recall that the top of the mountain is disappointing, all that's up there is a mop and pail.

We're simply not built for happiness. We're build to feel both rapture and agony. These feelings are aspects of your being, all, and cannot be expunged without simply their neglect, lack of integration, delegation to the unconscious. All things have their place, all things have their moment.

We all know that in the context of murdering someone, feeling rapture is a worrying thing. Just as it is inappropriate to feel agony at someone else's fortune, and well being. To focus on feeling particular ways, is to suggest that one either become this sort of delusional, or that one shuts out, and hides from "triggers" of unfavorable emotions. Insanity, and decadence. Humanity's favorite flavors.

Living and dead gods. Etymologically "God" is that which sacrifices are made to, and as such, one worships the bloom because they sacrifice, and prepare for it. They live with it in most of their actions, and work for its blessings. As life moves on, and the names get detached from the actions, the gods die, as communion with them, and relationship with them dies. When Paul was in Greece, no one really believed that the gods interacted with humanity anymore, and hadn't for something like five thousand years. Rather, the caste system was such that prominent families linked their lineage to the gods, and heroes of old. When Herodotus wrote about the Persians, he said that they claimed that they had something like 25,000 year old written history (lying to them about having lost the ability to read the ancient language), and that the gods hadn't interacted with people for much longer than five thousand years. Calling into question the lineages of prominent families.

When Christianity was coming about, when Paul met Jesus, the world he found himself in was one of stale religions and dead gods already. The world had become too big, and too diverse of lifestyle and practice, even as they recognized more and more gods, into the hundreds. This is why the new religions, the new monotheisms that sprung up around that time emphasized that their God was living, and universal.

People worship money they say today, because that is precisely what we make sacrifices to. What we do stuff for. No one cares to get paid for doing things that they want to (though it would be a bonus), and only do the things they have to for the sustaining of their life and well-being. The significance and meaning leaves everything else. Being told you just won ten million would really get the blood moving though, now that is meaningful.

I know more than I let on, but I'm attempting to fulfill my social duties here, and not tell people what to believe, but how to get their soul back, and see some things for themselves. Other drives, based in the appetites block the way, and are literally lower in the body than the heart. Need to be cleaned out, detoxified, overcome. Unlike the heart, they can just be completely tamed. The heart is too powerful for that, and requires devotion to purify -- but upon its awakening, a new dimension of language comprehension becomes available to you. Without the requisite sensitivity, it becomes far more difficult to track one's true feelings, and opinions, to stay honest. The soul is completely necessary for self-knowledge. Without it, "lifeless words carry on", language loses its personal meaning, and you start talking nonsense. Will the soul know everything about God, and have all of the answers? No, it won't, but it offers a whole new level of discernment, and allows one to transcend good and evil.

I'll punctuate it with more songs, as artists, poets really do exemplify a connection to the heart, and contrition really can skyrocket you to the celestial realm. Not the highest level, but that isn't practical for most, and I don't know of a straight forward easy method to get there at this time... plus, I'm not entirely selfless, and prefer to keep a few laps ahead.

I reject these notions of "primitive pasts" and sophisticated presents. On our way to being God. I prefer the notion that the gods were representations of the drives, and forces, of the universal, which ultimately becomes idolized in language itself, abstracted from living and sense. Is living in a wax museum an advancement, where everything seems dead for some reason?

The progression I look to, and at is personal, and individual, in the sense of to what orders one can sense, experience, bare witness to. What directs their lives, they have a relationship with, and commune with daily with their senses and actions. This isn't apprehended from a description, nor an "explanation". As if something could be made sense of, that you have no sense for. Ultimately reduced to this comparative evaluation of progress, and evolution, and inferiority, of delusion and unreality (or only real in some sense that no one immersed in it thought).

It's intuition, nous, that we're attempting to frame and make explicit. It's sense, sensitivity, life, feeling. None of that is improved in the ways you describe. Making more and more clear images of something that presents itself to you fuzzily doesn't make it clearer, just the image is clearer. The way to improve the intuition is with health, experience, travel, community, love... and is a personal journey.

Faith is understanding something spiritually, when one cannot explain, and precisely delineate how they know it. Reason is the process by which we make sense of things, or attempt delineation. It could be said that nearly everything is known in a faith way, and we are always attempting to picture, or capture it with reason. This is what philosophy has always been about, in my view, but this got complicated with the rise of "reason", and distrust. Things needed to be public, physical, repeatable, or don't bother me with it. Things taken on faith are things we have no clear definitions of, or explanations for, but still accept as true, and worthy of attempting to do that. Like consciousness, health, justice, beauty.

Reason is the process of framing faith. Or making explicit the implicit... but if I just adopt and repeat popular framings, so that you cannot even tell the difference between me, and a million others, because we just present the precise same model, explanation, reason, as everyone else, then I don't think that one is demonstrating faith or reason, just memory, and allegiance. Ideology.

It's the comfortable that aren't religious. People want to be happy, but being wrong, particularly with respect to sin, and your own doing feels terrible. People that feel bad, feel wrong. People that feel happy feel right. We want to feel right, and comfortable, complacent, and we don't want to feel bad, and wrong.

We don't want to be told what to do, and how to live our lives, and don't like the idea that some authority knows, and we have no choice. That isn't very comforting at all. That's obliging, terrifying, and guilt and shame generating. It's the complete inverse, the rebelling, the decadent, the addict, the seeker of happiness... they're looking for comfort. The seeker of truth is looking for agony, terror.

I am not without strife, and aggression. Aggression is a combination of desire and blame, in that it is a reaction to an obstacle, delay, or obstruction that is something else' fault. So that it is this combination of "I don't want that", and "this is your doing!". It's rather bratty. This is one of the miracles of accepting responsibility, of refraining from excuses, and blame as the ego reaches for them splashing in the depths of failure, denied upon every request until finally it drowns in the guilt and responsibility in which it rightfully owns, and cannot displace. Sometimes anger and aggression is justified and necessary, but most of the time it is just of this bratty "I'm not getting what I want because of you" kind of thing.

It is easy to respond to someone with hints of aggression because they aren't doing what you want them to, or in response to aggression, though I do believe that it isn't fruitful, and is childish, so I attempt my best to not just show no aggression, but to take all of the responsibility for failure to get my point across, or lack of persuasion, or failure to understand. To not just show no aggression, but to feel no aggression, just shame and disappointment.

I also think that that is silly, which is why it is difficult to know what one believes and doesn't, and particular states and circumstances are necessary to discover this. Without the desperation, without the terror, then we construct an image of ourselves pre-experience, based on what seems cool, inspirational, respected. We identify with feel good, positive things, and act them out to the best of our apprehension and appreciation. We are not at every moment transparent to ourselves however, and thus it requires tracking one's self through time, and various circumstances to get a true sense of what and who they are. To get to know themselves, as their own judging companion. A lukewarm existence though, won't reveal much.

You may think that all of that sounds ridiculous, but what we are and are not willing to try comes down to just how much it matters, and how desperate we are. The whole "no atheists in fox holes" quip is not met to suggest that atheists are cowards, but just is expressing this insight, that the desperate try everything.

At the times I didn't know it, but the most desperate times in my life were always the most transformative. When one is most desperate is when they discover what they're really too good for, and not too good for, and when most terrified is when one discovers what really matters, and what doesn't.