I wish you would give us a bit more background. It might even be a good thread by itself. — T Clark

I just gave you the background you asked for.

Maybe read the Wiki.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huna_(New_Age)#:~:text=King%20wrote%20that%20the%20seven,is%20the%20moment%20of%20power.

Have y'all been living under a stone not to have noticed the unreasonable effectiveness of bullshit?

I expect a debunking by the end of the week. — Baden

I just watched the congress hearing above. Three independent witnesses all very sober and well qualified, being taken very seriously by government and opposition. I think your expectation of debunking has been debunked.

There are a few sceptical arguments raised here and elsewhere:

(I.) That 'it' would be impossible to keep secret over the long term. Well it isn't secret, it's taken to be and presented as a fantasy conspiracy theory.

(2,) That the alien pilots must be crap if they keep crashing. That would be a strong point if they did keep crashing, How many crashes have there been? Maybe only one, maybe none..

(3.) That there must have been an international conspiracy to keep the secret. Again, if there has been only one crash, there will be only one government with hard physical evidence beyond radar recordings and dismissible video, and eyewitness reports. All other governments would have nothing more to keep secret except their complete ignorance, which governments are always slow to admit.

I'm not so sceptical I used to be. — ssu

That's about where I am. still sceptical, but not totally fanatically sceptical.

Abstract generalisations of this sort can best be defined by considering their negative space - that which they exclude. What is unreal, can be virtual, imaginary, illusory or delusional. Thus an image can be a real thing- marks on a surface, while whatever is depicted - portrait or landscape, is unreal. But the depiction itself can be real or imaginary in its content, rather as a map can be a map of actual or fictional territory. one might notice that the word 'real' is a real word, but it is only a word and not the real thing to which it refers like the map or the portrait.

It becomes clear that the word needs to be understood in context, in order to define its particular contrast, or negative space on each occasion. So no definition will be entirely adequate. For example, if one distinguishes Reality from mere talk - word from thing - map from territory, then to define reality directly in terms of truth is to put it on the wrong side of that divide as referring to statements and depictions - the very opposite of what is mostly meant. Rather I would like to say that reality is that about which one can speak truth or falsehood.

Treating religious stories as literature, which may convey wisdom, as any good literature may, is not the same as arguing pointlessly over the existence of God or gods or the reality of ideas like karma or rebirth. — Janus

I agree about that. But again, who involves themselves in such arguments except committed believers and equally committed disbelievers? As if religion were nothing but an alternative physics.

Do we argue that Plato's cave does not exist, and therefore it is a waste of time talking about it? No one does that. I have a thread of my own about all that

But i would also like to point out that the idea that time can be, and ought not to be, wasted in pointless activity is very much a Protestant Christian attitude derived usually from the parable of the talents. It would make little sense in any African or Indian tradition for example. All things must pass, but nothing is wasted.

I think we do that subconsciously — I’ve been guilty of it too. It’s why I invoked ethnocentrism, which I think is a related phenomena. — Mikie

I see. Well perhaps we have a substantive disagreement after all. If one invokes Christian imagery, one is laying oneself open to the accusation of ethnocentrism, certainly; but avoiding the mention does nothing to avoid subconscious ethnocentrism, it merely prevents the challenge that might make one become conscious of it.

But you’re free to feel persecuted if you wish. — Mikie

Of course, how could you stop me from feeling persecuted if I felt persecuted. I don't feel persecuted at all, as it happens, at least, not by you. But perhaps your imputation of my feeling persecuted implies that I should feel persecuted?

But aside from that, if my post is a straw man, then I must have misunderstood you. But if you are not addressing believers, and you are not addressing non-believers like myself who have an interest in religions and use religious terms and stories, then who are you addressing, and what are you saying for them not to do?

The video didn't do it for me. but this is more clear as a non-starting point to start from.

... it is not so much that I have written this book, as that it has written me. Or rather, "we" have "intra-actively" written each other ("intra-actively" rather than the usual "interactively" since writ­ ing is not a unidirectional practice of creation that flows from author to page, but rather the practice ofwriting is an iterative and mutually constitu­ tive working out, and reworking, of "book" and "author"). Which is not to deny my own agency (as it were) but to call into question the nature of agency and its presumed localization within individuals (whether human or nonhuman). Furthermore, entanglements are not isolated binary co­ productions as the example ofan author-book pair might suggest. Friends, colleagues, students, and family members, multiple academic institutions, departments, and disciplines, the forests, streams, and beaches ofthe east­ ern and western coasts, the awesome peace and clarity of early morning hours, and much more were a part of what helped constitute both this "book" and its "author."

https://smartnightreadingroom.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/meeting-the-universe-halfway.pdf

The observer and the observed are entangled in the observation, and this observation displays the same entanglement as every observation. The separation of the observer from the observed is never more than a convenient approximation that is never completely true. That this separation has always been the fundamental dogma of science has become an embarrassment with the rise of quantum mechanics, with which it is in direct conflict. The rehabilitation of the observer into the observation and the author into the book, is a really good way to begin to resolve the contradiction that has plagued physics for a couple of generations.

As a beginning, this is a description of the creative process that is recognisable and satisfying to me; this is how I write, how I garden, how I learn. In the beginning was the tangle, and within the entanglement there became discernible the Book and the Author - the theory and the theoriser - the observer and the observed. And the evening and the morning were the beginning of time.

Thus the preface. I hope to be able to come back later with something about the meat of the book, if I can enter into a productive relation with it.

As the disclaimer notes, I’m not aiming this at believers. I’m aiming this at those who are interested in questioning; in philosophy. That can be anyone— Christian or non-Christian, Hindu or non-Hindu. Those who recognize whatever religion they happen to be brought up in as one of many stories.

Given this situation, I would argue it’s just as much a waste of time to give special attention to Shiva (because one happened to be raised in India) or God (because one happened to be raised in the West) as it is to Xhandizi. It’s all perhaps interesting in an anthropological sense— but we needn’t give it extra weight or seriousness based on cultural familiarity. I see it done often — especially by atheists, in fact. So my advice is based on personal feeling, of course — but I think it’s potentially useful. Just let it go. I speak from experience in fact. — Mikie

Have you realised yet that this thread is a waste of time? I sometimes refer to Aesop's fables. They are morally instructive, even for people who do not believe in talking foxes. I refer to stories I am familiar with and that are widely understood. I will continue to do so, and also to bible stories because they permeate the culture and still shape our thinking whether we are aware of it or not. I prefer to be aware of it. It is convenient and communicative to speak of the Good Samaritan as the epitome of kindness to strangers, and I would rather leave the site than be silent about the wisdom and beauty of such tales. And I think there is a deal of support here for my views. Likewise, the Book of Job is wonderful philosophical approach to the problem of evil, and particularly 'natural evil'.

Your advice is bad advice, to deprive oneself of much wisdom from the past because of some fantastic elements and the limitations of factual knowledge of the time. It is Philistinism, and antihistorical. Furthermore it functions to give those stories more potency in the mind that rejects them - your own mind. Your advice is irrational — stories are not harmful, but illuminating.

First, identify the poison. — Amity

One man's meat is another's poison. In this context one human identity is poisonous to another human identity, so one needs to identify self and poisonous other simultaneously.

When a boy in school doesn't act in traditionally masculine ways, and he is bullied by the boys in his class for being "too feminine" — What is toxic masculinity - verywellmind

Here, for example, the poisoned 'y' to which 'x' is poisonous is laid out very simply. There might be another school where a solitary 'x' is bullied for being "too masculine", but that is less likely because of power itself being associated with masculinity, at least hereabouts.

However. One might consider Margret Mead: https://www.simplypsychology.org/margaret-mead.html

To which rather overly even-handed summary, I should add the following debunking of her debunker: https://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/current/readings/Shankman-Trashing%20of%20Margaret%20Mead.pdf

Clearly Freeman and Mead were mutual poisons to each other, and so I arrive again back at the conservative liberal divide, that overlays the nature nurture, that overlays the masculine feminine divide...

It always looks more like solid ground to me when the causes of war are identifiable as economic rather than ideological. So why would there be a big dispute about the ownership of "The breadbasket of the World"? Can it be that food is becoming a scarce resource? Who owns the breadbasket owns the world. Talk of democracy and freedom and nazification fades to the buzzing of flies round the feast, as possession is asserted by the destruction of the world's dinner by the dispute of those already bloated of stomach. The burning question is 'Who would you rather beg for your dinner, and slave for?' The prospect of the parties agreeing to share seems remote.

Google knows where we're heading: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.optivelox.radmeter&hl=en_US&pli=1

The shortly to be needed shopping and tableware ap You will need the geiger tube detector as well, as the comments point out. This is pure paranoia of course.

Yeah, that was a little ironic dig, as I am attempting myself to offer a social science/anthropological analysis, from which view it all appears as performance that is then referred back to "Natural kinds" that are posited to really exist and produce the performance which is not a performance but a real difference. A circle of trust, that gender benders of all kinds place themselves outside of. Capitalised Nature is the god of science and everything human is natural by definition. Except religion of course, but this is not religion, it is science! The circle is unbroken.

If the topic was placed in the religion section, much would be made of the fact that it is mandated to cover up the facts of sex in favour of the performance of gender, and this would be called out as deliberate mystification. And anything said thereafter would be dismissed as dogma, brainwashing, and superstition. To be trans is "heretical", as it used to be to be homosexual, and still is in most places.

When a heresy cannot be suppressed, it results in a schism, and becomes a sect, like, to take a non-random example, Protestantism. This then in turn splits into innumerable factions and one ends up with a sect for every conceivable permutation of the fundamental fiction. How many genders are we up to now? It must be almost as many as the angels dancing on the head of a pin.

Let's rejoice with loud Fal la--Fal la la!
That Nature always does contrive--Fal lal la!
That every boy and every gal
That's born into the world alive
Is either a little Liberal
Or else a little Conservative!
Fal lal la!
[Enter Fairies, with Celia, Leila, and Fleta. They trip round stage]

W.S. Gilbert. Iolanthe.

The peculiarity of gender and sexual identity in this culture is that what Nature contrives must first be hidden from public gaze, and then indicated by conventional signs of hairstyle, clothing, and behaviour. This invests sex and sexual identity with totemic power that makes this thread significant in a way that a discussion about, say, eye colour is not. Genitals are hidden like The Holy of Holies, and other such religious mysteries. Sex is the religion of modernity, and this thread should belong in the philosophy of religion section, except that no one here is questioning the foundations of practice and belief.

What is a blue-eye, and what makes them better than brown-eyes? And what should we do with those perverts who use coloured contact lenses behind their mandatory sunglasses and then wear the wrong coloured hat?
Fal lal la!
[Enter Fairies, with Celia, Leila, and Fleta. They trip round stage]

Zeus was prone to eating his children too. It's a god thing.

If you really believe your culture is special, exceptional, deserving of privileged treatment, etc — fine, go study it. — Mikie

I have done so, and have no such belief because I have also studied something of Indian, Chinese, and African cultures. And I have found much of value in all those stories that you seem to want me to dismiss. So what do you have that is better than stories?

No reason to give “god” special attention just because you happen to be raised in that faith. — Mikie

On the contrary, one cannot understand oneself and one's potential biases without some study of the history of the culture in which one was raised.

I didn’t say anything about Christian values. — Mikie

Like you, the Christian tradition makes much of the value of not wasting time, but working hard.

It’s a waste of time. — Mikie

I think it is at least interesting, and perhaps important, to recognise the source of such values.

Tell me more about what I should let go of, and how you know its value so well.

Some say that it was a Christian society that brought about the enlightenment and the birth of science, and the very commitment to truth, and to not wasting time that you seem to espouse yourself. Should we not let go of those very Christian values too?

Toxic masculinity is an identity of the masculine which identifies itself with power, and the feminine with love, and denies itself the feminine. If you feel love, the feminine, then that is a weakness which the powerful wouldn't need to succumb to, and insofar that you feel love you should act to purge it to become a real man. — Moliere

I like this because "should" finally entered the theory -- I really believe this is a topic in ethics more than ontology/epistemology! But it's hard to get there. — Moliere

That is excellent, because the way it enters is via the devilish wrong understanding, like wot da Bible say.

But I think there is also a simpler, and much more general explanation of the conflict which is that identification is necessarily divisive. No us without them. No male without female. Hence the famous story about the Buddhist visiting N.Ireland being asked insistently, "Yes, but are you a Catholic buddhist of a Protestant buddhist?" The very idea of being both or neither threatens everyone's own identity and the very laws of logic themselves.

As an old hippy, I well remember the horrified complaint about men with long hair – "but you can't tell whether it's a boy or a girl!" And as I have said at tedious length, sex is of fundamental importance to a patrilineal society, and not so much if at all to a matrilineal one, thereby allowing more focus on which end one opens one's boiled egg at breakfast (all right thinking folk, men and women alike, are obviously little-enders), and other such vital issues.

I do claim science is confused — Antony Nickles

It looks to me, reading this thread, that your disagreement with @Srap Tasmaner is curiously founded on a mutual reification of 'science' — an ironic mis-recognition of an object. Is it a method, is it an ethic, is it a philosophy, is it a practice, is it an ethnicity, a social institution, a tradition, a cult? No it's Superscience! Faster than a speeding bullet.

What is being defended and attacked is nothing more than a hand, waving in the general direction of vague habits of thought and attitudes of 'suck it and see', that have proven fruitful in the past in producing material conveniences. We tried the power of prayer, but found horsepower more reliable.

If it had happened to be the other way, scientists would be busy researching which prayers to which gods were the most efficacious, and we would be calling them priests.

Indeed, the way I heard it, a narrow gateway, you could only get a camel through unladen, or a rich man dispossessed of his burden of wealth.

There is nothing rich about a rich man apart from his riches. Which 'you can't take with you', as every grave robber will attest. But for my part, I have never intended, in this thread or on this site, to make any claim as to what if anything lies beyond this world or beyond the the grave. But I do attest that I have stopped smoking without the least regret or desire to restart. And this is not a boast, because it is not an achievement at all, but an honest report intended to be helpful to others in conflict about their habits.

There is nothing smokey about a smoker apart from his smoking habit, and the practice is the result of a habit of mind. What I have discovered is that the way one looks inwards at oneself needs to be different to the way one looks outwards. Outwardly, one needs to to distinguish the edible mushroom from the poisonous, and eat the one and avoid the other. But in looking at oneself in this way, in distinguishing beneficial habits from harmful habits, one creates a division and a conflict in oneself. In condemning the habit of smoking in myself, I am creating an imaginary non-smoker wagging his finger at the imaginary smoker. And then I can act out the conflict between them for many years a stop-start addiction, of self resentment and complaint. Whereas if I change my mind, I see without that conflict and without that division that tobacco is poisonous to me, then there is no difficulty.

I think this act of inward seeing without division might be what you mean by 'true self'. For fifty years I have been a smoker, or a smoker in remission, like a man trying to cross a ravine on a narrow bridge, but desperately holding onto the post at the beginning, knowing he has to let go in order to get across, but even in letting go, unable to take a step because the urge to grasp the pole again is so strong. And then I realise that the post I think I need is not helping me cross safely, but preventing me from crossing at all. I need the bridge, not the post. And with that realisation I set out, and the post is left behind.

Ron DeSantis recently commented that some American black people benefitted from slavery by learning trades such as blacksmithing. — frank

I think they paid for it already. If DeSanity will contract to be my slave along with a few generations of his descendants I'll teach him whole bunch of shit.

There is only this page, and only I am on it.

Nice obituary. A lifetimes' work, to add one informative idea to the human mindscape.

Tying this with the thread's main theme, were a literally egoless consciousness possible to actualize in principle, such would then be perfectly devoid of otherness - but there is no cogent reason to then affirm that it would also be devoid of its "auto"-awareness regarding its own, here unperturbed, state of being. I interpret this to then be in-line with the often told description of Moksha or Nirvana as being pure bliss. — javra

I have to report that there is as a matter of fact a state of absorption sometimes called 'flow', which I have experienced, mainly playing music, but even occasionally in writing, and sometimes walking in the countryside. In such a state, there is no separation for the moment between self and world; the music is playing the fingers and the rhythm is breathing the time, I mean timing the breath: even as an audience one can become lost in music.

In such a state, there is no difference between idealism and physicalism. It is called flow because the normal state of consciousness holds self static as the ruler that measures the movement of time, like the post of a sundial or the static face that the hands of the clock move across. Or perhaps it is more like like a log in the river, snagged on a rock that the river of time washes over and around until some wave or flood releases it to flow with the movement of the water for a while.

My poetic metaphorical language attempts to convey something that is probably familiar to most, so one does not need to rely on the authority of another. Bliss, because the habitual tension and anxiety of holding out against the world is gone for a while.

I have to admit that I have seen no reasonable evidence in this thread of any poster being terminally stupid, uncaring or insane. If I had, I would certainly have reported it to the moderators. And the same if I had seen evidence of racism and xenophobia. In fact I have a particular sensitivity on the latter issue that some here will be aware of, being part of a mixed race family.

And here is the inconsistency I see in your posting: you are very free with these negative labels, but there is no good reason ever to address them to your interlocutors on the boards, rather you should point them out to the mods so that they can be remove the people we don't want to waste time talking to and the sensible fair-minded decent people can discuss freely.

But instead, you use these sorts of epithets on a regular basis in an attempt to undermine people you do continue to engage with. And then bang on hypocritically about respect.

The argument here is not all people's opinions are equal. — Isaac

What argument?The rest of us call it ad hominem fallacy.

I've no interest in arguing with those. Likewise the terminally stupid, the uncaring, the insane... There are lots of categories of people who might have an opinion about how to resolve this conflict against whom I've no wish to argue, whose opinions I've no wish to hear. — Isaac

But you sure like calling them out, o fair-minded one!

Intelligent, well-informed people have a different view as to how best to resolve the conflict, but we can't just discuss the merits of each approach, those differing from the mainstream have to uniformed, biased, — Isaac

Or racist xenophobes.

Yeah I meant love that takes pains, not that gives pains. Old-fashioned Christian life-laying-down love. "He ain't heavy, he's my brother."

, it is also a deeply violent emotion if what we love is threatened. — Moliere

Ah, I see. There is some ambiguity in the word 'love'. I'm not referring to the emotion in that sense. Would you be happier if I used 'care', or 'affection'?

chauvinism in popular discourse is associated with men — Moliere

And boars. And bores.

I just have to stipulate I'm talking about the system here, something that men and women can do -- the way that a country can be chauvinistic towards another country. That's the sort of chauvinism I mean. — Moliere

Well yes. we're back to power here, are we not? Puissance — what (any)one can do: which is a function of culture (the system) rather than a literal trial of strength (the pecking order is not literally physical in human society). Patriarchy empowers men and endorses power as a masculine virtue, thereby declaring itself virtuous. Therefore...

Girkin appeared in a Moscow courtroom on Friday where he was formally charged with extremism. Earlier this week he had called for Putin’s downfall, saying Russia “could not survive another six years” of his rule.

He has also been found guilty in absentia by a Dutch court of the murder of 298 people onboard flight MH17, the plane shot down by a Russian surface-to-air missile while flying over east Ukraine in July 2014.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/21/russia-arrests-pro-war-putin-critic-igor-girkin-reports

Igor No-mates, it seems.

Can anyone semi-informed imagine who might replace Putin, and what policy changes would result? Or am I only dreaming?

I think this is the main reason women might be expected to present themselves as childish. I'm thinking more about Japanese culture where women are simultaneously ridiculed for behaving childishly, but the women themselves say they have to behave that way for acceptance and career advancement. — frank

Childishness is performed subservience. Reminds me of a thing I noticed about some US women - voices like the Chipmunks. Cute indeed! My ignorance of Japanese culture is profound, but a powerful woman is liable to be a witch, a harridan, a harpy, or if persistent, a nightmare, in this culture. A threat to the masculine identity. But girls just wanna have fun.

... the loving oppression which is paternalistic in nature. It comes from a place of love, but the power differential matters if the loving person is ignorant in some way of their amor's needs. — Moliere

Why do you call it paternalistic rather than maternalistic? Don't confuse paternal with patriarchal here.

The infant is helpless, so the power relation is real and necessary and its neglect would be the abuse. But even here, the nature of love is communicative - one does not force feed the infant, though one does force clean them because one literally does know better.

Interesting that in your example 'ignorance' is expressed as 'knowing better'. Something to look out for, along with infantilising language. But voting is for adults, and one does not marry one's father, so that particular 'knowing better' is patriarchal rather than paternal, I think. I treat my children as children, until they become adult, and then love has to grow towards respect and equality. I recall there was a radio 4 disability series called "Does he take sugar?" — a gentle reminder of how easily one can fall into that kind of ignoring, belittling ignorance. Sometimes, of course, a disability is a communication difficulty, but a communication difficulty is necessarily mutual in this sense:- one expresses inadequately and the other understands inadequately; although in the other direction of communication there may be no difficulty.

Interesting thread. Is consciousness cognition? Or is cognition something one might be conscious of. Or can both be true at once, such that consciousness is recursively defined as consciousness of consciousness?

The theme of this book is that a universe comes into being when a space is severed or taken apart. The skin of a living organism cuts off an outside from an inside. So does the circumference of a circle in a plane. By tracing the way we represent such a severance, we can begin to reconstruct, with an accuracy and coverage that appear almost uncanny, the basic forms underlying linguistic, mathematical, physical, and biological science ...

http://www.siese.org/modulos/biblioteca/b/G-Spencer-Brown-Laws-of-Form.pdf

This relates to Bateson's idea of a difference that makes a difference, and also to symmetry and symmetry -breaking. It is a mathematician's version of Genesis, and necessarily, before the beginning, before 'a universe comes into being' there must already be a space and a severing or breaking thereof.

Suppose that the space is consciousness; it is contentless, a blank page. But saying as much, I have already severed the space into consciousness and its contents.

'Wordless' is a word that is self-negating. Best not talk about it, but at the same time one is always talking about what is beyond words unless one is disappearing entirely up one's own arse. "The tao that can be spoken of is not the eternal tao."

So I'd go with your latter -- he has been a misogynist all along, — Moliere

That's a bit oppressive of you, isn't it? If your theory is also

People don't identify as misogynists — Moliere

The philosopher psychologist assumes the position of superiority, which is a power relation whereby even bosses are what we say they are. The man/woman at the centre of the hypothesis is a cypher, and we do not care a jot about their identity for themselves, or whether or not they even want promotion. Of course our power is also hypothetical here - our writs do not run the world. But they are to a great extent a product of the way the world is run.

I think the way out of this jungle is to see that oppression is power without love. The inequality between men and women or black and white or whatever, is one of power, and that is why it is always the boss who is oppressive in relation to his minions, even though they may all have equally uncaring and prejudicial views, and the minions may have their own pecking order.

Thus masculinity becomes toxic to the extent that it identifies itself with power, and femininity with love.

It might be nice to hear what you say, and why you might say it? — Isaac

Well I have to say it is not always nice to hear what you say

Negotiation is how we stop this God awful bloodbath. — Isaac

You say negotiation, others say appeasement. Peace in our time can mean a God awful bloodbath in someone else's time.

Yours was your only post for pages. — Isaac

Well the thread moves fast, so you can be forgiven for missing my response earlier today on the same page about Russian history, which a couple of people mentioned in a somewhat positive tone. But even if you had been right in your facts, that is flimsy evidence on which to base an accusation of racism and xenophobia. But never mind, I'm sure I have prejudices and ignorance to spare.

Russians haven't genetically inherited a likelihood to commit war crimes, they're not all warped by racial tendencies toward atrocity, there's no magic line from Rostov to Kursk east of which everyone is a monster. — Isaac

Of course they haven't. Of course there is no magic line. But there is a social inheritance that is expressed for example in nationalism, and ethnic identification, because people have memories and some have been known to hold grudges.

Fucking xenophobic, racist claptrap like that. — Isaac

Respect dude. But not much.

You are being unpleasant and silly, again. I expressed some sympathy for, and possible explanation of, the reluctance of Ukrainians to negotiate. I certainly think that mass killing is not unthinkable to the current Russian regime.

Speaking of history, I feel this thread is in need of a mention of the Holodomor, so here it is.

https://shron2.chtyvo.org.ua/Zbirnyk_statei/Canadian_American_Studies_Holodomor.pdf?PHPSESSID=p93mf86aasbafa5snpbs922m02

My father would have been a student in 1933, and if I were a Ukrainian and my father had whispered this story at all, I would not be very keen now, to negotiate away an inch of sovereignty.

The attack on Odessa's grain facility is a further reminder.