• Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    This is a new sort of McCarthyism and I’m glad I’m not on your side. — NOS4A2

    Estimating the number of victims of McCarthy is difficult. The number imprisoned is in the hundreds, and some ten or twelve thousand lost their jobs. In many cases, simply being subpoenaed by HUAC or one of the other committees was sufficient cause to be fired.
    Google.

    Yes, one man's indictment is the same as hundreds imprisoned and thousands losing their jobs. Trump's ego is just that big.
  • Boris Johnson (All General Boris Conversations Here)
    Boris is incredibly decent the way Donald is incredibly innocent.

    But don't take my word for it, listen to his colleagues:

    The question which the house asked the committee is whether the house had been misled by Mr Johnson and, if so, whether that conduct amounted to contempt. It is for the house to decide whether it agrees with the committee. The house as a whole makes that decision. Motions arising from reports from this committee are debatable and amendable. The committee had provisionally concluded that Mr Johnson deliberately misled the house and should be sanctioned for it by being suspended for a period that would trigger the provisions of the Recall of MPs Act 2015. In light of Mr Johnson’s conduct in committing a further contempt on 9 June 2023, the committee now considers that if Mr Johnson were still a member he should be suspended from the service of the House for 90 days for repeated contempts and for seeking to undermine the parliamentary process, by:
    a) Deliberately misleading the house.
    b) Deliberately misleading the committee.
    c) Breaching confidence.
    d) Impugning the committee and thereby undermining the democratic process of the house.
    e) Being complicit in the campaign of abuse and attempted intimidation of the committee.
    We recommend that he should not be entitled to a former member’s pass.
    Privileges committee.
  • Atheist Dogma.
    truth as the only and unquestionable value. — unenlightened

    It is important to be aware that every rule can (and mostly likely will, eventually) encounter circumstances in which the appropriate application may be unclear or disputed. — Ludwig V

    Hence one has recourse to dogma: "The referee's decision is final." Or the Supreme Court's, or the Central Committee's, or whatever.

    Right, even when wrong — unquestionable.

    We can debate the meaning of any word, but only by not debating the meaning of the words we use to debate it. Thus even a debate on the meaning of dogma requires a dogmatic understanding of 'meaning', 'debate' etc. One might say that dogma is the (perhaps temporary) still, fixed point of the mind.

    My thread, my rules; this is what dogma is, and this is my dogma. :rofl:
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Leaders should be like figureheads on the ship of state, out in front, catching all the weather and doing and saying nothing, while the power and steering happens at the stern. Figureheads that like to think they're in charge can only send the ship backwards.
  • Morality is Coercive and Unrealistic
    ↪Judaka
    Is there something wrong with being coercive and unrealistic?
  • The Indictment
    ↪universeness
    I've always been completely sceptical of astrology – until now. :joke:

    Why I am not hearing about the democrats trying to rush through legislation, to prevent anyone found guilty of a criminal act being barred from standing for president?
    Why was this gaping hole in USA legislation not corrected, years ago?
    — universeness

    Because that might be unconstitutional.     — Michael

    And it would encourage the (ab)use of the law to bar candidates. I imagine the thinking is that if 'the people' would ever elect a convicted criminal as president, that would constitute proof that the law itself is at fault and at odds with the will of the people.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    It would be so gratifying to see him go to jail, — frank

    I would be adequately gratified merely by his exit from my in-box. To be replaced by something more boringly acceptable and mediocre. Where he festers is of no consequence to me as long at is no longer in my consciousness. A luxury retirement home would be a very small price to pay as long as it had no outgoing internet.
  • Is our civilization critically imbalanced? Could Yin-Yang help? (poll)
    Is our civilization unbalanced? — 0 thru 9

    And if so, is it towards yin or Yang? This answer needs to be obvious, and I think it is obvious — that there is and excess of yang in the culture; this is resulting in a climate rebalancing — too much heat, too many fires, too much creative energy leads to more water, sea level rise, and eventually the drowning of coastal cities.
    The word “civilization” relates to the Latin word “civitas” or “city.” This is why the most basic definition of the word “civilization” is “a society made up of cities.”
    Google.

    And the culture has difficulty coping because it responds with male energy to "do something about it" instead of bringing the passivity of doing less to bear.

    Too much talking, not enough listening, too much creating, not enough sustaining, too much sun, not enough shade. too much artificial light, not enough darkness. Too much movement, not enough stillness, too much individual, not enough community.
  • Bannings
    ↪fdrake
    Farewell @Andrew4Handel A troubled soul. A decent chap most of the time I found, but became a broken record on the one issue.
  • The beginning and ending of self
    ↪Metaphysician Undercover
    Thats just what I mean by identity; that which comes into being by the process of identification. You do understand that this thread is about psychology, not physics? "What is there" is what is thought.

    Hence I do not argue; you can think what you like.
  • The beginning and ending of self
    What evidence do you have for this? New stories pop up in the strangest of places... — Changeling

    None. It's a story; it resonates with you, or it doesn't. Make a new story if you like; tell it in a thread; see what odd questions people ask you.
  • The beginning and ending of self
    So when we apprehend the fact that animals, plants, and other things have "an identity" just as much so as the human being has an identity, we see that the self-narrative is not the identity of the thing. — Metaphysician Undercover

    Anything is whatever it is, but to have an identity is not merely to be what one is, which any rock can manage., but to identify oneself as being some particular thing. This is what plants and other animals do not seem to do, by and large. At least that is my story, you may prefer your story.
  • The beginning and ending of self
    Consider what you said about how the narrator is not a part of the narrative. The true self is the narrator, , the self in the narrative is the illusionary self. When the narrative ends, so ends the narrative self, but the true self, as the narrator remains. — Metaphysician Undercover

    Is a non-narrating narrator of a self-narrative not a straightforward contradiction? Your suggestion goes against anything i have read of spirituality anyway, so I will not go there myself. I think your contrivance here just continues the narrative and does not end it, just adding an extra identification "true".
  • The beginning and ending of self
    If memory and anticipation are ‘now’ for an animal, this is just as true for a human being. — Joshs

    I disagree. The narrative is a retelling of what was present is present and will be present, that is available at any moment. there is nothing whatsoever in the animal that corresponds to —
    a central principle of time consciousness in phenomenology. If memory and anticipation are ‘now’ for an animal, this is just as true for a human being. — Joshs

    That is a narrative. and my thesis is that identity is narrative and that is where we live, not an extended present. "I was born at an early age..."
  • The beginning and ending of self
    ↪creativesoul
    ↪Metaphysician Undercover


    I don't recommend trying too hard to understand unenlightened on the topic of enlightenment. It's all projection and imagination on my part. Losing illusion and finding reality are kind of the same thing; from the pov of the self though, it is losing everything, so that's the aspect I have to face. Likewise if I have completed a story, I can put it aside and begin to live, but again, from here it is a completion, and an ending that I face.

    To speak of what lies beyond the ending as a new beginning would be I think to imagine self continuing beyond its own end. * mumbles something about squeezing camels through the eye of a needle*
  • Atheist Dogma.
    ↪Ludwig V
    My fault entirely. Thank you for querying it.
  • The beginning and ending of self
    I would argue that a non-linguistic animal lives in the interface of past, present and future just as humans do. Watch a squirrel be interrupted in its pursuit of an acorn by a stray sound, and then return to its goal. — Joshs

    Yes, they have memories, I said that. but the interface of past and future is the present. I'm not clear what you are saying different? I think I have made the time difference fairly clear. A cat sits by the mouse hole waiting for a mouse; there is anticipation but it is now. there is memory, but it is now. Now there is the acorn, now there is a sound, now there is the acorn. Never do you get the story of the pursuit of the acorn, an interruption and the return to the acorn - that is the human narrative, and resides nowhere in the squirrel.
  • The beginning and ending of self
    ↪TheMadMan
    I think we are pretty much in agreement. Before enlightenment chop wood and post on philosophy forums; after enlightenment chop wood and post on philosophy forums.
  • Atheist Dogma.
    I like unenlightened's first sentence. I don't understand the second.

    dogma makes for intolerance, but perhaps it is more related to power, and dogma is simply 'certainty'.
    — Moliere

    Dogma includes "certainty", in the psychological sense. But psychological certainty is a trap, precisely because it leads to dogma and there's nothing like power for fostering certainty beyond what's reasonable.     — Ludwig V

    Oh, Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood.
    This...
    the assumption seems to be that dogma makes for intolerance, but perhaps it is more related to power, and dogma is simply 'certainty'./quote]

    ...I now see is badly phrased and confusing. Let me remove the ambiguous "it" and replace it thus:

    The assumption seems to be that dogma makes for intolerance, but perhaps intolerance is more related to power, and dogma is simply 'certainty'.

    This hopefully aligns fairly well with your"...there's nothing like power for fostering certainty beyond what's reasonable."     — unenlightened
  • The beginning and ending of self
    ↪TheMadMan
    I see your point, but the Bodhidharma clearly knows how to talk, and has not become innocent like the beasts, And likewise Lao Tzu and Chiang Tzu.

    The emptiness of consciousness is the cessation of identification as the narrative self, not the forgetting of self and language and everything that characterises Alzheimers. I think it is appropriate to say that the transcendence is a moving forward not a return, certainly not a return to a prelinguistic awareness. But I'll give you the definitive answer when enlightenment is attained. :flower:
  • The beginning and ending of self
    And all those people spoke exactly of the return of the innocence of not knowing. — TheMadMan
    You have my attention. A couple of quotes would be helpful.
  • The beginning and ending of self
    ↪Paine
    Ah, the invincible optimism of the New World. If you're up shit creek without a paddle, plant roses.
  • Climate change denial
    The truth is though that my carbon footprint isn't part of the real problem. — Hanover

    I agree your carbon footprint isn't the issue, it was more your lack of support I was lamenting. That dam bursting in perhaps a century or so is going to raise sea levels and flood some quite large villages.

    There is still some uncertainty about the full volume of glaciers and ice caps on Earth, but if all of them were to melt, global sea level would rise approximately 70 meters (approximately 230 feet), flooding every coastal city on the planet.
    https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-would-sea-level-change-if-all-glaciers-melted#:~:text=There%20is%20still%20some%20uncertainty,coastal%20city%20on%20the%20planet.

    That's a lot of adapting to do, before any consideration of the actual temperature and climate changes. Is anyone quickly preparing for that? Or slowly?
  • Climate change denial
    ↪Hanover

    As China’s energy transition gathers pace through the expansion of its renewable energy sources – both wind and solar, authorities are faced with the challenge of storing away the surpluses to integrate their supplies into the country’s gigantic power system and ensure grid stability. — Hanover's cited source

    We are not having to do it without China. At the moment, we are having to do it without you.
  • The beginning and ending of self
    ↪wonderer1
    Thanks! every thread needs musical soundtrack. That'll do nicely!
  • The beginning and ending of self
    I am unclear how comparing judgment becomes morality. — Tom Storm

    I am a bit unclear myself, and thank you for your perceptive comments and questions. Here is something one can hear from time to time on the streets:

    "Be good for Mummy." We know what this means; stop jumping in the puddles, putting sweets in the trolley, commenting loudly on that man with no legs, 'look, Mummy he's got no legs, why hasn't he got any legs?' and hold hands while we cross the road.

    We learn not to do what we want to do in the moment, but to do what Mummy wants, because we are dependent on Mummy. That is, not to be what we are - that is bad - but to be good, which is what mummy wants us to be. Self-denial is born as 'the good', and self-indulgence as 'the bad'. and this judgement that is the (M)other's judgement is internalised as part of one's identity.

    1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
    2 The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
    3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.
    4 And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.
    5 God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.
    Genesis.

    1 In the beginning Mummy created the home and the child.
    2 The child was without self, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of Mummy was hovering over the face of the waters.
    3 Then Mummy said, “Be what i say”; and the child was what she said.
    4 And Mummy saw the child being what she said, that it was good; and Mummy divided the child from himself.
    5 Mummy called the repressed child 'Being good, and the spontaneous child She called Being naughty. So the evening and the morning were the first day of the moralising child.
  • The beginning and ending of self
    Some folk may find an echo here and there of this:

    “Man is something that shall be overcome. Man is a rope,tied between beast and overman — a rope over an abyss.What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end.”
    ― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

    I find this really annoying, please never mention it.
  • The beginning and ending of self
    I'm not sure what this story is about. Can you dumb it down? (I did read your comments above) — Tom Storm

    Sure. Who are you?
    ... someone who has not privileged philosophy and is a fairly crude thinker, — Tom Storm

    I'm sure you could say a lot more, but you have said something very similar before, and I guess it is a fairly honest summary of how you identify yourself in relation to the other folk on this site, who in general have more so privileged philosophy and are more subtle thinkers.

    This is an idea you have of yourself that you identify with, and claim as your self, in relation to some meaningful others. There must be many other relations, familial, professional, neighbourly, social, from which you derive all sorts of other characterisations — the joker of the family, the only one in the office who actually does anything, the fight defuser at the bar, the guy who always came top in metalwork at school. And the sum of these various ideas is your 'narrative identity'. and all your experiences are the experiences of that identity, and your response are the responses of that identity, which develops through time with experience. And this self is always comparative and thereby judgemental - I am smarter than a brick and faster than a snail, but not as beautiful as a sunset.

    A non-linguistic animal cannot form a narrative identity; they learn things - not to eat the yellow snow, but they never form the identity "I don't like yellow snow", they just avoid it when they see it. So they do not live in time, psychologically. they are always just here and now, with whatever they know, which is nothing of themselves.

    And the crux of all this as you have correctly identified, you crude thinker, you, is that I propose a state of enlightenment, where the self is 'transcended' and one again lives without time and without the comparing judgement that becomes morality, but retaining the glorious creative potential of language. This is the fulfilment of human potential, and the end of the narrative self that otherwise has to end in mere death.
  • The beginning and ending of self
    Wants and desires are the product of a being looking forward in time, toward the future. — Metaphysician Undercover

    I agree with this, but what can one possibly want that one has not experienced in the past? Only unnameable novelty. But we call that emotion boredom, not desire. Desire as a thought is always for 'more'.
  • The beginning and ending of self
    ↪Paine
    My ignorance of big John is profound, but Yes to the drama. It emphasises what I need to get to next, which is the social interplay of mutual and antagonistic identifications. "If you're not one of us, you must be foreign."

    {I just googled that made up quote, with slightly random results - visas taxes and death feature.}
  • The beginning and ending of self
    Given enough of that, the person could very well believe that they are more considerate of others than they actually are/were... — creativesoul

    People do that too. "I am totally innocent". Sound familiar?

    I am telling a meta-story which I believe to be – Let's say 'realistic', instead of 'true', . It's an abstract metaphorical account of the human condition intended to cover Jesus and Hitler and Richard the Lionheart, and Uncle Tom Cobbley and all. You seem to be telling a different story, of what someone ought rationally to say or feel or not in relation to a past and future which by my account are created by the story. Past then present then future; that is the narrative of every narrator, including you and me both.
  • The beginning and ending of self
    I think that this state of conflict you describe is artificial, contrived, because there is no need to consider alternatives for the past narrative, like you suggest, because we have no choice at this time. — Metaphysician Undercover

    Well I would say that there is no need for any of the stories; but people do make theses stories and identify with them and they feel guilt and shame in relation to the past, because they identify with the past, and in fact I think that this identification with the past is the necessary first step to a projection into the future. It is the self constructed out of the past that ought to do better next time. There can only be any idea at all of the future as a projection from the past. that is the story from the bible of the fall from the paradise of the present into time, full of regrets of the past and worries for the future. the two arise together.
  • UFOs
    Intelligence is not enough, you need hands. Or equivalent extendible manipulators. Ask any large brained marine mammal.
  • The beginning and ending of self
    Isn't there such a thing as a first person narrative, in which the narrator is part of the story? — Metaphysician Undercover

    Yes indeed. Take a simple example: "I went to the shop and bought a bar of chocolate, and ate it all on the way home."

    No doubt this story could be expanded to Proustian proportions, but never mind that. I am in the story, but I am also telling the story. Present is relating Past, so I am both in the story acting, and outside the story relating. but now I'll add another sentence: "I should have saved some for my wife."

    Now there is another, counterfactual story, where I went to the shop and bought a bar of chocolate and ate some of it on the way home but saved some for my wife. And it is a better story than the true story.

    Where am I now? In a state of conflict between narrative and meta-narrative – between is and ought.

    But the options continue to multiply. That second sentence could be part of the story, a thought I had when I got home, or it could be a new thought I had as the narrator not merely telling the story, but also hearing myself tell it, as if it were someone else's story.

    Such is the tangle of identity produced by two short sentences; and I have a seventy year long narrative... according to my mother, my first word was "More!" I won't inflict the rest on you.
  • The beginning and ending of self
    If the self is a story comprised of an imaginary character, why then do we create fictional stories on top of it with extra imaginary characters? And where do they come from? — Changeling

    It's not an imaginary character, necessarily. One can be more or less honest in one's thoughts about oneself. But I think the internal monologue, once established, just tends to go on and on. There seems to be no situation, except extreme shock, where it does not think it worth commenting on things in some way. The nature of identification is that it is always social because it is linguistic. In identifying myself as human, I also Identify the non-human - I am English, they are foreign - I am good, the Nazis are bad. My narrative is as much about the world as about myself, and because it is possible in language to swap things abound to produce counterfactuals, one can make judgements and plans, which one can then try to act out. Or perhaps one does not act them out and they remain just fictions...
  • The beginning and ending of self
    The scientific/philosophical problem with that religious notion, is "where is the personal history/memory recorded for self and posterity, if not in the brain?" — Gnomon

    Thanks for your interest. I assume it is recorded in the brain and the highlights written on the flesh, but also perhaps in the state of the world, the way the famous flap of the butterfly's wing is recorded in the subsequent hurricane. Beyond that I cannot speculate. But perhaps there is no record. Why should there be a record? I have made a story out of a very old story that echoes in your brain for a day, and mine for a week, and dissipates, or maybe in a thousand years someone will be talking about the mythic unenlightened one in conversation with the great Gnomon. and the profound wisdom they displayed.

    But The story i am telling here is that the preservation of the story - of the self - is of no importance; what matters is the completion of the story, in which once is for all.
  • Boris Johnson (All General Boris Conversations Here)
    The unfortunately rare triumph of principled democracy over party politics.
  • Boris Johnson (All General Boris Conversations Here)
    Johnson leaving in disgrace - Chris Bryant
    Labour MP Chris Bryant, the chair of the Commons standards committee, has been on BBC Breakfast this morning.

    He says that Johnson has been forced out by a report from a committee that had a Tory majority, and during a period where the Commons also has a Tory majority, shows he is leaving as a “disgraced” former prime minister.

    In all the breathlessness of this it’s easy to forget quite how significant a moment this is.
    I presume he’s resigned because he, being the only person who has seen the draft copy of the report from the privileges committee, knows that the house is going to decide that he has lied to parliament and that that is a serious contempt of parliament, therefore he should be suspended from the house.
    That has never ever happened to a prime minister. So he was not only ousted as prime minister but then thrown out of the House of Commons… by a committee that had a conservative majority and by a house that has a significant majority.
    So he is leaving as a disgraced prime minister.
  • My eyes are windows upon the world.
    My lived experience is of being my body, within a public, externally existing world. — Inyenzi

    So far, so good. My skin connects me to the world; my hands play with the world.

    When I open my eyes, it is as if I have opened the 'blinds onto the world'.

    "As if." The visual world is remote; the eye touches, not the objects it sees, but the light reflected from them. The contact is indirect but conducted at light-speed. Skin can feel the sunshine, but eyes cannot look at the sun without burning. But there is no real problem – one sees the glass with the eyes, picks it up with the hand, and tastes the wine as it slips down the throat. Remote and direct senses are integrated seamlessly into a convenient, delicious whole.

    It is only the analogy of the window, that suggests that the eye is not an eye, but behind it is another body with another eye looking through it as a window. This has to be nonsense because it recreates the eye to explain the working of the eye and recreates the body within the body. Seeing is indirect in relation to objects that one can touch directly, but it is direct in relation to the informative play of light that is also an aspect of the world, just as sound is. But somehow the idea of one's ears as the telephone system through which one listens to the world hasn't caught on.
  • Atheist Dogma.
    It is a dogma that dogma is bad.

    Dogma is the bedrock of one's understanding; the bars on the cage of the mind that stop one falling out into the bliss of total ignorance. To imagine oneself without dogma is to imagine oneself as God.


    The only avowedly atheist governments I know of are the old Soviet regime and Modern China. One might also include Japan, but not 'avowedly'.

    It's a very small sample, but not a great record. the assumption seems to be that dogma makes for intolerance, but perhaps it is more related to power, and dogma is simply 'certainty'.
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