Oh wait. I forgot love. That stuffs pretty important too . Haha. Love and compassion. Ciao!

:halo:

later!

If there is one thing I know about all this, it is that the main question for every sensible person is that of freedom. Freedom from an apathetic nature, freedom from an oppressive society, and freedom from an adulterated self. Everything else is just chit-chat haha

I read that at first as 'enlightenment' and it still made sense hahahahaha

I'd say something but then I remember the world wars. Who is responsible? Or what is responsible? Depends on how you look at it I suppose.

Individualism.

1. The desire to be rich
2. The desire to be cool

But that's not really human nature. Human nature is flexible. It depends on your particular circumstances and socio-cultural condition.

Yep. I mean, we're no Gods. We know very little, and most of that comes from without rather than within. When we see lots of people doing something, we say that must be good, right? And it's useful sometimes, to learn and copy. Lets you be cool without getting you into trouble. It's okay to wear torn jeans, it is not okay to wear a hat torn into tatters. People will think you're crazy or something, and treat you likewise. But at least you get to wear torn jeans, I mean, the rockstars and other cool people you like all do it and it is socially acceptable.

I can't really be sure, just like most other things I suppose. I myself never bought into that whole torn jeans charade myself, and the torn jeans I wore once was from being worn out. But I think it has a lot to do with television, shopping malls, and our great fascination with rebellion.

But at the same time, one must remember all the good that this sytem has actually achieved. Quality of life is better than ever before in all quarters of the world. All the major factors have to be taken into consideration while judging these types of things and prescribing a better alternative. I mean, had either capitalism or socialism actually worked really well, the problem would be easy. But clearly it didn't. Maybe for now Keynes is just the best we've got for this particular era.

If I had to guess, those desires mostly come from advertisements and other tactics businesses employ for profitability. Whether that is a good thing is another question. Surely there are some basic stuff everybody needs, but those aren't usually the expensive ones. I for one could surely do without half the useless stuff I have. If I could exchange that for something actually important in life, like happiness or love or aesthetic appreciation or something cool like that, I definitely would.

Thanks, I'll remember to. Also would like chip in a friendly suggestion that you write something for print. See you around :)

Hey Wallows, just curious. You have almost 8000 posts. I read a few of them, and to be brief I quite liked them. Have you written something in print as well? Like a book or essays or stuff?

Thanks, but apparently that's not it.

According to wikipedia:
"In Karl Marx's critique of political economy, commodity fetishism is the perception of the social relationships involved in production not as relationships among people, but as economic relationships among the money and commodities exchanged in market trade. As such, commodity fetishism transforms the subjective, abstract aspects of economic value into objective, real things that people believe have intrinsic value."

Another website:
"Commodity fetishism is the collective belief that it is natural and inevitable to measure the value of useful things with money."

And I tend to agree. It is a convenient way for economic analysis and so on. Although it probably isn't much useful in real life. One cannot compare a luxuxy car to a certain quantity of vital commodities like food and medicine in real life. But it is helpful in economic analysis.

But I think the OP also made the same mistake, and as did I in guessing what it meant at first, the concept of commodity feitishism.

"decrease, to some degree, Commodity Fetishism?"

It is a perception or a concept, one cannot increase or decrease it. It is au seful tool for economists.
Perhaps the term you're looking for is "mass production"?

Yes. Being happy means feeling good, regardless of the morality of the means of that feeling, while being good means feeling good while helping others do the same, or at least not hindering that feeling in others.
Your argument of a pen being "good" is subjective. To a poet a pen is extremely good, to a football player not so much. This type of good, if it can be called that is the good of utility. I think what you want to mean is the good in people, or virtue or justness as the Greeks called it.
Like, according to your definition of good, is a mountain good? I mean, some people might marvel at them but most people live their lives happily ignoring it, and it wouldn't really matter if you took the mountain away, wouldn't make any difference to them. Perhaps the habit of appreciating natural beauty is good, or penmanship, and not the mountain or the pen itself. Also, climbing mountain is hard work and a pen can be used to harm somebody by poking them with it. The intention of the person who made the pen expecting it to be used for some constructive purpose, and the beautiful verses written by the poet or the satisfaction of a businessman who just finished doing his accounts with the pen, is perhaps a better concept of good, rather than an object of utility itself.
Another example is an airplane. Is an airplane good? For some people it might be, but perhaps they are actually bad for the environment and to spirituality.

They failed to understand the concept of chemical energy. Directed by instructions in the form of electrical energy from the central nervous system. And who can blame them? Those were some primitive times.

What is "Commodity Fetishism"?

I'd add help appreciate the beauty, magnificence and complexity of the universe.

I'd like to disagree. Soberness is the quality of not being drunk, so it's just a negation. Before alcohol was invented nobody was drunk but that doesn't mean one can say everyone was sober, because drunkenness and Soberness didn't exist. Just like you wouldn't say ancient Egyptians were anti-vaxxers, because vaccination was not even a thing back then let alone it's negation.

No.
One can never be free, but one can sometimes feel as is one is. Hahaha. Its a sad thing.

This is like saying soberness is older than alcoholism. A fallacy. Only after alcoholism can there be soberness. If alcoholism didn’t exist, soberness wouldn’t either.

Now look at it from the viewpoint of a hypothetical psychic from the past, and someone from the future when there’s a machine that can look into the minds of people from the past. From both ways you were always going to choose THAT number and never the other one. (Implying you followed the instruction properly). When you willed to choose that number, was it really free? Actually, was it even will at all? Is there such a thing as ‘will’ that ‘you’ ‘have’?

Gnostic Christian Bishop, pick a number between 1 and 2. Think about that. You know what I mean? Hahahahaha.

“But that's not possible since we are not eternal beings, but beings who were created at certain point in time. So, nothing can ultimately originate within us.”
Why not? Surely God didn’t put magic on Van Gogh that he painted all those paintings? It came from him, would you agree with that? Human beings aren’t anything if they’re not creative and imaginative.

Now, whether that comes from free will, is another question. It probably doesn’t most of the time.

And no I’m not whoever you’re thinking I am. To your speculation about whether I’m trolling, please be advised that such things depends more on one’s perspective than the original intention. Do you always feel like people are trolling? If yes, then I must be. Fishes probably think they’re flying instead of swimming, because under water is where they live and die. Hahahaha.

History has everything to do with the present. In fact, is it only history that has anything to do with the present. Simple case of causes and effects.

Firstly I don’t think it’s right to view time as an arrow, because that implies direction. As in a starting point, and ending point and many intermittent points in between. It also implies things like the opposite direction, a force that causes it, and a magnitude, like speed. But time isn’t fast or slow, or ‘going’ towards somewhere. There is only duration. But even that is a human concept, used more because of its usefulness rather than truth-seeking. Close your eyes and breathe and tryto notice the present. it’s already GONE, not left behind. Present is nonexistent because it’s always the past, which is gone, and future is also going to meet the same fate of being past without getting the opportunity of being a present. (I can’t describe this properly right now, its late, maybe another time)
Likewise, we should investigate on what is information, and if information is all there is?
And whether nature actually somehow has the urge to create as you suggested more and more class of different things or objects. One’s understanding of the nature of causes become blurred at this point bordering on religion or mere guesswork.

“So can a person have private morals?”

There can be no other way. Everything else is making others give you what you want by making them think it’s for their own good.

What you worry about when you’re lying in bed alone at night when everyone else is asleep, are your only real principles. The rest is just politeness, and if done in excess, showiness.

Here I ought to remind you of the not-so-long ago history of two world wars, Cold War, postcolonism wars, opium war, famine-ridden British raj in India, the systematic destruction of the African continent, the Middle East, and so on and so forth. How much does it cost the state to keep out all the refugees from wars and the poor?
You lock the main gate and leave the room doors open, rather than locking the room doors and leaving the main gate open. Because the real enemy (the poor) is outside and in much larger numbers.

Socrates said it best: the unexamined life is not worth living.
Many other great philosophers have endorsed this opinion.
But it is important that the examination is done in a proper manner and only out of bewildered curiosity, and not for the mere sake of profit, idleness or exhibitionism. And not as self-help for psychological issues arising from complex societies. There is psychology for that. And psychology is not love of knowledge, philosophy is.
Stoicism has lost its meaning to the modern man, who thinks it means ‘hardening’ yourself by uncomplainingly suffering life’s more unpleasant moments. But it actually means accepting that whatever happens in nature is perfect as what is absolutely perfect is the very meaning of what is natural. There are no mistakes.
Also beware of the common mistake of overcompensating for confusion. If one is not careful, that humility, though looking nice to other people, can lead not to cynicism but a world-denying mysticism where everything is false because there are no truths, everything ought to be doubted because there is no knowing, and there is no mind besides the senses because everything is its opposite.

There is no other proper way.

Causation is a logical phenomena that encompasses physical and hence biological phenomena, which is what happens and that’s all very good. But likewise, it also ought to encompass to the consciousness phenomena, as consciousness grows out of the usual pathway in which reality operates, viz logic on which physics is based on which biology is based. (For reasons unknown obviously). But apparently not, judging by those existential crises that so many of us unwantedly suffer sometimes. Unless one believes that there is a creator God, and God made an error in this regard, it is simply another variety of the universe’s mysterious processes. None of it should happen out of nothingness, and yet it does. And it gets more and more unpredictable even though there are governing laws for everything. Laws themselves are effects and the cause is either unknown, or, more likely, nonexistent.

Also, I’d like to add that, when one says ‘cause’ as in ‘cause and effect’, there is a risk of wrongly assuming that cause is a singular entity or phenomenon. But it rarely is (perhaps it never is). For example, she overcooked the stake because she was busy using social media. Oversimplifying statement that fails to mention the half a dozen reasons like it was also her birthday, she was busy earlier taking a call so she was using social media now instead of earlier, because this was a leap year today wasn’t a Sunday and her day off, the customer wanted to have stake because of his own dozen or so reasons, the meat itself wasn’t very fresh, and so on and so forth, all of which assisted in the stake being overcooked. A problem naturally occurring from our view of the world as a collection or different things rather than being one single phenomena, and our language that conveniently institutionalizes that view, for good or bad.

An armed society is a normal society. Society without arms don’t last very long.
But whether we elect a few people to do the actual arm bearing, or whether each of us are made to bear them ourselves personally, which in my opinion, and that of many others, most others I should say, is tedious, risky, economically redundant, and a terrible burden, is apparently a matter of debate.
I personally have to go against the argument and say that an armed society is not any more polite than an unarmed one, and such business is best left to the state and mercenaries, while we citizens indulge in higher activities like art and philosophy.

I believe the original post contradicts the quoted passage. In fact, I think precisely the opposite is implied.
On the second comment I would like to interject my own opinion that the word ‘good’ is a flexible term in real life where line soften blur and there are more than a few factors for every action rather than one singular desire to ‘do good’ or to desire to desire the ‘good’.
Here it is easy to repeat Meno’s error against Plato that virtue is subjective, like a child’s, a policeman’s and a retired person each ought to follow different and sometimes conflicting policies to be virtuous. It must be remembered that: different virtues like kindness, courage and even the modern meaning of virtue viz skill or talent, and such individual qualities are subjective. But virtue itself, by very definition, is objective.

I would normally say ethics shouldn’t be based on intuition but rather on concrete principles, but as I get older I realize how human intuition is often very useful and the world couldn’t run without it as it does.
More and more I’m beginning to doubt that ‘man is basically good’. Man is more self-centered, confused, vain, and a slave of emotions. His intuitions, although serving its purpose for survival and multiplication, cannot be trusted upon, judging by it’s tumultuous past and chaotic material-centered present. Religion should’ve been helpful in this regard, but it rarely ever was. And neither is abundance.
Ethics cannot be relied on if it is bent for an agenda. It must be objective and clean, in most situations anyway.