Of course it is.

I don't think I said anything illegal or against the rules when I posted my discussion about Israel. I could be wrong. I'd quite like to know what I said that deserved it to be removed as I am slightly in shock of it's deletion. I wanted to start an interesting discussion, and i put up a poll. I'm pretty sure I followed all the guidelines.

Why was it deleted? — René Descartes

You certainly do deserve an explanation, although I am surprised that you want one. I should apologise, however, as I was intending to send you a PM - which I wanted to - but was unfortunately distracted and could only log back on now again, albeit briefly.

Your question was related to whether Israel should exist purporting that you don't believe it should, a discussion that is clearly and already a highly contentious subject that arouses unfortunate reactions. That was it. It was certainly not articulated intelligently neither was it charitable and there were no details in your position, nothing that could substantiate any merit to be deemed philosophical or even political. Indeed, there are a number of questions that can be asked related to the existence of states from a legal and political angle - and I know this given that my legal training is on international law - you articulated your position - or the lack thereof - in a manner that amplifies unwarranted assumptions and this became evident in the responses that ensued 6 hours after positing. The result of the thread were several members making it clear that the content contained little substance aside from one poster who began to espouse the very degenerate interlocution that I was worried about and often made possible by such broad topics.

Again, I do apologise that you feel upset about it, but at the same time you should adequately consider a number of factors prior to making a post, most of all a consciousness of the context. I am not one to often make deletions, but in that instance I am confident that it does merit such deletion.

Any objections to this, I am more than happy to further discuss.

You named a fine lady after a gourd we carve, to scare people as we jack them for free candy, when the sun goes down on all Hallows Eve. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

He is every girls dream.

Don't be jelly. You can be Punkin too. — Hanover

Hey man. No sharing.

What do I mean when I say people aren't serious? I mean that they seem to lack the energy, the willingness to delve deeply into problems, without any preconceived notions and pretence of knowledge, without appeals to authority and all the rest of it. It seems to me that people want to get rid of problems, forget about them, pretend to solve them, instead of really go into it and solve it, definitively. — Agustino

I think you are using the wrong word and from what I gathered in your post, it is a lack of integrity or apathy that would otherwise motivate one to conduct themselves with integrity either professionally or personally. It is a convenient indifference to moral codes of conduct and perhaps sometimes there may well be a fear to face this 'unknown' which is really just our way to avoid feeling shame and guilt - both sensations that are painful - but it could also be that such apathy is pleasurable; sometimes, our misery or unhappiness is soothed when we do bad shit to others or when others are suffering, a sadistic identification to happiness. Mostly, however, it is a lethargy similar to the Ring of Gyges.

I would be infuriated at the misanthropic bystander that would stare out or pretend that they did not see an injustice, sometimes even more than the actual criminal itself. What would compel a person to hoodwink the elderly for more money, who are comfortable being dishonest, who seem jaundiced about life as though disillusioned to a point that nothing appears beautiful. You'll eventually learn to avoid such people as best as you can.

To be serious, however, is the wrong word. I enjoy humour, jokes, silliness, Hanoverisms and these all lack seriousness, but it does not make me dishonourable or lacking in integrity, on the contrary sometimes the most kindest, just and honest people I have met are the most funny.

I'm reminded of certain usually American, typically psychology and self help books that have such a coded structure, using fonts and layout: bullet points, exposition, case histories, advice, all quarantined from each other in separate sections of bold, or italics or enlarged print. — unenlightened

There is something clinical about it, but sometimes you need structure to help balance you along your trajectory to improve the results. You could do 'whatever gets you through the night' but I am sure wifey would appreciate a bit of thoughtfullness in your foreplay, surely.

On a side note.

Very similar to Temppeliaukio Church, although I was not as awestruck as I thought I would be probably because I have a fondness for classical architecture. I really find Islamic geometry used to enrich its architectural design to be fascinating, something they have taken to another level with Sancaklar.

This is cool :ok:

When I was studying my PhD, I was analysing voter demographics in Turkey and trends to analyse topological 'swings' - or relational thinking - toward far-right ultra-nationalism in specific geographic regions, and weaving in historical or abstract properties relative to religious influence - such as the 'boundaries' of the former Ottoman Empire and the symbolic return of a neo-colonial past - all contained contingent properties. To help me formalise something accurate, I took a Cartesian angle (hah) where the physics of these properties were “extension in length, breadth, and depth which constitutes the space occupied by a body, is exactly the same as that which constitutes the body” (body being Turkey) and thus geometrically aligned reference points, kind of like your DNA example that make this complex whole tangible. Political science is kind of like the physics of abstract properties, taking in the Hobsbawm' view that political ideologies are imagined but that distributes and negotiates 'real' physical power through this network. I am not entirely sure whether there is any dichotomy here at all, where space enables us to understand time and motion; where as Kant said: "Space is a necessary a priori representation that underlies all outer intuitions. One can never forge a representation of the absence of space, though one can quite well think that no things are to be met within it" where intuition is an objective representation, something measurable.

I can drive out to a good school, a small sacrifice so that I can lie on the hammock, my son scurrying around with a ball, and a grumpy foster teen sitting on the veranda peering into her iphone. Maybe our appreciation of beautiful things is really the surprise that our dreams have been painted onto a physical canvas. I love your home. It suits you.

Is that your house T-Clark?

Just imagine reading on this hammock after a morning stroll, the little home between lush green and sea. Perfection.

Took it the other day. Three people liked it on Instagram so it must be awesome. — Baden

Yeah, but when you compare the total number of followers to likes, you're like a quantum Kardashian.

Does it need to be manmade? I love seeing places like this...

I'm not sure the unconscious makes much sense as a critical category when the private/public distinction is being undermined. I think about this in terms of the two systems approach, one of which consists of quickly executed prejudicial habit (mental reflex), the other consists of slow and resistive deliberation (cogitation) - the two are parametrised in terms of effort, and the antipodes of mental reflex and cogitation correspond to the minimum and maximum on the scale. — fdrake

Mental reflex driven by this automaton cognitive process lacks the consciousness that you have nevertheless categorised, but it is necessary because the unconscious mind is still a form of consciousness that contains mental activity - such as the way we automatically coordinate people and objects into categories - but accessibility or awareness of that activity is far from one would call qualia. Our will or motivation appears to exist somewhere in between and while this habitus is socially formed and the very impetus that alienates us from ourselves, at the same time we can feel or implicitly intuit non-verbal communication that we are unable to articulate. A man could have a trophy wife and live without ever feeling, but it does not mean he cannot experience the feeling of falling in love, that emotion that can drive a person' will emotionally. If we were to model psychological data, you could focal on mental health such as depression or anxiety, which is a byproduct of this intuitive 'I' that is seemingly breaking away from unconscious or automaton cognition, something living beyond the effect of class relations that has become aware of its own alienation, the deceit of advertising that we need things we really don't need, or that the more friends you have on Facebook or Instagram does not make your existence meaningful.

In terms of mental reflex, we have whatever the fuck advertising is doing to us - a prismatic spray of affectation, presumed general desire. — fdrake

Quite literally the best thing I have read in ages.

Authenticity is something which can be bought and sold at this point, I don't think it's a useful category of concrete social activity except through its negative - how existential authenticity is subverted and harnessed by the spectacle at every turn. — fdrake

I am not sure what you mean by this, can you further explain?

This indeterminacy of motive is one of the reasons authenticity is no longer analytically useful for descriptions of social life (in this context anyway), our 'true selves' are analytically indistinguishable from the bricolage of subtext that has built up as detritus on our retinas. Babies know Coke about the same time as they know Home. — fdrake

That is the reason why your two systems approach itself will fail to really articulate the dynamism of human agency, which requires a more substantial effort evaluating the authenticity of our will. Perhaps Kant would be a nice addition to the algorithm.

I say this without criticism or irony - I am thankful to be of an age when I am unlikely to experience any of these again. What language or languages? — T Clark

Stop being such an ageist. Besides, I am of the fruitful age of fruitfullness. Is that word?

The spectacle penetrates private life by diminishing its bearers to passive receptacles; enjoying each other perhaps by sitting closer than norms (for others) allow. It produces a blind form of resistance in terms of the elevation of friendship and affectionate solidarity to the highest ideal; a simple restatement of 'let us enjoy things together'. — fdrake

This is very Frommian, whereby this commodification driven by modern culture coverts this feeling of alienation through the unconscious desire that relatedness to others is a type of commodification itself, forming an almost pathological or faux unity to others where friendship and love adheres to inauthentic expressions, detached by this vacuum of abstraction. Feelings are no longer real but aligned to this fear and doubt - the condition of modern culture - to what is socially expected. Routine, copying, approval, doing what everyone else is doing saves us from that feeling, it makes reality appear concrete.

This disillusionment is filled with abstract concepts or spectacles that are no longer direct but almost sentimental in nature that enables this concrete albeit false reality, where stimuli to any feelings we have or relatedness within ourselves to the world around us is provoked by concepts we think we are supposed to have (Camus, in a way) and not because we actually have those feelings. If I go to Paris and see the Mona Lisa, do I really feel emotional and is there some sort of aesthetic relatedness, or am I emotional only because I am told that seeing the Mona Lisa would do that to me when really, I feel nothing.

This is the same with morality and love. Our relatedness is only formed because we are told that is the way that it is supposed to be, but we really do not feel anything.

I am honored both by the addition of a worthy new word and by it's use in reference to me. — T Clark

Your standards change when sober, I guess. :confused: Some foreign words seems to have better ways to describe things then we could ever in the English language. Right now, this is my favourite word:

Forelsket: The indescribable euphoria experienced as you begin to fall in love.

I think I kind of miss the idea of loving someone. It is a pretty amazing feeling, wanting to take of yourself, to make yourself attractive. I miss it because I haven't felt it for a long time.

Mamihlapinatapei: The wordless, meaningful look shared by two people who both desire to initiate something, but are both reluctant to do so.

Kilig: The feeling of butterflies in your stomach, usually when something romantic takes place.

Toska: A sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without a specific cause; a longing with nothing to long for.

Fernweh: Feeling homesick for a place you have never been to.

My excuse is that I was drinking. It seemed funny at the time. Actually, it seems funny to me now. But then again, I'm drinking now. — T Clark

Quite. Well, I do not drink alcohol so I have no excuse... you bumberclat. Nevertheless!

Or maybe it can be used in a sentence like "@ArguingWAristotleTiff and TimeLine, what a couple of doggerels. — T Clark

What the.

No, I am not my past. My past is my ego, and the conditioning of my mind. My true self is beyond all conditioning and all events in time, and cannot be touched by them. — Agustino

This is psychobabble. You have an ego whether you like it or not. The ego is merely a word that defines 'I' or the you and it is our will and reason that directs this 'I' toward the right or wrong by choice. It is your reason that you ought to ensure is free from this conditioning, which takes time and a continuous desire to improve. To say you have no ego is ridiculous.

But why would I bother with that, when I can extinguish the problem from its very roots by detaching myself from my conditioning, whatever that conditioning happens to be? — Agustino

You're not extinguishing anything. A person can see a crime and delude themselves into believing that they saw nothing. We are very good at repressing, misrepresenting, ignoring actual, real experience. Anxiety is this unconscious, deeper awareness of that truth, of that reality, this emotional response that is prompting us with feelings that we cannot articulate because we have repressed it from consciousness. Deep down, though, we know. This is the whole point about why our rational faculties are paramount and why we ought not to leave it to disorder. It is finding the courage to accept the actuality.

That is a waste of time, because it is playing the games of the mind. — Agustino

This is just silly. You are playing with your mind by choosing not to understand it. And you have the audacity to reward yourself as egoless? You are never a waste of time.

The problem with talk therapy is that it engages the person with their past, and the past is all nonsense. All that matters is the present moment, not silly games of the mind. Mindfulness helps you detach from the silly games of the mind - it doesn't matter anymore that such and such thoughts cross your mind. Your conditioning, from your past, becomes irrelevant. Psychotherapy is all BS, precisely because it is playing games - it is the mind playing games with you. — Agustino

Your past is not nonsense and forms the fabric of who you are, of your perceptions and how you identify with the world. If you experience anxiety, there could be a plethora of possible factors that are causally rooted in your past that talk therapy enables you to articulate and indeed you may very well realise that you are being emotional about something for reasons that are irrational, such as inculturation or some childhood experience. The subconscious mind will continuously influence your emotional behaviour if you do not coherently articulate why it is prompting you to have such emotional responses and detaching yourself without actually understanding is only a solution but not a resolution.

Mindfulness assists in the promotion of good mental health and the practice helps reduce the disabling effects of bad mental health - depression or anxiety - and therefore the stress that it has on your physical health. Hence it is calming. This detachment is a way to teach a person to be objective rather than rely on their emotions - to not skip the B in the ABC technique - and it calms a person who would otherwise experience an anxiousness that disturbs their capacity to reason adequately. If a person is not ready to talk, if they continue to present difficulties in finding that inner centre, I would not recommend it either until they can establish such self-regulation, but it is a natural evolution from that that a person should find the courage to reach further still - as the OP is experiencing - to link the network of possible causes.

Taking a holistic approach to psychotherapy through an affirmation of the inherent uniqueness of each individual by integrating talk therapy with CBT - the latter of which I too am a proponent - is fundamental to genuinely tackle the root causes of the anxiety as we each experience and identify from a cognitive, biological and genetic, environmental angle the world around us differently. We are individual and our techniques and approaches must counsel this difference. We know our experiences and with support it is about coming to terms with them and moving forward. The ABC Technique of Irrational Beliefs, for instance. The reason why mindfulness is successful is because it calms the individual enough to be able to communicate.

It's a used 2017 Corvette. I bought it because I got, I believe, a good deal. The color was the color of my 2014 Corvette, which I liked, so that was a bonus. The color is called 'long beach red metallic tintcoat.' — Sam26

My prejudice to colour and Corvettes lies with Prince. Little Long Beach Red Corvette doesn't have the same ring to it.

In the context of that practice, it may prove beneficial to cultivate the power of introspection, developing the capacity to recognize and "release" (or "detach from") the more or less subtle thoughts and images, memories and intentions, desires and aversions, emotions and feelings, that naturally tend to occupy and distract attention and lurk in the periphery of awareness in cooperation with perception, movement, posture, and breath. — Cabbage Farmer

I think you may underestimate the grievance that our emotional language and anxiety or depression can evoke in a person who is unable to articulate or explain that experience.Self-reflective practice requires the courage to make that choice to search for an honest answer. "Peace" of mind is not found in approaches that momentarily alleviate the tensions, help you swallow it or ignore it or move on, but to ascertain the root causes that eliminates it and the best way this can be done is through cognisance. This detaches us from the subjective to the objective and it no longer controls our emotional responses.

I have met people who display all the characteristics of a happy disposition and positive attitude as their new age practice teaches them, but underlying this remains an anxiety that can easily be provoked; the chalice is clean only on the outside. People often assume a 'danger' to the root causes of such anxiety, as though it is a life and death scenario, that one must simply avoid it at all costs. I think it is the courage to overcome this self-defence mechanism and face reality that is the greatest challenge but ultimately the only way to finding this 'peace' - and such a practice is individual.

Why did you end up choosing burgundy in colour?

On a side note and if I had money, I would get a sporty small SUV like the Toyota C-HR for both the speed, comfort and price. What do you think? Meh, a girl can dream can't she?

I've come to the conclusion that through many years of reading about Buddhism, Stoicism, and the likes that the biggest obstruction to happiness is the ego. — Posty McPostface

Just today, someone from a large hiking group took a photo from my instagram account and re-posted about me on their account and it generated hundreds of likes; I like being small and unknown, where I have only a tiny yet intimate handful of friends, so I felt really anxious when I saw the post. It has nothing to do with your ego, because the ego itself is willed in both positive and negative directions, just like pride - that can also be a problem in as much as it can be important - or even love where people bond and form attachments to the wrong type of person just as much as they can love for the right reasons. Happiness is a decision, it a process and one that needs to be honest and well thought out and the ego represents nothing other than making good or bad decisions.

The ego is a concept - the self or the experience you have of you or the 'I' - and so you are the subject based on the actions you choose to do. To give up entirely on yourself is to avoid responsibility and yet treat that avoidance as though it were virtuous. How is doing nothing a virtue? This sacrificial concept has deluded many religious people into assuming that experiencing and expressing oneself as an activity is somehow bad, only because bad people - those who are egocentric - do so. Completely cutting something off will not save you from the risks of making mistakes, on the contrary, it is no different to a bystander who watches someone else commit a crime and does nothing about it while pretending he is guilt-free because he did not act. Inaction is just as much an evil.

As a subject, when your activities - love, anger, passion, kindness, peace - are authentic, you become the subject of your activities and so you begin to experience - the actual activity - and not the experience of your ego, which is only formed when you identify your reality synthetically, such as the narcissism of egocentricity. The point is, there is no ego, there is only experience and the responsibility you have. Not sure why it would take a monk a lifetime sitting in isolation on a mountain to figure that out.

Which techniques are you referring to here, do you have any references to hand? — Pseudonym

You can have a read here for some further information.

Maybe you should try it my way...? :brow:

I cannot understand why such persons should be granted the right to vote. What possible arguments could there be for extending suffrage to adults who lack a normal capacity for rational thought? — Dachshund

International laws including the Convention on the Rights of Persons with a Disability for which the UK ratified back in 2009 endeavours to promote and respect the inherent dignity of all persons with a disability along with their active participation in society. This includes their legal capacity on an equal basis. This is a fantastic shift in our attitude towards human rights and persons with a disability because they have become accepted subjects with inalienable rights. While their cognitive capacity and their ability to make active decisions is called into question, there are considerable measures and clinical techniques that can ascertain their decision-making process and provide suitable methods to instruct and educate so that they can make informed choices and decisions.

Discrimination against persons with a disability remains very strong in our society and social stigma continues to present difficulties. During Nazism, they committed the atrocious Aktion T4 and eugenics was world-wide as people with a disability were perceived as "defective". In Australia, for instance, we had the Mental Hygiene Act 1933 that allowed "mental defectives" to be placed in private institutions that was later defined as: "Mental defectiveness means a condition of arrested or incomplete development of mind existing from birth or from an early age whether arising from inherent causes or induced by disease or injury and of such a kind as to render the person affected incapable of adjusting himself to his social environments and as to necessitate external care, supervision or control of such person." It was also not uncommon for words such as imbecile, lunatic, and idiot to be used as descriptions of intellectual disability and mental illness.

Forced sterilisations - of which I am very vocal against - continue until this day against women who have an intellectual disability and even further still occasionally racially targeted. This is disgusting abuse against those with disabilities.The problem is NOT those with disabilities but us as a society and the social stigma that continues. The questions that we should be asking is how we can ascertain the clinical parameter that can provide us with an individual, case-by-case assessment of cognitive capacity viz., persons with a disability and the diagnostic process or threshold must respectfully be devoid any conventional values by taking a functional approach during assessment - which is an analysis of understanding the action and also the consequences of that action - and by understanding the nature and effects of a decision.

Being capable of signing a contract, providing consent for sexual intercourse, and voting is not simply about doing those things, but understanding the broader consequences and persons with a disability - as active citizens in our society - must be educated, albeit differently, in order to enable them the capacity to understand and lead independent lives. If we continue favouring social stigma and avoid assisting them toward more informed choices, we are modelling a society of discrimination and exclusion.

You aren't alone MP, Immanual Kant - the greatest of the Enlightenment era's philosophers - firmly believed that women should never be allowed to vote; basically because - (and there's no way to put this diplomatically, I'm afraid) - he felt that they were just too stupid (irrational) ! :wink: Actually quite a few great philosophers would have run foul of the "Mod Squad" and been banned from this forum for sexism if it had have been operating in their time, like Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Kant, Aristotle ... (?!) :gasp: — Dachshund

The deep seeded misogyny was ever-present during those days, unfortunately, considering the strong ties to provincialism and dogma vis-a-vis moral philosophy until our contemporary social and cultural transformation. Women were viewed as objects who were reared from birth to consider themselves as objects, remained uneducated and formed meaning through marriage and birth to children. We cannot apply Kantian moral reasoning to animals and for Kant and many men, women are no different to animals despite the fact that such ignorance stemmed from cultural and social limitations, restrictions and paternalism.

However, while these philosophers are great, perhaps a peek into their personal lives can exemplify why they had such issues with women. Whatever the case is, Kantian axiom that love and respect between two friends is the height of rational thinking and a productive will, we can therefore assume that women are more than capable of being rational. Any other suggestions are a product of ignorance or personal disdain and misogyny.

In the final analysis I believe the need to overcome one’s isolation by oneness with others is also biological and owes its strength to the desire for survival, or rather the drive for gene propagation. In the vast majority of human evolution long term isolation severely decreased the odds for survival, and obviously gene propagation. — praxis

The problem is not isolating oneself physically or socially, but it is about becoming aware of and accepting the isolation that forms from becoming self-aware and separate from others, because our conformity gives us a false sense of unity. If, on the other hand, you are saying that our survival is dependent on this blind conformism in a Huxley sort of way and that maybe this small cohort of philosophers should just go and live on an island somewhere, then perhaps.

I don't know how I could ever have been so foolish as to not agree with you entirely from the start. — Pseudonym

Well, it happens. No need to be too hard on yourself.

This is exactly the kind of gross misrepresentation of nature that justifies the continued destruction of our ecosystems and presides over what is becoming the next mass extinction event. "It's OK to kill as many animals as we like because they're all brutal savages who deserve it, not like the angelic humans with their desire to share, give and sacrifice". — Pseudonym

Ok. :groan:

Ideally, I may agree. But I can't follow this downplaying of the body. We are just such social, sensual creatures that a healthy brain in body that is considered ugly will likely lead to a very different formative childhood than a healthy brain in a body that is considered beautiful. I think we are like plants that develop in the direction of recognition. — foo

Your body is regulated by the brain as much as your sensual impressions are formed through experience and maintained by the health of both the physical and the psychological; think of those individuals who have perversions or fetishes. Our sensual impressions is ordered by our understanding, which is why we are evolutionary and that there is a historical direction, but it does not give us knowledge.

Language is very dynamical and we have the cognitive capacity to calculate, contrast, and communicate that means that we are enabled or wired with the capacity to transcend conformity and start using our own autonomous, rational thoughts to understand and apply virtue aside from what we have learned. That is why I said that I am a compatibilist; free will is only possible through determinism and our brain is the tool that carries the capacity for rational thought while our mind through our social interactions gives us the structure to develop understanding. The paradox of our individuality is through the interconnectedness of all things, which is why God stands as the ideal in stark contrast to our autonomy because he is the Form of Good, the immortal, the virtuous, the righteous, all the moral concepts we seek to perfect in ourselves.

Second point: Is there not a tension between autonomy and 'moral' actions? If I am incarnate autonomous reason, I may decide that my culture at large is wrong about some issue. I may decide that some kind of prohibited violence is actually good and even a duty. Those who proscribe such actions while celebrating autonomy will presumably do so in the name of 'reason.' But this is to deny autonomy or to identity it with the incarnation of reason. But then who gets to speak in the name of reason? We are back to the same situation. Autonomy with any bite is dangerous. An autonomous person is not easily persuaded by the claims of those who identify either with God's will or universal reason (variants of the basic idea of authority.) — foo

I think what has been misunderstood is that being moral somehow implies something innate or explicit, when it is a rational process that requires cultivation. I think it has been suggested that morality - just like love - is something given to us or at least that for there to be any purity in the concept it must be beyond you - and to a degree with you think of platonic Forms that makes some sense - but love and morality is actually a system that we apply and improve rationally and autonomy is a process of cultivating this rational process that gives authenticity to this experience because it is grounded by our will. There is a multidimensional aspect to this dynamic that moves between ordinary or customary to visionary and wonderment, between determinism and free will, between learned and autonomous and in-authenticity is as much a part of our authenticity as we attempt to measure and describe ethical modes.

You judge people by whether or not they are authentic - whether or not they live their lives based on what others expect. You apply authenticity as a standard. — T Clark

Someone asked me once, "Have you forgiven your father?" I responded with, "Of course. Forgiveness is not about my father overcoming his mistakes but about me understanding why he made them. It is not about him." You see, philosophy to me is about defining concepts, mapping and articulating them, but how I apply this with my interactions with others is one of many ways in my attempt to translate their interpretation of the external world. I do not apply authenticity as a standard for or against others, but I practice authenticity as a way to understand others.

So, when you say:

The description does not match my experience of human behavior. How people are good. How people are real. — T Clark

Why is it that your interpretation of others is somehow justified since people are good and real, and yet I am being judgemental? You are placing yourself central to this standard and projecting it outward, not me.

Now, the reason why you are correct is not for the reasons you think; you are wrong vis-a-vis Kant and my expression of confusion was for why you are having trouble understanding the relevance of morality in Kantian philosophy. The reason why you are correct is because - like how Fromm speaks of love - we need to avoid defining authenticity because it is not an explicit or inherent thing, but rather something that we cultivate rationally, that we can learn to be 'true to our nature" as Kant said. If we avoid defining morality - like how we avoid defining love - but rather see it as a characteristic that we rationally attempt to cultivate consciously (why I always say that love is moral consciousness), then it is not an inherent thing but rather a practice and that there is a sincerity in this practice, the motivation or intent relies on our ideal commitment to good.

What underpins our humanity, what makes us transcend the biological or instinctual is empathy and our capacity to become self-aware; love and therefore morality is what makes us human, but it is ultimately a decision and not an inherent thing. It is something that we cultivate through learning and experience. It is grounding morality in a priori principles. The distinction between authentic and inauthentic as a mode is not suggestive of something "moral" but rather a dynamic that I am attempting to explain.

You judge people by whether or not they are authentic - whether or not they live their lives based on what others expect. You apply authenticity as a standard. — T Clark

Actually, you know you are right here. I am going to touch on this when I get home in about half an hour.

I started a thread to explore being/having some time ago, but my mind got stuck. While I felt like I had the gist of the distinction, where I was stuck was with notions of character orientation, modes of being, and so forth. I'm still stuck there now, else I would have replied to my own thread by now :D. — Moliere

There is this 'white Australia' culture that I have been attempting to sociologically penetrate and dissect, although my personal ethnography has not been successful to say the least. This cohort convey kindness at the most superficial level; what that means is that kindness is merely a tool to further advance their image that they portray and thus morality is a functional property or an object (and thus dead). They celebrate alcohol and anti-intellectual pursuits and by following this established mode of existence, they epitomise the so-called highest order in this human chain, therein giving them this sense of entitlement, so much so that they think they are entitled or justified to be vicious, to bully, to harass, to gossip and slander, to ostracise all underpinned by this archetype that appropriates a vision of superiority. They are not doing wrong or evil, they are allowed to because morality, to them, is exclusive and only for a select few and identity is merely power relations, objectifying imagined concepts like masculinity and where values become hegemonic.

So a beast or this large, monstrous animal comes to life only by this network, where this individual is dead and only comes to life when meaning is formed by this interconnection with the dynamic whole, which is merely an indestructible illusion. People identify meaning only through this symbolic whole and the practitioners of this mode of existence contrast and compare to everyone else. Underlying this is a need to belong, to unify and thus overcome the sense of alienation and aloneness that our selfhood projects through anxiety and depression (so we escape into our imagination) and the better we preform in this human order, the more meaningful our existence becomes.

So, to Fromm, he believes that there is a dichotomy to this mode of existence, where we paradoxically identify with two types of experiences namely that of Being and that of Having and emerge from two need; the need to belong and the need for freedom. We possess the need for freedom the moment we become conscious of our selfhood (perhaps that moment where our brains possess the capacity to rationalise concepts like death) and this produces an anxiety within us because we become aware of our separateness or that we are alone.To escape from that freedom, several possibilities emerge; Authoritarianism and Automaton Conformity - domination/control or sado-masochism, ultimately between those that cease to be by adopting the personality most appreciated by their environment and those that attempt to control others because they are out of control; it is hierarchical. This is blanketed by destructiveness, something you find in the justified violence of political regimes.

"The destruction of the world is the last, almost desperate attempts to save myself from being crushed by it."

He had several types of unproductive character orientations that develop from this Mode of Having; the Receptive (needy, passive, unable to make decisions), Exploitative (willing to lie, cheat, manipulate), Hoarding (possessive, unable to let go) and Marketing (shallow, dependent on social status, opportunistic). This character types seeks to possess or to have, which renders values, ideas, perceptions to be something that can be owned; love, for instance, is about possession and ownership, that the said person is 'mine' or about being loved. The energy is channelled in an unhealthy or toxic way, because they assume that to possess or own objects - such as by having a trophy wife - that he would be congratulated by this symbolic or imagined whole and thus give his life meaning.

The problem here is that we cannot escape this determinism, that the language we form that enables this experience with the external world to be articulated is established socially, through this dynamic interaction and communication and knowledge is formed by comparing and contrasting, but that we can transcend it to what Fromm calls the Mode of Being. We accept that we are alone, separate and channel the negative feelings associated by that isolating experience into productive and creative expression, to form a healthy understanding of our place in the social world. In a way, it takes a psychoanalytic approach to existentialism, where although we desire the delusion of immortality, come to accept that we are going to die and that we are responsible for our choices.

We feel lonely and isolated because we have become separated from nature and from other human beings. But once we fully accept this, we begin to articulate and express ourselves authentically, a type of solidarity with ourselves, an inherent respect that projects outwards into our mode of being, where we love and relate to all people, the environment and nature as a whole (not to just objects). It is a productive orientation that responds with care, respect, and knowledge.

So, when you think of the analogy of the rose at the OP, think of Goethe' poem that reflects the point so eloquently.

I walked in the woods
All by myself,
To seek nothing,
That was on my mind.

I saw in the shade
A little flower stand
Bright like the stars
Like beautiful eyes.

I wanted to pluck it,
But it said sweetly:
Is it to wilt
That I must be broken?

I took it out
With all its roots,
Carried it to the garden
At the pretty house

And planted it again
In a quiet place;
Now it ever spreads
And blossoms forth — Goethe

My interpretation of this is that the form, as distinct from the content, of the education system is such as to instil conformity, fear of standing out or being wrong, an obsession with 'right answers', competition and not cooperation, and this has a pathological effect that is normal to the extent of being almost universal. And it doesn't make for contented people either. — unenlightened

This is a contemporary outlook on Rousseau and it is interesting the "creative" here is the mode of being Fromm discusses, namely that by being creative, to have an active inner life and to express this faculty outward, symbolises this cognitive potentiality but that the system continuously tempts us further and further away from ourselves.

"In contemporary society the having mode of existence is assumed to be rooted in human nature and, hence, virtually unchangeable. The same idea is expressed in the dogma that people are basically lazy, passive by nature, and that they do not want to work or to do anything else, unless they are driven by the incentive of material gain, or hunger, or the fear of punishment... These considerations seem to indicate that both tendencies are present in human beings; the one, to have - to possess - that owes its strength in the last analysis to the biological factor of the desire for survival; the other, to be - to share, to give, to sacrifice - that owes its strength to the specific conditions of human existence and the inherent need to overcome one's isolation by oneness with others."

My real problem is with the inclusion of a moral dimension to this issue. People are responsible for their behavior, not for whether or not their internal life meets my standards. — T Clark

You are still not getting it and it is pretty profound considering I guided you to the most basic literature on the subject. Authenticity is not a standard.

Every behaviour we think of as moral - helping those in need, defending what is just, sacrificing our own well-being for the benefit of others... These are all behaviours which can be seen in the animal kingdom and so, presumably, all behaviours which derive from instinctive drives. — Pseudonym

Animals may display behaviours that one could assume to be moral, but they do not posses the same cognitive capacity to transcend to a level of autonomy that human beings can; we are merely projecting our experience of empathy to their behaviour. They are not aware of themselves because they do not have consciousness, and most importantly do not have language, both of which is necessary to attain any sense of moral consciousness. The key difference is feeling and what gives us 'humanity' or a 'soul' is our ability to love and love is not merely remaining with the same mate and being faithful. When I say our behaviour is instinctual, it is blindly identifying to behavioural norms and therefore there is no authenticity in our motives or will that enables a sense of autonomy, not just the evolutionary behaviour that compels us to act a certain way.

I thought it was quite a simple question. You said that our instinctual drives contain nothing of substance morally and yet those same drives in animals seem to produce all the behaviours we consider moral. We do not carry out any behaviour labelled 'moral' that is not carried out by some species of animal driven, presumably, by those same instinctual drives you've dismissed as empty. I was just wondering how you explained the coincidence. — Pseudonym

Perhaps the reason why I have not explained this contrast is because I do not believe animals have moral agency. Instinctual behaviour for evolutionary purposes that necessitates "good" behaviour is not the same as being able to display empathy.

Then how do you explain the fact that literally every act we consider moral has a parallel in the animal kingdom? Are you suggesting this is just coincidence? — Pseudonym

Que?

I think that's part of the truth. But we do have unique bodies and unique formative childhoods, so that we are indeed distinct. I agree that this distinctness can be exaggerated or feigned for ideological reasons, but what I have in mind is the genuine uniqueness that is allowed to manifest itself in a person who is not being self-conscious, who is not performing. — foo

This distinctness is really the cognitive capacity to rationalise and reason with common sense, but central to this prospect is the autonomy that wills such agency, so it is not really about the separate and unique body that we possess - aside from the health of your brain - neither is it entirely our formative and unique childhood but autonomy is the motive or will that we possess that gives us the capacity to regulate our own behaviour and therefore legitimacy or authenticity to our moral actions; it is moral actions that make us human or good. There needs to be some sort of grounding, though, in this will or autonomy and that is our rational capacity where the mind regulates our decisions and opinions and therefore the obstacles that we face are psychological. We need to overcome these obstacles that enables this continuity of irrational behaviour, such as self-defence mechanisms, fear, negative childhood experiences, self-esteem etc &c., and it doesn't help that these vulnerabilities we possess advantageously complicate the process of transcendence, the latter of which is possible cognitively or psychological and not mystical.

Let's imagine the differing behavior of those who are not being watched. Maybe the rest of humanity is somehow gone. No one will ever know how they choose to pass their time in this thought experiment. I'll grant that we carry virtual societies within ourselves, and that selves are largely constructed in relation to and dependent upon other selves. Nevertheless, I think you can see the continuum I'm pointing at. In short, I think that people can indeed more or less authentic, which is roughly to say more or less flowing, trusting, uncensored. — foo

Language is fundamental to our understanding since our capacity to describe, articulate and communicate to one another provides us with subjective meaning as we contrast this experience and internalise it back to ourselves. While I believe that we have an internal language - unconscious - that speaks to us intuitively through feelings or emotions including anxiety or depression, language is the very tool that allows us to articulate our engagement with ourselves and the external world. Children who were raised severely neglected and abused in Romanian orphanages, for instance, continue to struggle mostly because of the lack of contact and emotional care or love so much so that the severity of this neglect or lack of human contact made these children incapable of even walking. We are dependent on this contact or interaction as contrasting contains the very dynamism needed for rational thought.

The point, however, is when this engagement fails to transcend to the next level that we are capable of achieving, this capacity to calculate and correspond and independently ascertain the difference between fact and fiction and the predominate population fails to do this. Heidegger and many more attempted to explain why, mostly fear, and that is the purpose of the OP - what is it that stops us from engaging authentically?

I was thinking about this more. I think it explains a lot of the differences of opinion and misunderstandings you and I have had about autonomy and authenticity. I don't see it as having a moral dimension. You do. — T Clark

All of this is discussed by Kant; moral psychology and epistemology, metaphysics, aesthetics and it is true that I favour psychology because without this subjective moral dimension, without authenticity of this moral consciousness or 'love' then we are no longer human. Without our humanity, we are just automatons. His ethics are all about our motivation and the mind or our cognitive capacity to me is a tool that enables agency and therein the very freedom that allows us to recognise our own selfhood. It is psychological and while I understand the metaphysical considerations, being moral cannot be performed without consciousness, that our instinctual drives or impluses contain nothing of substance and as such conformity is acting on impluse; you do 'good' because that is what you are told and because that is what is expected and not because you consciously will to act.

It is rational thought or reason that gives us the capacity to structure our phenomenal experiences and even if there are properties that transcend this, accessing objects through spatial and temporal representations is a sensibility that allows us to understand and experience and that is all that really matters. Everything - being your identification to and experience with the external world - requires rational clarity.

I tend to think of this like idealism: there are some religious people that place emphasis and worry about the afterlife - heaven and hell - but since it is our moral behaviour that channels the prospect of transcending to heaven, thinking about the afterlife is pointless. All that is necessary is focusing on our moral behaviour. Indeed, the metaphysical realm or intuitive consciousness is valuable and perhaps the subconscious allows us to explore concepts, nevertheless we bound by the conditions of sensibility. My favourite Kantian statement:

Without sensibility, no object would be given to us; and without understanding no object would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty; intuitions without concepts are blind.