• Is it ethical to have hobbies?
    If your other hobbie (career) is sourced in some kind of exploitation (ex. selling over priced diamonds or commemorative coins on QVC, sex trafficking, selling poison) and you feel guilty about this then you may want to attenuate this guilt by charity. Then you can give the charity back to those you are unfairly exploiting as a consolation for the inescapable violence of being.

    Just remember, every vinyl disc requires a virginal sacrifice to the Sun to come into being. They call them blood vinyl in my culture. Willing sacrificial virgins are a dime a dozen though, so you've nothing to worry about.
  • What pisses you off?
    That reminds me: people who say cliche lines right out of a book in response to negative situations. Bonus points if you just opened up to them or asked them for personal advice. — Chany

    Yeah, well, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Duh.
  • What pisses you off?
    ↪Michael Ossipoff


    Your reply is insufficient but it is what it is. It could've been other than what it was.
  • What pisses you off?
    Everything happens for a reason. Say what you will about it, but it is what it is.
  • Why? Philo? not Agape or Eros?
    Don't forget about divisions of Eros as conveyed in personified deities.

    Pothos (Sehnsucht), desire for the dead or missing, a lack, the unobtainable, the past.

    Pothosophy (wandering the necropolis or desert in search of life, wandering the vale of illusion in search for truth or wisdom which is never satisfying, never ceasing, never a sufficient substitute for unmet needs, like other kinds of love)
  • What is spiritual beauty?
    I guess the following is just about affective realism...

    Perhaps the Pieta was associated with warmth in Cavacava's memory because it was inside a warmer place (inside rather than outside). If the Pieta was luminous for viewing it might further strengthen the the association, especially if the background was much darker, the way an experience of a fire place does in winter.

    The coldness of death (the effects of winter exposure) juxtaposed with the memory of a mother's love (warmth of a caressing body). Mary is inside, grieving (not hysterically since she is quite silent, stoic) over a corpse (which is quite fresh, sterile and pure like the marble it's made out of). Mary is the hearth (source of warmth and light). Mary is a good ma (not an uncaring selfish vindictive bitch who is suffering from Munchausen by proxy syndrome) .

    The light attenuates the subtle universal anxiety of darkness, the warmth attenuates the uncomfortable cold, the marble does not stink of death, et cetera.
  • What is motivation?
    But at the moment, there is no tea, and therefore no pleasure. The pleasure that has not yet happened cannot be the cause of its own production. It can only then be the pain of thirst. — unenlightened

    Likely you're lacking a bit here. Dopamine peaks at a much higher level to get you to make tea than when you're actually drinking it. Desire/anticipation is pleasurable(?) or motivating. Apparently worn out amphetamine users get high before the drug enters their system by anticipation and a conditioned reward circuit.

  • What is motivation?
    Is there a contemporary theory about sublimation (Freud's idea) that works or is relevant to explaining motivation? Hunger, sexual or social desire, status seeking, and pain avoidance could all be very fundamental to what moves us to do anything.

    We play games where the pathway of reward is intelligible (we know what folks expect from us in this setting). The dopaminergic reward system helps to habituate patterns of conduct that help us satisfy instinctual needs in a socially acceptable way.

    The variable reward (ratio) schedule of the forum might explain why folks here are attracted to come back. There must be a dopaminergic reward in worthy types of positive feedback relative to the expectations or needs of the poster.
  • What is spiritual beauty?
    Isn't it a kind of category error. Sure brainwaves may indicate thought, but they are not thoughts, they are brain waves. — Nils Loc

    I'm not sure what the significance is of category error.

    In those articles it appears that interoceptive or exteroceptive status (ie. whether or not you are hungry or horny, suffering, cold, hot etcetera) heavily influences value appraisal and what you read or project into an aesthetic construct or object at any time.
  • What is spiritual beauty?
    Scientific American: The Neuroscience of Beauty

    NYT: A Small Part of the Brain and Its Profound Effects
  • Denial of Death and extreme Jihadism
    It's not hard to imagine the state of being and existential conditions in which one would die or kill for a cause.

    There are some crazy historical scenarios of ritual suicide and sacrifice. Indian kings cutting off parts of their body in front of everyone, Native Americans joyfully (?) being killed by their captors, Japanese sticking a knife in their gut in a public display of Seppuku, wives being burned alive with deceased husbands (Sati), Mayan ball game winners partaking in voluntary sacrifice, a sacrifice to the cornerstone of the city state, entire servant retinues being killed and interred with the a king...

    I think we fear death too much in our Western culture.
  • Consequences of death awareness
    Scientific American: Fear, Death and Politics: What Your Mortality Has to Do with the Upcoming Election

    Mortality Salience (wikipedia)

    Terror Management Theory (Wikipedia)

    It seems that being reminded of death brings about a negative effect, enhancing the sense of your own importance and the importance of your own culture and group whatever it may be based on as opposed to 'others'. — eddiedean

    Why not just characterize this as a "positive" effect, especially in rare cases where an existential threat (terror) is imminent like war. The amplification on "self-esteem" by MS would make sense as an evolutionary adaptation, priming the brain in facilitating action, decision-making and movement to avoid death.
  • What is spiritual beauty?
    Some ideas that could work into your absurdly beautiful and tragic narrations:

    Sublimation -- An indirect or learned means to fulfill desire. Putting desire to work for you, or the effects of limits placed on desire.

    Sehnsucht -- Unfulfilled desire which no attempt quite satisfies, whether we undertake philosophical or poetic means or not to try to fulfill that desire. A desire for something dead or passed, nostalgia for the most beautiful time, the 1st of times, for God, for the ideal, et cetera.

    Dopaminergic Reward System-- Greed is good. Every time around you have to transcend the base rate to maintain addiction. Without dopamine beauty isn't what it is. Beauty helps you to bootstrap (lure you) out or into situations with the promise of reward.

    Maya (Veil of Illusion) -- Beauty Incarnate beyond which Nothing Exists. Endless sublimations, sehnsuchts and dopamine hits that go on and on until death. Symbolizing the whole in a nutshell (or in a part) by sheer force of illusion.
  • Consequences of death awareness
    Judges give higher bonds, people are less open to other cultures and religions, etc. — eddiedean

    Could you unpack and explain this a bit more with regard to death awareness. Any links to share about how such experiments were conducted.

    How does one know when a judge is aware of his own mortality versus when he is not and whether that significantly (or statistically) influences such decisions?
  • Create your World
    Where's Nil Loc when you need him. — praxis

    It's all about Bitter Crank or John Rawls really. They're the cat's meow and the answer to all questions.

    Now I will go and cry, alone, in my closet... (burning Praxis in effigy).
  • Extroversion feels fake / phony
    Most cashiers I encounter don't say much that isn't related to the utility of the transaction. A few of them are somewhat dour with an inverted Mona Lisa's smile.

    I found UK cashiers seemingly more gloomy and disinterested than USA cashiers from my locality.

    Hair cutting folks are the small talk monsters.
  • The World Doesn't Exist
    The thing in itself (ie. the world pre world) needs an observer to be known.

    Without senses and the apparatus of perception you can't sense the objects of sense or perceive perceptions.

    Whether the world exists without an observer is not an interesting question. You might as well flip a coin for the answer.

    Are we in a simulation? When we find out, we'll find out.
  • Extroversion feels fake / phony
    Obviously we see why there would be an intolerance for shyness in the service industry. Extroverted traits and pro social skills will always be preferred in these settings.

    There is a small part of my job that requires superficial social interaction and small talk. Several times I've reflected that my behavior might've seemed rude but it is never intentional, just a poor response because I'm pressed for time and don't know how cut it short.

    I think conversation is a social skill and that you can down regulate the fear response that gets in the way with practice. Just because it feels fake now doesn't mean it will always feel fake.

    Why isn't all the anonymous conversation generated here not an example of extroversion? Do your posts feel phony to you?
  • Geographic awareness and thinking, where are you?
    The earth is flat, last I heard.
  • Is Misanthropy right?
    A Darwinian version of the question would be under what social conditions could misanthropic beliefs be more adaptive than they are now (as opposed to maladaptive).

    If for instance we all lived in a Cormac McCarthy novel like The Road (societal collapse), or Blood Meridian (lawless wild west) default paranoia and doubt about the intent of others might help you to survive.

    Misanthropy is a post hoc rationalization for reinforcing or conserving behavior, that emerges out of any number of painful experiences where trust in others was repeatedly abused or exploited. You learn to distrust others if it generally saves you trouble (but compared to what?).
  • Intellectual life offers no financial reward
    Is there room for such thing as an intellectual fool in your narrative?
  • My shot at the popular "meaning of life" topic
    always choose the ability to create X over X itself



    Do the ends justify the means?
  • Dreaming.
    Only two recurrent types of lucid dreaming that I can remember well. One is about driving blind.

    I realize that I'm trying to overcome the sleep paralysis that keeps my lids closed and there is intense effort and strain to open my eyes but I can't. Meanwhile in the dream I'm usually driving, both memorable accounts being a motorcycle and a limo with something like Gweneth Paltrow and Tom Hanks in the back seat (I saw them even though I couldn't open my eyes). I actually think I'm getting real visual data that is interfering what I see in the dream (blurrrr).

    The other is hovering by tilting forward. It's like flying or floating but my toes nearly drag on the ground.
  • Random thoughts
    "attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed"

    Thorongil is not impressed. Who is impressed that he is not impressed?

    The quality of this rug (a quilt of rags) does not justify its price.

    The quality of this person does not justify his/her existence (here).

    Bench # 52.
  • Perpetual Theory of Life
    A purpose of life is to be successful in the domains (ecologies) you find yourself in or have voluntarily chosen for yourself. This success is about being rewarded and rewarding others in this game we call "The Philosophy Forum" which is a subdomain of the game of life.

    There are as likely as many purposes (or justifications for being) as there are ways of being.The tinkering space at the end of the chain of being is our sandbox. We can do what we want within that space toward whatever goals we voluntarily or involuntarily accept as worth pursuing. A lot of that work isn't really our own, we can inherit purposes (functions) and abandon them.

    I like the idea of universal Darwinism as applied to cultural artifacts (memetic theory) but you don't have to perpetuate it. Take it, leave it, turn in into a cartoon, or whatever, talk about Daesin, Genetic Imprinting, Jungian Typology, Jonathan Haidt's Moral Flavors, Economic Inequality, Black Box Metaphors, Biophilia et cetera. Obviously you'll always have reasons to prefer one kind of being (one direction) over another but you may not need really need them. No one has good reasons for eating at the Cheesecake Factory (oh but they do).

    I can go outside and clone colorful variants of Cordlyine fruticosa and Hibiscus rosa-sinensis. Why do I do it? Because circumstances have made it easy, because they are beautiful, for a similar reason people put pictures on their walls (they see something as they walk by), to have something to talk about with other people who are interested in cloning variants, because I'm avoiding doing something I ought to be doing like long term planning, et cetera.
  • The Unconscious
    A rational man's unconscious is irrational, an emotional man's unconscious is calculating. And of course they are both women! — unenlightened

    The anima is just like the wife in the Grimm's fairytale, The Fisherman and His Wife.

    Stepmothers are exceptionally cruel calculators.

    In the Grimms' version of the tale, the woodcutter's wife is the children's biological mother and the blame for abandoning them is shared between both her and the woodcutter himself. In later editions, some slight revisions were made: the wife became the children's stepmother, the woodcutter opposes her scheme to abandon the children and religious references are made. The sequence where the swan helps them across the river is also an addition to later editions.[3] — Wikipedia: Hansel and Gretel

    Best to pass blame onto to others whenever possible and to unconsciously adapt stories (narratives) to demonstrate our own intelligence and moral excellence.
  • On Nietzsche...
    A biographical clue, possibly, to Nietzsche being shaped by his own resentiment.

    The Birth of Tragedy presented a view of the Greeks so alien to the spirit of the time and to the ideals of its scholarship that it blighted Nietzsche's entire academic career. It provoked pamphlets and counter-pamphlets attacking him on the grounds of common sense, scholarship and sanity. For a time, Nietzsche, then a professor of classical philology at the University of Basel, had no students in his field. His lectures were sabotaged by German philosophy professors who advised their students not to show up for Nietzsche's courses. — Marianne Cowan, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks
  • Prometheus Paradox
    Ok but which one is Prometheus? — TheMadFool

    Both, either or none depending upon the arbitrary condition you impose to identify him. Let me know why this is an unsatisfying answer to the paradox.

    By what principle or law is Prometheus ever identical to himself?
  • I have found the meaning of life.
    @Rich

    I was just running with what you stated about how we can only speculate, explore, imagine. Bat life is probably great.
  • What right does anybody have to coerce/force anybody into having an identity?
    Parents simply say, "We will call you..."

    They do not say, "You will be identified as..."     — WISDOMfromPO-MO

    I guess your are invoking some likely average (normal) parental conduct in affluent Western countries. Whose parents are you talking about specifically? Yours? Do any parents actually let their children pick their names?

    In old societies a name might indicate and perpetuate status or social class. What might you think of a new born child whose first name is Trump? Might it provide a clue about his parents. Is there injustice in the mere accidental associations of a name.

    Just like kids (peers) on the playground say, 'we will call you fag' as opposed to 'you will be identified as fag'. I can see the latter in this context is worse if it sets up enduring discrimination based on institutional or tribal lines, as if there were some Lord of the Flies like emergent hierarchy. If for instance my peers tattooed or branded 'fag' on my body or forced me to wear a t shirt that said 'fag' on it, this is an even greater injustice if other kids can't form their own opinions about my character.

    There was a kid at school with the name, Gaman. His parents said, we will call you Gaman, properly pronounced like "gay man." He got a lot of flak for this and ended up using a different pronunciation when introducing himself.
  • Prometheus Paradox
    The clone would acquire unique identity by the fact that both could interact with one another. There might be a battle to the death supposing that they are free for a moment or cooperate to overcome their condition.

    In any case this multiplication would be a good strategy if the clones could cooperate toward finding a way out their situation.

    Just by occupying a different spaces they are distinct.
  • I have found the meaning of life.
    I've heard that bats live in a state of samadhi their entire lives and that some hallucinate their reality by echo location.

    Chiropteric ectasy is a grand state of being. Every bat is an individual seldom disabled by the abstractions of an ideal future. Chiropteric meaning by bat consensus is to be found in bat reciprocity, or bat on bat influence in an ecological sense. Whatever happens in the course of bat life, x arising then y arising, conveys bat objectivity.

    Since all is one ultimately, there are no bats and no humans, no grandness, no oneness, no objectivity, no no ness, no yes ness. Things neither exist nor not exist, nor neither neither exist nor nor not exist, et cetera.
  • Random thoughts
    When pothos is presented on a vase painting (fifth century, British Museum) as drawing Aphrodite's chariot, we see that pothos is the motive force that drives desire ever onward, as the portion of love that is never satisfied by actual loving and actual possession of the object. It is the fantasy factor that pulls the chariot beyond immediacy, like the seizures that took Alexander and like Ulysse's desire for “home.”
    Pothos here is the blue romantic flower of love that idealizes and drives our wandering; or as the romantics put it: we are defined not by what we are or what we do, but by our Sehnsucht: Tell me for what you yearn and I shall tell you who you are.     — James Hillman Essay, Pothos: The Nostalgia for Puer Eternus

    I think I first encountered the blue flower in this James Hillman essay.

    In a botanical domain, Pothos refers to a ubiquitous house plant Epipremnum that wanders (is a vine).

    There is an unknown epiphytic species (likely a true member of the genus Pothos) at my local botanical park that is quite unusual. The modified leaves are giant blue scales that hug the side of the palm it is wandering on.

    So when I think of the blue flower there is also this epiphytic vine that reminds me of the scales of a dragon. It's an otherworldly psychedelic kind of plant.

    All of the ideas amalgamate in my head in a beautiful (or romantic) way.
  • I have found the meaning of life.
    This "meme" is singular, grand and objective.

    Its grandness comes from everything to which it is attached (potentially the entire universe).

    This meme: "djmxki" is also, singular, grand and objective depending upon the consensus of the crowd.

    Everything that is singular, grand and objective is also reducible, banal and subjective.

    When an agent appears with a pitch fork in hand with a coercive moralizing toward whatever the value or truth of meme is, I may do what the average person does, or less likely what a "philosopher" would do when presented with the meme complex.
  • Random thoughts
    Novalis (latin for "new land") started the blue flower meme.

    Is the Sawstika (Nazism) a kind of dark flower that grew out of the soil of German Romanticism?
  • Frames
    I can't see the forrest for the trees but I can see some of the kinds of valuable frames one could make out of a set of trees.

    $$$
  • Bloom: A Philosophy of Infinity
    All is bloom then and I have been struck mute (or possibly dumb).

    Despite my stupidity I speak and write as if it were an addiction (oh, words, justify me in the eyes of my peers, let me get into the party of all parties, the dance of all dances).

    If only my mind could bloom with intelligence, which gives the knife its edge to cut.

    "Whereof we cannot speak we must remain silent. " Just as no bloom is my bloom, I merely pass on what people pass on to pass on the passing on. Just as the flower services and contains the entirety of creation.

    When I dance, they point and laugh. Before I dance, I imagine myself dancing and people pointing and laughing. So I do not dance. Buf if speaking is dancing, like walking is dancing, then I simply cannot help it (oh but of course I can help it). Call the categorical curators to select the good blooms from the bad, toward some fleeting end.

    I should not dance to mock the most excellent dancer.

    Every dance is a mockery in the light of excellent dancing.

    I should bloom to compete with the most excellent bloom in my class.

    Every bloom is competing with the most excellent blooms in their class.

    Look over there!!!! -------------> ✾
  • Bloom: A Philosophy of Infinity
    Enjoyable rant but I'm afraid it simulates a poetic drive (ache) in me to break out of the constraints imposed by adherence to the stricter modes of reason (a 'bloomin' ontology) and conduct as exemplified by others here in the forum.

    If only I could sweep the scene with a contagion of ecstasy moving toward the annihilation of self (or selves).

    The ache that would ache itself to death in service to the flower blooms.

    My ache blooms. The wound blooms just before death, red qualia seeping into the fabric of a shirt.

    The blooms in the vase upstairs, as a bundle, is a metaphor for the blooms in this thread.

    The vase is a tomb of blooms, a sacrifice of beauty to appease and calm the ravenous. An amalgamation of brains for an amalgamation of zombies.

    It (the bloom) teases and torments me with the promise of something unobtainable.

    A blooming contradiction: it fulfills temporarily while requiring more in the future to reach the same bloom of fufillment.

    The bloom is substituted for what it is not, that which is unobtainable.

    Blooms bloom in the baloom. Bloomalysitic bloomduction blooming bloomunctions. A bunch of bloomony. Set the bloomony in a boomessal for the boomites so they bloomizzle.
  • Random thoughts
    Searching for a better telling of the parable of the two-colored hat.

    It resembles the Blind Men and the Elephant.

    The end of John Godfrey Saxe's poem:

    "So, oft in theologic wars
    The disputants, I ween,
    Rail on in utter ignorance
    Of what each other mean;
    And prate about an Elephant
    Not one of them has seen!"
  • Random thoughts
    "Particles tend to dissipate more energy when they resonate with a driving force, or move in the direction it is pushing them, and they are more likely to move in that direction than any other at any given moment." ~ By Natalie Wolchover, Quanta Magazine on January 28, 2014 (A New Physics Theory of Life)

    Now bear witness to a moment of reckless, idiotic, energy-dissipating, nihilistic substitution:

    People tend to dissipate more energy when they resonate with a driving force...

    Daniel Dennett's carbon footprint is huge compared to mine because he dissipates more energy. Other organisms resonate with him to dissipate more energy. What luck!
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