You seem to be opposed to seeing any problems with the idea of superiority, and my view of seeing people as being of equal worth and value. You do point to the evolutionary importance of superiority. — Jack Cummins

You haven't been answering my questions.

Do you think hatred and prejudice are something idle and avoidable? That they serve no practical purpose?

The fact is that not even bare survival is guaranteed for anyone. Even in first-world countries, the possibility of dying in poverty and homelessness is becoming more and more prominent.

However, I am wondering what system of society you are advocating, in terms of ranking according to certain measures of superiority. Would you be wishing to maintain the status quo or challenge power dynamics?

My point about superiority took place within a discussion about political correctness. However, all discussions gets broken up in this long thread. But, bearing in mind that the conversation took place originally in that context I am wondering what are your views on the importance of equality?

People aren't equal. It's a fact of life.
Why try to sugarcoat this with politically correct notions that do nothing but set vulnerable people up for failure?

I don't advocate any particular political or social system. I am opposed to the politically correct pretenses of equality which just add insult to injury.

Why, I wonder, should this original doctrine hold sway? — Constance

Why do you quote or cite anything, instead of just making stuff up and ascribe it to another person?

Go ahead and empty the self of its contents I like this on "annihilation":

There is no this world, no next world, no mother, no father, no spontaneously reborn beings; no priests or contemplatives who, faring rightly and practicing rightly, proclaim this world and the next after having directly known and realized it for themselves.
/..../
It doesn't go far enough, does it?

Hold your horses!



Do you believe that what you quoted there is Buddhist doctrine??

What you quoted there is in the Pali Canon listed as a standard example of wrong view, in contrast to Right View.
Annihilationism is wrong view.

This is annihilation, and the method is one of apophatic philosophy. My thoughts are that once the constructed self is eliminated, what remains is not nothing, but a depth of existence and well being that goes entirely beyond the pragmatic existence of everyday living. Nirvana, throughout the literature, confirms this.

This is Mahayana doctrine. Why choose Mahayana over the Pali Canon? Can you explain?

That is, those kinds of feelings of pleasure that result from enlightenment take continual effort. — Joshs

What concept of "enlightenment" are you talking about?

The actual Buddhist one, nibbana?

Because by the standards of early Buddhism, what you're describing isn't enlightenment/nibbana, it's something that isn't even the first jhana. It's more like getting to the point of pleasantly zoning out.

What makes ethics contingent is value's embeddedness in the muddy waters of things that are extraneous to value, as with beliefs, competitions for valued things, value hierarchies, ethical institutions, legal complications, political lying, and so on. The point is that beneath all this dynamic play of human affairs there is this stand alone foundation, and tis makes for moral realism. — Constance

The illustration above aside, what you're saying here seems to be in line with Adler's will to power, related to Nietzsche's Wille zur Macht.

If we start from the premise that what drives a person is a will to power, then this also lends support to moral realism.

all issues turn on what is at stake, and this is always value. — Constance

Agreed.

Anyway. what I have in mind is an ontology of value, a metavalue. Not at all interested in how things are practically worked out, how they get entangled with the affairs of others, with value hierarchies, and the the rest. These are important, of course, but not the concern here, where all simply want all eyes on the experience give a proper, objective analysis. My claim is that once all "accidental" matters are put aside, the particulars of entangled cases, there is the, as I have said, residual metaethical: the "badness" the pain, or the "goodness" of the pleasure. — Constance

So, if I'm understanding you correctly --

I'll illustrate on an example:
There are three major Viennese schools of psychology, classified by what a person's will is considered to be centered on:
the Freudian will to pleasure,
the Adlerian will to power,
the Franklean will to meaning.
The idea behind this classification is that a person is driven by will; there is difference as to what exactly that will is about, but the agreement is that the will is the essential driving force of a person and that this is the optimal way to approach psychological issues both theoretically and practically.

It seems to me that you are after a similar principle of classification as above (not specifically in terms of psychology, the example with the Viennese schools of psychology occured to me because it seems to be structually the same as what you're looking for).

Buddhists do not try to eradicate the self in order to achieve abstract nothingness. Beneath the self, so to speak, the empirically constructed self or memories, attachments, the "stream of consciousness", is joy, bliss unparalleled. There is nothing more palpable than this. — Constance

Nirvana? — Constance

The idea that the self = nirvana, or that once the defilements are done away with, what is left is pure goodness and joy, is an idea that can be found in some Buddhist circles (esp. in Mahayana, and modern developments of Buddhism), but to the best of my knowledge, it has no support in the Pali Canon (ie. the text that is generally considered the authoritative text of what the Buddha taught).

/.../
This is why the Buddha never advocated attributing an innate nature of any kind to the mind — good, bad, or Buddha. The idea of innate natures slipped into the Buddhist tradition in later centuries, when the principle of freedom was forgotten. Past bad kamma was seen as so totally deterministic that there seemed no way around it unless you assumed either an innate Buddha in the mind that could overpower it, or an external Buddha who would save you from it. But when you understand the principle of freedom — that past kamma doesn't totally shape the present, and that present kamma can always be free to choose the skillful alternative — you realize that the idea of innate natures is unnecessary: excess baggage on the path.

And it bogs you down. If you assume that the mind is basically bad, you won't feel capable of following the path, and will tend to look for outside help to do the work for you. If you assume that the mind is basically good, you'll feel capable but will easily get complacent.
/.../
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/freedomfrombuddhanature.html

Presumably further in the sense of getting closer to making an end to suffering; or at the minimum, going further in the sense of simply having more things to do, more activities at one's disposal.

I have come to the conclusion that the self is not illusory, but my strategy is not a familiar one: the self, the genuine self "behind" the empirically constructed self, if affirmed through ethics, that is, metaethics — Constance

When you put it like that, it sounds like atman.

But therein lies the rub: Buddhists do not try to eradicate the self in order to achieve abstract nothingness. Beneath the self, so to speak, the empirically constructed self or memories, attachments, the "stream of consciousness", is joy, bliss unparalleled. There is nothing more palpable than this. — Constance

I'm going to need a Buddhist canonical reference for this, please.

I believe that everyone is equal in worth and value. — Jack Cummins

What is this belief based on?
Certainly not facts.

I would argue that this is the basis for opposing oppression which has its roots in people ranking themselves as superior.

Then what about the evolutionary struggle for survival? Do you just dismiss it?

How do such normative affectivities as 'unconditionally intrinsic goodness', 'spontaneous compassion', 'luminosity', 'blissfulness', ' a calm and peaceful life guided by the fundamental value of nonviolence' emerge as ultimate outcomes of a mindfulness philosophy of groundlessness? — Joshs

Out of at least two possible sources: a deeply internalized humanism (the beliefs "people are basically good", "life is worth living", "the universe is a welcoming place for me and everyone else"), or/and a selective internalization of Buddhism.

Varela and Thompson's claim that Buddhist-originating practices of mindful awareness reorientate experiencing from a phenomenological ‘after the fact' theoretical stance to the immediate here and now centers on its techniques of attentive meditation.

I’ m arguing that they misunderstand phenomenology. — Joshs

And possibly Buddhism, too. At least in some Buddhist circles, "bare attention", "nonjudgmental awareness" and so on are heavily criticized. See, for example, the work of Thanissaro Bhikkhu or N. Nyanamoli Bhikkhu.
The Satipatthana Sutta has already been linked to earlier. When one meditates, one is supposed to meditate within a frame of reference, and not just navel-gaze. One is supposed to have "appropriate attention" which has a very specific meaning.
See here, for example: Mindfulness Defined by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Varela and Thompson's dissatisfaction with the phenomenologies of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger stems from their belief that phenomenology begins from intentional and reflective acts as derived and secondary constructions built on top of the immediate neutral pre-objectifying awareness performed by the act of mindful attention.

Buddhist meditation also begins with intentional and reflective acts. There is no such thing as "immediate neutral pre-objectifying awareness" in early Buddhism.

I’m not trying to discredit mindfulness , only to refute
Varela and Thompson’ s claim that the mindfulness tradition has the resources to go further
than phenomenology in accessing the immediacy of the here and now.

The mindfulness tradition can go further than phenomenology only because it has smuggled along things from Buddhism, without admitting to them.

My disagreement centers on the assumption that there is such a thing as neutral attention.

And many Buddhists agree.

Meditation is not simply a matter of bare attention. It is more a matter of appropriate attention, seeing experience in terms of the four noble truths and responding in line with the tasks appropriate to those truths: stress is to be comprehended, its cause abandoned, its cessation realized, and the path to its cessation developed.
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/study/recollections.html

And there are still con artists who deny there is a leftist hegemony of the media. — Rafaella Leon

It's fantastic, the stuff that gets ascribed to the "Left" ...

Don't you see any dangers in a sense of superiority? — Jack Cummins

Danger for whom? The superior person?

Of course, I would guess that it does depend on how you understand the idea of superior and my own working definition is of is of being intrinsically better.

Two things:

1. Who gets to be the arbiter of which person is intrinsically better than some other person?

2. Would you say you're intrinsically better than, say, Hitler?

Nevertheless, the point which I feel that you are missing is that a sense of superiority can be a way of putting others down. It may bolster the ego but it is an aspect of power dynamics and I would say that it lies at the heart of oppression.

That is the whole point of superiority. There is no reason to think that a sense of superiority is not evolutionarily advantageous. Life is a struggle for survival, and in that struggle, deeming oneself superior to others is advantageous to one's survival.

Deeming oneself inferior - intrinsically inferior - is a recipe for failure.

What do you mean by "good"? For this, one has to go to the source, the primordial actuality, the "intuition" of pain or bliss and everything in between, the raw thereness, the value qualia--just take a hammer, bring it down hard on your kneecap and observe. You are not facing a fact, a caring, a negative judgment, an aversion, a denunciation, a condemnation, and so on. What is that there, in your midst, that screaming pain "itself"? — Constance

For one, I wouldn't deliberately hit myself with a hammer, tyvm, not even for a philosophical experiment!
I will remember some instances of where I injured myself when working in the garden. Such as when I accidentally hit myself with a handsaw on the back of my hand. The blade hit a vein; I've never seen so much blood! It was gushing out, I held the palm of the other hand below the wounded hand so as to not drip blood everywhere, and it was full in a few seconds. (The wound healed quickly, and a year later, there wasn't even a scar anymore.)

So, graphic details aside, what was there?

It hurt, but the hurt was overshadowed by the fear that the injury might be serious or that the wound will get infected.
There was also, "I need to take care of this wound."
And, "This shouldn't have happened."

What did you have in mind?

I think there are in principle reasons -- even self-interested reasons, so long as they care about anything at all -- for every person to care, in the long term, and the big picture, what is good. But people are often stupid and will do things that are against even their self-interest just because they couldn't be bothered to think about it. — Pfhorrest

I think it's more complex than mere stupidity. So much in social interaction is said and demanded between the lines, without it ever being explicitly stated, and people are used to this. People also hate to be pushed. Which leads to the stalemate situation where it is impossible to have a discussion without people reading it as some kind of demand. So for them, even a mere discussion is felt as an imposition. Which they would rather not comply with, simply because they don't like being pushed.

Really, what I have been trying to say in the brief snippets of discussion I have been having with you is that prejudiced hatred arises from projecting on to others. It is not an easy problem to address but our own sense of superiority can be damaging. — Jack Cummins

But how can our own sense of superiority be damaging?
Can you explain, other than on the example of the Nazis?

You mention the Nazis. On the other hand, take parents, teachers, or doctors who routinely consider themselves superior to children/students/patients; without doing so, they couldn't do their job or fulfill their roles.

With the few comments I have made, you keep directing them back at me. I have awareness that any comment which I make about others has personal significance too. I am aware of that but I would say that I think that many ignore this dimension.

Yes, but it later comes out that they believe they are superior, even though they are reluctant to openly admit it.

I feel that you are going to tell me that I think that I am superior for saying that and I would say, absolutely not.

Actually, it seems this is the only viable path for judging/assessing others: to start with the position that one is superior to them. How else is one's judgment/assesment of others supposed to be relevant?

It has just been that is the way my own life experiences has led me to think and that I am coming more from a psychological angle than a political one. But I do believe that there is an important dialogue between politics and psychology. The psychological view can benefit from an understanding of the political and the political can gain from a psychological perspective.

A psychologist deems himself superior to other people, at least to his patients.

Of course I don't condone what the Nazi's did. But I would say that it is still problematic when people do try to see themselves as better, including morally better, than others. — Jack Cummins

But then this points right back at you. How do you respond to that?

It stands outside the ethical dilemma, as an independent, unalterable, for the badness in play is not contextual, does not depend on anything form its being bad. — Constance

How about injuries to one's body that are intended as part of the greater good? Think, for example, of that mountainhiker who fell into a crevice, got stuck, and cut off his arm in order to free himself and get out.

All we need is some notion of what makes something closer to or further from correct in order to comparatively evaluate opinions and show that some are less correct than others. That doesn’t require we know what the completely correct one is, but it implies that there is such a thing as completely correct in principle, at the limit of less and less incorrect. — Pfhorrest

In daily social life, this works out in such a manner: the person who holds a position of more power gets to have the say over what is closer to objective reality than the person who has less power.

For an epistemic approach like yours to work in some meaningful way, people would need to at least temporarily be willing to put down their hierarchical roles and their expectation of deference, and work together for the greater good.
From what I've seen, people resent to do that.

I can see how your approach works for things -- such as for solving engineering problems.
But humans seem to be primarily interested in power games.

I would say wanting agreement precedes the meta consideration of whether or not a correct version exists. — khaled

Yes, because despite all the subjectivism, individualism, or relativism, or what is in-effect, solipsism, that so many swear by, they still cannot ignore that they are in some vital ways interconnected with other people and dependent on them for their livelihood.

The whole point Hitler was making was about wanting to destroy inferior people. This captures the whole problem underlying prejudiced hatred, which is the belief that one is superior to others. — Jack Cummins

But you don't believe you are equal to the Nazis, or that the Nazis are equal to you, do you? Exactly.

You have to admit though, there is something grandiose about these claims of voting fraud.

On a long term basis I would imagine that hatred of others comes back to oneself. The most obvious case is having committed all the worst atrocities, Hitler killed himself. — Jack Cummins

What if Hitler and other Nazis who committed suicide did so for stoic (sic!) reasons?

I have heard in WWII documentaries that some Nazis who committed suicide around the time of the end of the war wrote in their goodbye letters that they can't bear to live in a world ruled by an inferior race, and that this is why they willingly departed from life.

It's not clear that the Nazis who committed suicide did so out of self-loathing or some such.

The level on which I would think about working with prejudice is if I am in a professional or group situation where prejudices are occurring. What can be tolerated and what goes against boundaries is the main issue.

Which is a clear case of the rule of the turf: the owner of the turf has the say as to what is acceptable and what isn't.

Couldn't find any proof of that. At all. — frank

Because the commies destroyed it, obviously, duh.

It is a difficult question. How does one work with prejudice and hatred.? — Jack Cummins

But why would one have to?

I think the real problem with hatred and prejudice is that one hasn't come to the final conclusion that they are in fact _not_ evolutionarily advantageous.
Don't you ever wonder whether the people who are full of hatred and prejudice might in fact be better off in life after all?
What valuable things are they missing out on because of their hatred and prejudice? I can't think of any.

People who are full of hatred and prejudice can make life hard for some others, indeed. But beyond that, they don't seem to be missing out on anything. Hatred and prejudice aren't the sort of stumbling blocks and negative things as some people paint them to be.

You think you're having a conversation, — Kenosha Kid

They never saw it as a conversation, a dialogue to begin with.

But where is that "free speech and open discussion" supposed to take place?
Every conversation takes place somewhere, on someone's turf, not on some neutral no-man's land.

The rule of the turf takes precedence: the one who owns the turf where the conversation takes place has the say.

What is the use of such speculations?

In a forum discussion long ago, someone proposed to have solved this problem by pointing out that ethics was originally a part of aesthetics, and that it was aesthetics that dictates what is ethical.
How do you feel about this?

This reasoning is tailored after Christian theism. But there are other theisms apart from Christianity (and other Abrahamic religions), for example in Hinduism. In those other theisms, atheism is conceived of differently than in Christianity, and the requirements put forward in favor of theism are different.

In discussions of God and atheism, why give supremacy to Christianity, as if it would have monopoly over theism and all things related to it?

Nope.

"I think if you asked, most parents would say they want their children to be happy, rather than wealthy, recognised, popular or influential."

But what do those parents mean by "happy"?
It seems to me they mean exactly 'wealthy, recognised, popular or influential', they just don't spell it out like this.
How can a person be happy, without also being wealthy, recognised, popular or influential? It's not clear how such is possible.