So you were saying that my opinions were value laden, and therefore equally valid to everyone else's? — Wosret

No. Not saying that. We will kill and die for our own values. I'm no hippy. My "leap of faith" is organ deep, just as yours is. Equally validity is the opposite of what I'm saying. I'm saying that I don't pretend to speak from some objective place. I "speak from the I," without justification in terms of some alien other. It's an "evil" position, not some feel-good maternal nonsense.

You will behave as if some values are superior to others, and some are wrong — Wosret

Yes. Some of us pose as if we have an authority to justify this action. Others find reaching for this authority too servile or inauthentic.

What's the difference?

Who care's if they're servile, or inauthentic? You're just speaking from some alien position, it isn't as if it's true. It wouldn't matter if it was or it wasn't either, as that would require a value for the truth.

You also say that it isn't a feel good position, but then say that it's like heroic, and authentic basically... which is it? Don't you see how much nonsense someone starts talking once they start talking about things they have never, nor can they ever actually do?

Saying that on some meta-level analysis you think they're all valid, but we can't help but act otherwise doesn't actually change anything then, if we all act like they're true anyway, then there is no difference besides some kind of back-handed dismissal, or enlightened self-awareness that you can't in any sense actually enact. — Wosret

I'm saying we are irrational wills clashing in the void. Some of us convince ourselves and others that the world is not like this. It is not a void of clashing wills. They say that they know this God fellow or this universal rationality that elevates them beyond the mere assertion of personality. They identity the substance or kernel of their personality with a principle or image that is transpersonal.

But an earnest pursuit of the transpersonal (Nietzsche's quest for the truth about truth) can result in a generalized skepticism with respect to the transpersonal. One can ask one's self: do I really give a damn about posing as a scientist or the agent of some god? Or was this all along the assertion of the value of my individual personality? Such a person can cut out the middle man, drop the objective-righteous rhetoric and assert the I directly in terms of its dark charisma.

A demonized Sartre is sort of what I have in mind. He didn't have the nerve for existentialism. He worked in a Kantian ethic and eventually sold it out to Marxism. He collapsed into a high-brow moralist.

Why are you even talking to me then, if we're both just irrational anyway? Why reason with me? What's the point of that? There couldn't be a reason I guess, just irrationally doing so, for no reason.

Also, is everyone irrational? That's a transpersonal claim...

You've receded into contradictory irrationality and inactionable nonsense, sir, not I.

Who care's if they're servile, or inauthentic? You're just speaking from some alien position, it isn't as if it's true. It wouldn't matter if it was or it wasn't either, as that would require a value for the truth. — Wosret

Yes, I am "irrationally" invested in autonomy. It just is sexy. As I said, I think we have notions of the ideal man that we compulsively "incarnate." We have a passion for what is largely a vague image that we therefore conceptually elaborate.

Let me be clearer. It does make me feel good. But colloquially "feel-good" positions are often maternal. "It all works out in the end. Karma's got your back. The real is the rational is a the real." My little song is a dark song of the heroic ego facing the void, dying alone. It's sexy in an austere way. It's bleak. Of course it's macho. No doubt: for me philosophy has been a conceptual elaboration of masculinity. Phallogocentric and all that jazz.

Now, just be consistent, and drop that "we" stuff, and you'll have arrived.

Why are you even talking to me then, if we're both just irrational anyway? Why reason with me? What's the point of that? There couldn't be a reason I guess, just irrationally doing so, for no reason.

Also, is everyone irrational? That's a transpersonal claim... — Wosret

I've been down this road before. We exert ourselves in the world through language by seducing otehrs to see the world in our own terms. Our sentences are viruses. Moreover we (including myself) like to spit out our favorite ideas. It amuses me to paint these words on the public wall. Maybe someone will get where I'm coming from. Maybe someone like you will test my wits with objections. I like playing blitz chess & I like playing with ideas.

I think our motives our irrational, yes, but that "rationality" is the symbol-employing pursuit of our heart's desire. The mind is the tool of the dark heart. I offer that not as science but as a tool. The representational paradigm has its limits. It's constrained by the transpersonal pose. Representation is also (often) persuasive. I impose my interpretation as reality itself. I am well aware that I cannot control the meaning of my strings of words. I think Derrida has a point that the ideality of language means that every sentence is a mirror of our own finitude. Am I present the necessarily iterable concepts that I string together? They outlive me. They are objects in a quasi-spiritual realm that "haunts" the realm of sensation and flesh.

What we're maybe really talking about is re-envisioning of philosophy. Typically it seems to be envisioned as a kind of objective science. But we can widen that notion by not assuming objectivity. It's a genre or an historically organized collection of sentences. Philosophy can be understood as a branch of philosophy that assumes or institutes the universal pose. I'm trying to speak from outside that pose, and I tend to be misunderstood when doing so.

"Seriousness is the province of immortality; frivolity, the province of death. They that are serious do not die; they that are frivolous are always dead. Therefore would the wise be serious. The wise attain the supreme blessing, nirvana. He sees his glory increase who is energetic and can remember, who thinks honestly and acts deliberately, who is continent, who lives within the law, and who is serious. It is frivolity the fools and the weak-minded pursue; the wise treasure seriousness as a miser his gold. The monk who would be serious, who sees the danger of frivolity, shakes the evil law like the wind does the leaves; he tears asunder the bonds that bind him to the world; he is close to nirvana. Standing on the terrace of wisdom, released from all suffering, the serious man who has conquered frivolity looks out over the unhappy multitude, as, from the summit of a mountain, one might gaze upon the crowd in the plains below." - Buddha.

I personally am not just amusing myself, nor just playing games. I think we're done.

Sure. But to get nit-picky about my language is not necessarily to respond thoughtfully. Obviously you may hate my perspective. I offer it without justification, like a piece of sculpture or a dick joke. I try to state it forcefully (engrossed in shaping the concepts into sentences), but it is of course a joker's or asshole's philosophy. Divine malice, the laughter of the gods, etc. It irreverently questions "the spirit of seriousness." The film A Serious Man also did this. The nice guy scientist lacks a certain oomph as a protagonist. There's something flat in such an ideal. (Notes from Underground also comes to mind.)

"Seriousness is the province of immortality; frivolity, the province of death. They that are serious do not die; they that are frivolous are always dead. Therefore would the wise be serious. The wise attain the supreme blessing, nirvana. He sees his glory increase who is energetic and can remember, who thinks honestly and acts deliberately, who is continent, who lives within the law, and who is serious. It is frivolity the fools and the weak-minded pursue; the wise treasure seriousness as a miser his gold. The monk who would be serious, who sees the danger of frivolity, shakes the evil law like the wind does the leaves; he tears asunder the bonds that bind him to the world; he is close to nirvana. Standing on the terrace of wisdom, released from all suffering, the serious man who has conquered frivolity looks out over the unhappy multitude, as, from the summit of a mountain, one might gaze upon the crowd in the plains below." - Buddha. — Wosret

This sounds so much like "spare the moronic boredom and spoil the kid." I like to laugh; and what about Nirvana? Is that not equal to "nothingness"? and if it IS equal to nothingness, then don't the serious get to experience mortality?

This whole Buddhist thinking makes no sense, forces man to live an unnatural life, and it's for the birds, as far as I can tell.

Don't you see some sculptures of the "Laughing Buddha"? Well, what's up with that? Or is there humour that is serious, and is there sombre thought that is frivolous?

We exert ourselves in the world through language by seducing otehrs to see the world in our own terms. Our sentences are viruses. Moreover we (including myself) like to spit out our favorite ideas. — n0 0ne

You just don't get it. The above contradicts itself to the extent that it claims to be true in any objective sense, otherwise it violates the limits it itself proposes, which you keep doing. You don't get that you're accurately describing your own inner workings, but nothing more.

That's a Chinese God, and not Buddha. There are times to be serious, and things to be serious about. Not everything is a joke, or identity politics, where we're just trying to overpower one and other, and our words can become unrestricted by truth, and become aimed at persuasion and dominance above all else.

Good quote. I don't totally buy the dichotomy between amusement and seriousness. Divine malice. Seriousness of the child at play. As far as gazing on the frivolous multitude, my view offers its own version of that pleasure. It is free of the common pretense, no longer alienated or finding its essence beyond itself. "Nothing human is alien to me" and eventually "nothing alien is inhuman to me."


F R MA M N O LY


"FOR MADMEN ONLY" (the flickering sign in Steppenwolf)

Maybe you don't get it. That statement itself is exactly the kind of seduction it describes. It is a transpersonal bluff that recognizes itself a such. You might say that I'm an ironist doing performance art. But that would not be some final description either. I'm not doing science. I'm doing something more general with sentences. I include objective-sounding statements in this performance. The meaning is holistic. I'm not doing word math. I'm sketching a personality. Not even my own personality but a "fictional" post-philosophical position that I find fascinating and indeed embrace. 'Course I'm never done playing with it, building it, etc.

You're trapped in a hot-air balloon, headin'er for space.

That's a Chinese God, and not Buddha. There are times to be serious, and things to be serious about. — Wosret

I happen to be Chinese today. The Laughing Buddha is not a Chinese God. Maybe it's not the Buddha, but I think it is, because it is called The Laughing Buddha. Maybe it is not the same Buddha that you worship, but a different person by the same name. Much like there was Groucho Marx and Karl Marx, or Kate Bush and George W. Bush. Or Jesus and Jesus (many don't worship this lesser known Jesus, but He is also mighty and a powerful God.)

Sure there are times to be serious. And there are times to be frivolous. "There is a time for everything." But the quote I quoted from you quoted from Buddha denies the right to exist for any frivol.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budai

"Budai, Hotei or Pu-Tai[1][2] (Chinese and Japanese: 布袋; pinyin: Bùdài; rōmaji: Hotei[3]; Vietnamese: Bố Đại) is a Chinese folkloric deity. "

I replied to you, Wosret, but my reply is apparently under "probation".

I close this discussion. I don't tolerate senseless and unnecessary censorship well.

If this continues, I may quit the site altogether.

If one is "possessed" by the spirit of seriousness, then one can find no use for my word-art. That's OK. I love to read philosophy, but I don't usually find much agreement among them. They find me frivolous-narcissistic-irresponsible and I find them alienated-inauthentic-"superstitious." To question the basic scientistic/objective pose of the metaphysician is perhaps to go beyond or before metaphysics. When Plato and Socrates and the gang imposed a distinction between what they were doing and what the other wordsmiths were doing, they instituted "sacred sophistry" or anti-sophistry or philosophy. I think most intellectuals experience this pose as a necessity. That's what thinkers do, science.

But this view of thinking is contingent. We happened to get religious about certain conceptions of the use of conception itself. Because I use declarative sentences rather than a tiresome train of pomo-qualifications, you can say that I'm still doing "science" here. But I am more generally stringing words together and clicking "Post Comment." I am spraying spores of my own personality as an option for others. It's a culture-product. Lots of philosophers are as subjective, autobiographical as Kerouac. Few of them admit it. That's the gimmick of these particular spores. The objective pretense is abandoned even as it is employed to communicate this abandonment. (Declarative sentences insist that language is bigger than declarative sentences. Language is represented as being bigger than representation.)

"Probation" eh? You sound like a bad influence... What did you do?

Maybe there is just an amount of time that must transpire between posts or something, though I dunno, ought to inquire about it.

I don't want to argue about what God is or isn't, or whether or not it is or is, but just that there are things beyond you. If you go to learn a discipline, you subject yourself to their mastery. You listen intently, take them seriously, study what they tell you to, practice what they tell you to, and eventually things start falling together.

Now imagine two disciples, one doesn't pay attention, believes that the professor is an idiot, doesn't engage in the practices, doesn't study the material, and the other does the opposite. Which student do you figure will master the discipline, and which will not? Which will become an authority on the subject, and which will not?

No masters, or teachers are Gods or infallible, but you need to move through them, and beyond them in order to truly figure that one, it is far more difficult to reinvent the wheel, from scratch, thinking every other wheel maker a fool from the beginning, and a far better wheel than has ever been made before.

You of course do need to be on someone's level before you can understand them, and their are certain behaviors and attitudes which are not very conducive to getting there, and there are other behaviors and attitudes which are. — Wosret

I largely agree. History is driven by this quest for the beyond. Alienated man pursues his apparently distance essence. The student trusts the guru as the possessor, for instance, of this essence. So projection/alienation is absolutely central to my thinking.

Riffing on Hegel (without appeal to his authority), absolute knowledge is only possible at the end of history--in this case personal-ideological history. The student becomes the guru only when projection is overcome --when projection is recognized as projection. So the guru is self-subverting all along (in my vision of this process), but the student has to gather the nerve to live without the projection. Why?

Because the projection is a crutch. The projection is an essence for the student, a refuge from freedom. (This is a Sartre-Hegel blend.) The guru tries to tell the student that he "exists" or "juts out" from the given. As I see it, the guru's message is that there is no guru. Less paradoxically, the student's attitude toward the guru is the itself the unwisdom of the student that must be overcome. This can only be done in terms of the student's "misunderstandings" or "projections." He is deaf to that which does not relate to the sacred as he currently conceives it. Critique is immanent. Positions collapse only on their own terms. They fail their own criteria for success or validity and mutate in order to ease this tension or correct this failure. The process continues until alienation is overcome. Otherness is grasped as temporary, fictional, provisional. The criterion ceases to fail itself ("absolute knowledge" or what-you-may-call-it.)

A fuzzier version of this is the young man's hero worship of the great dead philosophers. He admires them in a way that forecloses the possibility of him becoming them. They themselves "spoke from the I" charismatically. They got themselves taken as authorities. They imposed their personalities as Truth. So young men not yet come of age argue with one another in terms of their chosen Father images (favorite philosophers around which they cannot see). Just as Christians quote the bible, the young thinker quotes the secular scripture of the famous dead thinker. Of course (as you say) we can't start from zero. Life is too short. We need the shortcut of centuries of thinking. But we are only fully mature when we can venture forth and "speak from the I" and our own here and now.

"Probation" eh? You sound like a bad influence... What did you do? — Wosret

I replied to you saying that Budai and its variations are not the Buddha. I meant this application of logic seriously, but nevertheless mine was a funny post, or an attempt at humour. I insisted that the Laughing Buddha does depict the Buddha, and not the Budai et al.

I said something to the effect that mixing up the Buddha with the Budai et al is a mistake like mixing up Groucho Marx with Karl Marx. Then I said maybe there was the Buddha, and there was another Buddha, much like there was Jesus, and there was a lesser known God also called Jesus, with a different life story and stuff.



I don't know why that post still hasn't appeared.

"Budai, Hotei or Pu-Tai[1][2] (Chinese and Japanese: 布袋; pinyin: Bùdài; rōmaji: Hotei[3]; Vietnamese: Bố Đại) is a Chinese folkloric deity. " — Wosret

Budai is actually NOT the Buddha. It is Budai. It's like mixing up Himmler with Hitler.

Your fact is totally dead on true, but is unfortunately irrelevant in this case.

The Laughing Buddha is not the Laughing Budai, Romaji, Hotei, or Bo Dai. It is the Buddha. Check Wiki again if you don't believe me.

A question for anyone who either

a) Believes in an afterlife
b) Doesn't believe in an afterlife, or
c) Is undecided about an afterlife

1. What do you imagine an afterlife, or the absence of an afterlife to consist of?

2. What makes you think that your current imagination of the afterlife/absence of afterlife isn't merely your definition of the terms "afterlife" or "negated afterlife"? What makes you think that your imagination in either case has a transcendental meaning beyond your immediate imagination?

Contrast this problem against an ordinary example of imagining something that might or might not have a reference:

For example, I have never been to Egypt (to the best of my knowledge), but I believe that I can currently imagine what the interior of an undiscovered tomb in Egypt might look like. But does it make sense for me ask myself solely on the basis of this image as to whether or not my imagined tomb will be discovered, or for that matter whether or not it is in Egypt?

Doesn't look anything like the Buddha bro. I was going to hilariously remark that you must be a racist for saying "that's not a Chinese god, I'd know, I'm Chinese, and being Chinese have a complete knowledge of all things Chinese".

Having read Plato, I think I'm okay with being judged by a good, objective judge, if it comes to that.

Man, your reading comprehension skills really have a lot of room for improvement. What you quoted as something I allegedly have said, is something I never said. Please retract your statement or else please erase / delete that post of yours. (That post of yours being two posts above this one of mine here.)