the potential that was given to me by God, because, in the end, it is only He who matters. — bcccampello

Preaching God is not philosophy.

Preaching God is not philosophy. — JerseyFlight

Your ex-cathedra pronouncement is hypocritical and inappropriate. The op is a practical exercise proposal that need have no relation to any god. There is no preaching going on, except your own.

Your ex-cathedra pronouncement is hypocritical and inappropriate. The op is a practical exercise proposal that need have no relation to any god. There is no preaching going on, except your own. — unenlightened

Then he didn't need to mention God, but he did. He invited criticism when he did.

This man claims that God has given him something personally and that God is the only thing that matters. Sagan is still correct, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If you deem me out of line for this, all I can tell you is that you're preaching the dark ages.

You are correct I could just say nothing and save myself from being rebuked from people like yourself, but then error goes out into the world. Who is reading this post? Impressionable young men? Would you argue that I don't have the right to refute error or call it into question? But this fella has the right to assert as many extraordinary claims as he wants without any rational accountability? How do you arrive at such a conclusion?

Would you argue that I don't have the right to refute error or call it into question? — JerseyFlight

No I would not. But you have refuted nothing, you have merely contradicted in a more dogmatic way something that the op recounted as his personal understanding, resulting from his method. When you do the exercise, you will come to your own self-understanding and express it in your own way.

Then he didn't need to mention God, but he did — JerseyFlight

Hate crimes are criminal acts motivated by bias or prejudice towards particular groups of people. What you are saying is an serious prejudice against the gypsys (i.e. me as well), and really, anyone who believes in God (jew, muslims, etc). "Mentioning God" is not the subject of the post, so it is obvious that you are an religious intolerant. You are already denounced to the site moderator. Also, FBI investigations of hate crimes were limited to crimes in which the perpetrators acted based on a bias against the victim’s race, color, religion, or national origin, but now the Bureau became authorized (since Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009) to also investigate crimes committed against those based on biases of actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or gender, so I am warning you to be more careful of your own prejudices, and keep them to yourself. I am saying this because this is not the first time that I see you doing this to me..

Pointing out that God-worship is not philosophy is not a hate crime.

Anyway, moving on and trying to avoid triggering anyone ...

I came to understand better not only who I am for myself, but who I want to be to realize the potential that was given to me — bcccampello

I'm not entirely clear what the exercise is in relation to this. Should I assume I will fulfil my potential for enlightenment in the obituary? I'm interested, but it is a rather alien way of thinking. When people used to ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I used to say 'a man'. That remains my aspiration, really - to be a husband to my wife and father to my children, friend to philosophers and implacable enemy to slugs in the lettuces. Am I allowed to aspire to the ordinary?

I prefer a funerary commemoration.

DIS MANIBUS SACRUM
Hic Iacet
Ciceronianus the lawyer
A mindful father
A dutiful husband
A helpful son and sibling
A faithful friend
An annoying enemy
An impatient man who required patience
He loved cats, books, chess, shooting clay pigeons
Intoxicating liquors, fine food and wine
Classical music, cool jazz, be-bop and Warren Zevon
Photorealism, modernist poetry and history
He loved wit even more than he loved himself
And loved himself too much
He did not do all he should have done
He was not all he should have been
His time is over. Use yours well.

Pointing out that God-worship is not philosophy is not a hate crime. — Kenosha Kid

I will try to use this occasion to make a few important points, hoping you will add a few comments. The paper you posed on Natural Existential Morality, not only displays originality, but an exceedingly high level of polemical skill. No moral idealist is going to be able to simply pass by it, it throws down the gauntlet. I respect your courage to stand up for truth.

When people are born into an abusive home, their psychology often adapts to the environment, after time it's what begins to feel normal. Every time father gets emotionally aroused people adjust their behavior and fall in line to fulfill his wishes. It's no different with this forum. When people start to get emotional, be it religious people or analytical philosophers (who are actually worse in this sense), I have noticed that some of the moderators start to get emotionally confused, that is, they lose their objectivity and start adjusting their actions to cater to the complaints of those who are dysregulated. This technique should not work but it does. If we evaluate what I said on this thread, we arrive at the conclusion that it is dispassionate, I did not attack anyone and my objection was rational as opposed to emotional, I attacked an extraordinary claim that was being made in a public forum. Now when people start to bud in with their emotional responses, which is what unenlightened did, I suspect the moderators see this and get emotional themselves, assuming that because people are upset I must have done something wrong. This is false, it is completely lacking in philosophical objectivity. Philosophy is a critical and negative enterprise, there is no way around this, it is the ethos of its very ontology. To be a philosopher is to contradict what is positive, this causes people psychological pain, and the more immature they are in this sense, the more extreme and emotional their reaction will be.

As long as the moderators keep emotionally siding with people like the original poster, who spoke of hate crimes and the FBI, implying that I somehow attacked him because I challenged his extraordinary claim, then this kind of emotionalism, just like it does in abusive households, will carry on because it works: the dysregulator gets his way. What was my crime? Invoking the sanity of Carl Sagan? Pointing out an outlandish claim? Dear moderators, this is not okay, it is not okay to side with those who try to make their case and get their way through emotion. That is not what I have appealed to here, I have made an argument for objectivity, for sanity, for siding with philosophy!

Jersey Flight was considered as a contemporary, liberal version of Nietzsche. He was an iconoclast against all forms of cultural superstition, including elitism and academia. His intellectual interests included, defining and expanding the psychological qualities that account for advanced thinking, as well as collaborating a method for its culturation. He had repeatedly challenged intellectuals to transcend theory and fulfill their social responsibility to engage culture through polemics. His writing style was consciously concise; an anti-scholastic, he tried to communicate complex ideas in simple prose. He had written multiple volumes of philosophy that are yet been released to the public. He is was one of the founders of The New School of Polemics. — Jersey Flight from a Third Person Point of View

May God and other inherited stupidities cease to contaminate impressionable young minds. Amen.

Now that "God" has been swept away as irrelevant, folks can continue critiquing/commenting on the exercise.

The exercise is about realizing who you actually are, not some bidimensional being that you have invented for yourself and/or your friends, but finding out who you really are. It is also about finding out what your gifts are, and then planning your life accordingly.

For this exercise to be fully fruitful, you will need to have some sense of eternity. Especially because, no matter if you were the emperor of the world, or reproduced like Genghis Khan and had 1000s of sons and daughters, everything here on Earth will be temporal and one day it will end, and no one will remember. One day nobody will remember what the USA, the Roman Empire, Mozart, etc was like. If you don't have that sense of eternity, you fall into the culture of death that most people find themselves with, that deep down, behind every act, is accompanied with a desire to die. Of course it will be like this, nobody wants a life that does not have a perennial meaning, therefore that it is meaningless. Maybe that's why some people here on the forum are so upset with people just mentioning God....

We can speak of an successful life only when one’s relationship with an eternal God motivates each of his actions. Not only accidental acts, but all, one by one, there is no single act that can be explained outside this dialogue. Who does the guy talk to, who does he respond to? If we erase this connection, his life becomes a collection of meaningless acts. There are individuals who are already born in this eternal realm, and this is what Plato was saying when he was talking about the Supreme Good. God (or the Absolute, if you like) does not want nothing for us beside being ourselves, and this is the first step to know God, to be truthful to ourselves, not living a posing life to others that is a lie, it is false.

So, it is not really about being rare or ordinary, but truthful.

Be well!

Of course it will be like this, nobody wants a life that does not have a perennial meaning, therefore that it is meaningless. — bcccampello

Is a perennial meaning that which is intelligible (or valuable or good) by virtue of participation in perennial forms? Mircea Eliade had this notion of eternity as perennial acts. The past happens again because of practical reenactments. Here the religion would be a reenactment of desired and good as it pertains to philosophical modes or analyses/criticism. Meaning is derived from your participation with your fellow people.


To have perennial meaning is to be perceived as having desirable (or meaningful) meaning in this game of life. Or as the maligned Jordan Peterson would say, to play well in as many "dominance hierarchies" as you can.

So, it is not really about being rare or ordinary, but truthful. — bcccampello

I understand that; truthful in the context of the fiction that I am dead, and some other speaks my life summary. But is the fiction that I died this morning, or that I died at a ripe old age having reached the end of the road I have in mind to travel, as it were. Not in my case that there is that much difference, decrepit pensioner that I am, but it's the principle I'm looking for.

In the case of unenlightened, he remained faithful from the age of 14 to his self-dedication to the understanding and manifesting of love. He failed of course, but he died still trying - weakly and grumpily trying.

Yes, this imaginary exercise makes it possible to discover who you are; and then becoming that, that is, yourself, in real life.

Love is not a feeling, it is a way of being. It is an inner oath to defend your loved one to death, even when he sins seriously against you. Love is really, as Jesus said, to die for the loved one. When we expect love to make our lives more pleasant, instead of sacrificing our lives for it, we are without love and life. Love is the most fearful of challenges, but when you know it, you never want anything else. I suggest reading Ortega y Gasset's essay about it.

When people start to get emotional, be it religious people or analytical philosophers (who are actually worse in this sense), I have noticed that some of the moderators start to get emotionally confused, that is, they lose their objectivity and start adjusting their actions to cater to the complaints of those who are dysregulated. This technique should not work but it does. — JerseyFlight

I'd be surprised if any moderator here reading the first few exchanges would lose their objectivity in the OP's favour: the OP was obviously triggered and moderators see this all the time. Correct me if I'm wrong.

But your general point, oh yes! If there's a state of equilibrium and someone perturbs that, there seems to be a human bias to give more weight to the first narrative they hear. It's very easy to go from nothing to a false story, because there's nothing to contradict. It's much more difficult to get from a false story to a true one because it throws up contradictions that the first story did not. As such, the first narrator gets a receptive audience, the second a sceptical one.

Which is maybe why reactions sometimes seem erroneously emotive: it's an instinct based on past behaviour to control the narrative. The OP has likely had success with this in the past. Coercive controllers work this way too, always making sure that the first story their victim's family hear is their version, She's nuts, she's losing it, I did nothing and she accused me. Darling daughter gets sideways glances henceforth.

Anyway, y'all seem made up now. Sorry for late response, I wasn't getting notifications.

Love is ... — bcccampello

I don't need you to tell me what my life is about. I was trying to engage, with respect, with your topic. But I think I've gone as far as i want to on this occasion.

Just giving my thoughts on it... I can't tell what the object in front of me is about, much less your life. Everything is unique, words most of the time are only analogies that we use to grasp something that is real and cannot really be defined and much less understood by them, if not by contemplation. Be well.

An obituary for the archetype of philosophical Cynicism, Diogenes of Sinope, might be quite fun. But that would take a bit of research.

There are four reasons why the Cynics are so named. First because of the indifference of their way of life, for they make a cult of indifference and, like dogs, eat and make love in public, go barefoot, and sleep in tubs and at crossroads. The second reason is that the dog is a shameless animal, and they make a cult of shamelessness, not as being beneath modesty, but as superior to it. The third reason is that the dog is a good guard, and they guard the tenets of their philosophy. The fourth reason is that the dog is a discriminating animal which can distinguish between its friends and enemies. So do they recognize as friends those who are suited to philosophy, and receive them kindly, while those unfitted they drive away, like dogs, by barking at them.[8] — Wikipedia: Cynicism (philosophy)

I'd like to live like a dog for a while, if I could muster the courage to lose my job and learn how to sleep anywhere and eat anything. Sounds like a good skill to have as we face economic insecurity and increasing poverty in the U.S. Street jars (homes) and dogs (friends) for everyone.