But what about the heroism that ultimately saved the surviving folk ? Don’t you see any nobility in that?

That gives meaning, despite the tyranny of evil man.

Something worth living for.

Something worth fighting for. — invicta

If you say so.

I take it most nihilists believe that nothing means anything? If nothing has any meaning why aren't more nihilists jumping off bridges and what not?

Where do nihilists believe meaning comes from if it were to be legitimate? — TiredThinker

There's a crowd of self-proclaimed nihilists on reddit. The loudest ones are fairly plaintiff and anti-natalist. The rest are so-called "positive nihilists", such as myself. It usually comes down to what aspects of life transfix you and so forth.

The answer to the second question is basically, no where. There is no meaning. This is harshest in regard to things like the Holocaust. There's supposed to be some sort of redemption in meaning, I think. Without that, it's just abysmal and oh well.

There's a weighty psychological and emotional side to it. Some just aren't going to go in that direction because they don't have the constitution for it. Some can't avoid it for various reasons.

I think there's probably a lot of chanting going on, like "I'm a terrible son." "Why are they calling me? I prefer text messages because I have so much more time to prepare to act like a regular human being on text messages." "I work hard to protect my ability to be abnormal, so you guys can screw yourselves!"

Personal chanting is supposedly the magic by which we create the world. So why does it seem that the world is totally fucked up? Because that's what we wanted. Utopia is boring.

**God, that's such smug bullshit. I bet all the people who like smug bullshit will appreciate it. God, they're so smug.**

The US CPI numbers came out this morning and inflation is higher. Powell has already warned that he's hawkish on increasing rates, but there was just a bank failure in California that increases fears of more bank failures due to negative P&L on their books as a result of rate hikes.

So the economy is between a rock and a hard place: if the fed does nothing, inflation continues to climb, if they act, it could potentially cause a string of bank failures the government would probably have to deal with.

It all just dissolves back into the mud from which it came.

A convergent series tends to a limit, gets closer and closer to a given number as the set increases. — Isaac

It never reaches the limit. Ok, try divergent progression.

Then you're not distinguishing between progress and merely 'change'. — Isaac

Think of a convergent progression in math. If that doesn't explain it, I probably won't be able to by adding more words.

Then toward what is it progressing? — Isaac

Just means development. Like if a person has had a stroke and now their mental status is degrading, one of the possibilities is that it's a progression of the stroke.

Progress can also be an element of goodness. In Christianity, goodness is not something we necessarily see by looking at a person's circumstances. It's that a person is always progressing toward God, trying to become better and reaching for redemption. This is part of our Persian birthright.

If cancer progresses, it's not toward a goal. It just means it's continuing to develop along certain lines. Enlightenment progress is like that in some ways since evolution is an example of it. The whole point was that there's no purpose to it.

The idea that it's only progress if it's toward something good is the reinsertion of values after we've already seen that we're just accidents doomed to oblivion. Since we can't seem to maintain an entirely amoral outlook for long, we'll find values one way or another. In other words, it's going to be progress of some kind, since progress has been an element of goodness since the west adopted the Persian worldview a few thousand years ago.

That’s my middle name. — Jamal

I knew it!

Fair enough. I have no wish to trigger sensitive Americans so I’ll retreat from this conversation. — Jamal

Looks like unjustified arrogance.

:up:

But is that like saying that since knives are used to kill, and killers are destroying their own world, knives are inherently self undermining?

I think you have to argue that we'll never have the wisdom to use our power wisely. It comes back to your vision of humanity.

I'm sorry if it wasn't clear. A species, such as Elm disease, that destroys its environment will not last long. Aeroplanes are part of the fossil fuel dependent culture that cannot long continue and will die out. — unenlightened

You mean the petroleum dependent way of life is doomed. I agree.

Looking for Progress and her sister, Endless Growth, is a wretched mistake that leads to the cliff edge — unenlightened

But amazingly, it's the technology rich societies whose populations are decreasing. It's countries that allow education and opportunity to women who have the unprecedented problem of transitioning to a smaller labor force because women are becoming professionals instead of baby machines.

It appears that it would help the environment if this culture, which for the first time in history treats women as adult citizens, would spread and bring the global population down.

There are alternatives to petroleum. We're working on fusion power now. It's possible to maintain the infrastructure of global community which allows us the ability to help one another and fulfill the potential we see in our dreams. We don't have to go backwards.

I am likening humanity to a species that we call a disease, that has not established a stable relationship with its environment but undermines it. I am arguing that this undermining is what we call progress in our own case. — unenlightened

I agree with this assessment. What's at issue is whether progress is exclusively a threat which must be abandoned, or if it's the solution to the problems we face.

This is where temperament comes into play, isn't it?

Maybe if it were possible for us to step back far enough we'd clearly see the Truth of Eternal Recurrence. Everyone's experienced déjà vu, after all. How much more proof do we need? — praxis

There's a little underground railway between the Eternal Return and Kierkegaard's Repetition.

The charge to board that train is 5 euros.

I think you have lost track of the argument.The demise of the dinosaurs made room for the age of mammals. This is not a progression but a succession. — unenlightened

I think your argument was that airplanes are the product of a diseased breed, so it's foolish to think of them as progress.

The sun of optimism can never bring light to pessimism. That bitterness is a black hole.

I said it was a rumor, not that it was God's Truth. — praxis

It's opposed to evolutionary biology. That trumps whatever God was going to say.

That's pseudo-science

Rumor has it they tend to be selfish. — praxis

Humans?

Do I? — unenlightened

You overlooked the possibility that our demise might allow some other species to flourish, and therefore the airplane very well may be a stepping stone to something amazing. I think that's because you think the end of us is the end of everything.

As I see it humans are making progress like Dutch Elm disease, thriving and growing and spreading until it wipes out all the Elms, and then itself. — unenlightened

You talk of humans as if they're the epitome of life. Who knows what glorious six legged creatures require our particular ashes in order to take off and become galactic explorers?

You aren't truly pessimistic until you rejoice in it. You're just jaded.

if the starting point is the extended family/tribe, the smallest viable group, there are only extinction, stasis, or enlargement as options. — unenlightened

But for hundreds of thousands of years, our species acquired skills only to lose them again. Stasis was the rule.

Something unusual happened about 60,000 years ago so that we started maintaining skills over time, allowing for accumulation and advancement.

So instead of developing the smelting of iron, only to lose it in the face of environmental disaster, disease, or war, we kept that skill and then went onto invent airplanes and so forth

I don't expect a response, just pointing out that progress isn't accidental for us. The conditions that set us in the path to progress may have been accidental, but ever since then, we've been taking the world into our own hands.

I'll just be over here in the corner.

Ok, cool. I don't know how that affects the discussion. The word used to mean that, now it means what it means now. There's no special mojo that makes the original use of the word have some power after that use has fallen out of favor. — Noble Dust

True. Today they take it to mean submission to God. I just meant that it doesn't come from their fiber, it comes from their heritage.

Again, the word Islam means "Submission"; it's in their very fiber, it would appear. — Noble Dust

That word is an inheritance from the Arabian culture that produced Islam. It was originally an agreement between traveling merchants and raiders. A merchant could "submit" to a raider a gain protection. Muhammad was a merchant at one time, and then he became a raider.

A faithful muslim obeys and honors their religious authorities — Noble Dust

They don't have religious authorities that compare to Christian ones. There's no Muslim pope. There are guys who serve the community, there are Muslim scholars of various schools, but none of those exert authority per se. So in Saudi Arabia, the power behind the Wahhabi family is the monarchy. In turn, the Wahhabis assure the legitimacy of the king. It's a very stable relationship.

Christian authorities don't need that kind of backing, which makes separation of church and state a little easier to accomplish.

I think the archeology associated with early humans shows pretty clearly that what marks us as different from other hominins is that we have the ability to hold on to skills and therefore progress. Whether it's something that should be happening or not, we do, and one assumes we will continue to until circumstances make that impossible.

There is a strain of counter sentiment in us. It's the part of us that looks fondly at the past, as if the past was the golden age, and everything has now gone to shit. I think this is a manifestation of essential conservatism in the face of rapid change. It's the tug of an anchor, and so a good thing.

My water heater recently stopped working and I've been too busy to replace it, so I've been experimenting with living without running hot water. I've actually been amazed that I don't really need it. I can heat up water to wash the dishes and bathe. Why on earth does anyone need the hot water to come out of the faucet? Cold showers are actually really refreshing, btw. Plus they're associated with an extended dopamine release. Just imagine you're in the woods at a waterfall.

Not only that, but the narrative offers either the present day or a future utopia as a stand-in for the Day of Judgement, or perhaps for heaven, and it begins to look like a matter of faith. Faith that progress can redeem humanity, that everything will be worth it in the end. — Jamal

According to John Kenneth Galbraith, progress, as an ideal, is rooted in Zoroastrianism (nod to Nietzsche). It's supposed to coincide with the uncoiling of cyclical time so that we're now headed into the unknown. In other words, it's not a stand-in for Armageddon and Judgement Day. It's the same thing showing up in the clothes of the present age.

We're in the world. We're part of reality. It isn't something separate from us, that we observe. But this is old stuff. — Ciceronianus

Panpsychism. :up:

Yes, there are many of those too. When the context is Western metaphysics, the use I've been arguing for seems to be the main one, and it's the minimal, most neutral sense, in line with the grammatical basics: a being is what can be said to be. — Jamal

Oh. Ok. Thanks

Oh. Ok. I didn't see that post. I could probably do a long list of philosophical citations where "a being" means a person. I guess it comes down to context.

No, that’s not true, unless you mean “a human being.” — Jamal

Or divine being. I don't know of any cases where "a being" isn't a person.

A victim need not be helpless — Hanover

Maybe not utterly helpless, but the point is that victimization means one's will was thwarted. In whatever way you've been a victim, you were powerless in that area.

Even in philosophy "a being" usually refers to a person of some kind. It's the capitalized Being that Wayf has mistakenly read to mean consciousness. The occasional off the wall misreading of this it that philosopher gets thrown in.

The injustices of the present can be so enormous and it can create hate. — ssu

And the cost of one act of violence is much bigger than the immediate victims. One man is murdered and his younger brother goes off the deep end and ends up with a failing heart from drug use. One bullet hits the whole family.

Being in uniform for your country doesn't make oneself evil in my view. — ssu

There's evil in there somewhere, isn't there? What do Ukrainians think when they see Russian soldiers coming their way?

Yes, according to Deleuze. — Joshs

And Hegel.

This can be seen from the way in the US a veteran having a Purple Heart is quite respected. Nobody (perhaps with the exception of the draft-dodger Donald Trump) will think a Purple Heart receiver is a loser. Or a helpless victim. — ssu

Trump was talking about John McCain, who was tortured for five years as a POW. It left him with a limp and unable to lift his arms above his head.

McCain was part of a force waging a proxy war in Vietnam. He's a good example of how we each have the potential for evil and good. He was an American soldier on the wrong side of history, so evil, he was white, so a beneficiary of evil, he was a POW, so powerless, he was a senator who helped outlaw torture by the US government, so a hero.

:clap:

This person is not afraid to meet the people or to enter into dialogue with them. — Paulo Freire

What an amazing idea. We can shut up and listen.

What do you purpose? Leave the victim alone in his/her suffering and trauma? — javi2541997

No. Beware labeling her as a victim though. That label is helpful for defending her and prosecuting her abuser, but if she keeps that label long term, it's crippling to her. Let her tell you what she is. Allow her to heal. Allow her to leave behind helplessness.

It's a subtle ethical point, but as long as you look at her as helpless, with you being the strong hero, you're helping yourself to honor you don't deserve and blocking her path to freedom.