The problem with humanity was when we developed intelligence. Up until that point we carried on within our evolutionary niche like other animals and plants. Thus playing a balanced role within the ecosystem. Once we became intelligent we began to exploit the ecosystem in new ways determined by what we thought was the right thing to do, or what we wanted to do. Unfortunately this determination was not thorough, or considerate enough of the implications of such action, to avert ever and ever greater exploitation of the ecosystem. Leading to the exploitation of geological deposits, which began to harm, poison, the ecosystem.

We have now caught up with what we have done intellectually and do now understand it and how to put it right. But we are in the predicament of having to great a population, which means we will be unable to make the necessary changes quickly, or efficiently enough to offset many of the consequences.

Yes, they have all fallen into line, there is talk of a bung 2 or 3 billion. Also the people in NI are demanding Stormont should sit, anything is better than Blojo.

the real issue that draining England.

Do you mean draining money from England?

You have misread the situation, I can only surmise that it is due to a cultural difference.

They have the misfortune to be born into the role, the're just making the best of a rum deal. I would'nt wish it on anyone.

Anyway back to Brexit, Stormont is back, I didn't see Johnson's speech, but I expect he will be encouraging them to rejoin Ireland, intentionally, or not.

The problem in Afghanistan is not that the US wants them to become a failed state, but any attempts they might have made to restore the country to something constructive always fail and would also fail in Iran. I know that the US was involved in the destruction of Afghanistan, but that was collateral damage, their purposes were to keep the commies out.

It's true that Trump's motives are all about re-election, but he does have the US legacy in the Middle East to attend to and I'm sure he would be happy to wash his hands of it and have the Middle East settle down into some kind of lasting peace. I know he's stupid and could well make things a whole lot worse over there, but this would not be his intention.

Forgive me, I didn't mean Trump would like to see a puppet installed, but rather a progressive democracy installed by the people. I know it may be a hopeless dream. But Trump is not a hawk, he doesn't want to waste time and money in escapades overseas. I am sure he would want Iran to stop being a problem for the region and US forces trying to get out of Iraq.

I don't think anyone can understand what it is like to be a Royal in the public eye unless you are born into it. Also Meghan did not know the extent of press scrutiny in the UK before she got married. She was perhaps a little naive, but no one's perfect.

It makes much more sense to stand with those protesting injustice and tyranny, and to let those privileged westerners protesting their feelings echo away in silence.

I am more charitable towards Trump in this than some. I realise that his vision for Iran is a liberated country returning to how it was before the 1979 revolution and that he would like to see the population rise up and restore the country. I think though that this can not be done by crippling sanctions and strategic strikes on their administration. I would think the education of the population to realise their plight and that they might rise up themselves in their own time. That the sanctions are going to push the country into a worse place, even into the hands of the Russians, which would not end well and be a strategic mistake.

Yes, the way I look at it is that the natural state in a world/realm of manifestation is for there to be one point in one moment, rather like a singularity. This is such that it is also extended in space and time, that it contains all the complexity found in our limited world and the nature of that particular manifestation. But those limited occurrences are natural expressions of the one point and may be, for example a 3, or 4, or 5th dimensional expression of a single point existing in a higher dimension, in which all extension is as one.

This sort of concept can be a tongue twister and philosophically mere speculation.

If one approaches the question from a spiritual perspective you can go a lot further and consider the absolute.

I wasn't expecting that bile from you. I didn't find much in your post which I can agree with. And I repeat the barrage of abuse she has received from the press is unbearable. Yes she may be a bit self obsessed and can't understand what Royal duties are about, but I am sure she would have made a success of it had the press attacks not been so overbearing.

Yes, I agree with every point except the one that they don't achieve anything. They do achieve a lot, certainly enough to justify their privelidge. Harry has for example created the Invictus games and the whole veteran rehabilitation programme around it. Also he has picked up the batton in campaigning against land mines started by Diana. There are many other good causes. I think we can only judge their privelidge in terms of monetary advantage, because the celebrity aspect of it is these days as much a curse as a privelidge, as it was in the past.

Take Prince Charles for example, the contribution he has personally made to the country would amount to a list more than a page in length.

With the ongoing Brexit apparently never coming to a conclusion, are we now also witnessing a Megxit in the British Isles? It looks like we can already give to Prince Harry the 2020 "cuck of the year" trophy!

Yes it's going to happen.
I don't know if you are aware of the nature of the British media. But Harry and Meghan have been hit by a tsunami of racist hatred and personal attacks from the right wing Zenophobic newspapers. Who have raised a campaign of hatred amongst their loyal readers, this has also spilled out occasionally onto the mainstream media.

The debate at the moment, is about the problem of hate news and persecution of royalty in the UK. A topic which rarely comes to the surface, as criticism of the media, is avoided by the media.

I'm responding to the post in the other thread.

Basically still after four years many of Trump's supporters pin hopes to him which won't happen. There was a similar (if totally different) hope when Obama got into power.

This seems to be the result of the populist developments going on. In the UK the people who bought the populism and pinned their hopes on the Brexit project, or Johnson, are going to be disappointed. Not that Brexit won't happen, but that it will improve their lives, or Britain.

They are going to have to rely on their hallucination now, as the unintended consequences role out. Or it becomes apparent that they were voting for a pipe dream.

Yes they are. Many more like e.g. Speaker Pelosi are needed ...

You're lucky, there aren't many here in the UK.

By refresh-rate, you are referring to the duration of a moment for a human, what we would describe as a few seconds. Or about a second with a fade in and out of a second each side, the past and future?
Also you are saying there are other reset periods, like day length determined by physical circumstances?

So, "I will be dead in the future" means the same as "I am dead" yes? That is, if I am dead in the future, I am now dead.

You can't be dead in the future, because there is no future, there is only conjecture. I know from empirical observation that I will cease to be a human being in the present, because I will be dead. Just that it is not this current moment, but another, future, moment, that I am dead.
Our language has developed with many words implying things happening, or being, in the future, or the past, I have written these words in italics. You are claiming that this narrative is false, because there isn't a past and there isn't a future? Well I agree.

Bartricks, seems to want people to agree on one simple point before moving on and has become frustrated that their not doing that. His argument seems to be that past, present and future are logically incompatible properties. I understand what he's saying, but there are subtleties which are missed. He is insisting that all events happen in the present, they logically can't happen in the past and nothing can happen in the future. So the property of something happening (being) in the past is nonsensical, there is no past for it to be in. Humanity has created a false narrative of things being in the past. Likewise there is no future, there is only the present.

These guys, or lady's are in short supply at the moment.

What then is the timeless universe like?

I go further than that, if one is to go to this place intellectually, surely extension, or space is in the same place at the same time. So we have all extension (space) and all time in one place and one time. And the extension and time we experience is some kind of progression (limited) through the all I just mentioned. Somehow we, as a limited person perceives a limited space and time. Or more specifically we experience a point in an apparently endless space and a point in an apparently endless time together as our point of existence, or experience, our being. If one views this from the perspective of a solipsist, it illustrates the point well. Really I think we should view all of humanity as essentially one being which has been extended into 7.5 billion parts, or individuals ( actually I would extend it to the entire biosphere).

So in this scenario we have one being (the human species), in one point of time and one place (the human world), which is somehow extended into 7.5 billion individual points in space. One could also say that this being is extended in time into all the different points of time (moments) experienced by humanity from their evolution a few million years ago, to the distant future (or not so distant).
But rather than place the moments along the linear time line, it makes sense to me to refer to 7billion individual moments, experienced by the 7.5 billion unique points in space, in this one moment of now that we all exist in.

All things that are extended are essentially the same, but apparent difference emerges when extension happens on a large scale. Until there is enough difference to be equivalent to the diversity we find in the world we find ourselves in.

Perhaps, instead of modern contemporary philosophy, try explaining it to the present modern you. If you can explain it to yourself, then it is philosophy.

Yes, this is no problem for me and I do after being on these sites for a few years now use a lot of the accepted terminology and process. But the difficulty arises when I attempt to convey mystical thinking, I use words and concepts which most philosophers find unintelligible.

Let me give you an example, key to my philosophy is the principle of self orientation. Now on first reading that doesn't sound to complex, or difficult a conception to grasp, but it is not that simple. For starters, I haven't come across anyone anywhere who uses or refers to the concept except in a body of work by an author, which I took inspiration from about 20 years ago.

Let's look at self orientation, what is being oriented and in which direction. Let's take what we agreed on, that all absolute beings are fully present with all limited beings at all times. If that limited being learns skills of orientation via communion with and guidance from those absolute beings, alignments of sorts can be established. This provides the opportunity for the limited being to develop alignments and communication with those absolute beings enabling aspects of growth in the development of the being, via control and mutual alignment with the absolute being through a process of growth/ development and greater alignment, thus a daily practice is developed leading to what could be described as spiritual growth, or walking the path. The limited being if so desired, or if they posses the appropriate faculties to align aspects of mind and intellect, so developing transcendent insight, for example. Can then develop intellectual understanding of what he/she is aligning with.

This is a simple introduction to the conception, which is I think easier to understand when applied to absolute beings, because they are greater, or further advanced than us, while easily understood through common understanding of deities.

I expect you will understand what I am saying, but I doubt many on this forum would give it much credence.

Quite, a lot of my explanation would be in relation to the self, being and life, following on a journey.

None of us are going to crack the code.

But I have cracked the code, for myself. But in a way that is almost unintelligible to others, except others who have followed a similar path to myself.

Also crack the code can be debated extensively and may be meaningless.

I will say though that I would answer you question in the OP with a yes. But if I were to explain this, it might come across as unintelligible to people coming from the perspective of western philosophy.

Well anyway, Trump is a showman, any stream of consciousness he appears to be performing is little more than a conjuring trick, like Billy Graham. I don't want to be disparaging to Billy Graham, but he new how to work a crowd.

The problem as I see it is the approach of academic philosophy. You can see it in the subject/object thread. These intelligent philosophers going around in circles chasing their tails, over the difference between the neumenon and the thing in itself, for example. I haven't delved all that far into metaphysics because it seems to be more of the same and trying to understand it is unnecessarily confusing.

I find myself coming to the forum already with a breadth of understanding of issues like what your OP is about, but from a different philosophical tradition, reluctant to broach many of the subjects because I just get shouted down by academic philosophers, especially the post modernists, as talking new age nonsense. Well if I'm spouting nonsense, what are the post modernists up to, I ask?

I'm already there, have been for a long time. The difficulty I have is the translation of those ideas into a form palatable for contemporary Western Philosophy.

Yes.

Quite.
Is this a philosophical discipline, or is there literature relating to it?

Reasserting one’s sovereignty is always the right thing to do. The EU is more a centralized technocracy which itself deals only with political elites. There is no popular vote, no democracy. I think the instinct for democratic choice and the entrenched reliance on common law procedures has led to a deep suspicion of the European ideal.

I agree with ZhouBoTong, that is a universal nationalism, the sort of idealism which has resulted in Brexit. If one looks at the realities on the ground, there is a large price to pay for such ideals. For starters it is probably going to lead to the break up of the UK. Why on earth would one want to do that.

Now we have Johnson imposing a kind of exit from the EU which will be decided by a handful of partisan people who are demonstrably putting party before country. While arrogantly telling Scotland that they can't leave the UK for similar reasons. The hipocricy is breathtaking, but that along with the duplicity, deceit and lies is the day to day reality of our government. They are far worse than the worst excesses of Trump, who is trying to do the right thing, which is not easy for someone who is not a politician. There are large numbers of people in the UK who are disgusted with our sham of a government and who realise that we are going to be worse off not only economically, but our integrity and reputation on the world stage is in tatters. And that being a member of the EU is far better than this farce.

What a great idea, I can't believe no one thought of doing something like that before.

I would point out though, that we have seeded very little sovereignty to the EU. But rather agree to work to the same rules on many things. Rather like in a trade agreement, but more integrated than that.

I agree with your overarching idea. In this scenario though any absolute being, is present with any limited being at all times and in all places and in any sense. So the limited person is in communion with all absolute beings eternally, were they to know it.

↪Brett

The trouble with Brexit bias, many of us don't know if it is right, or wrong. Was it the right thing to do, is it better for our country, is the EU going to collapse in debt, or are we. When one is so uncertain to then have xenophobic populism etc shoved down your throat doesn't feel right either way.

Well unless you're certain it was the right thing to do, in which case everything is rosy. But that can be nothing more than a wing and a prayer, because no one really knows if it was the right thing to do and if they think it was they are being deceitful in some way.

↪Brett
"And yet you argue against what Johnson has done. With what knowledge do you do that?"

That's easy, it's politics. But with Brexit, no one knows what the long consequences are either of staying in the EU, or leaving, it hasn't been done before and in a world in such flux no one really knows what's going to happen. It reminds me of captain Oates, on captain Scott's expedition to the South Pole. Who left the tent at a point of crisis in a ferocious blizzard saying, "I am just going outside and may be some time" and was never seen again. It is a haunting image of a person somewhere between life and death choosing oblivion. I get this sense of foreboding about Brexit, as do many others. Are we in a hipnotic state, blind folded, walking towards the clifftop?

I will paste this post into the Brexit thread, it should be there rather than here.

Stream of consciousness is an ecstatic state, more like the trance of a medium. What Trump is doing is showmanship, it might look the same but it is a charade, if he's claiming it's stream of consciousness. I don't think he is making that claim, I don't think he wants to disguise his showmanship, it works and people like it.

Just talking without a script.

Iran finally admits it shot down the jet. Incompetence.

All the more reason to enable Iran to move forward without feeling the need for nuclear weapons. Fat chance of that now.

Yes, I can see the kogs turning behind his eyes. I am familiar with stream of consciousness and what I see is someone who is not reciting a prepaired speech, but improvising. That is not stream of consciousness.

I will approach the issue from left field. I once had a visionary dream in which I was taken up by Christ and experienced my past and future, the past and future, laid out on the ground (in the dream I visualised this as the houses in my street with the roofs taken off and as one moved across a room one would have been traversing time.), as I was lifted I saw more of the landscape, hence a broader space of time. The Christ communicated to me in such a way without speaking, but rather like the almost telepathic understanding between a mother and baby.

My point being that reality is probably not what it seems, spatial, temporal conditions may only be a function of something else more real like a soul, or ethereal world. This suggests, or implies an atemporal, unextended (spatially) reality. But also transcendent and possibly omniscient from our position within it. Allowing everything to exist at once.

I think the country was in a state of startled chaos, anything could have happened. It doesn't bode well for when they get their nuclear bomb.

The trouble with Brexit bias, many of us don't know if it is right, or wrong. Was it the right thing to do, is it better for our country, is the EU going to collapse in debt, or are we. When one is so uncertain to then have xenophobic populism etc shoved down your throat doesn't feel right either way.

Well unless you're certain it was the right thing to do, in which case everything is rosy. But that can be nothing more than a wing and a prayer, because no one really knows if it was the right thing to do and if they think it was they are being deceitful in some way.

Question: why do we talk about Trump, but not Putin's persecution of homosexuals or Chinese concentration camps?

We don't talk about it because it hasn't been fed to us by the media. We talk about what we have been fed. People like me in the UK are acutely aware of this because we were onlookers while our media was controlled and manipulated by xenophobic rightwing media organisations during the Brexit process. Hence my rant against The Daily Mail earlier today( in the why do you think the US is going to war with Iran thread).

Now I am sensitised to this influence I can see how the media organisations are feeding us a narrative. The reasons why we get this story over the concentration camps in China should be analysed. At first sight it seems to me that rolling news looks for breaking news and when a story comes up which reaches a certain threashold of importance, it then gets blanket coverage and we all talk about it to the expense of all the other stories. This results in media organisations throwing all their weight behind certain stories, while ignoring others. This bias can be manipulated and was during the Brexit process.

Another side effect of this system is that we can become obsessed, or anxious about certain stories which are deemed to be of importance. Again this has a direction over time and can be manipulated.

We should make ourselves aware of the bias in the media we consume.

In the UK people are starting to plant trees, our biggest land owner National Trust has already started a programme of mass planting, with volunteer groups among their members. I am interested in ideas around permaculture and forest farming. It will however be a slow progress to alter the industrialised farming practices we have. Also there are a growing number of land owners embarking on re-wilding their land with remarkly quick increases in bio diversity.

This is as we know against the backdrop of the global crisis and I don't think we can in the UK anticipate just how our climate is going to change. This is due to the unpredictability of what will happen to the Gulf Stream, whether it will switch off, when and what would be the consequences. Will we have longer colder winters, will they be dry, or have significant snow fall. Will we have long dry summers, or changeable wet summers. We seem to be getting all these conditions in what feels like a rollercoaster at the moment, with them getting gradually more extreme. The record highest December temperature was recorded a few weeks ago at 18 degrees Celsius. I expect a cold spell with close to record low temperatures in a few weeks.

I believe that it would be naive to think that Iran does not already have a nuclear bomb. Knowledge obtained can rarely be eliminated.

Yes, I had considered that, the Russians could have given them one. I don't see why they would not want to tell the world about it. Because the main purpose of nuclear bombs seems to be to waive them in other people's faces.