Do you not believe that a man has a right, as a matter of dignity and survival, to put effort into a place of nature for his own living? — NOS4A2

A right? Where do they come from? God? You get more and more desperately ambitious in your pronouncements. No, it is an insane suggestion that any man has a right to fence off land and reserve it to his own use without the agreement of his neighbours - which is to say, without entering into a social contract with his neighbours to mutually grant each other such and such rights and such and such redress. And should you wonder who is your neighbour, I refer you to the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Would you actually lay claim to a garden someone else has built and cultivated
— NOS4A2

Yes. As unenlightened had already speculated... — Isaac

And as is happening right now to indigenous people in the Amazon, sanctioned ironically by the government, and as has happened on every colonised continent over and over. This tyranny of property is exactly the social contract that @NOS4A2 thinks he is rejecting.

"Property is theft." Proudhon proclaimed. Because all property is stolen from the commons which is the Whole Earth. But Nos uses Proudhon only as it suits him, he is no anarchist himself as he admits, but an involuntary non-autocrat whining about his impotence.

My garden? Not because I say so, but because I can justify it. I built it, planted it, and tilled it. If you can justify why it is yours, perhaps you can have it. — NOS4A2

Shit, the appeal to justice? Let's invent a court and make with the justification - your private justification has no sway over me. But anyway, you lie. the garden was already there, all you did was tidy it. I liked it the way it was and you ruined it. Now get off my garden and stop ruining it with your wretched building and cultivation of my lovely wilderness.

You and your desire to steal and appropriate another’s things is not unlike the State’s. — NOS4A2

You silly boy! what makes it yours? Your own say so? Or do you have some kind of bill of sale or other social contract that bestows it on you?

If Unenlightened wants VIP access to my garden or other people’s things you might try asking nicely. — NOS4A2

You and your bloody rules imposed by your bloody army.

Evil is a denial of reality itself, and perpetrator and victim both suffer. — Tzeentch

This.
We are fragile, and so we are fearful. And of those whose fragility is exploited and abused, there are some who are destroyed psychologically. One can see it sometimes in the eyes, a deadness, and other times it is covered by the brightest of smiles.
Those whose own fragility has become intolerable, seal themselves off from the world and present themselves as strong. Their strength is to project their own weakness onto the world and punish the world for it. This is hell, because it can never end, and there is no one left to save. Pity the pitiless!

It’s the State. They formed when one group of predatory men sought to exploit the rest. There is nothing public about the State except that they do it all in the open. — NOS4A2

Yes, but you are claiming that when you do it, it isn't the state. The divine right of NOS to his private army etc. Privacy is itself government - thou shalt not forage in my garden. My agri-culture necessarily excludes you, and there can be no privacy without government. Privacy entails contractual agreement just as much as community. You and your insistence on your private property are the predatory and disagreeable government you complain of. Alas for you," To live outside the law you must be honest."

if a private organization seizes power and the monopoly on violence I will naturally oppose it. — NOS4A2

It already has.

It still stinks bad though NOS. All you got is your privates guaranteed by the Godfather.

About the best imagined Anarchist society I've come across is Ursula LeGuin's The Dispossessed.

But there's not much 'private' there, so @NOS4A2 would hate it.

If I could choose to be governed or not, I would prefer to be without all of the above. — NOS4A2

Who wouldn't? We live in the state of anarchy, in which there is no law, and in particular, no law against setting oneself up as a governor or mafia boss. So feel entirely free to hide from the watchers, to disobey the rulers, and do what thou wilt. Tell them I said it was ok.

Sure you can. Private schools, private roads, private insurance, private firefighting, private healthcare, private charity, private armies, — NOS4A2

Private armies???? You can be the boss of a gang, sure, but gangs and armies are public - by definition. so it looks like your professed anarchism is just privatised government. We already got that, and it stinks bad.

This war has gone on long enough. It’s time to negotiate with Mr. Hitler — SophistiCat

"These made up quotes transferred from one war to another are just what one would expect from Himmler's propaganda machine." God.

The confusion that tends to arise is between what energy is and what the energy we use is. What we are concerned with is energydifference. The location of the energy difference is what is confusing about the potential energy of the rock at the top of the cliff, and it is between the rock at the top, and the potential rock at the bottom. Attach a rope and pulley to the rock and its descent can be contrived to do some work, if the rock is a long way from the edge, the work of getting it to the edge would be more than the work derived from its potential energy.

This is called 'Bridge Song'.



It is about the Seeker and his Beloved ( the unnamed Sophia, Goddess of wisdom).

The Beloved invites, and the Seeker always replies:

"Beloved how I love, how I love
To see things through the magic of your eyes
To share things that make your spirit rise up
But try as I might, and try as I may
I can't see anything."

...until the end, where he says "I will see you - more."

We are all seekers and lovers of wisdom here, and you no less than any of us. We share our follies, and hope that wisdom shines through somehow.

To my mind, existential means: relative to existence. — Olivier5

Me too. A gun to the head is an existential threat. A threat to end existence.

But this ...

"Nobody wants a World War, but dictators can only be stopped with weapons." — jorndoe

... is not true. Weapons are only useful for making and carrying out existential threats. Dictators need existential threats, and if people do not agree to make them or respond with fear to them, then they cannot dictate. Co-operators do not need them.

Your fear is the only thing that can dictate to you:

Always keep a-hold of Nurse, for fear of finding something worse. — Hilaire Belloc

Always keep a hold of Putin, or else be shot instead of shootin'.

Now that's a debate. — yebiga

Is it?

It seems to me that much of our contemporary cultural and political melee comes from an myopic emotive emphasis concerning our past mistakes which has left our culture petty, whining, bitter, resentful, shameful, bereft of pride and most importantly - incapable of agency. — yebiga

It seems to me that this myopic emotive view comes about as a result of the myopic, emotive, jingoistic celebration of the wonders of science, christianity, and whatever political system is flavour of the month, while ignoring the cost in terms of war, famine, and pestilence visited on every inhabited continent, not to mention the destruction of the ecosystem, and the creation of climate change. The astonishing achievements of producing global threats to not only our species but also many many others by man-made apocalypses are not anything to be proud of; if only humanity was a little less capable of agency.

Is the Western World really still a force for good? — yebiga

Still? Which good old day are you nostalgic for? Mussolini made the trains run on time, and The British Empire made the trains, and published Marx.

(you only get "nuance" in US strategic thinking when arms and oil interests are in some sort of competition, but if they coincide there is no other possible policy). — boethius

Well that has the bitter taste of truth. The land of the free far too costly.

An adviser to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy posted a message on Twitter saying the explosion which damaged Russia*s road-and-rail bridge to Crimea was just “the beginning”.

“Everything illegal must be destroyed, everything that is stolen must be returned to Ukraine, everything occupied by Russia must be expelled,” Mykhailo Podolyak wrote.

He told Reuters he believed the blast had been arranged by Russia, although he did not say how he knew.

“This is a concrete manifestation of the conflict between the FSB (intelligence service) and (private military companies) on the one hand and the Ministry of Defence/General Staff of the Russian Federation on the other,” he said.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2022/oct/08/russia-ukraine-war-live-news-fire-engulfs-part-of-kerch-bridge-between-crimea-and-russia#top-of-blog

Any other offers on who done the bridge? It does look like, and is claimed to be, a truck bomb. In which case it is most probably be Crimean resistance or some Russian faction. Can we expect more?

Ad break.

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Unfortunately, being free seems to involve being free not to do what one ought to do. I had God complaining to me about this the other day.

I'm saying that Nazi supporters are basically Nazis.

if you want to embarrass yourself by claiming that the difference between Nazi Germany and 1930s England is about the same as the difference between modern Russia and modern Ukraine, then I'm not even going to contest it. It's such a ludicrous claim that it doesn't even deserve comment, you crack on. — Isaac

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/american-nazism-and-madison-square-garden

https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/britain-adolf-hitler-dictator-admiration-appeasement-relationship-britain-germany/

Cracking on, sir, as ordered.

Trying to characterise the woman... imagine an angry toddler with a bag of spanners painted by Hieronymus Bosch.

Warning. Do not attempt to make sense of this government.

I think we might be talking about different kinds of awareness. My focus has been on SA, inseparable from thought. — Amity

Yes. Self-awareness is awareness of self - a complex of habit, memory, thought, narrative, identification.
I am talking of what awareness is, not of what one might be aware.

Lack of confidence, being too self-conscious are hurdles to overcome. — Amity

Now here is something intriguing, or perhaps it is just a matter of accretions of meaning in different contexts ... you seem to be saying that self-consciousness is a barrier to self-awareness. Now I'm wondering what that could mean?

It is an anti-representation theory. Your model of the world works if the end result is that you managed to make nothing unexpected happen. The goal of the brain is not to be aware in an attentive sense.

So the homunculus in chief is the sense of self that arises from being in full control of the flow of reality. The world is unfolding as you already imagined it in terms of your wants and needs. Life is easy. You don’t even have to pay attention or remember.

The future is being cancelled from mind as fast as it can happen. You are driving through busy dangerous traffic and you can’t even really remember the tune you were listening to on the radio as you vaguely daydreamed about this or that. — apokrisis

That has happened to me a few times driving a familiar route, that I find myself arriving with no memory of the journey. And of course the were no cyclists mown down, because if there were any risk of such, the homunculus would have been alerted. Your account of the functioning of the thinking, remembering and decision making mind rings true to me and accords with my experience.

But in relation to the matter of awareness, it simply avoids the question. While I cannot tell you much about that state of absent-mindedness whilst driving, I can confidently say that there was awareness and attention to the road and traffic, because without it there would have been a crash almost immediately. Rather, i would liken that state of mind to a meditative state of alert awareness without the thought narrative.

My theme for the thread has been to distinguish (particularly verbal) thought from awareness. This is naturally rather hard to do in words, and inclined to provoke resistance and incomprehension from thinking verbal minds that dominate philosophy.

Science begins with the observer:- "I think therefore I am", and it seems natural to presume that if I think not, then I am not, but this turns out not to be the case, and the absence of mown down cyclists rather demonstrates it.

Observing and being aware of patterns in the way I learn to be more aware in different situations is awareness of awareness. — T Clark

No. Learning is about memory, and memories are things one becomes aware of when something reminds one. Learning about learning is doubly so. I could put it this way; "Awareness is the present moment", and one can be aware of the past but not in the past. I remember being aware as I wrote that last sentence, that it would likely be confusing, and I am aware as I write this one that I may not be clarifying things much.

It is then noticing it for the first time which is the tricky bit. — apokrisis

Yes, and that's the tricky bit to even talk about. How to notice, how to even notice what it is to notice or as you put it

to kick it upstairs for a full attentive response. — apokrisis

But who is upstairs if it is not the homunculus in chief?

That experience and awareness was helpful in working on other moves. — T Clark

Thanks for that. It's a good description of becoming aware of a subtle sensation that one probably overlooks completely most of the time. I guess it's somewhat similar to the way a musician develops a very precise sense of exactly where their fingers are in relation to keys or strings, a form of proprioception for which we do not really have words.

But I don't think it's awareness of awareness as such. I lie awake in the dark, and very gradually it dawns on me. That is to say I notice the lightening of the sky. but all my description is of the sky of my developing experience of the sky, not my developing experience of what awareness itself is like.

How can an idea be 'empty'? — Amity

If there is a photograph, there must be a camera, but a camera cannot photograph itself, only another camera or a reflection of a camera Thus a camera cannot obtain an image of itself, but proposes that image 'beyond experience', or proposes itself as the unphotgaphable source of photos. One might say that awareness is a virtual image of the unseen seer. One cannot grasp it, but again one cannot dispense with it.

But perhaps I am wrong about this; perhaps someone can describe the experience of awareness. I await with eager anticipation a better explanation.

I've read this a few times now and the meaning is not yet in my grasp. In other words. I'm :chin:
Perhaps if you rephrase the first 2 sentences? — Amity

1. The content of awareness is experience.
2. Experience is everything one can be aware of -self, sensation, ideas, memories the taste of mango, the fear of flying, the sound of mother's voice. Present feeling, past memories, future imagining.
3. Awareness is an idea one has to have in order to understand the world, of something that is outside experience.
Thus one has the idea, but can give it no content, because if it had content it would be an experience that one was aware of not the awareness itself.

So in order not to recreate awareness as an experience one has, that would necessitate another 'one' to be aware of it, I say that we have the idea of awareness, but it has to be empty, silent. Unlike the self, which is this complex of memories ideas and sensations that one is aware of and identifies with.

[This is a repetition in other language of the homunculus problem of indirect realism. You know the story - the eye forms an image on the retina and the optic nerve carries the information to the visual cortex where it is processed, and somewhere behind that is the person who is looking at the screen, rather than directly looking at the world. This is indirect realism, and it is nonsense because the person looking indirectly needs also to have eyes and an optic nerve, and a person in the back of that... ]

So Brexit is not so much an aberration as just one side of a tension that runs through the whole project. We have that in common with the USA. I submit my case. — Cuthbert

I don't see much sign of the US breaking up. My theory is that Brexit is a manipulation of the xenophobic tendencies and imperial nostalgia by the disaster profiteers who have taken over the conservative party. The market manipulation continues with the disaster budget. Expect more crises. It would have been so easy to make a deal with the EU, by simply agreeing to the trade rules - but no, we were so desperate to have the US's chlorinated chicken and fake cheese. But then we couldn't even make that deal, because we 'forgot' the Irish border. I say sabotage!

Below is a rough, first-draft which describes two kinds of people. — Art48

Is this a scientific classification, or a prescientific one? If the former, you should include the research and statistics.

What do you mean by the 'self-complex'? — Amity

Ideas and memories that one identifies with. Answers you might give if I asked you what you're like or who you are. I am ... 70 years old, male, a gardener, philosopher, mathematician, red hot lover, I like marmite and hill walking and I speak French and am married to... not the facts, the habitual ideas or thoughts that occur to me.

How would that manifest as a 'silence' or an 'emptiness'? — Amity

I have to say that, not because I experience something, but because in making the distinction, I have necessarily excluded every positive experience as being 'contents of awareness'. It doesn't manifest, it is the condition required for manifestation. Thus if my inner condition is a cacophony of noise, how can I hear anything? If my head is full of thoughts and anxieties about tomorrow, I cannot give attention to what you are saying. So to be aware is to be silent internally. It is to have room for something new.

So, you are arguably aware of an initial thought — Amity

My main concern in such discussions is to distinguish awareness from the objects or contents of awareness.

So one can be aware of feelings, thoughts, memories, sensations, and so on - or one can have these things but be more or less unaware of them. So, if one can be self-aware, the question arises as to what is the thing that one is aware of - what is the content of that awareness? It should of course be easy and clear what the answer is, because one ought to be aware of it. The answer i give is that self-awareness is always awareness of an idea that one has identified with - the self-complex. To the extent that awareness can be aware of itself, it seems (to me) to manifest as a silence, and an emptiness. I don't know if anyone else has another experience?

I'm in the crack business. It's a rough trade, and subject to much government interference, but it makes me a living.

comparatively speaking. — Olivier5

What are you comparing? The concentration camps in S.Africa and those of the Nazis? the holocaust of the slave trade with the holocaust of the Jews? The argument is too odious to continue.

How do we develop our conciousness and self-awareness?

My first thought... — Universal Student

Is your first thought aware of itself? Or is your second thought a reflection on your first thought (as mine is).

My feeling is that thought distracts awareness away from the present into the labyrinth of thought. Thus the suggestion is that thought and effort in this matter are counterproductive, as if one would strain to relax. the only 'how' to relaxation is to strain, and then stop straining. Think very hard about stopping thinking, and then stop.

Surrender assures peace and save lives. — frank

Well that's obviously not always true. But clearly no one involved is much considering the possibility of peaceful resistance.

Those methods have not proved to work against a ruthless, amoral enemy. — Olivier5

Are you seriously suggesting that the British Empire was anything other than ruthless and amoral?

Gandhi brought Satyagraha to India in 1915, and was soon elected to the Indian National Congress political party. He began to push for independence from the United Kingdom, and organized resistance to a 1919 law that gave British authorities carte blanche to imprison suspected revolutionaries without trial. Britain responded brutally to the resistance, mowing down 400 unarmed protesters in the Amritsar Massacre.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/mahatma-gandhi-changed-political-protest

In theory. In practice, how would you suggest Ukraine to resist Putin's fascist regime and invading armies in a non-violent manner? — Olivier5

I am not sufficiently at peace myself to recommend anything. but the methods are well developed by Gandhi, King and others. It isn't an easy option, for sure.

I think the root of the debate is a profound difference in attitude toward conflict. Where there's a bully, you'll say it's the responsibility of the rest of the population to bow for the sake of peace.

The opposing view is that you have to smash the bully in the nose if you want peace. — frank

Reminds me of MalcolmX accusing Martin Luther king of being an Uncle Tom.

Nonviolent resistance is not non-resistance.