When we make effort to learn things, we memorize, principles, rules, orders, mathematical operations, etc.. We memorize all these things, to be able to recall them, know them, and we can actually use them in the conventional ways, without even understanding them. It's like when people talk, and say things without really understanding what they're saying. It's a matter of being able to repeat, mimic, or copy, without understanding the meaning of what is being copied. — Metaphysician Undercover

Indeed! Not that one should not learn things, and even conventions, but as a way of life it falls short. Use your head, but don't live in it.

then simply being unemployed is a valid option. — ssu

What's so terrible about that? If playing football and painting nails are valid options then why not going for a walk in the park. - Oh wait, that is already a thing - called professional dog walker. And yet looking after one's own children is "simply being unemployed". Looking after someone else's children is a profession, though.

Norway can easily afford the system, but we cannot. — ssu

See I don't believe this. Lockdown demonstrates that we can live without most of the services and with 50% unemployment. If we can live without them, we can afford to live without them. When we don't have to, we probably prefer not to, so most folks will want to work to afford them; that's not a problem either. But don't pretend that the freedom not to be a wage slave is unaffordable.

Tells something that they didn't continue it. So I'm not so sure it's this great solution. — ssu

Well given the overwhelmingly positive results there, it tells me that it would be a great idea, that it would not lead to lots of people just doing nothing or any nonsense like that, and apart from the continuing social pressure to find employment which is just a hangover from the outmoded attitude of a non automated industrial society, there really is no downside. But pressure from capitalists would make it hard to implement widely because it is only the fear and suffering of the poor that empowers employers. If unemployment was no great threat, work conditions would have to be made pleasant and workers treated with respect. That would be awful.

But coming back to universal handouts: unemployment benefits do that thing too (feed people). Or more generally speaking, a welfare state system does it. Why the necessity to give Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates the handout? — ssu

Bill and Jeff have to eat too. So we give them the necessities as of right, and get them to pay some tax on their "earnings" like the rest of us. Is it a strange notion to you that the government serves everyone?

haven't Americans already been give by Trump this during the pandemic? I — ssu

Not sure what's been happening in Trumpton, but here in ready baked Brexitland, there have been arbitrary ad hoc unfair handouts to mainly businesses to continue the pretence that everyone is doing vital work. "Eat out to help out" was the slogan to justify government handouts to Macdonalds and Starbucks, and the policy of not providing meals for children, was named, but not by the government, "Eat nowt to help out."

Why do you think an universal basic handout is the obvious solution? — ssu

Demonstrably, most people don't need to work most of the time, because we can afford to have to pay people for playing football, and painting each other's nails, etc. But they still need to eat. Don't call it a handout as if you own the world. It's a hand round of the plentiful resources of the world.

At the moment people who spend their lives building houses have to pay rent to people who never built shit to live in one of the houses they helped to build. That's a hand out, and a greedy grasping hand it is too.

On a global level the service sector is such a huge provider of employment that the impact that pandemic has had is quite dramatic to overall aggregate demand. Same thing goes for tourism etc. — ssu

Anyone would think that employment had value itself rather than being the cost of producing value. Employment is being produced, but no one is buying it or ever has - you cannot give the stuff away, you have to pay people to take it.

This time every asset category is just overvalued; — Benkei

I'm having a big problem making sense of all this What is the value standard by which every asset category is measured? The best I can make of it is that it is the end of the game of Monopoly; wealth has become so concentrated that the social system of exchange cannot function.

People not playing football, not painting each other's nails, not spending at bars and restaurants and not flying hither and thither on holiday does not cause the collapse of the economy unless the economy is based on pure bullshit. I would have thought that a universal basic income was the obvious solution to such a crisis as we face, linked to food and housing costs.

You are not the only one who is troubled with wandering thoughts. Our mind is extremely roving. But the will is mistress of all our faculties. She must recall our stray thoughts and carry them to God as their final end.

If the mind is not sufficiently controlled and disciplined at our first engaging in devotion, it contracts certain bad habits of wandering and dissipation. These are difficult to overcome. The mind can draw us, even against our will, to worldly things. I believe one remedy for this is to humbly confess our faults and beg God's mercy and help.

I do not advise you to use multiplicity of words in prayer. Many words and long discourses are often the occasions of wandering. Hold yourself in prayer before God, like a dumb or paralytic beggar at a rich man's gate. Let it be your business to keep your mind in the presence of the Lord. If your mind sometimes wanders and withdraws itself from Him, do not become upset. Trouble and disquiet serve rather to distract the mind than to re-collect it. The will must bring it back in tranquillity. If you persevere in this manner, God will have pity on you.

One way to re-collect the mind easily in the time of prayer, and preserve it more in tranquillity, is not to let it wander too far at other times. Keep your mind strictly in the presence of God. Then being accustomed to think of Him often, you will find it easy to keep your mind calm in the time of prayer, or at least to recall it from its wanderings. I have told you already of the advantages we may draw from this practice of the presence of God. Let us set about it seriously and pray for one another. — PTPG, 8th letter.

In zazen, when we realize we’ve been caught up in thinking, we try not to react at all. We just return to wholeheartedly sitting. A classic analogy for this is trying to hold a bowl of water very still. If you shake, or the wind blows, the water will be disturbed, but there’s nothing you can actively do to make the water calm again. Any motion you make, like patting the surface of the water, will only make things worse; the only thing you can do is hold still. Stimulus-independent thinking is like the turbulence in the water, and absorbing yourself in just sitting is like holding the bowl still. Patting the surface of the water is analogous to evaluating your meditation and mulling over how to improve it, feeling frustrated with your mind or with yourself, judging thinking as being bad, or even trying to hold your mind on something in rigid way in order to brace yourself against stimulus-independent thinking.

https://zenstudiespodcast.com/zazenpart2/

Again, it is obvious that the practice is substantially the same across cultures, though the language is different. And this goes too for the recommendation to continue the meditative practice at a less intense level as one goes about daily life. I like that phrase "stimulus-independent thinking" - think about what you are doing and seeing and avoid absent minded thinking. Chop that wood attentively! Read that thread carefully!

Most of us are afraid to hear deeply, but it is only when we hear deeply, when the sounds penetrate deeply, that there is a possibility of a fundamental, radical change. Such change is not possible if you listen superficially, and if I may suggest, at least for this evening, please try to listen without any resistance, without any prejudice - just listen. Do not make tremendous effort to understand, because understanding does not come through effort, understanding does not come through striving. Understanding comes swiftly, unknowingly, when the effort is passive; only when the maker of effort is silent does the wave of understanding come. So, if I may suggest, listen as you would listen to the water that is flowing by. You are not imagining, you are not making an effort to listen, you are just listening. Then the sound conveys its own meaning, and that understanding is far deeper, far greater, and more lasting than the mere understanding of words that comes through intellectual effort. The understanding of words which is called intellectual comprehension is utterly empty. You say, "I understand intellectually, but I cannot put it into practice," which means, really, that you do not understand. — Krishnamurti

http://krishnamurtiaustralia.org/articles/Krishnamurti_on_Listening.html

He often points out our blindness and exclaims that those who content themselves with so little are to be pitied. God, says he, has infinite treasure to bestow, and we take so little through routine devotion which lasts but a moment. Blind as we are, we hinder God, and stop the current of His graces. But when He finds a soul penetrated with a lively faith, He pours into it His graces and favors plentifully. There they flow like a torrent, which, after being forcibly stopped against its ordinary course, when it has found a passage, spreads itself with impetuosity and abundance.

Yet we often stop this torrent by the little value we set upon it. Let us stop it no more. Let us enter into ourselves and break down the bank which hinders it. Let us make way for grace. Let us redeem the lost time, for perhaps we have but little left. Death follows us close so let us be well prepared for it. We die but once and a mistake there is irretrievable.

I say again, let us enter into ourselves. The time presses. There is no room for delay. Our souls are at stake. It seems to me that you are prepared and have taken effectual measures so you will not be taken by surprise. I commend you for it. It is the one thing necessary. We must always work at it, because not to persevere in the spiritual life is to go back. But those who have the gale of the Holy Spirit go forward even in sleep. If the vessel of our soul is still tossed with winds and storms, let us awake the Lord who reposes in it. He will quickly calm the sea. — PTPG, 4th letter

The question of why we content ourselves with a little even when we have intimations of possible abundance is an important one. I think it is fear - the fear of losing the little. I have my little life with its discontents and its manageable pleasures. And I remain in this small known world ...

And always keep ahold of nurse
For fear of finding something worse. — Hillaire Belloc

But if I always keep ahold of nurse, I will never grow up - never enter the torrent of life. The torrent, indeed of myself. But of course to see this much is already to have dipped a questioning toe into the torrent of the unconscious.

"... not to persevere in the spiritual life is to go back."

I have experienced the truth of this myself. It is the danger inherent in studying such works, and explains, perhaps, some of the reticence of mystics to discuss openly. Once one has a glimmer of understanding of the direction one ought to take in one's life, to fail to act from fear, or attachment to the old familiar life, is to betray one's best self in favour of one's worst; it is self harm.

For the past forty years his continual care has been to be always with God; and to do nothing, say nothing, and think nothing which may displease Him. He does this without any view or motive except pure love of Him and because God deserves infinitely more.

He is now so accustomed to that Divine presence that he receives from it continual comfort and peace. For about thirty years his soul has been filled with joy and delight so continual, and sometimes so great, that he is forced to find ways to hide their appearing outwardly to others who may not understand.

If sometimes he becomes a little distracted from that Divine presence, God gently recalls Himself by a stirring in his soul. This often happens when he is most engaged in his outward chores and tasks. He answers with exact fidelity to these inward drawings, either by an elevation of his heart towards God, or by a meek and fond regard to Him, or by such words as love forms upon these occasions. For instance, he may say, "My God, here I am all devoted to You," or "Lord, make me according to Your heart." — PTPG, 4th letter

Br. Lawrence speaks of himself in the 3rd person. A conventional humility. I wonder if you can read through the unfamiliar religious language?

Zen students are with their masters at least ten years before they presume to teach others, after all learning all one can isn’t as easy as learning how to ask a girl out or how to ride ones bicycle. These are lessons that take the span of a decade to master. Nan-in was visited by Tenno, who, having passed his apprenticeship, had become a teacher. The day happened to be rainy, so Tenno wore wooden clogs and carried an umbrella. After greeting him Nan-in remarked: “I suppose you left your wodden clogs in the vestibule. I want to know if your umbrella is on the right or left side of the clogs.”

Tenno, confused, had no instant answer. He realized that he was unable to carry his Zen every minute. He became Nan-in’s pupil, and he studied six more years to accomplish his every-minute Zen. — Zen Koan 35

Sometimes one becomes distracted, until one attains one's every minute presence. I don't suppose I am the only one who sees these wildly divergent cultures saying the exact same things. And if that is so, that explorers of "the outer reaches of consciousness", (shall we say?) have independently arrived at very similar places, then it seems probable that we are dealing with, at the least, a real phenomenon of human psychology. Is that extravagant?

My King is full of mercy and goodness. Far from chastising me, He embraces me with love. He makes me eat at His table. He serves me with His own hands and gives me the key to His treasures. He converses and delights Himself with me incessantly, in a thousand and a thousand ways. And He treats me in all respects as His favorite. In this way I consider myself continually in His holy presence.

My most usual method is this simple attention, an affectionate regard for God to whom I find myself often attached with greater sweetness and delight than that of an infant at the mother's breast. To choose an expression, I would call this state the bosom of God, for the inexpressible sweetness which I taste and experience there. If, at any time, my thoughts wander from it from necessity or infirmity, I am presently recalled by inward emotions so charming and delicious that I cannot find words to describe them. Please reflect on my great wretchedness, of which you are fully informed, rather than on the great favors God does one as unworthy and ungrateful as I am.

As for my set hours of prayer, they are simply a continuation of the same exercise. Sometimes I consider myself as a stone before a carver, whereof He is to make a statue. Presenting myself thus before God, I desire Him to make His perfect image in my soul and render me entirely like Himself. At other times, when I apply myself to prayer, I feel all my spirit lifted up without any care or effort on my part. This often continues as if it was suspended yet firmly fixed in God like a center or place of rest.

I know that some charge this state with inactivity, delusion, and self-love. I confess that it is a holy inactivity. And it would be a happy self-love if the soul, in that state, were capable of it. But while the soul is in this repose, she cannot be disturbed by the kinds of things to which she was formerly accustomed. The things that the soul used to depend on would now hinder rather than assist her.

Yet, I cannot see how this could be called imagination or delusion because the soul which enjoys God in this way wants nothing but Him. If this is delusion, then only God can remedy it. Let Him do what He pleases with me. I desire only Him and to be wholly devoted to Him.

Please send me your opinion as I greatly value and have a singular esteem for your reverence, and am yours. — PTPG, 2nd letter

Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. — Zen koan

Or in this case, mending the sandals of the monks. Sandals are mended, letters are written, in a state of inactivity that fills the whole life where before was the void of self, and desire.

Not finding my manner of life described in books, although I have no problem with that, yet, for reassurance, I would appreciate your thoughts about it. — PTPG2nd letter

I likewise bring my thoughts to you, and appreciate your thoughts - most of them. There is a danger in the solitary life of entering a fugue of self aggrandisement and thinking one is achieving something.

For the first years, I commonly employed myself during the time set apart for devotion with thoughts of death, judgment, hell, heaven, and my sins. Thus I continued some years applying my mind carefully the rest of the day, and even in the midst of my work, to the presence of God, whom I considered always as with me, often as in my heart.

At length I began to do the same thing during my set time of prayer, which gave me joy and consolation. This practice produced in me so high an esteem for God that faith alone was enough to assure me.

Such was my beginning. Yet I must tell you that for the first ten years I suffered a great deal. During this time I fell often, and rose again presently. It seemed to me that all creatures, reason, and God Himself were against me and faith alone for me.

The apprehension that I was not devoted to God as I wished to be, my past sins always present to my mind, and the great unmerited favors which God did me, were the source of my sufferings and feelings of unworthiness. I was sometimes troubled with thoughts that to believe I had received such favors was an effect of my imagination, which pretended to be so soon where others arrived with great difficulty. At other times I believed that it was a willful delusion and that there really was no hope for me.

Finally, I considered the prospect of spending the rest of my days in these troubles. I discovered this did not diminish the trust I had in God at all. In fact, it only served to increase my faith. It then seemed that, all at once, I found myself changed. My soul, which, until that time was in trouble, felt a profound inward peace, as if she were in her center and place of rest.

Ten years of a daily discipline of negative thought. According to Krishnamurti, (I hope he will forgive me for mangling his teachings a little) the self is a centre of thought produced by a process of identification that becomes "sacred"- the all important centre around which all thought (and hence all life) is organised. And this self-identity is the source of all the mischief and all the unnecessary suffering of the world.

So one can see in the case of Brother Lawrence, how the notion of God functions in the mind of the ascetic to displace the self as the centre of life. It is particularly important that the self realises that it can do nothing to 'save' or extinguish, or transform itself. The thinker is a central thought that is sustained by a continuous circular consideration of itself, and every action (thought) of the thinker necessarily sustains and continues it.

Finally, the brother reaches the point where he is more than content to spend his whole life in the process without reaching an end, and that is the necessary condition for the ending of the self. Enlightenment can be obtained, but you or I (as centres of thought) cannot possibly attain it.

This moral surrender should be familiar to anyone who knows of the 12 step program for recovering from addiction. and it goes together with the focus on the present - "one day at a time".

Why not? Is it because you think it's pointless or because it's a tough nut to crack? — TheMadFool

Brother Lawrence said the greatest pains or pleasures of this world were not to be compared with what he had experienced of both kinds in a spiritual state. As a result he feared nothing, desiring only one thing of God - that he might not offend Him. He said he carried no guilt. "When I fail in my duty, I readily acknowledge it, saying, I am used to do so. I shall never do otherwise if I am left to myself. If I fail not, then I give God thanks acknowledging that it comes from Him." — PTPG

I don't believe you have discovered for yourself that suffering pushes you towards God. I think you are repeating some thing you have picked up from the cinema or somewhere. I'm not interested in that, any more than you are interested in engaging with the texts that form and inform the topic of this thread.

Why do you think this is? — TheMadFool

I don't.

So I will repeat what has been quoted and further indicated in all three cases as a direct and solemn warning that to attempt to understand anything of this with thought alone is worse than useless, positively injurious. If you do not sense the significance of the topic, leave it alone for it will only confuse you.

He said that useless thoughts spoil all - that the mischief began there. We ought to reject them as soon as we perceived their impertinence and return to our communion with God. In the beginning he had often passed his time appointed for prayer in rejecting wandering thoughts and falling right back into them. He could never regulate his devotion by certain methods as some do. Nevertheless, at first he had meditated for some time, but afterwards that went off in a manner that he could give no account of. Brother Lawrence emphasized that all bodily mortifications and other exercises are useless unless they serve to arrive at the union with God by love. He had well considered this. He found that the shortest way to go straight to God was by a continual exercise of love and doing all things for His sake. — PTPG - second conversation

And ween not, for I call it a darkness or a cloud, that it be any cloud congealed of the humours that flee in the air, nor yet any darkness such as is in thine house on nights when the candle is out. For such a darkness and such a cloud mayest thou imagine with curiosity of wit, for to bear before thine eyes in the lightest day of summer: and also contrariwise in the darkest night of winter, thou mayest imagine a clear shining light. Let be such falsehood. I mean not thus. For when I say darkness, I mean a lacking of knowing: as all that thing that thou knowest not, or else that thou hast forgotten, it is dark to thee; for thou seest it not with thy ghostly eye. And for this reason it is not called a cloud of the air, but a cloud of unknowing, that is betwixt thee and thy God. — Cloud 84

Krishnamurti seems to be, dare I say, under some misconception then. — TheMadFool

Possibly. I should have known better than to quote him at the top. Ok, Krishnamurti was a charlatan or an idiot or a lunatic. Now go read the God stuff chaps!

The intention seems to be bring about, if my reading is anywhere near the mark, change, not just that but positive change. — TheMadFool

Yes. Krishnamurti at least, rejects authority, including his own, in favour of a scientific approach. Do it for yourself, and find out for yourself. Don't rely on reports from anyone else. But added to this is the rejection of the thinking brain as the agent of transformation, and this latter is very much common ground with the Christian mystics cited above. Thus...

For whoso heareth this work either be read or spoken of, and weeneth that it may, or should, be come to by travail in their wits, and therefore they sit and seek in their wits how that it may be, and in this curiosity they travail their imagination peradventure against the course of nature, and they feign a manner of working the which is neither bodily nor ghostly—truly this man, whatsoever he be, is perilously deceived. — Cloud, 82

You may be able to educate me further, but wiki seems to think that there is reduced and increased activation.

Meditation – Structural changes in areas of the DMN such as the temporoparietal junction, posterior cingulate cortex, and precuneus have been found in meditation practitioners.[45] There is reduced activation and reduced functional connectivity of the DMN in long-term practitioners.[45] Various forms of nondirective meditation, including Transcendental Meditation[46] and Acem Meditation,[47] have been found to activate the DMN. — wiki

It's early days for neurology, and spiritual practice does not necessarily translate straightforwardly into neurological effects, even if one is a determined physicalist.

The handy glossary with the link offered above gives the meaning "Ronner - A gossip or tale-bearer."

Fleshly janglers, open praisers and blamers of themselves or of any other, tellers of trifles, ronners and tattlers of tales, and all manner of pinchers, cared I never that they saw this book. For mine intent was never to write such thing unto them, and therefore I would that they meddle not therewith; neither they, nor any of these curious, lettered, or unlearned men. Yea, although that they be full good men of active living, yet this matter accordeth nothing to them. But if it be to those men, the which although they stand in activity by outward form of living, nevertheless yet by inward stirring after the privy spirit of God, whose dooms be hid, they be full graciously disposed, not continually as it is proper to very contemplatives, but now and then to be perceivers in the highest point of this contemplative act; if such men might see it, they should by the grace of God be greatly comforted thereby. — The Cloud of Unknowing, prologue

An “absolute fact” as I would best define it is a fact that can be regarded/ verified as true independently of or consistently through time. — Benj96

All you have there is a perfectly ordinary fact with a place and time specified.

The cat is on the mat. - An ordinary fact.
The cat is on the mat in unenlightened's living room at 4.15 pm 26 Oct. 2020. A Benj96 absolute fact, true for all time and all space.

Or does it have to be an absolute cat?

I wonder if these two notions of present are compatible, being at the present in the sense of "I am", and the present as a division between future and past. — Metaphysician Undercover

If I put it negatively, psychologically, I might say that the past is trauma, the present is pain, and the future is fear. Or in more neutral terms, the past is knowledge, the present is sensation, and the future is imagination. I would rather view the present as the container of past and future than the divider. The past as memory and record, the future as plan and intention, and habit the thread that joins them.

I guess the ten thousand hour rule applies, but at least the practice sticks. — praxis

Not the best advert I've ever seen, but better than "Hey chaps why not get crucified like me?" With music they give you the results of the 10k hours first and deemphasise the excruciating school orchestra bit.

But I want to tease out the idea of practice a bit.

But that the aspirant can only go as far as his/her body is capable at their stage of development. Or that it is only for some people who are that way inclined. — Punshhh

As to the limits of the body, this is no problem. One can do yoga in a wheelchair, as Mrs un's teacher exemplifies. If one is stiff or weak, one's stretches and poses will be limited, but there need be no comparison as between teacher and student or between practice and performance. Life is for all, and there is no elite, no aspiration, in this practice. What is important here is to notice how one seeks to imagine the result, rather than practice the practice.

And that effort of critical self-awareness is the practice. Has anyone read Aldous Huxley's utopian novel "Island"? The wild parrots on the island are taught to recite "Here and now boys, here and now" just in case the mind should wander. It is my practice to go for a walk every day. I do not expect or intend to get better at walking.

It turns out the hippies were right, there is a cure for conservatism.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-if-a-pill-can-change-your-politics-or-religious-beliefs/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB

Brother Lawrence related that we should establish ourselves in a sense of God's Presence by continually conversing with Him. It was a shameful thing to quit His conversation to think of trifles and fooleries. We should feed and nourish our souls with high notions of God which would yield us great joy in being devoted to Him.

He said we ought to quicken and enliven our faith. It was lamentable we had so little. Instead of taking faith for the rule of their conduct, men amused themselves with trivial devotions which changed daily. He said that faith was sufficient to bring us to a high degree of perfection. We ought to give ourselves up to God with regard both to things temporal and spiritual and seek our satisfaction only in the fulfilling of His will. Whether God led us by suffering or by consolation all would be equal to a soul truly resigned.

Extract yourself, if you can, from the notion that faith as used here is a species of belief, subject to persuasion of argument and evidence. We live in a world of practices, and all our activity is founded on trust. Imagine maybe, how a pole-vaulter is enlivened by faith in his pole.

The idea of giving oneself up to an activity should be familiar enough; the state of mind when there is a focus on something such that one becomes un-self-conscious. There is an immediate paradox here for some, that mindfulness is the opposite of un-self-consciousness. I'll just say for now that mindfulness is a bit misnamed, and well done, it more approaches 'mind-emptiness'.

The last sentence here is a simple response to the problem of suffering from one who has suffered. No argument to satisfy a philosopher, but an observation that the attempt to avoid and escape extends the suffering beyond its natural limits. "A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once." Shakespeare, Julius Caesar.

No worries. :love:

That's actually a bit insulting, you know. Why doesn't everyone that has the least criticism of society go and live somewhere else? I want my country to be pleasant, not some other place.

They have taken power and refuse to relinquish it. — NOS4A2

It's a point of view. My point of view is that we have reached peak travel, and peak noise, and "they" will not relinquish the imposition of endless noise and busy-ness on "us".

A certain amount of people owe a certain amount of other people an apology. — Tzeentch

An amount of apology to an amount of other people. I am very happy to admit that fewer people are dying than I feared. Long may I continue to be wrong about such things in the same direction.

But can we have a continued lockdown anyway, please? It is so restful without the endless traffic all around and above. I had forgotten birdsong.

You don't know what you want. Neither do I. Few to none of us know what we REALLY want because what we really want has so rarely if ever been an option that we have so little real experience in considering it.

[snip]

... more of the same, kinda boring really. So my mind is forced to look further in search of whatever it is it really wants. — Hippyhead

This the logic. The known is always 'more of the same'. You have noticed the limitation of desire, and the inherent contradiction it contains. There is no remedy in the virtual, because there is no real novelty there; the virtual is inevitably an extension of the known.

What's going to happen when we finally get what we've so long dreamed of, that which lies beyond our dreams? — Hippyhead

But then your last question wants to bring what must necessarily be beyond the known within the known. You are bored with a virtual Diane Lane because she is a cliche. There is a lover you will still not know after 40 years of intimacy, and thus you will never be bored. And I am going to tell you nothing more, because I am kind and you are easily bored.

What do you think? Is his sceptical argument valid? And is it sound? — [b][/b]Humelover

Yes of course it is valid and sound. You cannot get an ought from an is, and you cannot get a will be from a was. But don't expect people to stop talking about what ought to be and what will be any time soon, because we simply do expect things to go on much as before, because that's all we got. It's not reason, but the necessity of knowledge poverty aka ignorance.

We (scientists) expect by extrapolation from the observation of the 'main sequence of stars' and other considerations, that one day the sun will not rise, but expand to envelope our planet. But there is no reason why it cannot happen that in 2 minutes the Great Cookie Monster gobbles up the universe and there is no future at all.

They tend to have very fixed ideas about things. — kudos

Some, not all. There is a tendency to forget that the biggest, fiercest dinosaurs went extinct, that the interdependence of every ecosystem includes top and bottom, and puts the top in the most fragile position, survival-wise. And that even biologists and philosophers were once mewling brats needing feeding and changing and nurturing by others. It's largely an ideological thing, I think.

Great minds etc.

See also Aesop.

Cows prey on grass, which is too weak even to run away.

But the predator is dependent on its prey although it is stronger.

Your insight is a traditional Chinese view.

That which shrinks
Must first expand.
That which fails
Must first be strong.
That which is cast down
Must first be raised.
Before receiving
There must be giving.

This is called perception of the nature of things.
Soft and weak overcome hard and strong. — Lao Tzu

Almost as if "the left" isn't a single ideology.
— Michael

Neither is the right, but they seem to do a better job of putting aside differences to access the power of unity. — frank

There are more workers than bosses. The bosses have property, money power and influence in abundance, but lack the numbers. Thus 'divide and rule' has to be the tactic. This takes many forms, manipulation through the media, infiltration of left organisations, bribery of certain segments, fomenting of conflicts of all kinds racial, religious, and so on. There is no solidarity on the right, but a common interest in weakening the left. And of course everybody knows it is far easier to make a little money from a lot of poor people than the same amount from a few rich people. The solidarity of the left is the only enemy of the right.

I can kill someone with a hammer. — Kenosha Kid

https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/claygate-attack-woman-telegraph-hammer-19041217
https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/woman-attacked-moseley-hammer-wielding-18427078
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/news/video-1282394/Portsmouth-hammer-attack-Local-describes-teen-girl-found.html

Not as easy as you might think. Perhaps consider a bladed weapon instead? 'The right tool for the job', I always say.

Indeed. But we are born survivors, so the better metaphor I'd "Gene the Survivor". — Olivier5

No no, the aim of every gene is to go extinct, not to survive, because genes are antinatalists. Fortunately, most genes achieve this sooner or later, and it is only the unlucky or incompetent few that find themselves continuing to be reproduced. (This is a metaphor.)

Where has anyone said that competition in nature is a metaphor? It's one of the three postulates of natural selection. — Kenosha Kid

Alas, I am losing all respect. Genes cannot have an aim, they cannot compete because they cannot know a win from a loss. Competition in nature is not a metaphor when it is used about organisms that can envisage an outcome that is preferable to another outcome. Eg, Stags compete during the rut. It is not the case that genes compete because they are guaranteed 100% aimless.

This is the danger of metaphors. They start off as handy ways of thinking about unfamiliar things and with familiarity become taken literally by people who really ought to know better.

And that's anthropomorphism, an inability to reconcile the literal fundamental altruism of humans and the metaphorical selfishness of genes. Genes aren't people. Metaphors aren't literally true. — Kenosha Kid

The argument of this book is that we, and all other animals, are machines created by our genes. Like successful Chicago gangsters, our genes have survived, in some cases for millions of years, in a highly competitive world. This entitles us to expect certain qualities in our genes. I shall argue that a predominant quality to be expected in our genes is ruthless selfishness. . . Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish (pp. 2-3, my italics). — Midgeley quoting Dawkins

Metaphors aren't literally true. The world is not literally highly competitive, and this does not entitle us to expect certain qualities in our genes, like ruthless selfishness, because it's a metaphor, and so genes are not literally ruthless or selfish. And because genes are not literally selfish, we are not born selfish.

He contends, that is, that the appearance of 'a limited form of altruism at the level of individual animals' including ourselves, is only a deceptive phantom. The underlying reality, as he often says, is not any other individual motivation either, but the selfishness of the genes. — Olivier5

It's extraordinary that the argument has gained any currency. The metaphorical selfishness of genes is used to explain, and prove - against all experience - the universality of human selfishness, from which the metaphor is taken. An argument form worthy of a creationist.

The thing that a metaphor is, is metaphorical and thus not literal. I'm not taking it literally, but you are.

Let us suppose, if you like, that genes behave in some ways as if they were selfish. What is the explanation for this curious fact? Because we agree, certainly, that genes have no self, and no interest in survival or anything else, because they have no brain, no awareness. So this would be something that stood in need of an explanation just as much as if it turned out that genes behaved as if they were altruistic. (Which of course they do all the time -cooperating in vast numbers to produce complex organisms.) But on the contrary, the selfishness of things without selves is taken as - what shall we say? - part of the natural order, and in need of no explanation but the explanation of everything else.

The "selfishness" of the gene isn't built into the gene, but into also the environment, the selection laws that stem from them, and the process of hereditary reproduction. — Kenosha Kid

This is the same equivocation I was complaining of in Dawkins. If its built into something, it cannot be a metaphor. the scare quotes prevent me from taking it seriously, but the continuation of the sentence does exactly that. No. It isn't built in. Selfishness cannot be built into anything that does not have a sense of self. On the contrary it is projected onto the inanimate in a gross anthropomorphism.