I am against assertions made not for any reason, not "because of..." anything, but "just because"; bare, unsupported assertions that some claim is true because it just is, with no further justification to back that claim up; assertions put forth as beyond question, for if they needed no justification to stand then there could be no room to doubt them.

As instructed by you, and in fideist tradition, I am against and doubt this assertion. Consider the unwritten essay, 'against scepticism'. Again Witty's notion of 'bedrock' is useful here. And remember that even scientists stand on the shoulders of ancestral giants.

If we pick our initial opinions for no solid reason, we are in a sense picking our opinions at random

But no one does that. If I believe that Jesus was the son of God or that stepping on the cracks will bring bad luck, it is for the very solid reason that the tradition has is it so, and one needs a reason to doubt tradition. And if you care to experiment in a cold climate, you can verify to your own cost that stepping on the cracks does indeed bring bad luck. And good luck to you.

Since when does the mad axeman ask first? — Bitter Crank

Since he was an Englishman, obviously.

1 Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, 2 and he began to teach them. He said: 3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. 5 Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. 6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. 7 Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. 8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. 9 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. 10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Surprisingly, Jesus does not say how happy are the lottery winners, those whose wives give great head, popular politicians, and receivers of honours, emmys, baftas, Nobel laureates, etc or people who are well tranquillised.

Seems to me that everyone wants to be happy — Wallows

If you define happiness as getting what you want, then everyone wants to be happy, because everyone wants what they want. But this says very little.

What good will being a tormented soul do you? — Wallows

Interesting that you regard any strong feeling as torment. I dare say you are not alone.

I want to be rationally motivated to do things that will help other people be happy and keep me and them alive to continue being happy, and then so long as I'm doing the best I can toward those goals, be happy with the things that are already good and calmly undeterred by the things that are still going wrong. — Pfhorrest

I don't. I want to be angry about injustice, worried about my children, desperately sad about the state of the world, agonised by love, and frightened, mainly, of becoming an unfeeling grinning mannequin. To choose only happiness would be to reject most of life.

Do you even want to be happy all the time? Happy when bad shit happens? Happy when people near you are in trouble? Happy when the mad axeman asks you to bare your neck?

When I am unhappy with things, I'm motivated to make them better - run away from the mad axeman, comfort the sick neighbour, clean up the shit. Right now I want to take away your happy pills 'coz they won't do you no good.

It needs to be flexible enough to be continuously re-purposed for evermore nefarious ends. — alcontali

Why not ever less nefarious ends? I applaud your suspicion, but not your despair. For the word to be repurposed and betrayed it must have a meaning and a purpose.

Democracy is a scam. — alcontali

You cannot have a scam without there being legitimacy. One cannot be deceived unless there is a truth of the matter.

A good school for democratic leaders would be a democratic school.

http://www.summerhillschool.co.uk

The size of the government is not that important.

It ain't the meat it's the motion.

What have you discovered about the truth of the matter so far? — TheMadFool

Last night I saw upon the stair,
A little man who wasn't there,
He wasn't there again today
Oh, how I wish he'd go away...

Hughes Mearns.

Congratulations on regaining sovereignty. — NOS4A2

I don't think our Sovereign frequents this site. We subjects gain nothing.

I take it that's offering a Wittgenstein quote that you think encapsulates the same thing that I'm saying? If so, thanks — Pfhorrest

Well it came to mind as I read you. But I think on further consideration W realised that there are questions that can only be answered with one's life. "Do you take this woman to be your lawful wedded wife?" It is not "I do" that answers, but the actual doing.

Very loosely speaking, that general view I support is merely that there are correct answers to be had for all meaningful questions about both reality and morality, and that we can in principle differentiate those from the incorrect ones; and that those correct answers are not correct simply because someone decreed them such one day, but rather they are independent of anyone's particular opinions and grounded instead in our common experience. — Codex into

For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed.
The riddle does not exist.
If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

I mean isn't abuse itself preventable? Why create a problem (abuse) and look for a cure (based on resilience and fragility)? — TheMadFool

There is a deal of material, and some links in the thread I linked earlier. Bruce Perry has a useful analogy to aid a general understanding. One develops muscles by stressing them, and actually causing little tiny tears, and they grow stronger. The trick is to start with the small weights, and increase as the muscles increase. To start with the heavy weights will not develop muscles but damage and so weaken them. Likewise, one offers small challenges to a child, and as they become more resilient they can face larger challenges.

"Resilience" has become a buzz-word these days, and is much used by people who have little understanding. But it has a particular meaning in this context and is developed through caring relationship (not government program). Here's a simple example.

When an infant becomes mobile, and starts to crawl, stairs become a danger, because climbing up is easy, and falling down is even easier. So perhaps one uses a stair gate. This protects the child from trauma - falling, but does not develop resilience - teaching them to navigate the stairs safely. To develop resilience, one spends time with the child, allowing them to climb, catching them if they fall, and showing them how to come down safely by crawling backwards. And so the danger becomes an adventure and a liberation.

As if liking and not liking is something other than life. Reminds me of the horror story of the man who was disgusted by the idea that his body contained a skeleton, and eventually found a doctor to remove it...

I do not see a theme song on the thread. Take your pick:







Variations on a theme of 'lay me down'. Note the dual meaning of putting aside and expression.

Or for a fuller exposition of the philosophy, and complete marriage to life, perhaps this: "when I was deep in poverty, you taught me how to give".

As... — Ashbery

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof is immortal and free.

'Elsewhere', the examined life is seen as drunk; the looming self and distorted world of the convex mirror. Elsewhere, in the examined life, mortal and unfree, this packet of self never simply is but always is as -as if - never the one, always the waiting - for Godot or some(other)one. Harsh words of being to self, or of poet to portrait. The world is re arranged around the looming face peering out of the porthole of the packet boat. There is a helplessness in the inevitable distortion of a point of view the world reflected in a bubble. This poem is a speech bubble in which you might see yourself or not.

Experience is always in the past. And here is a blast from the past by the Professor of Experience himself that both expounds and exemplifies:

If you have a better way to encapsulate it, or have other things to add please do. — Pop

This used not to be a question very much. The problem with consciousness based definitions can be seen in many art galleries - a small pile of rubble, or a banana taped to the wall is art because it is done consciously by an artist. It's depressing, and the reason is the triumph of physicalism. For physicalists, man is part of nature and art is part of nature and so the distinction between artificial and natural collapses.

One needs God, or the spiritual to maintain the distinction, a triumvirate of man, god, and nature is more stable, and allows that mere consciousness is not enough for art, it needs a spiritual dimension. So chuck out the rubble and the bananas, and insist on your art being on more than a mere physical level, and more than just an idea someone had.

(For those with an allergy to religious language, one might frame the triple as material, informational, meaningful.)

How do you make sense out of a god that cannot reproduce without a human female? — Gnostic Christian Bishop

By hypothesis, I don't need to, since he produced the first woman anyway. But alas I, a mere mortal, have no cure for literalism. You don't even want to understand, and I am not a Christian, so I'll leave you to your knockdown defeat of whatever you think you are defeating.

So i suppose you think — rhudehssolf

A standard rhetorical move. You make an argument that if I think X, this implies that I should accept Y. If Y does indeed follow from X, it is a legitimate move, and if not it is illegitimate. In this case you are introducing terms I have not used - 'noble' and 'dishonourable', as well as making a universal 'every persuasion based on fallacies and other similar means...' when I have explicitly remarked that even in the formal context of the courtroom, there are grey areas.

I regard this as merely poor rhetoric on your part, not propaganda. You asked for a distinction, and you got one. but this does not imply that either term applies to all speech acts.

...BUT...the Immaculate Conception has nothing to do with Jesus. (A common mistake made by non-Catholics and sometimes by Catholics also.) — Frank Apisa

I bow to your superior knowledge on the terminology, but...

It has to do with the notion of original sin. See the op, question, was Jesus born with original sin?

If you buy original sin as something literal, then you need the literal immaculate conception virgin birth to allow Jesus to evade it in order to be literally, the perfect sacrifice. The whole doctrine makes sense in its own terms, so the argument of the op fails. They've had 2000 years to work these things out, and unsurprisingly, some random poster is not going to trip them up now. If on the other hand, your translation of the relevant verse is "and the bullshit of the fathers shall be visited on the sons unto the seventh generation" all you need is that Jesus was born metaphorically deaf.

Rhetoric is used by, for example, legal representatives in court to make the best possible case for their side of a dispute. They do not resort to falsehood or meaningless but emotive slogans, that would be propaganda. There are quite strict rules to allow the one and prevent the other in court though their interpretation is open to dispute as always.

So, yes there is a big and important distinction based on the notion of truth, with blurred edges.

If god did not want rivers to speak, He would not have given them mouths.

I await your close questioning.

It's not that stupid. — TheMadFool

I'm afraid it is. There are differences in eye colour, we can see them, people talk about them, they are genetic. I have blue eyes, my wife has brown eyes. Nobody cares. It's the caring about skin colour, the assigning of meaning to it that stands in need of explanation.

The original racism is royalty - that bloodline of superiority that is attempted to be justified by special marks of the body and refinements of mind and spirit. It's bollocks of course. The caricature of the Jewish nose is used to justify the hatred, it is not at all the origin.

Art. an abréviation of artifice. Whatever is not natural.

Who gives a fuck. — Banno

That is indeed the crucial question. and the answer is 'no one'. It was an immaculate conception and no one gave a fuck, and that is why Jesus was born without sin. But he was born of woman and thus also fully human. As the op well knows.

But this is the triviality of such discussions, one takes a metaphor and a psychological insight as literal and then claims that magic is impossible. Not even stupid.

Royalty is itself a racial term. To make the monkey comparison with them is also racist.

And yeah your arse and mine and 180's can discuss this further on a gold plated toilet seat when hell freezes.

Scruton's career provided gravitas to hate speech and dehumanization via a veneer of elegant writing and highfalutin rhetoric in order to frame and legitimate Islamophobia, misogyny, homophobia, etc. as profound intellectual positions. They are not. — Maw

And I'll stand over his grave 'til I'm sure that he's dead. Let's also remember his sterling work defending the right of the tobacco industry to peddle their lethal drugs unimpeded by the truth about their products.

there's a good chance it wasn't deliberately racist. — Baden

Manslaughter, not murder, then? I'm sure the corpse would be relieved. Accidental, thoughtless, deniable racism is the rule; only complete fuckwits deliberately talk about piccaninnies and letterboxes or institute hostile environments these days.

Being yourself can lead to being rejected. — Andrew4Handel

Classic! :smile: The actor and the mask.

Unfortunately, not being yourself leads to not being accepted even if you are accepted.

See alice Miller, https://www.8freebooks.net/download-the-drama-of-the-gifted-child-alice-miller-pdf/

But from the pov. of someone who has been traumatised as a child, in a condition where one cannot escape and must as a biological imperative form an attachment with , in this case a possibly abusive parent, to be able to live with oneself is the happiness goal, and that I would say is more or less achievable in most cases, with the caveat that one cannot maintain a separation between the person and the trauma, so that to be healed is to become someone else, or in old-fashioned language to be 'born again', which is first to die - psychologically.

My question I suppose is can you recover from mental trauma if you compare it to physical trauma and realise how some physical trauma is irreversible.
A problem is defining what a normal functioning healthy human is. — Andrew4Handel

Some people live for a long time whilst never feeling good. For example the previous worlds oldest lady said she had never been happy and thought life was a curse from God. — Andrew4Handel

There's a lot to go at in your posts, but I'll say some stuff as if I know what's what, and see if we agree at all.

Who is to say that the oldest lady is not entirely correct and sane? Suppose one lived in a concentration camp, one would have to be mad to be happy? I will claim that a proper mental function is to be happy to the extent that things are good, and unhappy to the extent they are bad. Which is to say, I suppose, that happiness is not straightforwardly associated with mental health.

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. — J. Krishnamurti

But if one is constantly anxious, or desperately miserable and depressed, or feels out of control, then to escape that is what one probably immediately means by 'happiness'. In such case, the concentration camp one wishes to escape from is intra-psychic whereas real concentration camps are inter-psychic, ie social constructs.

But one needs in any case to bear in mind this relational condition of mentality. One might get closest to a definition of mental health in terms of being (appropriately) responsive to the environment, at which point, you can infer that current society is on this measure profoundly sick, and deep personal unhappiness and alienation is a sign of mental health.

too old to rock and roll, and too young to die. — Noah Te Stroete

You need a theme tune for the thread. I'm sure it's in the guidelines...



Have you read Pirsig on the influence of Native culture on the (white) American psyche?

You are bang on target with the latest psychological thinking.

I had a thread about it a while back that may have some interesting links for you.

However, on second thoughts, I realise I have not been innocent if this myself. — Brett

To the extent that a person is identified with their posts, not everyone is welcome on this site. But in this case, my comment can hardly be seen as less friendly or more critical than the op as quoted as it merely redirects the op's rhetoric back to the source.

Does One Million Moms not have anything better to do than invite ridicule on themselves? — Teller

Don't you have anything better to discuss?

Nowhere, nothing. I don't think there is such stuff. — Coben

"Stuff"? I have a strong theory about stuff - that everything's got to be somewhere sometime. And if it isn't, it isn't stuff. Accordingly, there is indeed no such stuff as space or time or nothing. Shimples.

Lawrence Krauss wrote a book 'demonstrating' how something can come from nothing. — Coben

Given that there is something, where can it have come from? I suggest nowhere, rather than nothing. Nowhere separates out into somewhere and anti-somewhere. Bla bla bla, gimmie a book deal.

Every addition and subtraction equation directly maps to the real physical world. — Zelebg

Draw your map according to the world, not the world according to your map. Map and world are not at all the same kind of thing.

but logic doesn't say things, — Coben

We agree exactly. It can be made to appear to say something 'there can be no up without down', but this is only a linguistic rule, not a law of nature.

Monkey and anti-monkey :rofl: space and anti-space? Time and anti-time?