Blameless, Shameless, and Fameless

Human nature’s ranges of inclinations
Will, to no surprise, express themselves
Far and wide, as such they ought, regardless
Of that constitution being intended.

Especially if the human recipe
Was thought out, planned, designed notably,
And so implemented accordingly,
Then the results will be just as they should be.

If mistakes crept into the formulas,
Then we’re still as made, outcomes expected,
So, one’s own creation’s still respected—
No shame for all, obviating the blame.

All do as they must; there is no brain-separate 'I' with separate machinery to rule over the brain will.

The fabric of Existence is continuous, as field.

the Ground of All... I like that. — thewonder

Or the Ground of Determination (G.O.D.).

The fixed will of a scientist all the more can consistently find connections and truth; the will doesn't just get skipped over. If there's bias and it gets in the way, one can learn from this omission and thus a newer, wider fixed will can attend to more complete solutions. The fixed will is dynamic, not frozen for all time.

What direction do you think we're pointed toward, the past or the future? If it's neither, then how can you call this an orientation? — Metaphysician Undercover

What we feel may not be how it really is. In the block universe of eternalism, the future already exists and we are somehow traversing the 4D block. Or, there is presentism, with the future not yet made, although the 'now will make the next 'now' and the previous 'now' will be gone forever.

Either way, we feel as if it is always 'now' and that the series 'nows' also represents the past going to the future, since the World progresses; however, our conscious 'now' is not really as the physical 'now' but of the very recent past, since it took time to derive and paint the qualia scene, plus another slight delay from the speed of light. Of course, practically, it's all fast enough to be of use, but, technically, we live in the past.

Force-recruiting more people into an inescapable game to strive-after, deal with that "informs existence" is all that matters here. The burdens of the "thrownness" of our situation (what is already-established and cannot be changed at all or readily changed by one person certainly), is all that matters. Potential is a propaganda tool to recruit yet more people to this existential scheme. — schopenhauer1

It's basically true that existence has been a bitch for us and all creatures for the last umpteen million years.

The heart, like tapers, takes at beauty’s eyes 
A flame, and lives by that whereby it dies; 
And beauty is a flame where hearts, like moths, 
Offer themselves a burning sacrifice. 

Take heart! Long in the weary tomb you’ll lie,
While stars keep countless watches in the sky,
And see your ashes molded into bricks,
To build another’s house and turrets high.

For me, heaven’s sphere no music ever made,
Nor yet with soothing voice my fears allayed;
If e’er I found brief respite from my woes,
Back to woe’s thrall I was at once betrayed.

Thrust into life, we seek the depths to know
The plots beyond the curtains of the show,
Learning naught but a whisper from the waste:
‘We came as water and to dust we blow.’

The bowl of life will drain you from your soul,
And hence you’ll part the veil or be as coal,
So, you might as well drink the wine of life;
One knows not what’s writ, or if, on Fate’s scroll.

What shall be, remedy or pain, or mix?
No contest, for we’re wise to change’s tricks,
So, can expect sorrow and joy alike;
But who cares! They’ll pass; we all go to bricks.

From birth we can look forward to being host
To woe, and then to giving up the ghost.
Happy are they who quickly burn to toast,
And blessed are they who ne’er came to the roast.

Creation’s smoke burns evermore thy meat,
E’en ‘fore you cinder from the deeper heat.
Ah, shun what bane you may of the kitchen;
Take no stock in trade; all sweet profits eat.

(These quatrains above are only half mine, or less, for they were retransmogrified into English from Omar's Persian/Arabic originals.)

Everything is energy. — thewonder

I’m the All and the One, omnipresent,
For I’m eternal and can neither be
Created nor destroyed, being my own cause
And the Ground of All—I am Energy.

More specifically, I've lost some of my ability to defend myself from attacks on my atheistic beliefs. — Purple Pond

Well, as noted, each side has to give a little, in that invisibles can neither be shown nor not shown, and thus there remains a 'maybe' either way, no matter how unlikely one has it.

There is the outside chance of self contradiction, as well as logical and natural impossibility, but it will probably get down to probability winning the day, for that's about all we have to work with on invisible realms.

The religious advocate returns…

You again!

Yes, we're supposed to try to convert non-believers into followers.

OK, I'm a philosopher, and thus well able to counter your claims. Come on in.

God grants us free will.

Absolutely free; we can do whatever we want?

Yes.

Truly free; our will doesn't have to match God's will?

Yes, free, God is all love.

Unconditional; no strings attached?

Would you like to be saved?

From what?

From not being with God.

What's so bad about that? I'm free.

It would be Hell. Would you like to be saved?

No, for your supposed God through you as his follower just reneged on the 'free'. That's bad character.

Jesus rectified that mistake. Would you like to be saved?

Oh, so there was a mistake that had to be fixed. So much for the Perfect Being. God remains as a problem, as supposedly Jesus' father. Plus, we are still thrown out Eden from the taint God designed into us, that of our human nature being able to sway from good to bad and all in-between, just as we see it does, as fact, to no one's surprise.

Would you like to be saved?

What do I have to do to avoid burning in Hell?

All you have to do is merely accept God with all your heart. OK?

No, for to accept is to approve, and thus I wouldn't have integrity. God broke his own commandment in the Great flood, and more that I could list. I don't make deals with controllers and coercers. Your God is easily out thought, plus He is not all love, but ugly, even.

You're going to the smoking section.

Good joke. Do you recall that all of this supposing is but a 'maybe' and so is not necessarily true?

Blah, blah, blah. We were put on Earth to worship God.

God needs this? There's the door.

Well, at first it seemed say that higher beings would be in the future, which higher complexity there is more logical and natural than they being in the past where all gets simpler and simpler and less and less and smaller and smaller, but then this seemed to reverse back to the religious standard of the greatest complexity being First.

Where in the Woe is Purgatory’s bane?
Purgatory’s on Venus, where sulfurs rain.
Where in the Heck is that deep Hell of pain?
Hell’s found in the sun’s heart, oh hot burning pain!

Where in the name of Heaven is Paradisea?
Of Heaven’s site no one has any idea—
Really now, where’s Heaven one and the same?
It’s the world’s best kept secret: Earth is its name!

Yes, that’s said, but truly, where is the stead…
I must tell of them that they’re only read;
…Of those places spent after we are dead?
It’s written of words that language bred.

‘Twas hope-word that invented All that was said?
‘Twas these that were signed for anything Divine ‘said’.

My mind wants more, as well as a reward beyond.

Mind is the ultimate of all there is;
It is the universe: billions of years
Of primordial material, complex;
So, then, what more could human beings want?

Morning at the Omar Khayyam Club of America — The Living Book

As I knock on the oaken door of the OKCA, the winds are brisk and the leaves of yesterday are swirling on down, during this part of autumn known as the ‘fall’ (of the leaves).

Autumn falls as summer leaves,
Harvesting its sum of days,
Seconding the rose of spring.

Warmth emanates from the parlor, from its chestnut paneled bookcases to the lush carpet that sinks under step like grass on a putting green. I deeply inhale the scented air installed here from Omar’s Persia-fumed grave that never fails to overwhelm.

I am at the Club early today, for an American breakfast of steak (medium-rare) and eggs (unfertilized, Swiss cheese omelet) with fruit and an apple cinnamon muffin (toasted, with butter). For dinner, later, I’ll try the leg of mutton (Persian style).

The saki pours my Iranian cranberry wine and an Arabian coffee (with french-vanilla).

Coffee plants are in the desert first seen,
By a starving outcast, who eats the bean
And finds it bitter, so he boils some, tart,
Finding that the water is the better part.

Such from asylum he returns home, quaint,
And for his coffee is declared a saint,
But its drinkers are despised by clerics—
The partakers dally over their cups!

There are many ladies about, whose presence would have perhaps dismayed the Club’s 57 originals, but that there are none of them left alive to complain.

I light up a smoke.

I note a loving couple coming in from a night in the Persian Garden of Paradise wherein the sands meet the sown.

Who knew that the twin-born Peri was bred
From lower flesh and higher spirit bled,
Where the Hellish desert meets the greensward,
When the hot sands and the luscious turf wed.

The sheer glass protective dome would be over the garden now, unnoticeable. I’ll be in there with Janice and her seven veils later this afternoon. The rose trees grafted upon from Naishapur bloom all year round.

I wave up a holographic copy of a private Rubaiyat that has only a single instance, the one illustrated by Edward Taylor Jewett, retained in the San Diego Library rare book room behind iron grates.

Jewett’s paintings in the book begin to move! It's a living book! Now perhaps you think I’m making things up about this Club’s fabulous features, in and of a hookah pipe dream, but, see more…

It's so hot everywhere due to global warming that the business man Trump finally gave in to the fact and was going to corner the market on ice, he to do this by buying Greenland; however, when he went there, the ice saw was all melted, with the land now really green.

they think that somehow their consciousness is just "occupying" or "driving" their body while not being identical to it, and so on — Terrapin Station

Or that we pick up brain waves from other people or beings. 'Fixed will' is immune to all these notions, for they would just be another input, Yes, the more good inputs the better for widening the range of the will, but as fixed the will still wills an output based on all that it has in it to consider, aside from playing dice harming the mechanism.

Close the courtrooms — TheMadFool

We want the judge to protect society by taking the offender out of circulation.

what type of knowledge allows us to say that there is a difference between future and past — Metaphysician Undercover

.
There is currently no way to tell presentism apart from eternalism.

Youth's smiles and tears may betoken nought
Until life's path has its values wrought. — fresco

The whole poem is excellent, both as to the forest nature description and to the winding refinement of values upon human nature.

We're all machines — TheMadFool

Hello, fellow robot. We're free of fame and blame and shame. That there are so many differing kinds of robots out there obscures the fact that the will is fixed to what it must do in the instant of its use. At least there is consistency. If I were the opposite, as an arbitrary air-head, I'd be long dead now.

Edward FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam stunned Victorian England soon after Darwin’s The Origin of the Species had shocked their sensibilities, but soon they and the world came to embrace what came to be known as the greatest poem in history, as well as one of the most often illustrated.

One of the quatrains from FitzGerald’s notes doesn’t have the Rubaiyat rhyming scheme or any:

Khayyam, who stitched the tents of science,
Has fallen in grief’s furnace and been suddenly burned;
The shears of Fate have cut the tent ropes of his life,
And the broker of Hope has sold him for nothing!

So, here is my version of his tent of science/philosophy, per the three Fates implied:

Fate Lachesis threaded Khayyam’s life long,
And Omar stitched his tent’s reasoning strong,
Clotho e’er spinning his essence along;
Atropos then sheared his rope for a song.

Some of Omar's Big Questions and Paradoxes still haven’t been answered but there has been much progress therein, as well as with many revisited/revised myth-takes.

It would take forever to reach absolute zero and stop all energy/movement:

https://www.sciencealert.com/after-a-century-of-debate-cooling-to-absolute-zero-has-been-declared-mathematically-impossible

hidden in our psyche, there's a part of us that wants God to exist. The times when we're distracted by the many pleasures of worldly life we don't get to see that part of us but it does surface when we're in mortal danger. — TheMadFool

Plus also a wish to carry on beyond our expiration date, which can turn religious or zen…

NOW AND ZEN

Everything that is part of us—
Our cells, tissues, organs and organ systems—
Has come about over billions of years
Because it proved successful
In the great survival stakes
During our perilous evolutionary
Descent (ascent) with modification.

The brain, being no exception,
Evolved in part
To allow a creature to learn
From what happens in its life,
To retain key elements that
Could influence future actions.

We are geared for self-preservation;
We will do anything to avoid facing the possibility
That who we are now cannot continue.

We ourselves are mainly the cause
That we are interested in.
The self is preoccupied with staying alive,
Which is why our species is still around today.

It is a prime biological function to be afraid of death,
And so the self as thus contrived
Is able to fully play its crucial survival role.

We want to equip our brain with a soul
That offers us an escape when the brain dies
Since the self cannot come to terms
With its own extinction.

From a subjective standpoint,
We are all born equal and undifferentiated
(Before that, ‘we’ were dead),
But as mature selves we make a distinction
Between the individual and the surroundings.

Still the brain keeps changing throughout life
In a pattern of the shifting flux of its neurons;
We gain and lose memories and feelings,
Essentially creating a new person over and over again.

The self is thus not so rock solid as it seems.
These moment-to-moment changes differ from death
Only in degree. In essence, they are identical,
Although at the opposite ends of the spectrum.

So, we are not static things.
Other neural networks will come to be in other,
Future people, albeit with an “amnesia”
Of what went on before in
The brains of the previous others.

Why should we be happy about this?

We never can be because the ‘I’ cannot operate
Outside of its own boundaries.
The only viable alternative is to think of a way
In which it is possible to ever continue on.

What will it be like to be a part
Of someone else after we die,
With our own particular
Narrative of life cast aside?

That is the ‘zen’
Of now and then and when.

I don't know what I think about this problem. — TogetherTurtle

Well, there is no "duration-less" because time is an interval; also, the hare beats the Together Turtle in another paradox.

'old-fashioned atheists' — Purple Pond

Proclaiming 'no God' as true for sure fails just as much as proclaiming 'God' as true for sure because neither can be shown to be fact; so, the full-blown "old-fashioned atheist" is just as doomed as the religious preacher saying things as if they were true.

Dawkins admits that 'God' has a one in a quadrillion chance of being; so, I guess he is 'new-fashioned', as honest. He weighs the probabilities.

Can I plagiarize this as is or will I have to ruin the symmetry with my own wording. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

Sure, you can use it and anything I put; all for the cause.

Human religious prophets say they can be trusted.

God speaks through them.

So you say, as a human. 'Just saying' isn't enough.

The Bible is the Word of God. It's all there, straight out.

Then how come the Geneses, both of them, are so wrong as to be the polar opposite of what we've found through evolutionary science? And also wrong that the Earth is fixed in space and that the animal line was created separately?

Humans were made in modern form, as is, by God only a few thousand years ago. God let the Earth go loose later. Animals are for our domination.

We have seen the geological strata and have inspected the layers.

Don't you note that they aren't straight up, but titled, with some even upside down?

Oh, so all the little microbes are really at the top, as the more recent?

Hubba, hubbada, hubba.

We have several other ways of measuring.

Carbon 14 dating doesn't work.

I see that you are a young earth follower of creation science. Can you show God directly, such that we would have no doubt and so then we'd all have to become believers?

God and his realm are invisible, but it's all true.

Does not even your own religious definition of 'faith' honestly indicate that it is of hopes and wishes for the unknown unshown being a God?

Well, I suppose.

So, all you have is a 'maybe'!

Yes.

So, then, you can't honestly preach and teach it as truth and fact, such as even now in trying to convert me, not to mention getting it into public schools.

Good-bye.

Get lost!

Stillness is impossible, at least so far, since hasn't happened. Ask me again at the end of the universe.

Blah, blah, blah. It says in the Bible ….

Humans wrote the Bible.

But they were divinely inspired by God.

Humans say they were inspired by God.

Religious prophets can be trusted.

…

(More another time.)

Myth’s performance is now over its tasks;
The artists have taken off their masks.
The illusion is fading; it couldn’t last;
The science behind is appearing fast.

They tried to undo evolution’s pace of snails,
But the stratified fossils ever told the tales
Of no special humans at once unveiled,
But of only natural selection’s weathered sails.

I am still wondering why it would matter that the choice first happens subconsciously, given that it still originates in the same brain. — Echarmion

It only matters for those thinking that decisions/thoughts are made in/by consciousness, for that's how it seems.

Did you write it — Alan

Thanks. Yes, I wrote it, and it's from my sequel to the Rubaiyat (called 'Rubaiyat II'). I've been putting the quatrains in the threads as appropriate to the OP, and the unused or all will probably end up in my Omar Khayyam thread that has just begun (see 'Austin's Golden Rubaiyat' video there). More such videos on Vimeo.

The poetic form is described here:

The verses beat the same, in measured chime.
Lines one-two set the stage, one-two-four rhyme.
Verse three’s the pivot around which thought turns;
Line four delivers the sting, just in time.

(Ten syllable lines are about the most one can speak without taking a breath.)

Interesting themes there. — schopenhauer1

And so they went on, deeper, since, well they had to [do something]:

Upon all worlds our shadows are cast,
From our inner musings that are so vast,
While we savor the gladness of life.
We’re off back to the inn to hear what’s asked.

Oh why, why is there anything at all?
There has to be, for Nothing has no call.
No birth, nor creation, choice, or option?
Even the Great Wheel knows not its withal.

What happens, from there being no election,
Of that which hath no point for direction?
Everything happens, as it e’er changes,
Revealing all faces of complextion.

What becomes of this potential everything?
Anything, as all its possible rings.
What’s the information of All these things?
Nothing, so it e’er jitters, flutters, and sings.

What sense to it all, in that it must be?
What is the message of eternity?
The only missive of all time is being,
Its point is but that it cannot not be.

But what’s the base of the basis, as First,
The simplest from which all things fill their thirst?
The first, simple, fundamental monads
Compose complicates, uni-versed.

So, we’ve it wrong that the base is complex?
Yes, as wrong as opposites can expect,
For complexities are of e’er the less,
Of more and more underlying simplex.

Is future connected to the present?
Yes, and in more ways than you’d want it sent,
As the consistencies you might resent:
All future flowers from seeds of the present.

Fine, but not; you leave me with mystery.
What is going on here? For what purpose me?
You and it are the riddle that solves itself.
You are exactly ‘being’ in its spree.

The FitzGerald Enigma—of Improving Omar’s Quatrains

How is it that only Edward FitzGerald could write a superb Rubaiyat quatrain, even 115 of them (5 are from his notes), in the grand order of day into night, transmogrifying Khayyam, while no one else could/can come up with even one great one, even given that almost 159 years have gone by for so many to have done so, and with such a large Omar source reservoir? Score: Fitz: 115 World: 0.

Should we ask for one from every poet and then put them together to match FitzGerald? It seems unlikely, and even then Fitz still wins because he is only one and we are many. His first edition contained 75 quatrains right off of the bat.

How is it that FitzGerald other poetic works pale in comparison to the Rubaiyat? What rarest of muses made visitation once in all of history just once for the greatest poem of all time? Should we even try to credit ‘magic’?

When Nicholas’ alternate 'wine as the divine' interpretation raised FitzGerald’s ire, causing Edward’s old fire to blaze again, 35 quatrains were added to make the second edition of 110 quatrains in the main, along with a refutation of Nicholas’ sufistic renderings in the preface. How many more quatrains might have become if Fitz’s eyesight and foresight hadn’t diminished.

Instead, to consolidate and better project the energy of the Rubaiyat, 9 quatrains were suppressed in the third edition, making for a lower total of 101, which remained so for the fourth, the intent of these new editions being also to combat the pirated editions abroad that the world devoured.

The ‘muse’ was a conjunction of many rare events, as can be seen in the the history of FitzOmar’s Rubaiyat, as written up by so many scholars.

No one — whollyrolling

Think not that I am existent as ‘I’,
Or talk the talk and walk the walk of ‘I’,
For all’s of the IS; the Cosmos is I;
Where then, and what, who, and whence is this ‘I’?

Bless your soul with tongues of fire; Holy Spirit burn;
Leave no trace of man’s desire; Holy Spirit turn.
Oh, man, why detest thy constitution;
Doth thou think Nature has a lot to learn?

So Nature got it wrong, the pious say,
In man’s constitution, erring its essay,
Granting so many ways to go astray.
Well, then, Who, do they say, penned this world’s play?

In the mosque, they say ‘God’ as if its true.
‘Faith’ in their wishes is behind what they chant.

Only a Fool would blame His own creations
For the taint therein—of His poor craftsmanship.
So, rejoice, there’s no Maker of Man; these ‘flaws’
Provide for interesting character types!

The preachers claim ‘perhaps’ as fact and truth.

Their ingrained beliefs the priests’ duly preach,
As if notions were truth and fact to teach.
Oh, cleric, repent; at least say, ‘Have faith’;
Yet, of unknowns ne’er shown none can e’er reach.

What’s not established can’t be addressed,
For it’s ‘invisible’, such as spirits.
Thus, a belief in a stated unknown,
As ‘faith’, can’t be shown, much less known.

We are not robots who just do stuff, but ask why, analyze, compare, look at underlying metaphysical and epistemological and ethical underpinnings. — schopenhauer1

As in this lost haunt of my imagination where philosophers gather:

Back to the tavern we creep, its drinks calling,
Where the inquisitive sit, pondering.
One and another says, We’ve more questions,
For we’ve all been born here without asking.

The scroll writes itself, my wondering friends,
Having not any plan unto its ends,
In this life borrowed from death that it lends,
So, we know not how the veil weaves and wends.

What can we do, as thrust into life?

Life’s object must be mental happiness,
For thoughts are all we can think, feel, or sense.
Aim for this euphoric state of well-being,
For true paradise is a state of mind.

Happiness is a way of life that celebrates
A living aliveness—that then opens gates
To further adventure, friendship, and delights,
To joy, success, triumph, and greater heights.

Who can we blame for our selves unmended,
For base nature’s ingredients blended?
You could invent ‘Allah’, as the baker,
Who disowns His recipe intended.

No. What's this wonderland? I'm baffled here.
What sends me though the ages, to my bier?
You’ve near said: death sifts the best from the rest;
And, overall, you cannot not be here.

What my life’s narrative that I hie through?
No matter it, for any one will do.
What’s left, then, in all common, as the clue?
We’re back to being—experiencing a ‘who’.

Where am I going? Am I important?
You’re going nowhere; here is your life’s plant.

The one who shocked the olden philosophic word to its foundations:

Only a fragment of his 'On Nature' survived, but it was the best part.

Through the Rubàiyàt, I sense enchantment,
Essence distilled in the translator’s scent.
Recomposed from Khayyàm’s dust and spirit,
Potent elixirs escape interment!

— Omar Khayyam’s Times —

The Shariah (Islamic Law)

The central debate in the Islamic world
Is and has always been between
Those who support reason and discourse and those
Who rely on a strictly legal understanding of Islam.

The former is interested in dialogue
And the latter in dictating
The nature and the terms of that dialogue.

— Medhi Aminrazami


The voices of the orthodoxy gained prominence
At the court of Caliph Al-Mutiwakkil,
Who opposed intellectual debate
Concerning religious matters.

It took another century
For the orthodox theologians
To consolidate their position and to present
The legalistic and orthodox version of Islam
As the official version.

This allowed such jurists as Ahmad ibn Ḥanbal
To formally charge philosophers and theologians,
Particularly the Mu‘tazilītes, with heresy.

With freedom of expression substantially curtailed,
The spirit of rationalism was replaced
By the Ash‘arites orthodox theology,
Which emphasized faith as opposed to reason.

Omar Khayyam lived in the 12th century
When the glorious days of intellectual debate
And discursive reasoning in Persia had come to an end.

Philosophers like Fārābī, Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna),
Zakariyā Rāzī, and Bīrūnī,
All of whom were once venerated figures,
Became symbols of apostasy and heresy.

In his Kharidat al-qasr, ‘Imad al-Din Katib Isfahani
Says about Khayyam,
“There was no one like him in his own time
And he had no peer in the science
Of astronomy and philosophy”.

"Do something about it" is the Cosmos doing us. Either we attend to existence or die as our 'attendance'.

It depends what you mean by one thing. If you take it to the bottom or to the top all things inevitably end up being one thing. — whollyrolling

Reality would be wholly rolling as the One Thing continuing/transitioning/transforming.

If consciousness has no causal role and is merely epiphenomenal, what is the point of the experience of pain? Why would our brains be "programmed" to feel pain if it has no causal function and everything is simply deterministic? — Michael McMahon

I would surmise that the result in consciousness of the brain's prior analysis has a usage to the brain, else it wouldn't have evolved. Thus, the internal method/language of qualia is used by the brain to globally broadcast its recent product so that more of the wider brain might attend to its implications, that presuming the brain may have many separate areas coming up with their own figurings/suggestions.

So, there has to be some use to consciousness; however, the decisions/thoughts seemingly carried out instantly therein were already finished and done beforehand. The subconscious analysis takes 300-500 milliseconds, which is a delay, along with the speed of light delay, which is quite short.