Thank you angry sperm whale who rammed and sunk the whaling ship Essex in 1820. Otherwise we might not have the horrendous account of survival from its crew, exemplifying human resilience, and the inspiration for Herman Melville's Moby Dick.

“Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began.

Consider all this; and then turn to the green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half-known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!” — Herman Melville: Moby Dick

The grass is questionably greener on the counterfactual side of the fence.

I thank all involved in De Niro's portrayal of Travis Bickle in the 1976 movie, Taxi Driver, even though I never saw the movie and just read the plot on wikipedia. Sounds like a good movie.

Surely more than just prayer affects Cheeta and Croc Christian Karma bank accounts even if such a system were true.

What are the demographics of Christian faith among animal communities and to what degree are we allowed to generalize about beliefs that constitute a religious identity? We can't canvass beliefs outside of our species. We'd doubt, given that animals lack anything like our language, that animals have much of an abstract conceptual life. How do we determine the religious affiliation of non-human animals?

Even with humans, the substance/work of faith is sometimes hidden. What appears on the face of things might conceal an ugly or banal or contradictory reality.

We're a bunch of crocodiles wearing masks. Our crocodile tears flow like crocodile faith, into the deaf sink of an insensible and indifferent nature.

Yes, it's all entirely possible and it's entirely possible it's all relative up to the ruling consensus of those who call themselves normal, just and good by virtue of an exercise of reason or rule.

Craziness is often a group mediated judgement. The normies point out the abnormality of the abnormies in a way that the descriptor "crazy" sticks.

Laura is just not going to Church and she is dating women. She is "crazy" to throw her immortal future away according to the brunch circle of culturally righteous Karens. But if Laura runs with the Anti-Karen motorcycle club, they might call out the Church Karens for what they are according to their little badass carefree subculture. So relative to group ideals but both, as human, partake in a larger group of standard behaviors by which they could make judgements about others.

Cryptocurrency is insane because it's an energy wasting gambling scheme which relies on the accepted belief in a regulated currency. Everyone is still only thinking about it in terms of dollars and yen and pounds and what not. But maybe I'm "dumb" instead of "crazy" according to the crypto circle jerks. The question is how risky is any action according to whatever the average apprehension of whatever the risk is... to say that losing your money is equivalent to having thrown it all into a blazing fire place (and how crazy would that be given that money is a bitch to earn but like breathing oxygen to spend).

Hannibal Lector has invited the Karens to brunch to see which one he wants to eat. Is Dr. Lector crazy? No. Abnormal with regard to how often genteel cannibalism occurs. He, like the Karens, just wants to have a nice meal.

You talk a lot from hearsay. — gikehef947

How much of the Bible is hearsay?

Animals have no souls so they are purely a means by which humans (God's chosen species in the image of the One Creator) can accomplish the will of God in order to get into the gated community called Heaven.

Animals do not pray. That is our species responsibility alone, to appease his supernatural Majesty, to avoid eternal damnation.

Remember what happened to Job. You need real grit to realize it's not about evidence of the results of prayer in this world but expectation for material reality in the next.

Gwada fanna ledo foop. Cesca denudo sek sek roo, kanak dej du ankh.

What are the particulars behind the OP and what are the solutions that ought to be pursued?

give me one example of human action — boagie

Every cause is fundamentally an uncaused cause if so willed and taken on faith by the bullshit maker.

Every act is an act of God, the 1st cause and the uncaused cause.

Down Under Rules

Always use a franger when touching a drop bear.

Never go unprepared into the never never.

Fossicking in Tasmania requires a permit.

Roo pouches are for Joeys only.

Gay or straight, Narcissus is a sick boy. A sexual deviation that some young men (men in particular) experience is the self-involvement of excessive solitary masturbation. They apparently have a lot more than the average amount of tension to resolve--sexual or academic or something else. The main feature of narcissism is very excessive self-involvement, to the point of isolation. — Bitter Crank

Bah! Nothing wrong with masturbating for eternity alone. The only tension resolved is the kind caused by a ceaseless and irritating horniness.

:eyes:

Nah, Narcissus was self-sufficient. He entertained himself in a reflection, felt happy with what he was doing, and deep down inside, while sitting there looking at himself... felt happy inside. — Shawn

It's a myth. You can just as well retell it how ever you'd like, like you just did.

Here come the sexy Bangles.

Proceeding from this, what's so special about thinking of one's self as 'special'? — Shawn

A morale helper, a support cushion, a superhero mask, a dream to keep oneself alive? Imagine the terror of the opposite: the self as a useless, ugly and bad powerless piece of shit. The way mythology/ideology helps to guide and sustain us in a sad, absurd, chaotic world. I don't know.

If you're gonna run the gauntlet (run in the rat race) you need a bit of a psychological bump (placebo) or a powerful anesthetic.

Add in Phthonus (Envy) and Nemesis (Revenge) to the pool party. Sounds like a recipe for humanity.

If I can't be of value by measure of what the group values, in endless hierarchical ascension of competitive vanity, then I shall revel in the shallowness of self-love, as the remaining outlet of pleasure.

Alone in my mansion, bereft of others, I'll look into my exaggerated portrait and declare: "I'm too sexy for my shirt."

Rule 67879777 On the Subject of Toilet Paper Etiquette

All toilet paper rolls on a dispenser should have their paper ends face outwards toward the user, not towards the wall. All users should adjust toilet paper rolls that are improperly mounted in the correct direction if they notice.

(Failure to follow this rule will result in a quantity of point demerits as outlined in the yet to be created social credit system. However, it is unlikely that there is any just mechanism by which such judgement of merit/demerit can be made on the basis of following or failing to follow such a rule).

I'm thankful that we're all effectively addressing climate change and that we're innovating toward a stable state economy. Really makes me feel good.

And thank you for fantasy. Imaginary worlds are great.

Could that be paraphrased as "take the bloody game seriously or piss off"? — Sir2u

A bit harsh. No one knows what it means to "take the game seriously" since the rules won't stick.

So we have a strange paradoxical thing on our hands: a non-game game free for all.

A better question would be, who has the total lack of morality needed to deny the creation of the game by not participating? — Sir2u

It's a double-bind now. You can't not play, even though in spirit no one ought to be forced to play (says some wannabe optional rule). To opt out is to opt in.

As Pauly Sartre said, 'We're condemned to play the game.' C'est la vie

Seventeen persons have lost their life because of the failed emergence (and utility) of this game.

You maybe thinking this is absurd and impossible. It is. The people are not real but imaginary.

They died in an imaginary flash flood, possibly due to imaginary climate change.

Supposedly, if you follow the rules, ideally, less imaginary people will die.

But how will you save those yet to die because of the failure of this non-game. How could a failed game cause such pretend devastation? How does one establish the failed game as a cause of these imaginary death?

By pretending that the effect is real and searching for the mechanism by which a failure to help the game emerge takes lives (lives that ought to have been saved).

The secret to giving the game life is to inspire the will to create it. But who has the will and strength to collaborate? Who has the passion?

In short, is the tit-for-tat strategy moral/immoral? — TheMadFool

Is it any more useful to get specific about the tit-for-tat in question.

Folks drink ground water laced with hexavalent chromium for years from a leeching local chemical plant and suffer all kinds of health consequences unknowingly.

Class action lawsuit forms to explicate cause and effect in a court of law and obtain monetary compensation for harm done.

A true tit-for-tat might require that we force all those guilty (responsible) to drink a certain quantity of hexavalent chromium for a time. Folks would say this is immoral. Why? Because we do not want to perpetuate harm in an endless cycle that brings down everyone and undermines the institution of law and order (society), which imposes itself between our natural response of justice (an eye for an eye). But there are probably lots of cases in which a tit-for-tat response is moral, depending on how contextually strict you are with whatever tit-for-tat means, and how innocent the reprisal is.

It reminds me of Rene Girard's crazy theory of what enabled culture to begin in the first place, by using a religious scapegoat (magic) to absorb and diffuse the apocalyptic escalation of tit-for-tat violence. It kept us stable enough to bring in a formal process of justice. Though if you look at some of those jungle hunter gatherer cultures the bad juju of tit-for-tat black magic accusation is alive and well in a terrifying way. Thus begins the chain reaction of an eye for an eye for an eye for an eye... until we're all blind. Hopefully the scapegoat or scapeplant can't retaliate...

___

We charge Yew (pun), to be guilty of murder, for poisoning the children of the community with your sweet poison seeds. For every man, woman and child poisoned by Yew so in turn a Yew should be poisoned.

Yew are sentenced to death by our poison. God bless.

No man steps in the same shit twice. But a person stepping in any shit again is probably inevitable.

Haha! Another dreamy thread which means it allows for a bad haphazard take.

The whole human shit show is absolutely reducible to tit for tat (or reciprocity variants). Treat others the way you think you ought to be treated. Live by fire, die by fire. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

Plants are innocent because of their relative weaknesses (or strengths). It stems (pun) from the fact that they are immobile and slow, thus evadible. They don't stalk (pun) you. The worst of it comes by bicycling into cactus or hogweed or ingesting their poison, or losing a prized sheep to a brambles trap. The accidents are comparable to drowning or falling off a cliff, attributable to human error.

It is other minds that have done us wrong we would take revenge against in this endless saga. Even animals, by comparison to man, are innocent/amoral.

If you feel guilty for eating plants then the source of that guilt is misplaced or fanciful. You should feel guilty for eating plants because of the human labor of the harvest and what that kind of tit for tat (or causes and effects) that might entail.

It's too late, Mad. You should have installed antiphilosophy software before you got the bug.

You could try an antismoking script but then again what would life be like for a caffeine addict who has to voluntarily avoid it? Terrible.

This is why it is so hard for life to self-assemble into novels and metaphysics. No cooperation. No cooperation at all.

Now if your life depended upon following the rules and your nociceptors were wired into this game, such that everyone had some skin in it, maybe you'd all show Banno a bit more respect. Or go absolutely mad.

All rules shall compete for the power to enact and expedite themselves.

The great thing about death is that such an exit is always available. It's the consolation for the living (those suffering) that there is always an escape. But we should honor those we brought into the world, or those that brought us into the world, insofar we are obliged to live for them.

Maybe we need a cultural revolution around death, that makes it less scary, streamlined, normal. Voluntary ritual suicide could become an honorable/sublime thing again.

Phenomena that are cyclical in nature and self-sustaining for that reason are indistinguishable from (actual) infinity. — TheMadFool

You just wanted to use the word infinity here for dramatic flare. Phenomena that are cyclical and self-sustaining are just that.

We've got a little plastic sterling engine(?) snowman in the window sill, who moves his hands all day long if he is exposed to enough light. Put it somewhere where it's always exposed to enough light and there is gaseous temperature gradient as a means for cycling the mechanism it would never stop... until a dog got a hold of it, or some other environmental change, or the wearing of friction.

The dog eating the sterling engine is sort of like the Sun absorbing the Earth. Just have to wait.

Well you smashed my non-explanation to bits. Thank you. :strong:

It makes sense that men are more easily aroused with respect to gamete asymmetry and the cost of resources involved. Males are not burdened with carrying to term which gives them incredible leverage/power between sexes. Easier arousal plays a role in competition for the fairer sex.

The drive to impregnate is on average stronger than the drive to be impregnated.

Therefore the image of the fairer sex (woman) is more of a fetish for men.

But if all males were gay... well... the world would be :flower: marvelous :starstruck: . This is the way to utopia.

I wonder how Cotard delusion patients make sense of the contradiction inherent in their condition. — TheMadFool

It's not a contradiction if they are in the afterlife. :P

We could just ask someone with cotard's delusion what it is like to be dead.

Yep but that was my point. Since the mind can't experience death, it can't conceive of death. — TheMadFool

So also, your mind cannot conceive of dreamless sleep. :P (Our use of language is annoying.)

We can't concieve of mind death. — TheMadFool

Don't you mean we can't experience mind death (ie. the absence of a mind). We can conceive of "mind death" as the absence of a mind, if we infer that a mind exists to begin with. But we sleep and sleep is always bracketed by what isn't sleep/unconsciousness (the qualia horrorshow).

Can we, has anyone, conceived of nonexistence/death? — TheMadFool

Yes. When something is dead it no longer alive and from a qualitative outlook of being in the world and seeing death, beings that have decomposed and personalities that have disappeared, we understand what is generally understood with relation to these deathly experiences. :P

Deep sleep is just like death because death is presumably just the absence of the 1st person view (zero qualia). Since time only passes for the living, you'll be awake far too soon after your dead... but it won't be you because you will have died. You'll be something, either Jane or John Doe, or something very weird but natural.

Edit: The metaphorical/mythic me wants to conceive of the "birth of death" as the act of bringing death(from life) into the world, the cloaked figure fond of drinking coffee, waiting to meet you at the right time and right moment with an accident or a mutually planned meeting.
The white cloaked figure, counterpart, refractable into any color of the rainbow, is getting you into non-fatal life accidents.

All these Koans are interminable and exhausting.

Did you mean Paul Noth ? — Amity

Yes, sorry, I should've linked the cartoon at least. An Army Lines Up for Battle

Have always liked Paul North's Duckrabbit War.

Two opposing armies converge on a battlefield, strangely with same banner, Duckrabbit. Someone on the ground shouts: "There can be no peace until they renounce their Rabbit God and accept our Duck God."

The vast entries of the subreddit, "I'm Sorry Jon" are hilarious(ly disturbing). It's basically the creep of cosmic horror into the Garfield comic. Garfield became a cosmic entity, a Lovecraftian god, which would haunt and terrorize Jon until the end of time.

Do folks born with the inability to feel pain suffer as much psychologically as normal folks? I wonder how much the "ouchie" kind of pain shapes the ability/capacity to feel embarrassed or guilt or are such pathways to suffering more functionally independent in the human person, related to an absence of desire. Are the "pains" of hunger completely unconditioned/unrelated to "ouchie" pain.

Assuming a person was indestructible, more like robot built to be super tough, and could not feel pain, like a toaster, they would not suffer at all compared to a normal person.

Maybe we as humans are to be the nociceptors and sex organs of the machine world.

You're not allowed to repost and link the entire internet randomly in the Lounge. It might cause an embarassing tear in the fabric of space time.