but maybe we could just be open to not fully knowing. — Tate

But only for as long as we're relatively healthy and wealthy.

In the Buddhist context, ignorance refers specifically to the ignorance of the Four Noble Truths.
— baker

I would beg to differ; why would you think the Buddha or his disciples after him were/are so narrow minded! — Agent Smith

It has nothing to do with "narrow-mindedness", but with focus.


“Both formerly & now, it is only stress that I describe, and the cessation of stress.”
https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/SN/SN22_86.html

You're not serious.

And you didn't answer my question:

Who is placing a gun to the head of the masses, threatening to pull the trigger if they refuse to get doped on sex, drugs & religion, game shows, state lotteries & promotional giveaways?
— baker

Is it my fault the public schools give short shrift to critical thinking? — ucarr

You still didn't answer my question.

Is it my fault the public schools give short shrift to critical thinking? The public needn't be herded together as livestock if they choose to resist. You can't deny, however, that rabbler-rousers travel the fast lane to prison. Most people are so numb with misery they've gotta be reminded of their discontent.

On the other hand, state-sanctioned rabble-rousers score pots of gold for their sage pronouncements, as we've been seeing with the many tongue-waggers hawking that Replacement Theory bosh.

Why do you think this has anything to do with not being taught critical thinking in school?

If anything, I think what's lacking is the culture of the heart, morality, and it's this lack that is causing so many problems.

A person can be fluent in critical thinking, and still be a thug.

I must say, Mr. Tweedle-Dumdee Baker, you're over-civilized to a fault, considering your experience at the greengrocer. I see you're a man who shelters by blending with the crowd. "What? I should publicize myself by opposing a shrew?! Messy affair."

Why, I say, someone's got to get you seeing yourself. You're deeply ensconced within a cage bound by gold bars, but a cage just the same.

It's beyond time you got that old rascal Complacency up on his feet and shakin' a leg.

Oh dear.

Name 3 examples of such sages.
— baker

Do your own homework! — Agent Smith

Really, Smith? This low you go?

Raise the standard of living and the people having so many children will rapidly diminish. — ssu

In order to maintain the relatively high standard of living for some people, many other people have to live a relatively low standard. So that's not really a solution.

And the interesting fact: Japan hasn't had an economic crash or societal collapse. So a World with a diminishing global population might not be so bad after all.

In Japan, living a modest, minimalist lifestyle is a virtue. Not everyone there lives that way, but some do. And if too many did, that would bring problems for the economy eventually.

Plain living and high thinking not only is no more, it seems it isn't the solution some hope it would be either.

That said, legends speak of sages who had mastered the art of statistics to the point of clairvoyance! — Agent Smith

Name 3 examples of such sages.

Marxist alienation is when a person lives contrary to human nature. I think. — Tate

What is "human nature"? Who is the authority on deciding that?

why should anyone care?
— Tom Storm

This is an excellent, devastating criticism of not just post modernism, but most of what attempts to pass for ethical thinking hereabouts. Ethics is at its core about how we interact with others, hence any claimed ethic that does not tell us what to do in our relations to others is void.

The account given by ↪Angelo Cannata starts with considerations of "history" - what I might call "background" or "being embedded" - but then slides into being "subjective", opening itself up to your critique. It has failed to follow through on the fact of our shared world, reverting to some form of solipsism, and as a result fails to deal with the problem of what we ought to do. — Banno

Ought we look to others for moral guidance?

Pomo shows us the ethical advantages of becoming explicitly aware of what is already implicitly involved in sense-making. — Joshs

Please explain this further.

How is such explicit awareness of what is already implicitly involved in sense-making an ethical advantage?

How is it an advantage at all??


(Personally, I think being more self-aware makes one a loser, a weakling. Unless, of course, one already has a massive ego.)

Do postmodernists care? As long as they have tenure, they don't.
— baker

Ha! Yes, I think there are a lot of people who hold to this view. — Tom Storm

They do tend to come across as cold, aloof, uninterested, or at least what they say doesn't seem to have any real-world application. It's why we can readily understand memes like



Of course, the way we see the postmodernists also reveals what we expect(ed) of them. And this is something we can explore further, ask ourselves whether those expectations are justified or not wise or not.

I think, maybe, people mistake description for prescription — Moliere

Yes, it tends to happen.

I think we often tend to look to philosophers (and politicians, artists, etc.) for truth, for moral guidance, we tend to listen to them with the assumption that they are giving moral instruction or even moral orders (even when they don't specifically use the words "You should do such and such, you shouldn't do such and such").

I think we're often not even aware of this tendency; but it shows that it is there when we feel distinctly let down, confused after interacting with someone and not feeling any wiser afterwards.

My overall impression is that postmodernist philosophers want to shake off that role of teacher that is otherwise so often taken for granted when it comes to philosophers (and people of cultural importance). It seems that they're trying to make philosophy be about thinking, an exercise in thinking, in different modes, as opposed to being yet another form or source of ideology.

How might postmodernism be helpful in determining how we should/could live? — Tom Storm

Do postmodernists care? As long as they have tenure, they don't.
/dissing pomo

In the Buddhist context, ignorance refers specifically to the ignorance of the Four Noble Truths.

Note however, there must be a psychological term for this, negative experiences are more susceptible to hasty generalizations than positive ones — Agent Smith

Yes, it's called a sense of entitlement.

After getting bitten, people don't confuse a rope for a snake. It's that before they got bitten for the first time, they confused a dangerous snake for a harmless rope, acting in the belief that the world should be a safe place for them.

My point is that the questions asked about the nature of the Tatagatha (whether after death he exists or not etc.) on which the tetralemma in the OP is based are just this kind of complex questions demading simple answers. Someone who would understand the nature of the Tatagatha would not ask such questions to begin with.

The whole tetralemma is set up by ignorance and insisting in the tetralemma just perpetuates the ignorance. There is no mysticism to it, and no middle way, it's just ignorance.

"There are these four ways of answering questions. Which four?
There are questions that should be answered categorically [straightforwardly yes, no, this, that].
There are questions that should be answered with an analytical (qualified) answer [defining or redefining the terms].
There are questions that should be answered with a counter-question.
There are questions that should be put aside.
These are the four ways of answering questions."

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an04/an04.042.than.html

Part of the practice is understanding which question should be answered in which way, and why thusly.

. I guess I just don't understand why someone would go through such lengths to write historical fiction/lies about an event that actually happened and that they were presumably there for. — Moses

I suppose if the story would be about, say, Vikings, people (with a Western background) would not bat an eyelid. Historical veracity is just not something one expects in the Viking stories. This is not to say that one expects lies from them. Rather, there is a specific culture of how we approach Viking stories: that the important points are the moral insights, or the tales of bravery, loyalty, and such.

In contrast, the biblical narrative has established itself in Western society as having the relevance of a life or death matter, a matter of eternal life and eternal suffering. Choose wrongly, understand the Bible wrongly, and you will burn in hell for all eternity. No such threat is made in Viking stories; or if it is, it's not popularily known. It is because of this threat that we are bound to read the Bible differently than Viking stories, or The Lord of the Rings. It's why we take the Bible seriously, or at least start from the position that it should be taken seriously.

Of course, the Jews are here in a special position, because they don't have a comparable notion of heaven and hell as other mainstream Abrahamists do.

I believe the entire work is selling a point of view, namely of the heroic tales of the Hebrew people. Whether there are moments of accuracy, I don't know, and I don't think it's terribly important. — Hanover

Religion as self-aggrandizement?

If, for example, I get bitten by a dog, isn't it a good idea to think from then on that all dogs are dangerous? To err on the side of caution, to be on the safe side, would necessitate that I immediately, after the dog bite, treat all dogs as threats, oui? — Agent Smith

Of course. But the next step (the one you're missing) is that one would be prudent to learn to distinguish a dangerous dog from one that isn't, and to recognize what leads to getting bitten and what doesn't.

Question: Can all other fallacies be recommended as a rational course of action based on Algos/Thanatos? — Agent Smith

Schopenhauer thought something like that when he first wrote his Art of Being Right.

Do you believe class division & the established social order, like human inequality, occur naturally, — ucarr

Yes.

and thus no need for any type of social engineering?

Attempts at social engineering are useless, at least as far as they have equality as their aim.

Do you believe the law, like class division & the established social order, are natural?

Leaving aside what "natural" means or is supposed to mean, yes.

In your sentence above, you use the passive voice with reference to (see bold words above) the fact of classism. If you rewrite the sentence with the verb in the active voice, who will you posit as the actor bringing classism into effect? You can answer by giving an example of the sentence rewritten with the verb in the active voice.

I'll give you an example from just last week at the local grocery store (a small store with only one check-out).
I was packing my groceries, the cashier wasn't yet done with the rest of them, while the next customer behind me pushed ahead even though it wasn't her turn yet (never mind that we're supposed to maintain 1,5 m covid safety distance). She was already waiting for her groceries at the other end, even though the cashier wasn't finished with mine. She almost physically pushed me away. She was about my age, or maybe even a few years younger, a middle aged woman. By my assessment, we were of about similar socio-economic status.

Going by my experience, me saying anything to her or the cashier or the store manager would only result in things getting worse for me. Why is that? Because bosiness, aggressiveness, competitiveness always win, always prevail. Sometimes, they are institutionalized, and this is when we talk of the class war. It is a phenomenon that can readily be observed between individual people; in any given situation, people generally try to establish a hierarchy.

You're asking who is the actor who is bringing classism into effect. In the situation at the grocery store, people would typically blame me. That if I were or at least appeared to be of a higher status than the other woman, she wouldn't dare to push ahead and step into my space. Or if I at least somehow maintained my space better, she would remain in hers. People would typically say that she simply did what every normal person in a situation like hers would do. That the way I behaved simply deserves the kind of behavior she displayed. From their perspective, it was I who brought classism into effect.

Do you believe revolts & revolutions are, more often than not, merely superficial makeovers of short duration?

Yes.

Do you believe revolutions are always the undoing of their authors?

To answer this with precision, we'd have to look into the historical details.

Who is placing a gun to the head of the masses, threatening to pull the trigger if they refuse to get doped on sex, drugs & religion, game shows, state lotteries & promotional giveaways?
— baker

Do you acknowledge two systems of justice, one for the rich & powerful, another for the commonality?

Of course.

And you didn't answer my question:

Who is placing a gun to the head of the masses, threatening to pull the trigger if they refuse to get doped on sex, drugs & religion, game shows, state lotteries & promotional giveaways?

Your tribalism.

monsieur. — Agent Smith

I really do feel like a dick, posting here, sometimes.

Judging from our past successes, I'd bet on our future success. I have no idea what 150 years from today will look like, but I imagine it'll be as different as it was 150 years ago. — Hanover

Hey, everyone has to die at some point, somehow, so who cares if a few billions die of hunger, floods, etc., right.

"Have you stopped beating your wife yet? Answer either with Yes, or No!"

If someone said that to you, how would you reply (presuming that you're not married and never were)?

Do we need Marxism for this non-estrangement to come about? — schopenhauer1

No, but just the right measure of poverty and exploitation.

Why is it so hard to consider the possibility that it might actually be good for a country to ask Russia to take it under its wing? Or at least to see it as a matter of their own interest to be on friendly terms with Russia?
— baker

Wondering if you still think this way??? — creativesoul

Of course.

It's the notion that one can hate and despise someone and consider them their enemy, but still expect this party to be nice and harmless that is absurd.

What approach should morally upright social scientists & legislators take regarding the naturally occurring inequality of human individuals grouped together within a state?
— ucarr

None. The classism based on the inequality of human individuals is in place practically, even if not officially, and it prevails.

For example, theoretically, officially, we're all equal before the law. But practically, we're not.
— baker

By saying "none," you're saying you condone the double-standard that, for the same crime, has the judge handing down a draconian sentence to a commoner and a slap on the wrist to a noble. — ucarr

No. I'm saying, again, that the classism based on the inequality of human individuals is in place practically, even if not officially, and it prevails.

Your conformity to the status quo, once it's amplified by a smug polity, launches a potent recipe for revolt.

Resistence is futile.

John Lennon sang about nobles keeping the masses doped on sex, drugs & religion. Are you also signed on with this stratagem?

Game shows, state lotteries & promotional giveaways take aim at the roiling dissatisfaction of the legions of working stiffs. Apparently you think they're effective.

Who is placing a gun to the head of the masses, threatening to pull the trigger if they refuse to get doped on sex, drugs & religion, game shows, state lotteries & promotional giveaways?

The quick & the clever are forever herding the pliant populace into one or another scheme of usury until, periodically, a seismic eruption of social upheaval lays waste to the cultural order.

And then the revolution eats its children and soon enough, things go back to the way they used to be, just the faces in positions of power are new.

You have the right not to be an idiot.

Unscrupulously. — Agent Smith

That's just too general a characterization for what psychotherapists do.

No, think. If you agree that you're not acting on your right to flee suffering, then there must be a reason for this.

I have been learning math for 1.5 years every day for 20 min avg, with books from openstax. — rohan

That's not enough time per day. You should try with 90 minutes per day, 6 days a week, for 3 months.

The right to flee suffering. — Agent Smith

What's stopping you?

As a psychotherapist in training, this favorite of mine, with its positive spin on an at times debilitating habit of mind, will be central to my approach to clients with pathological anxiety. — ZzzoneiroCosm

So how do you intend to approach scrupulosity?

Or maybe work isn't where they look for meaning. — Hanover

It's not my life and it's not my wife? How do these people endure working 8, 10, 12 hours every day, without this being central to their lives? I do wonder how they do it.

The holiest day of the week is sabbath, the day of day. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

This requires belief in God or something similar. My experience has been that it is not possible to develop such a belief for the purpose of making daily life and work meaningful. (One of my motivations for religion has been to make work seem meaningful; but this has proven to be a dead end, the wrong direction. Apparently, one first has to believe in God, and then other things can follow, but treating belief in God as a means to an end doesn't work.)

We are slaves to our material existence and survival requires work. How we choose to emotionally respond to that reality is our choice. — Hanover

My point is that people are different, and that what makes the workplace conditions good or at least fine for one person, might not be sufficient for another person. That's why I question the idea that

we need only reproduce the conditions to other workers that our unalienated worker has found — Hanover

and that this would result in further unalienated workers.

At the same time, I must acknowledge that your observation about people who do not think they are alienated (in Marx's sense) reflects reality for many. Capitalists and workers have negotiated back and forth to reach a tolerable middle ground. — Bitter Crank

Or is it that some people have simply adapted sufficiently to the capitalist system, or even that they are somehow genetically or otherwise predisposed to function well in it, while others are not?

I can think of several people I know whom I would describe as "unalienated workers", but in their minds, their wellbeing at work seems to have nothing to do with negotiations between capitalists and workers. They look down on unions and workers' rights. They are natural born Social Darwinists. They are hard-working, relentless, merciless, and, blimey, they enjoy life.

The unalienated worker isn't just an anomaly to look upon curiously, but he poses an alternate solution to the Marxist, which is that we needn't dismantle and reconstruct the system with the proletariat in charge, but we need only reproduce the conditions to other workers that our unalienated worker has found. — Hanover

Not only are we slaves, we're all slaves from the same series, for we react the same to the same stimulus! Yay.

(The term "robot" comes from the Slavic root for 'forced labor'.)

I don't subscribe to the notion that wisdom and ethically appropriate behavior is known a priori. — Hanover

Neither do I, but it seems that it is evolutionariliy advantageous to take for granted that wisdom and ethically appropriate behavior are known a priori. From what I've seen, people generally consider it at least neurotic to have doubts about what is moral and what isn't. Morality is generally regarded as something one "either has or doesn't have", not something that can be learned (psychopaths/sociopaths "learn" morality, but it's not a natural part of who they are).

What I can say is that the Bible, for whatever historical reason, in Western society, became the vehicle for those most concerned and focused on finding meaning and purpose to our existence. From that piece of literature,with much creativity and bias, entire systems of often conflicting thoughts sprang forth.

My resort to the Bible for wisdom has nothing to do with delusions that God himself spoke it while Moses transcribed it. It has to do with it having been designated the human societal Western Constitution (so to speak) and the thousands of years of our best and wisest having wrenched meaning from it, even if the literal text no longer resembles the final interpretation.

Then this is the institutional justification of the Bible's content for you: it's reception and role in Western society.

I see no value in the Bible, given that it can be interpreted in a million ways, in mutually exclusive ways, and that in any particular personal interaction between people where the Bible is used, the interpretation that prevails is the one given by the person who holds more power than the other person(s) involved.

You're committing another self-imposition: You take for granted that you're certain that there is no way out. (And that the materialistic outlook is the one and only right one).

Arguably, this is the core of your problem (and not the comply or die, or the futility of pursuing sensual pleasures).
— baker

If you're talking about some sort of asceticism, that is at the extremes that are pretty inaccessible for most people. It's a romanticized version of how humans can live. — schopenhauer1

No, I'm not talking about asceticism.

I'm talking about your certainty. I question its foundation.