Maybe, Christians are misunderstanding the text. — Edward235

Of course Christians misunderstand the Bible. This is why, I guess, we should look into Theists and their pursue of understanding the bible in a "philosophical" way. There are even some intellectuals who are open to criticism towards Bible. Keep in mind that this was even one of the issues because of some priest have broken apart making another kinds of interpretations inside the rule of Church

Free speech no longer exists in our modern era. Fascism is an over used word on Twitter vocabulary. Press, social media and Google algorithm controls and processes what we should think. A real free speech only exists in the ordinary conversation you may have with your neighbour about oil or taxes. Since the moment one person opt for being a public figure he would never have free speech because he would depend on the mass, thus, the unknown Twitter accounts which created him.
It is sad but... You have to be careful if you want to share a free speech in nowadays.

We can think whatever we want because, fortunately, nobody can get into our mind. This is one of the purest civil rights of humankind which still remains. If one day an intellectual develops a program which allows us to read other's minds everything would be over...
We shoul defend the ability of having inner thoughts and keep safe our secrets.
Free speech is just spreading lies for good politicians. I have given up modern free speech or democracy itself

misidentify, to find affinity with some ideal or stereotypical identity in order to disguise one’s real identity, which can be described in greater detail with any state I.D. card. — NOS4A2

:100: :fire:

It is a completely paradox since it starts. They seek for attention in their own identity while they mistreat the others ones

Does being a white male mean you have white male experience? I have no idea what that means. — Jackson

What the article is referring for is the spread of culture depending your ethnic. Have I to be a Japanese to write haiku? Clearly not...
Inside culture, there should not be any kind of limitations. For this reason I reject all of those books which are only about "identities" and then, you can only understand it if you are one of them. Sorry, but that's flawed... something such important as literature should be universal.
I am a completely obsessed man with Japanse literature but I am from slum in Madrid... not from Tokio.
That article only reflects what some people are always seeking for: "minorities culture and avoid the so called cultural appropriation"

Yeah, the point of personifying (Thanatos, Algos, Praxidice, Nemesis, and so on) — Agent Smith

Yes! :100: :up: these states of mind remember me about an anime I saw a few years ago called "Neon Genesis Evangelion" where the main protagonists wondered about Thanatos and Nemesis and then, how worthy is the human existence itself. Another expression of art of what we are debating about!

Mortality can be seen as a "catastrophic" if we understand the life as worthy to live in. I used the adjective "beautiful" to describe the nature of my thread because it surprises me they way they manage to write in a perfect writing or vocabulary something so shocking as death. Instead of being a perpetual sadness they try to understand it and connect some characters related to the same topic

I understand your point but that’s Japan in a economical point of view. I was referring in an art or literature expression. When they write haiku poems they reflect the power of individualism, loneliness and the course of life towards the nature and seasons (this is why they like to express their feelings according if it is fall, winter, spring or summer)

Good explanation :100: :fire:

Despite the fact that, death is the same path to us, we tend to conceive it in many different ways. You wrote that death can be seen as hyper-romanticism. This characteristic reminds me more from Kawabata works rather than Mishima. Yasunari wrote and developed some characters full of loneliness and lack of brisk. Nevertheless, he understood it as an aesthetic figure of the humans this is why he shouted phrases as drinking tea in a empty bowl, etc… I think it is pretty. Being lonely is not as bad as it is seen in other cultures.
As @NOS4A2 shared previously (I am fully agree with him) our culture is so surrendered by religion in terms of suicide/individual’s problems. I guess this is why it is not so easy to find out some Western books related to this topic.

Thanks NOS, for understanding what I wanted to share. Exactly, Yukio Mishima saw in a aesthetic view the concept of death. Despite the fact that all the characters of their works suffer of inner pain or depression, they do not see death as a "escape" but at least, a good ending in this complex life. You quoted Sun and Steel. Amazing essay indeed. But I would quote The Temple of the Golden Pavilion:

And what I envied most about him was that he managed to reach the end of his life without the slightest conscience of being burdened with a special individuality or sense of individual mission like mine. This sense of individuality robbed my life of its symbolism, that is to say, or its power to serve, like Tsurukawa’s, as a metaphor for something outside itself; accordingly it deprived me of the feelings of life’s extensity and solidarity, and it became the source of that sense of solitude which pursued me indefinitely. It was strange. I did not even have any feeling of solidarity with nothingness. – page 122

In the other hand, it is difficult to foind out Western writers or artistes wondering about this issue, because as you well said, our concept of being dead is so surrounded by religious traditions.

You didn't show any argument but I would put some apart of what I wrote in the OP.
Japanese see the perception of death more authentic because their culture is not influenced by Westerns. They understand and see the life as a scenario where our souls plays a role in the field. When the play ends the life so. If they have to die, they would do it without doubt or complains because they consider our existence as a beginning and an end. Not as a "live the life at the until of the days" like westerns.
Secondly, there is a ceremony called "seppuku" where the head of samurai clans committed suicide while composing the last haiku before the end. This act was thought to reach purity.
These facts sound pretty authentic to me...

True. But it not the general opinion. Death is still seeing as terrible or even a taboo topic. Religion ensured during centuries to “refuse” the meaning and significance of death because it is seen as dramatic. I want to turn the side and try to understand and accept the death since the beginning

as the Nipponese folks did. — Agent Smith

Completely. I would sound as a crazy boy but for me that specific act was so pure and authentic. At least the Nipponese died defending their thousand years old values and history… beautiful doesn’t it?

Why should we superimpose cultural conceptions that make us separated from nature, humanity, authenticity? — Angelo Cannata

I do not want to superimpose any culture and contrary from your view, I see the Japanese concept of death more authentic. Remember that in our "world" suicide itself is a legal punishment...

It is not necessarily connected to wars. You can feel stressed for whatever reason in our Western cities. I wanted to point out that while in Japanese arts the death is accepted, in the Western is seen as pure dramatic and it looks like you are forced to live

I think we always have to take care not to base our understanding of others and their actions (such as suicide) via books or other people's stories/claims about them. — Tom Storm

It is true that we should not follow the same steps of our idols because they had a very different way of life from ours. Nevertheless, I think it is important to at least have a look on them because they tried (Mishima and Kawabata) to give another meaning to suicide and try to be more confident about it

Perhaps, God is the first existant; I thought this natural view might be interesting to some enquirers. — val p miranda

Interesting text and points of view. But I guess you end up with a contradictory conclusion: God being the first existent. Previously you have shared that either the universe where we live in exists or doesn't not exist as basic primarily principle of the "Universe's origin"
For some religious God is "omnipotent", thus God is the maximum power. "Whether God can create a spherical cube, or make a stone so massive that he cannot move it" Omnipotence
So, the omnipotence of God should not be a handicap about "existant or not existant"

I always feel that Lao Tzu has a magnificent answer to every philosophical debate. Incredible the power of millennium poem

:rofl: :100:

An individual human can be very very strong indeed both mentally and physically. — universeness

Oh boy, you have a very optimistic view of humans. I don't feel myself more powerful than a pigeon since the moment when I have issues as depression or existentialism. These states of mind can induce some persons to commit suicide. So... in this context, a pigeon is more powerful than me at least emotionally

Conclusion: we are weak whatever we are compared with!

Depression: This, I'm certain, you already know to be a deficiency of the neurochemical serotonin. — Agent Smith

A big issue as depression it is not as simple as a "deficiency" on neurochemical serotonin. This is probably just the scientific explanation but goes this illness goes further. I cannot count or "mathematise" why a depressed citizen ends up killing himself...

Why would the size of the universe or the duration of a star be seen 'a barrier'? — Olivier5

Interesting question. To be honest, I see it as a barrier. Since the moment that our lives are limited we tend to see everything with limitations in terms of time, age, ability, understanding, etc...
It can affect us because it shows how weak we are towards universe.
For example: "A trip to Pluto takes 35 years of our life" it is literally a barrier of our capacities and nobody can pursue the trip yet.

A possible world is a logical structure. A system, or world, that is governed by a rule. — Jackson

The logical structure itself is made by us. In one side, we have a world or "universe" and, in the other side, we the humans make an order to live on those structures. We do not really know yet how many x universes or worlds exist with our same logical structure. I think this is due to that the term "logic" is something we created. The universe exists itself, "it" doesn't care about how many logic worlds are on it

Knowledge of god can't be empirical.

Yep, I am an atheist but I am agree that John Locke's empirical arguments towards God are so poor...

§3 "He knows also, that Nothing cannot produce a Being." In the next place, Man knows by an intuitive Certainty, that bare nothing can no more produce any real Being, than it can be equal to two right Angles. If a Man knows not that Non-entity, or the Absence of all Being cannot be equal to two right Angles, it is impossible he should know any demonstration in Euclid. If therefore we know there is some real Being, and that Non-entity cannot produce any real Being, it is an evident demonstration, that from Eternity there has been something; Since what was not from Eternity, had a Beginning; and what had a Beginning, must be produced by something else.
§4 "That eternal Being must be most powerful." Next, it is evident, that what had its Being and Beginning from another, must also have all that which is in, and belongs to its Being from another also. All the Powers it has, must be owing to, and received from the same Source. This eternal Source then of all being must also be the Source and Original of all Power; and so this eternal Being must be also the most powerful. [ibid., Book IV, Chapter X]

If we accept from the argument of the first paragraph that "from Eternity there has been something," it is a little surprising to learn in the second paragraph that Locke believes he has established the existence of a single eternal thing, i.e. God. The problem is an ambiguity in the word "something," which in the first paragraph need merely mean "something or other," i.e. "there must have always been something or other," to produce the objects that eventually are that ones we now see. In the second paragraph, however, Locke supposes that this can only have been a single, eternal object. That does not follow, and the ambiguity in the term makes the whole argument look like a kind of Sophistry.

Link: If Locke thinks that we can prove the existence of God, he manages to demonstrate it in a way that would seem to do the impossible: produce an argument for God even worse that that of Descartes.

Sorry to disagree with you but I think that's only the basic principle of primary qualities as John Locke already written about. We all act with some survival instincts but, fortunately, our knowledge is not limited to this. We even have some doubts about what we consider survival at all... I guess this is why empiricism is key to debate about A priori or common sense knowledge.
I quote a brilliant critique from Locke to Descartes in terms of basic knowledge, what it is called as tabula rasa: Locke then spoils his own excellent argument against Descartes

We know certainly by Experience, that we sometimes think, and thence draw this infallible Consequence, that there is something in us, that has a power to think: But whether that substance perpetually thinks, or no, we can be no farther assured, than experience informs us. For to say, that actual thinking is essential to the soul, and inseparable from it, is to beg, what is in question, and not to prove it by reason; which is necessary to be done, if it be not a self-evident proposition. But whether this, that the Soul always thinks, be a self-evidence proposition, that every body assents to a first hearing, I appeal to mankind. [ibid., Book II, Chapter I, §10]

Agreed that it is so interesting the fact that God seems to be weak in terms of randomness. Wether we like it or not, improbability is part of our lives in a good way. Sometimes we experience some circumstances that we can't explain and it is due to just randomly factors. Here we do not need to necessarily connect it with God. It simply happens. Otherwise, we are forced to destination and existentialism

Understandable. But what if I do not want to pray at all? I no longer believe in future or luck either fortuna. I think life tend to be difficult and painful for us, full of uncertainty.
This uncertainty make us to find different paths to survive. You choose religion but I do not choose anything.

In fact, I find myself gravitating towards the idea that God is none other than Fortuna (Lady Luck). — Agent Smith

But if we accept this criteria then we have to admit that God is just pure fortuna instead of mercy… and all the suffer or pain suffered by a priest or believer could be done without a real belief but finding luck in their actions.

God works via manipulation of chance. — Agent Smith

Remember Einstein’s quote: ”God does not play dice with the universe."

Is my condition actually an illness, or is it an adaptation, really?

After a month of your post, I was diagnosed with several depression today as you in the previous month. I have not read all the answers of my friends in this forum but whenever I read the question where you are wondering if this is an illness or an adaptation I thought it could be a good idea to take part of the thread.
To be honest, I always thought (in my deepest self) that depression is literally an illness but I never wanted to face it. Firstly, it was the medication which I had fear to take and then, the negative prejudices of psychological analysis and their stuff... So my behaviour was like an immature Child not accepting reality.
Now: You accept that we are in an illness and in danger because it turns out that you reach high scores in a test where it looks like you seem to be suicidal. This is why I see it as an illness. An adaptation can help us to get away with the problems, but an illness consumes us until our last days.
I guess this is why I am under public psychological administration, because I am somehow sick of severe depression which I can't be adapted for myself.

Hello Nick! Welcome to the forum. My name is Javi and I am (closely to the magic day :rofl: ) 25 years old. I am agree with you, it is difficult to find people of our generation with the same cultural interests...

The Decay of the Angel by Yukio Mishima (三島 由紀夫)
Far Approach by Seicho Matsumoto (松本 清張)

Accurate list of books. Nevertheless, I think it is made for a West minded point of view. You shall not forget Asian books and culture, I think it would amaze you. I highlight what @T Clark wrote about Tao. I completely feel that is one of the most important books about thought and knowledge ever written. Give it a try.
I also recommend you these books:

• "The Haiku of the four seasons" by Matsuo Bashoo.
• "The story of Genji" by Murasaki Shikibu (紫 式部)
• "The Temple of the Golden Pavilion" by Yukio Mishima.
• "Snow Country" by Yasunari Kawabata.

as with Greece — Banno

As with Spain too. It has been a tough decade for us to stay in frozen public salaries, bad quality jobs, and sacrifice a whole generation which lost the hope of the future. The fact that tears me off is when, back in the day, Germany and Austria said that "Mediterranean countries spent a lot according to their circumstances" or we waste our money in "wine and women" etc...
Nearly 15 years later I want to ask them back if the north is living upon their circumstances buying a lot of Russian gas and oil.

Anyway, good luck to Sri Lanka and wish them the best in such difficult situation.

Mizuumi/The Lake by Kawabata Yasunari (川端 康成)

Sorry, I was joking but I committed a mistake.

I think I completely misunderstood it since the beginning... :fear:

Could Ukraine be his Afghanistan? :grimace: — frank

No, those are orthodox and blonde! :eyes:

The hierarchy is of scale and complexity, not importance. Anderson is very clear about that. That's really the whole point of his paper and this thread. — T Clark

Hmmm complexity... That's interesting indeed. I am disagree with him in terms that chemistry is more "complex" than social science. I don't want to sound as an angry social student but for me, his theory sounds off time and old. Saying in nowadays that studying chemistry is harder than learning languages or law (for example) is quite old-fashioned... This thought can lead to some students to feel that they are "less" than others.

Philosophy isn't included in the hierarchy, it created it. — T Clark

Good phrase,! :100: but do you know the real paradox here? That philosophy is used to be included in "social science" area. So according to Anderson Chemistry is more complicated than reasoning or thinking themselves!