Nothing is "turning out". In both cases there's a body of texts, and there's us. Either you trust (by and large) those sources or you don't. Either you are interested in those texts or you are not. — Olivier5

Of course, but I've already stated the important difference, either you are interested in that difference or you are not.

:up:

The same question could be asked of Socrates, who could be a figment of Plato's imagination... Either one trusts the source or one doesn't. — Olivier5

Not really relevant - what matters about Socrates is a method of doing philosophy. We lose nothing if he turns out to be 'made up'. With Jesus there's rather more at stake.

It is not like figuring out the motives of a character in a novel. — Valentinus

Well it does seem to be rather similar to what you say it is not, but I agree scripture has had real world impact/repercussions, as have the myths held by all cultures. Claims made in a book can shape lives, regardless of the book's merits.

While I am not a mythicist - do we have good reason to believe that Jesus was actually a living person and that the Gospels contain anything this Yeshua (if he lived) might have said or done? It seems we may be commenting on literary fiction and/or myth and determining Jesus' view of Judaism is like trying to understand Slias Marner's view of Calvinism.

Agree, flawed personalities are almost always incoherent and inconsistent in my experience.

I’ve always thought that the psychological concept of narcissism was not only unhelpful but dangerous. — Joshs

I have heard this kind of critique often. I agree that personality disorders are over diagnosed and loose and often unhelpful. Narcissism being just one flavor. But having worked with those afflicted with prodigious narcissism - to the point where others suffer greatly - I have to accept it contains truth of a sort. Granted, that there are endless psychological interpretations and slants available to us for any human behavior.

Narcissism, as a diagnosis, is different from the classical references made to refer to a certain activity.

In the clinical sense, if it is not one condition, it is another. The importance of making a distinction is for the purpose of being closer to what is happening rather than further away. People have problems. How does one get closer to understanding them? — Valentinus

Oh, I see. Of course. And I have separated the two. When referring to Trump - given he is an actual person - I was referring to the conventional diagnostic criteria - which is appropriate given what had been said. When I quoted Nussbaum, I was referring to the myth. Moby Dick is of course another instance of the Narcissist myth being taken in a particular direction by Melville.

Huh? Please explain.

I suspect narcissism has been insufficiently described and needs to be seen in broader allegorical terms. Hence Martha Nussbaum's observation that like Narcissus, philosophy falls in love with its own image and drowns. She was making the point in a New Yorker interview that philosophy can be scientifically abstract and disengaged with the problems of it's time.

:up: For sure... It seems to me that foundations for paranoid thinking are partly built into some political frameworks.

What relevant events occurred between 1918 (influenza pandemic) and 2019 (COVID-19) that could explain it? — TheMadFool

The era of mass media, News Limited, the internet and some big political scandals like Watergate. Crackpots, the paranoid and the haters have a ready source of community and information all around the world in ways inconceivable in 1919.

Well, proving a conspiracy can be next to impossible, or entirely impossible, that's the whole point of a conspiracy. — baker

That's why any old shit can be spun into a perfectly fine conspiracy. I'd add to this that disgruntled people seem to embrace conspiracies that confirm their exisiting biases. Anti-semites talk of banking conspiracies, nationalist libertarians talk of post-modern Marxist conspiracies, etc...

the divine command "thou shall not kill" has absolute force. — Michael Zwingli

Except it seems with capital punishment and war. And there are a range of other commands that warrant a death sentence. I think the notion thou shalt not kill is cherry picked as these things always are. I don't think any 'thou shalts' explain the suicide question.

Thriving possibly requires different standards of ethics, depending on one's current socioeconomic status. — baker

I think this can be overstated. I have worked a lot with people experiencing homelessness and I am often surprised by the level of virtue - generosity, courage and selflessness I see in their behavior. But you need to know them to know this. This is especially true with Aboriginal people.

Win-win is a common old-school expression used in negotiations, based on the idea that both parties need to feel they got a win or closure will be hard or impossible. The idea is everyone walks away thinking they have benefited. Naturally it is a fabled response and not always achievable. I studied mediation in the 1980's and this was still a dominant approach.

Everyone loves a rule book.

I've personally found this thread helpful. I'll check out Nusbaum. Cheers.

Are our senses the only things that make the world real to us? — TiredThinker

Depends what you mean by 'the world'. Surely it's what we do with that sense data - our thoughts - that creates our reality. You use the term 'make the world real to us' - is this different in your view to the idea of experiencing the real world?

Obedience is eusocial, adaptive. It helps people flourish.

In my native language, we have a saying: Kdor ne uboga, ga tepe nadloga. 'He who doesn't obey gets himself into trouble.' — baker

Obedience certainly can function in this way. But obedience itself is an ambiguous term. Consider obedience under the Taliban versus obedience under Joe Biden.

In most circumstances, he who doesn't obey and gets caught gets himself into trouble. Or he who is is without status and doesn't obey gets himself into trouble.

Yep. I suspect Christian thinking influences these sorts of positions.

think that one should only commit suicide if their life is bad and I just made it clear(I think) that your life is not bad, you just say that it is. So if the reasoning behind suicide is wrong then no matter how much you suffer, it would be wrong to choose to die. — I love Chom-choms

There is no rule book to life. I think suicide should be an unstigmatized personal choice. There are many reasons why suicide might be preferable to life - pain, illness, war, old age.... However, people who want to kill themselves are often making the decision based on a situational crisis and with some support through the mess they may find equanimity and joy again. I was trained in suicide intervention counselling and have met many suicidal people. Most of them did not go through with it.

But the question, whether you choose not to live if you knew what your life was going to be like, is quite different. It's really about whether you believe it is worth having the life experience. I'm on the fence about this. Never having been born does not sound all that bad. But it's a ridiculous hypothetical no one can ever enact, so it's a fairly pointless speculative exercise.

What's your point?

Why not skip the God/Harry Potter stuff, which adds nothing, and just ask: If you had a choice never to have lived at all, knowing what you now know about your life events, what would you choose?

What are you hoping this question would reveal?

If before being born, God told you everything that would happen in your life but from a third person perspective. — I love Chom-choms

Incidentally, how on earth can God talk to you if you have never been born? Your identify, your sensibilities are moulded from your lived experiences, so there would be no one for God to talk to. Unless you are putting forth an argument regarding some kind of eternal, pre-birth soul - in which case you have, I think, a rather different philosophical question requiring further elaboration.

I guess because Nietzsche saw music is a pure Dionysian artform - it doesn’t appeal to our rational mind but rather to pure emotions, it is dance, movement, energy, celebration, abandonment and wordless catharsis. Nietzsche actually wanted to become a composer before philology. There is, I guess, Apollonian music too - Bach, perhaps and that terrible calming musical slush people use for meditation. I wonder what others think.

It was either Spinoza or Robert A. Heinlein.

I don't get it.

I came here to read discussions (usually to self conscious to post places.... due to the whole come access as a simpleton because I can't spell) and instantly felt unable to contribute. Is that really the vibe you want to give off?

I know I asked a fair few questions along the way. Main one still stands... should someone like myself be here? — Jem

If you feel like you can't contribute it may be (as you already suspect) because you lack knowledge and critical reading. Anyone can have an opinion, but opinions are like elbows - everyone has them.

Informed, reasoned opinion is precious and in philosophy a theorised view is frequently necessary. Philosophy is not just making shit up - even though metaphysics attracts more than its share of precisely this. But the fact remains, what can we possibly contribute to a discussion about the later Wittgenstein's approach, for instance, without critical reading? Ditto Aristotle or any one of dozens of complex and nuanced thinkers. There's also the history of philosophical ideas on subjects like truth or morality or idealism, which are terrifically complex and diverse.

Like you, I do not have a philosophical education. I came here largely to see what I have missed. I do not expect to make a contribution in technical matters or in critique of a thinker's key approaches, as I haven't privileged the time to explore them. Nevertheless, even if you have read, for instance Heidegger's Being and Time, it's another thing entirely to have understood it or to be able to critique it.

But all this doesn't mean you can't occasionally provide a perspective or ask a question or learn something new. That's pretty much all I do.

would very much like to believe that there is a wisdom that is beyond and above socioeconomic success, a wisdom that is worth more than socioeconomic success, a wisdom that trumps socioeconomic success. But I am afraid, sincerely afraid, that there is no such wisdom, and that socioeconomic success is as good as life gets. — baker

Interesting, Baker. I am afraid that wisdom may be as good as life gets... I prefer your fear as it is more straight forward and it would mean I can stop trying to understand Being and Time...

So Donald Trump, seriously put forward as an example of narcissism, is less infatuated the "real" DT and more infatuated with the DT he imagines himself to be. Egotists, who always put themselves first, may be more realistic about themselves than the narcissist. — Bitter Crank

I don't think there's a substantive difference between egotists and narcissists. A narcissistic personality disorder is a continuum and comes in mild to sever forms, with or without some insight. Plenty of room in this space for Trump and, say, an instagram influencer.

I'm suggesting that the thirst for subversion has been entirely absorbed within a system that cares very little about the content of the subversive beliefs , so long as the liberal value of open dialogue and discussion (this is a liberal idea AGAINST repressive, aristocratic power) continues to dominate our political imagination, we will continue to seek political desire in speaking subversively online, which does next to nothing. — wanderoff

Sure. My experience suggests that most 'activists', right or left are theatrical and certainly don't really want to achieve anything, they just want to whine and be seen as radicals. It was no different before the internet - I remember well. Is this intrinsic and sometimes hypocritical posturing not just human behaviour? It's no different to people who talk about the importance of higher consciousness and subverting materialism when at heart they are acquisitive consumers whose real concern are their cars, homes and swimming pools?

Where is that world??! — baker

English speaking countries.

Inspired by Mcluhan, Foucault and others, I wonder how much power REALLY relies on censorship as a form of social control, when its quite clear that, nowadays, the proliferation of political discourses online and offline serve their own, possibly more potent programmes of control. — wanderoff

These are the kinds of questions that require specific instances to be meaningfully explored, so it would help if you could provide an example of something a powerful group would want to censor as part of social control. You'd also have to define you have in mind when you are describing power.

I don't understand your point about political discourses as programmes of control - how do you see this working?

t relies not only on media companies but on the interaction between people and the medium (internet communication) itself. Power relies a lot less on controlling the "messages" as much as they are focused on controlling the medium (?). At least in the case of internet politics. — wanderoff

What does this mean? Can you provide an example?

The left believes the right runs the world, and that leftist ideas are subversive by virtue of their anti capitalism. This belief helps develop communities who engage with each other and with themselves heavily, who engage primarily through speech and ideas online because it is seen as satisfying political desire for a decisively alienated political era. For power, repression and consumption go hand in hand, the more we believe we are repressed, the more we speak and consume these so called subversive ideas. — wanderoff

The Right believe the Left run the world and that Right-wing ideas are subversive by virtue of their libertarianism.

Are you suggesting that political discourse and the thirst for subversion is the product of perception, not reality?

Again, sometimes folk are wrong. Disagreements can be real. — Banno

Yep- in a world that likes to privilege the folk wisdom of 'win/win' this is often an unwelcome truth.

Hermeneuticists like John Caputo and Richard Rorty call this working together in good faith toward a fusion of horizons of understanding the ‘conversation of mankind’. It has been critiqued by postmodernists like Derrida and Lyotard , who point out that in many cases the two parties are not operating with the same senses of meaning , and there is no meta-understanding that can arrived at, no perfect agreement, through an effort of ‘good faith’ What is needed in these cases is respect for the disagreement rather than pursuit of fusion. — Joshs

Yep - that's pretty much my argument too.

1. Establish agreement not only about basic definitions (which is important), but also about basic beliefs.

This is an essential place to start any discussion, as mentioned above, because it saves a lot of time, effort, and confusion. I can't count how many times an argument eventually loops back to these questions somehow.

2. Make sure to understand the other person's position.

This is best demonstrated by stating what you believe to be their argument, and by them confirming your accuracy. No straw men, no caricatures, and hopefully far less later misunderstanding.

3. Build on commonality.

Once basic beliefs and definitions are agreed upon, and positions accurately understood, then go on to problems and proposed solutions.

How much time and energy would be spared if these simple propositions were adopted? — Xtrix

Sensible ideas however:

I think there's room for a lot of acrimony in attempting to clarify points 1, 2 and 3. Just the process of working to summarize, or even to steel man the other persons' view, can escalate quickly indeed. A simple word may trigger a reaction, especially on questions of values.

'Building on commonality' is a frequently mentioned strategy, used by negotiators and relationship counsellors. It can come across as disingenuous and forced. Also commonalities are often the foundations of division.

Take the issue of cutting down old growth forests for the timber industry. We can argue that both the loggers and the conservationists want the same thing for their children. A viable future. But at this point it can go south very quickly. In identifying the how and why the problems begin. The loggers want an immediate future that is empirically certain while the conservationists use predicative science to highlight a contested potential future. What's going to be more compelling - jobs or climate change? Jobs, for the most part.

I think the the tools you describe are useful and can work if people come together in good faith.

My experience in mediating disputes between parties has taught me one thing. People only benefit from mediation and consensus building if they both agree to participate fully as honest interlocutors. And it's often when you arrive at the question of values that you start to hit the rocks.

know as much about climatology as I know about epidemiology. So, I do what I always do and roll with the experts, the vast majority of which (as I understand) think you are wrong. But let's say, just for the sake of argument, that you are right. That still doesn't address the fact that pumping countless metric shit-tons of man-made poison into the air is not a good thing. You know, like doing the same to a river. And no, Earth doesn't run around cleaning up our mess in any realistic time frame that will protect existing biodiversity baselines. — James Riley

:clap:

:up:

I get that. But my question was how does a Christian love his or her neighbor in practice? — Apollodorus

The New Testament doesn't seem especially unclear on this. Are you saying it is hard to understand what Jesus recommends? If you are saying it is difficult to ascertain what we should do here, then maybe we should give up all reading of philosophers/religion for lack of clarity?

Sure. Which experts do you have in mind? How about Heidegger? — Constance

A speculative thinker who is almost unreadable and readily misinterpreted is unlikely to help. How about one of the numerous physicists writing on the subject?

Like two ships passing in the night. Our context is such that despite our willingness to play the game, we lack sufficient commonality to get off the ground. You don’t know me, so it isn’t unexpected that I am less well understood than if you did. It is mildly amusing that you’d take from this conversation that I believe language to be codified or believe that it should be codified. I even felt a bit like I was waving a flag yelling “Meaning is use, so how should we use this word and is there even a good reason to do so?”

Regarding Nietzsche, I posted the quote because you suggested that I misapplied the idea that god is dead. I simply wanted to highlight that the changing role of god in society (rather than the idea of god or the god object) was the target of the claim that god is dead. The trappings of religion survive the change of orientation, and it is for us to decide what to do with them. It may be, however, that even religion will survive the movement away from god and instead of the churches being the tomb (the place where the remnants of the god orientation reside), they will be the house for the community that comes after. — Ennui Elucidator

Hmm - so this is not what I thought. Simply stated, I found you too dogmatic - on two words particularly. But maybe you are a dogmatic person.

And here we are - the modern men who turned away from god and left its corpse for the grave diggers. No longer do we deny the deed, but we have also failed to become god ourselves. The ubermensch is yet for tomorrow. — Ennui Elucidator

Poetic nonsense from where I sit and I started an entire thread on this here. Of course this section of FN is also an obsession of Jordan B Peterson's. Nietzsche may have despised Christianity but Christians seem to love Nietzsche since he sets up atheism as the notion that without gods anything is permissible, hence Stalin and Hitler...

But really, the post started off with a discussion of religion, language, and meaning, so I'm not sure how it is a criticism that that is the subject of my post. You've chosen to participate, so I assumed that you were interested in the conversation — Ennui Elucidator

What I found is that you are stuck on certain words ('religion' and 'spirituality') as in some way codified so an ongoing conversation per say did not seem possible. But sometimes I do that too, so I don't hold it against you. Conversations do run out of dynamism and I am a believer in moving on when this happens.

Ironically. the biggest obstacle to the Taliban, in attempting to establish an orderly Islamic state in Afghanistan, is internal tensions. According to news reports, ISIS may be their biggest revolutionary competition. And ISIS seems to as opposed to Taliban apostates as to American infidels. — Gnomon

Not really surprising and old news. The schism between the isms is a reoccurring problem with competing fundamentalists.

--- better for them to fight among themselves than to re-conquer the whole world in the name of a long-dead prophet. — Gnomon

:up:

I agree. I was referring to how certain laypeople use physics as an empty vase in which to arrange the flowers of speculative bullshit...