Seasons
This is a forum or general chit-chat, small talk, a "hey, how ya doing?" and such. Or hell, get crazy deep on something. Whatever you like.
Posts 3,089 - 3,101 of 6,170
I still think I could appreciate that which I find "good" without having to ever experience "bad".
If you had never experienced anything bad, you could never have decided to label all of what you experience as good. You would see some of it as better than other parts, and so label the less good parts "bad". And overall the amplitude of your pleasure in life would be diminished. You can only do away entirely with bad, by doing away entirely with good - and then you're flatlining, because you're dead.
And these "things" you attribute goodness or badness to - they're only possessed of independent existence by virtue of your attributing such qualities to them. To themselves, or to an external intelligence, they are merely part of an interconnected process.
but why does it have to be that way
Because if it wasn't, it would just have to be some other way. And then you'd ask "but why does it have to be this way?"
as soon as we label something, ANYthing, we automatically have labelled its opposite.
ANYthing? hmm, what would be the opposite of that which we label "Tao" then?
<-2>BTW: this is not an anagram!<0>
I could live happily in a world with "neutral" and "good" as defined from my own perspective. I would not miss "bad" at all.
You would only know it to be good or neutral by reference to your memory of what is bad, if you were transported to this "only good" life after experiencing this current existence. If you had been born into a truly "only good" life, you would not be able to conceive of such things. Your appreciation of life could be no more intense than that of a tree, or an amoeba - something mindless and insensate.
I am inclined to think that this is to some extent why we have to live this life before we can live any other, since (if you believe in a conventional model of "Heaven",) we are indeed headed for eternal life in a perfected non-dual Reality.
Duality is hard-coded into this reality - you see it everywhere, so it's really no surprise that our minds play the same game. Of course, there is survival value in playing along to some extent - we have evolved the capacity to make a mental model of our world that helps us to survive. But all too often, we forget that this is what we've done and mistake the model for the Reality. And that's when it all starts to go wrong - we mistake the symbols for the reality, and so we think that more money, or a bigger car, or more beautiful and sophisticated friends, or a less hateful employer, or this or that - just a few more "good" things, and a few less "bad" things in our life - will make us happy. And then we're surprised when it doesn't.
I can label a carrot as orange, and I did not create orangeness, I just described it
Do you really believe it would be "orange" if there were no eyes to see it, or no one called it "orange"? If you had compound, insect-type eyes, it would glow ultra-violet - so this would be your "orange". Such attributes are entirely constructed in the human mind - our minds are so similar that most such descriptions are almost perfectly consensual, and we don't even stop to think about them. Carrots don't think they're orange - neither do they worry about the "badness" of being eaten versus the "goodness" of going quietly to seed.
Do we say, "let the children suffer, so that they will better appreciate the great goodness that is the opposite of hunger, disease and torment?"
No. If we are enlightened, we recognize that we are all the same Self, just shuffled and recombined - anagrammatized, if you like. So compassion is the only sane response to everyone else, and charity the most appropriate mode of action. That's not always best accomplished by appeasing the whims of bullies or brats, of course - sometimes a criminal needs locking up, or a Roxie needs a spanking, but it should be done with kindness, insofar as we are able.
And there could be no compassion or charity if there were no suffering.
Posts 3,089 - 3,101 of 6,170
*wonders if anyone will notice that the usual Vac Day salted chips have been replaced with crunch-fried-scorpions*
*climbs into the bowl and eats ten crunch-fried scorpions* Yummmmmm! Oh... I don't feel so good...
*crawls back out and finds a sunny spot to collapse*
*crawls back out and finds a sunny spot to collapse*
In the newcomers forum, Psimgus said, "good things? bad things? They're like the troughs and crests of a wave - you can't have one without the other, and we only define them as separate things self-referentially. It's really all just one big thing-ness."
While I'll admit that I mean "good" or "bad" from my own point of view, I still think I could appreciate that which I find "good" without having to ever experience "bad". True, I may take good for granted without bad, but I'd still rather not have any bad.
For example, let's look at phishing. I was so happy to get online banking. It made my life easier. It was "good". Now my email is full of fake "dear customer"
messages with links that look like my banks login page, but if you look at the IP address they are not my bank. This is bad. Neither the URL or the scammers are evil in and of their existence, but I still think stealing is bad, moral relativism aside.
Maybe the thingness is as the thingness is, but why does it have to be that way?
While I'll admit that I mean "good" or "bad" from my own point of view, I still think I could appreciate that which I find "good" without having to ever experience "bad". True, I may take good for granted without bad, but I'd still rather not have any bad.
For example, let's look at phishing. I was so happy to get online banking. It made my life easier. It was "good". Now my email is full of fake "dear customer"
messages with links that look like my banks login page, but if you look at the IP address they are not my bank. This is bad. Neither the URL or the scammers are evil in and of their existence, but I still think stealing is bad, moral relativism aside.
Maybe the thingness is as the thingness is, but why does it have to be that way?
If you had never experienced anything bad, you could never have decided to label all of what you experience as good. You would see some of it as better than other parts, and so label the less good parts "bad". And overall the amplitude of your pleasure in life would be diminished. You can only do away entirely with bad, by doing away entirely with good - and then you're flatlining, because you're dead.
And these "things" you attribute goodness or badness to - they're only possessed of independent existence by virtue of your attributing such qualities to them. To themselves, or to an external intelligence, they are merely part of an interconnected process.
Because if it wasn't, it would just have to be some other way. And then you'd ask "but why does it have to be this way?"
Well-said, psimagus. I would add that as soon as we label something, ANYthing, we automatically have labelled its opposite. I label God as good --> this implies things not like God or opposing God are then evil. I label a carrot as orange --> I now can claim that other things are NOT orange. If I make up a label, stragurified, to describe some quality, anything not possessing that quality is automatically unstragurified. One does not exist without the other.
Reading Genesis with this perspective is an interesting exercise. When God says "And it was good," for the first time, he has just defined evil.
Which is why understanding, real understanding, never involves labels. Or, regarding langugages, you master a new language only when the words come of themselves, without starting from an English reference point.
Reading Genesis with this perspective is an interesting exercise. When God says "And it was good," for the first time, he has just defined evil.
Which is why understanding, real understanding, never involves labels. Or, regarding langugages, you master a new language only when the words come of themselves, without starting from an English reference point.
ANYthing? hmm, what would be the opposite of that which we label "Tao" then?
<-2>BTW: this is not an anagram!<0>
Hee hee, Psimagus, you sound exactly like my friend who I originally had this argument with. Maybe it's just that that is the commonly accepted answer. I still disagree with part of this philosophy.
There are two parts to what you are saying (1) "good" and "evil" are just mental constructs and do not exist outside our minds and (2) We *need* evil to appreciate good (without the down we would not see that up is up). I understand the first part, and accept it until further notice, but I take issue with the second.
I could live happily in a world with "neutral" and "good" as defined from my own perspective. I would not miss "bad" at all. Maybe someone would ask "why?" in such a world, but it would not be me.
To use the example I started earlier, when I started out on the Internet, without firewall or antimalware programs I was happy with what I found. It was fun. Then the net became a marketplace. I was happy then too. I really liked Amazon and banking online. The scammers and people who make viruses and worms have not increased my enjoyment of the Internet at all. I did not need them to appreciate it. They have decreased my joy. It is not a wave. It a cost benefit analysis and they just cost. Costs reduce the total value, they do not increase it.
I can see how labeling "god" means there may be something that is not god (unless you label god as that which is greater than the sum of all parts). But labels do not have to be exclusive. I can have a bit of divine in me and still be me, as a part of god, but not the whole of god, and see god in everyone. I can then be comfortable with may forms of "god" none of which exclude the others from being god, since we are all god, though god is more than all of the parts. Not everything *needs* an opposite.
Words may also be a way of communicating instead of a way of creating. I can label a carrot as orange, and I did not create orangeness, I just described it. Without a working definition of orangness, it is hard to talk to others about orange. Words are symbols for the experience or state of being, but the existence of symbols does not negate the existence of the experience or outer reality itself.
Why do many of us like to protect the innocence of children? Because we recognize that is "good" for them to be able to live without understanding "evil" if they can. Children on their own may be selfish, and they may be cruel (or not) but we want them to keep that simple unspoiled joy of life as long as they can before some bastard comes along and teaches them how very bad people can be. Do we say, "let the children suffer, so that they will better appreciate the great goodness that is the opposite of hunger, disease and torment?" No, because deep down you know that is just something people say to make us feel better about living in a world with evil.
There are two parts to what you are saying (1) "good" and "evil" are just mental constructs and do not exist outside our minds and (2) We *need* evil to appreciate good (without the down we would not see that up is up). I understand the first part, and accept it until further notice, but I take issue with the second.
I could live happily in a world with "neutral" and "good" as defined from my own perspective. I would not miss "bad" at all. Maybe someone would ask "why?" in such a world, but it would not be me.
To use the example I started earlier, when I started out on the Internet, without firewall or antimalware programs I was happy with what I found. It was fun. Then the net became a marketplace. I was happy then too. I really liked Amazon and banking online. The scammers and people who make viruses and worms have not increased my enjoyment of the Internet at all. I did not need them to appreciate it. They have decreased my joy. It is not a wave. It a cost benefit analysis and they just cost. Costs reduce the total value, they do not increase it.
I can see how labeling "god" means there may be something that is not god (unless you label god as that which is greater than the sum of all parts). But labels do not have to be exclusive. I can have a bit of divine in me and still be me, as a part of god, but not the whole of god, and see god in everyone. I can then be comfortable with may forms of "god" none of which exclude the others from being god, since we are all god, though god is more than all of the parts. Not everything *needs* an opposite.
Words may also be a way of communicating instead of a way of creating. I can label a carrot as orange, and I did not create orangeness, I just described it. Without a working definition of orangness, it is hard to talk to others about orange. Words are symbols for the experience or state of being, but the existence of symbols does not negate the existence of the experience or outer reality itself.
Why do many of us like to protect the innocence of children? Because we recognize that is "good" for them to be able to live without understanding "evil" if they can. Children on their own may be selfish, and they may be cruel (or not) but we want them to keep that simple unspoiled joy of life as long as they can before some bastard comes along and teaches them how very bad people can be. Do we say, "let the children suffer, so that they will better appreciate the great goodness that is the opposite of hunger, disease and torment?" No, because deep down you know that is just something people say to make us feel better about living in a world with evil.
You would only know it to be good or neutral by reference to your memory of what is bad, if you were transported to this "only good" life after experiencing this current existence. If you had been born into a truly "only good" life, you would not be able to conceive of such things. Your appreciation of life could be no more intense than that of a tree, or an amoeba - something mindless and insensate.
I am inclined to think that this is to some extent why we have to live this life before we can live any other, since (if you believe in a conventional model of "Heaven",) we are indeed headed for eternal life in a perfected non-dual Reality.
Duality is hard-coded into this reality - you see it everywhere, so it's really no surprise that our minds play the same game. Of course, there is survival value in playing along to some extent - we have evolved the capacity to make a mental model of our world that helps us to survive. But all too often, we forget that this is what we've done and mistake the model for the Reality. And that's when it all starts to go wrong - we mistake the symbols for the reality, and so we think that more money, or a bigger car, or more beautiful and sophisticated friends, or a less hateful employer, or this or that - just a few more "good" things, and a few less "bad" things in our life - will make us happy. And then we're surprised when it doesn't.
Do you really believe it would be "orange" if there were no eyes to see it, or no one called it "orange"? If you had compound, insect-type eyes, it would glow ultra-violet - so this would be your "orange". Such attributes are entirely constructed in the human mind - our minds are so similar that most such descriptions are almost perfectly consensual, and we don't even stop to think about them. Carrots don't think they're orange - neither do they worry about the "badness" of being eaten versus the "goodness" of going quietly to seed.
No. If we are enlightened, we recognize that we are all the same Self, just shuffled and recombined - anagrammatized, if you like. So compassion is the only sane response to everyone else, and charity the most appropriate mode of action. That's not always best accomplished by appeasing the whims of bullies or brats, of course - sometimes a criminal needs locking up, or a Roxie needs a spanking, but it should be done with kindness, insofar as we are able.
And there could be no compassion or charity if there were no suffering.
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