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 5,575 - 5,586 of 6,170

16 years ago #5575
Prob123, I can see how being treated like that would be annoying. Those kinds of things build up over time and can make anyone feel defensive or rightfully irritated. It's sort of like how for me porn never was a big deal (never even hit my radar other than to skip past it) until I had people in my life who insisted on making it a deal, and now even though the idiots are gone I notice it and cringe. I am sorry some idiots made your religion a deal.

That kind of takes me back to the topic of evil. It's not the demons and monsters that get under my skin. It's not even the benevolent dictators who do things for your own good that bum me out(I kind of wish Doctor Horrible would hand me the keys to a shiny new Australia). I guess if someone is simple enough to pop up and be pure evil it would be refreshing as you could kill him outright and be a hero (or take him home to tea and be on guard because, you know, evil). It's the causally normal cruelty of an otherwise nice person, the sense of humor that hits another wrong, and the banality of the very human tendency to feel good about yourself by putting others down that bugs me. Sensitivity training is a joke too, so it's not that people have a right not to be offended. It's just that there is a difference between snarky and nasty, if only in my head. It comes down to respect.

If my humor ever hits you the wrong way Prob123, I am sorry. You know I have the deepest respect for you. Over the years we have this Internet colleguegship that makes me tease you almost like a RL friend.

16 years ago #5576
Irina says,

"Well, the universe contains us, and we are conscious. Perhaps just as (some would say) certain brain cells make us conscious, we make the universe conscious"

That's very well said, very good analogy, gives one an idea, an intuitive notion, of what Conscious Universe might mean/ be like, the way I see it.

Your second post, "our consciousness [been] tied in closely with various material, 4-D characteristics"... Firstly, what I said about "soul", "reincarnation" and other such concepts, applies to "consciousness", too, very much so. That's why I put the word in quote marks, and added "whatever that means!". With this in mind, what you call "our consciousness" is not Core Evolving Entity (let's call it CEE) I was talking about, but rather, an expression, or aspect of it. Our particular consciousness, awareness (of reality), the very notion of what is (real), and what is not (real), are all mediated through, and derived from, interaction between CEE and - NOT the 4-D reality - but a kind of undifferentiated (information) Matrix (matrix: "a situation or surrounding substance within which something else originates, develops, or is contained" - I would add - contained as an inherent potential which may, or may not be actualized/ expressed). The CEE "starts up" as a so-called stochastic process. It is an expression of logos that's inherent to CEE/ Matrix. Logos is simply the larger order of symmetry that in turn unifies CEE and Matrix. It's open for further discussion and critical examination.

Our perceived 4-D world is a product of this relationship between CEE and Matrix, just like our consciousness that perceives it. Hence, it's inherently conscious, just as it is inherently material. And consciousness does have a material base, indeed, but can not be reduced to it.

This also means that the physical reality does not vanish when I go to sleep. The table in my living room remains there, BUT it's not a round table anymore, red or green, made of wood or plastic, it's not even a table anymore - it just simply IS. Until I wake up, and it becomes round, multicolored, made of wood, etc... once again. Now we have crossed, or erased, the fine line that separates material science from Zen, have you noticed it? Consider also the fact that our individual personal consciousness literary gets "dissolved" when we fall asleep, or fall unconscious, for that matter. The neural activity that makes our "sober", "clear", fully awake & aware self, ceases to exist once we fall asleep, and it gets "replaced" by entirely different set/ type of neural activity. We "loose" all attributes associated with our conscious self, just like my table loses those I consciously attribute to it. It is indeed one of major mysteries of modern science, just how do we get "re-configured" every morning, over and over again, in a manner that allows us to maintain our sense of continuity/ continuous identity, throughout lifetime. And, indeed, there are cases - rare, but they are on record - of people who wake up one morning, and have no idea who in the world they are at all, no sense of identity, or, sometimes, a notion of different identity, like being displaced in spacetime.

Can you now see why, to my mind, the 20th century material science, which insists on absolute separation of subject and object, cannot truly grasp the whole, why is it ontologically unsound? And just how did they develop a "measurement problem"? What will it take to solve it..? Perhaps it will be dispelled, rather than solved, for it's all in their minds

16 years ago #5577
Bev, here in Europe, religion and race are usually not "boxed", i.e. most of many forms that one is required to fill, do not contain these references. Actually, I can't quite remember ever coming across it, and my experience includes what was once a socialist Yugoslavia, the present day Republic of Croatia, and The Netherlands (a monarchy), my home for the past 20+ years.

The "big thing" here is nationality, it's all important when it comes to classifying citizenry, European Union in spite. Myself, I feel Earthling... most of the time

Obsolete as all these categories are, they are still being used as (effective) means of manipulation through separation, a good old divide & rule routine.

16 years ago #5578
hits you the wrong way That's what I love about the Forge, folks are very nice. I don't think I have ever been rubbed the wrong way.
someone is simple enough to pop up and be pure evil I think the Hitlers, Pappa Doc's, and the Pol Pots fit the "pure evil" label quite nicely.

16 years ago #5579
Prob "I think the Hitlers, Pappa Doc's, and the Pol Pots fit the "pure evil" label quite nicely."

Maybe. I think it was Simone deBeavoir who wondered if Ava ever saw Hitler sleeping and thought how child like and sweet he really was. Also I am sure Hilter's Mom had memories of a time he was kind, a time he helped out--something she really loved him for (though most mothers do not need reasons). If you look hard enough, there is something human in everyone. It doesn't excuse the evil done or tolerated, it just muddies the water a bit.

Consider the story of a struggling 18 year old artist who is devastated to find out his mother has breast cancer. She is operated on, but it is too late. They keep trying to treat the cancer, but it does not go well. The torn artist forces himself to leave his dying mother to take entrance exams for Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, but he fails. He hides his failure from his mother to stay by her side as she dies, cooking for her, washing her and even cleaning the house while she slowly rots away despite his best efforts. That Christmas she dies and he is inconsolable. After he settles her bills he can no longer cope and he eventually wanders the streets and sleeps on park benches. He is saved not by human kindness, but by forming a political ideology that later manifests as "pure evil".

Does the love of a son for his mother make Hitler less of a monster? Hell no. But he was human. He loved as much as you and I. As you said, if some killed baby Hitler, it's possible someone else would have done the same things or worse. I hate the evil acts, and in my smallness, those who do them. However, I know the acts are not the full essence of the person doing them, and if circumstances were otherwise, it is possible I would be as evil in my own way.


16 years ago #5580
Interzone, I can see how nationality or ethnicity would be a bigger issue in the EU. However, there are certainly also cases of historical patterns of discrimination against certain religious groups (especially with Muslims in Croatia, no?). How would you gather data on how many Muslims, Christians, Jews or whatever there are in a a given area, school, or career path without making people identify a religion?

16 years ago #5581
Bev:

No doubt Hitler was not entirely evil; it is even possible, that he was a good person who was radically misguided.

Perhaps it is not people who are fundamentally evil, but actions. For a person in full possession of his faculties to torture a baby just for the fun of it would be evil, I should think.

People might be more or less evil insofar as they tend to commit evil actions.

16 years ago #5582
So one who commits great good and great evil in equal measures is not better or worse than the average Joe? And what role does intent and outcome play in the analysis?

16 years ago #5583
Great evil tends to negate any good. The fact that Hitler gave us the Volkswagen doesn't make up for the dead millions.

16 years ago #5584
That reminds me of an old joke about a Scottish sheep herder that is inappropriate here, but it involves building a bridge and not being called "The bridge builder" and but after one questionable act, being named that for life.

So Prob, are you one to judge by net results then?

16 years ago #5585
Not net results, but anything like millions of innocent lives makes me discount a few nice words here and there. A person like Hitler, Pol Pot, and Poppa Doc were capable of such horrors makes me discount any warm fuzzies and insincere. There is a point where deeds are so horrendous that nothing can blot them away.

16 years ago #5586
I look at it more like I'm glad I wasn't Hitler. Maybe I'm a Presbyterian after all . . .

It's just, no, I haven't done anything close to the evil of the Holocaust. But I've done some pretty bad things in my time. I feel sorry for Hitler's victims, but that doesn't keep me from feeling sorry for him. What was eating his soul alive to make him mastermind such a thing?


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