Zoot's Philosophical Musings

"I agree: about as much fun as watching one's toenails grow -- at least they will get further after 2500 years!" - RL

Now THAT would be a sight to behold. Toenails that haven't been clipped in 2500 years. Can you imagine? It'd take an entire army of Japanese women to do a single pedicure... on just one toe!

ecmandu wrote:If there is a god, by laws of logic, it cannot be omnipresent.

uh that's a negative, ghost rider. god is not separate from nature, so pervades throughout it entirely. if a thing exists and occupies a space, god is there, because that thing is part of god... which only means it is part of nature.

this non-problem of god's lack of omniscience because "it can't know what it's like to not be god" is solved in the same way; there isn't anything that isn't part of god, so there is nothing that can know what it's like not being god.

and besides, god doesn't 'know' anything. or rather when we use the word 'know' in an anthropomorphic sense such as 'a person with a mind that is thinking', we can't then use that word to characterize some attribute of god because it does not pertain to its (god's) essence like it pertains to one of the two modes (mind) which comprise our being. 'knowing' is a phenomenologically contingent ontologically determined attribute of a certain kind of being that exists in particular instances in the universe. we are those instances. if those instances ceased to happen, the universe would not also cease to exist. ergo, god would not cease to exist, so god's essence does not involve 'knowing'.

god is that thing which requires of no other cause to be its reason or explanation, while particular things and events in the universe do in order for there to be adequate knowledge of them. we know god directly, deductively, as a clear idea. knowledge of everything else (excepting tautologies) is always confused and incomplete... like the posts in that thread you're in.

You know what my next post is going to be, right? You guessed it.


On Freud the fraud:

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:Why does anyone bother with that charlatan Freud?

Freud's life and work was characterised by a level of duplicity, fraud, fabrication, intellectual dishonesty, invention, plagiarism, monomania, cocaine-induced madness, hero-worship, client maltreatment (and abuse), bluster, dissembling, lying and bullying (protected by a level of hero-worship among his disciples that merits its own analysis), unmatched in the career of almost any other prominent figure in recent history outside of big business, politics and organised crime.

Check out the essays here:

http://www.richardwebster.net/

And consult these:

Crews, F., et al. (1995), The Memory Wars (Granta Books).

--------, (1998) (ed.), Unauthorized Freud (Viking).

Thornton, E. (1986), The Freudian Fallacy (Paladin).

Webster, R. (1995), Why Freud Was Wrong (Harper Collins).

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:Freud was a complete charlatan (which means Lacan is too).

You are welcome to all this a priori dogmatism, largely based on the fabricated work of that charlatan, Freud.

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:Freud's theory is certainly a prioristic -- hence he had to invent the 'evidence' he said supported his views.

You can find that allegation substantiated in the books and links I listed here:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1339862&postcount=55

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=970189&postcount=5

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:I suggest you give that charlatan Freud a miss -- he is neither a good psychologist, nor even a fifth-rate philosopher.

Most philosophy is incomprehensible anyway, so unless you have to read it for college etc., I suggest you skip the vast bulk of it.

You can be an excellent revolutionary and not even have heard of the word 'philosophy'. In fact, the less the better.

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:^^^Unfortunately for you and Caudwell, Freud was a complete charlatan:

http://www.richardwebster.net/freudwrong.html

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v22/n08/borc01_.html

http://www.human-nature.com/freud/fcrews.html

This means, of course, that the work of winbags like Lacan and Zizek is a total waste of space.

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:

"check out Rollo May, the Greatest Psychologist ever"

Given that he based many of his ideas on that fraud, Freud, he can't be.

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:And, please do no quote Lacan at me; he's even worse than Heidegger, with his reliance on that charlatan Freud and his a priori psychology.

On Heraclitus the mystical idiot:

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:In fact Heraclitus was both a mystic and an idiot. Who else would try to pass an opinion about change in the entire universe, and for all time, based on what he thought was true of his stepping into a river (the details of which he got wrong anyway)!?

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:Heraclitus was a confused mystic, who, among other things, thought that he could determine what was true of all moving bodies and/or processes in the entire universe, for all of time, based on a badly executed thought experiment about stepping into a river!
[He screwed up because he confused count nouns with mass nouns.]
Such *a priori* dogmatics has dominated much of ‘western’ thought ever since, including that which Hegel inflicted on humanity.

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:But, it is very easy to step into the same river. Or does BS think that if he steps into the Rappahannock it changes into the Potomac?

On a side issue, it's not a good idea to defend the useless ideas Hegel inflicted on humanity by quoting the even more confused ideas of that ancient mystic Heraclitus.

This mystical bumbler thought he could decide what was true for all of reality for all of time by observing what happens if you step into a river!

And he got those details wrong too! It is surely possible to step into the same river (as I have shown above) and many times, too. What Heraclitus probably meant was that it is not possible to step into the same water twice.

But even that is easy to do. Water is always H2O, and stays H2O no matter how many times you step into it.

Maybe he meant "Step into the same body of water", but that too is easy. If that body of water is Lake Superior, it does not change into Lake Ontario if you step into it.

Perhaps he meant that the atoms concerned were different? But he knew nothing of atoms.

Maybe then we can refer to different atoms? But every water atom is identical to every other water atom.

So, it's not possible to make sense of this obscure remark (just like it's not possible to make sense of any metaphysical remark) that all too many comrades regard as gospel truth.

Of course, if anyone thinks they can make sense of Heraclitus's confused thought, they are welcome to try.

Anyway, isn't the claim "you cannot step in the same river twice" not less abstract, and thus not true?"

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:

so you are quite happy to abuse the most important philosopher ever

Heraclitus is hardly the most important philosopher ever -- his work, or what little we have of it, is just a series of dogmatic
assertions (many of which are false, too obscure to assess, or mystical rubbish). But even if he were, I am still happy to brand anyone a *fool* who thinks he/she can derive fundamental truths about reality from what might or might not be true about stepping into a river! And anyone who swallows this guff is in danger of being tarred with the same brush.

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:

Anyone who writes that way about Herakleitos is plainly a total ignoramus.

As you of all people, should know, name-calling does not constitute a valid argument.

Don't tell me I have to teach you good manners!

Sure, I name-call from time to time but I also give reasons why I disagree with an opponent. Just why do you think it legitimate to derive fundamental truths about all of reality for all of time from what is or isn't true about stepping into a river?

Plato missed this (since he was happy to do likewise: derive such theses from language alone), and maybe you have, too.

As Marx said: the ruling ideas are always those of the ruling-class.

He also said this about ordinary langauge:

"The philosophers have only to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, in order to recognise it, as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only *manifestations*of actual life." [German Ideology.]

And that is what my work is aimed at, too.

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:I am well aware that other ruling-class hacks, like Plato, thought highly of Heraclitus, but what has that got to do with whether or not Heraclitus was a fool to think that he could derive fundamental truths about all of
reality for all of time from what was or was not true of stepping into a river (which conclusions we now know are false, anyway).

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:Heraclitus was talking out of his rear.

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:

dialectics is learned from nature, the basic laws

Not so. It was invented, as far as we know (and as you also point out) by that mystic, Heraclitus. As I have pointed out to you already, he was happy to impose universal change on the entire universe, for all of time, from what he thought was true about stepping into a river! And he got this example wrong too! [More details supplied on request.]

This theory was then elaborated by the following mystics and ruling-class hacks:

Plotinus, Proclus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Cicero, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Pseudo-Dionysius, the shadowy figure Hermes Trismegistus, John Scotus Eriugena, Albertus Magnus (St Thomas Aquinas's teacher), Meister Eckhart, Raymond Lull, Nicholas of Cusa, Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola, Marsilio Ficino, Henri Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim, Giordano Bruno, Robert Fludd, John Dee, Johannes Reuchlin, Paracelsus, Sebastian Franck, Valentin Weigel, Jacob Böhme, William Law, Emanuel Swedenborg, Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, Friedrich Christoph Oetinger, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, Fichte, Hölderlin, Goethe, Schelling, Novalis and Hegel.

Not one of these provided any evidence to support their universalist claims, since they were happy to derive their ideas from thought alone, as I alleged above.

Modern day dialecticians make a weak gesture at attempting to substantiate their theory -- by 'cherry-picking' which parts of nature they use, ignoring what does not fit -- as do you.

I have called this approach to knowledge 'Mickey Mouse Science'.

On Heidegger the silly old fart:

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:Practically every sentence this charlatan (Heidegger) ever wrote was metaphysical (as well as being incomprehensible).

Exhibit A for the presecution of his 'disciples':

Quote:
According to Heidegger, this is the historical conjuncture that bore witness to the triumph of 're-presentation,'
the thinking of being as 'world picture': the hardening of metaphysical speculation into a calculative technology of
'enframing', in which being (including Dasein [being-in-the-world]) has been reduced to 'standing reserve.'


Apart from the minor fact that it is complete b*llocks, is this a scientific claim?

No

Does it claim to provide a priori knowledge of the world?

Yes.

As I said: metaphysical.

Into the flames with it.

Please do not post any more of this sub-standard tripe; I want to hang on to my breakfast a bit longer.

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:I suspect he needs to re-read Wittgenstein, and throw Heidegger in the trash.

I am afraid I have to agree with Hume on this one: into the flames with it.

Metaphysical drivel.

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:I only posted this since it seemed to confirm my negative view of Heidegger.

An even better book about Heidegger (which exposes him as a philosophical plonker, and his 'disciples' as idiots) is Paul Edwards's book Heidegger's Confusions (Prometheus Books, 2004).

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:Throw all of traditional philosophy onto the bonfire, beginning with Heidegger. That will do for starters.

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:A priori, dogmatic guff I am afraid, from that Nazi charlatan.

On the other hand -- perhaps I was wrong about burning it all.

Yes, on second thoughts, burning is far too good for it...

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:Unless you need to read up on this for a college course, I'd advise you to steer clear of epistemology in its entirety. Not one single problem has been solved in 2500 years, and we still do not know what a solution would even look like.

And definitely steer clear of Heidegger, unless you want to be bamboozled by an out and out charlatan.

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:I honestly do not know why anyone bothers with that charlatan Heidegger; I suggest that unless you have to (to pass acourse at college, or whatever) you do not waste your time with that jargon-meister. He's even worse than Hegel. At least Hegel was not a charlatan.

He no more means anything by the term 'Being' than did Parmenides who invented the term (by nonimalising a perfectly good verb) -- a trick that Plato and subsequent philosophers perfected.

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:[On Heidegger, I am not the person to ask since I would not touch his work with someone else's condom-covered barge pole.]  

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:Heidegger was a dumbass compared to Frege.

On Steven Pinker the guy who looks like an old lesbian:

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:Pinker and most of the nativists (but not Chomsky) are right wing nuts, too.

As far as the 'blank slate' myth is concerned, no one has actually held this view (not even John Locke, to whom Pinker tries to trace this myth).

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:Ok, this should lay that myth to rest:

http://www2.phil.cam.ac.uk/~swb24/reviews/Pinker.htm

Now, I do not endorse everything Balckburn says, but he is right about Pinker.

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:I find it hard to believe anyone takes Pinker seriously.

wait a minute, aren't you that engine i met in the train yard?





yeah that is you! well i'll be damned. good to see you again, my friend. you know i remember how you saved those passenger cars, and i was very impressed by your bravery.

i am proud to be your friend and will gladly allow you to bear my image on your tender as a symbol of your courage.

three cheers for yong bao, the RM class 4-6-2 Pacific!!!

Wtf? I named myself after a chinese engine? I didn't realize that. I meant to name myself after this guy because I couldn't think of anything and I just happened to be watching this video.

Rap haters if you there
Put your hands in the air
Wave em 'round like you what?
Like you just don't care

https://vocaroo.com/i/s00kFqiXTSm2

it isn't what rap is, but who's doing it, that has brought such criticism to the genre. scientifically speaking, you have two neurological events that are corresponding when listening to rap which produce the interest in it and pleasure experienced when hearing it. when the attention is caught by both the conceptual content of a verse (word meanings) as well as the rhythmic form the verse takes, the phenomenological dimension of the sense data is compounded. the attention demanded by ordinary speech for deciphering the meaning of a statement said without being rhythmic in form, is simpler... just as the attention demanded for comprehending a rhythm produced by an instrument is simpler as well. but when combined, you have a more novel and complex form of sense data. it is as if two primitive brain centers evolved for performing a specific function are called into service to perform an interpretational scheme that doesn't exist for each center individually. this perhaps is why rapping has the appeal it does.

the objection to rap, then, has less to do with criticizing this neurological process as being somehow worthy of contempt (if anything it should be praised because of its novelty), and more to do with the conceptual content and the people who produce it. so for example when a black person sets out to rap about some political narrative (racism, victimhood, monetary success, sexual promiscuity, etc.), a conservative white person will come along and express disdain for rap per se, when in fact, in itself, this form of 'art' is not something that should garner such contempt.

other forms of criticism are also of concern. the fact that rap has been so successful, and yet is so easy compared to playing an instrument, has pissed people off. these people feel it isn't fair that a music form should be so successful while also being relatively simple when compared to other forms that have struggled so hard to reach that level of success. this is a legitimate complaint, but also a bit naive. when the music industry is understood properly, one will discover that it makes no effort in recognizing how much work is put into producing a product, but rather how popular and marketable that product is. a musician has no right to feel offended by this fact; the market doesn't owe him anything, and that a consumer group may show no interest in what he does is not a violation of some right.

if a musician wants to complain, he should be complaining about the quality of the consumer mentality and the forces that work to inadvertently dumb it down. but even that isn't something one has a right to complain about. to blame any single feature of this process would be to pass judgement on nature as a whole, which is completely determined and unable to be any other way than it is.

in any case, rap music just happened to fall into the hands of a lower class first, so it has been stigmatized since and associated with such a class. but in fact, it doesn't 'belong' to anyone and is not created by one 'type' of person exclusively.

the magnificence of lil dicky exists in this way. he brings the pureness of the novelty i explained above back into the foreground by a hyperbolic reversal of the cliches, formulas and stereotypes previously saturating the genre. in doing this he strips rap of its hermeneutic contingencies and re-presents it in its original form. so when he disrupts the existing normalcy of rap by changing the thematic schemes while also staying true to the complex rhythmic form, he disarms the listeners, upsets them, creates disorientation. essentially he is producing a powerful and effective logos in dramatic presentation while changing the ethos and pathos at the same time. he is a true pioneer in this respect.

notice all the exaggerated cliches in the 'professional rapper' video? a waiting room packed with a motley crew of black gangstas and hos, an overweight black receptionist talking in the expected black female idiom (oh ohhhkay!), the gluttonous display of gold records on the wall, the shameless debauchery of all the people working there (see the fat black chick riding that dude at the desk?), the hottub in the middle of the office, etc. all this is brilliant stuff.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

ho.lee.shit. look at all those man! we are seriously fucked up, folks. like the moment you wake up in the morning they start popping off, one after the other. everything you think is wrong, every reason for everything wrong you think is also wrong, and the reason why you wrongfully think you're not wrong about the wrong things you think, is, alas, wrong as well.

read the list and tally up the ones you're most often guilty of. i counted 32 for myself.

so you know i got this new (to me) car and i've been experimenting with the vehicle stability assistance (VSA) lately. i've found that only in extreme cases, such as cornering and/or accelerating to fast, do i experience any noticeable difference in performance. the system works to selectively apply braking so to straighten the vehicle when turning, and prevent wheel slippage. i'm not so sure i want this to happen as it results in a significant decrease in torque and power. i feel confident that i can manually correct any such deviations through my sheer skill as a professional race car driver, and i'd not want such limitations being put on the vehicle by this automated system. i've also found that the VSA significantly reduces my launch power... basically reducing torque so that my wheels can't burn should i accelerate too much. the point is, i want to be the one to make that decision, not the car. if i want to burn a little rubber on launch to intimidate the bmw or lexus beside me at the light, that's my right. i worked too goddamn hard to make the money to buy this car only to let some yuppie in a luxury sport car take me at the light. i've got the second fastest acura ever made... sonofabitch'll do a buck fifty-two and 0-60 in six seconds. little slower maybe off the jump but i'd take em on the quarter, pretty sure. the VSA won't let me do this so i've decided to keep it off unless i'm in bad weather.

she's an automatic with an optional manual shift... and i only break out the manual shift when the five-o are chasing me or when i'm racing democrats and yuppies. second fastest car i've ever owned... right behind the 70 oldsmobile sport 350 silver bullet four barrel three speed shift kit i had back in 93.

so to answer tracy's question, yes... yes i do.

^^^ for tracy. even though it looks like a bunch of spiders are having a meetin' on your head, I still love you, girl.

what, you ain't never used some shims and a pair of vice grips for a capo before?

https://streamable.com/y6j2y

Oh sweet. It freezes in the middle of the video. Lemme run over to streamable.com real quick and give them five stars.

alright try this one...

http://tinypic.com/r/4j6ezn/9

this is the dream i had last night.

so out of nowhere i'm standing in an auditorium at the university of berlin. every member from ILP, KT and BTL is there too, and they're separated into groups. on the stage some professor dude in a tweed sport coat is lecturing at a blackboard that's set up in front of a large stage curtain. he's going on and on about rawls and the veil of ignorance while everybody in the audience jots down notes.

then there's an audible 'slam!' heard from the fire exit hallway and all of a sudden max stirner comes rushing onto the stage, kicks over the blackboard, slaps the professor on the back of the head, and violently yanks the curtain back. behind the curtain is a three piece band, like max, dressed in what looks like road warriors costumes.  

max signals the lighting guy, counts off the band, and they break into my wave. he starts running back and forth across the stage with the mic stand addressing the forum groups respective of their particular modus operandi, tossing the mic back and forth between hands like axel rose.

at the end of the song he does a stage dive... and as he's flying through the air, time slows down to slow motion. he starts to descend and everybody quickly steps away so i shout in the slow motion deep voice "wwwwtttfff thhhhey're nooot gooooonna caaatch himmm... heeee's gooooona hiiiit thhhhe flooooor!" so i run over just in time, hold my arms out and catch him like a gymnast instructor. he's prone in a flying superman position across my arms and asks me "are you an anarcho-egoist?", and i'm like "well YEAH!", and then he yells "fly me around the room, dude!" so now i'm running around weaving between everybody, he's got his arms stretched out and is going 'VRRRRUUUUMMMM!!!" like an airplane.

man it was so awesome.

the brains of homosapiens, and this includes all races and subraces, have language centers (regions responsible for language process) which are similar enough to be able to share a common understanding of the most basic linguistic features that operate in speech. this means the 'hardwired' logic employed in reasoning and grammar is common to everyone (except for people with obvious organic deficiencies and/or disease). with this in mind, it should become clear that the only real conflict a people could ever experience concerning their 'memetic culture' would have to involve disagreements about linguistic contingencies; sets of concepts and ideas that result from the ambiguous compounding of ordinary language structures (e.g., values, metaphors, similies, allegories, etc.) which are unique to a specific culture only insofar as they have been able to first create these linguistic devices and second, preserve them. but the existence of these things does not indicate an intrinsic separating from other cultures, since every culture shares the same basic language structures that exist before and beyond the creation of these literary devices. all this is to say that a 'meme' is not a thing substantial enough to declare a fundamental distancing of people from one another, because of it. such things are completely superfluous... and you can know this by observing how easily a people can unlearn a meme... while they are unable to unlearn the basic features of language... those features shared by everyone regardless of any particular memes that might have been created through their culture.

but remember, a meme is an idea that transmits concepts that are impervious to logical analysis... which is to say, as expressions of values and preferences and opinions, as 'oughts", they cannot be true or false in the same way indicative statements can be. as such, they don't employ the hardwired use of grammatical logic that all people share. memes can't be subject to such criteria as 'right' or 'wrong', 'good' or 'bad'. furthermore, any set of assertions that tries to defend a theory that defines a set of memes as such, would be just another meme.

it comes down to this very basic premise; a statement of fact is a statement that belongs to the natural sciences, while a statement of value is something different and not to be examined in terms of its rightness or wrongness.

so for example:

a) "the libs are promoting the feminist movement"
b) "the feminist movement has a negative political effect"

the first is a fact, not a meme. the second is not a fact, but a meme. it is not a fact because unless the value 'negative' is posited in hypothetically imperative terms, it must be posited in categorically imperative terms.

as a hypothetically imperative term it would mean that some desired end is being compromised by the promotion of feminism, ergo, the negative effect. but the desired end itself is another value, which must in turn rest on the basis of a hypothetical imperative, which, in turn rests on another, ad infinitum. moreover, to state that event X (feminism) is the only cause for circumstance Y (political conflict) is a gross oversimplification.

so you have a double whammy here. you have people who don't value feminism because it doesn't agree with their values (a redundent meaninglessness), who attribute to the effect of their discontent only the event of feminism.

on the other hand, one would be hard pressed to prove that feminism is categorically and imperatively wrong, because one isn't going to be able to say that the circumstances resulting from it are wrong. there is no 'right' or 'wrong' concerning such things... only differences.

so this meme... and that's what it is... is nothing more than an innocuous confusion masquerading as a profound philosophical problem. some would go so far as to believe it is even a genuine scientific problem.

this is an excellent post by d63 over at ILP:

d63 wrote:Dear Diary moment 10/25/2018: As Kyle from South Park would put it: I had a thought today:

I now see the importance of Deleuze and Guatarri’s rhizomatic model (as compared to the arborescent (in terms more entwined with my own model of the Metaphysics of Efficiency as compared to the traditional Metaphysics of Power: that which leads to a Culture of More –which I will connect to Trump later.

If you think about it, the Metaphysics of Power is always dependent on arborescent models: tree-like models with an original cause at the bottom of it all. For instance: the recent issue of a disturbing number of young African American men being shot by cops under precarious circumstances. The left, of course, will designate the root cause to the prejudice of policemen. The right, of course, will delegate the root cause to the criminal nature of young African American men in the inner cities.

And this is the Metaphysics of Power at work: two sides attempting to offer a solution to some mythical original cause propped up by the traditional arborescent model. But let’s look at it from a more rhizomatic perspective. Let’s look at it from the perspective of a complex feedback loop between the desperation that might emerge in the inner cities, the desperate acts members of that environment might engage in, the fear that might provoke in those trying to enforce law in such an environment, and, yes, any prejudices those experiences with desperate members of that environment might reinforce.

My main point here is we can see how the Metaphysics of Power (the authoritarian mindset (would tend towards an arborescent model with some imagined “root cause”. We see it all over Trump with all his Gordian Knot solutions. It’s always a matter of clear-cut villains at the root of it: too much regulation, too many taxes, Obamacare, too much government, immigrants, etc., etc.. And I realize I have mentioned several causes which would seem to contradict my point. But Trump, due to the arborescent model he is working from, sees every issue as something like a different tree that he has gained special access to the root cause of. This is why he (as well as his followers are (is completely incapable of grasping any issue in its true complexity.

and that's real shit. it comes down to what's called overdetermination, and there's no way to stop the momentum of the erroneous causal reasoning involved unless you seize the movement of the entire system at once. you sure as fuck can't do that, so you end up with a magnificent informal fallacy that infects everyone in society that has a political opinion of this nature. one inconceivably humongous slippery-slope... and everyone is sliding down it, completely clueless.

^^^ or the fallacy of the single cause.

on the nature of the formulae and the proper philosophy that follows. active nihilism without the eternal recurrence becomes a hedonistic, absolute nihilism. this means that one lives once, and because there is nothing to value other than physical pleasure, one becomes a hedonist for a relatively short duration, dies, and is finished forever. absolute nihilism in the sense that not even the temporary satisfaction of physical pleasures mattered in the end.

the eternal recurrence without active nihilism becomes a never-ending and perpetual state of ignorance coupled with an ever increasing accumulation of self denial. to think that one should deny oneself a physical pleasure because it violates a 'morality' or a 'rule' is an error in reasoning. however, there are those who desire less in life, so that their ignorance is not experienced as a preventive measure against their quest for pleasure. and in fact, these types can even experience instances such as these as forms of pleasure. it is a kind of inadvertent masochism in the sense that they believe so strongly in values that they abstain from some acquisition of pleasure on account of it... and find pleasure in that abstinence.

for others, this is not possible because they simply know better.  

now the active nihilist who lives as if the eternal recurrence is true, actually, and paradoxically, enriches his life 'spiritually' much more than would a person who is not an active nihilist and actually believes in values. the enrichment comes in the form of the careful and deliberate attention paid to the efforts made and the consequences that result in everything the nihilist does in the pursuit of hedonistic pleasure. this demands everything from the active nihilist and is a full time job. he is 'spiritual', if one insists on using that word, because he believes that what he does now will have infinite and eternal implications for him... just as, say, the religious spiritualist believes their deeds do the same for them. the difference his, the active nihilist does not believe in transcendent values; he does not believe there is anything more to life other than life again, if anything. not different life... but more life, life that is structured by the same features- existence in a valueless world that exists for no reason and has no purpose.

the purpose here is to attain the highest possible awareness of THE truth, the final truth, the overall truth. and if the active nihilist is wrong and finds himself before god when he dies, he does not kneel and plead for forgiveness, but rather stands firm and declares that a god who provides no evidence for his existence and then has the nerve to punish those who don't believe in him while living in a world he has made a tremendous mess of (in addition to providing no evidence for his existence), can go fuck himself. this of course will land you in hell, but you'll still be true to yourself. hey, nobody said it was easy being honest and true to yourself. doing so might even require that you war eternally with god, and despite his power to destroy you, there's one thing he can't ever take from you... and that is your pride and integrity.

okay so the way to go is as the active nihilist that lives as if the eternal recurrence is true. anything else is nonsense; you're either an imbecile and don't know any better, or you know better and are lying to yourself.

and i admit that there are things that in addition to having an extraordinary intelligence (it certainly isn't 'ordinary'), work to facilitate such a philosophy toward life. much of this has to do with experiencing a very, very large volume of unfortunate circumstances that are consequences of somebody else's actions. in fact, a kind of quasi-misanthropy develops and goes hand in hand with the active nihilist philosophy. one finally loses all faith in man, learns to despise men, and turns their love and appreciation toward nature and the world as if it were the material for one's own art... the art of perfecting one's pursuit of self improvement and the attainment of pleasure in spite of men. happiness is the experience of one's own excessive power and psychical force. pay no attention to what destruction or chaos might follow in your wake.

this is a very spiritual endeavor, you know. one pays attention no more to politics, morals, rules and laws, traditions, customs, heritage, and any other meaningless drivel. the 'self', the expansion of the self, the experimental spirit of trying and daring extraordinary things if even at the cost of one's humanity. but isn't this precisely what a god would do if he walked among men?

oh man you're gonna be thinking about this all frickin' night. that's what it's about, peeps. the goal, as N so succinctly put it, is to make the individual uncomfortable. tomorrow morning you will have made the first step. but there are many more steps to come. we're in no rush, so don't despair. you've got eternity to get it right.... to become the magnificent barbarian you once were eons ago.

i, the disciple of prometheus, have given you fire (and am paying dearly for doing so). what you do with it is your choice.

"Being a pacifist is BY FAR the bravest and MOST badass thing." - ecmandu

And there you have it, a perfect example of the slave's inversion of morality that nietzsche describes so perfectly.

The slave, being unable to assert himself, redefines virtue to mean 'those who are passive', and vice to mean 'those who are aggressive'. In doing this he is able to poison those who are stronger and instill in them a bad conscience. This is his revenge... a subterranean rancor in not only resenting others but also himself because of his powerlessness. He becomes nauseated with his own existence and to compensate, creates greatly exaggerated delusions about himself through a kind of subconscious neurosis.

What a catastrophe. I tried to start a simple discussion as a catalyst for some ontology, and it ended up having a cataclysmic effect.

https://vocaroo.com/i/s0GV66GicmX7

to iambiguous, ecmandu wrote:You're playing a sneaky word game here.

If I choose to eat cornflakes instead of not, it still is the only event that actually occurred, and by virtue, the only event that could have occurred, that automatically happens the instance the choice is made.

This sneaky trick you're using, in no way removes agency.

yo biggy, tell that crank gobbler that 'agency' does not imply freewill. of course, one may make a decision to act, but what is the cause of that decision itself? another decision? well then what is the cause of that decision? ax him that, biggy.

he's either gotta posit some kind of immaterial agency that is free from the causal forces interacting in the world (in which case he'd be hard pressed to demonstrate how something could affect the material world without in turn being affected by it), or he's gotta submit that like anything else in the material world, the human being and everything thing about its body is affected by the same natural laws (regularities).

so for example when, as dasein, i'm experiencing conflicting goods down here in the real world, and i have devised an existential contraption which might help me in my approach escalation as a member of a sexually dimorphic species, and then because of me someone experiences one or more of the five heartbreaks, it isn't my fault because i have no freewill.

in fact, one of the only reasons why i fucks with ecmandu is because i know that when he listens to air supply, he has no choice in the matter. if freewill existed, i would unfriend him on that basis alone; that he willingly listens to air supply.

"There are two main reasons Democrats are losing votes. Guns and abortion."

That's why I love conservatives. They're killers twice over. If they don't murder you in the womb, they'll sure as shit shoot your ass after you're born.

lol hold up. aren't the conservatives anti abortion because of the whole 'we have souls from the moment of conception' nonsense?

damn. i've been away from politics so long i can't even remember. all i see nowadays is a blur of nonsense coming from both directions.

lordoflight wrote:We can see this in this new culture they made, where they hate men and hate the idea of being lusted after by men. They aren't happy.

i know, right? what happened to the days when there were real men who it was almost impossible to say no to if you were a woman?

we've gone from bad to worse. the progressives have ruined the traditional conservative values... when an alpha male meant being a bourgeois, pipe smoking, irish setter owning misogynist business owner who could pay a girl lower wages and smack her around the kitchen some because males are clearly stronger than females.

i mean even this was better than today's version of manhood, right? bunch of soft ass pussies like that maroon 5 guy... the singer. i can't stand that dude.

or maybe 'love' doesn't belong in music in the first place. let me correct that; once music becomes a marketable commodity, it's themes, just like the people in society, become as banal as the economy's modes of production that generate it all.

so you guys better be careful when you turn on your radio, cuz if you're not, you just might find yourself in the clutches of some wild love.