Zoot's Philosophical Musings

satyr wrote:For the human spirit, emerging into a cosmos that is not entirely known, nor benevolent, not kind - increasingly becoming self-aware - the matter of 'evil' is what he cannot deal with.
he may call it 'evil', in an Abrahamic paradigm of good/evil dualities, or if he is awakened further and becomes secular, he may call it 'chaos' in the more abstract (semiotic) order/chaos mathematical paradigm.
Chaos, Evil Satan, is what terrifies him. It is what he cannot reason with, rationalize, comprehend, and so cannot predict, nor fabricate strategies to deal with. It is beyond his ability, making him feel vulnerable and helpless.

well the theist's (of an anthropomorphic god of some variety) concern here is not with 'evil' per se, but with the personal consequences that might be experienced by one if they commit evil deeds. and an emphasis is made to this concern when in addition to the problem of evil, there is also the question of immortality. now one is especially concerned with the problem of evil because part of this theory of immortality involves the problem of being punished (eternally or not... as in the case of purgatory) if one commits evil deeds. you'll note here that a religion which does not profess immortality, but does believe in the existence of evil, is less concerned about it and does not consider it a real problem. why... because evil would only be a temporary condition of/in life... not something one needs to be careful to avoid for fear of suffering in the afterlife if they commit evil deeds.

in any case, you'd be wrong to say that they "cannot deal with it". the 'dealing with it' involves the same kind of theorizing that everyone does regarding philosophical and spiritual matters; believing is something which is consoling to them... something that justifies and makes bearable whatever distress they experience while living. everybody does this, including yourself. for you, the atheist pagan, redemption from life's absurdity comes in the form of conserving traditional values (let's say). however, in the language of stirner (if i may), this is just another form of the sacred, something which is alien to you and exalted involuntarily to gratify your ego. the idea that you 'belong' to some history, some ancestry and culture, some ideal, which you believe is the 'correct' one, is just another fixed idea... a spook... a distraction to keep you occupied in life as you deal with the absurdity of the human condition in general.

you might say only in the rarest occasions does one liberate oneself from the labyrinths of philosophy... and it takes a lot of work to do it. those of us who stick around among the philosophers are a kind of bodhisattva class of epistemology. we descend among you once in a while but usually just observe.

anyway, the difference between you and the theist is not in the form of belief, but the content of it. whether superstitious or scientifically verifiable, the purpose is the same; to provide material around which you construct some meaning and value which you then commit to while living to give your life purpose. here you admit this much:

satyr wrote:He will forever seek comfort in any ideology that promises a theoretical relief.

do not forget to include yourself. your ideology is merely another brand of the same stuff... an involuntary egoist's exaltation of something alien to him as a fixed and sacred idea he can commit to to keep himself occupied while living (often at the expense of his own advantage, or, to give him something to 'stand for' in the case that he needs some kind of struggle... so that he can experience some kind of success).

no shit... sometimes people actually and unwittingly invent imaginary problems and struggles in their head just for the sake of having an opportunity to be bold. in other words, if a man doesn't have a battle, he'll invent one in his head so he can play the role of the warrior he so emulates. and a 'battle', here, is anything the philosopher or politician (a type of warrior) believes is a matter of emergency. that is, when he believes something is happening in the world that is 'wrong', whether this be something directly and immediately at odds with himself, or a network of epiphenomenal mental concepts in his head that give him the feeling of cognitive dissonance. and neither of these are his fault; he is not responsible for being able to think in terms of 'right' and 'wrong', or for learning what he has over the course of his life. so, for instance, take any diametrically opposed ideologies... such as feminists and anti-feminists. neither of them is right or wrong (becase there is no such thing) and they're each doing the same thing; reacting to the contingencies of what they have learned, committing to a course of action that what they have learned dictates, and believing they are doing the right thing as such.

now all this is perfectly okay because that's what humans do. this isn't so much a protest as it is a revelation about what 'philosophizing' is. in a way it can be best described as nietzsche said; the personal testimony of one's own life. like an autobiography, one does philosophy and tells us nothing about the truth or even reality... only what one has learned, what has become fixed ideas in the mind, something they had no control over.

one can blame an ecmandu no sooner than one can blame an iambiguous or a satyr. each is doing essentially the same thing. living out in real time a philosophical autobiography with no more contact with the real world than a science fiction writer. well because if they had made contact they'd be writing in the natural sciences and not doing philosophy.

always remember what uncle wittgenstein told us: philosophy leaves everything exactly like it was before it got there.

http://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=194415&p=2712600#p2712600

what slips by us is the fact that such a statement can't be true or false because it isn't an argument, only a premise without a conclusion. ah but then you think "well 'the cat is on the mat' is only a statement and it's true", as you look at the cat on the mat. here, one of the conditions of this statement being true is that it is observed (verified), while the statement "this statement is true" implies an unconditional truth without an if/then clause so that by merely stating the statement is true in the statement itself is enough to create such a confusion. one cannot observe the truth of that statement because it isn't a conclusion brought about by experience, nor is it true on account of it (the conclusion) following directly from some premise (a deduction). in other words, the very condition of its being-true is in the very existence of itself, but it isn't a truth quality, not a conclusion. it's truth-ness is its is-ness.

that, my friends, is how a garage philosophers handles quine's paradox.

holy linguistics, it gets even deeper. and i have wittgenstein to thank for this insight, especially to the effect that he denied moore's "here is a hand" argument by saying how such skepticism would undermine the entire field of language itself and so would be preposterous.

what if you asked the one who says "this statement is true", is true, to provide a description of what it would be like if the statement were not true? aha! now you see. of course, one could create an argument in which the claim that being deceived by believing that one sees that "the cat is on the mat" is possible on account of, say, a problem of observation, and this argument would be sensible. but to demonstrate how the statement "this statement is true", is false, would involve no such discrepancy in the way of induction.

what i mean is, while an argument that the statement "the cat is on the mat", is false, is most probably false if you're standing there looking at the cat... it is nonetheless sensible in that in its form it can be logically sound. you can't produce an argument that the statement "this statement is true", is false, in such a way that it would be logically sound because it would be subjected to the same grammatical problems as the statement it attempts to refute.

one cannot be shown that such a statement is not true any sooner than one can be shown that it's false. neither in the form of producing a proof that observation of the statement is dubious, or in the form of a logically sound argument that could produce a proof that it is false by examining the coherency, validity and soundness of the statement.

what that statement is is a misuse of grammar functions. it's an attempt to give a subject a predicate without needing to prove the predicate on account of the predicate itself being the very truth value of the subject. it's treating the word 'true' as a quality in an inappropriate way. it references itself without giving possibility of reference with which to check the nature of it's being true or false.

"this statement is true" is nonsense... but it is a fact that the statement is, and this fact is true. know the difference!

ecmandu wrote:Hmm...

I think this whole board is turning into trolls.

dude. you have to switch perspectives for a second and imagine what it would be like dealing with someone you think is nuts... but not just nuts... SUPER nuts... so nuts that the dude can't even know he's nuts... which is like a whole nuther level of nuts.

these folks aren't trying to be dicks man... they're just very frustrated with ya... think you're a basket case beyond the possibility of recovery. but i don't want to discourage you; those other folks are also nuts, only a more mild form than you... so don't think you're some out-of-place weirdo. in fact, you're like their leader dude. the alpha nut. think of it like that.

now look man. i can cure you, but you have to cut the whole paranoid conspiracy thing out (omg what if i'm supposed to say that as part of my attempt to lure you in?)

see what i just did there? i made a caricature of the idea and all of a sudden you caught a brief glimpse of its absurdity and thought "yeah that does sound kinda silly".... but now it passed and you're slipping back into paranoid-mode. now you're like "what if he's supposed to to say that and then make a caricature out of it to divest it of it's seriousness so that he can lure me in after he's disarmed my paranoia?"

okay you got me dude. i'm a secret agent from a secret society on a secret mission to find you online and make you crazy because you are a light being with special powers that threaten our (the dark beings) domination of the world.

you don't really believe that, do ya dude? fuck. you do believe that.

well what can i say? while i do think that would be awesome, i'm afraid i'm just an ordinary dude. i mean i'm extraordinary but NOT LIKE THAT. like i'm not some evil inter-dimensional being that has been assigned to follow you across galaxies. what i am is a healer, of the jinn (the good ones, not the bad ones) and you, my friend, are terribly sick.

here's my offer. you come over here and give me a month, tops, and i'll turn your whole thesis upside down... and then hand it back to you.

i'll do this because like me, you're a big fan of the 80s bands, and as such, you're a kindred spirit, man. i can't begin to describe to you how i experience a complete metamorphosis when i hear flock of seagulls.

p.s. what is the significance of the blue coat? i gotta know.

by no means do i condone the recent mass shooting at the bar in california. in fact i don't condone any form a mass murder of this sort since it is essentially useless. as i've stated before, unless one is able to kill at least a few thousand people at once, nothing productive would ever come out of it and no real immediate social change would result. at this rate, what with all these tedious little shootings every day, it'll take democrats fifty more years to ban guns. what we need is a really big one. one so big even the right wingers are like "holy shit, enough is enough. here, take my shotgun... i don't want it anymore" when they see it on the news. i mean i don't care either way... i'm just sayin' this is how it's got to go down if anything's gonna come out of it. meanwhile, what we're getting is in fact an adverse effect from all these shootings. while the problem of gun ownership is indeed beginning to weigh heavily on the minds of citizens, at the same time, people are becoming (paradoxically) more and more desensitized by it because of its frequency.

at any rate, i'm an optimist and i'd like to try to salvage something positive out of this recent mess. this might seem like a shameless display of unmitigated audacity, but i'd like to say that at least it happened in a country western bar. i'm not sure if any of you have ever experienced a country western song 'line dance', but i can assure you there are few spectacles in this world that are more traumatizing than seeing thirty people all dressed in levi jeans, cowboy boots and hats, and over-sized belt buckles, moving in perfect uniformity back and forth like cattle for ten minutes straight while some stupid country pop-song blares from the jukebox. if you have ever witnessed such a thing you might have some sympathy for a would-be shooter at such an event.

and nobody seems to care that country song line-dancing is still legal in this country... but they make a big fuss when somebody goes in there with his guns blazing. hey, wait a minute; wasn't this dude true to the form? isn't that something billy the kid would have done? i mean that's what it's all about, right? romancing the wild west. why stop at just cowboy boots and pick-up trucks? if these folks wanna do it right, they should be having gun fights right there in the bar. well whatever. i'm just saying i understand the terror this guy might have felt upon walking into that bar and seeing that incorrigible display of plebian ethos. the cacophony of the twanging guitars alone would be enough to drive a sane man crazy. and the denim. denim as far as the eye can see. can you imagine such horror?

WARNING: the following video is very graphic in nature. viewer discretion is advised.

i believe it is clear that spinoza resolved the theoretical conflicts between al-ghazali, averrose, and avicenna. islamic philosophers cleaned up the bad conscience that had so permeated jewish and christian thinking, but left the anthropomorphic element characteristic of the abrahamic religions. spinoza then cleaned this up, leaving a conceptually pure vision of 'god'... in a sense getting back to aristotle's prime mover, but without any teleology.

the supremacy of monotheism over polytheism/paganism lies in the logically rigid lines of thinking that the islamic philosophers produced. the designation of divine power to a single entity eliminates several contradictions, which these thinkers noticed. now this isn't to say the monotheism that replaced polytheism is any better, overall, because it's still riddled with those anthropomorphic errors that spinoza had later corrected. only with monotheism, you have a single error, as opposed to the many errors you have with the greeks... or any other henotheists. perhaps the greatest correction made by the islamic philosophers was the reduction of the lesser gods to spirits; forms of life lesser than god but higher than humans, for instance. an ontological explanation for this conclusion would be simple; spirits are contingencies who's essence does not involve existence, while 'god's' essence is its existence, since there is nothing external to it for which to give it cause to exist. in spinoza's thinking, for there to be such external cause would mean there was at least two things who's essence involved existence... in which case you would have more than one 'god', ... in which case you would be back at those contradictions concerning the power relations between divine things and the conflicts that result.

another error spinoza cleared up was the islamic thought that the creatures of 'god' can have freewill. in islam, of the three forms of life lower than 'god' (angels, jinn and humans), the jinn and humans have freewill. but of course this would be impossible due to the conditions of 'god's' omniscience and omnipresence.

if one were to take a great leap between ages and advance to hume's critique of causality, you'll see the magic begin... something i roughly explained in that big fuckin' essay i was commissioned by 'god' to write a while back. what was it... dionysus and apollo god as immanence or some such title. so this is how it works; since all is a manifestation of the emanation of 'god', and there is no freewill, the following axioms result. because 'god' is self caused, and therefore not determined to exist by anything else... and we are modes of this 'god' insofar as we possess mind as one of our attributes, in addition to extension (which constitutes the existence of physical things in space and time), we have as our essence at least two of the infinite attributes necessary to qualify us as self-caused. in a word, we are miniature 'gods' in this respect... only difference is, we can 'think', whereas 'god' does not think. the difficult part to understand is how a causally determined contingency, such as our bodies, can possess the capacity of freewill. the answer is, we don't, but we do. we don't because everything is ordered and determined (the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things - spinoza), and yet we do because while we are intentional creatures, we are not omniscient; we cannot know that what we will do is only what we could have done, so we direct our actions from a position of an uncertainty of outcome. in effect, when the two modes, mind and extension, come into collision or union, a third essence is added to the nature of substance. self-awareness; a phenomenological splitting of activity in the form of freewill. actually, the word 'freewill' isn't enough to describe this phenomena... and it's to laden with erroneous philosophical semantics. we need a new word, because there is no 'will' and nothing is 'free'.
in any event, this delusional but necessary state of freedom (for lack of better word) we are forced to be in is identical to the kind of state 'god' is in upon actively forcing the universe to exist at each instant through ghazali's occasionalism.

with the same force that 'god' causes the universe (himself, herself, whatever) to exist, we, as miniature 'gods', are doing the same when the parallel unification of the two modes, mind and extension, cooperate to produce intentional action. in a sense, when we 'choose' and deliberate to act, we are preparing to enact an occasionalism upon our body/extension. we infer this occasionalism because of hume's argument that we cannot experience causality. we cannot experience causality in nature so to say "x caused y", only that y followed x, and yet we know deductively that every instance and every event is forced to occur through the efficacy of 'god' (of which we are a part), immediately and with perfect order. what you get as a consequence of this is not a 'freewill' in the classical sense of 'indeterminacy' or 'compatibalism', but a direction giving order to extension which is of the same essence as 'gods' power to act.

we are beings somewhere between ghosts and plants (N), and possess both contingency and necessity in our essence. and when spinoza says that the mind is not finite, but something of it remains... what he means is, you never blow your trip forever...

somebody at ILP wrote:It's about why his "I" is fragmented, why he is in an existential hole, why he is 'obsessed' by what most people would call "determinism", why he responds as he does.

i believe the obsession with the idea that there is no freewill is warranted because of its implications... which are indeed shocking. as far as philosophy is concerned, it's probably the biggest game changer, the most radical kind of philosophical enlightenment having the most profound existential impact of life in general. it shakes the entire field of ethics, more or less, and one has to be of a certain caliber to really grasp what it means... and be okay with that. most importantly... and this is what people are not wanting to accept... is that it eliminates the possibility of blame and praise and places admiration not on some 'person' that inhabits the body and makes choices, but on the degree of power and capacity of the whole being as a piece of fate. it's no longer a matter of people 'having' power in the sense of being able to do or not do something to express it... rather it is a matter of grounding... of people being a single power substance over a plane of immanence in a world that is completely void of the possibility of moral judgement.

without having this wisdom people will continue to demonstrate a fundamental weakness of spirit, expressed in the various forms of ressentiment that are concealed behind blame and hatred. blaming, persuading someone that they are 'responsible', trying to engender feelings of shame and remorse in another... all these things are forms of subterfuge expressed by the weak in an attempt to undermine and control what they are not strong enough to be unaffected by. so, rather than forcing the will directly to change some circumstance, the weak attempts the same in an underhanded way; poisoning the conscience of the offender in an attempt to weaken him and bring his activity under control.

when nietzsche remarked that 'the last bitter drop that we must swallow' was the knowledge that there is no freewill, he was already setting upon a course to redefine the political nature of man from its very foundation upwards, with a view of human kind so radical and unique as to be nearly incomprehensible to most. as i said, it really changes everything, the entire atmosphere and environment of sociology and politics must be reconfigured. presently, it is a culture still persisting because of lies which have been sustained for millennia. the lie of 'freewill'.

the other side of this coin is here; while it is a lie, it is certainly a useful lie... which is precisely why it has been preserved so well for so long by the ruling classes. what better way to prevent violence, crime, and negligible behavior in general than to make those whom you can't control directly, believe there really is such things as moral 'right' and 'wrong', and in doing so plant a conscience in one's mind to keep them under control?

oh and as a side note. it's not entirely accurate to call it a 'lie' in all cases, because there are actually philosophers who really believe it exists... in which case they can't be lying when they profess that it does. these are the innocently ignorant ones... it's the others that are the problem. not a problem because they are 'lying' per se (because deception is a natural tool in nature and gives the liar a competitive edge over an opponent), but... and this is very important... because those who tell this lie are not strong enough to not need to lie to achieve the desired results. it isn't that they are 'evil'. it's that they are not evil enough.

that just blew your mind and shook your soul like a fuckin earthquake. only because you're still slippery and soft, that's all. fledgling philosophers still 'snug in the woolly cotton brains of infancy', as morrison put it.

a quote that meno wrote:Democracy adds another element that disrupts the previous theorization. For both socialism and nationalism presuppose a dominant set of customs that “distinguish between government and people as though there were here two distinct spheres of power, a stronger and higher and a weaker and lower” (450). Democracy, however, puts forth the idea that the government is merely an organ of the people who embody the state’s power in their essence. It is important to realize that this essence constitutes the way in which the relationship between people and government reflects the organizations of other cultural relationships (teacher-pupil, general-soldier, etc.) (450). However, Nietzsche also thinks that “modern democracy is the historical form of the decay of the state,” a decay that is in itself an affirmative process (472). Democracy eats away at the layers of the state and the stratified cultural relations that they entail. This decay allows for the free spirit to collect potential energy for the invention of different institutions that will provide for the prudence and self-interests of all men.

oh now that's a decent summary of N's views. let me interject some points. there is no 'proper' rule of men in the sense that a system can be put into place in which everyone prospers in the way the old philosophers thought; the good life, pursuit of happiness, freedom, privacy, property, etc. this is so impossible that it renders the very concept of utilitarianism obsolete. what we can still have, however, and do have, is an ever increasing simplification of man into a materialistic creature who through a kind of hedonic calculus acquires his sense of happiness in proportion to his being gradually simplified. in other words, now that the politico-intellectual age is over- we've already had our hobbeses and rousseaus and lockes and benthams and mills... and they aren't coming back- no more questions can be asked, no more extensive examinations, no more theorizing. man is now at the end of this kind of history, the polis is fully matured, no more revolutions (spontaneous, anyway), and there is nothing that hasn't been already tried or implemented somewhere, somehow.

the final verdict concerning the question of how best to rule men, is out. liberal democracies and free market economics is this verdict because it has to be, and the reason is... it is the only possible way in the modern world to conceal the inherent immorality of man while at the same time sustaining civilization. it is one of the last(ing) great lies that is so well developed and buried in ages of philosophical nonsense that modern man cannot become suspicious of it any longer. not even in the universities is it questioned anymore.

democracy had to happen, and it had to happen because the world reached a point where it was no longer so easy to exploit and control openly, as it once was in the theocracies and totalitarianisms of the last century. only today, we have a different kind of tyrant... one who has lied to himself so long he actually believes it. not like an adam smith, a guy for who the revolutionary idea of a free market was an instance of sincere concern for the wealth and well being of man. we're talking about conscious liars here. anybody who today, in the 21rst century, still endorses capitalism for any other reason than to be able to continue their parasitic relationship to working class society, is quite certainly full of shit... or an imbecile... or trying to sell you something. the mantra 'capitalism is the best because it's the best' is tautological nonsense.

now i'm in no way suggesting that anything change. as i've just admitted... there is no 'proper' way. pure truth would be anarcho-nihilism, but that's a horrible truth man will never look directly in the eyes. fact is, there are almost seven billion people on this rock and they aren't going anywhere... so they gotta be organized somehow. better to democratize the entire planet so that the ruling elite behind it all don't have to expend as much effort exploiting the majority. it would be too much to expect another intellectual revolution, though. man is too simple now to care about anything more than gratifying his immediate desires... much less understand anything he's doing, and not doing.

the only thing left to admire in the only version of the overman that is possible today, is how cleverly he lies. but of course nobody could admire such a trait if they were aware of it... except for a very rare breed of nihilist who cares nothing about mankind. i am one such nihilist, and i give credit where credit is due; congratulations to the bourgeoisie. they got em good. easy money . couldn't have done it better myself.

on the day the federal government made official its new regulations on e-cigarettes, i, being a seditious rebel with a penchant for irony, decided to buy one... and i love it. haven't had a cigarette in over 24 hrs thanks to the infinix smok vapor system. electric blue with a sleek ergonomic design, its vast assortment of fruity flavors provides a much safer alternative to tobacco smoking while also delivering the same satisfaction. i can feel the difference already now that i am purging the 4000 toxic chemicals in tobacco smoke from my body. my energy levels are higher and my lungs feel better.

i have finally found my salvation from the cigarette. rejoice, my friends, for i am now a vaper. like the jinn, the raspberry mist too is born of a smokeless fire...

ecmandu wrote:Iambiguous, you definitely have what's termed, a personality disorder.

lolzzz! if that ain't the pot calling the kettle black, i don't know what is.

biggy is probably one of the sanest people at ILP, and in philosophy, honesty equals sanity. in a strange way, biggy is even better than socrates, because unlike socrates, he doesn't try to persuade his interlocutor in any particular direction of reasoning after having disarmed him of his certainty. biggy is what would happen if you converged socrates with richard rorty; excruciating honesty with a no bullshit pragmatism that asks "what does the knowledge that diatonic transinterceptive bidirectional platonic infinities are discursive non-referential interdimensional geometrical terpsichorean quiddities advise me to do when i get up in the morning and have to decide where i stand on the issue of abortion, global warming, capitalism, feminism, immigration policy, health care, capital punishment, environmentally safe energy alternatives, and so on?"

and what do they answer? an ostensive trialectical examination of the anomalies would intergrate a coextensive intersubjective substantiation of the binary functions processed in the phenomenological apperception of the question itself, thus providing an indubitable proof that hartshorne's process theology is generically compatible with voltaire's opinion regarding schopenhauer's fourfold root of sufficent reason as understood by erasmus after having read what john duns scotus wrote about augustine's evaluation of the hadron collider.

and they call biggy crazy?

i lifted this from jakob's forum BTL (bacon, tomato and lettuce, i think it stands for. just kidding, just kidding!))

“But then twenty years or so ago, something happened – adults decided they didn’t have to give up kid stuff. And so they pretended comic books were actually sophisticated literature,” Maher continued.

“The problem is, we’re using our smarts on stupid stuff. I don’t think it’s a huge stretch to suggest that Donald Trump could only get elected in a country that thinks comic books are important,” the comedian (maher) wrote.

well sure, but in a much more significant way than how maher is thinking. it's not so much a matter of adults 'not growing up' or 'using their smarts on stupid stuff', because in today's world it's essentially impossible for anyone to  'grow up', anyway, if by that it's meant that people become aware of the falsehoods and nonsense that fill their heads. in fact, i'd argue that they get progressively dumber as they get older through the steady accumulation of crap they learn in proportion to their increasing inability for proper reasoning.

but back to the point. there is certainly some substance to maher's idea, and here's why. by propagating fictional archetypes in the various forms of digital media in the entertainment industry available today, people's judgments of character type and merit become blurred by magnified and fantastical associations subliminally made by the subconscious. so, when a figure approaches a likeness of one such archetype, the association is made and the admiration of the figure is increased disproportionately to the actual benign reality of the figure itself.

in trump' case, several archetypical associations are subliminally made which affect the reasoning of the people who are considering him. for example, the power associated with wealth, the fact that trump is wealthy; this then translates into and fuses with the idea that power means 'authoritative ability', and people automatically think of trump as a candidate for a leadership role because he is wealthy... when in reality, wealth has nothing to do with how well one can lead.

these structures of association are the predominant forces in the enthusiasm for trump because the extent to which people believe they think they have a rational grasp and understanding on his policies, they are really just loosely acquainted with several ambiguous ideas which aren't thought through (if they were thought through properly, they'd lead to pure ambivalence). so it can't be those reasons that got him elected.

fraid' we're in the age of the 'cult of personality' where people lack the education, intelligence and reasoning for proper judgement when concerning the nature of character. today people are held spellbound by subconscious forces that act on their imaginations without them even being aware of it. joe bob votes for trump not because he's carefully reasoned through the centuries of development of conservative ideology and then made a conscious choice to endorse such principles (what the fuck does joe bob know about politics?), but because he likes how trump furrows his brow in that corny attempt to look concentrated and mean... he likes to watch trump walk down the aircraft stairs with his body guards... he likes trump's hot wife... he likes his shrewd gun fighter attitude toward the mexicans... etc., etc., all the while not even aware of how he has no control over these modes of perception which he's been conditioned to have through years of cultural programming... probably beginning with the fantastic four comics he read as a kid.

so sure, there's a little superman and batman and spiderman and clint eastwood in trump. wait clint isn't from the marvel universe, is he? duddint matter... you know what i'm getting at. you need only know that IT CAN"T BE because there is some coherent substance to any justification trump might use to insist that his policies are 'right', because there are no right or wrong policies... only different policies, yielding different contingencies in constantly changing circumstances.

and it's not for nothing that we notice a trend and correlation; politicians over the centuries have become increasingly less erudite and knowledgeable... right along with the pace at which entertainment media evolves. betcha didn't notice that, did ya? the decade that TV was invented marked the beginning of the rule of the celebrity. no more washingtons or jeffersons in the white house. presidents from that age forward are all pop stars and icons... and trump is, so far as i can see, perhaps the dumbest president ever to occupy the white house. like i'm not even mad he's president. i couldn't care less. i'm just telling you what i observe when i see or hear him talk/explain anything. if it wasn't for the team of economists and planners behind him, he'd be totally lost. obama could think and talk circles around that moron, and i like this just because it's ironic; the shining symbol of the american redneck ethos, donald trump, trumped by a negro. hilarious.

trixie wrote:there is only 1 rule and it is NOT the golden rule.

rule 1. self harm is wrong unless it is pleasurable.

fantastic! how stirnerite!

trixie wrote:I had this epiphany when I was thinking about lifeforms. And reincarnation. And that reincarnation is real but the general idea of it is wrong.

It is not so much that you have past lives. But past "sessions". This resolves the past-future paradox.

Each body is a husk. Think of it like an arcade. Brains, machines, computers. Soul enters a brain like an arcade. And that is your life. It is a "session" at a machine.

nice, but you don't actually 'enter' the brain. you were already there in it from the moment of its conception. that conception in that world in that galaxy in that universe is that you... you don't go there from another space/time.

but you're absolutely right, and nice choice of words. it is a session, not a life, because there is no death... just more sessions.

trixie wrote:t is possible that 95% of all lifeforms are vacant husks. With no soul or consciousness. P zombies.

no they're operating souls, not zombies. you're confusing difference of rank with absence of soul. any creature that is 'aware' has a soul, but the soul is not some transcendent cartesian feature that embodies a material object, nor is it from some platonic otherwordly realm. there cannot be such a realm because even different dimensions are causally related and therefore affected by each other. nothing is 'isolated'. there is only the plane of immanence (deleuze).

trixie wrote:If I had to live out Ecmandu's life I'd have to live in hell for 4 million years so I'd rather not.

but did ecmandu have to live in this hell for four million years? that's what i've always wondered. i figured he's either a ecmandusattva who willingly chose to go to hell (this world) to save us, in which case his distress is perfectly contrived, or, he didn't choose to and is now trying to figure out how to get out... in which case he can never be absolutely sure he's doing the right thing to get out. in either case, his situation is a trifle and nothing to be alarmed about.

there is only one thing that is truly tragic about ecmandu's case, and that is: he has to wear that blue coat for eternity.

at any event, there are approximately 58 ways to refute his non-zero sum consensual reality pseudo-theory, one of which i shall now like to suggest.

the very feeling of satisfaction, accomplishment, success, and pride, requires that there be some kind of struggle to be overcome. imagine a world where everybody was always perfectly content and happy. gradually, the very significance of those feelings themselves would lose their currency, becoming replaced by melancholy and boredom.

the fact is, you have to lose sometimes... so that you can be inspired to become better, to try harder, to improve yourself and your capacities. one needs enemies and obstacles, for one cannot evolve without them!

lol what was i just saying two posts up? just found this. did i tell ya or did i tell ya?

dumber even than truman. man that's tough to do.

ecmandu wrote:I'm in the existence reconstruction business trixie, and there is no more dangerous a job.

fuck man, i had trouble reconstructing a simple door jamb the other day... i can't imagine the headache involved in reconstructing the entirety of existence. jesus, dude, i didn't know you were in it like that.

alright so supposing i wanna give it a shot... that stuff about achieving a zero-sum consensual reality... what do i gotta do? are we talking like an ultra-stoic philanthropic pacifism like gandhi's gig where i just agree with everyone and give all my stuff away, or what? i'm already good on the whole approach escalation sex thing because i haven't gotten laid in a small eternity, so that part's taken care of.

basically i'm asking a biguous question; how do i apply these ideas to/in everyday living? where do i start? what do i do?

seriously, i'm not being facetious. we're going to test the pragmatism of this philosophy. we're going to take it out of your head, put it into the world, and see what happens.

i want you to sell me the idea, cuz i got my pen and checkbook out. you're the guy who just came to my door, and instead of selling kerby vacuum cleaners, you're selling a revolutionary philosophy. now let me hear what you got.

mad man p wrote:But consider that our species forms low resolution mental models of the world and the mechanics that propel one event into the next, and that this allows us to imagine alternative outcomes of past events and predicting outcomes of some future events.

That is not to say they ever could have been different.. but our ability to imagine it being different if only we had done x instead of y, is how we might adjust our behavior and navigate the world.

Even if every thought or action we ever have or take is predetermined, it does not change the process by which they arrived...

It is part of this process we might take ownership of and the results of those parts that we could call "choice"

... but imagination, anticipation, forethought and afterthought are no less subject to causality than is one's immediate awareness. you do not insert freewill in this seamless process when you 'imagine' and 'adjust' your behavior.

and by 'ownership', we can only mean accountability... but that does not denote responsibility in the typical sense of the word. it only means that when held accountable, we acknowledge in language that 'x and y is going to happen to me now, as a consequence, and i accept that'. what it doesn't mean is 'i could have done otherwise, and therefore it is my fault that i must now face these consequences.'

final note. to call the thesis that there is no 'freewill' a 'determinism' is somewhat of a technical misnomer, because it connotes a 'determiner'... and there is no determiner. there is nothing outside of existence that points a finger and gives direction to its state of affairs.

you'll need to go to 13:33 to read the following, because you'll need to be in 7/8....

rosa lichtenstein... bitch with that platinum grammar wrote:This issue has always revolved around the use of terminology drawn from traditional philosophy (such as "determined", "will", "free", and the like), the use of which bears no relation to how these words are employed in ordinary speech.

For example, "determine" and its cognates are typically used in sentences like this "The rules determine what you can do in chess", "The time of the next train can be determined from the timetable", or "I am determined to go on the demonstration" and so on. Hence this word is normally used in relation to what human beings can do, can apply, or can bring about.

As we will see, their use in traditional thought inverts this, making nature the agent and human beings the patient. No wonder then that the 'solution' to this artificial problem (i.e., 'determinism' and 'free will') has eluded us for over 2000 years.

To use an analogy, would we take seriously anyone who wondered when the King and Queen in chess got married, and then wanted to know who conducted the ceremony? Or, whether planning permission had been sought for that castle over in the corner? Such empty questions, of course, have no answer.

To be sure, this is more difficult to see in relation to the traditional question at hand, but it is nonetheless the result of similar confusions. So, it is my contention that this 'problem' has only arisen because ideologically-motivated theorists (from centuries ago) asked such empty questions, based on a misuse of language. [More on this below.]

When the details are worked out, 'determinism', for instance, can only be made to seem to work if nature is anthropomorphised, so that such things as 'natural law' 'determine' the course of events -- both in reality in general and in the central nervous system in particular -- thus 'controlling' what we do.

But, this is to take concepts that properly apply to what we do and can decide, and then impose them on natural events, suggesting that nature is controlled by a cosmic will of some sort. [Why this is so, I will outline presently.]

So, it's natural to ask: Where is this law written, and who passed it?

Of course, the answer to these questions is "No one" and "Nowhere", but then how can something that does not exist control anything?

It could be responded that natural law is just a summary of how things have so far gone up to now. In that case, such 'laws' are descriptive not prescriptive -- but it is the latter of these implications that determinists need.

Now, the introduction of modal notions here (such as 'must', or 'necessary') cannot be justified from this descriptive nature of 'law' without re-introducing the untoward anthropomorphic connotations mentioned above.

So, if we say that A has always followed B, we cannot now say A must follow B unless we attribute to B some form of control over A (and recall A has not yet happened, so what B is supposed to be controlling is somewhat obscure). And if we now try to say what we mean by 'control' (on lines such as 'could not be otherwise', or 'B made A happen') we need to explain how B prevented, say, C happening instead, and made sure that A, and only A took place.

The use of "obey" here would give the game away, since if this word is used with connotations that go beyond mere description, then this will imply that events like A understand the 'law' (like so many good citizens), and always do the same when B beckons, right across the entire universe --, and, indeed, that this 'law' must exist in some form to make things obey it. Of course, if it doesn't mean this, then what does it mean?

Now, I maintain that any attempt to fill in the details here will introduce notions of will and intelligence into the operation of B on A (and also on C) -- and that is why theorists have found they have had to drag in anthropomorphic concepts here (such as 'determine', 'obey' 'law' and 'control') to fill this gap, failing to note that the use of such words does indeed imply there is a will of some sort operating in nature. [But, note the qualification I introduce here, below. There were ideological reasons why these words were in fact used.]

If this is denied then 'determine' (etc.) can only be working descriptively, and we are back at square one.

Incidentally, the above problems are not to be avoided by the introduction of biochemical, neurological, and/or physiological objects and processes. The same questions apply here as elsewhere: how can, for example, a certain chemical 'control' what happens next unless it is intelligent in some way? Reducing this to physics is even worse; how can 'the field' (or whatever) control the future? 'The field' is a mathematical object and no more capable of controlling anything than a Hermite polynomial is. Of course, and once more, to argue otherwise would be to anthropomorphise such things -- which is why I made the argument above abstract, since it covers all bases.

This also explains why theorists (and particularly scientists who try to popularise their work) find they have to use 'scare quotes' and metaphor everywhere in this area.

As I noted earlier, this whole way of looking at 'the will' inverts things. We are denied a will (except formally) and nature is granted one. As many might now be able to see, this is yet another aspect of the alienating nature of traditional thought, where words are fetishised and we are dehumanised.

And this should not surprise us since such questions were originally posed theologically (and thus ideologically), where theorists were quite happy to alienate to 'god' such control over nature and our supposedly 'free' actions'. Hence, we too find that we have to appropriate such distorted terminology if we follow traditional patterns of thought in this area.

some remarks and objections to plato's theory of aesthetics.

back in the days of old when i was a fascist, i subscribed to plato's insistance that art should be closely regulated for the sake of producing a desired culture among the citizens. doing this... which is part of a totalitarian control on all aspects of a society... was obviously for the purpose of preventing memes from developing which might compromise the solidarity and homogenity of the people... their conception of the 'good' and the 'state', for example.

but this approach to the arts is now outdated and certainly impossible given the state (and size) of the world today. globalism, multiculturalism, economic trade, international diplomatic relations... these things prevent any country/culture from remaining isolated for any sustained period of time. moreover, that art has become a marketable industry as opposed to the kind of locally practiced and produced venues that existed in ancient greece, means that what now controls its (art) distribution involves a balance between its producibility and popularity... and this is a circular process; people buy what they can get, but get what they can buy. like a self perpetuating loop, nobody can stand outside it and dictate what its activity will be. producers and consumers alike are both subject to the unpredictability of this activity. in shorter words, people can't buy it unless its produced for them... but producers won't make it unless people want to buy it. it's a self-regulating phenomena that can no longer be directed by totalitarian forces.

once this is recognized, the question should be asked; would you want it to be, and why? this question is answered differently by different people... really depending on your political orientation. myself, i tend to side with the opinions of the maestro, frank zappa, and like him, put my tongue in cheek in doing so. there is no doubt that much of modern art is garbage... and i could almost argue that this is objectively and absolutely so (subjective tastes be damned), but if i might invert plato's theory for a moment and take up the banner of the futurists, i'd not only invite the unconditional freedom of artistic expression, but also embrace it. break down boundaries, cross limits, seek strange and forbidden dynamics.

of course i would do this. i'm an anarchist and nihilist... why would i want to restrict anything despite how abhorent it might be? i say, let it happen, make it happen faster, let there be more noise, more mayhem, more chaos... and let us see what comes of it!

besides, as a satirist i need material to work with. few things are more delightful than a good caricature.

frank's attitude, which was an ingenious inversion of plato, was this: give the artists complete freedom, and let them show the current spiritual and mental health of the society with what they produce. if you want to see what a mess a society is, set its artists loose.

plus, one should have only an experimental attitude toward this issue with an interest in a meta-aesthetics; is this plane of metaphors and allegories and symbols adding another dimension to our language? the answer is in the affirmative. it's no longer a question of 'good' or 'bad' memes anymore, but meme complexity, diversity, contiguity. it is the elogance of the rhizome that is important, not its results. in a sense, it is expanding our awareness and capacity to affect. art is an appendage, an assemblage of visual and audible languages which takes a life of its own and adds a facet to our being.

addendum to the simulacrum.

don't be an insufferable 'tard
but a post-structural bard
like baudrillard
and don't regard
the critics with they criticism
and midgets with they witticisms
just put your pencil to paper
take a puff from your vapor
draw a line and another
you've become a shift shaper

(see what i did there? that whole word play thing with changing the stanza and shifting the shape shifter to shift shaper. kay. just makin' sure.)

(and to my more cynical contemporaries i say: even fArt is better than no art.)

kropotkin wrote:today is the busiest day of the year in the grocery business,
and I have 8 hours of work today and tomorrow and I am already
exhausted from the days that has gone before.

I have been trying to think of topics and subjects I could write about
here but I have been so tired that even thinking is exhausting. And perhaps
that is the point. Work has been so hard that I can't even begin to
work out something to write here. The modern world and it obsession with
work has also so exhausted its workers so that they are unable to get enough
strength to even think about how detrimental the modern world is to their
mental and physical health. Millions of people are so exhausted from just
trying to make ends meet that they are too tired to think about a economic
and political system that wears them out and that is the point of our current
economic and political system that hides itself behind the sheer
exhaustion of its workers. What better way to maintain control then to
have your workers too tired to even think about what a shitty system we have,
little less thinking about how to change the current system.

kropotkin to aisle seven, kropotkin to aisle seven, please. fuck man if i had to hear this everyday i'd probably be a communist too. but he'll get no sympathy from me. the man is perfectly capable of committing crimes to make money, and yet the naive moralist in him who still thinks there's some solution to the cursed drudgery of the blue collar worker, prevents him from taking such action. he wants to remain a law abiding citizen in a society designed by the very parasites that exploit him? this man has lost his marbles... probably somewhere on aisle seven.

lol, i just got fired from the best paying job i've ever had by a capitalist parasite because of being convicted of crimes i didn't even commit by another parasite, a prosecutor... and i ain't complaining. i've lost count of how many times this has happened and i don't even care anymore. there are other, much more rewarding ways to prosper. and this kropotkin, this ILP member who dares to bear the name of the anarchist prince? what nerve!

speaking of grocery stores...

pat, the miserable chain-smoking wretch that i'm forced to live with at the moment because of probation, in a fit of rage, demands on the phone that the grocery store deliver a single can of cranberry sauce that 'jada' forgot to bag at the checkout. observe...

https://vocaroo.com/i/s0gZjjCYAsJ0
https://vocaroo.com/i/s0X9hamL7Ah4
https://vocaroo.com/i/s1UPTnDy9Hck

satyr wrote:The desire to stop suffering, rather than become stronger, able to endure higher levels of it, is a Abrahamic expression of the victim/slave psychology.

but nobody wants to purposely continue suffering so they can become stronger by enduring it... unless it's a form of intentional suffering like in the case of inducing physical exhaustion and/or pain (sports, training, etc.). any other kind of suffering one wants to abolish as soon as possible, and they don't desist in trying to do because they're thinking 'you know i think i should suffer... fuck it, i'm not gonna try to stop it.'

rather one naturally becomes stronger in the effort made to stop the suffering. this much is taken care of without 'trying'.

what is in question here is the attitude toward suffering, toward the anticipation of suffering more, and again, as a consequence of life. the moment one passes judgement on life and calls it 'bad' because there is suffering, one exhibits the slave psychology. so minor correction there; the desire to stop suffering is not an indication of a slave psychology. it's the passing of moral judgement onto existence... revoking its innocence because one struggles to endure it... that's the issue.

furthermore, if the circumstances you mentioned above were correct (but they weren't), they would stand for anyone, regardless of their religious orientations and would not be exclusive only to the abrahamic religions. only a difference of attitude toward suffering is distinguishable between the religions. those religious who feel subordinate to a 'god' will interpret their suffering as a form of punishment or at least bad fortune, and it's in the different ways that such suffering is ratified that is to be noticed. each religion has its own ways to 'appease' the god(s) it believes in... but they are all in an effort to appease nonetheless.

only the pantheist who has the wisdom that there is no freewill can ever be clear of this insipid confusion and the frustration it produces.

satyr wrote:Christianity had to affirm free-will so as to cast blame, and to internalize the guilt/shame as the Jews did.
Shame wasn't invented by the Christians, it was manipulated to produce sheeple.

In Paganism guilt/shame act as a self-disciplining mechanism. One judges self, through the eyes of one's own ancestors - holding oneself accountable to them.
Shame could be corrected.

this is just your predilection for paganism over monotheism talking here. shame is merely the feeling of regret and remorse created by a conscience... and what structures the conscience pertains to one's culture, precepts, traditions,  ethical codes, etc. in every culture shame can be corrected either by submission to god(s) or law... and rarely is there ever an act that cannot be forgiven (except in extreme religious codes). but you got that mostly right, only without realizing that there is essentially no difference between the paganisms and the monotheisms when concerning the attitude toward 'shame'.

satyr wrote:In Christianity it is eternal, due to a primordial sin, one inherits and can never correct, except after death and a lifetime of contrition.
And what is this 'terrible sin'?
Self-awareness, gained by contradicting God's rule. Exercising free-will, in other words.
Free-will acts as bait to trap the psyche in a cage it can never escape. Even death cannot help, because eternal suffering is the price for exercising the Christian version of free-will.

yes and no. you've nailed an absurd situation in the abrahamic doctrine of the fall of man. this insight; prior to eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, adam and eve couldn't have known that to disobey god and eat the fruit would be an immoral act... only an act of disobedience. but then one asks; could they have known a disobedient act was immoral or 'bad'? surely not, because they hand't yet knowledge of such things. in that case, what they did was in fact not an abuse of their 'freewill', since freedom of the will is an irrelevant condition unless one is autonomously aware of the goodness and badness of their choice of options. but one must further argue that they didn't even have freewill yet... which adds more nonsense to the situation. why would a benevolent god punish a being that had no knowledge of what they were doing, anyway? the whole myth is a ridiculous mess of half-thought-out storyline designed by thinkers who'd do well to take a class in logic.

however, playing along with this absurd storyline does lead us to the conclusion that, if it were true, would not involve eternal suffering. clearly redemption and salvation is achieved in life if one 'chooses' the good as it is described and instructed by the tenants of whatever faith it happens to be.

of course none of this is real. i'm only saying that insofar as it is believed, it does have its own consistent line of reasoning. that is to say, while the whole system of thought is nonsense, it can still possess particular axioms within it that are logically consistent.

on a more pragmatic note, we ought no more to think of 'freewill' as a metaphysical problem and instead consider the practical implications of man's desire to be and feel free, what he might expect that freedom to be like, and what he might aspire to do with it.

to biggy, madman p wrote:Your response to this seems to be to question whether or not our role in this scheme ever was a matter of "choice"... since we could not have done any different... To which I respond by saying that our ability to do otherwise is irrelevant to it being a "choice"... it's our will that makes it a choice...

so much of this kind of language gaming goes on in philosophy that its almost impossible to see it all. two, well actually three, hidden premises:

1. that there is a metaphysical entity called 'will'
2. that we can 'have' this entity
3. that this entity 'makes choices'

you know it wasn't until the ancients unwittingly created metaphorical concepts to explain human activity that the word 'will' was taken to be something more than a signification of one's intention...

'i will go to the blacksmith and have a sword made'

... or a simplified descriptor of one's commitment and ambition... one's ability to 'stick it through'...

'he is very strong willed, my lord. it has become difficult to stop him.'

you see that in each of these uses, nothing is implied about a metaphysical entity, nor that one possesses such, nor that this entity 'chooses' what the one who possesses it, would do.

hidden in this kind of talk is the implicit premise that there is some other being operating that is not subject to causality, or, that there is some other being that can be a cause, but not also an effect. neither of these suppositions make sense.

it may be that the thesis that there is no freewill is so shocking, people (even intelligent ones) unknowingly form a mental block in their head... a kind of subconscious refusal to face the fact and have to deal with the consequences of its truth.

but unique to this particular philosophical problem is another aspect that makes it even more difficult to deal with. it's the kind of problem that has no real praxis... meaning... nothing substantially changes if one accepts it or not. people will still have to make 'choices' and will be given both praise and blame for their actions. at best, acknowledgment of such a truth might radically change the social and legal sciences. there would be much more tolerance, as well as much more emphasis and effort made by people to take careful control of things they previously paid little attention to.

for example, those leaders who believe in freewill are quicker to punish citizens who exhibit behaviors that result from the diverse forms of classical and operant conditioning they are at the mercy of. determinists, on the other hand, would expect in advance that conditions x (say, child born in poverty to abusive, alcoholic parents) will likely produce effects y (say, a predisposition to commit criminal acts, fail in school and at relationships, etc.), and therefore pay more attention to the social environment in which this happens.

fantastic irony; the belief in freewill diminishes the feeling of responsibility for the way the world is. those who believe in freewill would sooner just blame the individual for what he has become rather than take responsibility for the circumstances that produced such unorthodox behavior... (@ 7:00)... like in my dear friends satyr, jakob, saully, lyssa, biggy, turd, ecmandu, et al., for instance...

satyr wrote:Surrendering to an external Will, is a part of Abrahamist psychosis, the very definition of desperation in one's own degeneracy.
Abraham, the unifying icon of the Abrahamic triad, is a figure exemplifying wilful surrender.

they all did the same. jews feared and surrendered to yaweh, christians to jesus, muslims to allah, greeks to zeus, indians to vishnu, satanists to beezlebub, ILPers to carleas, etc., etc.

there is only one kind of being, of which i am one, that shows no fear and worships no god... and that is he who is of the frizzle fry...

fucking greeks. paranoid and skittish as hell. i don't know why i even fucks with em. i save them from some giant scorpions, heal their heroic leader, and shake medusa up so he can cut the head of that triflin' bitch (which he never would have done without me), and what do i get in return? the silly wankers try to attack me.

satyr wrote:The idea of a one-god could only have evolved in a social organism experiencing the gradual emergence of self-consciousness - perception of 'self' in the third-person.
Whether it places 'self' or 'ego' 'outside' himself, determines if the projection is feminine or masculine.

no that's how 'soul superstition' in general evolved. first man becomes aware that he is aware, then draws the inference; the unity of the subject 'me' which i experience might mean that all existence itself is also a subject of which something else is aware of. this something that is aware of existence in the same way man is aware of himself, is a god. this was the first minor step in that naive, anthropomorphic reasoning that would later be strenghtened by other inferences such as those made in the ontological and cosmological arguments for the existence of god.

what got the 'one-god' idea going was the thinking of those logicians and philosophers who reasoned that if there were many gods, there would be an issue with notions such as omnipotence and omniscience. if two or more gods disagreed, one or more god must be wrong, which would mean it wasn't omniscient, which would mean it wasn't god. if one or more god opposed another god, it would mean one or more god wasn't omnipotent, which would mean it wasn't god.

this was the natural next step in reasoning once the anthropomorphic attributions are given to the gods; human beings disagree with and oppose each other, so the gods must also. now they're thinking if there can be such a thing as a god, it must be absolutely powerful in every respect and in no competition with anything else.

satyr wrote:We can now explain how Abrahamism could evolve into Marxism.

i never understood your correlation between abrahamism and marxism as being anything more than a confused association made from an obsessive fixation on two things you hold equally in contempt, and therefore reason they have something to do with each other. they don't... at least not in the way you surmise. in fact, you'd be hard pressed to find a better, more insightful critique of the abrahamic religion than that provided by feuerbach, someone who was instrumental in influencing marx. rather what you do is draw a symbolic correlation between two monolithic forces (abrahamism and the state), and assume that one is a representation of the other. now of course it may be that people find recourse in devoting themselves to the formation of 'the state' with the same kind of consolation other's experience in devoting themselves to a religion, but this fact is merely circumstantial and exists for all people in all societies. people either find purpose in devotion to a spirituality or in devotion to a 'state', or both in the event that these two are compatible. what people are looking for is citizenship per se, and it matters little what form their 'state' might take. a state is a state is a state. an organization of people who agree on a set of rules, laws and codes of conduct in exchange for certain rights and security. seeking such asylum from 'brutish nature', as hobbes put it, and cooperating with other people in an organized collective is not indicative of 'desperation' or 'degeneracy', as you say, but rather of common sense. why should we fight for our material gain and security when we can devise a system in which we are all able to acquire such through cooperation.  

the slippery-slope you are sliding down revolves around your short-sighted psychoanalytical examination of the conscious or subconscious motivations for why people submit to either a religion or a state. since neither the religion (abrahamism) or the state (marxism) are agreeable to you, you attempt to describe and explain each with such venomous invective. what you don't realize is that, say, a society of pagans who exist in a timocracy are essentially no different than anyone else, and are seeking to establish the same sense of rights and security... only through a different arrangement.

i dare say, the only person who today has the right to criticize the 'state' is the anarchist, which you are not, so quibbling over types and forms of states, and the motivations behind them, is as fruitless for you as it is amusing to me.

we can work on this more later, if you'd like. now some comments on your ongoing confusion about the consequences of there being no freewill.

first, the belief that one doesn't have freewill in no way changes their engagement to the illusion of choosing. one does not stop choosing because they think they aren't really choosing. neither is one no longer held accountable for what they have done because they couldn't have done otherwise. the wisdom that there can be no freewill only has currency retroactively, meaning, that if we know there is no freewill, we pay more attention to the factors and forces responsible for conditioning people to act as they do. we then attempt to eliminate factors and forces that influence people to act in ways we don't approve of. alternatively, if we believe people really have a 'choice' to do what they do, we pay less attention to the environment they are in/from. of course, this is the old marxist leninist in me talking here, the old 'society engineer' i used to be, the one who would declare with lenin 'you deserve every bit of the crime you have, capitalism!' only a society that encourages absolute individualism and still believes in freewill would commit such a blunder as to reprimand those criminal citizens it produces for commiting crimes that society's structure makes possible in the first place!

example: when you enforce a lockout, of course your workers are going to riot and steal bread. duh!

anyway, knowing there is no freewill only changes the philosophers attitude toward morality and creates in him a greater degree of tolerance and understanding. what did spinz say again? ...' i do not seek to belittle or scorn man's behavior, only to understand it, something something.'

so i hope i've helped you come to terms with this fact on a practical level. if it's not good enough- see me!

caveat: i won't engage the metaphysics of your theory of freewill- all this stuff about chaos and patterns and noetic this that and the other thing- anymore, because its so riddled with ambiguities i don't think you'd ever make it out in one piece.

^^^ oh, phil collins on drums, btw. you had no idea that sonofabitch could play drums like that. after early genesis and before his solo career whereupon he began writing songs we would roller skate to in the 80s. don't get me wrong, i like all his stuff, but the latter is no brand x. phil knew he had to start writing pop music to pay the bills, but we know where his heart is at and will always be...

note to rock drummers