Idealism vs Realism

There are, in my view, two general methods of engaging reality:
1- Bottom-Up 2- Top-Down...and their combinations.

The 1st I consider more natural, more primal...because an organism begins to be conscious of the immediate, and has no concept of anything above, beyond, it...nor does it care.
We may consider this organic thinking.
It begins with the sensually perceived, and attempts to extrapolate, the unknown, from the known....the not perceived from the perceived; it involves a projection, using imagination, and it evolves to find an advantage by finding patterns in the sensually perceived to predict the yet to come; offering the organism the advantage of efficiency and preparedness.
The quality of the projection, the imagined, is naturally selected...gradually resulting in heightened awareness.

The 2nd, I consider idealistic, and tends towards the extremes of naive Romanticism and Nihilism.
It begins with a conclusion and works backwards trying to integrate the perceived into the already established goal; the already “known”, yet never experienced.

In this case, the immediately perceived is overcome, bypassed, and rejected, because of the problem it poses, and the adaptation it demands. The mind is seduced by a hypothetical, which, most often, has little reference to the sensually perceived. This intellectual leap (a leap of faith) offers a solution to the immediate, by totally ignoring it, or by totally contradicting it. The power of imagination is used to annihilate the perceived.
This kind of thinking can only sustain itself, for long periods of time, within sheltering environments, where natural selection is overturned, or curbed in effectiveness, due to some willful intervention by some powerful protective entity.
This detached, detaching, projection, begins in primitive minds, as a way of explaining what is terrifying and mysterious; it offers an easy explanation to an immediate stress, by distancing self from its possibilities.
At first it has a minimal effect, as praying to the thunder gods, to protect one's self from the overwhelming, and dangerous, phenomenon of lightning, has only a small influence on an organism's behavior, when faced with this danger. The organisms will (re)act in the genetic ways, natural selection has programmed into it: fight/flight.

It is no more than an additional measure, along with the normal fight/flight (re)actions, offering the mind a comfort which increases the effectiveness of its instinctive (re)actions.
The supposition that thunder and lightning are caused by some hypothetical Will, is a supposition that begins with a conclusion and then finds justifications, in the environment, to support it.

At this stage the Top<>Down thinking still remains attached to sensual input, and it uses the non-experienced as a way of explaining the experienced. Its focus is on preparation.  

Then it gradually becomes a hypothesis that finds comfort in the interjection of a mediating familiar: a vision, a shaman, a leader, a priest...a mystical figure, which bridges the distance between the not-experienced and the experienced.
Now, control factors in, as the intermediate Will offers its services at a cost; the authority makes demands upon the individual.
The unknown turns to the known, ambiguously, through the holy-figure; (s)he/it is the one that connects the projected known to the sensually known.

The imagined, but not experienced takes on a familiar form, turning it into something which can be experienced and dealt with on a level the mind is comfortable with.
By doing so, this intermediating figure, most often a masculine energy, becomes necessary, and those who are willing to pay the price for being comforted, must surrender to his authority; he is the expert, the authority, who, for a price, makes the projected hypothetical more pragmatic; he is the one who takes the
presumed conclusion and justifies it to the ones who cannot, in a way which offers them peace and guidance.

As human knowledge increases, turning the once mysterious into phenomena we become accustomed to, the unknown increases proportionally.
Knowledge creates complexities of (inter)active parameters. The more we know, the more complicated our world-view becomes, increasing our anxieties....because now the possible, inflates in relation to the known.
The shaman, the priest, is still needed. He continues to provide the comfort that the unknown is known, or that it can be known...at least, in a greater
part, by him...and he offers his insights, as reassuring gifts, to those that depend on him, for a price.

Increased anxiety demands an increase in the measure of detachment from the known, required to maintain the simple mind comfortable in its environment; an environment still mysterious to it.  
The more indifferent the world is exposed as being, all the more the presumed, projected, conclusion, must reject and contradict it.
Nihilism emerges as a necessary psychological (re)action to increasing awareness.
The more complex the world becomes, all the more it must be simplified.
Because the immediate, the sensually perceived, cannot be denied, without surrendering to insanity or solipsism, the solution must be placed in the conclusion…in the hypothetical beyond and/or immanent.

The conclusion, the goal, becomes the "beyond", the "future" (Paradise/Hell - Utopia/Dystopia).
Hell and Dystopia become fantastic representations of the alternative, if the more desirable goal is rejected; a
desirable goal no less fantastic (Paradise,  placed in the beyond; Utopia, placed in the immanent).
The more undesirable the perceived is, for the mind, the more intolerable it is to the mind, all the more fantastic this projected final, conclusive, desirable, goal must be – sheltering from the immediate decreases the level of tolerance for the real, making the fantastic increasingly popular and viable.
The Modern Day shaman, the professional expert, the priest, is now the one offering justifications for the fantastic.
The presumed particle is sought ("God particle"), though no such thing has ever been found: the presumed beginning is sought (Creation, Singularity), though no such thing has ever been experienced; natural divisions, of sex and genes, are rejected, though no such rejection is applied to any other species except for man; “rights” are defended, rationally, though no such right has ever been found anywhere outside human artifices, exposing the underlying emotion corrupting reason; all types of mutations are explained, in the most forgiving way, and defended, if they do not disrupt the shared agreement, though no such practice has ever been observed anywhere in nature, except in manmade environments.

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Bottom<>Up thinking begins with the sensually perceived and works upwards, towards the Divine. It Wills itself upwards, when the world tumbles in the opposite
direction.
It begins with experience – the sum of one's known past – and then adds to it the ongoing perception of the world, to formulate abstractions which have references to the sensually perceived world.
These abstractions can then be projected forth, using the imagination, as hypothetical, theoretical, overcomnigs of the immediate.
Nothing is presumed which does not offer reference points to the sensually perceived immediate, and so no nurturing is accepted which does not have a basis on previous nurturing, or the sum of all past nurturing, we call nature.
This kind of thinking is more pragmatic and natural. Its need is to become as lucid as possible, since awareness evolves to offer the organism a survival advantage.

Top<>Down thinking, begins with the presumed known, yet not experienced, and then works to integrate the experienced into the not-experienced.

It begins by taking something for granted and considering it “self-evident”.  
Because this is easier and more comforting, the many are seduced by it.

This, in turn, necessitates a fantastic presupposition, one which directly contradicts the
sensually perceived, so as to offer comfort and guidance and hope to as many minds as possible; minds, now sheltered from the immediate to such an extent and for such a lengthy period of time, as to make the experienced, the past, intolerable.
The more dependent the many become, upon this annulling projection of a presumed known, supported by "experts" who feed into this, all the
more vehemently they defend its "reasoning", and its "logic".

These shamans, experts, build careers upon this role…or face ridicule and severe social consequences.
This kind of thinking is idealistic and nihilistic. Its need is to preserve the final, the already decided, which is always heartening and accessible to all those willing to pay the price to the right authorities.

The inclusion of all is part of the power of its peer pressurizing suggestibility.

It seeks a distinction from the past, as it is this past which troubles it and restricts its imagination.

An unfettered imagination is called fantasy and/or delusion.

These minds call it “freedom”, for now they can identify with anything their minds come up with, if this does not contradict with the shared agreement. They rejoice in the easiness of finding an escape from a past that they consider harsh and restricting.

But, there is a third type.
This type walks a tightrope between the previously mentioned two, and it can be called Modern.
It refuses the determinations of the past, but it also rejects the projections of a coming perfect future.
This type is what we call, these days, the "individual".

Its definition of individuality is contained by the presumed points in space/time which it calls its beginning and its end – its birth and death. In the intervening space/time it is totally dependent on the modern experts, the current experts; it remains constantly up-to-date, in tis affiliations.  

It feels no connection, and no gratitude, for, and towards, the past, because it is essentially unhappy with the outcome; but it can neither accept the fantasy of a coming future which will save it from existence.
It wishes to live in the "now”...the undefinable present...the contemporary.

Detached from both past and future, it feels no allegiance to anything: not to its ancestors nor to its decedents.
Such a mind is enclosed within the boundaries of a stunted ego.
An ego so pressured into temporal boxes that it needs to inflate itself to such proportions, as to compensate for this loss. It values hedonism, materialism, spontaneity, living in the moment and for the moment; it surrenders, in other words, to its basic animal nature, wanting to find nothing more valuable than its ephemeral existence.
It is most vital in its early stages of untapped youth...and this is why it values adolescence, and childhood, so much. As it grows older it tries to hold onto this puberty, because its creeping mortality makes it feel increasingly empty of all meaning.
It may, for this reason, give itself over to self-numbing, as it approaches its own death; when the pleasures subside and the materials it may have amassed,
fail to offer it comforting, it turns to religion, or some other form of nihilistic spirituality, popular in the age it is imprisoned within.
Nihilism has attained its apex.

Not only is the past rejected, creating the illusion of self-creation, and the choice of identification, but the future has also been rejected, as being a childish projection of fantastic possibilities, because such a mind can now only be soothed by such extravagances.
What remains is a jaded, cynical, husk of animalism; totally dependent on professionals, and completely identifying with the things it owns and the job it does – with its own profession.
Even its family, if it dares to contradict itself by having one, will be no more than an accessory to its castrated, meaningless, life.
Distraction from this contained world, it has placed itself in, or has allowed others to place it in, will be its highest priority.

All hail the rise of the Modern Man.

The romantic idealist, the desperate idealist the ignorant idiot, all begin with the idea(l), the conclusion, the absolute 'truth' and then think back ward, sampling from reality and incorporation it into an answer that has already been established as 'truth'.
Everything experienced is redefined, renamed to assimilate it into the desired outcome.

This is Nihilistic inverted 'thinking' which is really emoting.

One of its methods is to use the negative, the absence of absolute knowledge (omniscience) to justify a belief in anything.
The 'emoting' goes like this:
Since nobody knows everything, and there is no God to know everything, all is possible, ergo my own subjective absurd beliefs are just as likely as any other.
The use of a negative to support a projection of a positive, when the mind is unable to prove or to validate its delusions, is a common method to continue believing in absurdities that offer a pleasing return for the sacrifice of integrity.
Some degenerates call this evidence of thir faith.

But reasoning does not work like that.
It builds from the bottom up, testing theorizing and gradually establishing a precedent that exposes what is more from what is less likely - hierarchy of superior/inferior.

The degenerate begins with the absolute, not even probability, that absolute truth, and then uses mind games and word games to validate it.
Everything it experiences validates its absolute truth.
It wilfully ignores, or dismisses, what contradicts and/or challenges the absolute truth.
It presents itself as the know-er of absolute truth, and so by association the absolute mind.
Self-described humble minds assume absolute arrogance by association...like Christians do.
Their humility is hypocritical.A shameful sacrifice to assume the status of absolute via association....in this case association with the absolute male, the omnipotent/omniscient/omnipresent singularity, the one and only God. Like females compensate for their physicals and mental deficiencies by associating with a powerful group or a male of status.
Beta-males compensate for their own insecurities by belonging to a powerful gang, tribe, group.
In philosophy the simple mind finds genius by associating with a idol/icon of genius.

What I'm describing is the type of thinking which begins with the perceived and builds with experience/knowledge, theories of probability.

Top<>Down thinking begins with the conclusion, the desirable given, which is always unseen (beyond space/time, or in the future) and then works backwards trying to justify it.

Take the idea of sameness, or equality as a starting proposition.

Nihilism, being a reversal of the perceived, to justify a nullification of the past/nature, can only be a Top<>Down form of thinking.
It begins with the negating absolute, which can have a positive (One, Order, God, Singularity, Whole, Same, Being) or a negative (Nil, Zero, Chaos, Void, Different, Becoming) characteristic.
The real, which is neither positive or negative in any absolute sense, is ignored.

Life, as we know it, being that it is an ordering, can only emerge towards increasing entropy.

In relation to objective/subjective, Top<>Down, Bottom<>Up thinking begins from a different perspective.

Objectivity - begins from the bottom, as what is, before it proceeds towards the top, of what ought to be.
From the real towards the Ideal.

Nihilism, Modernity (subjectivity, postmodernity) - begins from the Top, the what ought to be, the ideal, the moral, and then proceeds backwards to incorporate what is, by redefining, or making excuses.
From the Ideal towards the Real.

When discussing anything with a Modern he is assuming you are presenting a description of your preferences, because he is doing so.
He associates your descriptions as your subjective ideals, threatening his own. you, become, for him, the voice of a world he cannot process or tolerate - a representation of what is most threatening, to him, about an indifferent, unknown, cosmos.
He would rather define you, in his subjective method of coping, as another opinion, no different than his own, reducing the standard of evaluating which perspective is superior and which is inferior to a mater of emotion, seduction, feelings, where his own needs always dominate as shared by a majority.

What costs accrue, in relation to the benefits, are excused away, by accusing others, or by seeking protection in the group.
The possibility of error is denied if this protection is available and easily attained.
Nihilism is always dependent on others to remain viable, or to exist at all.
Lies and hypocrisy and word-games are part of its defensiveness.

When you begin with the idea already determined - the conclusion from which you will proceed to validate experience, existence, this is Nihilism - Top<>Down emoting.
Then any word will do, as long as it is a positive reinforcement of you, and your self-gratifying delusions.

God, value, love, self, positive, whatever the chosen word is, it must be emotionally triggering.
Unlike Bottom<>Up Pagan, thinking, the world offers no limitations, no guidance....it is a "problem" to be "solved", or ignored.

This is not philosophy, this is self-comforting Abrahamic inverted nonsense, meant to appeal to as many degenerates as possible, demanding a "special' kind of logic, word usage, a specialize language and mathematics, reasoning...all ways of hiding the fact that it is emotionally driven and backwards thinking pretending to be progressive, and new.
If you can substitute God with another word, without losing any of the self-referential consistency, then you are not inventing something new, you are repackaging an old degenerate methodology.

In Bottom<>Up Thinking, words cannot be substituted by others, without a loss of consistency, and meaning, because honest, courageous, masculine thinking measures itself against other, or world....not some feminine contrived idea that can be anything that feel "good".
The WORLD, reality, imposes upon such a mind a challenge, a limit.
Words cannot be placed in any sequence, because causality imposes a particular sequence.
words cannot be substituted to pretend to be innovating, or in order to use a more emotionally gratifying one, because words represent abstractions, noumena, and noumena are not pulled out of nothingness, but refer to experienced phenomena, what appears.

Each specific word, has a specific definition, facilitating the sharing of ideas....but it also has a reference to the world outside the mind, facilitating understanding of self and existence, and the orientation and focusing of self in reality, pragmatically, whether this is emotionally gratifying or not.

Bottom<>Up thinking implies a very obvious and yet fundamental aspect of philosophy and the usage of language, which can go unnoticed.
Bottom<>Up Thinking is founded on physics, in reality, which means that one begins by proving one's acumen by presenting insights the common man can relate to.Because the common man is closest to the animal, and the animal is closest to the plant, and the plant is closest to the foundations of life, and the foundations of life are closest to non-living processes.
Like the artist who must prove his talent, to the laymen, before he proceeds to create abstract art the average mind cannot relate to, the philosopher begins with the real, not only he and those on his level can comprehend, but that all humans can comprehend.
It is easy to begin with the Idea(l), the "top" and then use fancy words, specialized terminology to impress, and imply something above and beyond common sensical, when all you are providing is nonsense, that can only impress illiterates and simpletons.
To the un-talented all art is magical, impressive, incomprehensibly brilliant.

It is only upon a firm appreciation of the immediate, the physical, the real, that all subsequent insights can base themselves upon;
Metaphysics <> Physics <>Ideals...Past<>Present<>Future.
Words simply connect the mind to the Real, before proceeding upward, towards the Idea(l), and downward, towards the Metaphysical.
Without this foundations words are left in limbo, floating in the mind with no gravitas, no basis, but only emotion, ego, desire: all aspects of the mind and its relation to world.

Without this foundation to restrict and discipline the mind to an external order, it can fly off into linguistic hypothetical, fantasy, on the tides of its own passions.
It is not obvious that this is what enables the most gifted men to delude themselves with their own vanity, to be engulfed by their own ego?
More so in out age where even lesser men can enjoy the privilege of a protective system that can offer them the illusion of their indestructibility and personal power.
We see the outcome of such sheltering when the rabble rise up to declare their private preferences and fantasies as worthy of respect.

Beginning with a solution to a problem one has to assume that there is a problem to be resolved, and the solution points to the resolution.

Beginning with a solution means you have to adapt and adjust all subsequent data to the given solution.

Beginning with a solution means the criteria for evaluating it changes from empirical, sensual, to psychological, emotional.
The absence of evidence, means you have to compensate with popularity and conviction.
To validate the conclusion, becomes a matter of making ti seductive to as many minds as possible.
This already implies that there is no objective reality, and that all is a matter of subjectivity.

Nihilistic ideologies have to be pleasant, promising, empowering to as many as possible.
This is called 'positive' nihilism.
In a cosmos void of absolutes, no God, no universal morality, no purpose, one has to be fabricated and projected into the void. To justify it one must makes it popular and accessible to all.

World becomes humanity.
The unsubstantiated can be validated by quantities of minds that hold it as 'truth'.
for all intents and purposes the idea, no matter how absurd, is true for those that hold it to be so - its range of effect is that of its followers.
As such all existence must be made a potential follower, by redefining it as conscious.
Politics becomes metaphysics.
Because nihilistic ideals are meaningless outside minds the universe must be redefined as a mind.
Words/Symbols become magical forces exposing this universal mind.

in your own unique way, you're summarizing the differences between idealism and empiricism. (i think you just added the title 'idealism vs realism', didn't you? perfect, because i wrote this post before seeing the thread title change. we are on the same page. i'll be damned.)

the former imposes information upon nature while the latter reads information from nature.

and it's interesting how this happens... how over many centuries philosophy changes from a pre-scientific method (or mid wife) organized by a few simple principles of reasoning, to a great big amorphous language game of inter-referential words and concepts.

there is no doubt about what has happened, and wittgenstein, in my opinion, has illustrated this tremendous event better than anyone else.

now i'd like to get in behind this event and investigate the reasons why this has happened. so far i have found two thinkers (not to say there aren't more) who best explain how and why this has happened. first, obviously, is fritz. but fritz put a neat spin on it. he claimed that the force behind idealists can be one of two different kinds. you have the type that idealizes because the world is too much for them, and then you have the kind that idealizies because the world is not enough for them. this distinction is very, VERY important, satyr.

plato the traveler, the lover of knowledge, vibrant and energetic (wasn't he also an athelete?). his idealism results in his disappointment with the possibility that there might not be something more for his type. how could someone with such a love for life not impose such wild theories upon nature? his thinking was an extension of his vigorous spirit. he was overflowing with eros.

we could also gather from his fascination with socrates the soldier, that he was a kindred spirit. that he understood socrates means that he understood socrates' dominating temperment; his severe, dialectical approach to debate was almost a metaphor for his soldierly nature. he enjoyed confounding, instructing, and winning.

these two types are idealists for the right reasons. they aren't satisfied with the mundane or the ordinary.

on the other hand, there are the idealists who form wild theories to save themselves from a world that they, unconsciously or not, really despise. christianity is the most perfect of this form to ever exist.  

with this in mind, a pardon must be made for that special kind of idealism that expresses a fullness and overflowing of a love of life.

the difficult part is determining which is which, who qualifies as the proper idealist.

it's not about the religious and metaphysical impulse, but what that impulse creates.

the other thinker who has really moved me by their explanation for this event is... you guessed it, big rosa.

imagine, if you will, that whole millenia consist of philosophers devising systems of thought to keep themselves, and the rulers they compliment, in power. imagine that these elaborate metaphysical systems of thought were forged to reflect a perceived order of the cosmos into political orders; the order of man must reflect the order of the cosmos, and for that, special 'wise men' must exist to interpret this order and translate it into a political model for the rule of man.

behind every king was a philosopher, like a priest, whispering into his ear, reassuring him of his natural right as a representative of that order, and his obligation to keep that order.

what was it that marx and engels said...

"The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it..... The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch."

a lightbulb just bursted above your head. did you see it? don't worry, it happened to me to, many years ago.

so you've got a good grasp on this top>bottom bottom>top thing you've created to articulate what's happened in philosophy. i'm not arguing against any of it... just adding a few remarks to contribute to it.

How can anyone not agree with reality?

Here's where we may part ways.
This psychological attitude, found throughout time, beginning when primitive man came across a phenomenon he could not understand, filling him with dread, and projecting into the unknown what was known to him, as a way of reducing his won anxiety before the unkown.
This is the psychology of nihilism. It's spark

What does nihilism claim?
That a world void of God, meaning, purpose, is negative.
So, what makes life possible is considered negative because it is missing what the mind needs to exist.
It then assumes its existence, mistaking its own abstractions, and the necessity for absolute (binary logic) as a cosmic necessity.  
I've explained my position on this elsewhere.

My contention is that nihilism this predisposition, is exploited by those who know better to manipulate the masses.
Like Abrahamic spirituality (Judaism -= Christianity - Islam), that morphed into Marxism, the secular version of the first...and now post-modernity, the repackaging of Marxism in a post-cold War era.
Abrahamism is also being reinvented to create a Christianity 3.0, by integrating Nietzsche, the severest critique that dismantled its psychosis and exposed it.  
They invent absolutes, like god, like ideals, and then name them, suing a positive moniker, like 'love' or 'value' and then justify them using verbal twisting, linguistic Gordian knots, that loop back upon themselves...creating a noetic cocoon.
Something psychologically preferable in comparison to the alternative of an open-ended, indifferent, uncertain world.
I call it a noetic, linguistic, womb.  
Will wills willing, is an example...but sometimes they can cover their tracks by fabricating intricate, convoluted, linguistic nonsense that seems to be saying something but says nothing.

Hypocrisy is part of Nihilism.
Then you have the cAnus types who pretend to be interested in breaking out of a linguistic conundrum, not to be break free, or climb out,but to pull the world in their noetic grave.
Crypto-Christian and crypto-Marxism are now emerging, because they failed they must reinvent and rename themselves.  
They are not interested in clarity, but in confusion, using words and symbols, to them present themselves as saviours.
It's a ploy.

Why? you ask.
I have a theory.
It's about exploiting this innate anxiety before the unknown to manipulate the feeble, the needy the lost - its political.
At the moment it is being used to deal with the only true enemy of Globalization - European males...European traditions.
It's a psychological ploy, using words to manipulate weakness.
European males have always been the challenges of authority...this is why they dominate the sciences and philosophy.
Nihilism is political, manipulating psychology by using semiotics.

I've unpacked my theory in a thread I call A War Like No Other....over at KT....in the private section - Adyton.
you can glean some of my arguments in my comments on nihilism.
Nihilism, the concept, has been hijacked by nihilism, the ideology....as it has many words, corrupting language.
Read Orwell on how controlling language you can control thinking.

You can identify nihilists by how they use language. Most of the time they do not identify with nihilism, though they practice it.
Detaching words from reality is how you begin the process of mind-control.

Two types of resetiment:

Extroverts & Introverts.
1- Those for who the world is too much to deal with, seeking relief in language that fabricates, like in the Matrix, an alternate reality for them to hide in.
2- Those, who being born and raised in sheltering human systems consider the world 'not enough', seeking relief in language to inflate and to construct hyperbolic alternative realities.

Drug use follows accordingly....the first find relief in mind-numbing, mind deflating chemicals, the second in accelerators, mind expanding, inflating chemicals.
In both cases the real is intolerable.

This returns us back to Schopenhauer's insight that man exists in stress or in ennui, but never in absolute contentment.

This dis-ease, I call a memetic virus, a psychosomatic parasite, is propagated and nurtured by a particular tribe, in the west.
Wittgenstein was a member who tried to discredit language altogether.
You should read a response to Wittgenstein:
Words and Things - A Critical Account of Linguistic Philosophy and A Study in Ideology --- Gellner, Ernes with a foreword by Bertrand Russell.
The threats are European males, who must be undermined and exterminated.

i'm not sure i disagree with anything here but the suggestion that all this stuff is conspiratorial. i just can't give credit to anyone, whether university professors or politicians, for spreading such memes with such sinister purpose. they aren't smart enough, or organized enough, to do so.

i think rather that all this is a natural trend of evolution that exists necessarily, expressing the dynamics of relatively sudden, socio-economic changes in the world. hell, even the ones who you propose are purposely spreading this stuff are affected by it. people don't choose to promote these ideals. instead, a kind of rational super-structure is enveloping the world, adjusting ideological movements to cooperate with a new globalism.

think hegelian dialectics for a minute. you have the old (thesis) and you have the new socio-economic relations (anti-thesis) that conflict with the old models. now you have the synthesis; a new ideology that must take form in order to make these conflicts reconciliatory.

it can't be stopped, dude. you just have to go rogue and watch it happen like that dude in the forum picture standing on the mountain looking down at the city.

embrace your pathos of distance, and look forward to your eternal return with great zeal!

Zoot Allures wrote:i'm not sure i disagree with anything here but the suggestion that all this stuff is conspiratorial. i just can't give credit to anyone, whether university professors or politicians, for spreading such memes with such sinister purpose. they aren't smart enough, or organized enough, to do so.

A conspiracy does not have to be creative....it can simply exploit something that emerges naturally...from the circumstances.
For instance, nihilism is a psychology of man before the unknown, uncertain, indifferent real.....and this is exacerbated when population pressures and resource pressures are present.
So, nobody invents nihilism, but only promotes it and attempts to manipulate it...using symbols/words.

Zoot Allures wrote:i think rather that all this is a natural trend of evolution that exists necessarily, expressing the dynamics of relatively sudden, socio-economic changes in the world. hell, even the ones who you propose are purposely spreading this stuff are affected by it. people don't choose to promote these ideals. instead, a kind of rational super-structure is enveloping the world, adjusting ideological movements to cooperate with a new globalism.

Yes....I am saying the same.
The problem is no accessible frontiers. If we had them, this would not be occurring.
Dis-ease flourishes in over-populated environments. This parasite is no different.
Have you seen the experiment with rats placed in contained environment?

Zoot Allures wrote:think hegelian dialectics for a minute. you have the old (thesis) and you have the new socio-economic relations (anti-thesis) that conflict with the old models. now you have the synthesis; a new ideology that must take form in order to make these conflicts reconciliatory.

it can't be stopped, dude. you just have to go rogue and watch it happen like that dude in the forum picture standing on the mountain looking down at the city.

embrace your pathos of distance, and look forward to your eternal return with great zeal!

I'm not trying to stop it.
I'm no martyr.
Like standing in front of a stampeding herd of bovines....
My motive is to preserve, in this coming Dark Age, which we've already entered. Superstitions multiply in these times.
To preserve....I use the metaphor of Zombie Apocalypse.
You do not try to heal the zombies...you use different strategies.

You've met many zombies using language to infect.

satyr wrote:The problem is no accessible frontiers. If we had them, this would not be occurring.

don't be so sure....

No accessible frontiers...not yet.
If this final frontier ever becomes accessible and viable, then this dis-ease infecting European man will cease to matter.
Another inconsequential parasite that emerged out of desperation and need, and then vanished as if it never was.
I will not be there....but I am fighting to preserve what can be preserved.
I'm a diagnostician and an immunization agency.

Too much of this crap has been left unchecked for far too long...and look what is happening.

When I construct a hypothesis and then a theory, I use real phenomena.
So, my positions on Nihilism, on how they invert reality, using words, is not theoretical; when I say they are Top<>Down emotional thinkers, that may use a cold, indifferent exterior to mask their passion infected thinking, I am not discussing some hypothetical person.

My theories begin from the real....with actual phenomena and specimens of the psychological types I am analyzing.
Most often more than a few. This constitutes a pattern.

Top/Down emotional thinkers begin with the solution, often an absolute - indivisible, immutable, whole.
Then they use empiricism, to whatever degree they dare to, to justify a solution that is, for them, absolutely true....usually based on esoteric needs/desires.
They sample reality, or they spin it to accommodate the solution they need to cope. For many the answer is a matter of survival, or sanity.
Their 'reasoning' infected by survival interests.
They place survival, self-preservation, on the highest pedestal and sacrifice reason, logic, integrity, independence, everything to it.
They use quantities of minds, popularity, for validation, or an idol/icon as a proxy.

They don't engage reality directly, and openly, but via text - their hypothetical spiritual ideologies, referring and deferring to other hypothetical concepts...symbols referring to symbols, referring to symbols....referring to an idol/icon, or to a sacred text.
Words all the way down, to the source in divine Scripture.

Notice, Zoot, that randomness is not something I invented.
Also notice that the concept of 'one' of 'whole' is an arbitrary concept where the mind imposes a limit upon space/time, to fabricate a boundary...a cognitive end, which then becomes the ambiguous whole.
When I say 'one cat' I am implying a becoming with a beginning and end, determined by how wide my range of cognition is.
Do I mean the cat as concept encompassed the moment I began the sentence until I ended it, or do I mean it as a ambiguous point in space/time when the cat was synthesized by a combination of two streams of memory (genetics), or do I mean the cat as a continuum that stretches back in time, or do I mean a organism, a species, with specific traits, within specific parameters - genetic limitations?
This determines the 'oneness' I am referring to.

When I speak of one universe, what am I saying?
I am referring to an abstraction in my head of an ambiguous whole....because I cannot see the whole I can only imagine it as an extrapolation of my method of dealing with phenomena, like cats, rocks etc.
I deduce a one universe using the method I use to distinguish a single cat, from all other cats and all other possibilities of the same cat.
I cut it away from all dimensions (space = possibility) other than the ones I can process.
I generalize/simplify the fluid, the continuum, the process, into a thing, a one, an abstraction, a concept, given a symbol to represent it, a name.
1/0 , mathematics, are the most abstract forms of language.  So abstract that they can be used to refer to everything, anything and nothing.
Math is a language.....an art.
So is language. They are representational.

In the case of a cat it is easy, because I use my experiences of the cat, stored in memory...but I have no memory of the universe as a whole.
I compensate for this by projecting myself outside the processes I wish to reduce to an abstraction.
Then I proceed to simplify/generalize as I did with the cat.
I convert the process to a singularity, a thing, and then I give it a symbol, a name to represent it.

These methods are not useless and arbitrary but they can become so...and this is the danger.
I will give you 'art' as an example.
There is art that represents the real, as it is perceived (interpreted), and then there is art that projects the artist's reaction to the perceived (interpreted).
One represents, the other reacts and then represents the reaction - it externalizes the internal.
One is ART the other is fART.  
One is exoteric, the other esoteric.
One absorbs the other expunges.
One can be evaluates, objectively using an external standard, the world itself or what the artist is re[presenting using his talent, and the other is subjective....because it expresses/externalizes a subjective reaction to reality.
The talent of the fArtist is also subjectivized.

For example, if I paint a horse all can evaluate, judge, my talent, in relation to a shared phenomenon...an organism named horse...but if I paint my reaction to horse, then i am painting my feelings, sensations, emotions, which are subjective.
I can scribble lines and say there.....my fArt.

Same applies for philosophy.
There is true philosophy that can be judged using world as a standard, and then there's failosophy that is entirely subjective because it expresses a subjective reaction to a shared world.
The first evaluates itself against world, the other by how many it can affect, influence - its popularity, how well it sells.

Life is so addicted/obsessed with order and wholes that it constructs them every chance it gets.
though it is immersed ion multiplicity, it must project itself outside existence, into the non-existent, to fabricate a conception of existence as a whole - contradicting the experience of it with its noetic abstraction - idea versus real.
As such, man's modern philosophies are burdened by the nonsense this produces.
We cannot exit existence into the non-existent to then construct a negation of the experienced. we can only report on existence from within it.
Multiplicity.

With Top<>Down emoting, the idea(l) is held to be perfect, by definition, whereas in Bottom<>Up reasoning the idea(l) is judged, gradually building its validity.

Top<>Down is inverse thinking, that produces Nihilism and such contradictions as a 'perfect' whole, made of imperfect multiplicity.
This a a characteristic of Abrahamic spirituality where calamities are internalized as the fault of those who did not live-up to the absolutes rules.....and is also echoed ion Marxism whee the ideology is perfect whereas its application continuously fails due to human  feebleness....

The idea of sin is based in this self-deprecation.
The idea(l) is never questioned, for this is a sin, but the fault should be sought in interpretation of the perfect 'divine' which is none other than the noumenon.

In Cosmology this is expressed in the contradiction of an absolute whole, a perfect one, within which imperfect, multiplicity is the rule.
The exception to the rule is never in doubt, never studied to explain its singular exceptionalism.
If it would the absurdity of constructing the dualistic negation of existence, a noetic non-existence (inversion of experience), as a theoretical, noetic 'outside' from where we can abstract the whole.
The method is mistaken for the absolute truth.

Existence, can only be studied from within....Bottom<>Up, and not from a theoretical absurd 'outside', a Top<>Down.
From this perspective there is no /one', no 'whole', no 'absolute. There is only superior/inferior....there is only process, fluidity, multiplicity, interpreted using binary logic (dualistically), by converting (interpreting) the fluid into abstraction.
This is the contrary attitude of Aryanism, that produced science and philosophy, and art, and Abrahamism, that inverted reality to accommodate a psychological degradation and only produced salvation for the genetically wronged that had to be denied to them, at first, and then had to adapt, morphing into Christianity/Islam, to become accessible across tribal, genetic lines.
This inversion was a powerful idea, as you can imagine, in a world where man had started intervening upon natural processes like culling, dis-ease, natural austerity and so on and has artificially created an environment where populations exploded and mutations multiplied unhindered by natural filtering...including a female's agency of genetic and memetic filtering our sickness and unfit mutations.

Abrahamism flourished in such environments....as Buddhism did in the east, under similar circumstances.

Idealism places the idea/ideal before the real....or some other metaphorical position in space/time indicating an exclusivity and separation - 'above', for example, or 'within', or 'beneath'.
It then samples or assimilates reality in accordance with this idealism.

Realism begins with the sensually perceived, the empirical, and constructs ideals and theories, in relation to this relationship of mind with world...the noumenon with the phenomenon.
The world, natural order, directs the mind towards what is more and/or what is less probable, and what is preferable, ideal, and what is not...in relation to a goal.
The objective, in relation to how the individual relates to an indifferent world, is what determines the reality of the objective and its desirability.

I see nothing wrong with idealism so long as it is grounded in reality and nature. There really is no way to strip away idealism from human beings so if we must have idealism as an inherent part of human nature it thereby must be a rational one.

Yes...I use a metaphor to explain good ideology.

Think of ideology, ideas, as a structure....a house.

....Empiricism, subjectivity, is the structure in world in relation to environment.
So our subjectivity must be in harmony with the environment.

Metaphysics is the foundation, which must be in alignment with the structure.
idealism is the blueprint.....using a noetic point is space/time to orient and to align the two.

The structure's solidity, its resistance to earthquakes, floods etc, validates it.

Nihilism, begins with the roof...and builds downward.
It inverts...it begins by building in the sky, in the air, and then attempts to connect the structure to the earth, the real.
Or it draws a sketch and declares it a real house....where it can live noetically, in a make believe world.

Realism begins with the structure or with the foundations and the structure being in alignment within REAL world conditions.
Idealism begins with the idea, in its head...and if it dares to try to build it, it begins with the roof, floating in air, and then builds down, hoping it will be in harmony with the real world conditions, the surface of the earth....if not it destroys the earth to accommodate its ideals...mostly it fabricates in the mind and then shares it with other minds, ideal homes, in ideal environments meant for ideal conditions to house ideal people.
Pure fantasy.

So a more natural idealism would be its opposite built from the foundation up, yes?

Yes. The ideal has to be in harmony with the real....not some fantasy that gives one pleasure, or is in his interests.
It has to be as realistic as possible.

This 'top' in Top<>Down emoting is not an actual 'top' it is the noumenon, the abstract, the mind, placed on a pedestal - idealism.
Mind projected in other, or in the beyond, or the occult, the hidden the underlying....projected into the unreal, and non-existent 'outside' existence.
Mind places itself, or mind of a idealized theoretical other, at the top, and world as its own creation at the bottom, shaped by its representations: symbols/words.

The method of dealing with world of adapting and adjusting to world, becomes a psychosis - Narcissism & Schizophrenia .