Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, California
|
|
'Introspective'
Wherever I go,
I go with me,
Wherever I go,
I always am,
Wherever I am
I'm always with me,
Wherever I'm not,
I'm on the lam,
Whenever I'm lost,
I then go missing,
Whenever I'm found,
I'm back again,
Whenever I'm missed,
I'm only missing,
Whenever I'm not,
Myself my friend,
Whomever I am,
Is what I am,
Whomever that is,
Is only me,
Whomever I see,
Behind the mirror,
Whomever it is,
Looks back at me,
Whatever I think,
My thoughts are secret,
Whatever I say,
It comes from me,
Whatever I try,
It's sometimes easy,
Whatever I think,
I'm still not free,
However I seem,
Sometimes uneasy,
However I feel,
Sometimes carefree,
However the truth,
Though cloaked in riddles,
How clever my death,
Concealed from me.
Forever is not,
So much my business,
Forever as such,
I cannot see,
Forever I'm so,
Irreconcilably,
Forever as lost,
As I'll ever be.
Bushman
03/09/2015
|
|
feralfae
Boulder climber
in the midst of a metaphysical mystery
|
|
Forever is not,
So much my business,
Forever as such,
I cannot see,
Bushman
03/09/2015
I like that. Yes, I find the present occupies nearly my full attention.
So, yes, Right Now seems to be my business.
Thank you.
feralfae
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
|
|
Nice,Bushman.
|
|
High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
|
|
|
Mar 14, 2015 - 05:06pm PT
|
A Jewish Atheist Asks, “Is There Moral Progress?”
http://boston.forward.com/articles/186919/a-jewish-atheist-asks-is-there-moral-progress/#ixzz3UPJbrBpq
.....
What a silly notion morality (or moral sentiments) as a topic doesn't belong on the "mind" thread when arguably it has more to do with mind-brain relations than anything else.
Indeed, there is a growing science of morality now called "moral psychology" that is becoming ever more an applied science or clinical science - that expresses itself not in any old-world Abrahamic theistic terms but in evolutionary biological terms. How refreshing.
Anyhow, the subject of morals (origin and nature) is just as "at home" here on this thread too - where science, religion and change... and changing beliefs... all intersect.
Steven Pinker is a pretty smart fellow and his work, esp his latest work concerning moral progress and the continuing advance of civilization, is inspiring.
http://www.amazon.com/Better-Angels-Our-Nature-Violence/dp/0143122010/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1426378116&sr=8-3&keywords=steven+pinker
Christopher Hitchens said religions poison everything.
Morality, as mental faculty or as behavior or as a general topic, is yet another excellent example case of this. Any discussion of morality (not unlike any discussion of dystropy or dystropology, i.e., the study of why bad things happen) is hard to have at least in public without somebody evoking religion and ruining it / poisoning it.
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Mar 14, 2015 - 08:09pm PT
|
Pinker -- "The humanistic epiphany came in his early teens when he learned that modern neuroscience could explain mental life in terms of brain activity."
Could!!!
That means he's purely guessing as usual.
He ultimately has no clue at all .....
|
|
BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
|
|
|
Mar 14, 2015 - 10:28pm PT
|
There's even a growing science of morality now called "moral psychology" that is becoming ever more an applied science or clinical science - and not in any old-world Abrahamic theistic terms either (we've certainly had enough of that in the bedroom for eg, or out of the middle east) but most refreshingly in evolutionary terms.
"Science of morality"??? pee-you!!!
This is where you become really queer. When you try to combine "old-world Abrahamic theistic" with the "middle-east" "bedroom" view. When the "middle-east" view these days are explicably from a muslim's bedroom.
guess that's ur way to confusion..
|
|
Spider Savage
Mountain climber
The shaggy fringe of Los Angeles
|
|
|
Mar 15, 2015 - 09:49pm PT
|
Lots of talk in this thread over the weeks about morality. Good Topic.
That's a tough subject for the materialistic science believers. Really tough to get a large control group going to run tests on. "Science" folk can speculate based on their knowledge base but that's no different than believing as in religion.
If you firmly believe there is no afterlife and we are all just squishy organisms eating and reproducing until we die, you've got very little to go on to rationalize a higher moral standard.
You can say, "well I have a higher standard." And there you go. You're out of science and into philosophy at least.
Monothiesm seems to be all about the submitting to the greater authority and the moral codes laid down by that great authority with the promise of maybe being okay in an after life. This seems to work for a lot of people on a personal level.
Unless you're Jewish and you had a grandfather who doubted the Lord for a few minutes in which case you are the 3rd generation being punished for his transgression. OR your just being tested, as in the Book of Job.
Going back to good old Polytheism you have a more practical approach because you have deal with the God of food, or the God of houses, or the God of the sea, and it's tough because they all have their codes and you have to make deals with them to keep your ship floating and your house from falling down. I think a lot people today actually live like this with out a formal structure since those religions went down with the Romans and old Greeks. Too bad too because they seem pretty fun.
The Animism of hunter gatherer tribes such as Native Americans, Australians etc., is pretty practical. And I think many sensitive materialists wind up going this way. Everything has it's own life force and you have to negotiate with every rock, tree, deer, (or food animal), etc. Here you get a practical application of "The Golden Rule" and the beginnings of a belief in karma if you get hit on the head too often.
The immortality religions like old Buddhism, and others where people KNOW they are destined to live, die and be reborn again have a sense of morality based on the conviction that if you do bad by others in this life, it can bite you in the azz next life.
And this is how I see it. I addition to treating others the way I would like to be treated, I try to think about how what I do is going to affect me in a future life, positive or negative. Yeah, that may sound selfish, but I figure what is good for that little kid is going to be for me when I'm that little kid again.
And lastly, something I think everyone knows and has learned from experience; if you do something wrong, you feel like crap and try to make up for it so you feel good again. Looping all the way back around to practical observation this seems to be a good guide. It's hard because you really feel like you would feel better to push that friggin Joshua Tree graffiti tagger off a cliff and watch him die in well deserved agony, but I think people who have done that sort of thing would tell us, "Hey, that didn't work. I feel worse."
|
|
BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
|
|
|
Mar 15, 2015 - 11:09pm PT
|
Unless you're Jewish and you had a grandfather who doubted the Lord for a few minutes in which case you are the 3rd generation being punished for his transgression. OR your just being tested, as in the Book of Job.
these old testament writings about generational iniquities and blessings must be the first signs showing man's enlightenment of environmental evolution directing biological evolution.
|
|
Tvash
climber
Seattle
|
|
|
Mar 16, 2015 - 09:58am PT
|
A higher moral standard is a religious idea. Those who do not subscribe to religion do not require it to act morally.
Acting to improve one's afterlife is narcissism in the extreme. The idea of an afterlife itself is narcissism. You're going to last longer than the entire universe? Well aren't you precious.
It is also the cause of much suffering. Millions of people hate infidels, homosexuals, women, other races - all in the name of selfishly improving their chances in the afterlife. Such a philosophy displays our baser, more unfortunate instincts. It is a cowardly retreat to the false promise of childhood safety - an abdication of adult responsibility. We can do better, and fortunately, an increasing numbers of us do.
Non-religious morality encourages one to act to make the world a better place - even if one must leave that world behind for oblivion. It is as unselfish as the idea of an afterlife is selfish.
Evolution gave us the capability to improve or degrade things. The actions one takes in that regard defines one's morality.
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Mar 16, 2015 - 10:09am PT
|
Totally clueless. ^^^^^
Completely clueless. ^^^^
Absolutely clueless. ^^^^^
Just keep talking your clue-less-ness every day.
And then everything will be fine ......
|
|
Tvash
climber
Seattle
|
|
|
Mar 16, 2015 - 10:20am PT
|
Here's a dollar.
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
|
|
|
Mar 16, 2015 - 11:56am PT
|
Nice try, Spider. (You got no respect for it, though.)
If the evolutionists (and new-age behaviorists) have their way, any sense of morality must come down to an engineered dampening effect on chaos, Hobbes’ “war against all,” and absolute self-interest. Man’s artifacts (society, civilization, even family) are the results of selfish genes serving the objective of non-individualized immortality of the species. Emotion, instinct, cognition, myth, mental modeling are all the result of evolution, and they all serve the same purpose. (So must art, science, and morality.)
Personally, evolutionists must become nihilists to be consistent with what they believe. If they think they can hold a code of morality that does not rely upon evolution, then it would seem they do not observe and follow their own beliefs.
Which is fine by me, of course . . . beliefs being what they seem to be. But, solipsism is topic for another discussion.
|
|
Tvash
climber
Seattle
|
|
|
Mar 16, 2015 - 12:54pm PT
|
I'm still not sure what an 'evolutionist' is supposed to be.
Am I also a quantum mechanicist? A Maxwell's equationalist? An Archimedes principlist?
How about an "I like tempura prawnsist"?
In their pity for us earthbound mortals, haphazardly thrown together by evolution from a mere 11 lowly elements with a sprinkling of this and that, I can only hope that the assumptionalist deductionalists will someday, at some point, seek to understand the concept of limited statements with a finite set of claims, backed by evidence that can be repeated by less emotionally invested parties.
I know, I know, Don't Fence Me In, but some of us have to live in the world rather than float above it, buoyed clouds of language borrowed from science and left in a bowl of tepid water until it's fuzzy enough to mean whatever you feel it should.
Some things just feel right, ya know?
And sometimes, those things are nonsense.
|
|
Tvash
climber
Seattle
|
|
|
Mar 16, 2015 - 01:14pm PT
|
Forgive my directness, but I'm becoming increasingly impatient with the "I WANT MY E-TERNAL RE-WARD"! thing.
If you can't do the right thing for its own sake, you're a child.
Actually, that's an insult to children everywhere.
Can anyone still credibly argue in 2015 that religion is a force for good thing in the final balance? The religious folks I know who do the right thing would do the right thing without religion - that's just who they are.
The religious folks who do bad things in the name of God? Most WOULDN'T be doing those things without God and a whole raft of God's Chosen indoctrinators spurring them on.
I always like to ask the Enternal Lifers - "So, whatcha gonna do with yourself during all that eternity?"
Best way to get a confused and worried stare I know of.
Shiite muslims, most folks couldn't fill next week if they didn't have a place to go and stuff to do lined up for them.
Hint: we didn't evolve to face off with Eternity or even a ball hair's slice of it. We were built to face challenges, solve problems, sacrifice for each other. We were built to seek meaning in a meaningless world and be snappy about it before we rot. We create meaning and purpose by taking on and overcoming hard things- they don't come served by Sky Mommy with a juicebox and a wet wipe.
A purposeless eternity of perfection?
That is the very definition of Hell for our species.
Frankly, I'd wisely choose death given the choice.
End of sermon, mfkrz! Pass the collection basket!
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
|
|
|
Mar 16, 2015 - 02:30pm PT
|
Evangelicals organize for a modern Crusade.
|
|
Tvash
climber
Seattle
|
|
|
Mar 16, 2015 - 02:48pm PT
|
Big Bigotry's last gasp?
This Army of Sky Mommy Dearest won't go unopposed. These shitebags got their asses handed to them after their anti gay initiatives went down in flames in 4 states during the last election cycle.
$40 million, and all I got was this "God Hates Fags" T shirt.
That's not to say its over. But guess what? Our side's donation funding has only ballooned since then.
Stay tuned for some real fun.
Of course, if SCOTUS makes the right call in June with regards to marital equality - all this Sound the Trumpets crap will be just a fart in a closet, and even places like Mississippi will have to let da gays marry, whether they like it or not.
One salient difference between America's evangelical leadership and its opposition - the former will soon be with their Father in Hebbin, if they're not there already. This is a generation die off problem.
Good riddance to bad ideas.
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
|
|
|
Mar 16, 2015 - 03:13pm PT
|
Tvash: If you can't do the right thing for its own sake, you're a child.
Ad hominems are not useful. Nor is emotionalism. Settle down, and focus.
What, other than continuance of the species, would “the right thing” be (more so for, “it’s own sake”) if you believe in evolution?
(BTW, your characterizations of people are prejudiced, for all your high-and-mighty moral position.)
DMT:
The same thing goes for you.
A straw man erected by anyone should be able to be set on fire or blown to smithereens.
Do you have argument to make other than a snide comment?
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!