Chatbox Trivialities - Race, Evolution and Aesthetics

Satyr wrote:

If beauty is an end...then it is a projection of the desired, missing, object/objective.

Another way of saying: complete, perfect, divine, absolute.
Nietzsche called it "power".
Other call it life, alluding to immortality.

Because if you think this world possesses such perfection, then you are either deluded or naive.
I've experienced a certain type of beauty, but never a perfect one.

Well, I didn't mean...The end. Just that in the moment it can be satisfying. I don't think that any experience of beauty would lead to my permanent stasis. As far as perfect, not in objective terms, no, but in subjective terms during an experience, sure, perfection. Though I think that word is fairly useless since it seems to lead to mathematical arguments like omnicience and omnipotence, in the specific do.

Quote :

The artists sees the beautiful and thinks:
"I could make it better."

That desire need not be immediate and generally is not, at least in my experience. AGain I am not suggesting that everything stops in face of Beauty, but rather that there is an experience of a kind of pure, in the moment appreciation. That that fullness later becomes something else, perhaps what you say here about the artist, I don't disagree with, so perhaps we are writing past each other.
I am also not suggesting that it is only an end.

The ascetic thinks:
"But why bother? This is good enough."  

Quote :

I watched trees rustling in the summer breeze...from a distance.
How beautiful, I thought. But as I approached, a dead carcass of a dog at the base of one of the trees.
And a smell straight out of hell.

To me that is two different phenomena.

Quote :

The pristine was shattered with a reality check.

I don't have pristine as a necessary quality for Beauty. Both experiences were real. I don't expect Beauty to eliminate all other kinds of phenomena to be complete.

Mo wrote:

I don't experience beauty as subjective.

Me neither.  I am not sure what this would mean.  Or, I don't experience my experience of beauty to be only subjective.  I cannot remove the sense that the object and its qualities are critical to my experience of it, including at the value level. Though one can train aesthetic appreciation. And untrain.

Quote :

When I see a beautiful movie, I don't just congratulate myself for it. I experience it as out there, in the world.

God use of 'just' since you should also congratulate yourself - congratulate is not quite the right word, but I recognize the skill involved in appreciating great skill in others and also some kinds of Beauty.

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It also seems to me Beauty is an end, not just a possibility or potential.

I agree with that.

Quote :

Buddhist contemplation of consciousness itself or the 'i', where you end up with consciousness without an object and have a nice blissful experience.   There are parallels in Hinduism and even the mystical fringes of the Abrahamic religions.

I'm not much of a Buddhist. I've never had any kind of consciousness that was not a consciousness of something. No pure being, or whatever else.[/quote]
It is an extreme claim.  However it plays out, I think, in the way religions often try to separate love, compassion, appreciation, recognition of beauty from the objects.  One aims to be grateful for, see God in, love, feel compassion towards, serve (and so on)
everything.  (a problematic goal in my values, but related, in context, to minimizing then eliminating any necessary qualities in the object from eliciting emotions and relating we associate with Beauty, and other capital letter goods)

Satyr wrote:

If beauty is an end...then it is a projection of the desired, missing, object/objective.

I thought we just agreed that things like this occur in relation---BETWIXT you and the world. It's not a one-man solipsistic show. You don't simply project this kind of shit outside of yourself. You see it, there.

Quote :

The pristine was shattered with a reality check.

I eat a sandwich and then take a shit. I don't get to say I never ate a sandwich. ---A parable.

Beauty is projected as an object/objective when it is imagined as an end....as perfect.
When it is experienced it is always imperfect, and so no beauty is ever satisfying.

I eat another animal which is, like me lacking.
I am never satiated...never completely fulfilled. Always momentarily fulfilled and then never totally.

The mind forages for order, it never finds it.

One seeks knowledge...the absolute being Omniscience.
One seeks power...the absolute being omnipotence.
One seeks beauty...the absolute being the perfect.  

One seeks, is attracted to, by what one lacks.
A God would have no reason for sensual awareness.
He would be all, in the absolute.

When one seeks, one needs.
When one acts, one lacks.

Real = phenomenon

Ideal = noumenon

The noumenon is always an abstraction.
When it has no reference in reality, it can be projected as anything, based on the past (experience, knowledge, nature).
When one imagines the beautiful it is can be imagined as perfect.
When one experiences the phenomenon which is beautiful, in degree (symmetry of mind/body, virile, full of possibility) it is always imperfect.

Therefore, one can discuss beauty in the abstract, as one discusses God, Goblins, Oneness, Here, Now, or any abstraction, and albel it as anything....complete, perfect, total, whole....etc.
When one experiences beauty it never corresponds to the Ideal completely.
The phenomenon is always lacking, the Ideal is always a theoretical abstraction corresponding to nothing experienced, senses.


Why do you not will ugliness?
Will to weakness...why not?

Satyr wrote:

When one seeks, one needs.

I did something today that I did not need to do. I went above and beyond. I put lettuce on my sandwich. I thought perhaps that would contribute positively to the total amount of pleasure in the world---starting with my own. Though had I not done this, no one would have had cause to point a finger of blame at the order of things.

If the concept of 'need' means anything at all, there there has to be some application for its antonym. That's how language works.

We have to preserve the sense in which I did not need to put lettuce on my sandwich... because, in fact, I did not.

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When one acts, one lacks.  

This is very Eastern. But again, I would levy the same criticism as above.

Satyr wrote:

Beauty is projected as an object/objective when it is imagined as an end....as perfect.
When it is experienced it is always imperfect, and so no beauty is ever satisfying.

I eat another animal which is, like me lacking.
I am never satiated...never completely fulfilled. Always momentarily fulfilled and then never totally.

The mind forages for order, it never finds it.

It seems like this post is a claim by a mind to have found a very clear order.

But again, it is not that one would be permanently satisfied by the experience of something one considers Beautiful, but that it is also an end for some, yes, limited period of time. It is not just a means.

Quote :

One seeks knowledge...the absolute being Omniscience.
One seeks power...the absolute being omnipotence.
One seeks beauty...the absolute being the perfect.  

One seeks, is attracted to, by what one lacks.
A God would have no reason for sensual awareness.
He would be all, in the absolute.

When one seeks, one needs.
When one acts, one lacks.

Real = phenomenon

Ideal = noumenon

The noumenon is always an abstraction.

But then the subject is not perfect. The imperfect subject can be fulfilled by the imperfect Beauty. Not so they lie down in a field having gazed at Athena and no longer desire anything ever again. Given our imperfection in the dynamic relation with something else that does not have a mathematically or objectively perfect Beauty we can still experience perfection. And then yes, Life moves in us and that state passes. But this only experiencing things as unsettled means does not match my experience.

Mo wrote:

Quote :

When one acts, one lacks.

This is very Eastern.

Nice Catch.

Kovacs wrote:

This makes me Think of various religious/contemplative practices where there is or could be argued to be a splitting off the valueing relationship from the object.   Buddhist contemplation of consciousness itself or the 'i', where you end up with consciousness without an object

No, to be accurate, you could say knowledge of consciousness itself becomes the object here.

Self-consciousness is this turning upon consciousness; to detach, cut away and look at yourself. Buddhist/Vedantic contemplation is an intensification of this process.

Quote :

and have a nice blissful experience.   There are parallels in Hinduism and even the mystical fringes of the Abrahamic religions.

What parallels do you speak of?

Need = the sensation of Flux, increasing entropy being the friction of resiting it - ordering in the disordering.

Need = the sensation of existing.

The opposite to that would be what, if you insist on the binary system?

God is a description of an absolute. the description is that of the absent, the....non-existent.
Two ways to escape Flux (interactivity)...to be a god, or to make one's self numb: to chemically inebriate the tool which processes the sensations as need/suffering...the brain.
Destroy a brain, while the body loves.
Is need gone?
Yes....is the attrition, that is translate by the brain as need/suffering gone.
No.
The brain-dead lacks the tool to interpret the its resistance to chaos.
It senses nothing...it is senseless.
Is it "free".
No....it is only senseless. Not free from the attrition, from time, from lack...only free from the consciousness of it.
It is unconscious.
A rock.....a piece of metal...a glass jar.

Eastern?
A reminder.
The Aryan peoples spread from the north southward.
Some tribes went to the east, others to the west.
3 of those tribes descended into the Hellenic peninsula.

According to some some cross-fertilization occurred later, in the Persian royal courts, when intellectuals form the west and east met in the then most Modern nation.

When the absent absolute is made into an end it is a projection that can never be attained completely.
The realistic projection is one where an imperfect form is settled upon, as probable.

The imperfect is, by definition, not absolutely beautiful.
It is not an end, but a means.
If it were an end the seeking would cease....satiation would be reached...God would be born.
I strive towards the beautiful to attain it, or to inspire myself, or to imitate it, or to escape in it, through it, my own imperfections.

Like all value judgments "beautiful" does not, and cannot, refer to an absolute, the complete, a perfection...an END.  
It is not an end, no more than it is a beginning.
It is a towards.
It is a process.
A process is a towards.

Beauty is always in juxtaposition....as is power, freedom, height, strength, speed, symmetry, superior/inferior, high/low...etc.
Ergo beauty is a relationship of observer to observed.
The observer covets, wishes to be assimilated by, to assimilate, to take courage from, to stand in awe so as to feel hope, gratitude, inspiration.
It feeds on beauty, or is fed to it...wishes to surrender to it, immerse itself within it.

Beauty, as a concept, is an ambiguity, if it becomes a projected absolute.
Beauty as a phenomenon, is symmetry, order, in degree, and in relation to the observer.
It is never perfect, ergo it is never an END.
It is always fleeting, falling away.
It is always imperfect, and so no END.
It is, itself, a manifestation of process that is either increasing in symmetry, order, beauty, or in decline tending toward chaos, randomness, ugliness.  

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Fluidity, Flux, is arrested by the mind....it is frozen, like a camera freezes the time as a snapshot: a simplification/generalization.

Reality is about variations in fluidity....or, to use a musical metaphor, notes in a symphony.
Each phenomenon is a symphony of notes...a human is so.
A human Becoming is not an end...it is a process...a dynamic manifestation....a symphony of notes.

Each note is a variant of a vibration...a rate of flow.
Beauty is all these notes in harmony, or as close as perfect harmony as possible, or in relation to an other.

The brain interprets perceives phenomena, into tones, colors, forms, densities.
The rate of fluidity determines how the mind interprets the phenomenon, which it senses via a medium (air, liquid, electromagnetism, light....etc).
The medium interacts with the phenomenon, is affected, and then interacts with the observer's sense organ.
The data is translated into biochemical pulses, and transmitted to the brain where they are processed and analyzed and translated further into form, color, tone, texture, etc.
In the process data is lost, or not processed....the phenomenon is simplified, generalized, and formed into a cohesive model.
What lacks a pattern cannot be processed...a pattern which is too subtle for the particular sens organ and/or brain, is not processed.
The brain is an interpreting tool.
It can only process patterns.

More sophisticated minds process more sophisticated, subtle patterns.
More sophisticated, sensitive, sense organs, can perceive more subtle, patterns.

Beauty is a pattern...a symmetry, harmony, a form of order.
This attracts the brain, as the brain is an ordering tool, foraging reality for patterns....serving an organism which is, itself, an ordering.
Therefore it seeks what reminds it of itself, or any form of order which is like it.
The brain evolved to do this because order requires energies, in other words ordering, other forms of ordering...in a sea of increasing chaos, decreasing ordering.....order become more rare.  

Again, order is not a thing...a static object/objective...it is a process. It is dynamic.
A pattern is dynamic, like a string emitting a note, a tone.
See String Theory.

It is obvious that an ordering, in a reality of increasing disorder, would seek manifestation of order, like itself.

Sorry....Can't do more than this.
I've written it about a dozen times, and if all I receive is "just because" and patronizing comments based on statements like "It occurs spontaneously" I lose interpret in going further...and I settle for the silver lining in this miserable world of cloud covers:
I play.

The psychological need to cleanse behaviors from motive, from interests, from selfishness, is more fascinating to me, as a person.
It's that same drive that abhors the idea, the possibility, no matter how rational it is, that God does not exist....that gender is not a human fabrication but the application of sexual genetic types within human paradigms, and that there is an act of self that is self-contradicting in its selflessness.
An act, activity, where the actor receives nothing from it.  

A purified, sanctified act...where acting is need, and need "need not apply".

Satyr wrote:

Need = the sensation of Flux, increasing entropy being the friction of resiting it - ordering in the disordering.

Need = the sensation of existing.

The opposite to that would be what, if you insist on the binary system?

There are any number of sensations that are part of existing, not just one. And even if you thought existence had just one sensation---that of 'need'---there are any number of different types of needs, and they bring different sensations. It is really not helpful to numb language down into a blunt hammer, that hits everything. It should be sharp, and made sharper, so that our representations of phenomena are carved and chiseled as finely and accurately as possible.

A need is something that is necessary. To say how or why it is necessary is just to specify the type of need that it is. The opposite of that would be something that is not necessary. That's a usage that would admit of relations, degrees, context, nuance, whatever else.

You said that, "when one seeks, one needs"...

I don't think so. What do you say about my ordinary example? ---I.e., Lettuce on my sandwich was a desire I had (something I sought)... but not a need.

Like I said....
Can't help you more than this.

I'm almost exhausted.

I've explained how different sense organs interpret the Flux in different ways.
The sensation of need is the sensation of lack, of the absence of an absolute....or the sensation of Time.
A finger brushing up against wool is the sensation of a phenomenon, existing in time, which is fluctuating, in relation to the brain translating the date, at a different rate.  

If you cannot piece together what sight, touch, sound, are in relation to the brain's sensation of flux as this attrition upon the entire body/mind Becoming, where the particular senses act as methods of understanding and helping the mind fulfill this need, then...one more time...I cannot help you further.

Let me give it one last try, before I call it a night...a good night:

Why need?
Because the ordering is constantly resiting attrition.
Flux does not end....time does not stop...chaos does not stop increasing.
The body resists, and this resistance it feels as need/suffering.

Comfort is when the body has accumulated enough aggregate energies that it can heal the effects of Flux upon it - somewhat - and, if there are leftovers (superfluous energies), it can direct towards growth or towards creativity...procreation is a form of creativity....and the artistic sense is linked to the libidinal drive.
Of course, in time, the organism cannot heal the attrition upon it....we call this aging.

Now the aggregate energies at its disposal are never enough.
It is in decline.

Here...let me bring it down to a level you and your girlfriend might understand:

"It just happens"

"Feeling is spontaneous"

The rest you'll have to look up in the Dictionary of your choice.

Satyr wrote:

Here...let me bring it down to a level you and your girlfriend might understand:

"It just happens"

Oh, well fuck... Why didn't you just say so...

Lyssa wrote:

No, to be accurate, you could say knowledge of consciousness itself becomes the object here.

Not my impression. Pretty specific about it being consciousness without an object. But then what do you mean by knowledge? Propositional, implicit, something else?

Quote :

Self-consciousness is this turning upon consciousness; to detach, cut away and look at yourself. Buddhist/Vedantic contemplation is an intensification of this process.

Buddhist meditation can be of an object also, and there are other foci of buddhist meditation that would not be the yourself. Though the distinction between self and other is being challenged, of course.

Quote :

and have a nice blissful experience.   There are parallels in Hinduism and even the mystical fringes of the Abrahamic religions.

What parallels do you speak of?[/quote]That there are states of consciousness without an object. That somehow consciousness itself can focus on itself or be itself. I have not experienced this (nor am I seeking to) but you can find this in Sufism, Hinduism and mytical Hassidism and Christianity. Given that language descriptions are problematic at that level, I have specifically asked practitioners of Hinduism and Buddhism whether a state of consciousness without an object is reached and got affirmative answers. I say this not to demonstrate they are correct but that it is a purported goal state in those traditions. Ken Wilber seems to think this is the case also, for whatever his opinion is worth. He does really seem to want to get them all to be the same and they end up seeming very like his version of Buddhism, which is his core practice.

Relevent to the topic, recent portion at least, it seems to me more intermediate states of religious practices are trying to split off the feelings and sense we have of objects from their qualities. Regardless the practitioners is being trained to see perfection, the Buddha, Brahma, Goodness, an objection of compassion, Beauty, in the object regardless. IOW it is an attempt to move humans away from what Mo is saying is what is actually happening when Beauty is experienced, a relation that is affected by qualities of the object - read: beauty is not merely subjective.

From my own perspective, I dislike this attempt to make all things/persons of equal value.

old man wrote:

Comfort is when the body has accumulated enough aggregate energies that it can heal the effects of Flux upon it - somewhat - and, if there are leftovers (superfluous energies), it can direct towards growth or towards creativity...

This is what I have been waiting for you to say.
The presence of stimulus to spend this energy is essential to one's well being. Without the stimulus, one suffers. However, if one is in possession of superfluous energy, motivation for spending it, and freedom to act in any direction instead of another, one does not suffer, regardless of whether he spends that energy or not.
At this state, action is free and spontaneous.

Notice that it is not "just because" since it relies on the presence of stimuli, so I would appreciate if you would quit yapping about that. I wasn't even I the room when that was said, and you did us all the disservice of removing all context by deleting the conversation, so I don't know why anyone would care to debate this, since we have to take your word for it, "just because".

Satyr wrote:

Here...let me bring it down to a level you and your girlfriend might understand:

"It just happens"

"Feeling is spontaneous"

The rest you'll have to look up in the Dictionary of your choice.

IN response to your longer posts...yeah, I got your position from your previous ones.
In response to this one and your not knowing how to help.   Don't presume the role, then there is no need to work yourself to exhaustion. Heck, you could just Think of it as disagreeing rather than adding on the helper role.  Given the propriety, here, of repetition, I will  say again that the artist does not ONLY react as you said.  It is not the first reaction, most of the time - unless all they can react with is competition issues or a kind of panic, and that calls into question their status as artist - and then your description is incomplete.   Your model says on means exists, so the Active, self in the World choosing future actions and rating itself is mentioned as the only reaction.  It is a reaction, sure, and generally comes, though later, after the first appreciation, experience of completeness if the Beauty is so striking, which then unsettles into reactions like the one you mentioned. Life is not just yang, Writing metaphorically.

fifi wrote:

man wrote:

Comfort is when the body has accumulated enough aggregate energies that it can heal the effects of Flux upon it - somewhat - and, if there are leftovers (superfluous energies), it can direct towards growth or towards creativity...

This is what I have been waiting for you to say.
The presence of stimulus to spend this energy is essential to one's well being. Without the stimulus, one suffers. However, if one is in possession of superfluous energy, motivation for spending it, and freedom to act in any direction instead of another, one does not suffer, regardless of whether he spends that energy or not.
At this state, action is free and spontaneous.

Notice that it is not "just because" since it relies on the presence of stimuli, so I would appreciate if you would quit yapping about that. I wasn't even I the room when that was said, and you did us all the disservice of removing all context by deleting the conversation,  so I don't know why anyone would care to debate this, since we have to take your word for it, "just because".

- - -

Mo wrote:

I did something today that I did not need to do. I went above and beyond. I put lettuce on my sandwich. I thought perhaps that would contribute positively to the total amount of pleasure in the world---starting with my own. Though had I not done this, no one would have had cause to point a finger of blame at the order of things.

If the concept of 'need' means anything at all, there there has to be some application for its antonym. That's how language works.
There are any number of sensations that are part of existing, not just one. And even if you thought existence had just one sensation---that of 'need'---there are any number of different types of needs, and they bring different sensations. It is really not helpful to numb language down into a blunt hammer, that hits everything. It should be sharp, and made sharper, so that our representations of phenomena are carved and chiseled as finely and accurately as possible.

A need is something that is necessary. To say how or why it is necessary is just to specify the type of need that it is. The opposite of that would be something that is not necessary. That's a usage that would admit of relations, degrees, context, nuance, whatever else.

You said that, "when one seeks, one needs"...

I don't think so. What do you say about my ordinary example? ---I.e., Lettuce on my sandwich was a desire I had (something I sought)... but not a need.

Ignoring fifi's condescending jabbering,  the topic;

Baurillard wrote:

"You need two superpowers to keep the universe under control: a single empire would crumble of itself. ...It will never again be a matter of a duel or open competitive struggle, but of couples of simultaneous opposition. In all domains duopoly is the final stage of monopoly. ...it is the fact that any unitary system, if it wishes to survive, must acquire a binary regulation. This changes nothing as far as monopoly is concerned. On the contrary, power is absolute only if it is capable of diffraction into various equivalents, if it knows how to take off so as to put more on. The "advanced democratic" systems are stabilized on the formula of bipartite alternation." [Simulations]

a random comment from the web;

Quote :

"...every option available to resisters has already been encoded, given a meaning and a response. This makes the system seem impossible to fight. Its framing of the available options turns it into a kind of habitus, or second nature, which most people don’t even see as a social construct. The code makes it difficult to resist, because any act of resistance is reinscribed, either as another yes/no choice, or as another social problem to be managed."

The "free choice" between democrats and republics really is no "choice" at all - Chomsky too has spoken on that.


I don't "need" to take that lettuce, but I do.

And I believe I'm acting freely.

But this is merely the limit of our consciousness enframed by "given" choices.

Given choices have restricted me.

The Lettuce is there.

The consciousness of something else present might press me to desire that as a need.
Hot coffee might be a need, but it is not there.

This is a restriction.

Our degree of consciousness exposes our degree of suffering.

A free-spirit is defined by how much resistance it can seek. How much of the world it experiences as a resistance, as a restriction to its scope of expansion.

Quote :

"My conception of freedom. — The value of a thing sometimes does not lie in that which one attains by it, but in what one pays for it — what it costs us." [N., TOI, 38]

A "freer" (degree: freer not free) consciousness asks, what is the "presence" of that lettuce, whether I take it or not, since I am not compelled, costing me? What has it restricted me from? The Lettuce, to such a freer-spirit is likely to appear as an imposing resistance.

The innate urge of life is always to expand; and so rooted in need and suffering, conservation is only an epiphenomenon of the WTP.

Also, like I've said before, what the consciousness is conscious of, is what the body "lets" make known. I only know as much as I "need" to know.
What emerges up to the surface is a consciousness only of excess energy available,,, but this does not mean, there isn't a war, "many needs" competing to be felt as "need" (singular) - as a dominating expression. Life is rooted in such a need. Effective self-organization is the expression of one need pressing itself and making itself known as THE need, no matter how many needs are present and competing, and how many sensations one feels.

That I have a surplus just informs me, that one need has triumphed and dominates at the cost of maintaining itself on other drives; this maintenance is not long lasting... suffering and war go on in the sub-conscious.

Nietzsche wrote:

"Nothing is more erroneous than to make of psychical and physical phenomena the two faces, the two revelations of one and the same substance. Consciousness in a subsidiary role, almost indifferent, superfluous, perhaps destined to vanish and give way to a perfect automatism-
From the phenomena of the inner sense we conclude the existence of invisible and other phenomena that we would apprehend if our means of observation were adequate and that one calls the nerve current.
We lack any sensitive organs for this inner world, so we sense a thousandfold complexity as a unity." [WTP, 523]

Nietzsche wrote:

"That which becomes conscious is involved in causal relations which are entirely withheld from us - the sequence of thoughts, feelings, ideas in consciousness does not signify that this sequence is a causal sequence; but apparently it is so, to the highest degree." [WTP, 524]

The weight of the very fact that it takes constant energy to just be breathing doesn't enter into the consciousness, doesn't impress up on the consciousness, while I think I'm "free" to need that lettuce or not.


The problem is not with language, but the frame.

To say I am free to want or not want that lettuce is a particular frame that describes my living. But it does not touch on the Nature of life as a whole, as a phenomenon, which is sacrificial or to use Satyr's phrase "always lacking".

Kovacs wrote:

Not my impression.  Pretty specific about it being consciousness without an object.  But then what do you mean by knowledge?  Propositional, implicit, something else?
Buddhist meditation can be of an object also, and there are other foci of buddhist meditation that would not be the yourself.  Though the distinction between self and other is being challenged, of course.  
That there are states of consciousness without an object.  That somehow consciousness itself can focus on itself or be itself.   I have not experienced this (nor am I seeking to) but you can find this in Sufism, Hinduism and mytical Hassidism and Christianity.   Given that language descriptions are problematic at that level, I have specifically asked practitioners of Hinduism and Buddhism whether a state of consciousness without an object is reached and got affirmative answers.  I say this not to demonstrate they are correct but that it is a purported goal state in those traditions.   Ken Wilber seems to think this is the case also, for whatever his opinion is worth.   He does really seem to want to get them all to be the same and they end up seeming very like his version of Buddhism, which is his core practice.

Relevent to the topic, recent portion at least, it seems to me more intermediate states of religious practices are trying to split off the feelings and sense we have of objects from their qualities.  Regardless the practitioners is being trained to see perfection, the Buddha, Brahma, Goodness, an objection of compassion, Beauty, in the object regardless.   IOW it is an attempt to move humans away from what Mo is saying is what is actually happening when Beauty is experienced, a relation that is affected by qualities of the object - read: beauty is not merely subjective.  

From my own perspective, I dislike this attempt to make all things/persons of equal value.

Have addressed your post in the Buddhism thread in the Lyceum.

[quote="Mo"]

Satyr wrote:

When one seeks, one needs.

Quote :

When one acts, one lacks.

This is very Eastern.

No. This sacrificial world-view is a very shared I.E. trope.

Quote :

"All who derive their pleasure from the stomach, overstepping the due season in eating or drinking or sexual pleasures, have pleasures that are brief and short-lived, that is, only while they are eating and drinking, but pains that are many. For this desire is always present for the same things, and when people get what they desire, the pleasure passes quickly and they have nothing good for themselves except a brief enjoyment; and then the need for the same returns again." [Democritus, fr.235]

Also, Anaximander, for example,

Nietzsche wrote:

"It may not be very logical, it is however at any rate very human and moreover quite in harmony with the philosophical leaping described above, now with Anaximander to consider all Becoming as a punishable emancipation from eternal "Being," as a wrong that is to be atoned for by destruction. Everything that has once come into existence also perishes, whether we think of human life or of water or of heat and cold; everywhere where definite qualities are to be noticed, we are allowed to prophesy the extinction of these qualities-according to the all-embracing proof of experience." [Philosophy in the Tragic Age; 4]

It is a very very old equally Western I.E. perspective that Becoming was a Punishment, a Suffering.

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The one surviving fragment of Anaximander's writing deals with this matter. Simplicius transmitted it as a quotation, which describes the balanced and mutual changes of the elements:

"Whence things have their origin,
Thence also their destruction happens,
According to necessity;
For they give to each other justice and recompense
For their injustice
In conformity with the ordinance of Time."

An alternate translation by Bertrand Russell is:

"Into that from which things take their rise they pass away once more, as is ordained; for they make reparation and satisfaction to one another for the injustice according to the appointed time."

Quote :

"It has recently been claimed that the Greeks did not characteristically describe happiness negatively and that therefore the type of formulation found in Epicurus' ataraxia must have come into Greece from Indian by way of Pyrrhon. But the view that negative ethical terminology was un-Greek seems far from obvious. Aristotle had referred to Greek thinkers for whom apatheia was the goal, and Democritus had used the terms athambia and quite possibly the term ataraxia also. Other terms for happiness prominent in Greek philosophy include akataplexia, inability to be amazed or frightened (Nausiphanes); apatheia, inability to be distressed (Spusippus, Diogenes); aphasia, nonspeech (Sextus); arrepsia, inability to be put off balance (Pyrrhon?, Sextus); and aponia, nonlabour (Epicurus)." [McEvilley, The Shape of Ancient Thought]

Lyssa,

I see that you extended my discussion of lettuce on a sandwich into the two party system in American politics, quoting Baudrillard and Nietzsche. I'm glad that the intellectual depth of my example was not lost on you. Quid pro quo.

Lyssa wrote:

Our degree of consciousness exposes our degree of suffering.

No, not really. The only time that consciousness, (in any degree), exposes suffering, is when it is a consciousness of suffering. There are other sensations than just that of suffering, in existence.  And consciousness of those things, just as with suffering, can come in degrees of greater or lesser.

But suppose someone wants to say, "all existence is suffering"---or something like that, (as in Buddhism’s first noble truth).

That's a misuse of language. Something that applies to everything, consequently applies to nothing meaningfully. That's because we understand concepts by distinguishing them from what they are not. That's how language works. The criticism is the same if someone were to say, "God is everywhere". ---I wouldn't know what he was referring to.

Not only is it a misuse of language, it's extremely deprecating to life. It suggests that life is a burden to be born, since it's really suffering at bottom. ---That's what dear Fritz calls the "spirit of gravity", I would think.

Not only is it deprecating to life, but it is false. Patently false. My pleasure is not just the absence of suffering---it is qualitatively different, in kind. --Not just quantitatively different. I can get to a place where I'm not suffering at all---but that doesn't make it tremendously pleasant... just numb.

Quote :

A free-spirit is defined by how much resistance it can seek. How much of the world it experiences as a resistance, as a restriction to its scope of expansion.

Got a quote?

Know Thyself
To want, to need, to desire to know why you did this, and not that.

To not settle for "just because"....to be courageous enough to delve deeper than "I'm whacky spontaneous, like that" as if your actions were so complex and random (chaotic) that you could not be understood, since not even you can comprehend your own choices and actions.

Why do I like chocolate?
Just because.
I spontaneously choose it every time.
I am THAT incomprehensibly deep.
Nobody can ever understand my behavior, because it is random, spur of the moment, not based on anything determined.
I call it my "freedom".

Know Thyself = to know, as much as possible, your past.
Past = nature.
Nature = sum of all nurturing.
Nurturing = sum of all experience, interactions environmental conditioning, and my reactions to them.

To say "Just because" or to try to pretend you are explaining it by stating "It's spontaneous" is saying: I don't care.....this is enough....I don't ant to dig deeper.
The "why?" ends here.
It is THE END...just because.
Not because but JUST because.

Why did I wear the mini-skirt today?
Just because.
I'm spontaneous.

Nothing I do is related to my nature, my past, my spirit, essence....character.
I am unfathomably.....so complicated that none of my behaviors can be understood or predicted.
so much so that I do not even know what I will do or say on any given moment. I am mysterious to myself.
I am THAT!!!! free-willed.

Why do I find this beautiful?
Just because.
It bubbles out of me....it's mysterious.
I JUST decide to.

How can anyone know me when I do not know myself?

I laugh at those who claim they do, or try to know me.
I am spontaneous...I act on no motive.

I am tabula rasa, through and through.

You fucks are easy.
Please, never leave and, for the love of the gods, never, ever change.
you make my life easier.


Why does Hannibal Lecter kill and eat his victims?

A plant has no nervous system, comparable to an organism.
it can feel no pain, no suffering.
There is no brain to interpret the flux as attrition upon it, as need/suffering.

Yet, there it is, digging, seeking, reaching, for what it needs to first maintain what it has constructed and second to advance, to grow, to reproduce...to (pro)create.

Does the brain sensing need/suffering erase need/suffering?
No.
The body is constantly breathing, healing, fighting off intruders, sucking energies through the blood stream, via the stomach....absorbing water to facilitate the processes and so on.

If I do not sense danger, is danger absent?
If I do not sense change is change not happening?

The brain...a tool.
A tool for foraging, for dealing with organic needs.
A tool.

It does not control reality.
It helps the organism deal with reality.

Scenario:
From Schopenhauer notebooks:
I feel a need to fuck, to ejaculate...I am lost in the need, like an animal...reproduction the consequences are nowhere near in what I am focused upon.
I am unconscious to the repercussions.

I, as male, ejaculate, feeling that rush of relief....of s sudden need, pressure, being alleviated - orgasm.
Nowhere are the consequences in my mind.
I've either dealt with them beforehand, or will deal with them after-the-fact.
For the moment (limited event- horizon) I am gratified.
One need has been satiate...but at that very moment it is being built up again, gradually.

Am I free of need?
No.
A different need now floods my consciousnesses.
I am bored, or thirsty, or hungry, or tired.

Am I ever free of need?
No.
My body/brain is never free of it...but my consciousness, is distracted, momentarily relieved, flooded with endorphins, with some other chemical joy...
I may not be aware of what all my automatic processes are doing to keep me alive, so as to direct my focus elsewhere, but there they are...otherwise I am, fuckin' DEAD!!!
I get sick.
A virus has penetrated by autoimmune system's defenses and is now threatening my organs.
I feel ill.
My temperature rises as part of the second defense tactic.
I feel discomfort, suffering.
My mind cannot ignore this threat.

Am I free of viruses, of diseases, of infections, of bacterium, on other occasions?
No.
Only a naive, imbecile, would think so.
I feel healthy, content...full of energy.
My autoimmune system suffices to deal with these threats.
My consciousness is not engaged....this tool need not intervene.
I feel strong....alive.

Kovacs wrote:

apaosha wrote:

I'm reminded of how the aristocracy selects it's marriage partners. They don't follow animal instincts, but instead take careful consideration of a candidates ancestry and personal history to determine whether they are suitable.

And Velasquez then got some interesting hemophiliacs to paint.  I am with you on this one.

Did he?
The case of hemophilia in royal families that I found started with Queen Victoria in the 19th century.
Actually, hemophilia is a good case study to see how aristocracies were very aware of selecting their partners, not only out of political considerations. That disease is difficult to eradicate (not only in royal families) because it's females who are the carriers and the symptoms (the apparent) of the disease are masked in their case. Yet they pass it on to their sons, who have a 50% chance of inheriting it and if they do, then it becomes the full blown disease.

So, how can one avoid to pass on that disease? By not only having eyes for the well rounded ass at hand but by looking back to the ancestors as well and observing their health. Now, if there is no honest family chronicles then the family members who are alive will have to do.

But I take it that the modern belief is that a genetic disease would dilute itself out of existence if people were randomly banging. - Which isn't the case - That disease would spread until it reaches 50% of carriers within the female population. But, luckily for us, until recently, people were on average not very mobile with their seed, they were geographically confined. And having a bleeder in the family traveled in form of gossip to the ears of possible suitors - which helped to contain those diseases.
So they had their way of genetic screening though not that sophisticated.

I want my cake and eat it too - the modern mind.
I want to live in harmony with nature and I want anti-biotics, indoor-plumbing, a low unnatural death-rate,...

For hemophilia in royal families today, the disease seems to have been stopped from spreading. The last known male case died in 1945.

And yet animals, through the female sex, select accordingly: shared genes, health, proximity, resources etc.

Promiscuity evolved to compensate for environmental conditions changing.
my spreading your investment you ensure that, no matter what, at least one will give you the desired return.
At the same time, one heavily invests in the present environment.

The Caucasian dominance can be explained in this way:
Of those tribes that were too weak to defend their territories in Africa and were pressured out, into hostile turf, some ventured north, into less hospitable environments.
Then the Ice age began to push the ice southwards.


Caught between an ice-rock and a hard place, mass extinction followed.
Of those few who her survived ingenuity must have been a factor.
Ingenuity produced by intelligence, and all the factors we include in this concept, or allude to when we use the word, even if most of us have no clue and use words without delving deeper.

This ingenuity was propagated by the male who managed to survive and dominate.
He passed on his genes and not his cousins, brothers, buddies.

This is a form of aristocracy.

In human social structures, because man intervenes and tries to make the process more efficient, natural selection is directed by man, socially, memetically...and we call this eugenics.
Monogamy, and what we call Paternalism, is a subtle cultural form of social engineering.

By restricting human promiscuity one pressures the individual to settle, to compromise, to socially select.
The filtering mechanism is the female sex.
The male seeds, spreads, markets himself, the female buys, selects.
If the market is controlled, then her options are reduced.
By manipulating her standards one can produce the required outcome.
By brainwashing, for example, the female population within a culture, by indoctrinating them, you produce a subtle form of eugenics. Now the female, seemingly by her own volition, selects in accordance to the standards ingrained, through social pressures education, cultural effects, the genes that are "superior" within the manmade environmental conditions.

If the standards are in contradiction to the natural ones, the ones that evolves the female/male sexes to begin with, and the human sexual type, then there is a psychological conflict.

Genetic versus memetic standards.
This might produce neurosis but it mostly results in compartmentalization, where the brain uses one standard sometimes and another at other times, and does not even try to justify the discrepancy....calling it "spontaneous" or "just because"...or blaming it on chemistry or falling ni and out of love, or some allusion to chemical, hormonal effects.

Because memes are extensions of genes, they evolve later, like self-consciousnesses evolves after consciousness emerges, there can be a conflict so severe that the memetic ideals, standards may contradict the natural drives completely....
I call these memes Nihilistic.

One of the mechanisms involved is the confusion between words, language, the noumenon and the phenomenon.
I've tried to thoroughly explore Nihilism, and its most current Western manifestation, calling it Modernity.

For those interested...some of the threads where I offer my perspective on this issue:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Mo wrote:

Lyssa wrote:

Our degree of consciousness exposes our degree of suffering.

No, not really. The only time that consciousness, (in any degree), exposes suffering, is when it is a consciousness of suffering. There are other sensations than just that of suffering, in existence.  And consciousness of those things, just as with suffering, can come in degrees of greater or lesser.

Does your body stop needing when you are asleep and your consciousness isn't awake?

Sleep on it, and think.

Quote :

But suppose someone wants to say, "all existence is suffering"---or something like that, (as in Buddhism’s first noble truth).

That's a misuse of language. Something that applies to everything, consequently applies to nothing meaningfully.
That's because we understand concepts by distinguishing them from what they are not. That's how language works.

And in suggesting that, aren't you drawing a non-sense yourself - "all language must work this way" - consequently applies to nothing meaningfully too, no?

The finest Philosophy is about positing something that applies to everything; that's why its called Sophia - Wisdom is because you have discovered or posited a concept that weathers time, able to hold ground, and something is able to hold ground when it manages to apply to everything.
Now I can present a concept that explains a, b, c, d,,,, but it cannot explain e and f,, unless certain conditions and clauses are introduced. Does this mean I throw away the concept itself, or do I refine my concept with conditional sub-categories?
That is called distinguishing.

Quote :

The criticism is the same if someone were to say, "God is everywhere". ---I wouldn't know what he was referring to.

Not only is it a misuse of language, it's extremely deprecating to life. It suggests that life is a burden to be born, since it's really suffering at bottom.

That's because you choose to read it with your emotional brain and not objectively.

What hits you first is the equation suffering = pain = depreciation.

You expose your own hedonism.

Objective inference will have you see all life is indeed rooted in suffering. N. only innovates this by saying, it is suffering because Every entity at bottom holds its self dear and wants to grow more, organize itself durably. There is a cost for this Every entity has to pay.

Quote :

---That's what dear Fritz calls the "spirit of gravity", I would think.

No. Then you misunderstand both Satyr and N.

The spirit of gravity refers to the nihilism and self-ressentiment in being unable to will in the face of meaninglessness. Ressentiment pulls it down, unable to rise.

Satyr and N. both say willing in the face of meaninglessness, to create a meaning, a goal for yourself involves suffering. Depending on the power/energy at one's disposal, one chooses a path or least or maximum resistance. The greater resistance you choose, greater the suffering.
The more aware you are of the meaninglessness, the more suffering your creativity entails.
Its why Satyr and N. say, consciousness is a piece of irony - intelligence that evolves to dominate the world around you can weigh on you to the point of paralysis or suicide or not procreating in making you aware of the terrible absurdity and meaninglessness that the universe is.

Quote :

Not only is it deprecating to life, but it is false. Patently false.

There is a pessimism from strength and a pessimism from a lack, is there not?

Do you want a quote?

Is Satyr's usage of lang. to be blamed when the mind inferring it is unable and lacks all capacity for nuance?
Do I pose my limitations to claim its lang. that is limiting?

Amusing.

Quote :

My pleasure is not just the absence of suffering---it is qualitatively different, in kind.

In the Apollonian perspective, pleasure is satiation, the absence of suffering from the satisfaction of the will's desire.
It says, "I suffer, therefore I seek to grow."
In the Dionysian perspective, pleasure is the dissatisfaction of the will, as the sight of obstruction and resistance is a chance for overcoming and stimulus for self-growth.
It says, "I seek to grow, therefore I suffer."

You cannot separate the two, they go hand in hand.

Without self-conservation first, you can't free yourself to expand.
Without expanding, there would be no self to conserve, it would stagnate.

Quote :

--Not just quantitatively different. I can get to a place where I'm not suffering at all---but that doesn't make it tremendously pleasant... just numb.

Like I've been saying, what enters the consciousness is different from the war going down below at the minutest subliminal levels and we intuit this attrition.

Quote :

A free-spirit is defined by how much resistance it can seek. How much of the world it experiences as a resistance, as a restriction to its scope of expansion.

Got a quote?[/quote]

TOI, 38; AC, 57.

The idea that if you do not sense it it isn't there, is amusing.

When the sun rises over the horizon darkness disappears. No more darkness, no more cold....a blazing brilliance dominates our senses and we believe that the universe is of light, heat....life.
Have we forgotten the night?

Did the dark go away, or was it pushed back by the light?
Are we free from it?

To say Philosophy is only as good as a commonly agreed sematic network is to put morality before reality.

Philosophy is and should not be a Democritization of language.

To first agree a will mean b, and c will mean d, and then philosophize is a piece of moralism.
Philosophy is about stating a will mean b and c will mean d; It is the science of determining values.

Lyssa wrote:

To say Philosophy is only as good as a commonly agreed sematic network is to put morality before reality.

Philosophy is and should not be a Democritization of language.

To first agree a will mean b, and c will mean d, and then philosophize is a piece of moralism.
Philosophy is about stating a will mean b and c will mean d; It is the science of determining values.

It's the arrogance underlying the Judeo-Christian psychology. Arrogance as a reaction to a deeper sense of vulnerability, insecurity.

The "positive" must be raised to be the equal to what is "negative".
"Thou shalt...", begins here...and "it must" becomes "just because."

Lyssa wrote:

Quote :

No, not really. The only time that consciousness, (in any degree), exposes suffering, is when it is a consciousness of suffering. There are other sensations than just that of suffering, in existence.  And consciousness of those things, just as with suffering, can come in degrees of greater or lesser.

Does your body stop needing when you are asleep and your consciousness isn't awake?

Sleep on it, and think.

What does that have to do with what I said? Why don't you read what I said, and actually respond to it.

Do you think that every sensation is just a different quantification of suffering? Are you that numb?

I did not say that suffering doesn't exist, I said that existence is not just suffering.

Quote :

And in suggesting that, aren't you drawing a non-sense yourself - "all language must work this way" - consequently applies to nothing meaningfully too, no?

Obviously not. I can say, "Everything in this basket is an orange".... that's not open to the same objection as "God is everywhere", or "Everything is suffering", is it? In one case, my language is restricted to a domain, in the other, it isn't.

Quote :

The finest Philosophy is about positing something that applies to everything;

No, that's absolutist thinking.

Quote :

you have discovered or posited a concept that weathers time, able to hold ground, and something is able to hold ground when it manages to apply to everything.

"Weather's time"? If you want timelessness and unchangingness----then join a religion. Your requirement is a religious one.

Quote :

The spirit of gravity refers to the nihilism and self-ressentiment in being unable to will in the face of meaninglessness. Ressentiment pulls it down, unable to rise.

The spirit of gravity refers to someone who thinks life is a burden to be born, and preaches that... which is what reducing every conscious awareness down to a degree of "suffering" implies. It does not just refer to someone who is unable to will----it refers to someone who wills heavy things.