Free-Will

apaosha wrote:

What if the past is not an imposition, a tyrant, a hostile outside force attempting to compel you - but is instead the fundamental root of your becoming, the forces that make you possible, without which you wouldn't exist?

Yes, this is where choice intervenes to return the body to its ideals.

apaosha wrote:

As such, one wills in fulfillment of one's past, one's self. The past is not something to be escaped or denied or challenged, no more so than the self is to be escaped, denied or challenged.

the body's 'programming is its DNA - genetic memories.
This, the mind must become aware of, as if it were belonging o an alien creature and not itself.
This is the Know Thyself commanding: to uncover one's own memories.
Remember that in Greek 'truth' is 'alethiea' - un-forgetting.
The mind must recall what the body can never forget, and through this it can choose what to accentuate and what to control. .

Degenerate lore has this as part of its nurture over nature - its subjective and no objective mythology. it, essentially, proposes social reprogramming - social engineering...memetic usurping genetic programming.
But most are so duplicitous, so naive, so cowardly, that they intentionally overestimate nurturing, and dismiss nature....believing that centuries, hundreds of thousands of years of trial & error genetic programming can be erased by a generation or two of social reprogramming., and, of course, it is they that want to 'chang the world' or are driven by idealisms. Idealisms often contrary to nature.

apaosha wrote:

What is your Will without the past that gives it shape and direction? How can you will anything without the past which you are a manifestation of? How can there be a "you" without the past to define it?

Will, properly defined and understood, is nothing more than a focus of organic energies upon an objective and/or object.
If we think of existence in Heidegger's terms as a 'throwness', then we can use 'momentum' as our concept.
Existence is dynamic = energy. What does this mean? It means momentum. This is the essence of Dasein = being there, being present (presence).
It is inactive because all that exists is in movement, has energy.
The Big Bang was the metaphorical way we conceptualize the source of our current momentum.
This makes the 'will' the organism trying to direct this momentum/movement in space/time.

apaosha wrote:

What is there that is disconnected from past that could be said to be spontaneous, ex nihilo, free?

There is no ex nihilo, no absolute freedom.
What freedom the will has is in relation to its own genetic programming and its own, ongoing, interactivity - expressed as choice.

apaosha wrote:

Why is there even a dichotomy here? What is there about consciousness that's distinct from a causative process such that it could be undetermined by past?

The past, manifested as body, is guided by genetic programming - automated reactions and impulses. The Will is directed by these genetic impulses.
The mind gradually becomes aware of this and believes it to be the product of an external will.
The brain evolves to add to the organism immediate reactivity, not guided entirely by genetic programming but by the immediate circumstances.
The mind can contradict or repress genetic impulses, giving the organisms the advantage of efficiency.
The mind is more flexible, reactive to the immediate. Its weakness is that its reactions are burdened by a time/space lag - the amount of space/time transverse during the time of processing: of becoming aware.
This temporal lag gives it the impression that its choices - automated choices made by the body - are not its own, or are inevitable.
It is possible for the mind with great effort and over a long time to reprogramme its automated reactions.
What would require centuries of trial and error can take generations of great will-power and focus.

apaosha wrote:

The soul?

Soul means, in my mind, the sum of all past, manifested as presence. It is the DNA strand.
This is what automatically chooses, impulsively, without necessitating the mind's conscious participation.
The body interact and continuously chooses, while the mind becomes aware of these choices after-the-fact.

Lower life-forms require no mind. A plant reacts to sunlight. The sun's stimulation triggering automated reactions that cascade across its from in sequence.
We share this genetic past...as the organic body also has similar reactions that do not require mental participation.
The heart beat, breathing, goose pimples, are all automatic - running no genetic programmes.

apaosha wrote:

You've said that randomness produces "free" will, but even if we are to agree that such spontaneous events occur, anything that could be described as free will would only be a response to these events, after the fact. The will would be responding to events around it, caused or determined by events around it, it would not itself be spontaneous, uncaused, free. So even with that it's not salvageable and you need to go with some kind of compatibilism.

Randomness implies an unforeseen event.
If all were determined and worked according to some predetermined order, then no consciousness would be necessary.
The unpredictability of the random effect makes every event unlike all others - slightly changes it.
Predetermined automated reactions would be sufficient but gradually inefficient.
The mind is the organ burden with the task of making slight modifications to reactions so as to adjust the body's impulses to any unforeseeable event.

Granted, its power is limited, but this is where natural selection enters the picture. Th degree to which the organism can gain a slight advantage over other organisms is the degree to which it increases its survivability, and its potential to pass on its genes.

There is no such thing as uncaused, as cause refers to the past.
Freedom, to whatever degree it is possible, is accessible in the dynamic fluid, fluctuating interactivity of present.
The immutable past is liquefied, heated to dynamic interactivity in the present. It is in the present where past is added to.
DNA, the body, is a manifestation of this past, but it is also dynamic - continuously adding to the memories DNA represent - DNA is continuously being added to.
Parts are made inert, other selected out, new codes added.
It's a dynamic process.
Genes are themselves the product of dynamic interactivity. They are not divine codes written no Tablets.
They are amendable, because environments are not static but fluctuating.

The individual is the writer who adds to the genetic chain his own lettering. a few strands, and if these are successful they are passed no to the next generation to be added to, or erased or whatever the case may be.

Why would consciousness even evolve when all was predetermined and all that could be 'gained' was an awareness of what the organisms had no power to change, or to intervene upon.
even the idea of an advantage looses meaning if all is already determined.
What 'advantage' if all is already decided?

Consciousness becomes a masochistic display.
It evolved - if we accept the degenerates position - to add to suffering, not to mitigate and decrease it.
Add to it the component of impotence.
Not only does the organisms suffer but now this suffering is multiplied by becoming aware of its own impotence to do anything about it.

This is the reverse of Hedonism that posits 'pleasure' as an end in itself.
Here we have pain as the end in itself.

It also implies a telos, a intent.
If all is determined then life emerging in the cosmos was not only inevitable but part of what has been determined. All part of a plan.

This is Abrahamic nihilism using different words.
The one-God becomes Order, or Absolute.
Determinism is code for the one-god's will.
Consciousness is a stand-in for sinfulness...that must pay in suffering. So, in this context conciousness emerges to create hell on earth, to make the individual suffer all the more, because not only is he a slave to god's will, to what is determined, but now he must be made aware of his decrepitude, adding mental suffering to physical suffering.
God wants man to know how decrepitude how sinful how impotent and helpless he is.

What remains for man?
His submission....his tolerance....stoically accepting his fate, enduring it....saying yes is an acceptance of god's will - faith.
Biblical narratives updated for post-modern minds.

There are two components to free-will....'free'....and 'will'.
Free implies a degree - not an absolute - of independence from the determined past.
Will implies a focus of the organism's aggregate energies, partly the consequence of inheritance (potentials) and of experiences, its own interactivity, its own life history, circumstances: nature/nurture.
The aggregate energies accessible to the Will, and the will's ability to focus them - control them - is directly linked to the degree of 'freedom' the organism can attain.

It is obvious that life is contingent.
Chance is a manifestation of randomness - energies that have no predictable pattern, contribution to circumstances the element of slight modification, because the organism can only perceive and process order, so it an only experience random energies indirectly, through ordered energies, or energies with a pattern.  

I've tried to explain, best I can, what my own thoughts are on what patterned (order), and non-patterned (chaos) are, how they interact, what interaction means (attraction/repulsion), why we cannot perceive randomness directly, how the effect of randomness or order manifests, and why, in relation to this, consciousness evolved out of necessity - Ananke (need) - primordial Hellenic Deity.
So, when we speak of causality we refer to the past - also named nature, also called god.
But causality only deals with order. Man can never know the effects randomness had on the present, not only because the past cannot be entirely known, but because it can never be known - it is, due to randomness, unknowable, in the absolute sense.
In Abrahamism this is represented by the 'Devil'.
The ancient Greeks used godly whimsy - fate.  

Essentially past is immutable. We cannot change it, because its consequences are what we call our present/presence.
The present is the dynamic aspect of existence. Where past is set, immutable, and yet unknown and unkbnowable, the present is dynamic, ongoing, fluid, fluctuating.
The present is the future's cause...and we participate in its making: sometimes in accordance to its programming (primal primitive nature), sometimes in contradiction to it (nihilism) and sometimes by slightly modifying, directing, diverting the programming rewriting a additional addendum to it.
These slight modifications are a by-product of mutations that are produced by the impact of random factors on ordered processes, or they are the product of will-power and the organisms self-controlling, self-repressing, self-regulating, over large periods of time, making second nature overwrite natural impulses.
An example would be martial arts, where the individuals spends years of stringent training to make certain automated reactions less likely, or to substitute genetically automated reactions to stimuli with the individual's desires reactions.
The training makes it possible for the body to react before the mind even becomes aware of its reactions.

So the present, our presence, IS the causality of the future. We, with our choices, interactions, are forming/shaping a past for our future selves - self being a continuum.
The continuum means the past cannot be altered, but only acknowledged and known, as much as possible, but in the present the chain link has not been closed.
The present is liquid, not rigid and static. It is hot - energy.
The past is cold, indifferent, unconscious - cold steel.
We are smelting the chain links, in the present, of what will become part of the continuum of self.

Will is the one who shapes the chain link - the environment is the heat, the fire.
The ancients (Heraclitus) used Fire to represent existence.
The moment is fleeting...we must work quickly because as time passes the metal is cooling, becoming rigid, unbending - immutable.
Our problem is the speed of our perceiving. There's a lag time, due to the time required to perceive, process and react...and time, as we noted, is a cooling factor.
Free-will acts in this small window of space/time...equal to the rate of cosmic expansion.
Modern lore believes this rate is constant, I, on the other hand, deny all absolutes...so I believe this rate is fluctuating, never constant: accelerating decelerating to degrees the human cannot perceive.
Life being the product of some level of consistency, regularity, order. So it can only perceive order, within its range of perceiving...even if it invents technologies to increase this range.
But this is a minor issue because even if in this universe expansion is consistent, this does not mean in all other possible universe the same holds true.
The Hindu idea of cycles implies that the cosmos is a continuous cycle of universal creation and destruction...ion some life emerges in others it does not.
If some consistency is present in this cycle, making life possible, this does not mean that consistency is a cosmic rule that characterizes all cosmic cycles.

Satyr wrote:

Why would consciousness even evolve when all was predetermined and all that could be 'gained' was an awareness of what the organisms had no power to change, or to intervene upon.

Do you not usually say that nature doesn't owe us anything and it is indifferent? I agree with that. But it seems to be in conflict with the quoted.

Satyr wrote:

even the idea of an advantage looses meaning if all is already determined.
What 'advantage' if all is already decided?

The advantage that was decided, I suppose. Though "decision" implies an agent, and determinism doesn't necessarily include a deity.

Satyr wrote:

What remains for man?
His submission....his tolerance....stoically accepting his fate, enduring it....saying yes is an acceptance of god's will

Why such a pessimistic outlook, as if life is only about enduring suffering and nothing good ever happens? If one accepts determinism, the good things in life are just as determined as the bad things. Victories are just as determined as defeats.

AutSider wrote:

Satyr wrote:

Why would consciousness even evolve when all was predetermined and all that could be 'gained' was an awareness of what the organisms had no power to change, or to intervene upon.

Do you not usually say that nature doesn't owe us anything and it is indifferent? I agree with that. But it seems to be in conflict with the quoted.

Why do you assume that conciousness is a product of being owed something?
Determinism means that conciousness is superfluous...it can do nothing but be aware of its 'predicament', suffer it doubly.

AutSider wrote:

The advantage that was decided, I suppose. Though "decision" implies an agent, and determinism doesn't necessarily include a deity.

So, according to this absolutism world-view not god but absolute order has determined everything...making advantage a joke, a game....no advantage if all is determined to pay out as it has determined them to lay out.
All are equalized in this predicament.
It's another way of proposing universal equality - not as sinful beings that will be saved by a one-god, but as impotent observers that can be saved by nothing.  

AutSider wrote:

Why such a pessimistic outlook, as if life is only about enduring suffering and nothing good ever happens? If one accepts determinism, the good things in life are just as determined as the bad things. Victories are just as determined as defeats.

Yeah, but the 'good' is nothing we can bring about...we can only pray and hope that it happens, that it has been determined to happen.

This is the opposite side of the same coin...on one side hedonism says 'pleasure is an end in itself,'  determinism posits 'suffering as an end in itself'.
What other function would consciousness have, if it is impotent and can only observe existence happening to it, other than to increase its suffering?
Animals, being only conscious, can only suffer....man, by being conscious of their own consciousness, must suffer the animals suffering but also the awareness of being impotent to do anything about it....according to determinism.
Mental suffering is added to physical suffering.
So, the implications is that, since consciousness can do nothing about anything, it evolved only to increase suffering.

Satyr wrote:

Determinism means that conciousness is superfluous...it can do nothing but be aware of its 'predicament', suffer it doubly.

I don't assume universe owes anybody anything, and determinism means that the consciousness can do what it was determined to do, but can't do what it was not determined to do.

The genetic potential and the environment determine to what extent life will be good/bad.

For those with highest genetic potentials and the best environment life is all good.
For those with lowest genetic potentials and worst environments, life is all bad.
And everything inbetween.

Satyr wrote:

So, according to this absolutism world-view not god but absolute order has determined everything...making advantage a joke, a game....no advantage if all is determined to pay out as it has determined them to lay out.
All are equalized in this predicament.

It is all kind of a joke and a game and death does equalize us all in the end.

Satyr wrote:

Yeah, but the 'good' is nothing we can bring about...we can only pray and hope that it happens, that it has been determined to happen.

Sure we can bring it about, we do what we can and if we are determined to we will get the good, and if we are not, we will not.

Praying is a sure way to get nothing though.

Satyr wrote:

This is the opposite side of the same coin...on one side hedonism says 'pleasure is an end in itself,'  determinism posits 'suffering as an end in itself'.
What other function would consciousness have, if it is impotent and can only observe existence happening to it, other than to increase its suffering?

Hedonism is a life philosophy on what one should do (pursue pleasure). Determinism is descriptive and doesn't posit any objective. They're not related to one another.

One determinist may think his life is determined to be about fun and pleasure and be cheerful all the time, another determinist may think life is about pain and suffering and be miserable all the time.

Quote :

One determinist may think his life is determined to be about fun and pleasure and be cheerful all the time, another determinist may think life is about pain and suffering and be miserable all the time

It does not matter what the individual thinks or how he fools himself, or what he hopes....according to determinism he is impotent, unable to affect anything...only forced to observe it happening.
Even attitude, according to this absolutism, is not up to you to determine. You cannot change your own attitude or way of coping....since it's already been determined.

If you do not see how this absurdity is related to Abrahamism....then I can say no more.
It's been determined, one way or another...according to you. So let's hope the determinations are kind.

Just as the dilemma proposed by Christians is a duplicitous one, so too is the one proposed by Determinism, in the absolute sense.

What do the Christians say - to justify their degradation of equal sinfulness - that man has been given free-will.
So, from the start free-will is determined for them, by an external will...it I a gift they must justify.
How?
By making the correct choice.
There is no real choice...the duality offers two, but one is the only rational one.  
You either abide by god's will - sacrificing, surrendering your will, after it has been 'given' - or you suffer the consequences: eternal pain and suffering.
In fact the Christians represent reality as this state of pain and suffering, which surrender liberates you from.

That's like giving someone a car, and then demanding he only use it to drive you around, and if he fails to abide by this rule you will destroy the car with him in it.
Is this a real gift?
It is a non-gift gift. It is a taunt. A test.
Moderns do the same but change the wording.
All is determined and you must either cheer it on, or suffer the consequences....which have also been determined.
Your wilful participation is not required, since it has already been guaranteed.
You cannot choose to not abide by universal rule, because this has also been determined.
It's a mental game...a way of validating slavery, by making the slave a happy participant - enjoying, worshipping his own enslavement....which is also not up to him.  
What hope for 'freedom does a mind have when it has been enslaved by words; when it is trapped in its won conceptions and abstractions; when the very idea of freedom is also a trap?

Imagine a trap - a mental jail - where the idea of 'escape', liberty, is part of the trap.
This is the entrapment of abstractions - absolutes.
If the idea, the concept, of freedom is defined as absolute, then you are trapped in the same cognitive cell. This is a product of inferior genetics.
Trapped in your won stupidity. Unable to conceptualize outside absolutes, or evade the confusion of mistaking abstractions and representations for the actual.
This risk was known to Plato...and this is why we did not like art. The simple minds would be manipulated and controlled through its representations...as they have.

If the very idea of escape fills you with an anxiety you cannot overcome, then you become a willing prisoners in your own jail.
You do not really want to escape....but only use the idea to comfort yourself, and to incarcerate all others, so that nobody escapes.
then its not stupidity but cowardice you are trapped by.
The idea of being responsible - to whatever infinitesimal small degree - for your own fate, is distressing to some. They need someone or something to blame, because the alternative would be so devastating: how does one accept his own culpability in a lifetime of failures?
Imagine what this says about him...that he was born of poor genetic stock, and that his failures are partially the product of his essence...his very ESSENCE.
Do you understand what this means?
This is degradation on a cosmic level.
How can a mind endure it?

The escape is given in and through absolute determinism. not only he but ALL are on the same boat - parity is found. All are sinners converts to all are determined.
Not god, but absolute Order, is the determining totalitarian authoritarian entity.
All are victims!!
Then we separate victims to those who rejoice and those who lament - the nay, and yay sayers.
But, this too is determined.
So nothing is left but the experience....consciousness is made a passive audience.

Prayer has the meaning it does in Christian dogma: begging, hoping for the irrational, pleasing, grovelling to the irrational - hopelessly hoping.
Is this not slavery?

Satyr wrote:

according to determinism he is impotent, unable to affect anything...only forced to observe it happening.
Even attitude, according to this absolutism, is not up to you to determine. You cannot change your own attitude or way of coping....since it's already been determined.

Impotence (unable to affect anything) is an impossibility, it would mean being exempt from the causal chain of reality.

Determinism is merely a recognition that we not only act and affect, but are acted upon and affected as well. That we are a part of the causality inherent in reality. Why would one hate reality so much as to wish to be apart from it, and to be able to change their attitude on a whim, instead of on objectively verifiable factors?

To be able to change one's attitude easily regardless of reality would constitute a mental illness, it's insanity.

Why can freedom not be viewed as the freedom to manifest one's natural inclinations, and must instead be the freedom to go against them?

I'm not saying that at all.
I'm saying that whatever small degree of freedom we have is in the present.
The past is immutable, and the future is not yet determined.
In the present, there are the added limitations of other life forms willing, acting, and non-living patterns and non-patterns interacting.
Within all this it is chaos that offers a slight gap to justify willing.

It is in that small gap that the will can choose in slight variance form its programming - not in antithesis - that would be nihilism.
As I stated about nihilism it is entirely theoretical, idealistic, because nobody can completely contradict his impulses.
It's advocates are seduced and manipulated by the opposite absolute - absolute free-will - where all is a mental choice a social construct...man as god.

I'm saying the 'truth' is in between.
Man is nether absolutely un-free- a slave, an automaton - nor absolutely free- a god.

Why would anyone contradict his nature? To whatever degree he can...
To survive.
Randomness means the mind must be proactive, and not automated. It has to adjust its programming to the unforeseeable.

Another reason is implied by the word 'cultivation', culture....it is the desire to direct your impulses along an ideal, not animal instincts.
Only man can contradict his natural survival impulses for the sake of an external other, or an abstract idea.

A third reason is to attain objectivity.
Since subjectivity is trapped in genetic programming to increase objectivity is to detach your thinking from survival interests,e go, or animal impulses...to become as indifferent as the cosmos you are attempting to understand.

All three are not ends in themselves, but means to an end.

Nietzsche, Friedrich wrote:

But over the widest surface area of Hellenistic existence raged the consuming wind of that spirit which announces itself in the form of ‘Greek serenity,’ to which I referred earlier as an impotent and unproductive delight in life. This serenity is a counterpart to the marvelous ‘naïveté’ of the old Greeks, which we must see—in accordance with its given characteristics—as the flowering of Apollonian culture, blossoming out of a dark abyss, as the victory over suffering, the wisdom of suffering, which the Hellenic will gains through its ability to mirror beauty.
The noblest form of that other form of ‘Greek serenity,’ the Alexandrian, is the cheerfulness of the theoretical man.
It manifests the same characteristic features I already derived out of the idea of the un-Dionysian: it fights against Dionysian wisdom and art; it strives to dissolve myth; it places an earthy consonance in place of a metaphysical consolation, indeed a particular deus ex machina, namely, the god of machines and crucibles, that is, the force of nature, recognized and used in the service of a higher egoism; it believes in correcting the world through knowledge, a life led by scientific knowledge, and thus is really in a position to confine the individual man in the narrowest circle of problems which can be solved, inside which he can cheerfully say to life: ‘I want you. You are worth knowing’.

[BOT, 17]

The Apollonian is the psyche addicted to order - masculine madness with no feminine sense to discipline it.
The belief that all is ordered, and therefore determined, implies that all is knowable, that man can approach the mind of the one-god.
Not, necessarily, that man can become God, because this presupposes chaos to be ordered and manipulated in accordance to a Will, but a Will that already exists and directs and controls, and determined....an absolute authority, a totalitarian external, pre-existing conciousness , all subsequent life must learn to submit to, accepting its fate: joyfully say 'yes!!' to whatever this Will has determined for it.
The joy of a slave - the last attainable pride of the miser.

I suspect Nietzsche, a son of a pastor, must have felt the seductive pull of surrender.To what degree he gave into it I'll let each one decide for himself.

Alexandrian, he called the pinnacle of the Last Man - the most modern man.
A man who has replaced faith in a one-God, with faith in his own ability to 'correct' existence, to save himself.
It denies Chaos, only retaining to acknowledge it in the form of 'complexity - a sly, infantile way, of preserving the 'father,' he cannot lose hope in.
Order is not rejected- his faith is tested and he passes - but it is mystified....presumed as underlying all that confuses and threatens him....hope is maintained, allowing every charlatan, from then on, to exploit it.
Alexandrian Man is a man who has faith in science - in his own mind's ability to discover the very secret of life - to find the absolute, to reach the pinnacle, the end...until that moment, like a child, he sleeps with the knowledge that whatever may befall him it is all due to a reason; a reason he will one day know, and can plead its case to, cry, and it will listen.

Language is how the disease spreads - semiotics - and the weakness it exploits is the mnid's need for absolutes - the fissures left open by the minds vague, metaphorical, abstract wholes.
Through those soft-spots it enters and spreads, infecting the psyche.
In time it fabricated concepts (abstract ideas & ideals) it cannot justify, but presumes exist 'out there' or 'under'.....hiding.
It allows its childish imagination to go wild, in anticipation.

No Messiah will be coming, but he is already here.

YIN/YANG = the interaction of opposites.
Complexity is not the opposite of order. It is a qualification, a description, a relationship with it.
Complex life is not death.
Complex shapes are not shapelessness.
White is not Black.

Complexity presumes order, like Abrahamics presume God, though they cannot prove not validate the concept empirically. They can only do so semantically.

The opposite of cold is heat...a variant of energy exchange in relation to an organism.
The opposite of white is not grey...it is black.  
The opposite of order is chaos...a  variant of energy in ration to an organism.
The opposite of pattern is random...a variant of movement/momentum, in relation to an observing organism.  

The standard is common = organism. But organism is prejudiced...it is, itself, order, patterns of behaviour, an aggregate of energies within a certain range.
The opposite of 1 (one), is not a fraction of it....but 0 (nil), its negation - one contradicts nil, as nil contradicts one.
Fractions (complex or simple) are variants of One.

Masculine and feminine are psychological variants of reproductive, codependent types...each type shapes an attitude toward existence.
The masculine is associated with ORDER - Apollo, light etc.
The feminine is associated with Order, as well - Dionysian....shadows etc.
Both need order. Both approach order from different psychological directions. Males are not the opposite to females...but variants of the same.

Yet, female is closest to nature....and nature is about the interplay of order & chaos...not order and complexity.
This is why the feminine is representative of nature. She need not know or understand how or why, because the feminine surrenders easily, willingly to a higher power.
So, she give into chaos, without needing to understand it.
Chaos is powerful, just as order is. It's power is inconspicuous.
Through the feminine chaos finds its purest expression.
This is why the feminine is flighty, easily seduced and taken away, swept away.

Nietzsche spirit has a lot of feminine in it....just as all good philosophers.

Hyper-Masculinity is prone to the other extreme.
Sometimes it compensates for a weakness, an insecurity, an uncertainty concerning its masculinity.
It tends to declare itself god, or as the highest representative of the godly, the divine - commentating for its feebleness with statements hyperbolic of self-esteem.
The masculine cannot accept anything over it. The feminine wants to find something worthy to give itself to.      

When the one-God, loses its appeal, the idea it represents does not vanish, in the psyche of those it had seduced.
It is repackaged, refurbished and returned....using new words.
Words that eliminate the emasculation of anthropomorphising.  
A hyper-masculine male will easily surrender to a faceless, abstraction...even though it is described in the same ways as the anthropomorphic god metaphor he could not kneel to.
He surrenders, submits to a faceless idea, than to the face that speaks of it.

************
Existence is not black/white...it is shades of grey.
No absolute determinism, but neither absolute freedom.
A synthesis.
Not absolute order, neither absolute chaos.
Something in between.

No absolutes.

Determinism is fatalistic.
Whatever occurs is considered to have been inevitable- after the fact.
The belief that 'it could not have been any other way' is a form of trying to escape culpability and what this implies about the individual.

Christians used absolute free-will as a way to justify guilt, and sinfulness...a way to punish.
Moderns use absolute determinism as a way to escape all guilt, and all responsibility...a way to remain innocent.

In the first case the definition of 'freedom' was a ruse, a lie. Even as they defined 'free choice' it was not a choice at all.
In the second case it is a psychological reaction to centuries of being made to feel sinful, and dirty; guilty of something nobody could ever escape.
The first made the second inevitable.
From one absolute, to the other: either/or.

Determinism is a masked victimhood. It believes that things occur to the individual without his consent, without him being able to evade it.
Victim psychology to the core.
The only antidote is an embracing of the situation....like a slave surrenders his mind, his hopes, his very conception of freedom to the master, who has already enslaved him physically.

A rape victim tries to deal with her predicament by 'enjoying' the rape; convincing herself that she could never have evaded it.
I ask you....is this how a noble mind thinks?
Is this manliness, and strength....or is it total surrender?

How comforting it must be to the mind that has advanced in age, seeing the end approaching, to be able to look back at all the terrible errors in judgment it has made, suffering the consequences one mistake after another, to convince itself that things could not have gone any other way.
Think about how devastating it would be if it could not deceive itself in this way.
Pascal's Wager comes to mind.
What a terrible loss...a lifetime of failings because the individual could not accept responsibility - always blaming others - and therefore could never adjust and adapt its behaviour to the circumstances.

What a terrible hell on earth the last years of its life would become if it could internalize and fully grasp what this means.
Everything it thought was true would have to be admitted as being a lie; everything it held to be certain, would have to be judged as being a big mistake.
One mistake after another because it could not admit culpability, it could not hold itself accountable first and foremost...before it cast accusations and sought reasons outside itself.
Lost opportunities, the 'what could have been...if only' too heavy a burden to bear.

How comforting...how self-deceiving, to delude itself with an absolute: 'I could have done nothing, NOTHING, to change a damn thing' he tells himself, while still accusing others for its situation, for the world's 'evils', contradicting his own principles...like all nihilists inevitably must.

I've said it a dozen times...here is the thirteenth.
A nihilist cannot help but lie, and self-deceive.....because his own stated convictions are self-contradicting.
The ideal must be corrected by the real, otherwise the individual that insists will find a quick and certain end.

Christians contradict their own dogma, because it is idealistic, fantastic....if they dared to live in accordance with their own values they would perish.
Fortunately, for them, the dogma itself has constructed self-protective lies to deal with the paradoxes it creates.
Marxists had to slaughter millions, including their own comrades, because they could not accept culpability; they could not question the dogma. So what remained to blame, to accuse, but each other, after they'd slaughtered millions of the 'enemy'.

Nihilism has to accuse someone outside the self.
If it has the courage and strength to live by its own deluded world-view it perishes.
Few of them are so courageous, or foolish...most are cowards, imbeciles, and liars, so it works for them.

Even Buddhism monks must rely on others to maintain the delusion of their meditative escapism.

The closer to nihilism you advance, the more lies and self-deceit - lies one believes, or pretends to - must become part of the psyche.
a man that has lived a lifetime believing ni ghosts and UFO abductions, will not admit he wasted an entire lifetime on a mistake...he will see UFOs and he will experience ghosts. He has to...or he'll have to kill himself. He would rather go insane that die.
Nihilists have no integrity....they place survival, pleasure, above all other considerations.

Satyr wrote:

The belief that 'it could not have been any other way' is a form of trying to escape culpability and what this implies about the individual

Claiming one is not responsible for anything = claiming one is not the cause of anything = claiming one is magically outside of causative processes of reality, an obviously non-deterministic claim.

Determinism would assign responsibility according to causality. To the degree X has caused Y, it is responsible for it.

It could not have been any other way = that was the only possible outcome given the factors at play in that situation.

This doesn't prevent the individual from changing factors in the future to obtain a different outcome. If anything, it makes adaptation necessary.

Causality is determinism.
If all caused could not have chosen otherwise, it is fatalism.
Causality simply indicates the chain of events that determined the cause.
According to determinists, this could not have been any other way. Being aware of the causes does no mean you could have changed the outcome, only that you suffer more, because now you are also aware of your own impotence.


An animal, or a plant, at the very least only suffers the causes...man also suffers the knowledge that he cannot do anything to alter them, or to react to them in any other way but the one already determined.

You're attempting to claim that knowing the causes somehow does not make it fatalism.
Responsibility means you can choose otherwise but you did not. you are using 'responsible' as as synonyme for cause.

What is responsible for the avalanche?
Accumulate snow.
Also cause.
But not responsible as in....what could have not destroyed the village, but did not?
The element of will is missing.

Your use simply states the inevitable, without ascribing to it intent.
In your use of the term, not even life is responsible...it is simply a causal agent with no intent. The intent is determined, not its own.
There is no intent but only universal intent - God.
God is the Will...man's will is but an image of His Will.
Man can never contradict God's will.
What is responsible could not have been anything other. An innocent responsibility.

They used it in the Nuremberg trials.
The defendants claimed they were simply following orders...so why were they punished?
Not only were they following orders but they could not have not followed them, and the orders were given by Those who could not have not given them...so all are innocent.

This is the conundrum Christian bullshit falls into with 'evil'.
If God is absolutely good and omnipotent then how does evil come about?
Either God is not absolutely good, or he is not omnipotent.
If God created man, then why does he hold him accountable....he made man behave in the way he does...so why punish him for being nothing but what he was created to be?
This is why they had to invent absolute free-will...setting man up for the 'fall'.
Not only is the choice a lie, but even in their narrative they do not resolve the conundrum...because if man was created in the image of god, and he is given free-will, then would it not follow that man can only use his will to do good?
So they invent Satan...the fallen.
but this doesn't solve the problem...because how does the fallen angle even think of evil...how is it able to imagine it, given god's absolute goodness, and his creation of ALL?


Do ya see the bullshit?

Here we see the confusion caused by the double meaning of words.

In your version 'responsible' means the cause.
No intent required?
What is responsible for earthquakes?
Tectonics plates, and so on...
But that's not what it means in regards to living roganism's, because in this case we have intent, will, choice.
In this case responsible does not simply mean the cause...but who intended, who chose, who willed this to happen, and not something else?

For you and deterministic both are one and the same.
Either all is will, has intent, can choose, judge etc.....or only life has intent, will, and can choose.
Or...all is innocent and cannot choose otherwise...in which case a hurricane is as responsible as a man who massacres millions.
So why persecute man, and not the hurricane?
Why hold him accountable, and not an avalanche?

You can't punish man for what he had no way of refusing to do...and if you do punish him then is this not also out of your hands?
Is the universe mad....is it masochistic?
Is it masturbating, is it self-punishing?

Yes, to me responsibility is purely causal.

A person makes choices based on their mentality. If their mentality was different then they could have made a different choice. But since their mentality wasn't different, they couldn't have made a different choice. And a person's mentality is itself caused by previous interactions with other causes, meaning that for it to be different, these other causes would have had to be different too, and the causes which caused them, and so on ad infinitum. The entire reality would have had to be different.

Just like a river goes into a certain direction because of its riverbed. If its riverbed was different then it could have gone into a different direction. But since its riverbed wasn't different...

You yourself said the past is immutable. It is useful for instructing future action, not as something to dwell on and imagine it could have been different - it couldn't have. Only the real is possible.

Satyr wrote:

Or...all is innocent and cannot choose otherwise

That's your definition of innocence, not mine.
Innocence = not being a contributing cause.

One can contribute to something with no intent to do so. True. Which is why one should be careful what they are a contributing cause to.

Satyr wrote:

Or...all is innocent and cannot choose otherwise...in which case a hurricane is as responsible as a man who massacres millions.
So why persecute man, and not the hurricane?
Why hold him accountable, and not an avalanche?

You can't punish man for what he had no way of refusing to do...and if you do punish him then is this not also out of your hands?

Man's behavior can be altered with persecution/punishment, or if not it can serve as a deterrent to others. You can't punish a hurricane.

Put another way, punishing men can be profitable, punishing hurricanes cannot.

Satyr wrote:

Is the universe mad....is it masochistic?
Is it masturbating, is it self-punishing?

It is indifferent.

If hurricanes could be punished by cursing them or hitting them with a club, we'd probably be doing it, regardless of whether what they do is intentional or not.

We deal with inanimate things too to manipulate/control them in accordance with our preferences, for our benefit:

The universe must be masochistic if it evolved consciousness to become aware of how impotent it is to do anything about its fate.

Past = immutable.
Present = fluid, interactive.
Future = undetermined, unknown.

there si no choice in an absolutely determined universe.
Choice is an illusion. The choice has already been determined.

A river has no choice. It follows the path-of-least-resistance.
It is determined by relationships of power - interaction = attraction/repulsion, harmony/disharmony.
it has no will, no way to flow uphill, taking the path-of-more-resistance. It has no intent, no motive.

How are you not a contributing force if you are ignorant of what will be the outcome of your choices?
How can you be innocent if you have no choice to not contribute? According to this, all contributors, the entire causal chain, alive or not, is guilty, and should be held accountable, and punished, as would any man whose choices result in a negative outcome.

Is a storm guilty of a crime if it drowns a child?

How can you not punish man if punishing him has already been determined?
Does the punisher have a choice?
So, according to you punishment is not about dissuading the choice, but about profit?
How can you not profit if profit is already determined?

All we can do is watch things happening.
If someone rapes you in jail will you seek vengeance knowing that he had no choice in the matter?
If someone kills someone you love, will you wait to see if you will seek retribution, knowing that his actions, like yours, are not his, wilful intent, but already part of universal programming?

AutSider wrote:

If hurricanes could be punished by cursing them or hitting them with a club, we'd probably be doing it, regardless of whether what they do is intentional or not.

We deal with inanimate things too to manipulate/control them in accordance with our preferences, for our benefit:

But this is also determined.
We'll have to wait and see if we deal with other natural phenomena.

I am curious to see what will happen.
Life is like a movie, and we are all sitting in the audience watching our lives happen. Who wrote the script, we do not know, we just 'know' it is written - our fate on a screen, and we but passive observers, now knowing what our role will be.

And ACTION!!

Stay tuned for the next episode of 'it's your life'.

This is getting really unproductive...

Choice is how we interpret uncertainty due to our limited awareness of all the factors.

Dissuading a choice (that is undesirable to you) IS profit.

Profit isn't determined for all, else natural selection wouldn't work. Some are determined to obtain high profits, others medium-high, others again medium, etc.

Quote :

All we can do is watch things happening

Quote :

we but passive observers

Again, this implies we are apart from causality instead of participating in it (as causes/affectors of some things, and caused/affected by others, sometimes both), which as I said is a non-deterministic idea.

There is no such thing as choice. I might think that I have a choice to cut my dick off, put on a skirt and pretend to be female, but I really don't. That's just my imagination. Empty words and thoughts with no reference to reality, as I would never do it.

And every day that I supposedly have this possibility but I choose to pass it up, I prove further that the possibility never existed in the first place - only the thought of the possibility ever existed.

Unless I hit my head really hard or something, that is exactly how things will be until I die.

People like to think they are free and undetermined, yet they act in very predictable manners, if you really get to know them.

Let's hope it has been determined that the European race will remain pure.
We, as men, belonging to those tribes have no say in the matter.
We are pawns...our will is not our own.

What is selected when all is determined? The participants have no choice in the matter. They simply go through the formalities of what has already been chosen.

Our causality is not determined by our will. We are slaves, agencies, going through the motions.
Why be concerned about racial purity when you can only wait and see what has been determined?
Your participation, or non-participation is already a given. We participate as cogs in a machine.

Profit is simply your way of saying....he who is blessed.
Those blessed, chosen to benefit, shall benefit, whether anyone likes it or not.
Those not blessed shall not benefit....it has been deemed that they will be the eternal losers.

Let's wait and see what happens to us.

AutSider wrote:

There is no such thing as choice. I might think that I have a choice to cut my dick off, put on a skirt and pretend to be female, but I really don't. That's just my imagination. Empty words and thoughts with no reference to reality, as I would never do it.

No...you have no choice. You don't know if you'll ever do it.

Quote :

And every day that I supposedly have this possibility but I choose to pass it up, I prove further that the possibility never existed in the first place - only the thought of the possibility ever existed.

How do you 'choose to pas it up' when you have no choice?
You hope you will....you have no choice in the matter. Even your hope is not your own.

Quote :

Unless I hit my head really hard or something, that is exactly how things will be until I die.

Nope...you have no choice.
You wish you are fated to never chop off your balls and be a woman.
The universe may have determined otherwise.

Quote :

People like to think they are free and undetermined, yet they act in very predictable manners, if you really get to know them.

No, one extreme does not negate the other.
The only alternative is not 'all are absolutely free, and not determined.
You are trapped in the nihilistic paradigm...in linguistics.

The opposite to 1/0 is not each other.
Reality has no one and no nil.

But you understanding is already determined and I will not fight it, nor try to change it.
so we'll leave it at that.

I'll take all your posts on race and manliness to be an expectation, since you admit you have no choice in the matter.
I hope you keep it in mind any time someone wrongs you. He, also, had no choice.

Satyr wrote:

How do you 'choose to pas it up' when you have no choice?

Ok you caught me, I am used to using that word. You could say I had no choice but to use it, at that time.

All of this is such word masturbation though, it's almost funny.

Satyr wrote:

I hope you keep it in mind any time someone wrongs you. He, also, had no choice.

Determinism is a theory of how things are, and you can't derive an ought from an is. It doesn't tell you what to do or not to do, it describes reality and may be useful for navigation, if it is correct, but it does not tell you where to go aka what to do.

The two usages of words: 1) representing what is, however imperfect; 2) representing the perception of what is, however imperfect.

These are not dichotomously exclusive. When performing 1, parts of self intrude all the time. When determining 2, one could be lying or using the incorrect words. 1 is a process, and as it becomes more precise, things are categorized either into some new phenomenon or reduced to another.

Responsibility is the ability-to-respond, which means countenance (however accurate) and then reflect on it and then choose whether to act on what thoughts arise - usually in response to other considerations.

One can think of going to school, consider that there's a lot of traffic and they'd miss class anyway, and then choose not to go at all. Without that knowledge, they can choose according to their dispositions. Those dispositions, while we can say they are determined (caused) by genetics or other factors, does not negate the ability to disregard personal life and risk for a greater goal. Like a parent going for the improvement of their kids' lives. One can go again and say this was determined - the abstract considerations were. But, having already evaluated all the costs and coming to have known them and that one will choose it anyway, has no effect on that awareness or choice. One already knows they'll go to school but acts it anyway, becoming an observer of their own life. However, one can also choose to consider more, to the point of discomfort, and challenge themselves. They cease knowing, from viscerally challenging. Chaos. All of this, you could say, is determined - but at what point does it become meaningless to say such? You've reduced all value to absurdity. This has zero effect on anything - it does not 'free' you, it only at most might get you investigating how to manipulate others in that way; but to do so? Questionable, at least, in value. One encounters something like a choice of Nozick's pleasure machine (spend eternity in a Matrix with eternal happiness until death, or refuse to go into the machine?); the choice to investigate that appears a choice to 'go into it'. The strong, at the top of their game, take the path of least resistance and become hedonist. Otherwise, they degenerate by reproducing with themselves. One singular human has to bring up more than just himself, to advance. Presuming no artificial reproduction and eugenics. In which case, why engage socially with those you'd exclude, trying to communicate to them the benefits of determinism?

I once said that many of these beliefs are all part of the same paradigm - the either/or duality of 1/0 binary logic.
The participants think they are in opposition to each other when both participate in the same belief system - one is for the other the other side of the same coin.
I've tried to describe my conceptions of Nihilism: what it is, what it is a product of, how it spreads, its essence, its multifarious dualism, fabricated on the black/white, either/or, good/evil paradigm.

I stand outside the Nihilistic paradigm. I CHOOSE to do so.
The two opposite poles think they are each others enemies, when they validate one another.
The true enemy is the ones who stand outside this shared delusion.

The crucial concept is 'chaos'.


We have two absolute extremes.
I'll use the metaphor of a stage play - 'all life's a stage' - to clarify.

On the one side of the absolute bipolar world-view man is absolutely free.
He's an actor 'thrown' into an ongoing play, written by someone - a conscious writer or writers - who impose a role upon him.
He demands to break out of the script and write his own play, or rewrite the one available.
Wardrobe, make-up, how he looks is superficial....how it is used by the play-write, within the context of the play, is arbitrary.
He believes that all is scripted and since all is scripted all can be rewritten, re-scripted.

The underlying delusion is that all are born 'tabula rasa', and are programmed - to use another metaphor - from birth.
The hardware is of little importance, since different machines can run the same programs. There is no relationship between hardware and software - or there's a minimal, insignificant one.
Man is presented as God.
He is free to be anything...so why be what others have mad him, have told him he ought to be.
There is no God, therefore all are gods.
There's always a conscious writer...Will.

-------------
On the opposite end of madness we have those we call Determinists.
Absolute ones.
For them the play is written and nobody can divert from the script.
They believe in something worse than an actor regurgitating his lines as they were written for him, by a conscious will. at least actors have to learn their lines and they know how the play unfolds - it has a beginning, a middle part and a end. The telos is known, predictable.
No, Determinists believe in something far more degrading, yet much more comforting.
They believe they are part of a puppet play.
They know not the script, nor who is controlling them....nor how the play will unfold. They are empty wooden puppets on strings....pulled by ONE puppeteer.
The theme of 'one', oneness, repeats among nihilists - if not one then 'nil'.
So, puppets speaking lines they have not written by regurgitate, mindlessly....acting in accordance to a script they know nothing about.
They have no Will.....the one and only puppeteer is the Will. They re but puppets on his strings. Empty husks.
Dummies.
Their deeds are nothing to be ashamed nor proud of....because it's not them, its part of their role.
They can glean what their role is by the way the puppeteer shaped them, and dressed (adorned) them, but they had no 'hand' in any of it.
The dummy is manipulated by the puppeteers hand.
They can only hope that the play has something 'good' in store for their puppet. They cannot choose to not play it out. They have no choice....because they are but mindless agencies.

Changing metaphors again....they are hardware/software that can never program itself in any minuscule way.
All they can do is run the programming some other put there, experiencing themselves as a part of a causal chain - chains binding them like they do all slaves.

Why hat transsexuals....why fight your enemies, when you have become aware that none of them can do otherwise. They, like you, have no choice but to behave in the way the universal one determined?
Why feel so much passion against them, when they have no choice?
Do you hat a flu virus for being what it is?
Do you hate a storm for being what it is?
Believing what you do, this is madness.
Even your hate is programmed. But the programming, the fates, determined that you, unlike me and many others, should become aware of your predicament.....does this awareness of your lack of choice not change your attitude?
I despise them because I ascribe to them a motive, a choice....but you determinists, why do you despise homosexuals, transsexuals, liberals, cuckservatives....why do you speak so hatefully when you have become aware that they, like you, cannot choose to be anything other than what you are?
Why hate the ones who wronged you? They had about as much choice as you do.
Do you surrender to the programming, despite being aware of it?
*tsk *tsk

How comforting an idea to believe that life repeats, forever, and none of us concious beings can do anything about it.
We evolved to become aware of our own impotence. We are part of the program...we were intended....because all is determined.
Our will is not our own - we are agencies of another will.
Too Christian?
Okay....we are helpless victims of existence....learning to say 'yes' to our slavery.
We are our own enslavers.

AutSider wrote:

Determinism is a theory of how things are, and you can't derive an ought from an is. It doesn't tell you what to do or not to do, it describes reality and may be useful for navigation, if it is correct, but it does not tell you where to go aka what to do.

You navigate, or are you the instrument of navigation?
Why is there a 'not' if its all determined?
Is it part of the programming - binary on/off, 1/0.
Do, do not do.
Is choice how you are told how to behave...not told, but how you discover what the universal programme has in store for you?

In my world-view IS is not OUGHT, because of choice - small as it may be.
In yours it is a synonym.
Ought implies a choice. What IS hints at what OUGHT, because you have no participation in choosing otherwise.
You only use IS as a way of realizing what has been determined you OUGHT to do.

Slaughtz wrote:

The two usages of words: 1) representing what is, however imperfect; 2) representing the perception of what is, however imperfect.

These are not dichotomously exclusive. When performing 1, parts of self intrude all the time. When determining 2, one could be lying or using the incorrect words. 1 is a process, and as it becomes more precise, things are categorized either into some new phenomenon or reduced to another.

Responsibility is the ability-to-respond, which means countenance (however accurate) and then reflect on it and then choose whether to act on what thoughts arise - usually in response to other considerations.

One can think of going to school, consider that there's a lot of traffic and they'd miss class anyway, and then choose not to go at all. Without that knowledge, they can choose according to their dispositions. Those dispositions, while we can say they are determined (caused) by genetics or other factors, does not negate the ability to disregard personal life and risk for a greater goal. Like a parent going for the improvement of their kids' lives. One can go again and say this was determined - the abstract considerations were. But, having already evaluated all the costs and coming to have known them and that one will choose it anyway, has no effect on that awareness or choice. One already knows they'll go to school but acts it anyway, becoming an observer of their own life. However, one can also choose to consider more, to the point of discomfort, and challenge themselves. They cease knowing, from viscerally challenging. Chaos. All of this, you could say, is determined - but at what point does it become meaningless to say such? You've reduced all value to absurdity. This has zero effect on anything - it does not 'free' you, it only at most might get you investigating how to manipulate others in that way; but to do so? Questionable, at least, in value. One encounters something like a choice of Nozick's pleasure machine (spend eternity in a Matrix with eternal happiness until death, or refuse to go into the machine?); the choice to investigate that appears a choice to 'go into it'. The strong, at the top of their game, take the path of least resistance and become hedonist. Otherwise, they degenerate by reproducing with themselves. One singular human has to bring up more than just himself, to advance. Presuming no artificial reproduction and eugenics. In which case, why engage socially with those you'd exclude, trying to communicate to them the benefits of determinism?

Determinists externalize Will, implying what Abraghamism has established as its dogma = an external Will, a god....of many names.
One name, the most Modern one, is Order, or Absolute.

It's the same cocnept under a new, updated, more Modern title.

Causality, for them means Responsible. Th two words have no difference in their mind.
For the Nihilist all words point to the same absolute.

God is love...God is conscious....God if good....God is perfect.
All the terms are now synonyms for God.

In the case of causality, it is responsibility.
A storm is responsible for house damage, is the same as saying the terrorist is responsible for house damage.
Storm, terrorist, conscious/unconscious.
Words lose meaning. instead of differentiating they are simplified to unify concepts - to produce uniformity of thought.

When Abrahamism loses its psychological appeal the concepts it manipulated to control the masses do not vanish....because the psychologies that were seduced by its methods, and rhetoric, still exist, awaiting to be exploited.
So all is repackaged and resold to the same kinds of minds...like Marxism is being resold under the heading 'post-modernism', or simply modernism, giving the added impression of progress of advancing, growing, becoming better.
In fact the only thing that has 'advanced' is the words used to represent the exact same concepts; the packaging, the rhetoric, the symbols have been updated.
The same psychologies are seduced and confused by exactly the same concept, renamed to make them feel like they are progressing.

They are still trapped/imprisoned in their noetic universe, only now it has adopted new chains, new bars.

I've described one reason why this is so seductive; what psychological issues it deals with.
The thing with nihilism is that it is unbound by any reality, so it can be used to comfort and cope with any psychological issue.
This is why its language remains obscure and insinuating....like abstract art.
The meaninglessness of the words used IS part of its appeal. Each mind can project into them whatever they desire...and then spend decades 'debating' which method is best, or more promising.

Realism leaves no room for debates. The talent of the artist is obvious and the painting's meaning is also obvious.
But not so for abstract art. It attracts pseudo-intellectual who unload their psychosis on the painter's 'fArt.
The fArtists intents, his hidden meanings can be mulled over for centuries, even if he did not intentionally place them there....offering the participants the delusion that they are involved in deep, profound work. No interpretation of the Fart is better than another, because all are about nonsense.
What matters is how much it costs - the price of the fArt

Nihilists always revert back to economics, represented by popularity, price on the market.
The nonsense is given a market value, though it is useless nonsensical garbage.