Against action.

Satyr wrote:

You play with semantics, knowing exactly, what is being said.
Use any word makes you feel comfortable.

So you are saying that desire and need is the same thing, or at least means the same thing to you?

Regardless how then is an active person a result of their degree of desires. But rather the particularity of the desire that requires activity? One can have many desires and many can conflict and prevent them thus from being an active person despite having more desires then the most active, perhaps.

Satyr wrote:

Abstract wrote:

The use of the word "boy" is such that it will offer resistance to your view point from joker.

And YOUR point is?

You think I seek for easy converts. Then I would tell them what they want to think and what satisfies their personal needs.
This shit is easy for me.

Such creatures can stay where they are, as they are, facing a world that will fuck them upside down and sideways.
Who cares?


They should stay away...and this is my method of keeping them away.

Do you seek for converts?

Abstract wrote:

So you are saying that desire and need is the same thing, or at least means the same thing to you?

Yes.
The difference is found in the nuances.

I desire what I need.
Otherwise, why do I desire it?
i desire it because ti fulfills, or I think that it might fulfill, the need inside of me.

In the "I think it does" the creation of artificial wants is made possible.

Abstract wrote:

Regardless how then is an active person a result of their degree of desires. But rather the particularity of the desire that requires activity?

When you are born, do you not suckle?
Do you not react to human touch?
The reaction is innate...there is no reasoning behind it.
Reasoning comes afterwards when self-0cosnciuosness seeks a motive for its own reactionary

Why do I react, without thinking, with an erection to the sight, the mere sight, of a female's round, firm, rump?
Why does it stir desire in me?
Why do I need to do something about it?

Abstract wrote:

One can have many desires and many can conflict and prevent them thus from being an active person despite having more desires then the most active, perhaps.

Ask yourself:
What is it that "prevents" him?
What is it that makes him think twice?

phoneutria wrote:

Need is a very fluid sensation.

I offer fluid with a needle sensation.

Satyr wrote:

phoneutria wrote:

Need is a very fluid sensation.

No, sweetie, need is the sensation of fluidity.

Learn to think.

I know your looks can get you far enough in this world, as it is governed by looks and superficiality, but if you wish to go further...just for the fuck of it....try harder.

Do it for your daddy...whom I look nothing like.
I suspect, and correct me if I'm wrong, that I also think nothing like him.

Half of what she says is incomprehensible, and she's been trying to burn me with the same crap since she got here.

It comes down to the vague, matter-of-fact attitude. What she writes has merit....but too much. In such a way, that it must come from another source or she's not comfortable saying it. It tends to be bland, and overly referential. There is a hesitancy to write outside of a certain frame, and so it often fits into one-line, and holds some power in its empty, intellectual appeal. Be it the subtlety of using new language, or unusual words---this is meant to fill the gap; to dress up otherwise boring, unoriginal thought.

It's like a sneaky attempt at looking the part, and presenting oneself as well-learned and having the ability to give the 'correct' answers in a sarcastic, aloof fashion, while completely missing any personal input.

Then toy with it.
Stop taking it so personally.

There's nothing to toy with. Just a hollow shell with a pretty layer on top =p

I'm simply making an observation and going with it =p

Satyr wrote:

Stop taking it so personally.

How is it personal? It's really old.

Nothing I've never encountered before...

If you seek depth in this world then you'll be looking for a long, long time.

Shallow dominates...it is ubiquitous.

Few can offer you what you think of as: depth
It is, itself, a relative concept.

What is deep, is what is deeper than your feet can reach; it is what threatens to drown you if you do not learn how to tread its currents.

She is, for you, simple...shallow....Yet she is part of a majority....part of an environment you must, MUST, adapt to.

Satyr wrote:

phoneutria wrote:

Need is a very fluid sensation.

No, sweetie, need is the sensation of fluidity.

Learn to think.

I know your looks can get you far enough in this world, as it is governed by looks and superficiality, but if you wish to go further...just for the fuck of it....try harder.

Do it for your daddy...whom I look nothing like.
I suspect, and correct me if I'm wrong, that I also think nothing like him.

I thought that what I wrote was simple enough that it didn't require expanding on. It is really very straightforward.

In order to live, and simply live, all you need is water and food a couple of times a week.
To live comfortably, you need food and water every day, plus shelter.
To live plentifully, you need food, water in abundance, comfortable shelter, and maybe some fucking art.

Thus, I elaborate my admittedly vague sentence, in hopes that it will cease to be ruled out as simple, but instead intentionally left vague in order to incite thought.
You are capable of thought, I take it. I hope so. Thinking for others is not among my preferred activities.

I will even add a quote:

"Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for."

How is that?

It annoys me that in a forum of people who claim to have to dumb themselves down in order to have a social life, I have to put filler in my post to adapt to your style, in which everything must be explicit and nothing can be intended.
Read the fucking post, then put your fucking think box to work. Is that too much to ask?

BTW: first you said that need is the sensation of absence, then you said that need is the sensation of fluidity. In my post I said that need is fluid. How are we in disagreement?

PS: notice how I ignore the nonsense about my dad and my stunning looks. That's because it means nothing.

Poison IV wrote:

phoneutria wrote:

Need is a very fluid sensation.

I offer fluid with a needle sensation.

Good one.

Poison IV wrote:

Half of what she says is incomprehensible, and she's been trying to burn me with the same crap since she got here.

It comes down to the vague, matter-of-fact attitude. What she writes has merit....but too much. In such a way, that it must come from another source or she's not comfortable saying it. It tends to be bland, and overly referential. There is a hesitancy to write outside of a certain frame, and so it often fits into one-line, and holds some power in its empty, intellectual appeal. Be it the subtlety of using new language, or unusual words---this is meant to fill the gap; to dress up otherwise boring, unoriginal thought.

It's like a sneaky attempt at looking the part, and presenting oneself as well-learned and having the ability to give the 'correct' answers in a sarcastic, aloof fashion, while completely missing any personal input.

That's adorable. I may frame it and hang it on my wall, along wing the drawing my little niece made.

Satyr wrote:

Abstract wrote:

So you are saying that desire and need is the same thing, or at least means the same thing to you?

Yes.
The difference is found in the nuances.

I desire what I need.
Otherwise, why do I desire it?
i desire it because ti fulfills, or I think that it might fulfill, the need inside of me.

In the "I think it does" the creation of artificial wants is made possible.

But then you are saying that you desire because you need it...(thus that need is primary and desire secondary or just equivalent to that) I would say that nothing is needed things are only desired, need is only a description of something that you require to fulfill a desire... there seems to be a difference between our view points here. I.e. I am saying "need" is basically a misconception; non-existent. You say you desire it because you need or think you need. I say you think you need because you desire something that needs a thing to be done or had in order to fulfill that desire.

Satyr wrote:

Abstract wrote:

Regardless how then is an active person a result of their degree of desires. But rather the particularity of the desire that requires activity?

When you are born, do you not suckle?
Do you not react to human touch?
The reaction is innate...there is no reasoning behind it.
Reasoning comes afterwards when self-0cosnciuosness seeks a motive for its own reactionary

Why do I react, without thinking, with an erection to the sight, the mere sight, of a female's round, firm, rump?
Why does it stir desire in me?
Why do I need to do something about it?

Tthere is brain activity we do think and we do reason, it is just on a different level. we are programed to desire particular things and thus we act as if we need them... What makes you think self-consciousness is at all necessary for a desire?

You do not need to do something about it... rather you desire to have the irritation of not doing it gone and thus you fulfill that desire. with practice that desire can be eliminated; by self programing, self conditioning. Other things that can't you still don't need to do unless you desire to live happily or live at all.

And again regardless of this it would seem to me that a person can be active and desire only a few things, or a person with many desires can not be very active... so it would seem that you are over generalizing.

Satyr wrote:

Abstract wrote:

One can have many desires and many can conflict and prevent them thus from being an active person despite having more desires then the most active, perhaps.

Ask yourself:
What is it that "prevents" him?
What is it that makes him think twice?

A desire to do a particular thing. I don't see that as changing what I said. you thus can have many desires and one particular desire will still make you less active.

Quote :

Tthere is brain activity we do think and we do reason, it is just on a different level. we are programed to desire particular things and thus we act as if we need them... What makes you think self-consciousness is at all necessary for a desire?

You do not need to do something about it... rather you desire to have the irritation of not doing it gone and thus you fulfill that desire. with practice that desire can be eliminated; by self programing, self conditioning. Other things that can't you still don't need to do unless you desire to live happily or live at all.

And again regardless of this it would seem to me that a person can be active and desire only a few things, or a person with many desires can not be very active... so it would seem that you are over generalizing.

I disagree with both in stating that there are things you don't need which you may desire.

phoneutria wrote:

Satyr wrote:

phoneutria wrote:

Need is a very
fluid sensation.

No, sweetie, need is the sensation of fluidity.


Learn to think.

I know your looks can get you far
enough in this world, as it is governed by looks and superficiality, but
if you wish to go further...just for the fuck of it....try harder.

Do it for your daddy...whom I look nothing like.
I suspect, and correct me if I'm wrong, that I also think nothing like him.

I thought that what I wrote was simple enough that it didn't require expanding on. It is really very straightforward.

In order to live, and simply live, all you need is water and food a couple of times a week.
To live comfortably, you need food and water every day, plus shelter.
To live plentifully, you need food, water in abundance, comfortable shelter, and maybe some fucking art.

Thus,
I elaborate my admittedly vague sentence, in hopes that it will cease
to be ruled out as simple, but instead intentionally left vague in order
to incite thought.
You are capable of thought, I take it. I hope so. Thinking for others is not among my preferred activities.

I will even add a quote:

"Do
not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that
what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for."

How is that?

I was not responding to you, nor expressing agreement with her.
I was offering advice as to how to deal with what she considered inferior.

phoneutria wrote:

It
annoys me that in a forum of people who claim to have to dumb
themselves down in order to have a social life, I have to put filler in
my post to adapt to your style, in which everything must be explicit and
nothing can be intended.
Read the fucking post, then put your fucking think box to work. Is that too much to ask?

I never expressed confusion.

Is it possible that some might use laconic phrases and referencing to mask their own vulnerabilities?
From personal experience I have discovered that at times those appearing to be deep and wise if pushed, have on understanding of their own wisdom and depths.

I asked a scientist to define the #1 upon which the entire edifice of science rests and he offered me a mathematical reference with no philosophical backing.
He simply accepted the metaphor as a starting proposition, which he could not define nor defend, but which was useful to him and his peers, and popularly accepted as such.
I'm sure that some time in the past similar issues arose when asking a priest to define God.

I'm sure that being anti-materialistic makes you part of a rare breed of females, but I can't see upon what grounds you base your own "philosophy".
It seems like its more of a hip thing to be; a rejection of the social norm that sets you apart.
But without this understanding one crutch is replaced by another.
We supposedly, overcome God, but then we become enamored with his numerical representation...the #1.
We supposedly overcome Jude-Christianity but then we become faithful to its secular form of liberalism.
We supposedly are anti-nihilistic but then we believe and propose the elimination of all categories and dismiss nature and the world as a fake or as a primeval burden we must overcome, in effect erasing from memory all that constitutes identity. We then call this "freedom".

phoneutria wrote:

BTW:
first you said that need is the sensation of absence, then you said
that need is the sensation of fluidity. In my post I said that need is
fluid. How are we in disagreement?

I try to use precise words to express my ideas.
Need, for me, is an interpretation of fluidity.
Since all interpretation is constantly updated then all is fluid.

Why must we disagree?

Abstract wrote:

[But then you are saying that you desire because you need it...(thus that need is primary and desire secondary or just equivalent to that) I would say that nothing is needed things are only desired, need is only a description of something that you require to fulfill a desire...

The sexual overtones of the term desire are not accidental.
Sex appears to be central in human thinking because it is the only response to mortality...it feeds the need to self-sustain.
But sex is a secondary need, as it developed later in evolutionary timescales, and so it is not a primary need. One can live without sex, even though the absence of it might have dire psychological and therefore psychosomatic consequences.

For me sex is mutation of feeding. There is an element of consuming in sexual passion.
The sex act itself is contains the feeding practice of a mother passing on food to an infant (kissing) and biting and penetration where one almost wishes to merge or be engulfed by the other.

Desire, in effect, is the focus of the Will upon an object/objective which promises, without ever completely delivering, a satiation.

Abstract wrote:

there seems to be a difference between our view points here. I.e. I am saying "need" is basically a misconception; non-existent. You say you desire it because you need or think you need. I say you think you need because you desire something that needs a thing to be done or had in order to fulfill that desire.

What a naive perspective you have.

I repeat.
Need, even in its rudimentary forms, is the conscious sensation of existing.
One awakens to reality by sensing one's own need for what is absent.
Life is an ordering in a disordering....therefore it is only possible in this linear temporal direction.
Life, consciousness, is only possible in a universe of increasing entropy.
We can assume that entropy is also simultaneously decreasing but we can never be aware of it.

Need is not "non-existent" as it is the sensation, interpretation, of existence. Activity is how this absence manifests.
I act because I need and I need because I lack.
Even the act of thinking presupposes an absence of omniscience.
I wish to know, I desire knowledge, because I am ignorant to one degree or another.

I strive towards power or life (Will to Power - Will to Life) because I do not posses it in any absolute way, but always in degree and in regards to an otherness.
I create and procreate because I lack immortality and understanding and order.

Your body is a living testament to your lack.
You need not know it rationally or even accept it.
you breath because your body needs, and what it needs is never enough.
You fill your stomach and it sustains you for a while, but the nutrients are c9osntantly distributed to your cells which continually need nourishment...energy or preserve themselves.
Your body is constantly fighting off intruders because it lacks completion...its boundaries are porous, its skin is not an adequate separation...the world intrudes upon its premises and deteriorates it.

In this I agree with Schopenhauer who defines pleasure as a negative sensation.

You are constantly making and remaking yourself.
You are held together in a relatively stable and ephemerally ordered state by memory...both genetic and memetic.

Wants are different to needs in that you can want something which you can do without, but a want is based on needs which you may not be immediately aware of and which you cannot do without satisfying, constantly.
For example you may want a nice house, or a car, but not for the reasons you tell yourself.
You might be able to do without a nice house or a car but the needs that makes it a want, a desire, cannot be ignored;
you need sustenance and a car promises access to it; you need shelter and a house provides it, though it might not be nice; you need social interaction and the house and car serve you in making you noticed or offering you contact or blending into a social environment you cannot live outside.
It does not matter how you justify your wants and desires, because the underlying need remains the same: the need to survive, to be cohesive (ordered), to increase your domain of influence, your power.

Abstract wrote:

Tthere is brain activity we do think and we do reason, it is just on a different level. we are programed to desire particular things and thus we act as if we need them... What makes you think self-consciousness is at all necessary for a desire?

Did I say that it was?
Consciousness proceeds self-consciousness...but the need is present in all organisms.

All is active, right?
What produces activity?
Nothing acts spontaneously.
Action is a result of a discrepancy in energy.
The weaker tens towards the stronger....the air tends towards the vacuum.
All is active because all is interactive, and always off-balance to a degree or another.
All is in a state of Flux.
Life is a reaction to this; consciousness is how this Flux is interpreted.
I use the term "Flux" now because it also indicates a universe where entropy is decreasing and increasing simultaneously but this should not indicate that it is in a state of balance.
you can't extricate yourself from reality and pronounce it balanced, from some imaginary, all-encompassing, all-knowing vantage point. All you can do is take the given, the immediately perceptible and extrapolate upwards.

Now scientists are talking of mutiverses and that our own is a product of one membrane coming into contact with another, so our universe might not be a product of balance at all; it might not be eternal. But the mind, being an instrument of ordering, needs order to make sense of a fluid reality. So it creates these mental models within the mind, and there it surveys it as a whole.
This is where delusion might set in, as the mind then begins to misconstrue its own mental models, for reality itself. It confuses the ideal with the real.

Abstract wrote:

You do not need to do something about it... rather you desire to have the irritation of not doing it gone and thus you fulfill that desire. with practice that desire can be eliminated; by self programing, self conditioning. Other things that can't you still don't need to do unless you desire to live happily or live at all.

Again....you are mortal...are you not?
Do you not breath and does not your heart pump blood, and does not your immune system defend you against viruses, and does not your mind lack knowledge or understanding, and do not your cells feed upon nutrients you break down in your stomach...constantly?
If so then you are always in a state fo need.

How this need is directed, socially, politically, memetically, is another matter.
Wants can definitely be artificially constructed...you might be convinced you want what you may not...but this is only possible, this type of manipulation is possible, because the underlying need is always present.
Happiness is a myth...whatever level of contentment is possible is made so by understanding self.
This self-knowledge leads to the possibility of you focusing your energies to what will provide you with constant satisfaction and will live up to your expectations, because your expectations are made humble and tangible.

When you understand yourself, your kind, your environment...then you stop giving a shit about the propaganda.
Phoeutria mentions it: all you really need is nutrition, water, oxygen, space, and some companionship, sexual or not...and these because you are an organism which is imperfect seeking fulfillment.

Abstract wrote:

And again regardless of this it would seem to me that a person can be active and desire only a few things, or a person with many desires can not be very active... so it would seem that you are over generalizing.

The classic comeback of a mind unable to accept the idea that its own absolute "happiness" is impossible and, more than this, undesirable.
The truly "happy" man, theoretically always, has no need and so does not act.
Why would a God act?
Why would a God create?

Boredom?
Then this is a lack in Him...contradicting His, hypothetical, perfection.
Curiosity?
This implies an absence of knowledge as will. It implies a need.

Abstract wrote:

A desire to do a particular thing. I don't see that as changing what I said. you thus can have many desires and one particular desire will still make you less active.

Therefore being in a state of absolute bliss is a human myth.

The moment you satisfy a need, it begins building again....it is not erased it is momentarily quelled to the point where it drops off your level of consciousness.

I eat, right, but my need to eat does not vanish...it is only momentarily satiated and fed consistently, with the evolved method of storing food in the stomach, to a point where it no longer occupies your consciousness. The mind is a tool...and it deals with problems and survival.
When one problem has been dealt with, for a short while, it moves onto the next.

Satyr wrote:

I repeat.
Need, even in its rudimentary forms, is the conscious sensation of existing.
One awakens to reality by sensing one's own need for what is absent.
Life is an ordering in a disordering....therefore it is only possible in this linear temporal direction.
Life, consciousness, is only possible in a universe of increasing entropy.
We can assume that entropy is also simultaneously decreasing but we can never be aware of it.

Need is not "non-existent" as it is the sensation, interpretation, of existence. Activity is how this absence manifests.
I act because I need and I need because I lack.
Even the act of thinking presupposes an absence of omniscience.
I wish to know, I desire knowledge, because I am ignorant to one degree or another.

I strive towards power or life (Will to Power - Will to Life) because I do not posses it in any absolute way, but always in degree and in regards to an otherness.
I create and procreate because I lack immortality and understanding and order.

Your body is a living testament to your lack.
You need not know it rationally or even accept it.
you breath because your body needs, and what it needs is never enough.
You fill your stomach and it sustains you for a while, but the nutrients are c9osntantly distributed to your cells which continually need nourishment...energy or preserve themselves.
Your body is constantly fighting off intruders because it lacks completion...its boundaries are porous, its skin is not an adequate separation...the world intrudes upon its premises and deteriorates it.

In this I agree with Schopenhauer who defines pleasure as a negative sensation.

You are constantly making and remaking yourself.
You are held together in a relatively stable and ephemerally ordered state by memory...both genetic and memetic.

Wants are different to needs in that you can want something which you can do without, but a want is based on needs which you may not be immediately aware of and which you cannot do without satisfying, constantly.
For example you may want a nice house, or a car, but not for the reasons you tell yourself.
You might be able to do without a nice house or a car but the needs that makes it a want, a desire, cannot be ignored;
you need sustenance and a car promises access to it; you need shelter and a house provides it, though it might not be nice; you need social interaction and the house and car serve you in making you noticed or offering you contact or blending into a social environment you cannot live outside.
It does not matter how you justify your wants and desires, because the underlying need remains the same: the need to survive, to be cohesive (ordered), to increase your domain of influence, your power.

In order to justify this you would have to prove that we actually need to live... but we don't. all these things you call needs are only needed because of the desire to live. thus everything comes down to a desire. So my question to you is do we need to live?

By the way you never answered my question: Do you seek for converts?

Satyr wrote:

Abstract wrote:

There is brain activity we do think and we do reason, it is just on a different level. we are programed to desire particular things and thus we act as if we need them... What makes you think self-consciousness is at all necessary for a desire?

Did I say that it was?

you said this in response to me given what I meant it seemed to imply such: "Reasoning comes afterwards when self-0cosnciuosness seeks a motive for its own reactionary"

Satyr wrote:

Abstract wrote:

You do not need to do something about it... rather you desire to have the irritation of not doing it gone and thus you fulfill that desire. with practice that desire can be eliminated; by self programing, self conditioning. Other things that can't you still don't need to do unless you desire to live happily or live at all.

Again....you are mortal...are you not?
Do you not breath and does not your heart pump blood, and does not your immune system defend you against viruses, and does not your mind lack knowledge or understanding, and do not your cells feed upon nutrients you break down in your stomach...constantly?
If so then you are always in a state fo need.

No you only need that stuff if you seek to live. if you don't desire to live then you don't grasp for those things and you die, plain and simple, because you are mortal. It is only a need for something in the sense that you desire to live.

Abstract wrote:

And again regardless of this it would seem to me that a person can be active and desire only a few things, or a person with many desires can not be very active... so it would seem that you are over generalizing.

The classic comeback of a mind unable to accept the idea that its own absolute "happiness" is impossible and, more than this, undesirable. [/quote] your reading imaginary stuff into my words... I haven't said or thought anything with regards to happiness. Which when I do I tend to think of it only synonymous with contentment.

Example: a person can desire only to have power, sex, and money...3 things.. and be very active
Another person can want power, sex, and money...world peace or something, and thus does not do anything for the sake of not contradicting peace.

Not the best example but it should give you the idea...

Satyr wrote:

The truly "happy" man, theoretically always, has no need and so does not act.
Why would a God act?
Why would a God create?

Boredom?
Then this is a lack in Him...contradicting His, hypothetical, perfection.
Curiosity?
This implies an absence of knowledge as will. It implies a need.

if there is an ultimate such as a god it does not necessarily have to be perfect. (Hinduism)

Satyr wrote:

Abstract wrote:

A desire to do a particular thing. I don't see that as changing what I said. you thus can have many desires and one particular desire will still make you less active.

Therefore being in a state of absolute bliss is a human myth.

I don't see how that conclusion follows from the premise? I presume for some reason you think I believe in a state of absolute bliss? But let me ask you this, if there is a state of contentment and that is all there can be then is not that then the ultimate state and thus what should be called bliss?

Satyr wrote:

The moment you satisfy a need, it begins building again....it is not erased it is momentarily quelled to the point where it drops off your level of consciousness.

I eat, right, but my need to eat does not vanish...it is only momentarily satiated and fed consistently, with the evolved method of storing food in the stomach, to a point where it no longer occupies your consciousness. The mind is a tool...and it deals with problems and survival.
When one problem has been dealt with, for a short while, it moves onto the next.

I think need can only exist in the sense of defining it as something that is required to fulfill the desire to live or live content. So perhaps I should not have said need does not exist but rather that need in the sense provided or often thought of does not... as it is not a requirement, it is only a relative requirement, one required only if one wants to live or and live relatively content. beyond that a thing is not a need but an unnecessary desire. yet then certain things can be required for achieving contentment due to addiction or over consumption such as to get used to having larger portions...such I would think is not needed but to fulfill a desire that is not accepted as being one that is efficient...or rather it prevent the fulfillment of others and is thus a overall prevention of fulfillment of such desire based needs, with regards to the whole of humanity.

Abstract wrote:

In order to justify this you would have to prove that we actually need to live... but we don't. all these things you call needs are only needed because of the desire to live. thus everything comes down to a desire. So my question to you is do we need to live?

I do.
I need to survive, to be conscious and willful, and to survive, is to live.
Do you?

To act on need one need not be aware of the outcome.
An animal strives to persist, without having a conception of need or existing of life.
It acts on an impulse.

Abstract wrote:

By the way you never answered my question: Do you seek for converts?

No, do you?

Abstract wrote:

No you only need that stuff if you seek to live. if you don't desire to live then you don't grasp for those things and you die, plain and simple, because you are mortal. It is only a need for something in the sense that you desire to live.

Ergo to exist as a consciousness means to contradict, to resist, entropy, or fragmentation.
It is an act of will, giving itself direction with these projected objects/objectives.
Desire is the focus of the Will upon them.

Again: Need is the consciousness of a linear flow...a towards increasing entropy.
It is an ordering in the disordering.
You react instinctively...alter you gain self-consciousness, questioning, as you do this need.
You turn to God or you become nihilistic, wondering why one must live at all.
The animal, or the simpleton, does not h ave existential questions. He is an agent of life, and acts in accordance to its needs as these have been produced by the reaction to entropy.

Abstract wrote:

Example: a person can desire only to have power, sex, and money...3 things.. and be very active
Another person can want power, sex, and money...world peace or something, and thus does not do anything for the sake of not contradicting peace.

But he does...he is forever active.
His heart beats, his mind thinks and hopes, his immune system resists...
He is inactive in relation to manmade constructs such as peace and power.
These are not possible in the absolute sense but only ephemerally and in regards to a condition a man can cope with...or they are comparisons of states.
Sex is merely a means.

Abstract wrote:

if there is an ultimate such as a god it does not necessarily have to be perfect. (Hinduism)

therefore he exists within the world and is a participant, contradicting any idea of omnipotence and omniscience.
Are not Hindus polytheists?

The ancient Greeks believed in such gods.
They were symbols of natural processes. Approachable, faulty prone to errors and and susceptible to manipulation.

Abstract wrote:

I don't see how that conclusion follows from the premise? I presume for some reason you think I believe in a state of absolute bliss?

You used the word "happiness".
I'm simply pointing out that this is an ephemeral and negative state.

Abstract wrote:

But let me ask you this, if there is a state of contentment and that is all there can be then is not that then the ultimate state and thus what should be called bliss?

Yes, and if there is a christian God The Rapture is coming.

Abstract wrote:

I think need can only exist in the sense of defining it as something that is required to fulfill the desire to live or live content.

I'm wodnering to myself if you show this much sleticism to the notion of a Will, as it has been used by others.
For me there is no Will without consciousness, as there is no need without it.
There is Flux, which needs not because it is both unconscious and not a thing at all. Life is a direction towards Thingness, in its positive form, or a towards No-Thing in its negative.

Abstract wrote:

So perhaps I should not have said need does not exist but rather that need in the sense provided or often thought of does not... as it is not a requirement, it is only a relative requirement, one required only if one wants to live or and live relatively content. beyond that a thing is not a need but an unnecessary desire. yet then certain things can be required for achieving contentment due to addiction or over consumption such as to get used to having larger portions...such I would think is not needed but to fulfill a desire that is not accepted as being one that is efficient...or rather it prevent the fulfillment of others and is thus a overall prevention of fulfillment of such desire based needs, with regards to the whole of humanity.

You, like many liberals and New age spiritualists think of words within the prism of capitalism and modern day political discourse.
I could care less about your "progressive" ideals and naive expectations.
I've concluded that liberalism or this need, NEED, to abolish categories and create uniformity and the absence of suffering, similar to eastern spiritualism, is a hidden nihilism.
You seek to abolish the very factors that made you possible, like greed, violence, selfishness etc.
This is a form of self-hatred.

I am an advocate of asceticism and balance, but I do not cloud it with pseudo-altruism and morality.

Abstract wrote:

In order to justify this you would have to prove that we actually need to live... but we don't. all these things you call needs are only needed because of the desire to live. thus everything comes down to a desire. So my question to you we need to live?

You arrived at the next logical step of my argument.
Need, being a very fluid sensation, is entirely conditional to an objective.
"In order to ----, you need ----".
Without objective, there is no need.

Now, to align with both off you, since we are all saying the same things in different ways, I can make this connection: an objective is the fruit of a desire.

Thus, if there is no desire, there is no need.

And that, is epicurism, to whom is credited the quote I posted before.

Note that the reversed relation is false, there can be desire without need, as I posted before as well.

No, we are not.

I claim that the universe has no objective...it is Flux.
Interaction, blind and without meaning and purpose.

Life, and the consciousness it produces, is what gives direction and then when it results in self-consciousness it seeks, at first, externally and then projects from the abstractions it creates itself, a purpose and a meaning...an object/objective.

This projection is need in the face of an absence.
What is absent is indeterminate for the very reason that it is absent. It can be anything the human mind can imagine and project out of necessity.

I call it the absolute.
you might call it by its many other names: Thing, One, God, Particle, Static, Whole, Self.....and so on and so on.

That which is alive has a profound desire to remain alive, and that shapes its essential needs.

Yes, as all needs are a product of this basic need.

Satyr wrote:

phoneutria wrote:

Satyr wrote:

phoneutria wrote:

Need is a very
fluid sensation.

No, sweetie, need is the sensation of fluidity.


Learn to think.

I know your looks can get you far
enough in this world, as it is governed by looks and superficiality, but
if you wish to go further...just for the fuck of it....try harder.

Do it for your daddy...whom I look nothing like.
I suspect, and correct me if I'm wrong, that I also think nothing like him.

I thought that what I wrote was simple enough that it didn't require expanding on. It is really very straightforward.

In order to live, and simply live, all you need is water and food a couple of times a week.
To live comfortably, you need food and water every day, plus shelter.
To live plentifully, you need food, water in abundance, comfortable shelter, and maybe some fucking art.

Thus,
I elaborate my admittedly vague sentence, in hopes that it will cease
to be ruled out as simple, but instead intentionally left vague in order
to incite thought.
You are capable of thought, I take it. I hope so. Thinking for others is not among my preferred activities.

I will even add a quote:

"Do
not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that
what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for."

How is that?

I was not responding to you, nor expressing agreement with her.
I was offering advice as to how to deal with what she considered inferior.

You were responding to me. You told me to learn to think and then some nonsense about my looks and my dad.
My post is in response to that. It is a disagreement with the concept that because my posts are brief, the lack thought. Read again please.

Quote :

phoneutria wrote:

It
annoys me that in a forum of people who claim to have to dumb
themselves down in order to have a social life, I have to put filler in
my post to adapt to your style, in which everything must be explicit and
nothing can be intended.
Read the fucking post, then put your fucking think box to work. Is that too much to ask?

I never expressed confusion.

Is it possible that some might use laconic phrases and referencing to mask their own vulnerabilities?
From personal experience I have discovered that at times those appearing to be deep and wise if pushed, have on understanding of their own wisdom and depths.

Yes, bus is that the case?
You and poison seem to have already decided that it is.
And thus I look down on you, not in reciprocation, but because my posts are lost in you.

Quote :

I asked a scientist to define the #1 upon which the entire edifice of science rests and he offered me a mathematical reference with no philosophical backing.
He simply accepted the metaphor as a starting proposition, which he could not define nor defend, but which was useful to him and his peers, and popularly accepted as such.
I'm sure that some time in the past similar issues arose when asking a priest to define God.

Cool story.

Quote :

I'm sure that being anti-materialistic makes you part of a rare breed of females,

It goes further than that...

Quote :

but I can't see upon what grounds you base your own "philosophy".

I don't have one.

Quote :

It seems like its more of a hip thing to be; a rejection of the social norm that sets you apart.

"Social norm" is also subjective. Remember, I am not from here.

Quote :

But without this understanding one crutch is replaced by another.
We supposedly, overcome God, but then we become enamored with his numerical representation...the #1.
We supposedly overcome Jude-Christianity but then we become faithful to its secular form of liberalism.
We supposedly are anti-nihilistic but then we believe and propose the elimination of all categories and dismiss nature and the world as a fake or as a primeval burden we must overcome, in effect erasing from memory all that constitutes identity. We then call this "freedom".

We are condemned to replace one concept with another, because we need to understand.
And when we reach the end of the stack, we return to the first concept.
We are vain creatures. Vanity of vanities... remember [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] one?

"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun."

Is that... nihilism? In the holy fucking bible?!

Quote :

phoneutria wrote:

BTW:
first you said that need is the sensation of absence, then you said
that need is the sensation of fluidity. In my post I said that need is
fluid. How are we in disagreement?

I try to use precise words to express my ideas.
Need, for me, is an interpretation of fluidity.
Since all interpretation is constantly updated then all is fluid.

Why must we disagree?

It seems that, despite the "no sweetie", and the "learn to think", we don't disagree at all.

phoneutria wrote:

"Social norm" is also subjective. Remember, I am not from here.

phoneutria wrote:

Satyr wrote:

but I can't see upon what grounds you base your own "philosophy".

I don't have one.

phoneutria wrote:

You and poison seem to have already decided that it is.
And thus I look down on you, not in reciprocation, but because my posts are lost in you.

phoneutria wrote:

It seems that, despite the "no sweetie", and the "learn to think", we don't disagree at all.

It would appear that I am in disagreement with you.

Not on the subject being discussed.

Satyr wrote:

Abstract wrote:

In order to justify this you would have to prove that we actually need to live... but we don't. all these things you call needs are only needed because of the desire to live. thus everything comes down to a desire. So my question to you is do we need to live?

I do.
I need to survive, to be conscious and willful, and to survive, is to live.
Do you?

To act on need one need not be aware of the outcome.
An animal strives to persist, without having a conception of need or existing of life.
It acts on an impulse.

Can you explain how it is that you reason that you need to live?

No I do not need to live... but there are particular things that I want to do.

We could step into the more ...metaphysical... and ask: can we actually not-live? perhaps after the death of this body we are reborn..or there is some after life... but that is another question and perhaps one that is unsatisfactorily answerable.

Satyr wrote:

Abstract wrote:

By the way you never answered my question: Do you seek for converts?

No, do you?

Might depend on how it is meant... at times..as I think many do... I desire to have particular people do things, and thus it could be said that I make effort to convert them in a manner to aid in the accomplishment of what I desire. Though personally I do my best not to do such wherein it is evident that it will do wrong to the given convert. And generally my goals or what I desire is in line with what seems to be what is most likely to justly fulfill the desires of the people...or something like that... (why?....Why not?)

Satyr wrote:

Abstract wrote:

No you only need that stuff if you seek to live. if you don't desire to live then you don't grasp for those things and you die, plain and simple, because you are mortal. It is only a need for something in the sense that you desire to live.

Ergo to exist as a consciousness means to contradict, to resist, entropy, or fragmentation.

Maybe only if you are of a particular state of consciousness... one might say that particular states of thinking are purely reactionary where in one then does not resist, they are just instinctual reacting as I do by beating my heart...and then that requires the presumption that there is not the possibility I mentioned above of stuff like after lives or reincarnation...

And even then one does not constantly have to resist... for example if one only want to live for a few ..i don't know 3 days ..they don't have to resist... (unless there happens to be a human eating beast around...stalking them...) they can just sit and do nothing and live without resisting for a time being...

And then do we resist constantly or only for moments or particular periods of time?

And then in order to say it is resistance doesn't that require the belief in free-will... otherwise everything is predetermined and we are really just going with the flow, right?

Satyr wrote:

It is an act of will, giving itself direction with these projected objects/objectives.
Desire is the focus of the Will upon them.

Again: Need is the consciousness of a linear flow...a towards increasing entropy.
It is an ordering in the disordering.

Without thought there is no recognition of anything being ordered or disordered. so perhaps both require perception?

but to be honest maybe I have lost track of some of the context or something but I don't know that I follow what you mean by need being the consciousness of a linear flow?

Satyr wrote:

You react instinctively...alter you gain self-consciousness, questioning, as you do this need.
You turn to God or you become nihilistic, wondering why one must live at all.
The animal, or the simpleton, does not h ave existential questions. He is an agent of life, and acts in accordance to its needs as these have been produced by the reaction to entropy.

Is there really in "accordance" when it is pure reactive action? except accordance to the environmental activity that resulted in stimulating the reaction?

Satyr wrote:

Abstract wrote:

Example: a person can desire only to have power, sex, and money...3 things.. and be very active
Another person can want power, sex, and money...world peace or something, and thus does not do anything for the sake of not contradicting peace.

But he does...he is forever active.
His heart beats, his mind thinks and hopes, his immune system resists...
He is inactive in relation to manmade constructs such as peace and power.
These are not possible in the absolute sense but only ephemerally and in regards to a condition a man can cope with...or they are comparisons of states.

If we are to look at things in that sense then we must say that all people are equally active in that we are all infinitely active in that there are an infinite number of actions going on in accordance to what we are including not simply heart palpitations but alterations of cellular behavior and what not?

Satyr wrote:

Abstract wrote:

if there is an ultimate such as a god it does not necessarily have to be perfect. (Hinduism)

therefore he exists within the world and is a participant, contradicting any idea of omnipotence and omniscience.

Not therefore; there can be nothing concluded regarding such I would think, if anything can be concluded regarding anything. omnipotence would not necessarily be contradicted because we do not know what all-powers are or are not, and what are not powers but rather imaginary things we think would be nice if they were powers... like wise that does not necessarily contradict omniscience. ironically given ideas of rebirth ... if one has experienced an infinite number of lives then we are all omniscience, we just don't currently know all things, or all things at one given time except perhaps that one moment that is the entirety of time.

Satyr wrote:

Are not Hindus polytheists?

Some might be... most think of the gods as being manifestations of the one divine entity they think is the ultimate... many call that ultimate brahman some think it is shakti... some shiva... some vishnu... etc... hinduim is realy a polytheoristic religion... there are atheist Hindu sects...

Satyr wrote:

The ancient Greeks believed in such gods.
They were symbols of natural processes. Approachable, faulty prone to errors and and susceptible to manipulation.

Different... the gods of hinduism are often more fair to be called representative of particular natures of types of people... to some...

Satyr wrote:

Abstract wrote:

I don't see how that conclusion follows from the premise? I presume for some reason you think I believe in a state of absolute bliss?

You used the word "happiness".
I'm simply pointing out that this is an ephemeral and negative state.

I thought I did use it once. I don't know that it is a negative state while it is in effect but perhaps it results in negativity? Fly to high and suffer to great a fall...sort of thing.

Satyr wrote:

Abstract wrote:

But let me ask you this, if there is a state of contentment and that is all there can be then is not that then the ultimate state and thus what should be called bliss?

Yes, and if there is a christian God The Rapture is coming.

everything that has yet to be is always approaching, coming, if it can be.

Satyr wrote:

Abstract wrote:

I think need can only exist in the sense of defining it as something that is required to fulfill the desire to live or live content.

I'm wodnering to myself if you show this much sleticism to the notion of a Will, as it has been used by others.
For me there is no Will without consciousness, as there is no need without it.
There is Flux, which needs not because it is both unconscious and not a thing at all. Life is a direction towards Thingness, in its positive form, or a towards No-Thing in its negative.

Seems like your lookin at half the circle things go that direction and approach no thingness and then come back around...perhaps...

what did you mean by the first sentence? Selectism?

Satyr wrote:

You, like many liberals and New age spiritualists think of words within the prism of capitalism and modern day political discourse.
I could care less about your "progressive" ideals and naive expectations.
I've concluded that liberalism or this need, NEED, to abolish categories and create uniformity and the absence of suffering, similar to eastern spiritualism, is a hidden nihilism.
You seek to abolish the very factors that made you possible, like greed, violence, selfishness etc.
This is a form of self-hatred.

I am an advocate of asceticism and balance, but I do not cloud it with pseudo-altruism and morality.

Your continued suggested interpretations of my nature continue to be quite inaccurate. I can be considered some what liberal in the literal since of the word given places where it is efficient to do such. Neither did I ask you to care about my ideals, nor are they necessarily progressive as many of them if not all are repetitions of things that have been said before. further i don't desire uniformity if anything i am bored and find it fun to see reductions in suffering because it is a challenging thing to attempt puzzling. In fact i am quite open to what is the most logical consideration or thought such as to inform action and so must say i find this particular ad hom of yours as rather ill with regards to logically convincing me of any particular mode of thought...not that I am suggesting you are attempting such necessarily.

Satyr wrote:

No, we are not.

I claim that the universe has no objective...it is Flux.
Interaction, blind and without meaning and purpose.

Life, and the consciousness it produces, is what gives direction and then when it results in self-consciousness it seeks, at first, externally and then projects from the abstractions it creates itself, a purpose and a meaning...an object/objective.

This projection is need in the face of an absence.
What is absent is indeterminate for the very reason that it is absent. It can be anything the human mind can imagine and project out of necessity.

I call it the absolute.
you might call it by its many other names: Thing, One, God, Particle, Static, Whole, Self.....and so on and so on.

I didn't think we were talking of the universe as having an objective... but of individual humans having desires...

anyways...

If life gives direction and life springs from the universe then the universe is what initially directed and thus directs life, isn't it... what allows life to magically be able to direct things any more then anything else?

Is it perhaps an abstraction to think that the universe is or isn't a separate from consciousness in the first place?

Abstract wrote:

I didn't think we were talking of the universe as having an objective... but of individual humans having desires...

If portions of the universe can have objectives, then we do not know if the whole thing does or does not.

Abstract wrote:

Can you explain how it is that you reason that you need to live?

There is no choice without life.

Life is an automatic reaction. You don't think about breathing, you do so automatically because you need oxygen.
You can't even will yourself not to breath, although it is reported that Diogenes dies by holding his own breathe...but you can end your automatic breathing by killing yourself.

The automatic processes which are reactions to entropy can only be appreciated after the fact.
Nihilism is partly a questioning of one's own constant and automatic reaffirmation of life.
Life is an ordering....ergo it needs energies to order itself.

Abstract wrote:

We could step into the more ...metaphysical... and ask: can we actually not-live? perhaps after the death of this body we are reborn..or there is some after life... but that is another question and perhaps one that is unsatisfactorily answerable.

I don't discuss such hypotheticals.

Abstract wrote:

Might depend on how it is meant... at times..as I think many do... I desire to have particular people do things, and thus it could be said that I make effort to convert them in a manner to aid in the accomplishment of what I desire. Though personally I do my best not to do such wherein it is evident that it will do wrong to the given convert. And generally my goals or what I desire is in line with what seems to be what is most likely to justly fulfill the desires of the people...or something like that... (why?....Why not?)

I find people tiresome.
My ambitions are strictly personal.
Others get in the way, slow me down, or divert me from my main goal.

Do I get a sense of power when I do influence someone?
Definitely.
But it does not affect my self-assessment.

Abstract wrote:

And even then one does not constantly have to resist... for example if one only want to live for a few ..i don't know 3 days ..they don't have to resist... (unless there happens to be a human eating beast around...stalking them...) they can just sit and do nothing and live without resisting for a time being...

The act of existing as a willful cohesive emergent unity, is an act of aggression.
When you eat, you deny that organism life but you also deny it's nutrients to another.
When you breath you appropriate the oxygen.
When you defend yourself against viruses you resist infiltration asserting your domain.

This is why the Buddhist non-resistance, non-aggression, myth is bullshit.
If you live...you are doing so by resisting, by being selfish and aggressive.

Abstract wrote:

And then do we resist constantly or only for moments or particular periods of time?

Flow is constant...resistance to it is cosntant.....repairing the attrition this produces is constant.
Age is the fatigue that follows.
In time the attrition of retaining cohesion and resisting produces so much damage, accumulated through time, that the combined energies under the organism's control become insufficient to deal with it. At that point the organism begins to decline and then it dies.

Time is both a blessing and a curse.
Nietzsche's overman was the future man who has overcome the resentment this produces in the aware mind.
It is the overcoming of resentment towards the very thing which makes life possible...in a sense it is an overcoming of self-hate.

Much of liberal politics, this denial and dismissal of the past, is a hidden self-hatred as one hates or wishes to forget the very circumstances that brought him about.

Abstract wrote:

And then in order to say it is resistance doesn't that require the belief in free-will... otherwise everything is predetermined and we are really just going with the flow, right?

I've said this before but since you ask I'll say it again.
Free-will is a self-contradicting concept.

When I will, I will what I do not posses, but only in degree, I will what I lack absolutely...ergo Will to power and Will to life.
I will what I need...ergo I am dependent on its attainment.
Therefore I am not independent...not free.

Free-will, for me is about increasing ones approach towards the absolute.
The closer I get to it, without ever finishing the job, the more free I become....and this is accompanied by an indifference since to not need, to be free, is to be indifferent.

Abstract wrote:

Without thought there is no recognition of anything being ordered or disordered. so perhaps both require perception?

Yes, but you are talknig about the after emergence of consciousness, out of this ordering, and then self-consciousness.

This is why you understand yourself after-the-fact...as consciousness is a looking back.
By the time you've conceptualized the phenomenon that stimulated your sense organs it has ceased to be as it was...because flow is constant.
Therefore you are perceiving, no matter how fast your analytical ability is, the world that was.
This makes the liberal notion of forgetting the past or dismissing it, more ironic, as it constitutes a diminishment of consciousness.

If we are all the sum of our pasts, then knowing yourself (Know Thyself) is knowing your past and accepting it.
Dismissing it is a form of self denial and a dumbing-down.
The system benefits from it because a less self-aware mind is a mind more desperate to find identity in the more immediate past.
The system offers its artifices, its social statuses and its values to fill in the void it produced by training the mind to dismiss the past as primitive or irrelevant or an illusion.

The mind is lost, cut off from its heritage. It does not even accept its own nature as being determining.
It is a tabula rasa, Sartre's terror of his delusional absolute freedom.
Sartre was a douche-bag.
Man is not free, as he is contingent and a product of a past he cannot change.
Man strives for freedom, by slowly diverting his path willfully and against the determinations of the past.
Freedom is another word for the absent.
It is nihilism. To be absolutely free is to need nothing, noone; it is to be omnipotent and omniscient...indifferent.
To be God is to be a singularity that requires nothing.
Consciousness is an ordering, and so the absolutely ordered would require no ordering.
What would an omniscience Being do with consciousness? Thinking would be obsolete.

The only way around this dilemma is a simple baptism:
You just call the ordering order....or you call change perfection.
Now we are dealing with semantics.
To make it all make sense you redefine existence as an illusion, or you make it into some kind of staging area, a purgatory awaiting the more real reality.
The world is degraded into a fake, an undesirable one.

Abstract wrote:

but to be honest maybe I have lost track of some of the context or something but I don't know that I follow what you mean by need being the consciousness of a linear flow?

Entropy is increasing.
In fact as time passes and order decreases entropy is speeding up.
Life is an ordering in this disordering...ergo it needs...and it suffers because it resists the flow of time.
You can't escape suffering because to suffer is synonymous with living. You can, however, build up your tolerance, momentarily as age deals with that as well, increasing your possibility for comfort. Comfort is a state where the energies under your willful control are sufficient to deal with entropy.

Consciousness is the awareness of existence...which is increasing in entropy resulting in need which if left unsatisfied builds up into suffering.
So, being conscious is the awareness of flow towards increasing entropy...which is the only direction life is possible in - the arrow of time.
There are other direction, dimensions, but your mind being an ordering tool, it can only exist in relation to increasing entropy, or disordering.

Abstract wrote:

Is there really in "accordance" when it is pure reactive action? except accordance to the environmental activity that resulted in stimulating the reaction?

Think of it as a vortex in a river.
The water's interaction produces pockets of slower or faster flows....we know these as different forms of matter or energies.
Once in a while these interactions create a congruence of flow which is juxtaposed to the flow of the river. It spins there, self-organizing, facing the attrition of the water's flow around it.
If it survives long enough it might grow in power, offer more resistance, perhaps direct its congruence of energies towards more order...or against the flow of the river...Will to...whatever.
Life begins as a simple reactivity, following paths of least resistance. It then might evolve into a more complex organism and be more willful. At this ponit it might choose a path of more resistance to gain an advantage over other organisms.
This is a survival tactic, entailing an increase of risk and suffering with the hope of higher or longer lasting returns.

An accordance is a congruence of flow which following the path of least resistance benefits from the synergy of flowing in unison, thusly decreasing the effect of resistance to its flow.
Like a current within the ocean characterized by a different temperature and speed of flow in relation to the waters around it.

Abstract wrote:

If we are to look at things in that sense then we must say that all people are equally active in that we are all infinitely active in that there are an infinite number of actions going on in accordance to what we are including not simply heart palpitations but alterations of cellular behavior and what not?

Actions are always reactions or, more precisely, they are interactions. These are governed by a differentiation in energies, or strength, power.
Not all have equal power, energies at their disposal and not all face the same exact interactions, environments.
But all are affected by temporal attrition with a definite end.

Therefore no, actions are limited, not infinite.

Also activity is existence and existence is experienced as need.
Ergo the one who needs less, is approach perfection...omnipotence....and here's the conundrum which makes the finalization of the approach towards the absolute impossible: As one approaches the absolute, the state of godliness if you will, he can be thought of as dropping out of existence.

Abstract wrote:

Not therefore; there can be nothing concluded regarding such I would think, if anything can be concluded regarding anything. omnipotence would not necessarily be contradicted because we do not know what all-powers are or are not, and what are not powers but rather imaginary things we think would be nice if they were powers... like wise that does not necessarily contradict omniscience. ironically given ideas of rebirth ... if one has experienced an infinite number of lives then we are all omniscience, we just don't currently know all things, or all things at one given time except perhaps that one moment that is the entirety of time.

You show an interest in rebirth because as a living organism the idea of living forever appeals to you.
Will to life, for you, is projected in this rebirth metaphor.

Here's the thing, identity is built on memory.
You are not the same person you were at your birth....not even your cells are the same.
So how are you a cohesive entity?
Memory....genes are a form of codified memory; memes are a form of codified, by man this time, memory.
The continuity of flow you call "I" is held together by memory.
Take away this memory or cut it at some point and you lose identity.
This is why the teaching of dismissing the past is a form of amputation or a reduction of self-awareness and self-identification.

What does it matter if you are reborn a million times as nothing is passed on...therefore the "you" in the sentence "you are reborn" is nonsensical.
Christians invented the spirit to deal with this issue.

Abstract wrote:

Some might be... most think of the gods as being manifestations of the one divine entity they think is the ultimate... many call that ultimate brahman some think it is shakti... some shiva... some vishnu... etc... hinduim is realy a polytheoristic religion... there are atheist Hindu sects...

There are varieties of spiritual dogmas built around monism.
They all have certain things in common.

A true polytheist, a pagan, rejects any idea of a singular divine authority: a dictatorship of God.
To a pagan only submission and respect towards nature is possible.
Nature and its forces symbolized using anthropomorphic concepts. A true pagan does not go outside reality to justify his existence or his beliefs.

Abstract wrote:

Seems like your lookin at half the circle things go that direction and approach no thingness and then come back around...perhaps...

Because consciousness is a 'looking back' the idea that there is an immutable substance comes about because the apst cannto be changed, thuogh change is occuring all around us.
So this past is immutable and forever mysterious because nobody can ever know all the past.

Life is, as was said, an ordering, just as consciousness is.
Knowledge is a codified, ordered state of sensual awareness.
Therefore life is only possible in this direction of increasing entropy and impossible in the imagined opposite.
In a direction of decreasing entropy all would be ordering and so life would be impossible as it would not be distinguishable or even reactive.

If we think of the Big Bang as not a singular event but an ongoing one then entropy is increasing and decreasing simultaneously, but life is only possible in one direction.
Of course this image of a looping universe is itself a human construct...a method of comprehending artistically, visually, symbolically, what is incomprehensible.
for all we know this looping is not in perfect balance and it is deteriorating....one day to vanish. A membrane amongst many others that also interact with each other in a vast game of creation destruction.

Some things you must pass over in silence.

Abstract wrote:

what did you mean by the first sentence? Selectism?

Typo...it should read: Skepticism.

Abstract wrote:

I am an advocate of asceticism and balance, but I do not cloud it with pseudo-altruism and morality.

Your continued suggested interpretations of my nature continue to be quite inaccurate. I can be considered some what liberal in the literal since of the word given places where it is efficient to do such. Neither did I ask you to care about my ideals, nor are they necessarily progressive as many of them if not all are repetitions of things that have been said before. further i don't desire uniformity if anything i am bored and find it fun to see reductions in suffering because it is a challenging thing to attempt puzzling. In fact i am quite open to what is the most logical consideration or thought such as to inform action and so must say i find this particular ad hom of yours as rather ill with regards to logically convincing me of any particular mode of thought...not that I am suggesting you are attempting such necessarily.[/quote]Deciphering you and all people is a hobby of mine.
As this medium only provides me with abstractions, I only have them to go by.

----------------------------

Abstract wrote:

If life gives direction and life springs from the
universe then the universe is what initially directed and thus directs
life, isn't it... what allows life to magically be able to direct things
any more then anything else?

There is no magically.
Man is the only entity which can projects abstractions so as to direct his own actions.....making them more efficient and effective.
We might consider man as a germinating god...a piece of the Flow trying to attain absolute order, by reaching the "desirable" destination of perfection or a singular Being...a Becoming wanting to finally Be.
This too is a nihilistic tendency.

The universe is just Flux...that a life form emerges with self-destructive tendencies or awakens to its own existence and finds in it anxiety and more pain and suffering (because more awareness leads to more suffering) is really a parenthesis in the entire process.
The universe has no direction. Man projects abstractions to give himself a direction...a focus for his flow (Will).

Abstract wrote:

Is it perhaps an abstraction to think that the universe is or isn't a separate from consciousness in the first place?

Consciousness is a part of the universe awaking to itself...just as self-consciousness is a part of consciousness awakening to itself.
In both cases consciousness is not complete and always a process...a tool of survival.

This awakening is always accompanied with dissatisfaction...and coming to terms with this or dealing with this, is part of the human condition.
There is no consciousness outside life. Consciousness is developing, evolving.

"Desire" is the focus upon an object/objective.
Desire is the Will focused.