Nietzsche, Orwell, Huxley, Rand

no problem. They were elitist though too. So they hated the common man and wanted to exterminate them, but only keep the well educated, bourgeoise/aristocracy. They felt the common man was a brute and only knew instinctual skills and reproduced too often. I would have to agree mostly.

 

I use the term vain in this sense: too busy looking in the mirror to see the rest of the world, or too even be aware of the mirror.

Efforts made in vain are not always vain efforts. Sometimes the cause may not have the desired effect, but sometimes our desires are vain, and since no cause can be balked of an effect, the subsidiary effect may turn out on the whole to be more self-fulfilling than the cause.

Rolled the dice. Lucky seven or snake eyes, at least I played the game, instead of standing in the corner, looking in the mirror and preaching to the other players about the vanity of gambling.

 

Sorry, have to beg to differ there. None of these people believed that, and niether do I. Nietzsche was disgusted by the herd, no question, but he wasn't blind to his own place among them, or how crass the so-called aristocracy really was. Orwell was a socialist. Rand believed in our democracy, and she came from Russia. With Huxley I am not sure. Maybe another poster who is more well-read than I could enlighten us further?

 

he was liberal, non-specifically (as far as i can tell) anti-capitalist, an individualist and pro democracy.

he was also a committed humanist. so the characterisation of his viewpoint as being dismissive and cynical of humanity, and advocating their destruction, could literally not be any less accurate.

 

Thank you!

 

Much of what you think about what I have said comes not from what I say, but from the string of associations from your past that what I say stimulates in your mind. That is you tend to treat what I say as heard before or stereotypical. I has not occurred to you that you might be hearing something new to your experience.

We all crap out at times osiris, it doesn't mean that those times must be frequent or unpredictable. You suggest that I somehow don't play the game
because you think a lack of indignity is dishonest, that if I don't take offense I am dissociating myself from the rightfully offensive nature of phenomena.

I think your position is a projection that robs you of the power to create anything different. If the big bad world outside is responsible, then you are powerless to do anything but eat it or fight against it. You think I cannot be real because what I describe is beyond your personal experience.

You have said that cause and effect are not always consistent and I find that not to be the case. If your result does not match your avowed cause, then one of the two is a perceptual error. That is honesty is when what you say and what do, are the same. Dishonesty being when what you say should be, doesn't match up with what you say is.

Your argument is incredibly weak if your assertion is, at least I tried.

 

What are you autophobe?

 

erm... that's a pretty loaded question

but, to put it in a format like the one above,

like huxley, i'm an individualist, a humanist and an anti-capitalist

and i'm a libertarian socialist (or social anarchist) which, coincidentally, is exactly where Orwell would fit on the political spectrum. although his views are often misrepresented by right-wing libertarians, and he would have described himself merely as a socialist, one has only to read his early works to see his opposition to state socialism (1984 is a critique of state socialism as the direction of the english socialist movement- "INGSOC" in the book, as well as stalinism) in "homage to catalonia" (probably his best work) he is vocal in support of the anarchist and libertarian socialists in the spanish civil war, and even served in the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM in Spanish), an anti-Stalinist libertarian Marxist militia.

what are you?

 

Hello Auto

Interesting thank you.

Well I suppose I am still working it out. Work in progress so to speak.

Yes "Homage to Catalonia" is a wonderful work. I am pretty shore I know which side I would have been committed to in that conflict.

Regards

 

more than fair, it doesn't do to be rushing to be pigeon-holed. the beliefs gotta come first, the label second, if one fits at all. only really necessary as a means of recognition if you intend to organise.

 

You can avow all you want as to causes. The reason, I suspect, you find "that not to be the case", is because you dissociate from any effects that don't fit your avowed cause. As I said, just a suspicion. It may also be that you don't avow any causes the effects of which you are uncertain. That is moral cowardice in my opinion, as per the discussion you seem so adamant about continuing with me, but have it your way.

Also, I don't pretend to know the effects beforehand, but rather study them in retrospect, and continue to question them as much as I can. One can misattribute an effect to a cause if they don't retain some modesty about their observations and the possibility of perceptual error, as you call it.

I am constantly making mistakes, but that's okay. Live and learn. Your motto seems to be: live and preach. Apparently you already know. Good for you; but I don't believe it. As I've said, I think you're full of it, and I suspect -- suspicious person me! -- that the reason you do so much preaching is to try and reinforce to yourself all the above-mentioned dissociations for the sake of not having to admit your own mistakes.

Nothing you are saying is new to me. Literally nothing. It's the old familiar stench of mysticism redressed in the garb of scientific inquiry; but while you get high on the fumes, I just get sick, as I've overindulged in the past.

The big bad world is not responsible for my position. As part of the big bad world, I am responsible for it, and fighting it or eating it are things I do when I have to, and accordingly, my position changes. Yours is static, though it proposes to be elastic. Bleh.

 

Moral cowardice? What is moral cowardice? I thought it cowardice simply, that you were at one point ignoring my questions and statements et all. It is my feeling that you should be able to stand your premises up to scrutiny if they are indeed strong. I am glad you are responding now.

You made the claim that I asked you unanswerable questions. I pointed out that it was the arbitrary metric, that rough and ready standard, that made the questions unanswerable to you. Considering all things, the questions are not unanswerable.

You certainly are not modest in your estimation of me. You have not asked me one question though I have asked you many. I don't pretend to know things. I know that having and being are the same truth. It can be one thing to act cool and quite another to be cool. I was over myself when I was quite young and I never had anything to say before I was much, much older.

I know for example that the way I initially approached you caused you to respond in an unfortunately predictable manner from which you still haven't entirely recovered. We find those most agreeable whom we agree with and those most disagreeable whom disagree with us. If I had taken pains to flatter you, I might not be wading through defensive response.

This is a philosophy and religion forum in which we share ideas.

What stench of mysticism do you refer to? Is that a reasonable or scientific metric, stench of mysticism?
Where you have overindulged I have transcended. I haven't closed my eyes to the possibility of freshness in the world. I am not ill and am not made ill having conversations with people about ideas.

Static position equals hard and fast rule.
Fighting or eating is all you ever do because you see the cause of your regard as being outside of you. It is either accept or deny the phenomena you see and in that scenario there is little time to develop understanding.
Suspicion is not knowledge and if you rely on suspicion as your guide you will never come to know anything.

 

You say:
"Where you have overindulged I have transcended."

So you keep saying, but I don't see it. Very few people have agreed with me, but I have no trouble talking to them. Ignoring you is not cowardice, simply a way of not wasting precious time. I will now continue in the consummate wisdom of not dealing with dissociative idiots. It's a life lesson. Of course, you'll probably just step in and take over threads as you always do, inundating them with your territotrial pissings and moanings, under a pretense of wisdom and transcension, and masking the smell of the dead horse baking in the sun with the pungent incense of mystic self-aggrandizement under the guise of scientific inquiry.

For someone who claims there is no special knowledge, you sure seem to think you are in possession of quite a bit. You're special, alright. Really... special.

 

I am not at all special and that is what makes what I say relevant at large to those who are interested.

I say I have transcended where you overindulged, because that is what you reported and as the result of your experience of failure to appreciate appropriately, say that the mystic path is bullshit, therefor anyone who puts forward ideas that sound like what you associate as mystic bullshit is also fll of shit. I say it not to say I am better but to say where you stopped, I kept going and where you had a bad experience, I have had a redeeming one.

Failure, is not proof of success.

What evidence can we find of a reasoning mind or an enlightened mind, or of a half wit for that matter on an internet forum in philosophy and religion section? The evidence can only be in the quality of the ideas presented.

The thing about ideas though is the only ideas you can possibly take advantage of are those you allow to have space in your mind.

There is no mud in these head waters.

I see the premise of this thread is that the ideas of these thinkers is found to be significant because they have prophetic power.

Prophecy is simply speaking in accordance with what is. Things seem prophetic because the observation is applicable to many climes.

Example; there will be wars and rumors of war.
When have there not been wars and rumors of war?

It is equally prophetic to say, there will be peace and overtures of peace.

Social critique is not necessary but it is practiced.

Social skills are more of a refinement.

 

Amen.