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Rairun wrote:Rhett: Being a good thinker and a good moralist go hand-in-hand Rairun. Whilst most 'moralists' are mind-dead religion regurgitants, there's another breed of people quite unlike them.
Rairun: No, they don't. You can be moralist while being a good thinker, but you have to recognize that you're basically conning people into changing their values.
No, i'm not conning anybody. It has been my experience that the rare breed of people to which i refer are both good thinkers and good moralists, and never have i met or personally experienced either of these attributes in isolation. To not be moral is to be wanton, which is clearly not an enlightened state.
Imagine that a guy likes salty food more than sweets, and that he always picks chocolate at the grocery store instead of bread. You can inform him that bread is salty so that he'll buy it instead. You're influencing his actions, but that's not moralism.
Okay, but the motive to educate him could be moral.
Now imagine that I like sweets more than salty food. I walk into the grocery store to get my chocolate bar, and you start telling me that I should buy bread instead. I say that I like chocolate better, but you say, "No, you're dellusional!" That's moralism. I understand perfectly what chocolate and bread taste like, and I perfer the former.
That's not an accurate analogy. You've neglected to account for the emphasis you placed on "fun" and "selfishness", placing them above honesty and truthfulness, towards which you were derogatory.
You can disguise moralism and say it's the truth, if it suits your purposes. I'm just saying that in reality it's not.
It depends on whether one is referring to a conventional 'moralist', that holds onto various sayings and regurgitates them at whim in an absolutist manner, or whether one is referring to what i might call a moralist.
Rhett: But then how will you do what you want, unless what you want to do is be in jail?
Rairun: That's a purely pragmatic question, really. You have to weight the predicted results of each action, then decide which one you're going to choose according to your values. If you want to do something that will get you in jail, you'll have to ask yourserlf, "Do I value doing this one thing more than being free?" If your answer is yes, then go ahead and do it. If it's no, then deal with it.
I will now make a public statement urging everyone to completely purge all amoral self-oriented characters from your life. Shun them and leave them. They do you and us harm. If we all do this we will make a far better world. Pass this message on.
Rhett: Do you have the gumption to acknowledge that you've been well educated and pampered in life, and that this has arisen only because most people aren't psychopathic?
Rairun: That's a difficult question to answer because I don't know how efficient secular institutions are when it comes to holding society together.
Secular institutions remove us from a hand-and-mouth existence, giving us time to develop spiritually.
Do we need guilt to make people work together without killing each other? Or is a good legal system enough?
In this day-and-age, yes, most people still need guilt for civilisation to exist. We need
more of it.
Legal systems will always be restricted by;
- their inability to completely foresee new forms of destructiveness, and
- their inability to completely counteract the deviousness of the clever, and
- their inability to enforce all contraventions of the law, and
- the depravity of the persons upholding the legal system, and
- etc . . .
Most people forget that all legal systems are founded on the belief in truth. They could not operate otherwise. Need i note that Postmodernism is completely anti legal systems?
Rairun: Also, psychopathic people, such as myself, aren't necessarily a threat. Although my life style is not exactly traditional (it might even be frowned upon), I don't think it's too harmful to the workings of society in general. I don't feel like going around killing people or anything like that. I don't feel the need to con people for money.
Yes, you are very normal and boring, and you're not seeing the harm you are already doing. For example, in this thread you've spoken favourably of the bad side of a well-known 'spiritual teacher'. It's ever so easy to keep people in the animal realms by appealing to their base nature, in the same way it's ever so easy for a terrorist to destroy.
That being said, I'd have no problems acknowledging that. I'm not claiming that we should make an effort to turn people into psychopaths.
Yet you are doing exactly that.
Rhett: Who here do you find saying these glorious states are of inherently greater value?
Rairun: You find an innocent, gullible person, and he'll most likely be attracted to your "glorious" states, even if you say they aren't of inherently greater value.
Do you find something wrong with that?
That being said i don't tend to spend time with overly gullible people.
Rhett: Do you like being conned Rairun?
Rairun: I'm not being conned by him, am I?
Well, maybe he conned me into thinking he's cool. The thing is that if he turned out not to be cool, I wouldn't be disappointed. I don't really care about him.
My intention was to highlight the experience of being conned, which is invariably unpleasant. Do you really wish this upon others?
As for U.G., yes, he has conned you into thinking he is free of cares and concerns and that his teachings can help others become this way. The populace has also conned you along these lines.
Rhett: I agree that he's sloppy but i see the point he is making. He's talking about the ego, the notion of an inherently existent self, which is very destructive of that which is good. It's not necessary for survival or desirable, and is in fact responsible for death and perhaps a lot more of it in the near future.
Rairun: . . . I don't even agree with you that we must believe in an inherently existent self to feel emotions. So you say that the apple doesn't inherently exist -- so what? "I" don't inherently exist -- so what? I want to feel like eating it, so I do.
Please explain to me what is it like to "feel like eating" an apple.
I don't pretend I'm some sort of permanent being that comes into existence uncaused. I'm fine with that.
Are you fine with permanence and the truth that nothing ever actually comes into existence?
Rhett: If he really says those things i say he can't just do what he wants, as he's addicted to fun. I call him a cripple..
Rairun: Rhett, of course he can do what he wants, because what he wants is having fun. That's the way everyone works. By your definition, everyone is a cripple. There isn't some sort of magical entity that freely picks the things it wants out of nowhere. We are always caused to want things, and fun can be one of them.
You're denying that most of people's lives isn't fun. In fact, people's lives aren't fun in proportion to how much they wish for it to be fun. That's an irony you're yet to see. 'Good' emotions are only good in comparison to bad emotions, like the experience of getting out of prison is 'good' compared to being in prison. However, one would be best off with neither experience. People cling to better rather than best because they fail to fathom best.
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