The Enigma

[propellerbeanie]

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an inigma, a harmless inigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth" -Umberto Eco

Terrible is sort of an understatement, but I agree with the rest. It is not the thing in itself that is bad, but what we do with it that makes it frightful.

[MKFaizi]

Well, blow me down. I thought you were talking about an iguana.

You mean, enigma?

The world is an enigma because it's full of assholes.

Even a lizard could figure that one out.

Faizi

[N0X23]

But we are that thing in itself. There is no division between us and “it”. We don’t do anything, it does us, and its doing of us, is indifferent. Frightful is an erroneous concept derived out of an imagined, individualistic segregation.

[kjones]

"the truth is that the truth can't be known, and knowing that this truth is unknowable isn't in the least harming me - i must believe this!"

echo /Umberto's_Grief > /C21st_Humanity

$How_much_more_of_this_do_we_need

[propellerbeanie]

"the truth is that the truth can't be known, and knowing that this truth is unknowable isn't in the least harming me - i must believe this!"

echo /Umberto's_Grief > /C21st_Humanity

$How_much_more_of_this_do_we_need

If you understand it, you need little enough. Considering how many people have died for the truth, and for the lack of truth which is the tail of the same coin, I would say this is a lesson well needed. Philosophers and scientist should take an oath like doctors to first do no harm. Until then, if you want the truth I want to know why.

[Leyla Shen]

Hm. No harm?

How about just a little bit of harm?

What about getting your wife pregnant and putting her through all those contractions and birth (not to mention the kid that comes out screaming)?

Elaborate, please.

Edit: just as an afterthought, how can you possibly know what is or isn't harmful without truth?

[propellerbeanie]

Hm. No harm?

How about just a little bit of harm?

What about getting your wife pregnant and putting her through all those contractions and birth (not to mention the kid that comes out screaming)?

Elaborate, please.

Edit: just as an afterthought, how can you possibly know what is or isn't harmful without truth?

You say it yourself. Even our births are an injury. If you could hold the earth in your hands like God as you might hold an orange and see the spread of humanity upon the surface of the earth our progress would resemble some slime mold, wrecking, ruining, remodeling, warring and deforesting, extincting even, if that is a word. Where do we walk without footsteps? We even fill space with junk. We are homotrashiest.
So If you ask: How can I know without truth? I know because I live consciously and add to that voluminous reading, during which I have had time to notice that every book written has a particular view of truth, and that the truth that most often claims divine inspiration, which is the very truth one should expect to be good is the first people do evil in defense of.
If the truth is our friend, then the absolute truth is our enemy. The truth that counts is the one we are born with and know before words, before a concept of 'truth' and that for most people is never spoken, and it is the kindness and love we know from our mothers that is the essential truth all humanity knows, of all social exchanges, and it is this truth of love and caring that is first disregarded in the quest for ultimate or absolute truth. We know truth with life. All truth against life is not truth at all, but that is the very sort that is killed for.

[Leyla Shen]

Father Beanie:

I know because I live consciously and add to that voluminous reading, during which I have had time to notice that every book written has a particular view of truth, and that the truth that most often claims divine inspiration, which is the very truth one should expect to be good is the first people do evil in defense of.

The (absolute) truth does not claim anything -- not divine inspiration and not defence of itself. It is people who claim this, and take up words and arms in its defence. Am I to believe every maniac is enlightened just because he says he acts in the name of God?

If the truth is our friend, then the absolute truth is our enemy.

Every book you read and act you conceive is an "act of God." The Absolute Truth is the only friend you have. Any phenomenon is nothing more than the folding and unfolding of the absolute in time, packeted by the practical mind into envelopes of suitable truth and lies like love letters hurled into the wind.

[David Quinn]

I wouldn't worry about it, Leyla. He is only interested in Oprah-speak. It's not worth it.

-

[Leyla Shen]

“There should be a deep attachment, heart should be tied to heart between parent and child, for unless the child learns how to love a parent profoundly, I believe that he will never learn how to love anyone else profoundly, and not knowing how to love means the loss of the meaning of life and its fulfillment. I loved both my parents but at different times and in different ways. In childhood all my love went to my mother; my love for my mother was a thing apart. It was rooted in my blood and my bones.”

Search on Oprah's site on "love"

I think you could be right.

I wonder where her love for her father came from, then?

[DHodges]

If the truth is our friend, then the absolute truth is our enemy.

It is certainly your enemy.

[propellerbeanie]

Father Beanie:

I know because I live consciously and add to that voluminous reading, during which I have had time to notice that every book written has a particular view of truth, and that the truth that most often claims divine inspiration, which is the very truth one should expect to be good is the first people do evil in defense of.

The (absolute) truth does not claim anything -- not divine inspiration and not defence of itself. It is people who claim this, and take up words and arms in its defence. Am I to believe every maniac is enlightened just because he says he acts in the name of God?

If the truth is our friend, then the absolute truth is our enemy.

Every book you read and act you conceive is an "act of God." The Absolute Truth is the only friend you have. Any phenomenon is nothing more than the folding and unfolding of the absolute in time, packeted by the practical mind into envelopes of suitable truth and lies like love letters hurled into the wind.

As if: you don't act like truth can be found or inspired or that you can be led to wisdom by your nose. All you see is truth. Look or don't look and you find truth. Truth is everything, and knowing what to do with everything, which is truth, is wisdom. Don't even suppose that any concept no matter how helpful it may be at times -is a truth. It is a lense that darkens all we see through it, and blinds us to all that our concept does not highlight. Or shall I say: we can see all that is preconcieved, and we disregard all that does not fit our conception. Concepts like truth are trick glasses or carnival mirrors. There are no absolute concepts, only people who are absolute about concepts. Those people are the danger, and their concepts are their weapon.

[propellerbeanie]

If the truth is our friend, then the absolute truth is our enemy.

It is certainly your enemy.

To be considered as an absolute the truth must be separated from all the contexts that give the concept meaning. To make truth absolute every single human being, which also happens to be every living human being must be destroyed because it is in their minds that the reality of known and unknown creates multitudes of truths and lies. No truth can be more absolute than the human beings concieving of them, and we are a mixture. Every concept has its opposite or antipod. No one concieves of light without darkness, no one concieves of right without wrong. All attempts at conceptions as absolutes are an appeal to God, and an attack upon human reality.

Let me amend this in plain sight. Annnihilate is a better word than destroyed, above, but to make as nothing says it better. All our concepts must be seen in the light of those who use them, percieve them, and form them. Because each basic concept is already an idea, which is to say: one thing, it is already an absolute. To imagine an absolute of this absolute is to view it out of its contexts, and in the very sense that it never appears.

[Jason]

As if: you don't act like truth can be found or inspired or that you can be led to wisdom by your nose. All you see is truth. Look or don't look and you find truth. Truth is everything, and knowing what to do with everything, which is truth, is wisdom.

What can you do with "everything"? The "doing" would be part of everything.

[propellerbeanie]

As if: you don't act like truth can be found or inspired or that you can be led to wisdom by your nose. All you see is truth. Look or don't look and you find truth. Truth is everything, and knowing what to do with everything, which is truth, is wisdom.

What can you do with "everything"? The "doing" would be part of everything.

Truth is not only everything we see, but all we see with, know with and live with. It is the sea we swim in and the sea we are, and what we can do with this everything is all that is morally right, and if to this we bend our entire wills through our entire lives and gain not an inch on it, we, hopefully, have done no harm. And if we do, then the change becomes stasis, and we do, as well, with that. Truth is not a brick. It is a fluid and dynamic relationship between living people and objectified life. Considered as an abstract or an absolute, truth is only a way to turn truth into a living being, and people into objects.

[Jason]

Truth is not only everything we see, but all we see with, know with and live with. It is the sea we swim in and the sea we are,

I think I agree with you up to this point. Or perhaps you're just getting lucky, it's hard to tell....

and what we can do with this everything is all that is morally right,

So murdering, raping and torture are morally right? Those are some of the things we can do with everything.

[propellerbeanie]

Truth is not only everything we see, but all we see with, know with and live with. It is the sea we swim in and the sea we are,

I think I agree with you up to this point. Or perhaps you're just getting lucky, it's hard to tell....

and what we can do with this everything is all that is morally right,

So murdering, raping and torture are morally right? Those are some of the things we can do with everything.

All that wisdom allows to us freely is what is morally right. It is not morally right only because we do it, No! I was afraid that sentence would give you trouble. I should have clarified it.

[williamashley]

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an inigma, a harmless inigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth" -Umberto Eco

Terrible is sort of an understatement, but I agree with the rest. It is not the thing in itself that is bad, but what we do with it that makes it frightful.

I get reality it is not inigma, this puzzle has been solved.

[williamashley]

Father Beanie:

I know because I live consciously and add to that voluminous reading, during which I have had time to notice that every book written has a particular view of truth, and that the truth that most often claims divine inspiration, which is the very truth one should expect to be good is the first people do evil in defense of.

The (absolute) truth does not claim anything -- not divine inspiration and not defence of itself. It is people who claim this, and take up words and arms in its defence. Am I to believe every maniac is enlightened just because he says he acts in the name of God?

If the truth is our friend, then the absolute truth is our enemy.

Every book you read and act you conceive is an "act of God." The Absolute Truth is the only friend you have. Any phenomenon is nothing more than the folding and unfolding of the absolute in time, packeted by the practical mind into envelopes of suitable truth and lies like love letters hurled into the wind.

-----------

we are all the will of g-d , imo.

[David Quinn]

Jason wrote:

pb: Truth is not only everything we see, but all we see with, know with and live with. It is the sea we swim in and the sea we are,

J: I think I agree with you up to this point. Or perhaps you're just getting lucky, it's hard to tell....

Given that he has firmly attached himself to a couple of small drops within the sea, it's all just empty prattle. It's the same old Oprah-speak. He makes it plain that he doesn't understand anything he says. It's all just meaningless babble that gushes out from his brain with the sole purpose of delighting females.

-

[edited for grammer - DQ]

[MKFaizi]

Oprah-speak. That is so appropro. Not just to potbelly but to the modern world in general.

The Age of Oprah. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times and so on and so forth.

Faizi

[Jason]

Truth is not only everything we see, but all we see with, know with and live with. It is the sea we swim in and the sea we are,

I think I agree with you up to this point. Or perhaps you're just getting lucky, it's hard to tell....

and what we can do with this everything is all that is morally right,

So murdering, raping and torture are morally right? Those are some of the things we can do with everything.

All that wisdom allows to us freely is what is morally right. It is not morally right only because we do it, No! I was afraid that sentence would give you trouble. I should have clarified it.

One of the problems I'm having with your writing is that you keep chopping and changing between truth and morality and wisdom.

If truth is literally everything, then murder, rape and torture are part of truth too. You can't say truth is everything, and then start putting limits on what it is, or is not. If you do, it is no longer everything.

Wisdom/morality on the other hand, might have certain limitations such as not murdering. But if wisdom/morality has limits, it is not everything, and thus it is no longer the same thing as truth, which is everything.

Do you see what I'm saying?

[propellerbeanie]

Jason wrote:

It's all just meaningless babble that gushes out from his brain with the sole purpose of delighting females.

-

[edited for grammer - DQ]

In the middle ages people once accept ass's feces as an aphrodisiac, and you are welcome to test if this quaint theory on your own time. Delighting females is not my concern. Contributing to the happiness of all people by breaking down the walls of prejudice that ignorence builds is a worthy task. To believe one man can delight females, or even understand women as a group, or as a concept is thick. Women cannot be understood, and to think they may be understood is an insult. To think women are one thing because they have a chromosome in common is retarded when they are human based upon many chromosomes in common with men. Women are, as a group, much more human than they are women, and only in a relationship with one woman, exclusively, will you ever begin to understand that one, of many, and you may find that is enough.

[propellerbeanie]

Truth is not only everything we see, but all we see with, know with and live with. It is the sea we swim in and the sea we are,

I think I agree with you up to this point. Or perhaps you're just getting lucky, it's hard to tell....

and what we can do with this everything is all that is morally right,

So murdering, raping and torture are morally right? Those are some of the things we can do with everything.

All that wisdom allows to us freely is what is morally right. It is not morally right only because we do it, No! I was afraid that sentence would give you trouble. I should have clarified it.

If truth is literally everything, then murder, rape and torture are part of truth too. You can't say truth is everything, and then start putting limits on what it is, or is not. If you do, it is no longer everything.

Truth is everything, and everything we do. Just as the industrial revolution waited on the steady rest for lathes, the revolution in human behavior waits on a firm point of stasis, a fulcrum upon which we can balance the fluid and changing nature of reality. Our human will seems an insignificant force at times, but it is made so by the tendency to turn that force against humanity as in murder, where will goes against will. Our consciousness does not stop us from being truth, or affecting truth, but it makes us singular of all truth, in the sense of not being mindless, and in seeing the future to a certain extent.

Wisdom/morality on the other hand, might have certain limitations such as not murdering. But if wisdom/morality has limits, it is not everything, and thus it is no longer the same thing as truth, which is everything.

Do you see what I'm saying?[/

quote]

Wisdom and morality as virtues, like the concept of truth, are a search for a point of stasis in a fluid and dynamic existence. Notice how often the search for wisdom and morality look for absolutes, eternals, consistency, and even laws. The problem is one like parallax one encounters when using a transit, where a small change in point of perspective results in a large change in the field of vision. Human needs and human life are the reliable reference we need in the sea of truth. We cannot conform our behavior to suit gods or dead people however honorable, nor should we bend all of our behavior to supply the needs of a future day. We should look for a moral reference which values all human beings, and tends to support the needs and aspirations of all.

[Kevin Solway]

Beanie,

It would be a good idea if you go to this link and work out how to format your posts.

Practice sending a post, and then replying to it, and replying to the reply to see how the quotations work.