windhawk wrote:Is it the oneness that is the metaphorical concept we all grasp? I don't think it is, at least not given the strife in the world, even such strife as which constitutes our struggle for survival.
How does the strife in the world indicate a lack of the sense of the oneness of things? Doesn't strife itself signifiy connectedness?
The best example from Eastern thought, of which I'm very much ignorant,[...]
Thank you for the welcome, this looks as if it's going to be fun.
Yes indeed, strife does demonstrate our lot, and if we had some common sense about it, our camaraderie would help immensely, but such as it is, we commit the most outlandish sin against one another.
I'd use a less charged word than sin, but that is the word I'm reaching for. Even mystical relationships can be broken.
People are walking bits of irony. We strive to separate ourselves from others yet that very striving is borne of connectedness. It's quite bizarre, really.
You hit the nail quite squarely on that. Frankly, oftentimes it is the sheer absurdity of it that convinces me that there is an ultimate purpose, which wouldn't put me in very good stead with some of the Europeans of the last millennium. (First & last time I've ever used that expression... felt good too).
DHodges wrote:He was also kind of a dick, what about that? Seriously, this is the guy who didn't like Christianity because it wasn't Christian enough for him.
no idiot. He didn't like phoney Christians, who weren't Christian enough for Christianity.
Kierkegaard's writings are best understoond from the viewpoint of Freudian psychology - it's all about his father, really. He wanted to be more his father than his father was.
this is too far-fetched. For this to be true for Freud, he would need to have an Oedipus Complex, which isn't the case.
Rand and Kierkegaard start from some assumption about how the world is that they do not allow themselves to question. They do not allow themselves complete intellectual honesty and integrity.
I can see this perfectly for Rand and maybe a bit for Kierkegaard, but explain it better. This also doesn't refute that there's a Self.
windhawk wrote:Frankly, oftentimes it is the sheer absurdity of it that convinces me that there is an ultimate purpose
what is this purpose?
we also have strife because although we're causally connected to oneanother, we are only 10% empathetically connected to oneanother, which goes back to my question, how can we have conscience without love?
No, really. Go out and try it. Although, it is possible to turn left by turning the handle bars left, and it is necessary at slow speeds. At anything over, perhaps 5 MPH (a rough guess), you actually do turn the handle bars in the opposite direction to the direction you wish to turn. What happens is that you really turn by moving your center of gravity in the direction you wish to go, and that requires you to conteract it by turing the wheels toward the other side. It is completely subconscious, and is an almost perfect example of how our mind & body accomplish something without an awareness of it penetrating through.
One more point, once you do become aware of it, you become a better bike rider.
Ah, I didn't even know it had a name, and apparently, I'm wrong in thinking that at slow speeds it isn't necessary. The article uses the similar example of how a person learns the physics of walking without consious effort, which when you think of it, there is a lot going on to make it work.
Interestingly, it also discusses how in an emergency situation, the momentary counterturn must be applied post haste, it just astounds me to realize that the mind and body can develop such a synchonicity in absolute defience of what the consious mind is demanding... Go West, young man! Yeah, via Bar Harbor, Maine replies your body.
ok well that's not as important as answering this, can we have conscience without love? Can total indifference and detachment from other people be qualified as conscience?
Faust13 wrote:ok well that's not as important as answering this, can we have conscience without love? Can total indifference and detachment from other people be qualified as conscience?
Conscience is an assessment of one's actions according to one's values. Indifference and detachment mean no values and as few actions as possible.
The indifferent, detached person cannot do right or wrong because they reject that right or wrong exist. Instead of creating their own values in light of their understanding they denied all values.
However, the completely indifferent and detached person doesn't exist. This person would literally do nothing. They wouldn't spread truth, pursue truth, or eat food, because they have zero value in anything. They deny life entirely. The only way you can actually imagine a fully indifferent and detached person is someone who is dead. So when a Buddha finally decides to stop valuing his life and promoting wisdom, he will finally be completely indifferent. He cannot suffer anymore because suffering is life and he is dead!
Faust13 wrote:ok well that's not as important as answering this, can we have conscience without love? Can total indifference and detachment from other people be qualified as conscience?
A wise person does not experience either indifference or detachment (detachment and non-attachment are not the same thing), but let me ask this: what is conscience?
what's the difference between detachment and non-attachment??? Many "wise" people here speak of detachment.
I define conscience to be recognizing that other people exist, and you would help them as much as you humanly could if they were in an emergency. Basically it's the opposite of being a psychopath. But this conscience includes love does it not? The love that Jesus spoke of, is still love on some level, though much healthier.
I recall lying in bed with my woman, our daughter in a bed across the room, all chatting during commercials. It was getting late and the thought occured to me that my daughter had never witnessed what I was about to prove, for, this was the first opportunity I had had to involve a witness because of the lack of a closed bedroom door.
As our conversations were subsiding, a point where voicing any more comments was hindering the approaching sleep. As we shushed each other when the shrinking comments, retarded to maybe two or three a minute, I spoke to my daughter for what, in a perfect world would have been the last time for the evening, by explaining that her mother just could not stand not having the last word.
As silence filled the room, like a shark tasting blood, her need to speek became her tunnel vision universe, and as if I were a prophet, she spoke. No importance to her act, totally redundant at best, yet, she spoke.
This however, opened the door for me to comment to our daughter "See! I told you she couldn't stay silent." At this point, I once again achieved the "last word status" by virtue of my interjected comment.
This, later proved to be the motherload of chum that ultimately sparked an additional half hour of last words and fun poking. Subsequently, when my woman regained her senses, we agreed to a compromise and let the last word of the evening come from our daughter. Even at that, I could still sense the fight to resist the urge beckoning at my woman for quite awhile longer. Finally the flushed color of her face subsided, and we all slept.
The moral of this story is that, I know this post was about something fairly of interest to someone somewhere, but, Like I always find, when a relationship gets distant, and it interpret it as I am being accused of not really understanding why she thinks I never get what she tries to tell me, it's only because, I wasn't really listening, and with a roll of the eyes and a quick "Is this going to be a long story?" I see the color of red appear back onto her face, but it isn't over getting the last word in. The colors are identical though. This could explain why I seem to be confused.
Yeah, we do get off topic in a lot of our posts, but this one still seems to be reasonably on topic to me. (Umm, that was your point, right?)
Faust13 wrote:what's the difference between detachment and non-attachment?
Detachment is kind of like being off in your own little world and not being plugged in to what is really going on. Non-attachment is being okay with the way things are rather than wanting things a certain way so badly that - as some examples - it hurts when things don't go your way, or that you get so happy about things going your way that it clouds your judgment, or so intense about things going your way that you falsely believe that things are going your way when they are not.
Elizabeth Isabelle wrote:Detachment is kind of like being off in your own little world and not being plugged in to what is really going on.
uhh, not being plugged in to what is really going on??? I think that's totally false. Detached people know exactly what's going on, which is why they're detached.
Non-attachment is being okay with the way things are rather than wanting things a certain way so badly that - as some examples - it hurts when things don't go your way, or that you get so happy about things going your way that it clouds your judgment, or so intense about things going your way that you falsely believe that things are going your way when they are not.
being okay with the way things are? what things exactly?
Faust wrote:what's the difference between detachment and non-attachment??? Many "wise" people here speak of detachment.
Well, I think that’s a good question. This is my view.
Detachment implies two things: first and foremost, explicit in the idea is separation. It describes a condition wherein the subject has no connection to particular or general things and circumstances. Consequently, the term itself connotes an emotional (insofar as we consider emotion to be any given psychic, and therefore physical, response to things and conditions rather than the more crude understanding comprising anger, frustration, grief, etc.) state covering everything from the kind of separation and detachment a husband has from his wife through the kind a surgeon needs to do his job effectively to the extreme and fixed manifestation of it in the psychopath.
“Non-attachment†is not loaded with the same meaning because it is not specifically about the condition of separation. It describes, simply, the unfixed/unbound condition.
If one’s relationship is not fixed---either by way of attachment or detachment---to things and conditions, one’s responses to those same things and conditions would be markedly different.
So, there’s not much wrong with a detached surgeon, for example. But a detached human being? I think that’s problematic, myself.
