The difference between imagination and reality:

[jupiviv]

A man's youngest son asked him - 'Father, what is the difference between imagination and reality?'

The man asked his wife, who was sitting beside him, 'Can you imagine yourself having sex with another man for 1 million dollars?'

His wife said, 'Why not? I'd do anything to get a million dollars!'

The man then said to his son, 'You see, in our imagination, we have 1 million dollars, but in reality, we are sitting beside a prostitute!'

[Tomas]

A man's youngest son asked him - 'Father, what is the difference between imagination and reality?'

The man asked his wife, who was sitting beside him, 'Can you imagine yourself having sex with another man for 1 million dollars?'

His wife said, 'Why not? I'd do anything to get a million dollars!'

The man then said to his son, 'You see, in our imagination, we have 1 million dollars, but in reality, we are sitting beside a prostitute!'

So .. the man is the pimp and the son is the bastard child?

[Pam Seeback]

In our imagination we have 1 million dollars, also in our imagination we are sitting beside a prostitute. In the reality of us, there is no rising up to form an image of a thing we have [already] seen, heard, tasted, touched or smelled. Everything of our senses belongs to our realm of imagination, that of us that is without the rising up of our senses is of our realm of our [one] reality of us.

Robert Browning:

"Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
From outward things, waht'er you may believe.
This is an inmost centre in us all,
Where truth abides in fulness and around
Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in.
This perfect, clear perception....which is truth.
A baffling and perverting carnal mesh
Blinds it, and makes all error: and TO KNOW
Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape,
than in effecting entry for light supposed to be without."

[pegasus]

imagination precedes reality, if reality is interpreted as consensus. Imagination stands alone as in a stand alone complex; its ideas are not shared. Someone once said: the present era dreams the next one.

[cousinbasil]

A man's youngest son asked him - 'Father, what is the difference between imagination and reality?'

The man asked his wife, who was sitting beside him, 'Can you imagine yourself having sex with another man for 1 million dollars?'

His wife said, 'Why not? I'd do anything to get a million dollars!'

The man then said to his son, 'You see, in our imagination, we have 1 million dollars, but in reality, we are sitting beside a prostitute!'

Funny one, jup. Now, take my wife.

...Please.

[Kelly Jones]

Tomas is probably right. He has inseminated the woman, and cojoined with her to generate and develop a new life and mind, yet she is a woman who is clearly superficial, and therefore he is clearly guilty of the thing he criticised her of. More guilty, actually, since he is at least aware of the folly of amoral dreams.

It is he who is the prostitute-creator with his damning ideological conflict. It's a story, but I think it's realistic. It's typical of those men who want a principled female - a father - in their woman, but can't generate the principled morality in themselves first. They cling to their dreams. Then they blame their wives for not living up to what they cannot uphold. A lot of the men's movement members are like this. It's a very weak form of masculinity.

Then they have sons, to whom they can self-piteously bemoan the superficiality of the boys' mothers, when it is they who are responsible - as the more conscious creature - for endorsing that superficiality by desiring it as mate. What cretinous behaviour to point the finger at their wives.

And when they are ashamed of themselves and their hypocrisy, the guilty men beg pardon from their unconscious wives, praising them as guiltless goddesses of great forgiveness, compassion and mercy. As if that were the solution! The wives become even more smug and superficial, doubly endorsed in their retardedness, in their haze of false moral superiority. It's enough to make one puke. Where is the guy who will take responsibility for his own crap?


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[jupiviv]

Actually, the joke had nothing to do the man or the son, but about the mother's perception of herself. She's so engrossed in dreaming about getting a million dollars that she forgets that the way she chooses to act in the imaginary scenario makes her character in reality that of a prostitute, and this character is what she is left with in the end, not the $1 million - that's the humour.

You can try to extend the joke beyond what it was intended to portray, but then you wouldn't be talking about the joke. Actually, I think you can read deeper into this joke, in the sense that only our character and whether we act morally or not ultimately matters, so it should never be subordinated to the things that we may or may not want to have at different points of time. Reminds me of a quote from "Sex and character":

Not because coitus is lustful, not because it is the prototype of all delight of the lower life, not for this reason is it immoral. Asceticism, which declares desire as the immoral in itself, is itself immoral; then it seeks the standard of wrongfulness in an accompanying manifestation and external consequence of conduct, not in the mentality: it is heteronomous. The human being may strive for desire, he may seek to arrange his life on earth more easily and more joyfully: only he may never sacrifice a moral law to it.

[Carmel]

A wife ask her husband if he would have sex with another woman for a million dollars...he says no I'd do it for free...

ahahaha!

Some imaginary, hypothetical men are such whores...

[Kelly Jones]

Asceticism, which declares desire as the immoral in itself, is itself immoral;

Internally contradictory, not immoral, if Weininger is talking about abstinence from sexual intercourse, rather than the enhabituated renunciation of desire that characterises the sage. The latter is neither.

then it seeks the standard of wrongfulness in an accompanying manifestation and external consequence of conduct, not in the mentality:

Only if the ascetism is of external things. It doesn't necessarily have to be so. Ascetism could be (and I view it myself as) a mentality, namely, a renunciation of certain thoughts. As a mentality, it's not immoral at all, but then it all depends what one defines morality to be. If Weininger is talking about abstinence from sexual intercourse, and that kind of outward celibacy, then yes, I agree with everything he says.

it is heteronomous.

Yes: it's a lie.

The human being may strive for desire, he may seek to arrange his life on earth more easily and more joyfully: only he may never sacrifice a moral law to it.

Well, striving expresses desire. That's why I said it's internally contradictory. A moral law expresses desire also, albeit usually this is in the domain of the mentality.


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[Kelly Jones]

A wife ask her husband if he would have sex with another woman for a million dollars...he says no I'd do it for free...

ahahaha!

Some imaginary, hypothetical men are such whores...

Technically a whore is a person who accepts money for sexual services. Perhaps you meant slut or nymphomaniac?


.

[Carmel]

lol!

Well, let's just assume this hypothetical man will "fuck anything that moves", in reference to a Lenny Bruce joke about men...but if you prefer to label this imaginary man a "slut", that'll do.

[jupiviv]

Internally contradictory, not immoral.

If you define immorality as "not doing what is right in spite of knowing what is right" then all immoral behaviour is internally contradictory.

Ascetism could be (and I view it myself as) a mentality, namely, a renunciation of certain thoughts. As a mentality, it's not immoral.

It is immoral if the renunciation of certain thoughts(which you are calling a mentality) is done with the conviction that not having those thoughts would lead to morality. In other words: if a certain mentality is itself used as a means to the end of being moral, then that mentality is itself immoral.

Earlier in the book, Weininger talks about hysteria, which is an example of this kind of behaviour.

Well, striving expresses desire. That's why I said it's internally contradictory. A moral law expresses desire also, albeit usually this is in the domain of the mentality.

Depends on the definition of morality. Morality expresses desire only when it is not perfect morality.

One can strive to make his life more pleasurable without having pleasure as the goal of his life, and there is no problem with doing that, as Weininger says.

[Kelly Jones]

Weininger: Asceticism, which declares desire as the immoral in itself, is itself immoral;

Kelly: Internally contradictory, not immoral.

Jupta: If you define immorality as "not doing what is right in spite of knowing what is right" then all immoral behaviour is internally contradictory.

Well, yes. This ties in with "Verlogenheit" (Bob Willis translates that as "mendacity, untruthfulness, dissemblance, semblance, lack of will".) Namely, lack of will is lying to oneself, since one has the will to choose to be apathetic and demoralised. It's the same kind of conceptual internal contradiction, i.e. incoherence. So, his meaning for "immoral" would be essentially: untruth.

Kelly: Ascetism could be (and I view it myself as) a mentality, namely, a renunciation of certain thoughts. As a mentality, it's not immoral.

Jupta: It is immoral if the renunciation of certain thoughts(which you are calling a mentality) is done with the conviction that not having those thoughts would lead to morality. In other words: if a certain mentality is itself used as a means to the end of being moral, then that mentality is itself immoral.

As the adage goes: "You can tell a tree by its fruit". I think the effects of making a bid for truthfulness, even if that is dimmed by psychologically ambivalent motives, indicate morality. By mentality, I meant the contents and meaning of the thoughts, by contrast to Weininger's focus on asceticism as manifested in external phenomena. I can see the latter as being a very dim attempt at morality.

Earlier in the book, Weininger talks about hysteria, which is an example of this kind of behaviour.

Insanity would definitely be holding onto particular mindstates, rather than seeking a resolution of intellectual problems, but I wasn't referring to the former.

Kelly: Well, striving expresses desire. That's why I said it's internally contradictory. A moral law expresses desire also, albeit usually this is in the domain of the mentality.

Jupta: Depends on the definition of morality. Morality expresses desire only when it is not perfect morality.

One can strive to make his life more pleasurable without having pleasure as the goal of his life, and there is no problem with doing that, as Weininger says.

Well, if your standard is perfect morality, there is definitely a problem with having a pleasurable life, since pleasure indicates striving, and, as you say, a perfect morality doesn't express desire.


.

[Kelly Jones]

lol!

Well, let's just assume this hypothetical man will "fuck anything that moves", in reference to a Lenny Bruce joke about men...but if you prefer to label this imaginary man a "slut", that'll do.

Another possibility is being unwilling to take money to have sex. It could imply he had no better talents or ways for making money, lacked initiative, etc. Or, he may have one of those unrealistic, over-romanticised views of sex with women, such that taking money would "cheapen" his "offering" to the goddess. It could also mean he had the traditional view of manhood where a man brings money, not the woman, to the transaction of coupling-up (and marriage). That would be another example of the thread topic. It just boils down to self-deluding glamour.

Jupta's joke has brought out some interesting ideas, basically that women don't have the romanticism of men over sex. They're far more materialistic about it. Which shows their subservience to sexuality, and consequent immorality (or probably amorality) because they've displaced the idea into the external quite instinctively.

I mean, there are still far more female prostitutes making packets, and justifying it because of those packets.


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[Carmel]

delete: duplicate post

[Carmel]

Kelly

Jupta's joke has brought out some interesting ideas, basically that women don't have the romanticism of men over sex.

Carmel:
While that may be true in your imagination, reality begs to differ. According to research from the Kinsey Institute, woman's sexual fanatasies are typically more romantic, whereas men's sexual fantasies tend to be more explicit, hence Bruce's "Men will fuck anything that moves" joke. get it now? I'm a little surprised that I have to exppain this to you.

Kelly:
I mean, there are still far more female prostitutes making packets, and justifying it because of those packets.

Carmel:
I see you missed the point of the Lenny Bruce joke. There are far more whoremongers, than there are whores. Your notion that women are more immoral than men simply doesn't hold in the light of reality. It only exists in your imagination. It's a delusion, a fantasy.

[jupiviv]

Namely, lack of will is lying to oneself, since one has the will to choose to be apathetic and demoralised. It's the same kind of conceptual internal contradiction, i.e. incoherence. So, his meaning for "immoral" would be essentially: untruth.

Lack of will is lack of will. There is no choice in the matter of whether you have will or not, and "will" doesn't mean choice(at least not to me). A person who lies simply doesn't have enough will to affirm truth, but he has enough to know(to some degree) what truth is.

As the adage goes: "You can tell a tree by its fruit". I think the effects of making a bid for truthfulness, even if that is dimmed by psychologically ambivalent motives, indicate morality. By mentality, I meant the contents and meaning of the thoughts, by contrast to Weininger's focus on asceticism as manifested in external phenomena. I can see the latter as being a very dim attempt at morality.

The bid for truthfulness may be false, e.g, someone may think that not having violent thoughts would lead to morality. If morality ever becomes the consequence of an action, then it is not morality. All moral actions must proceed from a moral soul. I believe that is Weininger's point here. Think of it in terms of beauty - the beauty of anything disappears if we try to understand the causes of its beauty, because its beauty actually lies in us.

Well, if your standard is perfect morality, there is definitely a problem with having a pleasurable life, since pleasure indicates striving, and, as you say, a perfect morality doesn't express desire.

"Pleasure" is just a label we give to an illusory link we draw between ourselves and certain things. If that link isn't drawn, then there is nothing wrong with doing those things. Scratching the testicles can be very pleasurable, but does that mean that a sage cannot scratch his testicles if he gets an itch there?

[Kelly Jones]

Kelly: Jupta's joke has brought out some interesting ideas, basically that women don't have the romanticism of men over sex.

Carmel: While that may be true in your imagination, reality begs to differ. According to research from the Kinsey Institute, woman's sexual fanatasies are typically more romantic, whereas men's sexual fantasies tend to be more explicit, hence Bruce's "Men will fuck anything that moves" joke. get it now? I'm a little surprised that I have to exppain this to you.

I think you've taken me a little too literally, but you've raised an interesting subject. Certainly, women's fantasies of sex are very romanticised: they're often focussed on being swept off their feet by a dominating male (in whatever way) who will carry them off into ... you guessed it, a grand castle high up above the plebs and serfs and competing female rivals (i.e. social status). That translates in reality as: contemporary suburban nest with chlorinated pond, shiny smeg appliances, ra ra ra. All their material needs provided for, in quite a pragmatic way. Women's interest in sex is materialistic at core.

Kelly: I mean, there are still far more female prostitutes making packets, and justifying it because of those packets.

Carmel: I see you missed the point of the Lenny Bruce joke. There are far more whoremongers, than there are whores. Your notion that women are more immoral than men simply doesn't hold in the light of reality. It only exists in your imagination. It's a delusion, a fantasy.

No, I think men are the most immoral; women are amoral. Women are the ones who allow themselves mindlessly to be used by men.


.

[Kelly Jones]

Kelly: Namely, lack of will is lying to oneself, since one has the will to choose to be apathetic and demoralised. It's the same kind of conceptual internal contradiction, i.e. incoherence. So, his meaning for "immoral" would be essentially: untruth.

Jupta: Lack of will is lack of will. There is no choice in the matter of whether you have will or not, and "will" doesn't mean choice(at least not to me). A person who lies simply doesn't have enough will to affirm truth, but he has enough to know(to some degree) what truth is.

Choice exists, and I beg to differ on the dynamics of the person who lies (to themselves). They do keep telling themselves they have no choice, but they're choosing to be like that. That's why it's lying.

Kelly: As the adage goes: "You can tell a tree by its fruit". I think the effects of making a bid for truthfulness, even if that is dimmed by psychologically ambivalent motives, indicate morality. By mentality, I meant the contents and meaning of the thoughts, by contrast to Weininger's focus on asceticism as manifested in external phenomena. I can see the latter as being a very dim attempt at morality.

Jupta: The bid for truthfulness may be false, e.g, someone may think that not having violent thoughts would lead to morality.

If they don't understand why violent thoughts are deluded, it's not a genuine bid for truth.

If morality ever becomes the consequence of an action, then it is not morality. All moral actions must proceed from a moral soul. I believe that is Weininger's point here.

It's agreeable to me.

Think of it in terms of beauty - the beauty of anything disappears if we try to understand the causes of its beauty, because its beauty actually lies in us.

I agree with the general idea, but the beauty doesn't need to disappear if one already understands oneself as the creator of that beauty.

Kelly: Well, if your standard is perfect morality, there is definitely a problem with having a pleasurable life, since pleasure indicates striving, and, as you say, a perfect morality doesn't express desire.

Jupta: "Pleasure" is just a label we give to an illusory link we draw between ourselves and certain things. If that link isn't drawn, then there is nothing wrong with doing those things. Scratching the testicles can be very pleasurable, but does that mean that a sage cannot scratch his testicles if he gets an itch there?

If you mean a psychological satisfaction when talking of pleasure, rather than purely physical relief from pain or discomfort, then pleasure is definitely a sign of immorality.


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[Carmel]

Kelly:
I think you've taken me a little too literally, but you've raised an interesting subject. Certainly, women's fantasies of sex are very romanticised: they're often focussed on being swept off their feet by a dominating male (in whatever way) who will carry them off into ... you guessed it, a grand castle high up above the plebs and serfs and competing female rivals (i.e. social status). That translates in reality as: contemporary suburban nest with chlorinated pond, shiny smeg appliances, ra ra ra. All their material needs provided for, in quite a pragmatic way. Women's interest in sex is materialistic at core.

Carmel:
These rescue fantasies are probably more prevalent in women of lower socioeconomic status, but in the middle and upper classes in America most women whether, married or single are educated working professionals and don't need the the escapism fantasies of which you speak.

Kelly:
No, I think men are the most immoral; women are amoral. Women are the ones who allow themselves mindlessly to be used by men.

Carmel:
...and the whoremongers, in droves, mindlessly use women making them more immoral and amoral. You have no real argument per usual, just another unsubstatiated opinion, meh.

[Kelly Jones]

Kelly: I think you've taken me a little too literally, but you've raised an interesting subject. Certainly, women's fantasies of sex are very romanticised: they're often focussed on being swept off their feet by a dominating male (in whatever way) who will carry them off into ... you guessed it, a grand castle high up above the plebs and serfs and competing female rivals (i.e. social status). That translates in reality as: contemporary suburban nest with chlorinated pond, shiny smeg appliances, ra ra ra. All their material needs provided for, in quite a pragmatic way. Women's interest in sex is materialistic at core.

Carmel: These rescue fantasies are probably more prevalent in women of lower socioeconomic status, but in the middle and upper classes in America most women whether, married or single are educated working professionals and don't need the the escapism fantasies of which you speak.

Actually, even the more educated, wealthier female media-makers seem hell-bent on making sexual narratives where the woman is swept off her feet by a charming, dominating, quick-witted knight. Generally, she has to go looking for him these days, and the fling is placed away from her real world, like in a backwards coastal village. Still escapist fantasies, so far as I can see, and still materialistic, because the passionate dalliance always comes into a crashing collision with her materialistic needs. In other words, the punch-line is: is he marriage material? Do you find it really so hard to see this kind of thing?

Kelly: No, I think men are the most immoral; women are amoral. Women are the ones who allow themselves mindlessly to be used by men.

Carmel: ...and the whoremongers, in droves, mindlessly use women making them more immoral and amoral. You have no real argument per usual, just another unsubstatiated opinion, meh.

If you'd followed the discussion between Jupta and myself, you would have perceived the argument. Relax, and stop taking things so personally.


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[Kelly Jones]

Have you ever read "The Manipulated Man", dedicated in part to those few women who aren't venal (Vilar's words)?


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[Carmel]

Kelly:
If you'd followed the discussion between Jupta and myself, you would have perceived the argument. Relax, and stop taking things so personally.

Carmel:
You seem to be having trouble seeing reality for what it is. Try reading this simple sentence again: There are more whoremongers than there are whores.

It's really not that complicated, but hey if you want to keep lying to yourself, go for it.

[Kelly Jones]

Well, I don't know why you're putting that on me. My first post in this thread laid the blame at men's feet. Presumably you think the whoremongers are men...?

[jupiviv]

The bid for truthfulness may be false, e.g, someone may think that not having violent thoughts would lead to morality.

If they don't understand why violent thoughts are deluded, it's not a genuine bid for truth.[/quote]

Exactly - this understanding is what matters, not the not having of violent thoughts. Once this understanding is reached, the person will try to refrain from having both violent and compassionate or loving thoughts. All the actions of the moral person proceed from this understanding.

If you mean a psychological satisfaction when talking of pleasure, rather than purely physical relief from pain or discomfort, then pleasure is definitely a sign of immorality.

I mean just an action which is otherwise thought of(by deluded people) as leading to pleasure. If necessary, a sage may have to have sex with a woman, but that act doesn't necessarily have to be immoral/amoral.