Whack-a-Mole

[Cahoot]

Because she has a circle of friends the woman lets the man know that the world does not center around him.

That he requires her to serve primarily as the center of his attention is a cultural and biological conditioning that attaches an agenda upon awareness, for both man and woman.

The cultural conditioning is arbitrary. The biological conditioning is hormonal.

Awareness left undeformed by conditioning is the same for both.

[Leyla Shen]

Cory,

"lonely outsiders"

can't help but see themselves as outside of a center of more value.

This "need" you speak of in babies is similar to this. The baby feels "apart" from itself.

The need and satisfaction of need I refer to in the human infant amount to biological need and physiological reaction, right down to its cutest little smile (which is more usually wind in the first few months). A pre-linguistic human infant has no concept of “centre” and “value”, and therefore cannot “feel apart from itself”, since it has no conception of being apart from its environment. In its earliest stages, we conceive of the human infant as being totally merged with its environment and all the things within it, since it is completely reliant on others for its survival. Without a parent of some description caring for it, it will die for its lack of ability to distinguish things, including its own needs.

As it grows and its brain and consciousness uniformly develop a capacity to distinguish between self and other and things/objects/environment, its “babyness” (need and satisfaction of need) gradually too becomes an object of its consciousness and it is only here that a potential for some sense of being apart from oneself can develop as what was need and satisfaction of need becomes separation and desire.

In other words, the baby isn’t lying there thinking, “I’m hungry, feed me”. Both its hunger and its demand for satisfaction of it are only “conscious” in the sense that a biological function reacts to physiological stimulus. We make a distinction between the stages of development of human consciousness (human infant, adolescent and the human adult) since such stages can be observed. This is not something a human infant does, neither will it ever have a capacity so to do whilst remaining human.

So although the baby is not necessarily self aware, it rages against a sense of incompleteness and helplessness. This carries over into the teenager years through envy, inferiority and loneliness. The self doesn't feel as if it's acquired what it needs to be itself. Therefore, the fascination with another becomes acute.

I’m really not sure what value you see in drawing a parallel here, and I think it extremely pertinent. Unlike in the adolescent, and that which might carry through well into adulthood, the “rage” in the baby is purely biological and has nothing to do with the much more complex consciousness of desire and conception of selfhood. Of course, such stages of development are transient and not entirely mutually exclusive. So yes, realistically, there exists also the early developmental stage wherein both exist simultaneously as a sort of psycho-physiological equilibrium.

What is the reasoning and/or evidence that supports your assertion that a human baby “rages against a sense of incompleteness and helplessness”, (i.e., if you hold to the view that there is more, in terms of self consciousness, to the human baby than biological need and its satisfaction)?

However, the woman feels the same way.

Well, yes—you mean, women are human, too.

So you have a woman who is making a big fuss over something out in the horizon (oh the big city! how I wish I could be there!) and then you have a man who wants to court her in the same spirit.

I’m sorry; I seem to have missed how this proceeds logically from what you have stated. I would have to fill in a lot of blanks to arrive here!

Both human beings are constantly placing more value on something outside of them. If only I had that person. I would make them my center. Obviously this doesn't work very well because neither human being has a center, yet, each expects the other person to be stable.

Right. So early male and female have no centre (no “I”). I don’t know then how you could reasonably object to the notion that a creature who makes a centre out of a creature who has no centre is that creature...

Were you agreeing with me without wanting to be seen to agree with me?

Furthermore, what a woman wants is different from what her male suitor wants. She's focused on large groups of people, precisely because she puts more value on the crowd than she does on her own worth. On the other hand, he's focused on her. The farce begins!

Again, I don’t see how this proceeds from what you have stated so far; it’s like there’s no centre in your writing and thinking, except a something without a centre!

I'll try to tackle the latter part of your post before the earlier carries us away... (:

[Cory Duchesne]

Cory,

"lonely outsiders"

can't help but see themselves as outside of a center of more value.

This "need" you speak of in babies is similar to this. The baby feels "apart" from itself.

The need and satisfaction of need I refer to in the human infant amount to biological need and physiological reaction, right down to its cutest little smile (which is more usually wind in the first few months). A pre-linguistic human infant has no concept of “centre” and “value”, and therefore cannot “feel apart from itself”, since it has no conception of being apart from its environment. In its earliest stages, we conceive of the human infant as being totally merged with its environment and all the things within it, since it is completely reliant on others for its survival. Without a parent of some description caring for it, it will die for its lack of ability to distinguish things, including its own needs.

The baby is in a physically powerless position. It can't walk or move it's arms very well, so a baby could easily die. Beyond that, I don't see any reason to think a baby doesn't share a similar level of consciousness to a cat. A cat will not easily die, but that doesn't mean a cat has a clear concept of being a center. However, cats, like babies are extremely self centered, so it's probably best to remain open minded to what it's like being a cat or a baby. Their consciousness is highly primitive, but surely there is a center that can suffer and enjoy. Babies are like little gravity wells, attractors that draw in human attention. We give them that center as compassionate observers of their primitive reality. Babies and cats are a kind of blind, primitive consciousness linking up with the stimuli around them. It's very hypothetical, obviously. Nobody really knows what it's like to be anybody, but we all go around doing our best to be fair about how things appear: humans are desperately trying to become who they are, which is - by default - a center.

the baby isn’t lying there thinking, “I’m hungry, feed me”. Both its hunger and its demand for satisfaction of it are only “conscious” in the sense that a biological function reacts to physiological stimulus.

There's probably more than just a biological function occurring. How can we know what animals, babies and super autistic people experience? Why not just call it how it appears? They are little centers that don't consciously realize they are centers.

This brings us back to the Woman and Man issue. A Woman is conditioned to be an attractor, she obviously attracts. But as you point out, men have a difficult time recognizing her humanity. This is because most men see Woman as a kind of ticket to oblivion. Most men have a secret yearning to return to a very primitive, unreflective, spontaneous mode of consciousness (call it Dionysian), and if a man manages to secure a good wife, then he degenerates into a kind of emotionally childish character, sneaking around and getting occasionally berated for his guileless, oafishness.

When a man falls in love with a woman, he steps into a kind of wishful, prejudiced dream world. He is the fly getting caught in a web of sticky sweetness. Together, with each others help, the man and woman fail to become fully human.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

When a man falls in love with a woman, he steps into a kind of wishful, prejudiced dream world. He is the fly getting caught in a web of sticky sweetness. Together, with each others help, the man and woman fail to become fully human.

Together they fail because the shared wishful image (of "Woman", of "World" to have her exist in) remains false, shallow, a failed projection of what perhaps might have been a higher idealization that only keeps functioning for any longer time when the mind keeps firmly shut, excluding any higher more essential ideals. All remaining ideals are normally just projections of the first one they are still embracing and would still be, even after a split as shadows linger and fuel the original dream even more. Therefore it's not the woman who needs to be abandoned but the image in both minds, the make-up of it: dishonesty.

[Cory Duchesne]

Therefore it's not the woman who needs to be abandoned but the image in both minds, the make-up of it: dishonesty.

Yes. Male-Female relationships tend to start off dishonestly, especially during first experiences in adolescence. However, as the couple gets comfortable around each other, there is less of an effort made to create illusions. They slowly reveal the truth of who they are, and if they're married, then the marriage conditions them into the hard work of loving what was initially unlovable.

Early on, the male uses his intelligence to put on various displays. He might spend considerable time preparing and planning for something so that when the event arrives, there is a theatrical surrealism to whatever it is he is doing. The important illusion to protect is that there are no rough edges behind the smoothness. Don't let her see how hard you work! You want to make yourself seem magical, as if you are the one who is going to transport her away from the mechanical reality she's grown so tired of.

So much of love depends on being "cool". And by cool, what I mean is that there are no embarrassments. To be attractive, the male must be sufficiently smooth, not rough. He must be cool, not hot-tempered. He must be congenial and popular, and not lost, bruised and ragged out in the wilderness.

In other words, he must be criminal as opposed to embarrassing. Of course, females are very empathetic creatures, so if you can present your vulnerabilities to her in a way that seems honorable, you can win her heart by feigning weakness (or being genuinely weakened). The female must have maternal instincts for this approach to work and there has to be an intriguing story behind why it is you are so helpless and in need of her maternal instincts, especially considering you're going to try to bonk her the first chance you get.

[Dennis Mahar]

You're just trying to protect yourself from harm or threat Cory Duchesne.

[Cory Duchesne]

You're just trying to protect yourself from harm or threat Cory Duchesne.

Or I'm being satirical effectively enough that you've become confused about who I am, choosing to roll the dice with wanton conclusions, failing to remain in an honorable position that I can respect.

Interestingly, you've admitted the very truth I'm spelling out, that the process is harmful. I'm being no more protective of myself than a scientist who studies and then carefully describes radiation.

As far as you know, I've gotten more radiation poisoning from women in one year than you'll probably ever have in your whole life. It would explain why I can explain it so effectively!

[Pam Seeback]

Woman represents earth, (Mother) nature, the turning wheel of birth and death. Woman as (Mother) Nature is not dishonest, She is Ignorant. Why? She lusts after Herself to replicate Herself, She wounds and sickens and kills Herself to feed Herself, in short, She is eternally causing suffering to Herself. Who is Man? Man is He who gives life to Her Ignorance.

[Cory Duchesne]

Woman represents earth, (Mother) nature, the turning wheel of birth and death. Woman as (Mother) Nature is not dishonest, She is Ignorant. Why? She lusts after Herself to replicate Herself, She wounds and sickens and kills Herself to feed Herself, in short, She is eternally causing suffering to Herself. Who is Man? Man is He who gives life to Her Ignorance.

Yes. Woman is amoral. Self-deception is not dishonesty.

Man is the sun. The Moon reflects (is brought to life) by the Sun.

Man is capable of being dishonest, of rebelling against God - revenging himself against God. Socrates would say nobody sins consciously. High Christianity says that man can deliberately sin. I think Socrates is referring to ordinary, amoral people. Kierkegaard is speaking to the elite.

[Pam Seeback]

Sin is not conscious because it is Ignorance.

[Cory Duchesne]

Sin is not conscious because it is Ignorance.

That is the Socratic view, which is generally true. I think spirituality requires increasingly high levels of sacrifice and faith, and even though you might have a perfect intellectual understanding of reality, and even though you've emotionally disintegrated and regrown back through a dialectical redoubling, I think a person can deliberately choose "the low hanging fruit" almost out of spite, or out of a kind of pantheistic justification, or even out of revenge, either against a person or against the universe. Spirituality at the highest levels can be a very self depreciating, absurd, masochistic kind of thing. You're surrounded by lazy sadists who will back stab you over and over, so it's hard not to choose the dark side at times.

It's like Diogenes passively being spit on, and saying it's no different than being sprayed by the ocean. This is more than just enlightenment, it's the result of long hours of practice, laying deep, deep roots of love for Truth. It just can't happen over night.

[Dennis Mahar]

oh, you know, subjects and objects,
who's afraid of the big bad wolf,
protection racket.

It just can't happen over night.

One fine day,
Martha and the Shondelles wasn't it?

[Beingof1]

Sin is not conscious because it is Ignorance.

That is the Socratic view, which is generally true. I think spirituality requires increasingly high levels of sacrifice and faith, and even though you might have a perfect intellectual understanding of reality, and even though you've emotionally disintegrated and regrown back through a dialectical redoubling, I think a person can deliberately choose "the low hanging fruit" almost out of spite, or out of a kind of pantheistic justification, or even out of revenge, either against a person or against the universe. Spirituality at the highest levels can be a very self depreciating, absurd, masochistic kind of thing. You're surrounded by lazy sadists who will back stab you over and over, so it's hard not to choose the dark side at times.

It's like Diogenes passively being spit on, and saying it's no different than being sprayed by the ocean. This is more than just enlightenment, it's the result of long hours of practice, laying deep, deep roots of love for Truth. It just can't happen over night.

Interesting insight there Cory. It is why Socrates was forced to drink the poison.

Most women are driven mainly by instinct. Instinct is different than intuition of which, when a women is on the road to enlightenment, is usually razor sharp. They are attracted to a man that teases her and is a gentleman all at the same time because they are infatuated with contradictions. The reason is because that is how they see reality - its a contradiction to most women. Most women confuse manipulation with a 'self made man'.

[Leyla Shen]

Cory,

The baby is in a physically powerless position. It can't walk or move it's arms very well, so a baby could easily die. Beyond that, I don't see any reason to think a baby doesn't share a similar level of consciousness to a cat. A cat will not easily die, but that doesn't mean a cat has a clear concept of being a center.

Yes, that’s what I’m saying (not sure why you needed to compare a baby to a cat to understand it). Babies do not have a concept of self/centre, and therefore the belief they are “self-centred” is something you are projecting onto them:

However, cats, like babies are extremely self centered, so it's probably best to remain open minded to what it's like being a cat or a baby.

Their consciousness is highly primitive, but surely there is a center that can suffer and enjoy.

Let’s stick to babies: why “surely”, Cory? Particularly given the above.

Babies are like little gravity wells, attractors that draw in human attention. We give them thatcenter as compassionate observers of their primitive reality. Babies and cats are a kind of blind, primitive consciousness linking up with the stimuli around them. It's very hypothetical, obviously. Nobody really knows what it's like to be anybody, but we all go around doing our best to be fair about how things appear: humans are desperately trying to become who they are, which is - by default - a center.

Yet we were all babies, and still our babyness remains a mystery upon which we can only hypothesise...

L: [...] the baby isn’t lying there thinking, “I’m hungry, feed me”. Both its hunger and its demand for satisfaction of it are only “conscious” in the sense that a biological function reacts to physiological stimulus.

C: There's probably more than just a biological function occurring. How can we know what animals, babies and super autistic people experience? Why not just call it how it appears? They are little centers that don't consciously realize they are centers.

You mean they are centres in the mind of the other. That’s calling it how it appears. Sure, they’re not conscious of being this centre for another in the same way that the other is conscious of babies being “centres” for them.

This brings us back to the Woman and Man issue. A Woman is conditioned to be an attractor, she obviously attracts. But as you point out, men have a difficult time recognizing her humanity. This is because most men see Woman as a kind of ticket to oblivion. Most men have a secret yearning to return to a very primitive, unreflective, spontaneous mode of consciousness (call it Dionysian),

Return? As in like when they were a baby, to the loving arms and centre for the mother?

The rest makes perfect sense in that light:

[...] and if a man manages to secure a good wife, then he degenerates into a kind of emotionally childish character, sneaking around and getting occasionally berated for his guileless, oafishness.

When a man falls in love with a woman, he steps into a kind of wishful, prejudiced dream world. He is the fly getting caught in a web of sticky sweetness. Together, with each others help, the man and woman fail to become fully human.

[Cory Duchesne]

Cory,

The baby is in a physically powerless position. It can't walk or move it's arms very well, so a baby could easily die. Beyond that, I don't see any reason to think a baby doesn't share a similar level of consciousness to a cat. A cat will not easily die, but that doesn't mean a cat has a clear concept of being a center.

Yes, that’s what I’m saying (not sure why you needed to compare a baby to a cat to understand it). Babies do not have a concept of self/centre, and therefore the belief they are “self-centred” is something you are projecting onto them:

Babies appear to have some consciousness, and there are some things we can know about extremely low levels of consciousness. Namely, that even the lowest level of consciousness is creative in the most rudimentary sense.

To give an example, imagine setting a cats tail on fire. Now think about the implications of that for the consciousness of the cat. We set up a kind of feed-back loop, that repeats over and over. The pain registers like a light bulb, and the reaction of the fire against the tail is like a battery. As long as there is a reaction occurring on the tail, there will be a cyclical experience of pain through time. Now, what I'm explaining is physical. However, the only reality is consciousness. So the cat is using it's very primitive memory of peace to strive for it's own peace.

I'm emphasizing a Cat so that I don't have to light a baby on fire! Also, this applies to all creatures that suffer so I like to abstract away from the human world.

The priority in all consciousness, no matter how primitive, is a center. I imagine the consciousness of animals and babies must be like being strapped on a roller coaster - it's an experience. What reason is there to think otherwise?

What drives the consciousness is clearly memory. Any creature that suffers (whether an elephant, human baby or cat) is on a kind of warpath towards the memory of peace.

In academic psychology, this kind of memory is considered procedural memory.

This brings us back to the Woman and Man issue. A Woman is conditioned to be an attractor, she obviously attracts. But as you point out, men have a difficult time recognizing her humanity. This is because most men see Woman as a kind of ticket to oblivion. Most men have a secret yearning to return to a very primitive, unreflective, spontaneous mode of consciousness (call it Dionysian),

Return? As in like when they were a baby, to the loving arms and centre for the mother?

The rest makes perfect sense in that light:

Everything is driven by memory of happiness, all creatures love happiness and peace. There is no reason to think otherwise. War is just an expression of an infantile wish to return to the mother. Creatures on earth are generally war-like because suffering is so excessive, and happiness is so scarce.

Finally, to emphasize what I said earlier, consciousness is all there is, and that consciousness is creative. These centers are being created in the moment through memory of pain and pleasure. The creature wants peace and so the consciousness is drawing out it's existence around that one priority. So we can call "the center" the priority, a value, a non-physical thing.

[Dennis Mahar]

Most men have a secret yearning to return to a very primitive, unreflective, spontaneous mode of consciousness (call it Dionysian),

In the domain of experience,
there be the experience of thinking/feeling.
Dionysian...feeling
Apollonian...thinking

don't ever reckon you're immune.

For a woman,
understood as,
Psyche
Aphrodite

A woman who 'gets it right',
attuned,

She being 'throned',
(in her subjective consciousness),
the Court of the Mighty Aphrodite as going about her business,
and when the day is done,
the natural play of the psyche loveliness,
lustrous

There's no finer critter.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Dionysian...feeling
Apollonian...thinking

Big mistake endlessly repeated by you. There's wrong and right: wrong feeling/thinking and right feeling/thinking.

The term Dionysian has always been about (ritualized) madness and ecstasy. Unpredictable bloody chaos in thinking and feeling alike.
While Apollonian was about the ordered mind: dreaming, poetry, oracling as well as traditional philosophizing.

Dennis, your mistaken justifiers show your muddled feelings and addiction to the little pleasures. Sober up!

[Dennis Mahar]

oppose, oppose, oppose.
I 'get' it.
Sorted.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Still better then repeat, repeat, repeat the same flawed or murky rhymes!

[Dennis Mahar]

You gestalt as a traffic cop lad,
go this way, not that,

even better,
a driving instructor,
brake, indicate, turn left, turn right, check the rearview,

even better,
a car dealer,
trade in your wreck for a smoother ride from 'Diebert's Car's of Distinction'.

Bless you.

[Pam Seeback]

Body-Feeling being moved of Unmoving Spirit Wisdom is the perfect union of male - female consciousness.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Trade in your wreck for a smoother ride from 'Diebert's Car's of Distinction'.

[Laughs]. It's more like improved Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The call for quality and truth unified in genius.

[Dennis Mahar]

(:

breakthru'
touchdown.