GENIUS FORUMS

Testosterone is not the seat of reason. In fact, it's quite the opposite.

To approach reason as a project of promoting masculinity is a self-defeating cause. A self-defeating, masturbatory cause.

Conditions are the seat of human reason, and conditions alone are why men have been freer to excel in this regard. Set those conditions - everywhere with everyone, if this is what you truly value above all.

Pye,

DQ: Exposing the differences isn't the same as maintaining them. Indeed, we can only begin to deal with the harmful pull of the feminine by becoming aware of what this pull consists of.

Sweeping it under the carpet and pretending it doesn't exist doesn't solve anything.

Pye: Still, no-difference is at the root of this aim.

Well, maybe your aim. My own aim is pushing the human race into growing beyond both the masculine and the feminine and becoming sages.

And you can get there better than this, if you look deeply enough inside - where all the factories of constructs reside . . . .

Are you suggesting that the masculine and the feminine and the differences between the sexes are nothing more than constructions on our parts?

Now - for you are right - there is no excuse for women's deplorable condition and the values they unthinkingly adopt, except ignorance. Not stupidity, as in constitutionally incapable, but ignorance. This world rewards them still for being desirable objects and immanent workers alone. And their world still punishes them in gross and subtle ways for seeking transcendent activity. One of the grossest-subtlest ways is to tell a women she's incapable of reason; and when she masters reason, to tell her she's no longer a woman.

If a woman were to become perfectly logical in all aspects of her life, then mentally speaking, she would indeed cease to be a woman. There would be no longer being any of the cunning, feminine wiles, vanity, changeability, emotionalism, sexuality, and unconsciousness which comprises being a woman.

I realize that women want everything, and they like to believe that they can do everything, but it is impossible to become a sage and remain a woman. The two are mutually exclusive.

As for affecting change that can help women (and men) become more rational, I can't see how that is going to happen without significant genetic modifications in both men and women. As it stands, given the human race's genetic make-up, most people love the current differences between the sexes far too much to ever contemplate giving them up through increased rationality. From their perspective, these differences are what make the world go around. Without making changes to this underlying biological reality, our attempts to change cultural and psychological realities are unlikely to get very far.

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Without making changes to this underlying biological reality, our attempts to change cultural and psychological realities are unlikely to get very far.

Let's call this a "long-term goal".

Pye,

All you have done in your post is to reinforce the idea that women are 'victims'. This doesn't help free women, it just makes them believe their victim status all the more.

Men are equally victims of the victim mind-set of women, for the onus is squarely placed on them to be the ones to fix women’s lives. THIS, of course, just reinforces the victim mind-set in women.

Women think men are stupid, because women are forced by them to live such unacceptable lives; and men think women are stupid, because men keep trying to give women more acceptable lives - but what is considered “acceptable” to women constantly changes. Both sexes are trapped together, with no possibility of a happy ending for either one.

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There is a solution to this mess, but most people take offence as soon as they hear it, for they immediately sense that their happiness is being threatened. The simple answer lies in attacking and undermining the feminine (that victim mind-set) at its very roots. If both sexes will accept their equal responsibility for fostering the psychology of the feminine, then both sexes can expect to reap the benefits of being released from that mind-set. Their old happinesses will have been disposed of, but there will be new joys to experience.

The first step on this path to true freedom is to stop seeing yourself as a victim - the rest will follow from there.

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Trevor wrote:

David: Without making changes to this underlying biological reality, our attempts to change cultural and psychological realities are unlikely to get very far.

Let's call this a "long-term goal".

True, it is a long-term goal, but the way we presently think about the relationship between the sexes will have an influence on whether or not that goal comes to fruition. If we continue to ignore our role in fostering the relationship the sexes now have, the less chance of that relationship changing further on down the track.

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Pye wrote:

Cory wrote:Sure, there are some women these days who seem unprecedentedly intellectual, and we can attribute this to more equal opportunity

This is a very shining moment, Cory, that you brush over far too quickly as a parenthetical aside. In it rests everything - causality, condition, and the way-out.

I think that females who are very intellectual are in debt to their relatively more masculine biology, the support and inspiration from their male contemporaries, as well as the deceased men who have left behind enlightening bodies of work.

Change the conditions, you change the result

In some ways yes, in other ways (sometimes very fundamental ways), no. You know, they've done a great deal of research on hormones and brain structure, and how they influence behavior. In one study, they noted the behavior and development of girls raised in an environment that consisted of all boys toys, and male themed stuff. They found that without any conditioning, girls simply perceive objects differently than boys. When a little girl is left to play with only a truck, instead of driving it, animating it with sounds, there is a strong tendency for girls to actually try nurturing the truck, rocking it, etc - treating it like something to take care of. It's the same with the toy soldiers - to little girls, these were people who were focused doing peaceful family activities. She also regarded the soldiers as objects to take care of, to tuck into bed, nurse, etc. The boys on the other hand were incorrigible in their desire to animate the toy soldiers in an intense aggressive battle of good vs. evil, where strategy, heroism and 'missions' were of prime importance.

I think it's about time you gave this book a read (written by a woman, btw) You really need to get over your denial of biological differences between men and women. It would be much better if you built an argument for feminine virtues by accepting the fact of biological differences, as opposed to the intellectual cave-dwelling that your current state of denial seems to suggest.

100 years you mention has to stack up against millennia of women kept in immanent service to the species, with no possibility of the conditions for transcendence.

That's right, the difference in biological disposition is the result of many thousand and thousands of years of natural selection. Woman and men are innately different from each other, biologically.

Did they participate in this scheme? No doubt. How else to secure their own resources if they are seized and distributed by men? Are women cunning? Well, yes, for cunning is the only possible weapon against plain power and force.

Not only power and force, but right-brained visual-spatial and abstract abilities of which females are comparatively deficient, by nature.

But the onus of participation in their own condition can only become excuse-less now, when causality/condition itself shows us just how much can be consciously changed.

The present state of women really isn't that impressive. There are a few notables, though.

Only now, as in that last 100 years you mention where education, voting, public project, the possibility of transcendent activity and anything else outside the home (immanent domain) has been grudgingly opened to women, too.

Yes, women have been given more freedom. But what are women? In the realms of lofty reasoning, compared to men, they are creatures with capacities of a lower order. Freedom gives expression to what is most central, and thus women have proceeded to further specialize in their appeal to man's lust, blunting man's higher cortical synapses to the same spectacular degree to which woman's narcissism has been free to fountain. Behold, bikini clad silicone breasts...Christina Aguleria getting 'dirty'...

Now - for you are right - there is no excuse for women's deplorable condition and the values they unthinkingly adopt, except ignorance. Not stupidity, as in constitutionally incapable, but ignorance. This world rewards them still for being desirable objects and immanent workers alone. And their world still punishes them in gross and subtle ways for seeking transcendent activity.

I don't think so. The world doesn't respect Anna Nicoles, Paris Hilton's, Britney spears, etc. Nor does the world respect very feminine males. They are quickly forgotten or remembered with mockery. The world honors masculine people, to greater degrees depending on how masculine the individual is, sometimes this reverence goes on many hundreds, even thousands of years after the hero's death.

One of the grossest-subtlest ways is to tell a women she's incapable of reason; and when she masters reason, to tell her she's no longer a woman.

I don't have a problem with no longer being considered male as a result of my self mastery. However, we can't fool ourselves and believe that testosterone isn't the vital key to overcome gender. There is just too much evidence suggesting that maleness is a requisite to being able to think well.

What may have begun as an original condition of greater physical power on the part of men - hence the capacity to seize what it desires (women/progeny/natural resources i.e. power) - has become a total ideology, reified, with women left in the "thing" column and men ascending to subjecthood - not as a matter of nature, but as one of conditions.

That's right, biological conditions are primarily responsible for the difference between the sexes.

But you don't need a history lesson from me. The only way women, historically in general, have been able to secure resources, a modicum of safety, relatively free-movement in the world, has been to secure it through a man, "belong" to one.

That's right, that's just the way woman have been selected by both nature and men- to be a certain way. A polarization has occurred.

And the only way she manages this is by rousing the latter's desire so he might care to share these things with her. All throughout history, unmarried (metaphor for undesired) women have had little chance of seeing to their own needs, but to return to immanent (bodily) service: cleaning, cooking, nursing, prostituting, child-bearing - the kind of work with which no 'master' will dirty his hands.

There's no doubt women have played the more menial and limited role throughout history, while the most unruly and masculine ones were likely eliminated, leaving the more compliant, more feminine genes to define the gender. In the meantime, the men who were most aggressive, calculating, right-brained and clear thinking managed to have the most kids, whereas the more feminine men had less and lower quality children.

We are still quite sick on the aristotelian assumption of a two-type world: one that masters, and one that serves.

I don't want any man or woman serving me. Although, I don't see anything wrong with, say, David Quinn living on social assistance. People ignorantly, arrogantly and incorrigibly living wholly selfish lives - might as well have their stupidity and amorality taken advantage of.

The greatest (and frankly the most incoherent) ideology put forth by the gendered rubric on this forum - is to remand to nature (fixed) what actually belongs to living condition. Your shining comment above says it all. People who assume themselves sensitive to causality you'd think would be far more alert to its genealogies and complexities

I think I have a pretty good understanding of natural selection and I've caught up on most of what has been said so far in regards to gender psychology, hormones and behavior, etc. The disparity between the male and female brain is quite significant.

But no, it seems it is better to rest in the corrosive glee of everything stupid that women do, repeat it again and again as though to nail down that which one claims most to want to dissolve.

I think being in denial of innate differences is far more destructive than facing up to them. The view of this forum is very hard on people's self-esteem no doubt, and I truly do sympathize, but if women truly want to be equal, then the first step for them is to be able to do without the need of men's approval, or the need to be needed by him. That men can go off on their own, asserting their superiority - while woman protest speaks volumes really. Why can't women just go do their own thing? Because their need to be needed controls their behavior, and so they are left devastated and protesting when they discover man has outgrown his need for neediness.

you don't know whether it is women or unconsciousness you are trying to eliminate.

They truly are one and the same.

Who amongst you works as a causal agent of change (instead of a strident declarer of status quo)? I'm on the front lines, Cory. My work is raising up reason, and over and over again, my own experiences tell me, even in the tiny window within which I work with students, that women have every capability of reason when the proper conditions are set.

Yes, the proper conditions being a sufficient maleness of mind, biologically speaking. I have no doubt there are many masculine women out there who are capable of living very commendable lives.

I remember Kelly saying here sometime before her sabbatical that women ought to be kept out of the temples of reason, kept on the outside, until they prove themselves capable of entering participation.

Well, I find that too strong of a position.

Brings to mind a passage from Kevin Solway's poison for the heart:

Kevin Solway wrote: Men are professional at being men, precisely because they have been men all their lives. They keep an even keel even in rough seas. But the modern masculine woman is new to the game, and is often rash, cruel and incounsellable. Her rawness results in her expressing the very worst qualities of the male spectrum. I tell you, she is not masculine enough!

Pye wrote: What kind of assbackwards understanding of causality is this? This is precisely the condition that creates the flaccid reasoning of women's consciousness to begin with.

No, I think the flaccidness of woman consciousness is more attributable to man's protecting her, making life soft for her and thus domesticating her. Men are strong because hostile conditions involving competition and war have shaped them over many thousands of years. Woman are soft because they have been protected, trophied, domesticated by man's superior capacities of will.

I know women fighting the cosmetic industry, the fashion industry, the media, infibrulation in Somalia, pornography, the sex slave trade, marriage, domestic law; fighting the traditional family, the gender roles, fighting themselves to gain a higher level of reasoning, and fighting each other to keep from falling back into old patterns. I know women who are harder on their kin than this here philosophy could ever be. A minority? Indeed. But a growing minority. Do I know the behaviours of women generalized on the forum here? Indeed I do.

But smirking, relentless smirking misogyny and self-serving elevation "above" these women are also the dangerous traps of self-delusion, not to mention a safe-deposit box for your ego.

Well I agree that a young man's ego can easily become flared up by the philosophy here, but that sort of misogyny goes on much more subtlety, animalistically and destructively when gender issues are swept under the carpet. The issue with woman QRS have brought up isn't being addressed directly anywhere else, and it should be.

The intention I don't think is to hurt, but really, it's to present a realistic avenue toward equality. If you want equality, then you are going to have to go after it in a reasonable manner. Paying heed to the work done so far in gender research and the relationship those findings have with natural selection would be a good start.

When women develop their own reasoning skills, they wake up to the sorrowful world of their own behaviours and their idiot dependencies upon the attention of men - all by themselves.

There's nothing that impresses me more! Seriously, that's what I want to see.

You do want them to wake up to it, yes? Or do you? You'd lose you're favorite scapegoat

Not really, because femininity is the automatic, animalistic processes within me, my emotions and sensuality, etc.

Regarding the how-should-I-define-the-feminine question, you should un-define it entirely. It's a conceptual trap. When psychology seeks to build from likely features a human "norm," it, ironically, ends up describing no one and nothing. It builds an untruth. If you think unconsciousness needs destroyed; dreaminess needs repelled; reason needs tilled and furrowed, then do that. Everywhere, and with everyone.

Give that book 'brain sex' a good read, or whatever else you can find on masculine and feminine empirical research. With an open mind, I think you'll eventually find that femininity and masculinity are useful concepts.

David Quinn wrote:There would be no longer being any of the cunning,

Why is it that cunning is viewed as a positive trait in males, and a negative trait in females? A man who does a cunning business deal is viewed as a modern conqueror, but when "cunning" is applied to females, it is automatically considered a negative trait? Some who claim that females have superior cunning, also state that this gives women greater capacity for intellectual work.

David Quinn wrote: feminine wiles,

And here you even have to preface it with the word feminine, to differentiate it from masculine wiles.

David Quinn wrote: vanity,

Male vanity can not be blamed on women any more than female vanity can be blamed on men.

A second article

David Quinn wrote: changeability,

When circumstances change, or more information becomes available, it is more intelligent to re-evaluate a situation than stubbornly hold onto the original plan. That would be unhealthy attachment.

David Quinn wrote: emotionalism,

Except anger, of course; anger is considered very masculine.

David Quinn wrote: sexuality,

You have previously posited that females are sexuality because everything about them is arousing to (heterosexual) males. Since males, just by being males, tend to be arousing to heterosexual females, the same argument could be made of either gender.

David Quinn wrote: and unconsciousness which comprises being a woman.

There isn't even a need for me to cite that most males are unconscious also - you have said that yourself.

David Quinn wrote:My own aim is pushing the human race into growing beyond both the masculine and the feminine and becoming sages.

Good - but why not accurately assign female characteristics to females, and male characteristics to males, and duly note characteristics which show in both males and females, rather than saying that most males are mostly women?

Pye wrote:One of the grossest-subtlest ways is to tell a women she's incapable of reason; and when she masters reason, to tell her she's no longer a woman.

I agree. There are differences between men and women, so the path to sagehood is slightly different between the sexes; but it is equally possible (or should I say equally improbable) to go from woman to sage as to go from man to sage. Maybe women need to go from perspective of woman to perspective of man then to sage, but only equally to men having to go from perspective of men to perspective of women to sage. So long as we have bodies though, we are men or women (or hermaphrodites) as our bodies dictate for us.

Cory wrote:femininity and masculinity are useful concepts.

Yes they can be - but explosives can also be useful in the hands of well-trained people, and devastating in the wrong hands. I am not opposed to the truth about masculinity and femininity, but I am opposed to the misuse of these concepts.

Response for David

Pye: Still, no-difference is at the root of this aim.

David: Well, maybe your aim. My own aim is pushing the human race into growing beyond both the masculine and the feminine and becoming sages.

If everyone is a sage; everyone is the same, yes?
As well does this seem to imply that sages are above the masculine. I'd ask after the coherency of elevating masculinity and eliminating femininity, but for the confused purposes I already know I'll hear in return.

David: Are you suggesting that the masculine and the feminine and the differences between the sexes are nothing more than constructions on our parts?

One of the unfortunate features of misapplied absolutism is this tendency to either/or. A huge part, David - a HUGE part is social construct. What we can do nothing about, we can do nothing about. Yet I have knowledge and practice in a single lifetime of what all can be done. So do many others, when they have not (mistakenly) remanded to fixed nature what belongs to fluid condition.

David: If a woman were to become perfectly logical in all aspects of her life, then mentally speaking, she would indeed cease to be a woman

So there is a mental woman/man and a biological woman/man? You are awfully close to mind/body mistakes here.

I realize that women want everything

(As opposed to yourself, who hankers after the whole of Totality?)

David: Without making changes to this underlying biological reality, our attempts to change cultural and psychological realities are unlikely to get very far.

Genes are not entirely irremediably fixed entities. Geneticists have already observed the effect of environment, lifestyle practices, diet, etc. in the change of gene structure over a lifetime. Just last evening on the tube was a science program involving the genes of identical twins and how they depart resemblance to one another over a lifetime, and these were attributed to the differences in lived conditions/experiences between the twins. If you want wisdom in the world, you are going to have to do more than wait for the scientists.

Response for Sue

Sue: All you have done in your post is to reinforce the idea that women are 'victims'

It's unfortunate this is all you were able to focus upon. To explain condition requires this historical scope. As I mentioned to David above, if in one lifetime, gene structure can be altered by conditions, what can we say about the conditions over millennia for female genes? Lots of work to do, conditionally speaking.

Sue: (1) Men are equally victims of the victim mind-set of women, for (2)the onus is squarely placed on them to be the ones to fix women’s lives.

(1) All you have done is reinforce the idea that men are 'victims', this does not help them, etc. etc.
(2) Bullshit. Although one might expect one to assist in cleaning up the mess they've made and returning what they, by force, have withheld (which in this case is nothing less than the opportunity to transcend animal (immanent) conditions). It's precisely the opposite: men's great ambivalence of attraction/repulsion to women is what keeps this in place. And trust me, Sue - none of the women I work with are waiting around for men to fix things. They know now that their 'waiting' has been their own self-defeating problem all along.

Sue: and men think women are stupid, because men keep trying to give women more acceptable lives

This is also horsepucky. In your own mindset, recognition of victimization is over: Men don't "give" lives or dispense freedom anymore. Enlightened women know that this is not about what men can or cannot do for women anymore. In fact, it's never been, other than the most brute of physical detentions that men can devise.

Sue: The first step on this path to true freedom is to stop seeing yourself as a victim - the rest will follow from there.

Then you have much work to do here, where victimization by a whole force in the world (feminine) is the defining feature of this philosophy.

What is taught now is the victimization that women apply upon themselves. That's basic mind work, much like what is also promoted here.

Response to Cory

You really need to get over your denial of biological differences between men and women.

Cory, I appreciate the long response; let me try to reply by centering on this: biological difference in men and women are the mechanisms of procreation. They most certainly exist. Perhaps you need to take care of how much about life you insist on remanding to this. I don't care about that for which I can do nothing. Your ilk think that nothing can be done about anything. Myself, I am completely at ease working the overlap, and a willing explorer of the conditional fluidity of existence, whereas a great many of you are not; happy to fart around with this feminine-enemy thing and wait for scientists to implant hope. I don't even have hope: I have evidence. I am altering female genes as we speak . . . .

Good post, Elizabeth. That's exactly the kind of deconstruction needed here.

However,

Maybe women need to go from perspective of woman to perspective of man then to sage

. . . it goes like this: gender perspective to human perspective to sage.

Lao Tzu himself worked on this project in "recovering" the feminine embodied in the interdependent, intertwined symbol of the Tao, the whole. For him, his society had tilted too far in favouritism to the yang. Sounds familiar.

Pye wrote:Geneticists have already observed the effect of environment, lifestyle practices, diet, etc. in the change of gene structure over a lifetime. Just last evening on the tube was a science program involving the genes of identical twins and how they depart resemblance to one another over a lifetime, and these were attributed to the differences in lived conditions/experiences between the twins. If you want wisdom in the world, you are going to have to do more than wait for the scientists.

Reference please ..... if you're gonna give it such importance in light of your argument it must be more than an unnamed theory developed by unnamed scientists. And of course it would be an important discovery to name on this board by its very own.

My first reaction would be to warn for reversal of cause and effect. The phenotype is often seen as extension of a genotype but that doesn't mean changes in phenotype and genetic material always have to mean some direct Lamarckian feedback loop. Who knows which inter-genetic development finds place during cell division during a lifetime? It's quite tricky to name cause and effect right away.

Example: one gene in a male might cause a colorful tail. Same gene in a female might cause the preference for colorful tails. Genes get together and make baby tail genes. If some environmental influence (eg lack of sunlight) might affect the gene expression it doesn't equal a mutation. It might open the door for other genes to become dominant in their expression, or phenotype. For example a short and audible tail. But this only happens when that gene is already there in the first place. No mutation of any kind has been proven yet, unless one can point to the DNA and show the mutation in place. I wonder if your show did that and could prove this would be inherited.

Elizabeth wrote:

DQ: There would be no longer being any of the cunning,

E: Why is it that cunning is viewed as a positive trait in males, and a negative trait in females? A man who does a cunning business deal is viewed as a modern conqueror, but when "cunning" is applied to females, it is automatically considered a negative trait?

Because the cunning of men has led to the creation of civilization, science, philosophy and wisdom. Female cunning is almost exclusively focused on manipulating others, deceiving them, seducing them, pushing their emotional buttons, etc.

To the degree that a man engages in this latter form of cunning, and many do - e.g. salesmen, politicians, shonky businessmen, etc - he is behaving femininely.

Masculine cunning is visionary and constructive; female cunning seeks narcissistic, short-term rewards in the moment.

Some who claim that females have superior cunning, also state that this gives women greater capacity for intellectual work.

If it is combined with insight, vision and long-term purpose, then maybe they can do something.

DQ: feminine wiles,

E: And here you even have to preface it with the word feminine, to differentiate it from masculine wiles.

"Feminine wiles" is a traditional term, reflecting the long-held perception that men correctly have of women. I've never heard the term "masculine wiles" used in any context.

DQ: vanity,

E: Male vanity can not be blamed on women any more than female vanity can be blamed on men.

Recognizing that almost all women are hopelessly vain about their appearance and status within the world of womanhood is simply a case of recognizing reality. It has nothing to do with casting blame.

Those articles you posted merely highlight that men have become more feminine over the past couple of decades.

DQ: changeability,

E: When circumstances change, or more information becomes available, it is more intelligent to re-evaluate a situation than stubbornly hold onto the original plan. That would be unhealthy attachment.

Changing one's mind in the light of new information and new reasoning is certainly a healthy thing. But feminine changeability doesn't operate like this.

Feminine changeability is unstructured and random and results from the lack of definition in women's thoughts. There isn't enough clarity and structure in their thoughts to maintain a consistent point of view.

This is why a woman can happily contradict herself within a couple of sentences and not even know it. It is also why she has real difficulty extrapolating from what she learns from others and exploring entirely new lines of thoughts. It is why there is so little genius produced by women.

DQ: emotionalism,

E: Except anger, of course; anger is considered very masculine.

Not by me. Yes, explosive anger experienced by some men generally results from the way they habitually suppress their emotions, which causes a gradual build up. And yes, this activity of suppression does enable men to separate their emotions from their thoughts in most instances, which in turn enables them to think more objectively about things and handle pressure situations.

So explosive anger does indeed come from a more masculine source. But from the perspective of wisdom, anger is still a very feminine activity.

DQ: sexuality,

E: You have previously posited that females are sexuality because everything about them is arousing to (heterosexual) males. Since males, just by being males, tend to be arousing to heterosexual females, the same argument could be made of either gender.

I have never made that argument.

Female sexuality is passive and decorative in nature. It is all about becoming a pretty ornament and waiting for men to be attracted. Male sexuality is wrapped in his achievements, wealth and status. That is, it is intertwined with action and being constructive, which again gives men a greater advantage when it comes to higher pursuits.

DQ: and unconsciousness which comprises being a woman.

E: There isn't even a need for me to cite that most males are unconscious also - you have said that yourself.

I've also said that men and women are unconscious for different reasons. A man is unconscious because he suppresses, erect mental blocks, hides away, distracts himself, etc. A woman is unconscious because there simply isn't enough definition in her thoughts.

A woman doesn't have to engage in the kind of suppressive activities that a man engages in. There is not enough there in her mind to suppress.

DQ: My own aim is pushing the human race into growing beyond both the masculine and the feminine and becoming sages.

E: Good - but why not accurately assign female characteristics to females, and male characteristics to males, and duly note characteristics which show in both males and females, rather than saying that most males are mostly women?

Because it highlights to men what they need to do to become wise.

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Pye wrote:Testosterone is not the seat of reason. In fact, it's quite the opposite.

To approach reason as a project of promoting masculinity is a self-defeating cause. A self-defeating, masturbatory cause.

Conditions are the seat of human reason, and conditions alone are why men have been freer to excel in this regard. Set those conditions - everywhere with everyone, if this is what you truly value above all.

What a load of feminist drivel. No wonder women have achieved nothing more than the ability to be female. "Conditions" are the seat of human reason? And what, these conditions just popped into existence out of the ether? Miracles are true!! Hallalujah!! Praise the Lawd and pass the butter!

Pye wrote:Genes are not entirely irremediably fixed entities. Geneticists have already observed the effect of environment, lifestyle practices, diet, etc. in the change of gene structure over a lifetime. Just last evening on the tube was a science program involving the genes of identical twins and how they depart resemblance to one another over a lifetime, and these were attributed to the differences in lived conditions/experiences between the twins. If you want wisdom in the world, you are going to have to do more than wait for the scientists.

Lamarckianism. Like Diebert, I would appreciate some sort of reference here. Sounds a little too good to be true.

Cory Duchesne wrote: Lamarckianism. Like Diebert, I would appreciate some sort of reference here. Sounds a little too good to be true.

Yeah, I suspect the phrase "how [the genes] depart resemblance to one another over a lifetime" is the culprit really. We already know they do because of various mutation processes, some caused by environment (eg radiation) other more random. Even with identical twins it already starts from the get-go with around 1% difference which is more than people normally assume.

Anyhow, I suspect Pye's reference might be about the so-called DNA methylation or "chromatin marks", which are parts of the chromosome but not the DNA. They both influence the expression of the DNA in the phenotype to some extent ("Epigenetics").

It makes sense in terms of adaptiveness that there's a mechanism beyond DNA that can turn certain genes on or off depending on circumstance instead of waiting on next generations. Question is if this epigenetics can go as far as changing core behavior in terms of masculinity and femininity. If that is so then still Pye's argument doesn't make sense. Instead of changing genes the scientists now just have another option open apart from changing circumstances. Circumstance which might not be so easy to change without changing hearts and minds first. Catch 22?

The catch is that if gen therapy would become available one still has to choose to submit to it. And the 'popular' genetic treatments wouldn't be the masculinity or wisdom trait-inducers, one can only assume.

Diebert requests:

Reference please

Sorry for the unacademic referencing (I'm not being smartass) - this was a segment of an american television program called Nova Science Now and I did not take notes (still not being smartass) nor catch the names of the several scientists working on this identical twins genetic research. I promise if time permits to do some tracing on it if possible.

Meanwhile, if you can accept a synopsis: The researchers took pairs of identical twins of young ages and old ages and isolated pairings of specific genes from both of them. To illustrate their similarities, they did a kind of overlap (microscopic) photography that could show in color to what extent these pairs of genes from the pairs of identical twins resembled one another along the strand (in this case, yellow was the telling color).

In these pairings, the matching genes from each twin were laid overtop of one another, and in the young identical twins (children), almost the entire strand showed yellow (but for the smallest shades of departure here or there along the overlapped strands). They performed the same procedure with the genes of a different pair of identical twins who were somewhere in their late 50s. (We have to keep in mind that genetic science hasn't been around long enough to have performed this experiment on one pair of identical twins, both in their youth and 40 years later, but this is what these researchers were curious about.)

When the gene pairings of the older twins were overlapped with this imagery, very little of the signal color of yellow showed along the strand at all. In fact, the overlapped strands appeared mottled with other colors that did not contain the yellow that indicated identical/sameness at all. A few tiny dots of yellow were present, but the researchers themselves were surprised at how little the two gene pairings in the two older identical twins were no longer identical. The researchers were suggesting that as life and private experience go on for identical twins, their genetic structure increasingly reflects these differences. The narrator then went on to talk about the implications of lifestyle, diet, experience, etc. - the effect of living conditions on the genes themselves, which is the conclusion the researchers themselves had drawn.

Dan writes:

"Conditions" are the seat of human reason? And what, these conditions just popped into existence out of the ether?

Conditions, like, say ancient Greek culture, wherein we are fond of remarking the birth of western philosophy. Or the equally highly developed ancient China, wherein Lao Tzu lived. Conditions, as in how well you are going to grasp philosophy if you live in Auschwitz as opposed to Australia. Conditions, as in the reasoning capacity of a feral child versus a child born into a human society. Conditions, as in education versus no education; literacy versus no literacy, and in the case of women, conditions such as those that encourage immanence and those that encourage transcendence. Conditions, such as, place a plant out of sunlight and it will die . . . . conditions are causality, and those that we have conscious knowledge of promoting wisdom, we have no excuse to ignore.

C'mon Dan. This isn't rocket science. We are conscious of what given conditions can do with different things. There is no excuse anymore for this bullshit fixity, not when we are conscious of many of the conditions that promote the growth of reason in people; conscious of the fluid nature of life and causality.

If many here are so convinced that the work of promoting wisdom in women and men will really only gain success through materialism/genetics, then why haven't you all studied to become genetic scientists? Why have you considered your own enlightenment only a matter of your minds/logic/thinking and the practice of philosophy? If you love it as you say on the one hand, and you deem materialism/genetics to be the only way forward, then what are you doing driveling around with reason/meditation/logic/speech/texts/dialectic, inner and outer/attachments, etc? Are you interested in the upward movement of conscious or not? Yes, you say. Work with philosophy you say. But then you say it can't happen this way! Havers. Stark, raving havers . . . .

Dan emotes:

What a load of feminist drivel. No wonder women have achieved nothing more than the ability to be female . . . . Miracles are true!! Hallalujah!! Praise the Lawd and pass the butter!

If this is the best you can do against a number of cogent points I have put forth throughout this thread - if this is the very best you can do, then you have done nothing. Okay, you wait for the scientists/materialists to make wiser reasoners of us all. You hope and pray and sigh and wish and say over and again, no to women; no to bootstrap enlightenment; no to all these things you say no to, and yes to whatever that is you are waiting for to come down upon you and enlighten your mind, speaking of ether.

Myself, I've got stuff to do and sorry to disappoint you, but it works. I have living proof that it does.

Pye wrote:

Cory wrote: You really need to get over your denial of biological differences between men and women.

Biological difference in men and women are the mechanisms of procreation.

The higher faculties of both men and women have indeed most likely been brought into being by the blind drive for procreation. However, these higher faculties, being an effect of this blind drive, have caused men and women to want more than to just be a mechanism of procreation. For instance, there are some woman who, with some degree of consciousness, use birth control and have abortions, often for the sake of maintaining, what they sometimes refer to as, a sexy body. They use their faculties of memory, which was originally selected to help along procreation, to make life more exciting and fun. Where I used to work, there was this woman in her late twenties who had, what most would regard as, a very sexually arousing body, you could tell she worked hard to stay looking very good, and someone said to her: "it's about time you had some kids". The reply was: "And ruin a body like this?"

Her mental faculties were invested in maintaining excitement and thrills, whereas procreation wasn't even on the list.

And then there is the case of someone like yourself, Pye. Is your brain totally devoted to catching a mate to get yourself some children? Or do you make use of your mind in other ways?

Perhaps you need to take care of how much about life you insist on remanding to this.

Remanding?

to send back (a case) to a lower court from which the case was challenged, with instructions as to what further proceedings should be had.

So, because I'm the higher judicial authority, the case I'm 'sending back', is the appeal made by those who say that women are not dangerous to the well being of clear thinking and truth.

Or we can put things the other way around, where it is you who is the higher judicial authority, and being in such a lofty position, you keep remanding the appeal made by those underlings like my self who think that, contrary to the view of higher judicial authority figures like yourself, women are indeed dangerous to the well being of clear thinking and truth.

I don't care about that for which I can do nothing.

That's strange, didn't you say you were altering female genes?

Your ilk think that nothing can be done about anything.

A truly good man is not aware of his goodness, And is therefore good.
A foolish person tries to be good, And is therefore not good.
A truly good person does nothing, Yet nothing is left undone.
A foolish man is always doing, Yet much remains to be done
When a truly kind man does something, he leaves nothing undone.
When a just man does something, he leaves a great deal to be done.
When a disciplinarian does something and no one responds, He rolls up his sleeves in an attempt to enforce order
Therefore when Tao is lost, there is goodness.
When goodness is lost, there is kindness.
When kindness is lost, there is justice.
When justice is lost, there is ritual.
Now ritual is the husk of faith and loyalty, the beginning of confusion.
Knowledge of the future is only a flowery trapping of the Tao.
It is the beginning of folly.
Therefore the truly great man dwells on what is real and not what is on the surface, On the fruit and not the flower,
Therefore accept the one and reject the other.

it's not just about conditions it's also about the desire to be enlightened Pye. Most women and men simply have need for such a thing. They literally weep and whimper when such a thing is mentioned or revealed to them, it's totally the opposite. However, males hold the seed for philosophical wisdom, and the more masculine you are the more you will desire it, that's why all the serious philosophers were men. It's not just "conditions," most philosophers here were raised ignorantly by their parents, and yet something inside them made them think. Women thinkers have a huge masculine component, Celia Green, Camille Paglia, they are aggressive and serious, most people aren't.

Pye wrote:

Dan wrote:"Conditions" are the seat of human reason? And what, these conditions just popped into existence out of the ether?

Conditions, like, say ancient Greek culture, wherein we are fond of remarking the birth of western philosophy. Or the equally highly developed ancient China, wherein Lao Tzu lived. Conditions, as in how well you are going to grasp philosophy if you live in Auschwitz as opposed to Australia. Conditions, as in the reasoning capacity of a feral child versus a child born into a human society. Conditions, as in education versus no education; literacy versus no literacy, and in the case of women, conditions such as those that encourage immanence and those that encourage transcendence. Conditions, such as, place a plant out of sunlight and it will die . . . . conditions are causality, and those that we have conscious knowledge of promoting wisdom, we have no excuse to ignore.

I agree that conditions can give rise to all sorts of beneficial paradigms. However, what you said was: "Conditions are the seat of human reason." This is obviously nonsense as such conditions (e.g. ancient Greek cuture) don't just appear out of nowhere. It is human reason that gives rise to them.

Dan writes:

I agree that conditions can give rise to all sorts of beneficial paradigms. However, what you said was: "Conditions are the seat of human reason." This is obviously nonsense as such conditions (e.g. ancient Greek cuture) don't just appear out of nowhere. It is human reason that gives rise to them.

Correct.
Causality creates the human who in turn creates its own conditions for living. Unless you think causality is here to take care of you. Unless you assume that these cities, culture, ideologies, and social practices have all been created by unconscious men. For when we are prone to saying that causality alone makes me do everything that I do (and that "I" have nothing to do with it [or worse yet, that there is no "I"]), we refute the very causality we are attempting to uphold.

Doing this promotes an incorrect view of the for-itself being as a passive entity pinballing around helplessly by causal forces other than itself. Doing this promotes the same kind of unconsciousness that one identifies in others, who tend to say things like, "well, that's just the way I was raised," or "that's just the way it's always been," or "that's how we do things in America," or "I just have to get that pair of shoes - everyone is wearing them!" etc. It's an invitation to mindlessness. Gives it a very grand excuse. In this, one shares with Christians who pass off their own wills to god-willing, or spiritual causalists who pass off their own will to causality. Both are not the truth. Both are on the run from themselves. And why not. The work of the rising consciousness is painful, like waking from sleep. Like Plato's Cave, disorienting, difficult, etc.

It is a fact that we are for-itself beings. We live, breathe, eat, think, sleep, act, and die entirely for-ourselves. Causality does not put food in your mouth: you - as a human agent in conformity with your for-yourself condition - do. It does not think for you, act for you, or die for you. Indeed we are affected by multitudinous causal conditions in and around us at all times, and in turn, we affect multitudinous causes to the whole in return. But we cannot escape this brute fact of our for-itself condition. Nor the fact that it bears an expiration date.

It is this brute fact that men run from, willing themselves as passive substance, willing metaphysics to explain themselves to themselves, willing all sorts of entities to guide and accompany them in the fact of their for-itself isolation. If this for-itself condition did not actually exist, we would never have discovered our individual minds, and if this for-itself condition did not exist, it is likely we would not experience suffering, nor be able to commit suicide. Causality does not hold the gun and pull the trigger. You do, as an unmitigated agent for yourself; as your will to end.

One has to pause here and ask: if everything that the human undergoes is pure nature, purely a matter of what moves on its own and moves us, then why is human living difficult? Why does it ask questions, envision, suffer in its own mind, think that things aren't "right" with its being in the world and that something needs corrected in the whole affair? To resolve all of this into pure conditions is correct, but to do so and not reckon with our for-itself condition is to continue on in an "unnatural" state.

So, our living conditions are those of our own creation in service to our for-itself nature. Men build cities, temples, religions, ideologies, social orders for-themselves. They have to - this is how they have found themselves in the world. And they are able because they possess the original brute strength to affect all their for-itself projects. And that very for-itself freedom of movement and project is the seat of evolving reason. Where men build for themselves conditions that do not foster waking reason, reason dozes along . . . . where men restrict other for-itself beings in their own for-itself freedom of movement, reason also sleeps, and this latter has been the historic condition of women.

Stay out of our temples, our institutions, our universities, our world-building, so have said the men to the women. Stay as an animal (in your for-itself state), in service to our (for-itself) desires, so have said the also for-itself men.

David writes (in general defense of the fem-enemy thing):

Because it highlights to men what they need to do to become wise.

So you tell them their reason is apt to be interfered with in their desire for sex/mating/women. (And of course, you tell them something they already know). You tell this to women, too, for it's the same for them. If passion appears to be antithetical to reason, then this is true for every passion-feeling thing.

Myself, I rather like Hume's upending of this, in that reason is and ought to be the slave to the human passions. One of those human passions is wanting to be "enlightened" and thus mitigate the suffering of one's for-itself condition. You tell them this - that their desire is a for-itself affair and that it is their desire alone that gives (in this case unwanted) value to the object. The object (in this case women) has no intrinsic value on its own. Men's (and women's) desire for each other makes it so.

From another thread:

Jamesh writes:

You folks really do need to think of the QRS as being autisitic, because the truth is they are.

This is not autism. It's willful ignorance - the real enemy of truth.

And let me state categorically that I mean this only in reference to the mas-fem pathology of bad faith promoted here. But this is no small potatoes: it is setting up conditions for "enlightenment" at the same time it is setting up conditions for the impossibility of that to occur. This sort of teaching embeds the neuroses of one's teachers into the teachings, rather than guiding people to the reasoning faculties of their own minds - the only thing a teacher ever need do.

From another thread:

Dan writes:

Looking for a girlfriend right now, huh, Jimbo?

You've been forewarned, mates. If you follow/support/enhance/agree with something that looks like truth to you, but comes from the mouth of a woman(unconsciousness), you will be similarly accused.

Another fine teaching technique brought to you courtesy of your forum hosts, who appear to prefer something else over truth.

(and I reiterate this last hyperbole once again in reference to the fem-enemy thing.)

Pye wrote:[. . .] when we are prone to saying that causality alone makes me do everything that I do (and that "I" have nothing to do with it [or worse yet, that there is no "I"]), we refute the very causality we are attempting to uphold.

Doing this promotes an incorrect view of the for-itself being as a passive entity pinballing around helplessly by causal forces other than itself.

No, it promotes the view that there's a reality that is greater than what can be perceived by consciousness. It is correct that we are entirely part of the flow of causality and thus passive entities, but consciousness can't perceive that so the perception of being an active agent persists.

Matt writes:

No, it promotes the view that there's a reality that is greater than what can be perceived by consciousness.

Matt, maybe take this up with David, who has written often (and eloquently, I might add) that nothing exists outside the mind.

Matt: It is correct that we are entirely part of the flow of causality and thus passive entities

say bye-bye to your mind and enjoy your stay in the waiting room :)

Matt: but consciousness can't perceive that so the perception of being an active agent persists.

"Consciousness" - has just perceived that, right here, right now.

I just wanted to add to my last post that the perception of being an active agent is the only perception that we have to work with, so that's why thinking of ourselves as having freewill works on a practical level. But just because something works doesn't make it true.