GENIUS FORUMS

Cory: What causes pettiness and small mindeness I wonder?



Elizabeth: Shallowness from a lack of deep experiences, or at least sufficient exposure to them.

What prevents people from having deep experiences?

Elizabeth: Failure to understand the bigger perspective, perhaps from failure to open one's mind to other paradigms or inability due to mental deficiency

Yeah but, what causes people to not open their minds? (don’t say small mindedness and pettiness!)

Selfishness/greed

What cause selfishness and greed?

A lack of love and compassion for others

What causes this?

Cory Duchesne wrote:

Cory: What causes pettiness and small mindeness I wonder?



Elizabeth: Shallowness from a lack of deep experiences, or at least sufficient exposure to them.

What prevents people from having deep experiences?

Insufficient girth and/or length.

Elizabeth: Failure to understand the bigger perspective, perhaps from failure to open one's mind to other paradigms or inability due to mental deficiency

Yeah but, what causes people to not open their minds? (don’t say small mindedness and pettiness!)

Control of "popular opinion" through control of academia and the media.

Selfishness/greed

What cause selfishness and greed?

Fear.

A lack of love and compassion for others

What causes this?

Early abuse in life.

Cory: What prevents people from having deep experiences?


Milli: Insufficient girth and/or length.

And although your comment was funny, attributing importance & significance to say something like penis girth and length is big problem for many men I think.

I observe a lot of men who shower in the in public showers in their speedo's and swimshorts.

And the amount of penis enlargement spam is very telling.


A friend of mine on the basketball team I was on used to subtly and surreptitiously masturbate himself as he took off his clothes in preparation for the shower. He was trying to get the blood flowing in order to add an extra half inch and bit of girth before getting in the shower

One time at a party I was at in high school, a buddy of mine Kevin who was real drunk came around the corner and had a mean look in his eye. His eyes met with another guy (chris) who was coming from the opposite direction. Kevin reached into his pants like he was about to draw a gun. Chris didn’t flinch and reached into his pants with a confident grin. Kevin & Chris stared each other down for a moment, and Chris then began to draw his penis out slowly with a look of great confidence on his face.

Kevin backed down and laughed out a: 'fuck you you faggot!' 'hahaa!'. "Lets go smoke a joint!"

I was observing as an outsider, and wondered what compelled Kevin to do that. Obviously the importance of penis size is culturally and genetically ingrained into our brains.

Cory: Yeah but, what causes people to not open their minds? (don’t say small mindedness and pettiness!)

Milli: Control of "popular opinion" through control of academia and the media.

And what causes people to feel compelled to control others? Attributing greater significance, where there is none.

Cory: What cause selfishness and greed?

Milli: Fear.

I agree with you there – fear is the root of all over-aggrandizing.

Eliz: A lack of love and compassion for others

Cory: What causes this?


Milli: Early abuse in life.

Why do people abuse others? Its because they fearfully attribute greater significance to things that have no greater significance.

Cory Duchesne wrote:
Why do people abuse others? Its because they fearfully attribute greater significance to things that have no greater significance.

But we are significant. We should value ourselves, assuming living is a desirable state above the state of death, which I know must be stipulated with you. Self worth gives us the strength to walk away from abusiveness.

Cory Duchesne wrote: (to mil) Population control schemes? Sorry I don’t deal in those. For you to think so only reveals your own paranoia,

I think mil's just trying to play class clown.

Cory: What causes pettiness and small mindeness I wonder?


Elizabeth: Shallowness from a lack of deep experiences, or at least sufficient exposure to them.

What prevents people from having deep experiences?

Usually choice. Sometimes being spoiled or leading a sheltered life to the point that the individual is just unaware that there is deeper water out there. Once they are aware, it's choice.

Elizabeth: Failure to understand the bigger perspective, perhaps from failure to open one's mind to other paradigms or inability due to mental deficiency

Cory: Yeah but, what causes people to not open their minds? (don’t say small mindedness and pettiness!)

Some people just don't want to. They are comfortable where they are.

EI:Selfishness/greed

Cory: What cause selfishness and greed?

Being spoiled or deprived, effects of certain substances abuses, greed could be hedonistic pleasures but I don't think that would apply to selfishness,

A lack of love and compassion for others

What causes this?

Sometimes choice, sometimes abuse, being spoiled, brain damage

Cory: attributing importance & significance to say something like penis girth and length is big problem for many men I think.

Men seem to have more of a problem with that than women do - it's a rare and extra shallow woman that cares about that sort of thing. The saying "It isn't how long or how wide, it's what you do with it that counts" holds a lot of truth. If anything, if ia penis is too big a female may wonder if the guy is going to hurt her with that. What counts much more than size is the person the guy really is. Open your eyes and look around at who couples up. Guys don't have to look good or be at the right weight. They have to observe basic hygeine (and at that there are some exceptions) but that's about it. It isn't even the stuff that the QRS says it is - although there are shallow females like that. I've seen many homeless couples - they look very happy. It's matching up with the right person without any delusions about what the other person is or should be. The size of a penis is the last thing on the mind of most females, but it's all that important to guys? Whatever.

Cory: Why do people abuse others? Its because they fearfully attribute greater significance to things that have no greater significance.


Milli: But we are significant. We should value ourselves, assuming living is a desirable state above the state of death, which I know must be stipulated with you.

Well, from my perspective, life, if lived wisely, is effortless. Furthermore, a truly liberated person sees no difference between living and dying given that one is undivided with the totality to begin with, and there for beyond life and death. Both life and death are effortless and unemotional states of being, of causality. Personally, the emotions I do have are used to fuel a strategy that leads to the ultimate demise of the emotions themselves. Emotions and reason can be seen kind of like the scaffolding and tools needed to build the house. Once the house is built, only an emotionless program remains. A program that is wise.

Milli: Self worth gives us the strength to walk away from abusiveness.

Sure, it’s necessary to be deluded and emotional at first. And like I said, enlightenment is not for injured and unhealthy people. Those people need healing. For that reason it might be best for those people to gravitate more towards sports, movies, socializing, lighter reading.

For healthy people who are devoted to supreme rationality and emotionless-ness, delusions and emotions may eventually fall away in the same way a caterpillar yields to the butterfly within it. I know, a clichéd metaphor, but it’s interesting how the caterpillars whole body actually fights to survive with defense and attack against the butterfly that is emerging.

Cory Duchesne wrote:And like I said, enlightenment is not for injured and unhealthy people. Those people need healing. For that reason it might be best for those people to gravitate more towards sports, movies, socializing, lighter reading.

Your path to enlightenment, if it does in fact go there, is not the only path to enlightenment. Snobbishness is not sage-worthy. Who is to say that the right path to enlightenment does not heal all wounds? Perhaps all are wounded in some way, and different wounds require different paths to enlightenment in order to heal?

Your path to enlightenment, if it does in fact go there, is not the only path to enlightenment. Snobbishness is not sage-worthy. Who is to say that the right path to enlightenment does not heal all wounds? Perhaps all are wounded in some way, and different wounds require different paths to enlightenment in order to heal?

I never said I wasnt wounded and in the proccess of healing.

I am qualified to give advice to those in need of healing for the very reason that I practice what I preach and am not too proud to admit that I need healing and worldliness.

I play basketball & squash, do a bit of running, swim sometimes in the mornings. I like to watch comedies, dramas, documentaries, and I've made friends with a few people whose values are totally different than mine in order to simply emotinally bond and sympathize. I can be a bit forgetful during the course of the day and occasionally there is a bit of dissonance in the socializing department, my day is rarley orchestrated perfectly, however, I am very rarely feeling sad or miserable and this is a big improvement from when i was pretty much bi-polar.

Doing all of the activites I mentioned is all part of healing and it really has not much to do with spiritual work.

But I feel healthy enough that I can engage in what I consider real spiritual work, and thus am qualified to talk a bit about it as well.

um...I have no comment towards anyones comment. I am just here to view the patterns of what everyone else is saying about stuff that I've already experienced.

My spiritual walk has it's own end. Thanks, though, anyway for nothing. Although I, would like to add that this has been a memerable experience in which I won't forget. And...would like to add, what is a genius???

Is it knowing everything? or, is it knowing what is to come in the future?...sike

Cory Duchesne wrote:a truly liberated person sees no difference between living and dying

No. THis is called a nihilistic person. This is nihilism. It's a suicidal meme placed into a society to destroy it's will to live.

"You want to live? how regressive and gauche."

THere's no argument about what you believe. You just don't like an accurate label applied to your thought turd.

For you, devaluing life is an inexorable part of enlightenment.

cory: a truly liberated person sees no difference between living and dying


Milli: No. THis is called a nihilistic person. This is nihilism. It's a suicidal meme placed into a society to destroy it's will to live.

"You want to live? how regressive and gauche."

THere's no argument about what you believe. You just don't like an accurate label applied to your thought turd.

For you, devaluing life is an inexorable part of enlightenment.

ah, I should have added - - even someone who is far from being completely liberated from attatchment can see the truth of there being no difference between life and death.

Life is effortless and of no burden to the extent that you understand. However, you cannot come to understand without great suffering, solitude, burden and striving.

Mill: "You want to live? how regressive and gauche."

I am programed to survive. I am programed to establish and maintain wisdom. I am programed to value the survival of wisdom, and thus the survival of myself.

Simultaneously, I see no difference between life and death.

Cory Duchesne wrote:

Mill: "You want to live? how regressive and gauche."

I am programed to survive. I am programed to establish and maintain wisdom. I am programed to value the survival of wisdom, and thus the survival of myself.

Simultaneously, I see no difference between life and death.

So you're programming values survival, but your intellect doesn't?

Milli: So you're programming values survival, but your intellect doesn't?

my intellect is both the programed, and the programer. The program can re-program itself. In other words, the intellect can meditate upon itself, and gain and substract from itself.

Just because I value survival, doesnt mean I can't also see life and death as one.

This program, this intellect is not easy going. It is hard going.

Frusteration, anger, joy, hope, despair, love etc, these emotions may flood or trickle in -- but the sources of each of these sensation are understood and not valued. My life is not prioritized around maintaining much pleasure, just the minimal ammount necceary to keep the organism from being too encumbered.

Just because I don't value the the enjoyment of food, nature, or whatever other common worldly experience, doesnt mean there is not enjoyment though.

Cory Duchesne wrote: This program, this intellect is not easy going. It is hard going.

If you were truly unattached, or if you were not trying to swim against your life-stream, wouldn't it be neither easy-going nor hard-going, but just going?

Cory Duchesne wrote: Frusteration, anger, joy, hope, despair, love etc, these emotions may flood or trickle in -- but the sources of each of these sensation are understood and not valued.

It seems that you entirely equate value with attachment, believing that if you devalue something, you will not be attached to it. Is that your belief Cory?

Cory: This program, this intellect is not easy going. It is hard going.

Eliz: If you were truly unattached, or if you were not trying to swim against your life-stream, wouldn't it be neither easy-going nor hard-going, but just going?

Who says I'm unattatched? It doesnt just happen instantly the moment I decide to free myself.

Consider a heroin addict. He can't just simply decide to stop taking drugs and expect everything to be just roses. After he quits his drugs, things are actually bound to get worse. Vomitting, fever, diahrea. Staying on the drugs is much easier.

You can't just close your eyes and click your heels and expect the drug addiciton to be over.

Nope, you've got a pretty rough time ahead of you. But the suffering is worth the greater freedom that awaits those who can persevere.

It works the same way with attatchment.

That's why the person who says -

"oh yeah, that no attatchment thing........yeah, I tried that for about a week - -- doesnt work, don't bother"

is being foolish.

If it was that easy, wouldnt everyone be unattatched?

Eliz: wouldn't it be neither easy-going nor hard-going, but just going?

'Just going' is simply living on auto-pilot. This would be an absurd thing for a confused and suffering human being to do.

No you have to always be questioning, doubting yourself, introspecting, watching, refrain from being influenced by others who are 'just going'.

Perhaps when I'm 50 then I can begin going on auto pilot, because by then my intellect should be well stablized and and the neuron connections responsible for my most base emotions by then will perhaps be very weak, in a deep sleep, or perhaps even dead.

Eliz: It seems that you entirely equate value with attachment, believing that if you devalue something, you will not be attached to it. Is that your belief Cory?

An entity who values, is an imperfect entity. Ones values can do either/or. They can 1) preserve and even excarberate ones imperfections or they can 2) destroy ones imperfections.

There is only different qualities of consciousness, higher and lower.

One strives for the higher because that is the nature of the masculine.

Man's problem is that he sacrifices his deepests longings in order to appease more shallow longings.

Why does he do this? Because it is easier, less scary.

The end result is that he becomes miserable old sodden lumber, too wet to burn.

The soul, kept dry, grows good.

Cory Duchesne wrote: Consider a heroin addict. He can't just simply decide to stop taking drugs and expect everything to be just roses. After he quits his drugs, things are actually bound to get worse. Vomitting, fever, diahrea. Staying on the drugs is much easier.

Drugs are artificial to the body, emotions are natural part of our exisence. It is true that just because something is natural does not mean that we should use it all we want - overindulgance is not good.

I do not believe that I have attachments except to the truth. I value what is for what it is but I do not have attachments to what is because I recognize that all that is, is only temporary to the precise moment (a moment so precise that the moment of realization is a separate moment, but with the fluidity of time and reality, induction and deduction can expand the moment to inclusivity - as nothing is truly separate anyway).

I do not have attachments to emotions, but emotions are an undeniable part of human existance. Denying Reality is insanity.

David's been at this non-emotionality game longer than most (it seems perhaps midway through the period "Letters Between Enemies" was running, and he had a natural tendency to less of a desire for relations with the opposite gender (as evidenced by his delayed onset of interest in females, mentioned in Genius News, Sex and the Sage), yet he still shows evidence of some emotion. Read The Larkin Debates, including the commenatry thread - and emotion becomes appearant in David, as it does in the thread on thebigview "The Genius Forum and its Particular Brand of Philosophy" and to a lesser extent on "Enlightened = Schizoid? A Question to the Genius Members" - same forum.

I believe that I am currently without attachments except to the truth, yet I have measured emotions over which I have reasonable control. I attempted to give up all emotions for a week - but attachments are not uncouplable from emotions. The emotions I expunged also disconnected some of my access to Reality, and left me rather unbalanced. This then took longer than expected to rebalance in myself. Denial (as defined also by "abstinence from") of reality is insanity. Self-control is an entirely different creature.

Hmmm, sometimes the right thing has a funny way of showing up at the right time. I just happened across this post of David's from January 15, 2006, 4:11 pm (it doesn't come up to the right post, you have to scroll down) where David states he still experiences emotions on occassion.

There is a difference between having emotions and wallowing in them.

You wrote:

My life is not prioritized around maintaining much pleasure, just the minimal ammount necceary to keep the organism from being too encumbered.

I think that is all there is supposed to be. Much pleasure would come at much cost, but a measured amount seems sane.

EI: If you were truly unattached... wouldn't it be neither easy-going nor hard-going, but just going?

CD: 'Just going' is simply living on auto-pilot. This would be an absurd thing for a confused and suffering human being to do.

(from the same Jan. 15 post) DQ: While I still experience myself as a "doer" in a superficial, practical sense, nowadays I can never shake off the perception that God is the doer of all things and that I really have no existence at all - even when I am running around doing things.

What David said in that post in January is closer to what I meant by "just going" but David personifies it with the term "God" where I was being more direct about causality.

********************
edit to clarify where to find the right post on the link.

Everyones truth is different. The reason I, posted the question, " why is truth?" is I, want to know what reality really is.
Set aside what time it is on your watch and go back with me to when you were born( for some of you that may be yesterday). I am sure you don't remember anything, now, but the truth is that trust was the most important person in your life. Remember when somebody was holding you in their arms, trust gave you confidence to sleep for a while.
Then, years later truth stepped into the door of your mind and she told you, " what goes up, must come down" and so on and so on. What did you do? You paniced and believed her.
Now, that everyone is older truth is the torch they are caring. Trust, well, you left her behind in your mother's blanky.