GENIUS FORUMS

Dan Rowden wrote:Here's an interesting question: is a sage who sits in a chair and does nothing all day, every day, but contemplate the Infinite, lazy?

Loki wrote:I'd say he's vacuous and unconscious of many things - like economics, psychology, world issues, technology, etc.

...To contemplate the infinite is impossible anyway. The infinite can't exist, therefore it's impossible to contemplate something that can't exist.

All you can do is think about reasons why it's impossible to think about the infinite, which is not equivalent to thinking about the infinite. It's really just a weird hang up, if you ask me.

rebecca702 wrote:

Dan Rowden wrote:Here's an interesting question: is a sage who sits in a chair and does nothing all day, every day, but contemplate the Infinite, lazy?

Yes, that is an interesting question. What are we valuing here?

Dan Rowden wrote:I was asking a specific question: is he lazy?

Dan Rowden wrote:

rebecca702 wrote:

Dan Rowden wrote:Here's an interesting question: is a sage who sits in a chair and does nothing all day, every day, but contemplate the Infinite, lazy?

Yes, that is an interesting question. What are we valuing here?

"Lazy" is generally a judgment we make on the basis that a person isn't doing what we value.

Loki wrote:I'd say he's vacuous and unconscious of many things - like economics, psychology, world issues, technology, etc.

Ouch! Vacuous, really?

Because he didn't watch Obama's inaugural speech? What does any of that stuff have to do with ultimate reality?

...To contemplate the infinite is impossible anyway. The infinite can't exist, therefore it's impossible to contemplate something that can't exist.

What? So what are you saying? Forget thinking about what "infinity" means?

You've reasoned that you can never figure it out, so you quit. You figure you can't ever know what the sound of one hand clapping is,

All you can do is think about reasons why it's impossible to think about the infinite, which is not equivalent to thinking about the infinite. It's really just a weird hang up, if you ask me.

So what's your solution?

Loki wrote:Have some fun hobbies, and learn a skill set that involves the world of form. If you're suffering from some depression or bipolar, get on a mood stabilizer or upper.

David Quinn wrote:The ethical basis is the valuing of truth.

David Quinn wrote:So yes, to the degree that we urge people to shed their delusions and start behaving sanely, we are pushing an ethical agenda.

Dan Rowden wrote:

1otherS wrote:Now that women have access to higher learning, albeit a very faulty education, they too will become more rigorous in abstract concepts like morality and goodwill.

What? Are you suggesting the uneducated lack morality and goodwill?

Nick Treklis wrote:Are you defining ethics as behaving truthfully/logically? I guess that's fine as long as you are making a distinction between the way you are using the word ethics, and the status quo. Because ethics, the way I understand it, is nothing more than another kind of religion, a blind faith in what feels right, lacking any concrete logical basis to back it up.

1otherS wrote:

rebecca702 wrote:So then: how to separate created meaning from true insight or understanding.

A true insight or understanding is something which brings you satisfaction in an ethical manner.

Pye: Such a dismissal also protects a person from the need to examine their own acts; place greater import and urgency upon same.
rebecca702: I don't understand that last part. Can you rephrase that?

["who's to decide?"] Right, I do Based on all my own delusions, plus those of every other human being I've ever come into contact with. So it's "me" doing it plus "someone else", always in some ratio. How is this helpful, exactly?

I think the "ought-to" thought is simply the ego needing to do something to recreate itself in each moment.

Loki: I too have noticed that QRS is very much a moral code. Even, In their radio interviews I noticed the import they placed on appealing to people's conscience. I can recall Otto Weinegger stating the the male force is moral, while the feminine force is amoral. His point seemed to be that only men are capable of morality. Kierkegaard uses words like goodness and evil quite a bit, and Quinn seems quite taken by K. It's a no brainer that QRS philosophy is very ethics based.

Nick: An ought is in no way inextricably tied to morality. Unless of course you're saying a statement such as, "you ought to fish on that side of the river if you wish to catch anything", is a moral/ethical one, but then morality would less any sort of meaning I'm used to it having, and I'm sure it would for most others as well.

Nick: If one wishes to become enlightened, i.e. free from delusion, then pursuing truth is something one must do. Saying that we ought to pursue truth in order to become enlightened is no more moral or ethical than saying we ought to add 1 + 1 in order to equal 2.

David: With women, it's always "will", "in the future", "if given the opportunity", etc. They still refuse to take ownership of the past and recognize the limitations of their own natures. Nothing will ever be achieved until this happens.

David: The term "morality", on the other hand, has absolutist overtones, which makes it inappropriate.

Dan Rowden wrote:Here's an interesting question: is a sage who sits in a chair and does nothing all day, every day, but contemplate the Infinite, lazy?

Nick Treklis wrote:

David Quinn wrote:The ethical basis is the valuing of truth.

So truth is the basis of ethics, i.e. ethics are built upon it, which necessarily means there is no ethical basis for understanding truth. Even if this is the case, why, instead of using the word ethics, can't it just be said that understanding truth is the basis of one's values or the basis for behaving logically? Are you defining ethics as behaving truthfully/logically? I guess that's fine as long as you are making a distinction between the way you are using the word ethics, and the status quo. Because ethics, the way I understand it, is nothing more than another kind of religion, a blind faith in what feels right, lacking any concrete logical basis to back it up.

Nick Treklis wrote:

David Quinn wrote:So yes, to the degree that we urge people to shed their delusions and start behaving sanely, we are pushing an ethical agenda.

I don't necessarily see this as ethical. I see it as truth dictating one's actions in order to align other minds with the truth. It's like a wave in the ocean which can only move in one direction, and anything that doesn't have a firm grip on something else is carried along with it. How can it do anything but? And when there is no choice being made, ethics surely do not enter the equation.For instance, if I'm explaining causality to someone, and they disagree or do not understand it, I don't consider them unethical, immoral, evil, or bad. I consider them ignorant, mislead deluded, insane, or firmly grounded in egotism.

What the question boils down to is basically this: Where is the ethical basis for operating delusionally or truthfully? My answer is there is none. It's whatever we are caused to do, and once truth is understood, morals and ethics become meaningless, or at best redundant.

Pye wrote:

David: With women, it's always "will", "in the future", "if given the opportunity", etc. They still refuse to take ownership of the past and recognize the limitations of their own natures. Nothing will ever be achieved until this happens.

I see you are still reveling in your willful ignorance here, brought forth by too much media mis-taken for reality.

Pye wrote:

David: The term "morality", on the other hand, has absolutist overtones, which makes it inappropriate.

What sort of overtones does truth have?

Man's strong sexual drive, his brilliant mind, and his need for a system that will help him bear those responsibilities recognized by his intelligence have enabled women to make effective use of certain institutions that properly belong to the past -- institutions like the Church, the many nonconformist sects, and other religious communities[...]

Yet, in reality, neither women nor their chosen police force, the clergy, are really interested in man's sexual drive. The taboo did not have to apply to this particular instinct. They merely chose it because it is man's greatest -- and purest -- pleasure. Had he derived as much satisfaction from smoking or eating pork, woman would have equated smoking or eating pork with sin. The point is to keep him in a state of sin (fear), thus open to manipulation. This is one of the reasons why the catalogue of sins varies according to a man's age. For a small child, the taboo is lying, coveting the property of others, and not honoring one's father and mother. For an adult, it is sexual desire and lusting after one's neighbor's wife.

Yet how can they recognize these sins when they know neither the rules nor the system in whose name they were established? How can they believe in something that does not exist, or feel ashamed of a pleasure that does not hurt anyone? Anything that deals with religious beliefs is contrary to the rules of reason and consequently has to be instilled at an age when a sense of logic is as yet undeveloped. If possible, this should take place in a building whose absurd design and architecture equal the absurdity of that which is preached in it, thus making it all a little less incredible. And the purveyors of this type of illogical thinking should, if possible, look different from other people. If children are taught by men who dress like women, for example, or who adopt some other form of masquerade, their pupils' bewilderment and awe will be all the greater, and their respect for these figures will never entirely leave them.

Women have taken great care to ensure that their lobby, the clergy, are always men. First, because the female image might be damaged if they represented their own interests -- men might think them calculating -- and second, because they know men rate feminine intelligence rather low, which is why they can only influence a man's emotions. Advice from another man, and one respected from childhood, is much more likely to be listened to and taken. Although this advice always benefits women (for example, they will advise a man to stay with a woman he doesn't love, or support children he never wanted), it does not reflect hostility on the part of this lobby toward "normal" men, but is a direct consequence of that lobby's financial dependence on women.

Women could survive easily without the Church (they only need it for the training of men and children, or as a setting for the display of specialized wardrobes), but the Church would be ruined without the support of women. Children can be trained and today are very often raised without the Church's help. It is entirely possible that women one day might give up the nave of a church as the most effective background for a white dress. They might even consider a registrar sufficient to subdue a nervous bridegroom. Such trends would empty the churches in a couple of years. In the Soviet Union "Marriage Palaces" have taken their place as a wedding background. If this became the fashion, people would see churches for what they really are -- relics of a long-dead age. They would withdraw their financial support, both public and private, which in the last analysis has always been provided by men. It is man who pays his own tormentors. So when we hear someone say what magical power the Church has, since it still draws people to it after many hundreds of years, the circumstance has obviously been misunderstood. It is not the Church which possesses a magical power -- it is women. All such institutions have long since become mere tools in the hands of women, and it is unlikely that they will ever do anything other than fulfill women's expectations.

Ultimately, the victims are not the representatives of the various religious communities themselves. They want only to live a peaceful, undisturbed life (at the expense of masculine men, of course, just like women) and have become a kind of Mafia used by women to terrify children, enslave men, and put a brake on progress. These men are forced, under the threat of boycott, to appear in ludicrously effeminate clothes, to intone grotesque songs loudly, and to tell horror stories to a sometimes even intelligent audience. All this despite the fact that these stories, by which they make such abject fools of themselves, have long been discarded by modern theology and stand in obvious contrast to all they have been taught as students at their universities.

Modern theology, of course, is useless for conditioning purposes now that it has renounced the carrot-and-stick principle. Women need those moth-eaten tales of heaven and hell, of devils and angels, of paradise and judgment day. Death is only a useful means of manipulation if it is a door leading either to eternal happiness or to eternal damnation. To which of these two realms this door may lead is dependent on a kind of point system, scored according to earthly achievement and calculated by women. If life everlasting can be won only by faithfulness and slavery, it falls in with the interests of women -- interests which would in no way be furthered if men decided to investigate eternal life in biological terms, an investigation for which we might have to wait a couple of generations.

Women themselves are, of course, quite unmoved by all these myths. They go to church only if and when they want: their consciences do not bother them either way. For the big ceremonies which are really attempts at intimidation -- on the part of women, not on that of clergymen -- they array themselves in suitable attire: wedding dresses, christening clothes, mourning clothes, confirmation dresses, their men in the usual dark suits. They enact the roles of believer, superstitious person, or skeptic -- but in reality their minds are elsewhere. They are not interested in male speculations on the possibility of walking on water, turning water into wine by magic, or by achieving, also with the help of magic, an immaculate conception. As usual their interest does not concern itself with the essence of the thing as such, but with its possibilities of exploitation. If a man of another faith wants to marry a woman and demands her conversion in exchange for his own promise to work for her, no woman would hesitate for a moment.

If a woman chooses to believe in God, it is for one reason only: she wants to go to heaven. And what, after all, is the dear Lord but yet another man who will arrange things for her?

"Lazy" is generally a judgment we make on the basis that a person isn't doing what we value.

Her understanding of women and their deeper role in society, still a taboo subject in our glorious modern times, is quite exceptional.

Anything that deals with religious beliefs is contrary to the rules of reason and consequently has to be instilled at an age when a sense of logic is as yet undeveloped.

If possible, this should take place in a building whose absurd design and architecture equal the absurdity of that which is preached in it, thus making it all a little less incredible.

And the purveyors of this type of illogical thinking should, if possible, look different from other people. If children are taught by men who dress like women, for example, or who adopt some other form of masquerade, their pupils' bewilderment and awe will be all the greater, and their respect for these figures will never entirely leave them.

Women have taken great care to ensure that their lobby, the clergy, are always men.

Advice from another man, and one respected from childhood, is much more likely to be listened to and taken. Although this advice always benefits women (for example, they will advise a man to stay with a woman he doesn't love, or support children he never wanted), it does not reflect hostility on the part of this lobby toward "normal" men, but is a direct consequence of that lobby's financial dependence on women.

Jamesh wrote:

Her understanding of women and their deeper role in society, still a taboo subject in our glorious modern times, is quite exceptional.

That's what I thought on first reading, but is it really women creating the circumstances in the first place?

I think she is twisting the facts rather substantially in many of the statements, for the purpose of attaching blame - even though they do contain philosophical truths. Her points are made to support her establised thesis, not by looking at the origin of these traditions, but by what they now have become to more women than men.

Jamesh wrote:

EV: Anything that deals with religious beliefs is contrary to the rules of reason and consequently has to be instilled at an age when a sense of logic is as yet undeveloped.

But is it women who initiate this or women being subservient to the wishes of their husband or father?

I believe the latter.

Jamesh wrote:

EV: If possible, this should take place in a building whose absurd design and architecture equal the absurdity of that which is preached in it, thus making it all a little less incredible.

But it is not women who desire and create such buildings but alpha males, be they churchies or kings. Women don’t generally drive these alpha males in to building such edifices.

Jamesh wrote:

EV: Women have taken great care to ensure that their lobby, the clergy, are always men.

Crap, men filled with the ego glory of wanting to be more godlike, maintain this practice as well. As stated later they simply do not respect feminine intelligence, particularly when they themselves are forced to be feminine relative to their superiors.

It is not women choosing to do so via their own devious calculations.

Women are more herdly, thus more subservient and easier to fool.

David Quinn wrote:

Jamesh wrote:

Her understanding of women and their deeper role in society, still a taboo subject in our glorious modern times, is quite exceptional.

That's what I thought on first reading, but is it really women creating the circumstances in the first place?

Not consciously. It is the power of evolution working through them (and through men) which creates these circumstances.