GENIUS FORUMS

They are, too. They seem new. Perhaps part of me wishes to forget them.....

http://infinite.futurephilosophy.org/aphorisms.html

I am a true hypocrite, one who is frequently thinking about (and occasionally voicing) ideals that I do not, and cannot, live up to. But why should something I am able to live, necessarily be what's right and proper for me?

All about me, people endorse the easy and comfortable life, as well as living it --- why? If there is so much talk about how decent and worthwhile the easy life is, then surely they are all feeling restless and dissatisfied.

How easy it is to turn one's great dream into a tiny tunnel, and there, in the dark, find that suddenly the entire field of possibility that exists outside the tunnel, has become a chilly, windy storm. That happens around the age of 30, when the tunnel becomes a safe haven, and one no longer has the energy of youth to fly boldly and with delight in pouring rain.

But I am a true hypocrite: I stand, or sit quietly, on the threshold of the tunnel, watching the rain and my thoughts. My position on the edge is recorded like a cardiogram, with the changes of thoughts leaping back and forth: a bit more will here, and a bit of a dip into the shelter there. My dallying is all about doses: if I can taste just a bit, then I can get used to a bit more.

How else can the egotism, engraved like a moraine through my entire biological terrain, be altered, except by exchanging flake-by-flake new weathering? So I live, neither here nor there. Yet even in my nowhereness, I have chosen to be at a destination. I am not lost, but finding out.

So, I am not perfect, I dare to say that I will never experience formlessness without some dirt in the soil of my mind. But - look this is real, the very attempt is more honest than all my vociferous idealities. Oddly enough, this subjectivity is far more truthful than any personal identity or value that I've pushed onto my face, because I own up that I am myself --- and in that "guilty plea" have I finally fastened my long thread.

Dan's website might do well to show a link on this forum.

A poet is a person who simply cannot keep his confusion to himself.

it is the very essence of the poet to make the common as if it were not common.this is the common coin,that where poetry deals with more or less in the common form;this circulating fluid of idea and image and phrase.

Good observations about yourself, Kelly. I've had the same sort recently. Also, good link of aphorisms written by Dan. They're all funny in that damaging truthful kind of way.

What's the point of just agreeing, bert? Why not say something truly oppositional - since pretending that confusion is uncommon is just agreeing wit Dan's aphorism.

It is sometimes said colloquially that if women didn't have vaginas men wouldn't want to know them - this is regarded as a base and vulgar view.....but.....is it true?

Vagina means "sheath". Would a man who is only a walking sword want to know anything else?

What's the point of just agreeing, bert? Why not say something truly oppositional - since pretending that confusion is uncommon is just agreeing wit Dan's aphorism.

I wonder if expressing the common as not common does necessarily imply confusion.maybe there's simply wonder...

Kelly Jones wrote:I am a true hypocrite, one who is frequently thinking about (and occasionally voicing) ideals that I do not, and cannot, live up to. But why should something I am able to live, necessarily be what's right and proper for me?

All about me, people endorse the easy and comfortable life, as well as living it --- why? If there is so much talk about how decent and worthwhile the easy life is, then surely they are all feeling restless and dissatisfied.

How easy it is to turn one's great dream into a tiny tunnel, and there, in the dark, find that suddenly the entire field of possibility that exists outside the tunnel, has become a chilly, windy storm. That happens around the age of 30, when the tunnel becomes a safe haven, and one no longer has the energy of youth to fly boldly and with delight in pouring rain.

But I am a true hypocrite: I stand, or sit quietly, on the threshold of the tunnel, watching the rain and my thoughts. My position on the edge is recorded like a cardiogram, with the changes of thoughts leaping back and forth: a bit more will here, and a bit of a dip into the shelter there. My dallying is all about doses: if I can taste just a bit, then I can get used to a bit more.

How else can the egotism, engraved like a moraine through my entire biological terrain, be altered, except by exchanging flake-by-flake new weathering? So I live, neither here nor there. Yet even in my nowhereness, I have chosen to be at a destination. I am not lost, but finding out.

So, I am not perfect, I dare to say that I will never experience formlessness without some dirt in the soil of my mind. But - look this is real, the very attempt is more honest than all my vociferous idealities. Oddly enough, this subjectivity is far more truthful than any personal identity or value that I've pushed onto my face, because I own up that I am myself --- and in that "guilty plea" have I finally fastened my long thread.

Dan's website might do well to show a link on this forum.

nice,..nice.

we have no direct experience of personality.
actions are expressions of ideas cought up in the belief,they being inherent are obscure and thus easily deceive introspection.
know thyself...?how do we know?Realize thyself...?which self or which part?
these statements are pathetic fallacies.how much of such knowledge is knowable or helpful?

the Truth is not necessary?the need is for our own truth;lack of integerity fits for sterility and is meaningless.
what is more necessary than Truth are noticed by our efforts to render such...
the means to the Ideal is by living your reality

the road for you is always devious and dangerous.

Kelly Jones wrote:

I am a true hypocrite, one who is frequently thinking about (and occasionally voicing) ideals that I do not, and cannot, live up to. But why should something I am able to live, necessarily be what's right and proper for me.

It has to do with suffering, we plan for the future with ideals or values because we attribute a certain way of life to less suffering.

Philosophers like Kierkegaard were incredibly concerned with how man ought to live. Now suppose I have forumulated a series of values which I attribute to the wise life, but I haven’t achieved all of these but I have achieved some of them. Now do I accept what has been achieved and forgot the others because they are too difficult to attain or should I keep working towards parts of my value system that I’m not yet living?

Is long term planning necessary? And if one is in a state of long term planning, isn’t one a hypocrite because they value an outcome that they have not yet achieved?

It seems Long term planning is necessary for survival purposes. And what is the relationship between long term planning and hypocrisy? Especially one we are voicing our long term plans to others as if we have acheived them?

UG krishnamurti stated: the acceptance of limitation is intelligence.

But how does one know that one's value system or long term plans are unattainable. I suppose one must realistically and objectively face the truth of their present conditions and figure out the probability of their long term plans being acheived.

And if the probability is low then I suppose they should abandon those plans and accept the limitations of their present condition.

Kelly Jones wrote:

All about me, people endorse the easy and comfortable life, as well as living it --- why? If there is so much talk about how decent and worthwhile the easy life is, then surely they are all feeling restless and dissatisfied.

I wouldn’t say there is “an easy life”, but obviously there are easier lives. For instance I would rather grow my own food and work part-time doing some easy meaningless job such as security guard than working full time as a hard labour construction worker.

So because I know there are easier lives, I think the key as a minimalist or wise person is to figure out the easiest life possible for you given the unique circumstances that you were born into.

And what is important here is that to fully understand all of the possibilities, your knowledge on many areas of study must be developed and up to date.

For instance: permaculture, sustainable technology and minimal housing designs would be vital bodies of knowledge to be familiar with.

Philosophy is not sufficient here, there must be a holistic understanding which involves the comprehension of many contemporary radical scienific movements that appeal to the minimalist.

However again one may not have been born into the circumstances to make a minimlist vision a reality so to accept that limitation would be intelligent as well.

cosmic_prostitute wrote:Is long term planning necessary? And if one is in a state of long term planning, isn’t one a hypocrite because they value an outcome that they have not yet achieved?

There is nothing hypocritical in working to achieve some goal. What would be hypocritical is to state that you have some goal, but do nothing to achieve it.

Many people are unconsciously hypocritical - if you ask them what they value, the answer won't have much to do with how they actually live their life. They've just accepted (as words) the values other people told them to have, and haven't really given it further conscious thought. They may feel some guilt when they don't live up to what they think their ideals are, but they don't actually know what it is they value.

People often just don't understand themselves.

I wouldn’t say there is “an easy life”, but obviously there are easier lives. For instance I would rather grow my own food and work part-time doing some easy meaningless job such as security guard than working full time as a hard labour construction worker.

So because I know there are easier lives, I think the key as a minimalist or wise person is to figure out the easiest life possible for you given the unique circumstances that you were born into.

Having an easy life doesn't seem like an especially worthwhile goal.

Rather than an easy life - although my life is pretty damn easy, I have to admit - I value variety of experience. To know about life, you have to live it - through different activities, different perspectives.

Young people, it seems to me - mostly by looking back on myself when I was young - have naive ideas, because they have had limited experience.

Even when I was young, I thought philosophy was something you did when you were older - after you had a body of personal experience to draw from. The more varied that experience, the broader a perspective you can have. Some things, it seems, you only learn by living through them.

Dan's site is full of wise words and aphorisms- why is it not linked to "The Absolute"? I think it would be beneficial to have access to his site from the main link-page.

look this is real, the very attempt is more honest than all my vociferous idealities. Oddly enough, this subjectivity is far more truthful than any personal identity or value that I've pushed onto my face

the word 'attempt' appeals.

a well known magician from the Golden Dawn(one of the 2 persons known to Crowley who could materialise ideas)went to Asia to become enlightened when the Golden dawn ran an end.tens of years later he return to England deeply dissapointed and ill.he died 3 months later.

Fictional Final Goal
Classical Adlerian Psychology assumes a central personality dynamic reflecting the growth and forward movement of life. It is a future-oriented striving toward an ideal goal of significance, superiority, success or completion. The early childhood feeling of inferiority, for which one aims to compensate, leads to the creation of a fictional final goal which subjectively seems to promise total relief from the feeling of inferiority, future security, and success. The depth of the inferiority feeling usually determines the height of the goal which then becomes the "final cause" of behavior patterns.

bert,

we have no direct experience of personality.

Well, if you're determined to be a "we" then you are directly experiencing the very common, and tremendously boring, personality of the people. And this personality is also tremendously effusive. I'd personally like to meet Bert, not this wispy stray cat.

actions are expressions of ideas cought up in the belief,they being inherent are obscure and thus easily deceive introspection. know thyself...?how do we know?Realize thyself...?which self or which part? these statements are pathetic fallacies.how much of such knowledge is knowable or helpful?

I agree that it's easy to be deceived and confused by egotism. But this doesn't mean one has to remain locked into the egotistical mindset.

the Truth is not necessary?the need is for our own truth;lack of integerity fits for sterility and is meaningless.
what is more necessary than Truth are noticed by our efforts to render such...
the means to the Ideal is by living your reality

the road for you is always devious and dangerous.

If only one gets on the road, and stops howling about how awful it is, then one will naturally sort out what it is one is so afraid of. Death to the dramaturd.

I think Dan is still in the process of constructing his site, that is why it hasn't been linked yet. It is literally brand new. But given the quality of those aphorisms, it certainly should be linked, I agree.

There is more depth and insight in one of those aphorisms by Dan, than the whole of Voltaire's, Kant's and Wittgenstein's work put together.

-

cosmic_prostitute wrote:But how does one know that one's value system or long term plans are unattainable.

I don't know that it's impossible for me to experience formlessness without any delusion whatsoever. But, by experience, I can judge it to be highly unlikely for me personally. That doesn't make an inch of difference to my idea of becoming perfectly wise, or to my long-term plans to achieve this goal.

How I go about educating myself will always be open to change. I might abandon short-term plans that earlier seemed useful, as indeed I have done lately.

I think the key as a minimalist or wise person is to figure out the easiest life possible for you given the unique circumstances that you were born into.

Philosophy is not sufficient here, there must be a holistic understanding which involves the comprehension of many contemporary radical scienific movements that appeal to the minimalist.

Did you know that you were loud-speakering popular opinion - which is entirely and absolutely dead wrong about wisdom?

bert wrote:Fictional Final Goal
Classical Adlerian Psychology assumes a central personality dynamic reflecting the growth and forward movement of life. It is a future-oriented striving toward an ideal goal of significance, superiority, success or completion. The early childhood feeling of inferiority, for which one aims to compensate, leads to the creation of a fictional final goal which subjectively seems to promise total relief from the feeling of inferiority, future security, and success. The depth of the inferiority feeling usually determines the height of the goal which then becomes the "final cause" of behavior patterns.

This describes the egotism of most males down to a "t".

As boy-children, they are brainwashed with the idea of the glorious big man. They then focus on striving to attain that image. Why? To support the society, that's all.

Egotism is the self-obsession that drives the unenlightened individual to fit into society, which Adler calls the "central personality". But this has nothing to do with the logical consideration of how to live spiritually, which is free of egotism by definition.

I thought Dan's website was abandoned on the Future Philosophy forum, having seen it there in March.

Ah, I recall you mentioned adding blogs and stuff, so I guess you were going to re-launch it.

Those pages were a work in progress. They are essentially abandoned at this point. When Philophaster (from Future Philosophy) created his phpBb board he offered some people a sub-domain and I accepted. For whatever reason he has since closed that board down and gone back to the Ezboard version so the sub-domains are pretty much meaningless now.

When I get around to organising it I plan to get my own domain and create a proper Men of the Infinite site. All of the material at those pages will be tranferred there.

And yes, the images will fit properly when I get myself a decent monitor :) Assuming I decide to retain them.


Dan Rowden

That doesn't make an inch of difference to my idea of becoming perfectly wise, or to my long-term plans to achieve this goal.

Kelly -

What do you consider 'perfect wisdom'?

I wrote:

I think the key as a minimalist or wise person is to figure out the easiest life possible for you given the unique circumstances that you were born into.

Philosophy is not sufficient here, there must be a holistic understanding which involves the comprehension of many contemporary radical scienific movements that appeal to the minimalist.

Kelly wrote:

Did you know that you were loud-speakering popular opinion - which is entirely and absolutely dead wrong about wisdom?

popular opinion? How so? 99% of the population cringe at the thought of living totally minimally without the vices that the city/civilization gives..

and to accomplish such a thing requires much more than just an understanding of the false ego/self, one needs to understand the physical sciences as well and be able to apply that knowledge.

if one solely specializes in psychology alone then one ends up being a lopsided genius - not able to take care of oneself.

but if you feel that I'm dead wrong about wisdom, I would like to see you actually construct an argument as to why a disicipline such as sustainable agriculture is not absolutely vital for a genius because so far it looks as though your stating one limited opinion without a properly thought out argument.

But if this is not the case, prove me wrong Kelly.

Quote:
we have no direct experience of personality.


Well, if you're determined to be a "we" then you are directly experiencing the very common, and tremendously boring, personality of the people. And this personality is also tremendously effusive. I'd personally like to meet Bert, not this wispy stray cat.

It's so funny that people are only interested to bring down the way it is said.but then again, the aphorisms of Dan,yes they are great!
when I read 'between the lines' of the answers I get ,a whole new book opens.a book that has nothing to do with the content of my post in particular,but with others connected to it.
social activity...

Quote:
actions are expressions of ideas cought up in the belief,they being inherent are obscure and thus easily deceive introspection. know thyself...?how do we know?Realize thyself...?which self or which part? these statements are pathetic fallacies.how much of such knowledge is knowable or helpful?


I agree that it's easy to be deceived and confused by egotism. But this doesn't mean one has to remain locked into the egotistical mindset.

depends on what you mean..
I believe in the eternity of Ego whatever its fluctuations.

question is: are you free or not?
He who entirely loves himself produces self-love only.

purity and innocence is simplicity,happiness is wisdom.
what is simple has no duality.

Quote:
the Truth is not necessary?the need is for our own truth;lack of integerity fits for sterility and is meaningless.
what is more necessary than Truth are noticed by our efforts to render such...
the means to the Ideal is by living your reality

the road for you is always devious and dangerous.


If only one gets on the road, and stops howling about how awful it is, then one will naturally sort out what it is one is so afraid of. Death to the dramaturd.

yeah I know what you mean.
devious and dangerous does not mean afraid.

Kelly Jones wrote:

bert wrote:Fictional Final Goal
Classical Adlerian Psychology assumes a central personality dynamic reflecting the growth and forward movement of life. It is a future-oriented striving toward an ideal goal of significance, superiority, success or completion. The early childhood feeling of inferiority, for which one aims to compensate, leads to the creation of a fictional final goal which subjectively seems to promise total relief from the feeling of inferiority, future security, and success. The depth of the inferiority feeling usually determines the height of the goal which then becomes the "final cause" of behavior patterns.

This describes the egotism of most males down to a "t".

As boy-children, they are brainwashed with the idea of the glorious big man. They then focus on striving to attain that image. Why? To support the society, that's all.

Egotism is the self-obsession that drives the unenlightened individual to fit into society, which Adler calls the "central personality". But this has nothing to do with the logical consideration of how to live spiritually, which is free of egotism by definition.

from birth is a degeneration of function - safe is he who never leaves his mother's womb.
what is perfect does not reflect its caricature.what is true has no argument - in that it is volition.
the workers of malignity own the Kingdom of Earth.
what asses these teachers,prophets and moralists now appear!
and through them what greater she-asses have we become!
you would have prophecy?first tell me your sleeping partner's name...

drowden wrote:When I get around to organising it I plan to get my own domain and create a proper Men of the Infinite site. All of the material at those pages will be tranferred there.

You could consider including some of the dialogues, and the longer essays, from the Men of the Infinite subdomain.

And yes, the images will fit properly when I get myself a decent monitor :) Assuming I decide to retain them.

The beached boat by the long breakwater is an interesting one. The nightmare image, in Femazure's post-a-picture-with-quote subdomain, is also haunting.

Steven Coyle wrote:What do you consider 'perfect wisdom'?

The ongoing consciousness of "normal everyday life", in which no egotism, or attachment-bound experiences, whatsoever, arises.

cosmic_prostitute wrote:99% of the population cringe at the thought of living totally minimally without the vices that the city/civilization gives..and to accomplish such a thing requires much more than just an understanding of the false ego/self, one needs to understand the physical sciences as well and be able to apply that knowledge.

I recently abandoned a much-pondered plan to create basic subsistence-level "farmlets" for baby philosophers, called "Thinkers Sheds". I did so because baby philosophers need many years of unstressed, and idle time, to explore. The stress of philosophy includes psychotherapy, and it is unrealistic to expect such people to have the ability to focus on farming, and construction.

I deliberately keep people - such as the cashier at the grocers, and the farmers supplying me with food, and all the others - enslaved to society to look after my needs, but because they are helping me, who is consciously striving to be free from such slavery, I am actually freeing them also.

My life is not a luxury. I may feel guilty at not bolstering the economy like a good slave, but I didn't determine how much time and effort philosophy requires!

if one solely specializes in psychology alone then one ends up being a lopsided genius - not able to take care of oneself.

The body is not hard to take care of. Most of my own health problems have improved immensely through focussing on philosophy (and psychotherapy), purely because of the emphasis on rationality.

I would like to see you actually construct an argument as to why a disicipline such as sustainable agriculture is not absolutely vital for a genius because so far it looks as though your stating one limited opinion without a properly thought out argument.

But if this is not the case, prove me wrong Kelly.

Genius depends on consciousness, absolutely, but only seems to require keeping one's life going as a human being. Looking after the human's biological needs is not absolutely vital to genius, but is likely to be a necessary cause, given appearances of the decayed body.

I think you're worried about sustainability, because you feel somewhat guilty for not working to meet your own needs. This is a symptom of social coercion.

bert wrote:I believe in the eternity of Ego whatever its fluctuations.

question is: are you free or not?
He who entirely loves himself produces self-love only.

purity and innocence is simplicity,happiness is wisdom.
what is simple has no duality.

I'm assuming that you think it is wise to be egotistical, and that you believe that there is no such thing as non-wisdom (in your scheme this would be egolessness).

Am I right in this assumption?