Neil,
And...? You haven't convinced anyone other than those who, like you, are afraid to fall and therefore won't climb. I see life as resistance, hard boundaries, and structure. I see the greatest degree of "freedom" as coming with power, not with impotence. You have an aversion to life and to power.
Would you run that one by again, in a little more detail?
David said,
Children tend to come a distant third in comparison to their relationships with men and their status in the world of womanhood.
One of many statements made by the three of you that make me wonder what planet you live on. Women care far more for their children than they do for men. A famous quote: "Men are slaves to women and women are slaves to children."
Kevin,
That's exactly right. Consciousness is hellish and women are a holiday to men - a holiday from the pain of consciousness.
This is pure baloney meant to aggrandize your valor and bravery in the tough battle toward consciousness. Increased consciousness is the greatest of rewards, albeit perhaps an acquired taste, and were it not so, no one would pursue it.
Yes, my life would probably would have taken a different course - I would probably now be married and working for a start - but all my ideas can't be dismissed just because I'm not God's gift to women.
My point was that you would have different opinions than you now hold, and the movtive you seem to have for obtuseness would not be there.
since we already have men, why we should want women to be men also is odd.
I am in agreement with you. I am keen to help women if they want to become more masculine, or what I would call "more conscious", but I'm not going to force the issue any more than I would try to force goldfish to be more than what they are.
No, you are not in agreement with me. I am exploring the possibility that there might be value and wisdom in having two genders. Like my father at the age of five, you are scandalized. The only good woman is not a woman. What I am wondering is whether the only measure of a woman is how much like a man she is. I find your attitude both juvenile, and cruel. You have admitted that you have not matured emotionally since the age of ten, and that strikes me as correct. (Although Jed McKenna says that is true of most of us.)
Of course, I acknowledge this whole thing is a strange puzzle. Men certainly DO more with the intelligence that they have. And men are possessed of more genius. Structure fascinates them. Women are all but indifferent to it. The tendency is so pronounced that I have to wonder whether it is fitting for women to interact with the world differently than men do. Thomas Kneirim once said something interesting, that the nature of the masculine, like all things yang, is open and easily given over to analysis, whereas the feminine will tend to defy analysis.
Perhaps it is true that women flow into the spaces that men create, and perhaps that is fine. That the sexes might be highly interdependent goes against all modern emotional paralysis. Perhaps what women are for is to provide the detail to life. Structures without detail aren't very satisfying. They don't remain interesting for long. Perhaps women really do require a certain spark to awaken their interest, a spark that comes from man. Since, unlike you, I think our modern society is extremely masaculine, women are more lost now than they have ever been.
My thoughts are only henids of course, but I think that women are supposed to achieve something different from wisdom than men. There isn't much point in exploring such ideas if you are already sure of the consclusions. It is always sad, tragically sad to see, but I have the impression that you cannot think any new thoughts.
What a maze. How few reach the end. Yes, there are many dead ends, but unlike in the puzzle books, in this one the key out of the dead end is available if you want it - sincerity.
I disagree with this. Women feel "merged" with everything in their environment but have no real understanding of their environment - which includes other people.
This is just pure idiocy. A man can kick a dog because he is unaware of the effect he has on others (i.e., it isn't very real to him that the dog FEELS, and SUFFERS). But the woman knows the dog suffers because she is 'merged' with the dog! That's actually correct, Kevin. Increased concsiousness must include awareness of others. Otherwise, one is locked into a self absorbed hell. Certain things, spiritual things, are always a dichotomy. Samsara and Nirvana, the Tao and the ten thousand things, self and totality, individuality and unity. They are always
simultaneously both true.
This is why I say you are cruel, and being cruel you must be immature. Because your cruelty constantly reminds me of boys. Men certainly get 98% of the glory in this world, and you can easily demolish women when you compare them. Yet if the faint possibility arises that a woman might, even if due to her more emotional nature, or her brain structure that discourages certain accomplishments, might actually give her a small advantage in any area whatsoever, you smack it down with the most transparently ridiculous arguments.
And actually, our gender-free society has decreased the natural respect due to men, because of the very pretense that women aren't differently talented.
Importantly, it's not for a conscious and rational reason that women are concerned about the suffering of others.
True, Kevin, it does not require almost any rational thought. It requires sight. And I do not mean visual acuity.
Perhaps women never believe certain delusions to the same degree that men tend to.
This is true, but the same can be said of goldfish.
Not for the same reason. Don't you think comparing women to animals constantly is a bit over the top?
Women are less vulnerable to belief in nonsense because it is not the area in which their egos are vulnerable. Goldfish cannot consider ideas at all. They are not in the running. What I am talking about is an opinion that women come to, perhaps with a lot of thought and perhaps with little, an intution that tells them that the thing is much, much bigger and more complicated than the men who have confidently decided to tackle it want to believe.
Truth is a pathless land.