GENIUS FORUMS

Hi all,

My name is Nicolas and I'm 21.
I'm very happy to be here beacause this type of forum doesn't really exist in France.
My interests are philosophy, arts, metaphysical, mysticism, psychology, criminology, genius and people like Krishnamurti, Buddha, Da Vinci, Beethoven, De Staël, Jesus, Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, Weininger, Plato, Kierkegaard etc..

I also would like to share two french genius :

Simone Weil (1909-1943) : French philosopher and Christian mystic.
In particular the following books,
- Gravity and Grace
- The Need for Roots

René Guénon (1886-1951) : He wrote a lot of things about metaphysical and about symbolism.
In particular the following books,
- The Crisis of the Modern World
- The Reign of Quantity & the Signs of the Times
- Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power

As I continue English language learning my study focuses on unknown genius of history - about Otto Weininger these days - and their work
If you have any other names or works to advise me I would be happy to hear that :)

Zhuangzi, Aldous Huxley, and a must read is the Tao te Ching by Lao Tzu.

I should warn you in advance this site is not about philosophy or enlightenment, it is about having arguments

But philosophy is useless, so why do you care?

Bonjour Nicolas,

I've run into René Guénon already a few times, some of his social criticism was very interesting to read and he took on a lot of subjects it seems in his overall work. Its always interesting to bring a thinker under the attention. As a whole I still have no opinion yet on his work simply because I've not read much of it. But I liked this statement though when he described his concept of initiation as opposed to the mystical: "in everything pertaining to initiation there is really nothing vague or nebulous, for on the contrary it is as precise and 'positive' as can be". That's the spirit!

Nicolas: I am curious as to why similar forums do not exist in the French language? Given the French love of conversation, ideas and debate I find it surprising. Based on your reading list, it would seem you are interest in the philosophy of religion or religious ideas. Or perhaps the religious aspect of philosophy. Or how would you put it?

And what part of France do you write from?
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John/Seeker: What interests you about Aldous Huxley? What are your favorite works? I have to say that I would not have imagined you a fan of Huxley: the quintessential intellectual.

What isn't useless? I don't care, although speaking of contradictions, how can one be aware they have no free will, and then go on to say their uncontrolled thoughts are reliable?

Dan wrote:

"Yes, most people are wafflers, lost in the dance of useless conceptualisation, but this isn't necessarily true for everyone."

What makes you think you are different? You are a "dumbass machine" like the rest of us.

It isn't that you can't think, it is that your thoughts have no relation to what is real, they are nothing but imaginations and delusions, like an explanation one might give for why there is a roller coaster in their backyard in a dream.

It is called ego to think highly of your self, or to "listen" to even one delusion that arises in your mind.

In case you haven't noticed, every single person thinks they are right, they think they know it all, but in reality they are all simply going through mad ramblings, and the only platform they have for checking if their ramblings are truths or not is to ask other mad ramblers.

Not-knowing is true knowledge... thinking you know Dan, is a disease.

Alex,

Huxley was very good at realistically talking about the drives/motivations of people, I was given a hard copy of Ends and Means from the 1930's which is a great book, and the doors of perception was also interesting. He wasn't the average intellectual, he spoke a lot about mysticism and even divine nature, and was clearly very honest with his opinions despite if others would have thought him ridiculous. Not that I read anymore, past that stage, sometimes I just decide to participate on a whim.

SeekerOfWisdom wrote:What isn't useless? I don't care, although speaking of contradictions, how can one be aware they have no free will, and then go on to say their uncontrolled thoughts are reliable?

Why do you think there's any problem or contradiction between the two views? There isn't. The fact that all thoughts are determined doesn't negate the possibility of valid thoughts. Valid thoughts are as real as false ones. They're both simply caused and ultimately unfree (which doesn't mean much because the idea of free will is incoherent in itself anyway). Their lack of freeness says nothing about their validity or otherwise. You think Nature can't produce that which is logically valid and have the conduit of that validity know it?

I'm going to ignore the rest of your hopelessly self-contradictory post and put this to you: the law of identity, symbolised by A=A, is an irrefutable piece of "knowledge". It's the principle upon which all logical formulations are built (and indeed consciousness itself). It is the basis of all possible world views. There can be no world view that doesn't have this principle at its foundation. That's because things are. Differentiation, is. The law of identity states, essentially, that a thing is itself and not something else. There can be no identity, no "thingness" without it. It's basically what consciousness is. I know this. My knowledge of this cannot be invalid. It cannot even be coherently doubted. If a given idea cannot be refuted or even doubted coherently, then it perfectly sensible to regard it as true and valid.

If you can doubt, question or refute A=A coherently, then I'll award you a gold star and consider your own position to be established as true.

Like I said once before, try giving me some knowledge on ultimate reality that isn't simply "1=1" or "I can see a cup". A four year old can tell me these things, also, having no control over what thoughts pop into your head very clearly shows how meaningless they are...

You make no decisions over what you do, think, feel or see. It amazes me how illogical you can be while talking about how irrefutable your logic is, you admit you can't even choose what topic you think about...

Even having the slightest correct understanding about how things work is enough to see clearly we do not decide which imaginations flow through our mind, we have zero choice over any of our mental stimulus and zero choice over any of our thoughts and reactions to that stimulus. Too empty for you?

SeekerOfWisdom wrote:...we have zero choice over any of our mental stimulus and zero choice over any of our thoughts and reactions to that stimulus.

The fact of ability to respond - responsibility - deliberation, doubt and selection, isn't that what choice boils down to? Free will or not, decisions are being made by something. Some process is occurring and it can be examined. The claim "zero choice" is meaningless and it doesn't stop you from challenging or agreeing, it doesn't stop you from examining, caring or not caring. It doesn't stop you from growing or curtailing. And discussions like this can still help you to clarify for yourself or others. No person making choices doesn't mean no rationality or dialectic occurring.

John/Seeker wrote:Huxley was very good at realistically talking about the drives/motivations of people, I was given a hard copy of Ends and Means from the 1930's which is a great book, and the doors of perception was also interesting. He wasn't the average intellectual, he spoke a lot about mysticism and even divine nature, and was clearly very honest with his opinions despite if others would have thought him ridiculous. Not that I read anymore, past that stage, sometimes I just decide to participate on a whim.

It surprises me that you wonder why Conversation often becomes completely impossible *here*, and then it seems tragic-comic that, for you, the Conversation is the end of conversation. Where the Divine and all that that might mean is a man flying like a moth into the flame where he is consumed, annihilated. This is the sort of 'spirituality' that is condoned *here* and there are a group of persons who practice this religion of annihilation of self with a peculiar vigor. Deeply convinced, 100% certain, rhetorically and dogmatically committed. Unmoveable.

I glanced at the opening paragraph of Waldo Frank's 'The Rediscovery of America' and found a line where he meditates on the long attainment of Europe and 'the silence between men who for a thousand years had lived within a Word'. And yet here, with you and others like Dennis, and with a blind determination that no one of you actually understands or can even defend cogently, you advocate for what is effectively an ending, not only of a mediation on 'the Word' and all that might mean, and the work it requires, but for the severing away from everything that came from that vast investiture within the world of the Idea. You can, at 19 years of age, simply overturn the whole table, cast the books aside. You are so confident that you know what you are doing, of your self-possession, your certainty. And in that certainty you, like your close brother Dennis, you quack. Quack quack quack. Filling up the space with badly conceived 'ideas' that represent the end of Idea. And no one can put a stop to it. There is nothing anyone says that gets through on any level or in any way. It is a perfect resilient structure for a position of sheer ignorance dressed in the robes of the highest attainment: self-realization. I am often literally shocked by what I read on these pages.

There is no comparison whatever between what you are doing---'articulating'---and what an intellect like Huxley articulated. In the end it rather seems to me that you are fully contemptuous of Huxley and anyone else like him who will work methodically through ideas. I wonder: where will you be in ten years? In twenty? The direction you are establishing for yourself, where can it possibly lead to? What could it ever attain? Will you perhaps end up like Dennis, a barking, angry man with three destructive ideas that dominate his body and mind, pathetically trapped with some chihuahuas and an Internet connection typing out a value-devoid swan song? Maybe you two are an omen for each other? (In the end of course I can only share with you my impression of your trajectory and perhaps I really do get it all wrong. But it seems to me that someone should recommend to you that you take care. The roads we establish for ourselves rise up at a certain point and claim us. We have freedom to choose but only up to a point).

Diebert writes: The fact of ability to respond - responsibility - deliberation, doubt and selection, isn't that what choice boils down to? Free will or not, decisions are being made by something.

yes, and yes - being made by the for-itself that every living thing is.
ALL choices are conditioned - by the circumstances, by the genetic make-up and experiences of the living being, by everything. I wanted to go to college on the moon, but conditions dictated otherwise. Nevertheless, no one else made my eventual "choice."

A living being can only act for-itself, breathe for-itself, think for-itself and is only and ultimately the nexus of its actions. Nothing else mediates the for-itself in relation to the absolute (totality, all, what-have-you). This means that individuality will never be transcended or reduced or uptaken into something else. This individual for-itself stands in absolute relation to the absolute (to borrow a little Kierkegaard). The word "choice" is a synonym for this un-mediatable individuality. To say that nothing is happening there but pure response does nothing to mitigate the for-itself processing that every living being does.

It's not necessary to burden the free-will vs. determinism discussion anymore with its religious spin, for that god only wanted followers if they came to him freely, unconditionally. Nothing is unconditioned. Everything is condition: ourselves, the environments we find ourselves in, the circumstances we navigate, the synaptic impulses we fire upon - all of it IS conditions. We needn't fret over this word "free" anymore. We only need understand it from the point of every for-itself, for that for-itself can only and ultimately act, choose, what-have you for itself. The choice process can never transcend individuality; hence, individuality is that nexus of all possible action.

Choice is just a synonym for individuality, the particular, the for-itself. Kierkegaard's still right: the crowd is untruth; the truth is subjectivity - irreducible, unavoidable, un-mediatable: it is the direct exchange between any given for-itself and the whole of the conditional world.

Dan Rowden wrote: the law of identity, symbolised by A=A, is an irrefutable piece of "knowledge". It's the principle upon which all logical formulations are built (and indeed consciousness itself). It is the basis of all possible world views. There can be no world view that doesn't have this principle at its foundation. That's because things are. Differentiation, is. The law of identity states, essentially, that a thing is itself and not something else. There can be no identity, no "thingness" without it. It's basically what consciousness is.

Identity is identity and it is not something else. So it is not consciousness, or knowledge, or something else. Only Identity is identity.

SeekerOfWisdom wrote:Like I said once before, try giving me some knowledge on ultimate reality that isn't simply "1=1" or "I can see a cup". A four year old can tell me these things, also, having no control over what thoughts pop into your head very clearly shows how meaningless they are...

"very cleary shows"? Are you for real. You cannot suggest such a thing. There cannot be any genuine clarity, validity or even coherence that you can assert for any ideas you want to promote here, by dint of the very ideas you want to promote here! I'm beginning to think that your position on this is a result of a personal incapacity to actually think in a consistent, coherent fashion, and you want to imagine and build an epistemology whereby everyone has this same incapacity. That's all awfully egalitarian of you, but part of your problem is that very belief that everyone is in the same boat. You cannot know this because you cannot know the consciousness of another person. At best you could attempt to assert some general principles of reality that will necessarily apply to all sentient beings, but you can't even do that because you can't produce a coherent line of thought, by your own "philosophy".

How are you achieving this grand ability to assert certain realities for everyone, when your own thoughts are nonsense, apparently?

Dan, I took a deep breath once a few weeks ago, preparing to go through all the tangles you just went through in an attempt to untangle seeker's entanglement, but a huge wave of fatigue overtook me and I fell short of the task. Taking your time for this is practically a public service :)

Alex, you are %100 correct, I am so certain that I can just cast it all aside as pointless. The end of ideas, the reason you can't accept this emptiness is because you are still chasing after something. The only difference is that we have stopped chasing after whatever it is you feel you need to be satisfied with life, eventually you will get here too, when you stop trying to prove it to yourself or others.


And Dan your whole argument that I am by my own word saying my point is invalid is false, it's not true. I experience thought, I am saying it is made up of uncontrolled imaginations that flow into my mind, I am saying this is the same for all humans because that is the nature of thought, it is a very valid claim for someone who is experiencing thought to make.

Do you really think your ego was going to let you agree when I say you know absolutely nothing and are like an idiot child who is lying to themselves about being intelligent and all-knowing? Clearly you aren't going to agree, so no need to keep repeating "I disagree, I disagree".

Just so everyone knows... Dan has agreed he can't even decide what topic to think about. lol. "Speaking of contradictions"

Oh, I know exactly what topic I want to think about - how to get you out of the ridiculous place you're in with respect to the matter of thought. What I can't decide on is whether there's any future in it.

Real conversation is 1 on 1 with openness and honesty, without any contention. It doesn't end until all issues are resolved, short of that, nothing we speak about will ever lead anywhere.

Alex, you are %100 correct, I am so certain that I can just cast it all aside as pointless. The end of ideas, the reason you can't accept this emptiness is because you are still chasing after something. The only difference is that we have stopped chasing after whatever it is you feel you need to be satisfied with life, eventually you will get here too, when you stop trying to prove it to yourself or others.

While I can't say definitively, my intuition tells me you are caught up in a sort of 'spiritual narcissism'. You have your point, it is communicable in one sentence, and after it is enunciated there should be Eternal Silence. Why are you here writing at all? For what purpose? You spoke of joining together with others---for what purpose? To recite together that it is pointless? Something has grabbed hold of you and will I think carry you along until it has finished with you.

• "To contend, as William James did, that the mystic experience is finally ineffable is non-sense: from the Upanishads to Blake and Whitman, high men have expressed and talked about little else".
  
  ---Waldo Frank

I will happily continue to converse with you, on any subject or non-subject of your desire, with an advance fee of $500.00 A bargain in fact! I have a PayPal account so let me know when you plan to cough it up.

Dan Rowden wrote:If you can doubt, question or refute A=A coherently, then I'll award you a gold star and consider your own position to be established as true.

If A=A is itself and is not something else. There are things which are not A=A.
If A=A is itself and is something else. There are things which are not A=A.

Bobo,

It's stoopid to think A=A refers to quantities.
It refers to quality, 'nature'.

seeker,

A=A, the law of identity is not only the foundation of knowledge, it is an ontological principle of the unconditioned essence of reality. It opposes empirical reality.

The principle of identity displays the essence of reality: only that which is identical to itself is real, the empirical world is ever-changing, therefore it is not real. The empirical world has an illusory character, because phenomena are ever-changing, and empirical reality is unknowable.

This is basically what you are trying to say and yet you have managed to hoist yourself on your own petard.

SeekerOfWisdom wrote:Real conversation is 1 on 1 with openness and honesty, without any contention. It doesn't end until all issues are resolved, short of that, nothing we speak about will ever lead anywhere.

Will you please concede that your point of view makes that impossible. What does "open and honest" mean in your paradigm? It surely can't mean anything at all.

Alex Jacob wrote:Nicolas: I am curious as to why similar forums do not exist in the French language? Given the French love of conversation, ideas and debate I find it surprising. Based on your reading list, it would seem you are interest in the philosophy of religion or religious ideas. Or perhaps the religious aspect of philosophy. Or how would you put it?

And what part of France do you write from?
_______________________________________

John/Seeker: What interests you about Aldous Huxley? What are your favorite works? I have to say that I would not have imagined you a fan of Huxley: the quintessential intellectual.

These issues are not really discussed in France. My main interest is to discuss about everything about enlightenment and genius. I wrote from lyon; southeast of France.

You made that up Dennis, I didn't do anything, and that sounds very different to what I was saying but I will trust you on it. Not only because things are ever-changing, this view is from a detached perspective of thought, no longer saying "these are mine and belong to me", no attachment to illusions, it is clear they flow without your control and are essentially a bad thing when there is self-clinging, they should be regarded as manifestations and nothing more. Remember, I didn't write any of this.

SeekerOfWisdom wrote:You made that up Dennis, I didn't do anything, and that sounds very different to what I was saying but I will trust you on it. Not only because things are ever-changing, this view is from a detached perspective of thought, no longer saying "these are mine and belong to me", no attachment to illusions, it is clear they flow without your control and are essentially a bad thing when there is self-clinging, they should be regarded as manifestations and nothing more. Remember, I didn't write any of this.

Then you are saying that rationality exists prior to thought, and that thought is the means by which humans access rationality? In other words, the rational principles of human flight are timeless, they merely had to be discovered in time via thought. Correct?