The meaning of life and how to attain it
The meaning of life is peace, and the only way to attain it is to be present in every moment... every second. You look forward and feel anxiety because you cannot control what isn't real. The past is equally mythical, and yet you look back and feel shame.
You tear yourself to pieces over 2 falsehoods, and in doing so you inhibit your ability to live in the present moment. This is the only place where you can find true peace, and therefore live in accordance with your soul and God.
Every single time you have a wobble, bring yourself back to the now. What are you doing? Where are you standing? Feel the ground under your feet, and the air in your lungs. There is beauty inside a prison cell, and solace within pain.
Be present and you will find peace.
You tear yourself to pieces over 2 falsehoods, and in doing so you inhibit your ability to live in the present moment. This is the only place where you can find true peace, and therefore live in accordance with your soul and God.
Every single time you have a wobble, bring yourself back to the now. What are you doing? Where are you standing? Feel the ground under your feet, and the air in your lungs. There is beauty inside a prison cell, and solace within pain.
Be present and you will find peace.
Comments (102)
Is or can be?
But does that make you happy? Eating, counting your money, and relaxing?
I think you need diversions that keep your interest. Peace alone is very, very boring. It is a prerequisite to happiness, but alone, peace is boring. You need some spice: drama, if not in your life, then watching it on tv, reading it in a book, or gossipping about it with the neighbours (in a good sense); you need to dance and sing when elated, and curse smash thing around when frustrated, and make furious love (even just to yourself, if no partner) when aroused.
And most importantly you need to make sense of all this; ponder the little and big things in life, have some "alone time" to think, and sort and analyze and organize your thoughts. Some call it meditation, (it's not the transcendental kind, but the everyman's kind), some call it introspection, some call it philosophy.
It is good to have the solid ground felt under your feet, and it is good to feel the pain and hear the floor creak and the cricket crick; but if that's all you do day in and day out, it's gonna get pretty mundane, and you'll yearn for an escape.
Here we go. No, it's 42.
Peace is eternal. You're judging it through the lens of Capitalism. Which is fleeting.
At the words "peace is boring" any sane man just stops reading... As did I.
Ignorance is the root and stem of all evil - Plato
There is only one good, education. And one evil, ignorance - His teacher... Socrates
No, it's 42.
Could you supply a quote of this confirmation?
1. So whom are those major religious texts interpreted by? If not by men and / or women, children. Those parts of religious texts that are interpreted by Godzilla, The Loc Ness Monster, and Bigfoot confirm your claim. I like that.
2. Or you mean the parts that do not need interpretation? Then are you talking about the entire text, or about select parts of it?
3. I have a strong suspicion your argument falls in the category of fallacies called "appeal to authority". Plus you refer to an alleged text without the support of actual quotes.
4. If I accepted your argument on the basis of 3, then you'd necessarily need to accept my argument that peace is not happiness, or it does not lead to happiness, and every major religious text that is not interpreted by man confirms it.
5. Your argument (as per 3.) and mine, expressed in four, share the simple force of referring to nothing in particular, while claiming it exists.
6. You can win this argument (i.e. that my reference is not as valid as yours) easily if you show the particular texts you have had in mind when you said what I quoted by you while at the same time I can't show you my references of my claim.
So is hell.
Therefore eternality is not an argument for meaning of life.
Plus life ends at one point. What do I do with the eternal peace that is left over after my life ends?
I can't control what is not real, or what is real.
Can you?
Can you control the situation in the Middle East, which is real?
Can you control climate change, which is real?
Can you control the problems borne by the population explosion?
You can control to realize where you are and to feel the ground under you. That is a control everyone should admire? Or aim at? It is precious little control. If everyone had the same control, can you envision what the world would be like? Or let's say, the good guys had no more control than what you advise, but the bad guys had guns, control lives, drive us (good guys) into slavery, rape our children, etc. etc. Take our food, our clothes, our shelters... but hey, you have the ground under you, which gives your life meaning.
If it does, good for you. I don't have any problems with that. If that's all you need to get a meaning of life, then I'm all for you to pursue that lifestyle.
1 - The original texts are the word of God. When they are then taken and used to create contemptible and abhorrent structures of control - that's the work of man.
2 - The entire texts with no additions or addendums.
3 - Quoting god must be atheist You're being pedantic and trying to be clever. When you're enlightened you don't need to quote. Did Einstein quote a load of scientific bods when he upended physics with relativity? No sources - he saw a truth. And he spoke his truth.
4 - I don't accept 3, which is why your 4th point is nonsense.
5 - You're 4th and 5th points are built on a foundation of sand.
6 - I don't even know what we are talking about here.
Stop the pedantic nonsense... Stop focussing on trying to win arguments with gotcha bullet points. Philosophy is a love of wisdom, which is to say it is the pursuit of truth. You've just had the truth ripped in front of your face and you can't see it. What standard of Philosopher does that make you?
I am enlightened... With the greatest respect, you don't know what you don't know... Ask Socrates, he knew that he knew nothing, and he was leagues above this forum.
It is technically not possible to be anywhere else other than the present - if one means to say pay attention to the immediate present, this would probably be the same as *not* living in ones mind which can recall past impressions and/or imagine future ones. Besides, the past and future reside as a part of the present. Past, present and future are not three separate things, they are all one.
I find peace naturally is the default state of being - one must at least be peaceful by their own nature to start making their own immediate surroundings more peaceful, including as an example unto others. It is the ones who "believe" that peace needs to be enforced externally in accordance with a "belief"-based ideology who are the barriers to true peace, despite calling themselves the purveyors of such.
I'll insert here again: "belief" is the agency required for people to "believe" that what is, actually is not, and what is not, actually is. In this case, it takes a "believer" to "believe" war is peace. This is precisely the nature of the "believers" - always inverting everything. "Belief" is the agency required to invert anything, hence why so-called Satan *requires* "belief". If Satan requires "belief", what "God" would use the same agency as Satan for "believers" to... know God? Isn't knowing (of) God better?
I find the true basis of peace in understanding (not "belief") such that one is no longer polarized and/or "set off" by anything they do not... understand.
It works the other way too:
Be peaceful and you will find the present.
I gotcha. I gotcha.
It's just an ego-fest. And the ego is blinding.
And your closing sentence is completely wrong. It is when you are truly present that you find peace. Not the other way around.
Not intending to be mean, but I feel you are describing yourself here, given you are accusing others of being "pedantic" while attempting to correct another over an arbitrary statement.
Enmity leads to projection: it is like a mark that can be seen. It applies to people who have not themselves found peace and thus accuse others for/of their own internal 'state' of being.
Be peaceful and you will find the present. Presently, you are projecting and I think you would understand this if you were in peace. Whatever lens ones own eye has will be seen in/as others, and enmity is the trigger which reveals whatever this lens is.
On a separate but related to OP note, life has no intrinsic meaning. I find one can either choose to become something greater than they presently are, or suffer themselves while blaming others. It seems a lot choose the latter, but they don't understand they are doing it.
You are a joke, pal. No one here will take you seriously, so best cut your losses.
I am enlightened, meaning I see the truth, and on this forum and this thread, I speak the truth, and you're coming back with pseudo philosophical BS. How can I be egoic if I am enlightened? If you want to question the veracity of this claim, call me out on a post and let's talk.
Philosophy is a noble pursuit. It's so sad to see that a forum with this name is really just a bunch of men trying to outdo each other. Side stepping incisive statements of truth to try to score a point.
And when Socrates knew that he knew nothing, we get you making this preposterous claim: "life has no intrinsic meaning. I find one can either choose to become something greater than they presently are, or suffer themselves while blaming others. It seems a lot choose the latter, but they don't understand they are doing it." Can you please explain to me how you managed to gain a greater insight than the great Socrates?
"The tragedy isn't when children are afraid of the dark, but when adults are afraid of the light."
I actually disagree with your statement that it is when you are truly present that you find peace. It's the exact opposite for me. It is when I am truly absent that I find peace, like when I play some chilled out music and escape.
But it's true that no one here will take you seriously when you say the kind of things that you've been saying. What you're saying isn't philosophy, it's crackpottery, oh enlightened one.
What religious texts are not interpreted by man? And if there is one and you've read it, how did you avoid interpreting it?
Quoting PhilCFThe various religious texts have quite different messages. In fact within these texts the messages are different, let along what believing in the Upanishads vs. the NT vs. the KOran leads to.
Clearly, you are not. An enlightened being doesn't claim they are enlightened and/or wear it as a badge - that's rather a way to tell one is not enlightened.
Clearly, you do not. I pointed it to you: you are projecting your own nature as if owing to others. This is the same thing as the "Biblical" mark of Cain: to till from ones own soil. Do not till from your own soil, dump it on others and then call them nothing but soil mounds.
Clearly, this is what you "believe". Some "beliefs" are rotten to the core. It has to do with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Once you eat, you are marked for death. There is another tree entirely whose fruits are ever-yielding and do not run the risk of being spoiled. I imagine this is the tree you are looking for: nothing but truths, truths and more truths.
Could this be projection?
You can claim to be enlightened while not actually being enlightened. That is a thing.
It's definitely present, but that is what the conscience is for. Rather than reacting, just filter out what is not needed. I myself find there are plenty of people on here I would thoroughly enjoy having a discussion with. I prefer people who disagree with me, and can do so without throwing a tantrum, because I think contrasting views can yield much in the way of pushing boundaries. I don't like boundaries.
Well first, knowing that one knows not is in my name - a gnostic (what I know, I know) agnostic (what I do not know, I do not know). Knowing one knows not is the condition necessary to "know" anything, which is not particularly wise, only humble.
An example of the inverse of this would be a person claiming to be "enlightened" while accusing others of what they are themselves doing.
By the way, just the Torah alone has 4 independent source authors: J, E, P and D with a 5th R(edactor) thus, unfortunately, is not only "interpreted" by man... it is written and compiled by man. This might be a place to start with regards to your "enlightenment" by knowing what the Bible actually is and where it came from.
If you would like to discuss the book of Genesis, I have read it in Hebrew as I have spent much time learning the 'form' which gives rise to the 22 Hebrew letters. When viewed from 22 different angles, the 22 letters are derived such that a passage is actually a physical form which rotates from position to position.
At least you're not engaging in the "ego-fest."
There are women on the forum as well. I am not consumed by competitiveness. I love the rational and polite exchange of ideas and the entire process of two or more individuals attempting to come to an understanding of each other, and thus to a broader perspective on their own ideas.
This forum is no exception as far as aggression, one-upmanship, insecurity, and plain meanness go. Trolling has become the rule rather than the exception for many people online.
This should just be the slogan of all forums and comment sections. Instead of engaging in a respectful way, it is easy to simply antagonize and patronize for a lot of people who use these forums. People haven't learned how to disagree in a thoughtful manner. Thoughtful to them equates to patronizing. When I engage in it, it is usually because patronizing and antagonizing language is the only one they speak, so apparently that is how they listen.
I seek intellectual generosity and inquiry. Everyone here should realize that this kind of correspondence requires a sustained effort and strong concentration skills to stay focused and really get our points across to each other. It's as if we are engaged in writing a kind of essay together, in creating something that reveals to all of us that we know and understand a little bit more than we did an hour or two ago.
Fortunately, trolling isn't a contagious disease, although it does weary one...
Yep this forum, even in it's original incarnation was never one that promoted healthy exchange. It's as if people here equate dbaggery with superior argumentation. There are exceptions but mainly demeaning antagonism is the norm sadly. People haven't grown from their college or grad pretentions perhaps. Dont know. That being said, this forums format and varying topics, along with some very good posts makes this better than others in the realm of philosophy.
Quoting schopenhauer1
That is a sad statement, indeed. The moderators, in allowing the tone to be set in such a way, perpetuate the kind of academic cruelty that never should be allowed. I'm an academician and I've seen more than my share of pathetic Ph.Ds try to compensate for their sense of worthlessness or low self esteem by acting sadistically towards others.
I just posted a new topic on Bakhtin's concept of dialogism; I'll be interested to know what you think.
I'm not letting a few warty, bilious, infantile trolls chase me away. I just wish they would play nice.
My guess is some mods do see this but dont have time to really teach people healthier discourse styles. My guess is only the egregious ones are simply banned or warned. Hard to make that distinction of when to step in.
Quoting uncanni
That rings very true as what could be or is happening here sadly.
That hasn't been my experience at all. Sometimes things get heated between even reasonable people who generally discuss and agree or disagree in good faith, but apart from that there seems to be only a small minority of people here whose main motivation seems to be to win arguments and/or defend their own biases or pet theories at all costs.
People on these forums are on many different levels of philosophical understanding and competence in critical thinking, so there will be many threads which the more philosophically adept will not be interested in, as well as specialized threads which the generalists will not be interested in. Surely the purpose of participating is to learn, and to try to overcome our biases and humility dictates that we should learn from those who are more adept, if we can understand them. I welcome my ideas being challenged, and I hope I can find the humility to admit it when I am wrong.
Anyway, in relation to the OP: why should it be assumed that meaning of life would be the same for all people?
Sure, I'm fine with that.
Quoting Janus
Nothing wrong with that. My critique is the style mainly. To pretend that there are posters that are not being demeaning and purposely antagonistic and not arguing in good faith and basic decency is to overlook a lot of what is the case. If you think simply because someone argues a point you disagree with requires a vitriolic style of response, than I don't know what to say. The only thing I would think that warrants any sort of vitriol is straight up racism, bigotry, and personal attacks.
I think you meant to write: "To pretend that there are not posters that are being demeaning and purposely antagonistic and not arguing in good faith is to overlook a lot of what is the case." so I will answer that.
I'm not saying there are not posters of the kind you describe, but that they are a small minority and not characteristic of the forum.
:lol: Yes that was what I meant.
Quoting Janus
I've seen some productive stuff and not so much.. The jury is out maybe... But as far as my experience, there's a lot of vitriol. The problem is people don't know how to regulate their message.
There are several levels of vitriol and venom going on...
Let's say you think you're a philosophy hot-shot. You've read the latest on Concepts, and Objects, and know a lot about statistical this, or biological that, language games this, or logical puzzle that, and symbolic logic this, mathematical axiom that...then a poster comes who is not speaking your style (level of grammar.. in the mind of the OP) of academese.. the amount of vitriol spurned on the intruder is unnecessarily venomous, to the point of hubris. It just doesn't warrant that. The best way to handle this for a conscientious person who encourages learning, is to present the poster in a private message some articles to read up on, if you don't think they are at the level YOU are at on that particular topic and to even elucidate a bit more on the general topics at hand that you want to focus on.. Of course, that would take patience and compassion- things lacking for most in an internet forum meant for quick posts. We are only in a "PHILOSOPHY FORUM" who needs to think about other people and ethical behavior in posting, right? But anyways, this is rarely done, even by the most "well-read". Yeah, am I "asking too much?" maybe.. but then again, it IS a philosophy forum where ethics is something that is relevant.
Then you have your everyday pisher/antogonistic poster who is trying to get a rise out of others. This is your basic troll that just wants to see their "opponent" or "interlocutor" pissed off at all costs. They are not arguing in good faith, but rather out of meanness and seeing the other person burn to the ground.
So, from the top down, I see a lot of both of these kinds of nasty behaviors. I am just telling it how I see it a lot of times.
I see that too. I am guilty of it myself at times. People commonly do become impatient, and get pissed off, especially when the interlocutor does not seem to be actually responding to what is written, but distorting it for the purposes of making their own argument look better, or is changing the subject, becoming needlessly insulting or abusive, or trying to otherwise control the discussion so as to avoid answering hard questions for their position that have been posed.
You know, all that ego-shit: that is the one thing that really tests my temper, but I have been making efforts to keep my responses even-tempered come what may, and to ignore people I believe are just trolling, or who I believe have no intention of ever seriously questioning their own beloved ideas or pet theories or whose egos are patently so big they will never admit they are wrong. (Not suggesting I'm devoid of ego myself, of course; maybe that's why it makes me feel angry when I see it in others).
Well, if I were to say, "God, any child can see how ridiculous and stupid that statement was. You are not even in the realm of sensible understanding." is that productive? I could say, "That doesn't seem to make sense if we take into account X, Y, Z". That second style seems more productive and is focusing on the issue at hand, not just trying to provoke and incite. That can go a long way in making things more pleasant all around.
I have also called myself out for it a few times. (See how much holier than thou I have become!).
An angry, insulting, patronizing participant has nothing to teach me.
How could I put it. How can we agree with your points (not a specific one, but any one of them) while disagreeing with them?
We need a sample text. Or some guidelines.
I figure your text reflects what you consider "playing nice". For references, please see your quote leading this post of mine.
In this case you can become the teacher.
You missed the point. It isn’t what they can teach you, but what you can learn from your participation in the discussion: humility, patience, tolerance...
So you believe that we learn from trolling? I see it as toxic, discussion-killing. So do the experts.
I don't know if I'm more sensitive to nastiness than others.
Let's keep it to no more than a 200-word essay, please. ;-)
(I think discussions are better when they remain tightly focused.)
You must stay away from the discussions with around 2,000 responses. Just because a discussion gets long doesn't mean it can't keep its focus.
I agree with that hypothetically, but in practice, contingently, even single long posts on the board are never focused.
But perhaps what he or she as an individual needs to learn is pride or the sense that should not simply get away with being disrespectful, or perhaps he has been to patient in the past and not cut off relations with rude people or users or too tolerant of things that were in fact simply vicious.
It seems that even the short posts aren't focused quite frequently.
That's true, but the situation isn't made any better by making posts longer.
I like Paulo Freire's concept of the student-teacher and the teacher-student in collaboration. I have always learned a great deal from my students, for I am a professor.
Historically, the teachers who so developed, had no chance, they were burnt on the stake most commonly, and / or given hamlock to drink, and / or criticized by the peer reviewers mercilessly.
Ironically, people have always been keen to listen to a rabbi, a teacher, a wise person, but when the teacher's tuition turned against accepted, strong beliefs, he or she was burnt, mutilated, hanged, quoartered and cut into many little pieces.
Teaching to transgress by bell hooks: I teach subversively, but so far I've avoided being tortured to death; they can't do that after they give you tenure, can they?
I teach students to question authority and more than anything else, I try to get a dialogic flow going between them and me.
I saw this joke by JIm Unger. It's a drawn comic. A teacher is pinned down on his desk by a painful stranglehold by an irate parent, and it is obvious to the viewer that the teacher's arm can be broken in an iunstant. The kid is standing ildly by. The parent asks the teacher, "Did you, or did you not teach my kid that I'm a 'homo sapien'?"
I thought about this on and off all day. One of the challenges of cyber-communication is, indeed, staying focused and to the point, and another one is the fact that in many cases we really don't have enough of a context within which to understand what a person means when s/he writes a statement. It's a challenge not to assume that one knows exactly what someone means when one might not really understand where the other is coming from without further clarification.
This reminds me of Borges' infinite cosmic library, which in turn makes me think of Derrida's deferral of meaning, and we're always chasing after it like a runaway kite...
What do you answer when the kids ask you, "Why ought we question authority?"
And what do you answer, when the kids don't question you?
And what mark does a kid get who does not question you, but answers all questions on his test the precise way you taught him to answer them?
This could lead only to two different responses: all communication would stop, or ELSE, all communication would explode into an infinite series of questioning
A: "What do you mean when you wrote..."
B: "What do you mean with your question?"
A: "Why do you ask that question?"
B: "What is the reason behind your asking that question?"
ETC.
In my opinion assume we must, and if it's really off the mark by a long shot, it will come out in the wash.
When they excel in the subject matter (in the Humanities), they earn As. I tell them, It doesn't matter if you never use this subject matter again in your life, because you've gotten better at learning, which is the skill you want to strengthen all your life.
I challenge this assertion. I have found that both online and in person, it takes time to learn another's language with its nuances and inflections. This is exactly what I'm talking about in the Bakhtin topic.
I have found that I understand a couple of my friends on another forum much better after writing with them for three years. Of course, this won't happen with an irrational person or a troll...
This is no version; it does not address my question at all.Quoting uncanni
This ain't an answer either. If the kid does not question you, obviously he ought to get a failing mark. If the kid questions you, then obviously his only thesis coudl be that he rejects the notion that he must question authority, and therefore he did not internalize the subject matter.
In any way, this is a great way to give all students always a failing mark.
Ya da man.
You asked me what I answer. I told you. Next you write that it doesn't address your question at all. That is confusing.
And I was not calling you a troll, not by any means!!! I'm saying that there's no dialogue with a troll.
What about the last part of my tri-part question of your teaching?
If a kid questions you, when you teach "You must question authority", then his or her only thesis could be that s/he must not teach authority, therefore they get a failing mark for not internalizing the subject material.
If a kid does not question you, the authority figure, then he or she obviously did not internalize the subject material.
Both ways they deserve a failing mark.
If you were honest in your marking system, therefore, you would have to fail the entire class each time you have a session.
I'm not da man; I'm da woman. And if you knew the concrete circumstances of my students, you would realize that this isn't an exercise in following the logical consequences of questioning authority to its limits, but rather one more along the lines of pedagogy of the oppressed. Are you familar with Paulo Freire? He wrote Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
But we came to an understanding that you are a woman. DESPITE my assuming you were a man.
So the dynamic was precisely what I advised: I assumed, and you corrected me. I did not have to ask you "Are you a man or a woman", to which you'd maybe answer, "What concern is that to you?" and I would answer, "Why are you asking me if that is a concern to me?" etc.
However, I consider this the least important aspect of what I teach my students. There are moments, either in class or in my office, where a real teaching moment, a genuine dialogic moment can occur.
Same dialogue. If I knew. How would I know? You told us? I simply went by what you told us on the post. I calls them as I sees them. If I assumed that they had special circumstances, then I'd also have the right to assume they were Martians, or that they were Cantaloupes, or that they only speak Sanskrit while your teaching language is English.
You must assume, as a writer, that people will read what you write, and some of the readers will not assume more than what they read. IF there are special circumstances that must be considered to not treat the topic logically, then you must inform the readers. Which you are doing now.
This is acceptable, of course, to correct the readers' perception if the reality is not precisely what you first wrote.
Do I detect that you don't teach what you originally told us you teach?
You told us origianlly that you teach your students to question authority.
Now you tell us you teach something different.
How would this stand up to some authority who is judging you for consistency? I am not that authority, but still, moving the goal posts of the argument is not very nice.
I wrote, concrete circumstances--not special. And certainly, you can assume any number of absurdities that you wish. I don't think you and I mean the same thing when we refer to questioning authority.
So in effect you don't tolerate your students to question your authority. "It's my way or the highway", you say on the day you hand out the syllabus.
Not very pedagoguical, I'd say. You fail them for doing precisely what you teach them to do.
Exactly what I had predicted.
What do you mean by that? Let's sort this out as well. You say I assumed you meant something different than what you meant.
So let's hear what you meant. Please.
I teach many different things to my students. Is that really so hard to understand? I don't think I've ever known a professor who only taught one thing in the sense that you seem to mean.
Who is this "we"? Is that the royal we?
Go back and read again, buddy. I work at a university and I'm paid to teach a subject matter. I don't teach or practice anarchy.
So back to the crystal ball with you to seek another prediction!
You wrote this originally:
Quoting uncanni
You gave no indication at all beyond this about what you teach. I ASSUMED NOTHING BEYOND THIS AS YOUR TEACHING SUBJECT MATERIAL. YOU ARE HANGING ME FOR NOT ASSUMING MORE THAN WHAT YOU SAY.
Quoting uncanni
We are the users of the forum. Many people read these posts, not just you and me. When you say here something, you tell not just me, but POTENTIALLY all that can and do read our dialogue.
Then you did not say the truth when you first posted about what you taught.
You clearly said, you teach your students to question authority.
I proved it to you in logical terms that you must then fail the whole class if you do that.
You said that is not you teach, in order to justify why you don't fail the whole class.
I am sorry, this is a philosophy forum, where logic is supposed to reign.
I will be surprised--nay, amazed--if anyone has the patience to read the above exchange. But of course, anyone has the right to chime in.
I don't see any logic to your arguments above. I see you wilfully distorting some of the things I wrote, and I conclude that it amuses you to do so. You call it employing logic??? What is logical about concluding that a professor teaches one thing only? This is crazy.
I also conclude that you have an urgent need to "win arguments."
No, I did not distort your story. And the logic stands. You wrote you teach your students to quesion authority. I proved that then you must fail all your students.
Then you said you teach other stuff as well. So did I bend the story line? No, instead, you have given too simplistic a description of what you teach. With what you gave, I was right, and my conclusion was dead on.
Then you introduced other elements... which means that your oriiginal description was not true! This thing I can't be blamed for, and I resent the accusation that I distorted your story. I distorted nothing, I just went with precisely what you said.
You then said I ought to know that the entire curriculum was not restrcted to teaching your students to question authority. How would I know that? You SAID what you taught; it is invalid to think that I should have known more. I knew as much as you told me, nothing less, nothing more.
I beleived you; then you changed your story. I believe you gave a better picutre in the new version, in the changed story of what was close to realliy; in fact, I don't doubt you do also what you said you additionally do. But that was after an argument was too tight for you. You had to introduce new, true stuff, which I had no way of knowing ahead of time.
I therefore resent that you claim I distorted your story of how and what you teach. You gave partial information, and I beleived it; I drew the consequences; then you changed your story.
-----------------
You also said something, do I think you are an anarchist or something similar. You DID say you were a subversive.
You presented things that lead to a self-contradiction, then you rewrote the things. And then you accused me of distorting your story.
But back on the topic of this argument,
are you familiar with the principle of charity? It seems to me like you could stand to extend it a bit more to uncanni, whom I read as saying that she is employed to professionally teach a university course (on some subject matter unspecified, though I would guess philosophy from context), and in that course she has to make rules against which her students will be graded; but that, in a more casual sense of "teaching", an important principle she tries to convey to her students is the importance of questioning authority, which NB is not equivalent to disobeying authority. She is not, I'm pretty sure, saying that she grades her students on how well they follow her (hypothetical) instructions to not follow her instructions.
If, according to you, only the present is of value then you'd be repeating the mistakes of your past and that doesn't sound so enjoyable.
Perhaps you mean some of our past is worth forgetting and some of our future is not worth the energy spent on planning.
How does this explain the principle of charity? You, @Pfhorrest, set out to explain it to me, and then you did not, but instead told me what @uncanni has assured me of later in her posts.
What is the principle of charity? I wish to learn it from you.
If you promise something, then please deliver it.
Okay, I read the link in Wikipaedia, and it makes sense now.
Please tell me the name of the process that is the opposite of "Principle of Charity". I suffer from autism, very badly, and to me words are words, with meanings. If I have to extrapolate from the words' meanings, in my view it leads to extremely dangerous territory, as extrapolation can lead to ANY INTERPRETATION.
I like to not fall into the trap of false interpretation, and therefore I am unable to use the Principle of Charity. This is in my nature and conviction as an autist and as a person who has experienced life.
unicanni herself, and probably you, too, advocate to not assume things that are false. That is laughable. How do I discern between a false assumption and a non-false one? I read words, understand them, and form opinions based on what they mean. I don't go beyond that, becasue to do that, I need to make assumptions, and you and uncanni are against making false assumptions, while you don't give guidance how to differentiate between false and true assumptions.
The only guide this Principle of Charity gives is to make the statements lacking in crucial detail filled in so that it makes sense and logical congruence. Even then, the sky is the limit of possible assumptions.
I am sorry, I can't use the principle of charity. In fact, it can be used, but I don't condone it.
With regard to the above, that is, my view on Principle of Charity: If you refuse to use it, then the holy scriptures of any and all religions appear to be bullshit to you. I can't afford to give the interpreters of holy scriptures that freedom of escaping from the truth. If I agreed to use the Principle of Charity, then I give the green light to interpreting scriptures.
IN other words, if I used the principle of charity, then I deny that scripture interpreters are simply rationalizating a completely false claims. And I refuse to deny that.
I find the principle of charity actually quite helpful when it comes to figuring out what assumptions to make. Natural language is ambiguous, the same words can mean different things to different people, and I often find myself facing a statement or question from someone that I can see multiple different interpretations of, and that makes me really uncomfortable because I'm afraid to assume one of those interpretations and maybe make a false assumption. I find that the principle of charity helps with that conundrum because it basically says to pick the interpretation that makes the other person seem to make the most sense, which is simultaneously the assumption that's most likely to be correct (as in accurately understanding what they mean) and also even if it's not, the one least likely to upset them, because at worst you'll have assumed they're smarter than they are.
For example, in my job as a graphic designer, I often get requests for things that, on my first (and to my ear, most literal) interpretation of things, sound like requests for things that are impossible or at least really obviously bad ideas. But rather than write back and say that, I ask myself, what might they have meant by this that would be possible and not a horrible idea, even if I think that the actual words they used would be an awful way to put that? More often than not, what I guessed ends up being what they wanted, and when it's not, the feedback is usually "oh wow, no that's not what I meant but this makes so much more sense!"
You can think of it, if you like, as "what mistakes did this person probably make to end up saying this nonsense when they surely set out to say something that was supposed to make sense?" Like, for a trivial example, if you see someone say that "the cat brought it's pray to me as a gift", the literal interpretation "the cat brought it is beseech-a-deity to me as a gift" makes no sense at all, but it's easy to see that they probably meant "its" and "prey", and then they make perfect sense. The principle of charity is like that, but for things besides just grammar and spelling.
I'm a hard core atheist myself, and I do have serious qualms about liberal interpretations of supposedly authoritative holy texts to willfully reinterpret them in a way that is more acceptable to the modern ear while also claiming that they are the inerrant word of God, but I don't think the principle of charity requires you to do that. You can still think that someone is saying something false. It's just a matter of trying to make sure you understand what they're trying to say, and if it seems like they're saying something that would probably seem obviously false even to themselves, then that's probably not what they're trying to say. In the case of religious texts, the authors lived thousands of years ago and lacked much of the knowledge we have today, so it's more reasonable to think that they were saying things that we know are false, but might not have been obviously false to them. In some cases, it does seem reasonable to imagine that they might have been speaking poetically or metaphorically. (For example I was just writing an essay on existential dread and such, which included a note on the possibility that the story of Adam and Eve "did not know death" until eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil could be a metaphorical way of saying that people were carefree and worry-free and had no knowledge of their impending deaths and other dooms back when they were all unthinking animals, and it is the cognitive ability that defines modern humanity that also dooms us to existential dread and such, a metaphorical loss of the paradise of ignorance).
But I guess I'm basically saying that you need to try to get inside the other person's head and think of things from their perspective, and I know that's something that autism makes very difficult, so maybe that's not something I can so easily ask you to do.
Focused on what?
A topic or issue.
No, not necessarily. Long posts here almost always ramble on about a bunch of different topics or issues.
I haven't read every single post on the board. (Shouldn't that be obvious to you?)
I've never read a long post here that was focused.
Peace is required
Thus so many aspired
In its ground
All flowers found
Those who find it
carefully tend it
If it hides unseen
It means a past unclean
a heart that feels
under nature's claw reels
yet to a heart, sir, miss
that peace dearest is
A nagging thought
peace once got
more we may desire
grow the craving fire
forget that which has left
Untouchable to the softest deft
I have met many autists in social circles, who you would never think they were. A woman, extreme beauty, rich, confided in me that when she asks her mother-in-law, "Do you get the newspaper seven days a week", the relative answers, "We don't get it on Saturdays." My acquaintance said, that this meant nothting to her: does the M-i-L mean she gets it on every day but Saturday? To my acquaintance it was an impossible conondrum to solve. Had she known and applied the Principle of Charity, she most likely would have interpreted that the M-i-L meant she gets the paper the other six days of the week.
The language is not as weak as some people think; the language is as weak as the user who uses it. It takes special skills to be unambiguous, and if the speaker does mind if she is misunderstood, then I think the onus is on her to be crystal clear in her communication.
Clear, unambiguous speech is just as inaccessible for most of the population, as for me to access the Principle of Charity properly.
A wise man or woman once penned, "Everybody lies, but it does not matter, since nobody listens." It is true, that reading and comprehension skills are lacking in our world. I wrote just yesterday a post , that I was harshly criticized for, only because the reader neglected to read two words in my argument. I was crystal clear, but s/he glided over words.
My autism dictates that I listen and read every word... can be very uncomfortable when in the company of very boring people.
Anyway, I am rambling. The upshot is, that the Principle of Charity is useful for normal people, who can substitute the gaps in the explanation or the gaps in the steps of logic, or the misspeaches with the right expressions fluently and without error. I believe this is a skill that more befits women. I can listen to a story with my aunt (she passed, this is an old example) and the speaker would talk about a woman, her mother-in-law, and a female cousin of the woman, and in the story she would use the female personal pronoun for all three. I would be lost by the second sentence, while my aunt would follow the story through, without any difficulties.
The sad ending of the story is that I perfectly well see the intention and the logical helpfulness of the Principle of Charity, but alas, I am unable to use it due to my disability. This is not a statement coming of defiance, it is a statement of the sad truth.
I don't write many long posts. I can't recall the last one I wrote.
I read long posts until they start introducing a bunch of different issues. You don't need to read them in their entirety for that. Often it happens within a few sentences.
Yes, you did distort what I wrote to you. And I already responded to that. I can't take you seriously because of how you distort an other's words; it looks to me like you'll say anything to prove yourself right. That's sad, hostile, manipulative and solipsistic.
I see now how it happened. You assumed that your readers would assume a lot of things, and when I challenged you, you eventually and one-by-one filled out those gaps which you assumed I ought to have assumed.
It's your right and privilege to not take me seriously. I have no arguments against that. I, however, take your words seriously.
"Brevity is the soul of wit."
I write long posts. I love to hear my own keyboard's tap-tap-tappity-tap.
Now you are lying. You never took my words seriously; your entire premise--that I can explain what I teach in one statement--is just silly. I never even told you what my subject matter is, but the idea that a professor teaches one thing is... not even worth responding to again.
You removed the context of what I wrote in order to create your little solipsistic strategy which was always focused on tearing down one or another of my statements. What makes me saddest of all is the overwhelming impression that you were never interested in any serious kind of exchange of ideas. My perception is that you were only interested in your need to prove me wrong. I feel compassion for you, but I won't engage with your hostility and deliberate distortion.
I was not interested only in proving you wrong. I am interested in proving anyone wrong whose claims are self-contradictory.
Obviously you disagree with my assessment of how you presented your subject and how I perceived it, and the logical links between the two. I note your disagreement, but I shall disengage now, as you are merely repeating yourself, with inventing accusations against me with each new post you write.