Serapis Bey

What's interesting is that Kacy is a staunch denier of free will, and yet we see him here tied in knots and vexed in a way not altogether different than a medieval monk worried about the salvation of his soul. Otherwise, you're right. With no free will, with no God, morality is a minor issue at best -- the world is the way it is, shit happens and no one will care when you die. Also Greg, you were describing in another thread the nature of the mind, and the Witness, and how most people's minds are a maelstrom of circulating thoughts, impulses, memories, feelings and daydreams. You suggested that only the Witness can free one from such bondage. I don't see what Wilson is saying as all that much different. It must be the Casteneda inflluence in you.

Greg, I'm curious what your opinion is of Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ. For myself, I found it touching and wise in certain respects.

Mike, I had hoped the hyperlink I posted above the text would be sufficient to indicate the writing was not mine (I can't do quotes on this iPad). That was actually an excerpt from an introduction written by novelist Robert Anton Wilson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Anton_Wilson Thanks for the inadvertent compliment on my writing, however. I'm pretty sure Mr Wilson meant no harm, so it is interesting to me how you interpreted it as pushing buttons to get people pissed. Just goes to show how Man's ideological territory (what he calls our "reality tunnels") is just as angrily defended as a dog defending his bowl of dog food. What's even more interesting is that I posted it to provide another perspective on the downsides of belief in absolute personal autonomy -- the " bloody mindedness" that comes from assuming people are perfectly aware of the many factors at play influencing their behavior. This is a more compassionate view of humanity and speaks to why Sufism is more religion than philosophy. But in one sense you are right. Personal growth - REAL growth - involves some degree of anguish. As Wilson goes on to observe: "WARNING! THREATS TO THE PRIMATE EGO ARE COMING! Unfortunately—while the Energized Meditation system is fun, and erotic, and makes you “smarter” (in the sense of more aware of detail and complexity), and even jolts you out of total mammalian reflex behavior into something approximating in slow but definite increments toward that mystic “free will” Christians claim you were given at birth, and I recommend it heartily—I must admit that there are pages coming up shortly in this book that will probably make you extremely uncomfortable. Dr. Hyatt is a rude, insulting and deliberately annoying writer. He does not soothe or pacify the reader with the Christian and Democratic mythology of our society by pretending that we are all free and rational people here. He insists on reminding us, every few pages, in the most blunt language possible, that most of us most of the time are conditioned chimpanzees in a cage. Don’t let it worry you too much. The situation is this: there are mechanical systems operating throughout the domesticated primate (human) organism, each on different levels. For instance, as Bucky Fuller liked to say, you never sit down and ask how many hairs you should sprout on your head and body in the next week: that is one of the thousands of biological programs that operate entirely on mechanical circuitry. Except in various systems of yoga, you do not have much control over your breathing, either: that is also an auto-pilot. The digestive-excretive circuits also operate with a minimum of conscious attention or strategy, except when you need to find a public toilet and the bars are all closed. (Make a list of ten more programs that keep you alive and functioning, over which you have never had any conscious control. Be one of the 13 readers out of a thousand who actually do it before reading on.) The reason that mystics and certain other psychologists are always “attacking” the ego is that the ego is the one mechanical circuit that suffers chronically from the illusion that it is non-mechanical and “free.” The ego and its delusions must be undermined—either attacked openly and bluntly, as in the Gurdjieff system and this book, or subverted more subtly and slowly, as in certain other systems—before any real progress can be made toward “liberation,” “enlightenment,” “finding IT,” discovering the “True Will” in Crowley’s sense, or whatever is your favorite term for becoming less robotic and more aware—less the computer and more the programmer of the computer—less the conditioned rat in the Behaviorist’s maze and more the Beyond-Human that the Sufic-Hermetic traditions and Neitzsche have predicted." ------------------------------------------ I suppose everyone has the option of considering challenges to their world view as "empty of substance". The Internet is full of comfortable echo chambers.

http://rawilson.wordpress.com/2007/06/17/undoing-yourself/ The blood-thirsty nature of Christianity and Democracy which is obvious, psychologically, if one listens even for a few minutes to a typical speech by Rev. Jerry Falwell or his good friend Ronald Reagan is, of course, based on arrogance, megalomania and a deeprooted sense of total moral superiority to all non-Christian and non-Democratic peoples. But beyond that, the violent nature of Christian/Democratic countries is rooted in the singular delusion shared by both the Religion of Love and the Politics of Liberty. This delusion is the belief that human beings are born with some sort of metaphysical free will which makes them unique in the animal kingdom and only slightly less exalted than the gods themselves. The free will fantasy is not a minor error, like thinking it is Tuesday when actually it is Wednesday. It is not even to be compared to a major intellectual blunder of the ordinary sort, like Marxs notion that once a totalitarian workers state was created, it would then quickly and magically wither away. It is even more nefarious and pernicious than the medieval lunacy that imagined witches everywhere and burned over 10,000,000 women at the stake on the basis of hysteria, superstition and the kind of hearsay and rumor that no modern court would permit to be entered as evidence. The free will delusion is much more serious than any of that. It is the kind of radical 180-degree reversal of reality that, once it enters a persons mind, guarantees that they will be incapable of understanding anything happening around them; they might as well be deaf, dumb, blind and wearing signs warning the world, ULTIMATE DESTINATION: THE MADHOUSE. I do not speak flippantly, nor do I mean to be understood as writing satire or polemic. The facts of modern biology and psychology have demonstrated clearly and conclusively that 99 percent of the human race is in a robotic or zombi-like state 99.99999 percent of the time. This does not refer to other people. It refers to YOU AND ME. As the Firesign Theatre used to say, Were all Bozos on this bus. The best that can be said of any of us, usually, is that we have occasional moments of lucidity, but that can be said of any schizophrenic patient. EAST, WEST AND THE MIDDLE In the Orient, which has its own idiocies and superstitions, there has always been a singular sanity about the free will myth: virtually without exception, all the great Oriental philosophers have recognized that donkeys, grass-hoppers, dolphins, toads, hummingbirds, dogs, chickens, tigers, sharks, gophers, spiders, chimpanzees, cobras, cows, lice, squid, deer, and humans are equally important, equally unimportant, equally empty, equally expressive of the World Soul or Life Force. Buddhism, Vedanta and Taoism also recognize that each of these clever animals just mentioned, including the humans, have about equally as much free will as flowers, shrubs, rocks and viruses, and that the human delusion of being separate from and superior to the rest of the natural order is a kind of narcissistic self-hypnosis. Awakening from that egotistic trance is the major goal of every Oriental system of psychology. Opposing this Oriental recognition of, and submission to, the order of things as they are, and yet opposing also the Christian and Democratic delusions of free will and individual responsibility, there is the hidden tradition of Sufism in Islam and Hermeticism in Europe. This occult teaching recognizes that, although domesticated primates (humans) are born as mechanical as the wild primates (such as chimpanzees), there are techniques by which we can become less mechanical and approximate in daily and yearly increments toward freedom and responsibility. These spiritual (neurological) techniques of Un-doing and rerobotizing oneself are, of course, of no interest in the Orient, where it is accepted that we are born robots and will die robots; and they are of even less interest in the Christian-Democratic cultures which assume that we are already free and responsible and do not have to work and work HARD to achieve even a small beginning of nonmechanical consciousness and non-robotic behavior. The Orient forgives easily, because it does not expect robots to do anything else but what was programmed into them by the accidents of heredity and environment. The Christian and Democratic nations are so bloody-minded because they can forgive nothing, blaming every man and woman for whatever imprinted or conditioned behavior is locally Taboo. (This is why Nietzsche called Christianity the Religion of Revenge and Joyce described the Christian God as a Hanging Judge.) The Sufic and Hermetic traditions are almost Oriental in forgiving robots for being robots, but are far from sentimental about it. As one Sufi poet said: The fool neither forgives nor forgets; The half-enlightened forgive and forget; The Sufi forgives but does not forget. That is, Sufism and other Hermetic traditions recognize that robots will behave like robots, and does not blame them, but it also does not forget, for a moment or even a nanosecond, that we are living in a robotic world an armed madhouse in the metaphor of poet Allen Ginsberg. Those of this tradition know that when a man spouts Christian and Democratic verbalisms that does not mean he will act with brotherly love at all, at all; he will go on acting like a badly-wired robot in most cases.m

Obviously this also relates to free will. You don't believe in it, most of the people here do. Another thicket: free will, personal autonomy, personal responsibility....blame, self-recrimination, guilt This is one for the ages, I'm afraid...

Sounds like you are drawing an equivalency between "making a bad chess move" and "murdering someone." This view lacks proportionality. You would probably reply that the details don't matter -- that the principle is the same. To which I say: this is where the veneration of "principle" gets you. Thanks Objectivism!

That's not quite what I had in mind RB. What struck me about his usage of the word is that I had covered this ground with him before, on this board, back in April: I would urge any older folks reading to pay a visit to that site -- get a feel for "what the kids are up to" these days. These people are almost exclusively women and thin-skinned males, i.e., liberals. I guess I can't say I'm surprised by this latest addition to Kacy's vernacular, but I really wish I was.

You don't get me -- I wasn't thinking in terms of any particular point of view, whether political or psychological. You didn't address any of the content of my post and instead focused on the meta-issue of the epistimological error I was making. And what was your claim? That I was presenting opinion as fact. I think I have cleared that issue up, pointing to my use of the word "speculation", and if anyone bothers to look, I also went to the trouble of inserting qualifiers like, "it seems to me", and "probably", and "I suspect." I'll be honest, it pains me to even go to those lengths, but some people still manage to feel aggrieved. I guess I can see how my qualifiers might be overlooked -- I presented my opinion in forceful language. Somebody get the smelling salts... So, no I have no fantasies about your reaction as you have described above. What my closing statement was intended to address was your response as such. I'll plead guilty. I DID present my opinion in a rather forceful and self-confident way. And why? Because I know the posters here are intelligent, professional adults. Explicitly commited to the use of Reason. If I'm full of shit, they can pick it apart. I give them enough credit in seperating the wheat from the chaff. They don't need to have their hands held, bogging down every discussion into these side-roads. Henceforth, my dear philosophers, let us be on guard against the dangerous old conceptual fiction that posited a "pure, will-less, painless, timeless knowing subject"; let us guard against the snares of such contradictory concepts as "pure reason," absolute spirituality," "knowledge in itself": these always demand that we should think of an eye that is completely unthinkable, an eye turned in no particular direction, in which the active and interpreting forces, through which alone seeing becomes seeing something, are supposed to be lacking; these always demand of the eye an absurdity and a nonsense. There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective "knowing"; and the more affects we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our "concept" of this thing, our "objectivity," be. But to eliminate the will altogether, to suspend each and every affect, supposing we were capable of this -- what would that mean but to castrate the intellect?" - Nietzsche

Spot on? I'm not sure...what do YOU think about what I had to say?(You do realize a "speculation" is distinguished precisely by its difference from "fact", right?) "Tell us... how is it that you have the inside scoop on the motivation for why rich Obama supporters voted as they did? I mean, you wouldn't just assume a motivation and pass it off as ostensible fact, right? Because that would be presumptive and dishonest, and you would not be presumptive and dishonest, right?" Why the interrogation? You can choose to criticize my idea or buttress it. This nitpicking over over "my sources" is kind of funny in a sociological discussion. In your own post below you speculate that the reasons Tebow gets hated on is NOT because he proudly wears his Christianity on his sleeve, but because he is "out of his league". How do you know this? Have you interviewed his haters? Performed an fMRI scan on their brains. Do we really want to go down this silly road? "Is it possible that rich people voted their conscience just like everyone who went to the polls? Is it possible that, just like everyone else who voted that day, those rich Obama supporters simply voted for the candidate they thought was a better bet than the alternative?" It certainly IS possible. The general usage of "blind spot" (the word I used) usually implies a larger scope of awareness -- hence, the blind part is just a "spot", hence, the reason even geniuses can be naive on certain matters. My pointing out ONE factor which Objectivists may have missed does not mean other factors don't exist. Otherwise I would be stating my theory of Everything and would be calling Objectivists "blind", sans the "spot" Look, I made a point. Dan chimed in after me with his own observation - the more mundane reality of buying influence. He is right, and my momentary tunnel-vision was enlarged by his contribution. My context was expanded, the Oists might say. This is called "having a discussion", and I find value in that. Mike calls this "preaching". You consider it "lying" and "being dishonest." Lord save us... It seems to me the same impossible-to-reach standard-of-purity which keeps you from endorsing fine libertarian candidates like Ron Paul is the same demand for an idealized purity of thought you are demonstrating here. Both are counterproductive. "Arguments that Obama wasn't the best candidate are fine. Arguments that rich Obama supporters got it wrong are fine. But stating that they were voting for reasons other than the reasons anyone else voted as though it were established fact... that betrays your intent to paint an unsupported narrative, which in turn betrays your intent[...]" Since I wasn't presenting my opinions as "established fact", this can be disregarded. However, your reponse seems to betray your feeling threatened by strong opinions.

That's flying monkeys to you, Mr. Kelly. Mike, do you consider Charles Murray to be a "racist"? He is someone who acknolwedges the fact that society is cognitively stratified. His latest book laments the growing gap between the cognitive elite and the lower classes. Yes, we mustn't have any bad vibes. Remember what I said ealier about people's thinking being influenced by their need for emotional self-preservation? Some people's egos are more precariously balanced than others...

I think he might have an Oklahoma area code... http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/08/satan-ten-commandments-oklahoma-city You can't make this crap up because the actual story is too hilarious to top fiction... A... Looks like Greg has his work cut out for him. Greg: since Jesus appears to be asleep at the moment, perhaps it would be wise to go to the attic and open that dusty chest which contains the life you had while studying Castaneda. Put that superhero outfit on for old time's sake. It may be what these dire times require. (half-joking)

http://bigthink.com/21st-century-spirituality/how-contemplation-changes-our-brains-for-the-better Regarding #5 Try telling that to Ayn Rand. <rimshot> Hey-ooooooooooo

Not illegitimate. Unethical. If that's truly your view, Robert... then you have just enumerated the price for which you have been bought: Doing what lying snakes in the grass do. I've done the marketing in my business for well over three decades and have never needed to resort to using "covert persuasion techniques" to manipulate others,. This is because the values by which I live differ from yours. Greg Sorry to break it to you, but those were MSK's words in another thread. I applaud your integrity, however.

Michael Stuart Kelly Internet Status: Owned

In my view the Self may in time have the opportunity to be able to observe All That Is... but it can never be All That Is. Of course not -- an individual (an ego) is a a mere diffraction of the Original Absolute Inertial Frame. Think of a prism diffracting white light into its component spectra. You consider this Absolute Inertial Frame to be Jeebus. Craig Weinberg and assorted Panpsychics hew closer to the Eastern Tradition in considering this Absolute Inertial Frame as Pure Consciousness... you say "Tomato"... Nevertheless, each individual's (limited) capacity for Awareness is the exact same Awareness shared by The Big Guy. This is what I mean by "the Self is the seat of All That Is". It is a co-creation. Big Mind and Little Mind. Yes, it is... but it is only able to see by virtue of the light of Something Else. The Primordial Sense. The original consciousness whose sensory-motor interaction with the World brought Space and Time into being. Existence requires Observation. Forget about notions of The Big Bang, of Something arising from Nothing. You and I know that is nonsense. I think Weinberg and the panpsychics are onto something with their notion of a "Big Diffraction". Consider: http://multisenserealism.com/thesis/7-space-time/big-diffraction-sole-entropy-well-model/ I see that differently. In my view, language is just wordy descriptions of what is... and, in itself, is not and can never be what it can only describe. Yes, "the map is not the territory", "the menu is not the meal" That is true if we are talking about "pure awareness" or "things in themselves" (whatever that may mean). But as individual egos in a material universe, all we have is language to bridge the gap between our little individual worlds. In THAT world, language is PARAMOUNT. Don't fall to sleep, don't fall back into the primordial soup -- it has no practical import, even if God does love the attention (that narcissist). Focus on the here and now and the co-evolution that is occuring among all these consciousnesses(?) and minds. Welp. I'm wiped out at this point. This is probably all gobbledygook. I wonder if we can derive some practical actions from all this nonsense?

I do understand... and yet don't feel the least bit bad about it because I already knew up front that most of my view is off the map here. Yet we do share the communion of Conservative American Capitalism, and that counts for a lot. Greg You misunderstand me. I was referring to your experience with the Casteneda crew. If consciousness is primary, if the Self is the seat All That Is, if the Witness is the Core of Who We Are...then the language we extrude into the collective unconsciousness determines ALL.

He Is? I didn't know that either. Don't sweat it. His circumcized schlong and balls eagerly awaits your tender ministrations.

"Get yours"? it seems Eben Pagan has no problem with mirrors...

You're slipping Mike. Might be a good idea to put me in moderation again. ;)

Eric, I think you just identified your problem. To you communication = propaganda. Your words... Michael I think you missed the part where my question was in direct response to your fingerpointing about MY "propaganda." And here I was thinking I was just communicating and sharing my thoughts. Even with a trollish bent, I wasn't attempting to steal your flock...

Oh great, so I get no love? I get it -- RB is a Jew.

Back when I was in moderation, I asked Michael about his hairtrigger accusations of "propaganda". It seemed that any ideas I put forth were labeled as such. So I had to wonder: at what point is ANYTHING we say to each other NOT "propaganda"? I never got a response. But it does show Mike is keenly aware of controlling The Narrative. Progressives understand this very well. Kudos to him. Unfortunately it leads me to being marginalized on this board. *single tear rolls down cheek*. I think Greg understands this very well.

Fair enough, Michael. Just one thing: my inebriation and its associated anasthetic qualities give me the ability to stomach certain truths which can be intolerable to the sober ego. My thinking seems to flourish in the places most people ignore out of emotional self-preservation. I'm not saying one modality is better than the other. It is what it is.

That's something Progressives say, you know. Paging Stephen Gould... Despite the debates over the exact nature of "g", those in the field are unanimous on one point: this "property" measured by "g" is consistently correlated with life outcomes. I'm not interested in having this debate, but as Cochran says in the paper: Word to the wise, Mike: don't speak too loudly about this line of thinking -- you won't get invited to the Cool Parties. I hardly think I'm an intellectual superior. Irreverent? Yes. I prefer to think of myself as an embodiment of hormesis, stress-testing smarter people's ideas. Others might say I'm just a contrarian misanthrope. As far as "prancing" goes...well... Truth is after all a moving target... - Neil Peart Wouldn't you like to know... (that makes two of us, actually)