[Hong Wu]

We're going to transcend so much you'll be tired of transcending. You'll be like, Please Mr. Hong Wu, I can't take all this transcendence. I want to be a salty forum troll again. I want to be stronger together.

I thought she was polling well in Wisconsin?

But seriously, whether you have excess mental energy depends on what your job is. I have a very intellectual job that sometimes suffers from splitting my mental energy, such jobs are likely to become more common over time, not less common, which means that this problem would presumably increase.

[Hong Wu]

It's deep thinks time!

The Associations Test for Real Community
People complain a lot about their elected leaders. They want leaders to lead, yet they also want their leaders to do what they tell them to. That is a contradiction even before you accept that no one can agree on what they want to have done. Despite this lack of agreement they do know that they want it done federally, which is a nice way of saying that they want to force the people who would do it differently to do it their way. This is also bad, even before we accept that few of us are qualified to dictate policy in any area.

So your daily red pill is that democracy is a sham. Justifications for it include "individual rights" and "you have to force people to associate with each other or the country will break up." Let's examine this second idea. In much of the world (including the developed world) there are either no laws forcing people to associate with those they don't like, or if there are such laws, they are not really enforced. Despite lacking in those laws or in the ability to enforce them, many countries get along. In fact, the only countries which would dissolve without forced associations are western countries, Muslim countries and maybe China (no one knows at this point because the communists have been suppressing people for so long). No one can force you to serve someone you hate in Japan, or Russia, or most of eastern Europe and so-on and those countries are not in danger of breaking up because of it. Yet if you were allowed to not associate with people you don't like in the west, the countries would probably dissolve.

Therefore they fail what I'm going to call the "associations test" which identifies real communities. Western countries are merely militarized economic zones, run by the now empty husk of a bourgeois (or sometimes, socialist) apparatus that died a long time ago but its vehicle continues to move towards nothing solely because the parts haven't broken down yet.

[Hong Wu]

Feeling good is easy, in the west it's so easy that it's almost asinine. Feeling good about yourself is a lot harder. I think one of the best ways to go through life is not to live so that you can feel good but to live doing things, as much as possible, which make you feel good about yourself. This is different for each person which I think is okay. When doing things that make me happy but which don't make me feel good about myself, I sometimes try to do it with the mentality that it's "against unhappiness" and not for a kind of happiness that exists externally from myself, having no real connection to me (this describes most consumerist adventures).

[One Degree]

You guys are really deep. I may have to rethink my commitment to 37.

[Hong Wu]

Superficially, Muslims not eating pork and Hindus not eating beef might look similar but the Muslims eschew pork because it's an unclean animal and beneath them, Hindus eschew beef because they like cows. I realize these are simplifications but in a way these are completely opposite things.

[MistyTiger]

I think a major problem in the USA is that we say we admire individuality and we encourage it. But the moment someone comes up with something revolutionary or outstanding, many critics will come out and denounce it as being impractical or not realistic or something negative. Maybe those critics are jealous that they were not responsible for the revolutionary idea and they do not want someone else to get credit for an extraordinary achievement if the invention turns out to be a smashing success.

So then the ego which is in part responsible for individuality, is the reason for shooting down anything new or different in society.

[Hong Wu]

I think a major problem in the USA is that we say we admire individuality and we encourage it. But the moment someone comes up with something revolutionary or outstanding, many critics will come out and denounce it as being impractical or not realistic or something negative. Maybe those critics are jealous that they were not responsible for the revolutionary idea and they do not want someone else to get credit for an extraordinary achievement if the invention turns out to be a smashing success.

So then the ego which is in part responsible for individuality, is the reason for shooting down anything new or different in society.

Human things always contain their own antithesis because our ability to perceive them is dependent upon the human condition. Hot and cold are just what has too much or too little thermal energy for your body and so-on, otherwise they don't exist. I can see how this would apply to communities and individuality as well, since a community is a collection of individuals, etc.

Deep think: When I'm feeling irritable, one thing I try to do first is see if I can trace it to a physiological function. For example, have I missed a meal, did I not get enough sleep and so-on. A lot of negative feelings have very shallow and often easily-addressed roots, if we don't pay attention to them our irritability can turn otherwise insignificant issues into larger problems.

[Hong Wu]

Deep think: What if "social justice" is just college kids being mad that they weren't considered cool in high school (socially), so now they want social justice, which is to say that no one is allowed to be mean to anyone else and the less mean you are, the cooler you are?

Because seriously, what does communism, racism et al. have to do with "social" in the first place? Communists are notoriously anti-social and racism has nothing to do with sociability. Racism is generally considered to be a deeper issue than mere socializing and there are plenty of racists who are fun to have around.

I think this is at least as good as Paul Joseph Watson's "daycare generation" theory, which is basically that they were all raised in daycare and the only way those kids get attention is when they knock over the blocks and start crying.

[Potemkin]

I think a major problem in the USA is that we say we admire individuality and we encourage it. But the moment someone comes up with something revolutionary or outstanding, many critics will come out and denounce it as being impractical or not realistic or something negative. Maybe those critics are jealous that they were not responsible for the revolutionary idea and they do not want someone else to get credit for an extraordinary achievement if the invention turns out to be a smashing success.

So then the ego which is in part responsible for individuality, is the reason for shooting down anything new or different in society.

This is the dialectic between individualism and collectivism, MT. If everyone is an individualist, then they will be in constant competition with each other to aggrandise their own individuality at the expense of everyone else's individuality. This competition is experienced by the individual as a collective pressure against them from society as a whole. This is the paradox of liberal individualism - it is ultimately self-defeating, and living in a society dominated by a liberal individualist ideology can be an intensely frustrating experience. The truth is that there must be a dialectical balance between individualism and collectivism - the individual can only achieve self-fulfilment and live and work at their full potential within a certain social framework. If there is an obsession with social order and stability, then that society will ossify and suppress individualism and creativity (imperial China or the Ottoman Empire are good examples of this). But likewise, if there is unrestricted competition between individuals, and if that competition is regarded and treated as a zero-sum game, then all that will happen is that the loudest bullies will get their way and the nepotism of these bullies will ensure that an hereditary ruling class will appear which will end that competition between individuals anyway in favour of a rigid class hierarchy based on hereditary privilege. A one-sided liberal individualism is ultimately self-defeating - it abolishes itself. The dialectic between individualism and collectivism means that we can only truly achieve self-realisation as individuals by thinking socially, and we can only achieve collective social goals by thinking individually and by nurturing individual talent and initiative.

[MistyTiger]

This is the dialectic between individualism and collectivism, MT. If everyone is an individualist, then they will be in constant competition with each other to aggrandise their own individuality at the expense of everyone else's individuality. This competition is experienced by the individual as a collective pressure against them from society as a whole. This is the paradox of liberal individualism - it is ultimately self-defeating, and living in a society dominated by a liberal individualist ideology can be an intensely frustrating experience. The truth is that there must be a dialectical balance between individualism and collectivism - the individual can only achieve self-fulfilment and live and work at their full potential within a certain social framework. If there is an obsession with social order and stability, then that society will ossify and suppress individualism and creativity (imperial China or the Ottoman Empire are good examples of this). But likewise, if there is unrestricted competition between individuals, and if that competition is regarded and treated as a zero-sum game, then all that will happen is that the loudest bullies will get their way and the nepotism of these bullies will ensure that an hereditary ruling class will appear which will end that competition between individuals anyway in favour of a rigid class hierarchy based on hereditary privilege. A one-sided liberal individualism is ultimately self-defeating - it abolishes itself. The dialectic between individualism and collectivism means that we can only truly achieve self-realisation as individuals by thinking socially, and we can only achieve collective social goals by thinking individually and by nurturing individual talent and initiative.

That makes sense. If only there were a way to tamp down on hostile competition and that urge to undermine others.

[Potemkin]

That makes sense. If only there were a way to tamp down on hostile competition and that urge to undermine others.

Religion used to play that role, before capitalism came along and replaced the worship of God with the worship of Mammon. So long as capitalism is the dominant economic paradigm, I don't see any way that this sort of hostile competition and mutual hostility between the atomised individuals of modern society can be tamped down. Capitalism, after all, presupposes that people are atomised individuals in mutually antagonistic competition against each other. As Thatcher so famously said, "There is no such thing as society."

[RhetoricThug]

Finnegans Wake created the Anagrammarian = Study of possibilities. Post-structuralism. Semantic antics.
Example: Knowledge, know+ledge=knowledge. No+Edge=Knowledge, Knowledge now led to its ledge/edge

“But other questions come upon us. What is a man’s eye but a machine for the little creature that sits behind in his brain to look through? A dead eye is nearly as good as a living one for some time after the man is dead. It is not the eye that cannot see, but the restless one that cannot see through it. Is it man’s eyes, or is it the big seeing-engine which has revealed to us the existence of worlds beyond worlds into infinity? What has made man familiar with the scenery of the moon, the spots on the sun, or the geography of the planets? He is at the mercy of the seeing-engine for these things, and is powerless unless he tack it on to his own identity, and make it part and parcel of himself. Or, again, is it the eye, or the little sea — engine which has shown us the existence of infinitely minute organisms which swarm unsuspected round us?"
-Samuel Butler 1872 (Book of Machines)

Please note, Samuel Butler is a fixed perspective defined by his time and space.

See, Platonic Ideation (sacred geometry, language- which I call local area network gauge, human forms, etc) and phenomenology foster teleological definition (sensory resonance). If sensoria and SELF must be defined through our native interface (or the big seeing engine) then we must be the product of applied consciousness. As we stand on the shoulders of our ancestors (genetic compilation) we revive dead-language and transcend time & space, which reinforce LOGOS by design as archetypal human knowledge, predestined to inhabit the cosmos. Nonetheless, we operate through the native interface and the universe may be the living emanation or grand medium that calculates (deterministic potential) the thing-in-itself & every conscious (re)animation. Alas, are we not the universe swimming through its various forms?

I wrote 'Flowering Tower' because the universe is the seed and we're the blooming flower recycling celestial seasons. Our free-will may be limited to figuring out how to soak up the sun. I must ask, do you think a flower is aware of its genetic purpose? Perhaps humans are like flowers in a field, living under the illusion of SELF-driven motility, since NOW is invisible to our finite sensation/experience.

In structuralism, a binary opposition is seen as a fundamental organizer of human philosophy, culture, and language.
@Potemkin You sufficiently explain dialectical tension, and I like that about you, but how can you not see the new math (quantum dialectic) for its practical & transcendental qualities? Quantum mechanics (micro systems) produce the [1010] instead of 1...0...1...0, we're augmenting and evolving away from linear logic (mechanistic causality). Quantum computations simultaneously simulate 1 & 0 (dialectical tension) to produce solutions to natural & man-made problems. Do you understand how that may abolish natural dialectical tension as one cognitive pattern within our material world? We can use quantum mechanics to solve and build macro-system equations thus we may mathematical build cognitive patterns for the program we call civilization (civilized awareness). Society (socioeconomic schematic) is now a programmable (technological Darwinism) construct. Ecological systems operate through hierarchical dialectical tension, and humans can calculate (deconstruct/reconstruct) new chains of association using quantum dialectic. Our material world is now one calculable layer of experience (epidermis of reality), and we can program its mechanistic causality.

In other words, we have enough code to rewrite the system... Is that not the end goal of tools and technology as an extension of ourselves? BTW, if the medium is not the mass-age, why do our cosmologies evolve alongside technological invention/discovery?

I wanted to say something uber deep, but a few of my thoughts will not fit in this little thread, so here-
viewtopic.php?f=92&t=166296
Something about infinity and several other subjects. What, do you want an epistemological apology?

/Thread

[Hong Wu]

Why practice asceticism? In Taoism, any external thing which holds your attention saps your life force or energy. I imagine this may be because when your attention is directed externally you aren't being "mindful" of yourself. The less mindful of yourself you are, the weaker you become.

There are certain exceptions to this though. Some external things force your attention to move back inwards, creating a loop of sorts. One of the most obvious examples of this would be studying a holy or religious text with an appreciation of how it applies to you; usually treating things as being about yourself is a bad idea (because external things usually aren't about you, even if they want your money or will do anything to have your attention) but if the external thing is about you while also encouraging you to discard your individual ego then a positive feedback loop is sometimes created between the self and the external thing.

This might also be related to the "path of action" and the "path of contemplation". Sometimes we engage in actions that can permanently change us for the better because the action engages or reveals something inside of ourselves, or the efforts of contemplation (sometimes facilitated with a "feedback loop" as described above) can give us new insight into ourselves.

[Hong Wu]

I think having a good excuse for not doing something can be tragic because it's at that point that you might stop trying, which would be bad if the excuse could have been overcome. Good excuses are bad!

[Hong Wu]

Apparently the information of, or physical manifestations of, imagination and reality flow through the same parts of the brain but in opposite directions of each other.

I've spent a lot of time trying to bring reality up to imagination, maybe it's time to try and bring imagination up to reality. I think that sometimes people don't accept something better because they don't want to see the limits of their glory. This is ultimately hubris.

[Hong Wu]

Being right all the time can be a real burden when you think something bad is going to happen Still, if the trends weren't firmly set I wouldn't be able to make such good analysis in the first place. This has me wondering lately, if I'm not going to accomplish anything by it, why do the analysis at all.

[Hong Wu]

"Where can I find a man who has forgotten his words so that I might have a word with him?"

In trying to learn Chinese, I've been using a method recently where you force yourself to think in Chinese. Since my Chinese is not as fluent as my English, this has the interesting and unexpected side effect of simplifying my life. Issues become stripped of all of their political, philosophical and to some degree social context when you are no more articulate than "I want to do this" or "I wonder about that". For someone who has spent a lot of time on analysis and debate, perhaps too much, it's actually a somewhat pleasant and relaxing experience.

[Potemkin]

"Where can I find a man who has forgotten his words so that I might have a word with him?"

One of my favourite Zhuangzi quotes.

[Decky]

What the hell does it mean?

[fuser]

Sounds like Zhuangzi is looking for an Alzheimer's patient.