[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by dead_battery

well the good is things like technology, science, civility, peace, education, health. successful aspirations to end suffering and improve personal or social infrastructure so we can lead lives of material prosperity and live and die independently with minimal abuse, violence and harm. the lights being on. when you aren't facing threats, noone is insane, you have the security of knowing you can afford to live decently. not having to fight wars. obvious things. i think that in reality we can be afforded these luxuries only by our material situation. in the 3rd world its corruption, violence, misery, sickness, poverty etc. even worse than it is here.

things like a fusion reactor or a carbon neutral or at least minimal infrastructure are good. things like soylent are good. i dont believe in this bullshit about man existing independently from the material world and needing to just tend to his soul to realize happiness independent of his material circumstances.

another way to put this is there is NO good. only more comfortable and civilized living conditions. those, to me, are good, but my biases and longings for the good and in fact everyone elses are meagre and fragile. 1st world shit that the science and techniques we use to ameliorate suffering, poverty and ruin need to flourish - that's the good.

in other words, a peaceful drift into the void.

alright thanks for answering mang.

tell me if i'm wrong but looks like a good summary from you would be that your supreme values are those of "safety" and maybe "comfort"? am i wrong in inferring this from your post? from what you say-- technological advances, infrastructure, non-violence, etc. would you summarize all that under those two things? or am i ass-wrong here?

i'm slowly waking up so i still will have to muster the energy for your long post from last page but i'll get to it when the time is right.

[dead_battery]

yes. exactly the values of the last man that nietzsche decried.

i'd add experimentation, research, and some sort of accelerating if not progressive momentum with technology.

war and strife and all that shit that is supposed to glorify us is bs. the only people who ever said that were upper class right wing intellectuals who never fought a day in their lives.

anyway, i dont take my ability to affect the world or the existence of my ideals all that seriously. since its mainly pissing in the wind.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by dead_battery

yes. exactly the values of the last man that nietzsche decried.

ha ha ha.

Originally Posted by dead_battery

i'd add experimentation, research, and some sort of accelerating if not progressive momentum with technology.

but is that for more control/safety/comfort or for its own sake? e.g., would you sacrifice safety and/or comfort for experimentation and research?

Originally Posted by dead_battery

war and strife and all that shit that is supposed to glorify us is bs. the only people who ever said that were upper class right wing intellectuals who never fought a day in their lives.

left wing ones to. "for the revolution" and all that.

i don't think war glorifies jack shit, i think that the "glory" is a way to justify getting yourself killed like a skewered pig. sorta like religion ("suck off god today and get the eternal afterlife tomorrow")

but i digress

Originally Posted by dead_battery

anyway, i dont take my ability to affect the world or the existence of my ideals all that seriously. since its mainly pissing in the wind.

yeah my question re:values was for you originally but then you started talking about the whole planet (in the long post) and i thought "that's too much for a single person". i get that we are all one with our environment (generally speaking, not just in the ecological sense) and ultimately share its fate, but as dna water packets we also operate at the individual level.

re: last man stuff. i think it's hard to wake up day after day and face all manner of shit just to say "today i wanna bee reeeel seyf". in other words the preservation of life itself for its own sake is sufficient for survival but nothing else. which may cause disorientation and depression and all that shit. a lack of "meaning."

now i'm not saying "invent yourself a new desire so you can have a reason to live" but that shit can't be manufactured. HOWEVER (however)--

[dead_battery]

i dont think that meaning can be found. i think there literally is none. i think that even comfort and safety are but a feeble attempt to pacify basic terror and anxiety.

i get what you're saying - and i share that attitude too - you dont wake up and think "man i hope my house is still here". you want to take that as a given. what you daydream of is success, but i think sane dreams of success do not interfere with safety and comfort.

i mean, i think the human conditions terrible.people who skydive or take those kind of risks - im not condemning it or trying to stop it. i just think you need to maximize intelligence and security before you can die in any kind of a worthwhile way.

i think we're all collectively hitting into walls of exhaustion and collapse because we have this kind of dim promethean attitude that is encouraged on us - were instead of knowing anything about the world we're told to focus on this kind of magical thinking where some part of our eternal creative essence is gonna triumph against the odds of the zero sum economic game and banish all the strangeness, confusion, death, nothingness and entropy. i'm repeating here things that other people are coming up with in theory at the moment.

i should change my idea of security and safety. what i mean by this is not "niceness" or hippies holding hands. im talking about real fucking technological shit. i want a motherfucking fusion reactor giving me free energy so the electricity companies stop raping me. i want clean water and air. i want advanced consumerism - i want to be able to grow my own food and i want all the trends in medicine and science that are empowering the individual, particularly low income ones or no income ones like me - to increase. i want MOTHERFUCKERS TO KNOW - all this shit is possible. stop believing in these false metaphysics. believe in THINGS, not just your self.

i want everyone to have leisure time instead of exhausting themselves to stack shelves of more fucking junk food.

i want people to finally wake up the technology we ALREADY HAVE - most of our work can be done by machines. we could have a new era of massively increased free time and empowered individuals able to tend to their own energy and food and to a certain extent health needs with even greater independence from the state/market. this is not an anti capitalist philosophy - its more about getting people to understand we need to integrate renewable resources. then, ON TOP OF THAT, once everyones basic living needs can be easily met - you can have the greatest most experimental and scientifically advanced capitalist free market system humanity has ever known. but motherfuckers need to stop having to spend their lives trying to out work machines being unable to take care of their rent/food/energy bills. im sick of my generation being sacrificed and having our futures and potential squandered for this fucking INEFFICIENCY!

i believe today, we peasants are in the situation as we were in the middle ages. back then the church told us we couldnt read and we werent allowed to learn cos only they could handle the bible and only they could manage our interests. motherfuckers rebelled and we taught ourselves some dang fine good english and empowered ourselves, and it was to the benefit of all. the same situation applies today - only with science and technology. the average person needs to become literate in scientific techniques and understand the means for their own greater independent survival, freeing themselves from economic brutality and emiseration as part of the precarious work force!

we dont need revolts to attain this kind of future. we need an understanding that an individuals best interest lie not SIMPLY in collaborating with the market system or whatever systems exists for them, but having an understanding of their body and technology that allows them to extricate themselves from the types of enslavement so common to those of us who dont start off with daddys trust fund and nepotism network.

[h8kurdt]

You know who should listen to more? Queen. That'll sort you right out.

[dead_battery]

heh

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by dead_battery

i dont think that meaning can be found. i think there literally is none. i think that even comfort and safety are but a feeble attempt to pacify basic terror and anxiety.

i get what you're saying - and i share that attitude too - you dont wake up and think "man i hope my house is still here". you want to take that as a given. what you daydream of is success, but i think sane dreams of success do not interfere with safety and comfort.

i mean, i think the human conditions terrible.people who skydive or take those kind of risks - im not condemning it or trying to stop it. i just think you need to maximize intelligence and security before you can die in any kind of a worthwhile way.

i think we're all collectively hitting into walls of exhaustion and collapse because we have this kind of dim promethean attitude that is encouraged on us - were instead of knowing anything about the world we're told to focus on this kind of magical thinking where some part of our eternal creative essence is gonna triumph against the odds of the zero sum economic game and banish all the strangeness, confusion, death, nothingness and entropy. i'm repeating here things that other people are coming up with in theory at the moment.

i should change my idea of security and safety. what i mean by this is not "niceness" or hippies holding hands. im talking about real fucking technological shit. i want a motherfucking fusion reactor giving me free energy so the electricity companies stop raping me. i want clean water and air. i want advanced consumerism - i want to be able to grow my own food and i want all the trends in medicine and science that are empowering the individual, particularly low income ones or no income ones like me - to increase. i want MOTHERFUCKERS TO KNOW - all this shit is possible. stop believing in these false metaphysics. believe in THINGS, not just your self.

i want everyone to have leisure time instead of exhausting themselves to stack shelves of more fucking junk food.

i want people to finally wake up the technology we ALREADY HAVE - most of our work can be done by machines. we could have a new era of massively increased free time and empowered individuals able to tend to their own energy and food and to a certain extent health needs with even greater independence from the state/market. this is not an anti capitalist philosophy - its more about getting people to understand we need to integrate renewable resources. then, ON TOP OF THAT, once everyones basic living needs can be easily met - you can have the greatest most experimental and scientifically advanced capitalist free market system humanity has ever known. but motherfuckers need to stop having to spend their lives trying to out work machines being unable to take care of their rent/food/energy bills. im sick of my generation being sacrificed and having our futures and potential squandered for this fucking INEFFICIENCY!

i believe today, we peasants are in the situation as we were in the middle ages. back then the church told us we couldnt read and we werent allowed to learn cos only they could handle the bible and only they could manage our interests. motherfuckers rebelled and we taught ourselves some dang fine good english and empowered ourselves, and it was to the benefit of all. the same situation applies today - only with science and technology. the average person needs to become literate in scientific techniques and understand the means for their own greater independent survival, freeing themselves from economic brutality and emiseration as part of the precarious work force!

we dont need revolts to attain this kind of future. we need an understanding that an individuals best interest lie not SIMPLY in collaborating with the market system or whatever systems exists for them, but having an understanding of their body and technology that allows them to extricate themselves from the types of enslavement so common to those of us who dont start off with daddys trust fund and nepotism network.

hey it's hard to reply to everything you're saying here even though it's a holiday weekend (or maybe because of it), but the first thing that jumps at me is that you're saying that THERE IS NO MEANING.

and it strikes me that the problem is that you're asking is for some sort of cosmic shit to answer you. "the meaning of it all" or monty python's "the meaning of life".

and of course the meaning is "nothing" or "46" or whatever teh fuck.

because that's the wrong question.

you're not the whole of it all so you cannot ask "what is the meaning of the universe and everything in it" or "what is the meaning of this single thing/event to the whole universe". it's an absurd question, with an absurd answer.

but you can ask simply: what does this mean TO ME?

that's the only thing you can ask and it's the only thing you can answer too.

seriously, who gives a splatterd turd about THE WHOLE FUCKING COSMOS. it makes no sense.

what makes sense is:

what is the meaning of this TO ME?
what is the value of this TO ME?

that's a lot easier to answer and it's meaningful within its context. if you then say "this means X to me but i am nothing to the whole cosmos" then you're pissing away your anwser.

forget about the fucking absolutes-- you're not the whole of it and it doesn't matter and it's unanswerable/pointless/etc anyway.

there is some horrible-ass song from the 60s that the hippies like-- it's some lamo singing "duuuuust in the wiiiiiiid... all we are is duuust in the wiiind...." i've always hated that fucked song not just because it's horrible in every way (whiny bastard singing crybaby music) but because he overgeneralizes. "all we are is..." -- *speak for yourself, motherfucker*.

of course it's all christian bullshit-- people who claim to know "god" or that "god" will reveal shit to them.

seriously. trying to speak for "god" or figure out his fictional mind always ends up in either nihilism or delusion or both.

in other words, you have no god any more, but his shadow is still pestering the fuck out of you and trying to kill you in your sleep. get out from under it.

[dead_battery]

but what if there is no me?

i think its sensible to see zero value in anything as a moral proposition. i think its more accurate.

i am yet to be convinced that i posses a self that isn't an illusory neural trick. i know this is in a way a redundant move but i think its a more accurate description of whats actually going on.

and i cant see the value in trying to assess everything according to my own whims. i dont want to live that kind of a life, where i am the ultimate arbitrar of value. i'm just trying to survive and know - but i really don't know what the hell i'm doing most of the time.

and you should know by now im a hypomanic machine that cant stop and interrogation is often a dead end or a tldrathon.

[dead_battery]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

in other words, you have no god any more, but his shadow is still pestering the fuck out of you and trying to kill you in your sleep. get out from under it.

exactly.

[dead_battery]

but then again, i still dont know what you are telling me to do or how to do it.

the decaying corpse of god will always hang heavily over my mind, being a mere hick who is accosted on the street by maniacal preachers telling me they've extracted demons from people that "left their body in a mans voice but they were a woman." I think this was some subtle way of saying "you're faggy looking and i want to exorcise you" but i'm not sure.

I can remember the moment the teacher uttered the accursed word "atheism" and 30 disgusted faces turned to glare at me, the heretic. They called me a heathen. "Why can't we burn him on the bonfire?" That's the kind of mentality I come from, so it's maybe hard to carry gods corpse all the way to the incinerator on my own.

[dead_battery]

yeah anway, you're probably right. i added too much creatine to my soylent today.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by dead_battery

but then again, i still dont know what you are telling me to do or how to do it.

the decaying corpse of god will always hang heavily over my mind, being a mere hick who is accosted on the street by maniacal preachers telling me they've extracted demons from people that "left their body in a mans voice but they were a woman." I think this was some subtle way of saying "you're faggy looking and i want to exorcise you" but i'm not sure.

I can remember the moment the teacher uttered the accursed word "atheism" and 30 disgusted faces turned to glare at me, the heretic. They called me a heathen. "Why can't we burn him on the bonfire?" That's the kind of mentality I come from, so it's maybe hard to carry gods corpse all the way to the incinerator on my own.

what i mean is that while you have chucked the old fucker out the window, you're still doing business in His way-- i.e., looking for the cosmic answer.

toxically shamed humans like those who invented and maintain religion need GRANDIOSITY to compensate for their wounded egos. so they claim a god that gives them the answers of their past present and future (prophecy) and eternity and the afterlife and all the grandiose shit that's way way way past human capability. lunatic fuckers!

voltaire on the other hand who was as rabid as atheist as it comes (and in the dangerous 18th century no less) really put very well an alternative option to al this cosmic fecal matter in candide.

btw if you haven't read candide it's one of the most hilarious motherfucking books ever. EVER. it's so fucking funny that even the musical based on it (i hate musicals, but this is an exception) is funny. and it's short so you read it in a couple of hours.

eh, go read it and have a good laugh-- the belly kind that leaves you dizzy afterwards.

ps- professor pangloss is supposed to be leibniz. not the inventor of the cookie, but the monad fucker. okay. enjoy!

[dead_battery]

its on my kindle so i'll read it tonight.

and in response i will commend a bit of nihilism to you

its true - i am one toxically shamed motherfucker.

but i am not going to totally get on board with your "stop looking for absolutes" thing because i dont want to totally reside in pomo relativist hell. been there too long, its in my blood, its too comfortable.

[dead_battery]

btw i dont fully agree with the conclusions of that article but its a good overview.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by dead_battery

its on my kindle so i'll read it tonight.

and in response i will commend a bit of nihilism to you

its true - i am one toxically shamed motherfucker.

but i am not going to totally get on board with your "stop looking for absolutes" thing because i dont want to totally reside in pomo relativist hell. been there too long, its in my blood, its too comfortable.

i don't have time/energy to read that now, but thanks for the link

pomo relativist hell is just more liberal academic pant-crapping. it stands for nothing because it (again) adopts the god-perspective and says all shit is equal in its eyes. it's just the shadow of god calling it quits in impotence.

but if there is no god and his shadow has vanished and there is only human limitation, then it is up to us to claim whatever is our domain and do our work there with things that matter to us there. that's the (real, sane) meaning of "humility" (not "duuuuuust in the wiiiiiiiiiiiind" which is just god-posturing ceybaby). we don't know everything, can't know everything, but we can work our fucking parcel, we can find meaning and value there, because that's the only place one can find it. and yes one can voluntarily associate with others for larger purposes in what's called a "community," and there's meaning and value there too, some say a greater meaning and a greater value. but there is no meaning or value in the vast interstellar emptiness because the universe as a whole does not / can not give a fuck and it is absurd to ask any of that of it. except to scam other people for tithes & mind control.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

dead_battery, I feel you. I was once and generally still fight a deeply rooted sense of societal nihilism, especially with my fellow Americans. You got to dive into the world and enjoy the show, cultivating an almost spiritual (i.e. transcendental) sense of humor about things. Like in African folk tales, funny traits about animals are the butt of most jokes and laughs and are a colloquial way of saying, "Life is what it is.", the moral being we have to be able to laugh at ourselves more often than we don't. I think that in means we have to be able to laugh at everybody else too. I think you might enjoy this very short novel, its one of my all-time favorites by one of my all-time favorite authors. Its a very short read, a introspective reflection on self-destructive inward nihilism but expressed in brutally polite and congenial forms on the outside.

 

[dead_battery]

ill give it a go, i love perfume.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by dead_battery

ill give it a go, i love perfume.

Isn't it fucking fantastic? ALL Suskind's works are great. They have this way of being nihilistic yet without coming across as pessimistic or crass. Nihilism doesn't have to be negative, even the Desert Fathers were spiritual nihilists, yet pious men. In its positive manifestations, nihilism is about limiting expectations towards realism, not getting too caught up. Hope is fine, but wishful thinking is caustic. In fact, the core of the Orthodox Christian tradition is nihilism, or what the Fathers call apathia (not to be confused with apathy) which is what the Rastafari folks call, "Don't feel no way." Feelings are deceptive, thoughts are illusory. There is something altogether deeper to life than the chatter of the mind, but it can only be understood in the experiential sense.

[dead_battery]

yes. the object of buddhism is in a sense to become an object. to become still as a stone and cultivate an emptiness of mind. then you hit the phase of terror when you meet the total void inside everything. i've been there and met a friend who went down the buddhist path and was stuck in this phase. he was ranting about episodes of south park that didnt exist, telling me some crappy youtube video was the best song in the world. i didnt laugh, but i smiled knowingly, since i too was once at that phase of panic at the nothingness inherent in everything. eventually you realize how emptiness and form are the same thing, and it becomes more clear again.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

That is unfortunate about your friend, as I mentioned on the David Lynch thread, there is substantive danger in approaching deep spiritual practices and meditations with out some professional guidance. Nihilism especially, its a thin line between passionless perfection and crassly judgmental self-destruction.