Lets say there is a position someone holds, or an idea that they have, and you disagree with it, lets call it position X, so as not to offend anyone by choosing a position arbitrarily ([cough]….fundamentalism).  No but seriously, position X, and you disagree with it.

Now there are three ways to go about a disagreement:

1)  You can flat out say…no….you’re wrong, and I say ~X, (~ means not by the way).  So, this is just rejecting this persons idea with no justification or reasoning.  The issue is, that in arguing this way, all you’re doing is rejecting and not even hearing them out, because if you were to hear them out, my god you could be turned and influenced to their opinion, and you wouldn’t want that because you’re Right.  But doesn’t this just perpetuate the constant war of attack and retaliation?  (Of course that assumes attack and retaliation is bad, but whatever that’s my argument)

2)  You can argue and reason against the person. Now the issue with this is that to “reasonably reason” you have to accept some of the premises/assumptions of what the other person is saying, you have to meet them halfway so to speak.  Problem is that all this does is basically spawn odd analogous offspring of their argument, that are slightly different, because you go into it thinking you will show them they’re wrong, but all you end up doing is just slightly morphing both of your perspectives into a new perspective which someone will invariably disagree with, and on and on and on this goes.  By arguing in this way, all we end up doing is meandering through the argument and ending up no where.

3)  You can use logic, ahh of course logic, the savior of 99% of contemporary western philosophers–no offence to any philosophers out there, if your offended then maybe you’re in that 1% lol, hope that made you feel better.  If you can prove a logical inconsistency within the persons argument, then you don’t need to come off as an asshole–via #1–or take on some of your opponents argumentative assumptions and thus end up in a meandering chain of analogous thinking–via #2.  But, yes there is a problem with this as well.  As much as we would all love to think that logic will bring us to the truth, logic is itself based on the changing senses or words, ideas and arguments, as well as the varying interpretations of what the person ‘probably’ means and how charitable of a reading you should do which is nested within the persons thinking as a whole, and many other varying contexts, and not to mention problems of translation if theres a language barrier.  Further, logic, in trying to avoid these variables will propose ideas that are so precise that they end up not saying anything at all, they are so clear that they become transparent no-thing.

So, what are we left with?  Are we left with pragmatism, just do whatever is most practical.  Without even getting into the problems of what is really practical and for whom, it’s that sort of pragmatic calculative thinking that churns out genocides and the numbering of us people so that we can fit in as cogs in a machine.  Further, choosing what’s practical is just another of the contexts that fits into the argument at hand, which means it is still all up to this problem that whatever method of argument you pursue, you are left with the problem that there is no way to conclude it, it will always lead nowhere.

But then, we are left with the question, what to do with argument?

What is argument?

Is it to ’see’ each others positions clearly and to come to a better understanding, maybe to reach some kind of conclusion, maybe you want to show that you are right and the other person is mistaken.

Imagine something with me, a race of telepathic beings.  They are a special kind of telepathic though.  They don’t merely hear each others thoughts, they also feel each others emotions, they feel each others very person, they understand everything that lead this person to do what they do, they feel it all, they feel everyones whole colored experience.  How could you disagree in such a state of unity, it would be like disagreeing with your own leg–stubborn bastard!

If I saw the way you did, felt the way you did, and understood your justification and reason for all of your actions and ideas, would we even be 2 separate people anymore.  Would we not be much closer to 1.

So, with any argument where we are getting closer and closer to ‘getting’ each other, a problem arises.  We can’t get each other on the level of those telepathic’s, there is always this individual centre that is inaccessible to everyone.  And this means that we can never, ever–until we are that sort of telepathic–understand each other fully.  And this means that argument and disagreement will always necessarily arise in human life, so long as there is this separation.

So, what does this imply.  Well first off this implies that we can’t know big ‘T’ Truth or big ‘R’ Reality, we just have our truth and our reality; and so, our disagreements do not come from misunderstanding the Truth or Reality, but our misunderstanding of each other.  Because if you remember the talk of logic in their attempt to be precisely precise, they end up saying nothing.  In trying to pin down reality and truth, those goals end up disappearing, yet in trying to step back and take them in, they disappear as well.  So, what I guess I’m trying to say, is, let go of thinking we are disagreeing about Reality, and understand that we are simply disagreeing with each other because of our lack of understanding of each other, not Reality.  So, with that may you listen more.  We need not argue so as to complete the very important and serious task of elucidating Truth, and thus gain the wondrous credential of being right, correct, or doing the will of some divine being.

In seeing that a disagreement is merely an indication of the fact that we don’t ‘get’ each other, then this is kinda hopeful I think, because we’re no longer after the very seemingly important Truth of the matter, we’re after unity among us.  And in that I find hope.

Of course one last problem emerges, isn’t my whole talk here, my own argument, my own disagreement? Yup, I guess this is all just another drop in the ocean of truths and I should just take my own advice and listen to you.  Maybe I just don’t get you position X’ers yet? Maybe I need to listen, and feel as you do, then, I’ll get it, but in doing so, my disagreement disappears, my rightness disappears, maybe even a bit of me disappears!  And then I’d have nothing to blog about.

First, my degree is my credential,

then my wealth is my credential,

then my status is my credential,

then my friends are my credentials,

then my talents are my credentials,

then my house is my credential,

then my knowledge is my credential,

then my intellect is my credential,

then my eclectic musical tastes are my credentials,

then my refined taste is my credential,

then my life experience is my credential,

then my not being like them is my credential,

then my age is my credential,

then my thoughts are my credentials,

then my doctrines are my credentials,

then my confusion is my credential,

then my mysteriousness is my credential,

then my righteousness is my credential,

then my compassion is my credential,

then my ability to listen is my credential,

then my ability to withstand pain is my credential,

then my love is my credential,

then my awareness is my credential,

then my spirituality is my credential,

then my radicalness is my credential,

then my piety is my credential,

then my deconstructionism is my credential,

then my constructionism is my credential,

then my savedness is my credential,

then my christianness is my credential,

then my anti-christianness is my credential,

then my anti-religiousness is my credential,

then my wisdom is my credential,

then my awareness of my propensity to identify with credentials is my credential,

then my egolessness is my credential,

then my selflessness is my credential,

Finally, my credentialessness is my credential.

If we don’t get rid of credentialization itself, then why bother switching one egotistical credential for another?

Just a quick thought on identity.

What is it to have an identity?

What does it mean for me to identify with my work or my friends or my interests?  What is it to be me?

I said in a earlier post (“Names”) that basically one’s name is just a ‘label’ you throw on top of the infinite depth of a human being, but now I am not so sure.  There’s a few reasons for this.

First, well, the definition of Identity is the condition of being oneself or itself, and not another.  Now this mean that when we are talking about identity, we are NOT saying that “I am related to, or I see myself as X” as if there is this identity that I hold apart from myself but am associated with.  It really means that I AM this X or whatever. Hmm, this is getting confusing, let me try to clear this up.

When I say that I identify with my job, this does not mean that my job is an attribute of me, that just covers me up–like what I said in ‘Names’–instead this means that my job IS me.  They are identical!

I have found that I often make the mistake of thinking that there is this “true” identity behind all of the things that I identify with, so I try to deconstruct towards this “real” me, but the problem is that, there is no ‘me’ apart from all of those things that I identify with.  I AM those things.

So, in the case of the name, I am my name.  That ‘I’ that I try to grasp and find and make authentic, doesn’t exist apart from my name and all of the things in the world that I either identify with positively (as in say that is me) or negatively (as in say that ‘that’ is not me….like how I am NOT a conservative fundamentalist, that is me). There is no-thing/no-me behind it all, if you keep deconstructing towards the referent of your references, then you’ll end up in non-sense (as in a placeless place with no sense because there is no distinction, in fact there is no-things).

Maybe this is why enlightenment philosophy often has the motif that you step back and step back and become more and more aware (become aware of your awarenesses awareness lol) until you eventually give up all your identity, there is no more ‘you’ and all that is left is the universe that you now ‘dissolve’ into and become identical with–but there is no discernible you.

So, I’m at a paradox here.  I look for ‘myself’ by deconstruction towards this authentic ‘me’ behind all the labels and attributes that “cover me up”, but there is no-me behind this me.  Those things which I rejected in search of identity were exactly those things which I was identical with.  Meaning I end up no-where with no-self, but searching for an authentic self, meaning I need to rebuild my self.

It might explain why anti-conformists end up looking like conformists in their strife for anti-conformity.

Anyways, my point is, why do we keep trying to find this self, why do we keep thinking we can find this true self, that is behind our “inauthentic” identity? Why is it a drive in everyone, is it because we are anxious about the fact that at the core or our identity, there is a no-thing, that is a non-sense.

It’s funny that the very thing we try to find so as to cover up this anxiety, is the very thing that we give up in trying to search for an “authentic” self.

Second, lol, lets be honest I forgot what my second reason was a long time ago in this meandering thought, but it’s nice to have structure anyways.

Thanks for listening.

MENDING WALL

Robert Frost

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Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors’.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

---

My Response–I don’t quite know why I have a response?

But I being a man,

have only my thoughts;

No emotion to break,

my chains of justification;

“So, my friend,”

. .

“Good fences, make good neighbors.”

I often hear the saying: ”I don’t like being treated like a number.”  But what about this idea….”I don’t like being treated like a name.”

Names can be just as depersonalizing and commodifying as numbers, and numbers can be as independence-affirming as names.  An example is that I have a student number but if someone took the time to learn my student number and used it in some kind of common conversation, I would be flattered, how meaningful that someone remembered something about me–regardless of if it’s a number.  And yet on the other hand someone could know my name and use it in a commodifying and controlling way–just like how one can be “treated like a number.”  It’s why slave masters gave their own names to their slaves, it was a measure of control.

The name ”matt” doesn’t describe me, it is a useful label for communication purposes, but it doesn’t represent(as in re-present) who I am at all.  Another example is that the description of the concept of  ”headache” is not the same as the actual nameless experience that was named a ”headache.”

So, I say get rid of names and numbers as descriptors of me and get to me.

Yet at the same time, I need a name, it is very very very useful and as well, it is very humanizing, allows me an individual self that I call ‘me’, it is humanizing as it is dehumanizing.

An annoying paradox!

If God’s love is selfless love, then does God not have a self and therefore, no person/identity?

You may think well that’s not doing justice to what it means, because it just means not ’selfish’ love as in not doing it for your self.  But selfish love can be very very subtle, even doing good for that person on the street is selfish because “you” are doing it, it is self-centered, literally–of course not with the negative connotations we use those words in today.  So, ’selfless’ love, what is that?  It can’t be in relation to a ’self’ or ‘person’ so what does that mean?  What does selfless love look like, is it just a open space or and open clearing where we can be?  Because I don’t think it can be ‘love’, in the same way we think of love, which is “I love her/him” because that is me (the self, or subject), loving you (the object–and ‘object’ not in a negative sense), there is still this subject-object duality.  However, if it is ’selfless’ love there is no self, there is no subject, and there can be no object with no subject right so…….What is God’s selfless love look like (is that sentence itself a contradiction?)?!?!

So, for those of you who stayed I had a odd question and I’ll just talk it out with you girls and guys.  So, lets say that I am moving a table, on that table there’s a deck of cards.  The deck starts to slide off the table while I’m moving it.  I stop it from doing so, except one single card falls off the table.  The card falls face up and it:

Case #1 – It is a Three of Clubs.  Meaning the probability of a 3 is (4 in 52), probability of a club is (1 in 4), probability of being the three of clubs is (1 in 52).

Case #2 – It is a King of Hearts. Meaning the probability of a king is (4 in 52), probability of a heart is (1 in 4), probability of being the king of hearts is (1 in 52).

Case #3 – It is a Seven of Diamonds. Meaning the probability of a seven is (4 in 52), probability of a diamond is (1 in 4), probability of being a seven of diamonds is (1 in 52).

Each case has the same probabilities built into what happens you see, for every single one of these cases, the probabilities are the same. Same for the suit, the value and the card itself.

So, there is a point to that.  See I want to bring to your attention something that I found really odd.  If any of you have ever played the game asshole, president etc, you’ll maybe know that the King of Hearts is also the “Suicide King–if you don’t know why, take a look at the car….that king is no brain surgeon you can be sure of that”, and the Jack of Hearts and Spades are the “One-Eyed Jacks”.  Now if case #1 happened to you, I feel you really wouldn’t think anything of it, you’d pick up the card and go on with your life.  However, if case #2 had happened to I wonder if you would have thought differently.  Especially if you play asshole a lot.  You might have said to yourself , “hmmm the Suicide King, of all the cards that came up it was the suicide king, the best card in asshole.”  Now, I have a feeling that you don’t actually say that in your head if this sort of thing happens, but maybe a subtle quick thought or just a feeling of oddness or more intense recognition would flash by.  But there is one thing to keep in mind.  The probability of the 3 of clubs coming up in case #1 is precisely the same as the king of hearts coming up in case #2 (1 in 52 or 1.92 %).  So, what has changed? What is the difference between the two, because there is no empirical difference.

Well obviously the difference is in your head isn’t it.

Take case #3, but add in that I have a special lucky card in my wallet from my grandfather’s deck of cards, the only card of the deck that survived with him back from the war was the seven of diamonds.  So, when that one comes up–even though the probability remains the same as every other card–I am amazing, that’s the same card, and depending on the kind of person I am, it’s either going to be significant or just a coincidence.

But the issue here is that I am imposing meaning onto one thing and not another, when they are–mathematically speaking–exactly the same.

So, I wonder how much I do this in my life, how much I overlay my own meaning onto things.  Now, not that I mean this is a bad thing, I actually feel that stuff like this IS what gives us meaning and purpose in life, but at the same time some of these meanings are undischarged assumption.  But, even the fact that some of the things we get our meaning from are undischarged assumptions (just assumptions that haven’t been showed to be true or false) doesn’t mean that we should do away with these things wholly.  For example, it is an undischarged assumption that every morning when I wake up there will be ground to step onto rather than the center of the Atlantic Ocean–ok I know that’s kinda over the top but whatever it’s funny.  But, I live by this assumption because I’d go crazy/be called crazy if I tried to check all the time.  So there’s this tension, for me at least–maybe I’m the only one who even cares about this kinda stuff but whatever there you go.

Now there are actually two really big holes in this little thought experiment and I don’t quite know how to plug them.  This was more of a idea that can just get ya thinking if ya know what I mean.  The first loophole is that you could show how mathematically the above case is an meaningful coincidence.  This is because there is a 1.92 % change of getting the seven of diamonds, but at the same time there is this fact in you of the meaningfulness of the seven of diamonds so of the cards that would be meaningful to you 1.92 % of them are meaningful.  So, (0.0192 X 0.0192 = 0.00037 or 0.037 %) So, there actually is a difference in the two cases and indeed it is meaningful for the seven of diamonds to come up, and not just imposed meaning.  The other hole in this argument is that there is more and more research being done of action at a distance.  There is much research supporting the existence of the minds ability to effect physical things in the world.  So, that messes with the whole clean probability.  However, I would argue that if this stuff is true then that implies that we physically create our own meaning and not just in our heads but in the real world so it would still come down to us doing it.

Ok enough of this, if you made it this far I really am so happy and thankful, but seriously so sorry for putting you through that.

Do we ever really understand each other.  Especially in an argument or debate, do we actually understand each other.  Is understanding even possible?

Someone says that they like poetry and you say, “I understand that you like poetry, but I just don’t?”

I feel that this means you only understand at the level of propositions.  You understand the statement in a propositional way, that is, you understand what the meanings of the words are in your head, you know that there is this person, and that there is this thing liking, and this person has that liking towards poetry.  You understand that.  But is this really understanding what a person is saying?

Because when someone says that they like something, they are not presenting it as dry propositions about themselves the way I  showed above.  They are talking about their actual experience of liking poetry.  So, would truly understanding them–or at least getting closer to understanding them–mean to actually experience the liking of poetry?  To actually feel it? Isn’t that what it would mean to more deeply understand someone.

If one were to understand the other person this way, could you then even say, “I understand that you like poetry, but I just don’t?”  I mean, didn’t YOU just have the experience of liking poetry in that deep understanding, you clearly didn’t just watch, witness or observe the experience that the other person has, you felt it yourself, felt it as yourself.

So, can you even disagree?

Maybe this is why arguments often get to a point where there is no further movement.  Because both have heard and understood the propositions the other is proposing, but to actually listen would mean to give up their position entirely, and if you have your identity as constituted by your  opinions then this will be very de-centering to actually listen and understand another human being.  Because you lose your perspective, you lose your rightness.

Ok, I can’t help it.  So, what about religion.  You know, religious discussions, I mean this may be moot since I know that religious discussions  never get out of hand at all. Ha. So, if I talk to a atheist, agnostic, panentheist, pantheist, monist, theist, Muslim, Christian, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, etc, well how can I be right if I am trying to understand them.  I mean, isn’t that almost like a universal aim of humans and some religions, to understand one another, isn’t that what love really is?  But if to understand one another means to feel as that person does, who’s right anymore?

Also, what about immoral people, what if you understand them, does this make you immoral for feeling the way they do?  Or does it make you more human for not trying to be selfishly righteous?

I’ve always found that love is a understanding-listening-embrace of another person, but then how do we say that we are to love everybody, what about the Genocide participators, rapists, child molesters.  That is very urky, but then does this mean we are not to love them, or at least only love them on a distanced propositional level that reduces the infinite depth of a human being to a name, label or proposition.

Say–hypothetically, so as not to offend too many of your moral sentiments–we are to Love in that deep feeling understanding way, the way that dissolves the right and wrong.  Does this mean that our thoughts and emotions are not ever wrong, immoral, sinful, unjust?  Does this mean we don’t have a fence in between us and them, me and you, I and the Other?

Now I’m sure a avid hair-splitter will say, ah but your having those immoral emotions for a moral reason.  But I say–well one, did you even understand what I was saying lol–then, the issue is that that implies that you could do immoral acts for a moral reason, and that kinda gets into just war philosophy/theology and I’m not !@#%ing touching that.  Now of course, the law cannot function this way for society to exist in relative balance, that is  a whole other ball game, but human interactions might be much different–maybe leading to eventual change in law–if one were to adopt this.

Maybe part of being selfless has to do with dissolving those very powerful self-other boundaries.  But we don’t do this by thinking about selflessness–because it is the self that’s thinking, or by “being” selfless–since to be without a self is not a state that your “self” can be in.  You do that, by doing it, by listening and understanding.

Compassion means to suffer with someone, this is what listening with the intent of understanding is…..i think lol.

Well, I’m rambling now so I guess I’ll leave it at this,

If you are not your thoughts or emotions, but the one who is aware of them, then why are you so afraid of “bad” thoughts and “bad” emotions?

Now, when I’m talking about faith, I mean faith in God in general, so I’m steering clear of the doctrines and beliefs of the theisms of the world and instead going to try to talk about faith in God philosophically…so I’m sorry for all the people I’m about to offend….jk  

Ok, so on with it then.  What is faith? Well that’s an easy question isn’t it.  I used to think that faith was belief in God even if there isn’t evidence or whatever.  So, I used to think that faith in my God was a well….faith….a belief that is not based on proof.  Ok, fine so I can accept that idea of faith if we’re talking about conceptual beliefs.   BUT…..

….how does one live faithfully?’

What does that mean?

Do you walk around with the belief that God exits all the time, is that really what faith is?

I have a intuition that to really live faith, you have to get rid of ones idea of God…..before you moltov cocktail my house let me explain lol.  See, to have an idea of God means you ya know hold it in your mind.  Having an idea of God is not living faith because your idea of God becomes you God.  You already have the God that you profess to have faith in just by having faith.  Of course I don’t think that our conceptual idea of God is God.

So, what does it mean to live faithfully?  Well I propose that to live faithfully is to let go of such conceptual Gods and exit faithfully, meaning letting go of all these things we think we know about God by “having faith” in Him.  Now this may not rub most doctrines the right way because via revelation in acts or persons, we do know God.  But, I guess I sometimes disagree with that.

Although maybe to let go of ones conceptual Gods, is to live without those useless and distinction creating thoughts that actually cause all the terrible judgments that modern spirituality is trying to rectify. But you don’t rectify it by rejecting it because that is just another judgement.  One must stop thinking, I think…lol.  To stop thinking is to stop those distinctions that are the single source of these religious and ethical wars.

And to take this even further, to give up those thoughts–which includes those very comforting conceptions of God that we take to be God–we end up not finding ourselves on one side or the other of certain debates and movements, but instead the self that is defined by our relation to the “other” disappears entirely.  And then we end up in a place that is distinction-less.  Without the thought there is true equality and oneness that isn’t just and idea, but is real oneness.  And yes distinctions must still be made in the sense that there still have to be laws and morals but that is a whole other discussion.

Anyways my point is to live faithfully we have to give up faith intellectually.  And that doesn’t just mean accept the “intellectual” idea of giving up faith because that is still bound up in thoughts and their polarizing properties.

Well I hope that didn’t ruin any of your days, but if it did trust me I have had a lot more anxiety on this issue than you could imagine lol. Anyways, have a wonderful day, and if your reading this then wow people read my blog.

First there is happiness. (Physics)

—Playing, having fun, timeless moments

.

Then, there is “happiness”. (Metaphysics)

—I am aware of “happiness”, but if I’m aware of it, I’m separate from it, am I really happy?

.

Then, there is happiness. (Physics & Post-Metaphysics as identical)

—Not forgetting the idea of “happiness”, one begins to play, have fun, and live timelessly once again.  You have come full circle, but you are changed.

.

.

The metaphysics is the scary part, you can’t go back, but you don’t want to go further because going further into it only separates you further from everything you love…or at least it seems to, this is the Dark Night of the Soul, the depression of subjective relativism and thinking in general.  However, if you dig in that thinking abyss for long enough, you end up where you began, but changed.  I see post-metaphysics as enlightenment.