Duschia: How can an IEE submit to Dogma?

[Grendel]

Interesting. I agree that the responsability for understanding his reasons to believe weights on the believer. But isn't the real issue with most believers, whether they have understood their beliefs or not, that they can't step out of their own beliefs? Shouldn't it be a bigger responsabilty for believers to try to thouroughly understand why others believe what they do? Otherwise, a beliver turns into his shadow; an ignorer. An ignorer has turned away from truth to dedicate himself wholly to his fetish; his knowledge is dead, and his truth is just some videotape he plays over and over in his mind. Real enlightenment has then just turned into some light at the end of the tunnel; paradise is for the dead.

Well, this begs the question of to whom, or to what, it is one's responsibility to step outside of a belief. I think that reason is the servant of the passions, and that all truths beneath me, not above me, are to my liking. All of my truth-seeking is done in service of my will to life; if a truth refutes my will to life, I should oppose it. The idea of "The Truth" (capital T) is itself a bit of a phantom; that Truth is a good-in-itself, that the good in pursuing it at all costs must be self-evident, and not conditional; and that, even if the Truth ever could refute one's will to life, one should be willing to relinquish everything in its service.

But I will make no such sacrifice for the selfish god of Truth! Nothing is above my will to life! If this selfish god, this "greater good," draws blood of any of its own children, then it proves that nature is indeed wrought in strife! And if all is wrought in strife, then let me be the cruelest. For as long as any power in the world dares impinge upon my will to life, then let my own Power be the highest good in all the world!


But, you may ask, is nature truly wrought in strife? You may ask, is not the notion of life as a War of All Against All a construct of the power-hungry in order to cement their rule? And, were their rule dismantled, would not a more cooperative and less competitive field be left in their wake? I think the question itself betrays lines the asker has already drawn in the sand. For who are the "power-hungry," and how were they able to convince us that life is a war of all against all, if it was them who did such? How did they herd us all into an arena, if that is where we are? Was it a one-time anomaly that the most sociopathic of people once and forever ascended to the highest echelons, persisted their power for eternity, and from there, created all the strife of Modernity? I wouldn't think. Such a one-off malicious omnipotence, leaching out into everything that has a name, is almost equivalent to an actual Devil, a fantastical thought. And, I wouldn't accept that probability would allow this error to happen only once and never again, as if any revolution could correct it for all time. Why should this single event in human history be framed as artificial, but all the others accepted as emergent?
I think the rise of the cruelest people to high places was an emergent phenomenon. Easily repeated, if disrupted. Bound to have happened in the past timeline. Even given that the "War of All Against All" is truly a spook conditioned onto us by the mighty, the inevitability of their rule would mean we would all be conditioned into this mentality at one point or another. Which, in a sense, demonstrates the War of All Against All as a true principle.

The common rebuttal to this is that humans have collective agency, by which we've altered the cruel forces of nature in past times, and mayhaps may alter ourselves out of our own cruelty. I doubt this. Modern humans have diverted a few rivers, but the rivers we end up diverting depends upon where we spawned, which depends upon where the rivers were to begin with. Our ability to alter the map depends upon the starting state of the map. People neglect that the scale and complexity of the present world is needed to keep the machinery running, but this complexity makes individuals mostly powerless to move us towards more sustainable paradigms, let alone the impossibility of collective organization.

Any fine-tuning of the system for greater efficiency that does not come from the system itself is dead-end fantasy. So no, I would say the human race does not have real agency. Our own success will continue to undermine the foundations that allow us to exist. The philosophy of Modernism, the power of human greatness to improve upon the world in which we live, was a blind alley.
So there is no Enlightenment. "Enlightenment" began when we started injecting religious fervor into scientific progress. But nothing guarantees that progress can endure forever. In the end, all that matters is to become the slaver and not the enslaved, just as the ancients did. Thus then, thus now.


If the world's a shark tank, let me be biggest.

[lkdhf qkb]

Well, this begs the question of to whom, or to what, it is one's responsibility to step outside of a belief. I think that reason is the servant of the passions, and that all truths beneath me, not above me, are to my liking. All of my truth-seeking is done in service of my will to life; if a truth refutes my will to life, I should oppose it. The idea of "The Truth" (capital T) is itself a bit of a phantom; that Truth is a good-in-itself, that the good in pursuing it at all costs must be self-evident, and not conditional; and that, even if the Truth ever could refute one's will to life, one should be willing to relinquish everything in its service.

But I will make no such sacrifice for the selfish god of Truth! Nothing is above my will to life! If this selfish god, this "greater good," draws blood of any of its own children, then it proves that nature is indeed wrought in strife! And if all is wrought in strife, then let me be the cruelest. If the world's a shark tank, let me be biggest.

Veeeeery interesting(and poetic)! I think this relates a lot to beta vs delta actually.

I don't think that reason is the servant of passions, and I believe that there are higher truths that are good in themselves even if Truth itself is a phantom; these truths are tied to the essence of things and not to my liking. A tin can is made of tin, whether I like it or not; I will die, whether I like it or not; the past can't be undone and human existence contains suffering, whether I like it or not; fear breeds suspicion, which breeds violence, whether I like it or not; I can't be sure that my religion is the true one because all knowledge is built on assumptions, whether I like it or not. Why would I accept truths if they hurt me, would you ask. Well, they only hurt me if I want them to be otherwise. If instead of being able to look them in the eye, I cover in fear. But it is not these truths that make me weak; it's the fear. The passion.

In what way are they higher truths may you ask? What makes them worth suffering for? In that they lessen suffering not now, but ever after. They lessen suffering not only for you, but for everyone. Because they transcend my or your life; they make you strong. The truths you like are like candy; they make you lazy, weak, dependent on some holy book in order to understand the world around you; but you were dependent of your tastes all along anyway, weren't you? Higher truths give you the choice to accept life as it is; they give choices! and only with this gift, free will, can you start to suffer for something instead of from something. You have the choice; will you make life better for everyone?

You say you oppose "every truth that refutes your will of life"; but isn't this struggle the negation of the will of life itself? You are engaged in an never-ending cycle of suffering and struggle, diminishing with every revolution, undermining your strength with each fight. In that state, what will of life are you talking about? Shouldn't it be better referred to as a will of death?

You refuse to make sacrifices to the "selfish God of Truth", but let me ask you: who is selfish by never wanting to suffer? You! Projecting your selfishness on truth is just another trick of your ego to make you run away from pain.

Let's talk about passions. Sometimes I walk in the park and I see people walking their dogs. They pick up a stick and throw it; the dog, unfailingly, starts to run after the stick and bring it back to his master. The dog doesn't know why he does this; probably the master doesn't either. Dogs exhibit this reflex because their ancestors were conditioned to bring back hunter's prey that was killed. Now however, both dog and master are replaying a pointless scene from centuries ago. Your passions, your rage, your happiness, your trust, are similar; they have reasons to exist, biological, historical, or personal. Again, this truth gives you a choice: learn to understand your passions, put truth in a equal-to-equal relationship with them. Be the dog who says "what, what am I doing?". Or you could be the one replaying for ever your own fears, falling ever deeper into nihilistic determinism. Pick.

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[Grendel]

I don't think that reason is the servant of passions, and I believe that there are higher truths that are good in themselves even if Truth itself is a phantom; these truths are tied to the essence of things and not to my liking. A tin can is made of tin, whether I like it or not; I will die, whether I like it or not; the past can't be undone and human existence contains suffering, whether I like it or not; fear breeds suspicion, which breeds violence, whether I like it or not; I can't be sure that my religion is the true one because all knowledge is built on assumptions, whether I like it or not. Why would I accept truths if they hurt me, would you ask. Well, they only hurt me if I want them to be otherwise. If instead of being able to look them in the eye, I cover in fear. But it is not these truths that make me weak; it's the fear. The passion.

Passions are the reason we do anything at all. Therefore, everything, even truth-seeking, must be done in their service. When a truth overrides the ego's own will to exist, it's akin to a mind parasite.

In what way are they higher truths may you ask? What makes them worth suffering for? In that they lessen suffering not now, but ever after. They lessen suffering not only for you, but for everyone. Because they transcend my or your life; they make you strong. The truths you like are like candy; they make you lazy, weak, dependent on some holy book in order to understand the world around you; but you were dependent of your tastes all along anyway, weren't you? Higher truths give you the choice to accept life as it is; they give choices! and only with this gift, free will, can you start to suffer for something instead of from something. You have the choice; will you make life better for everyone?

It can't be overemphasized that these "holy books" began with these very wisdom traditions predicated upon such "higher truths." They gained the appearance of incoherence upon layers of layers of divorce from their initial contexts and traditions, until now, naive moderns see them as the apotheosis of incoherence. It is not our age that is an age of anachronism and schizophrenia, it is every age but the first.


We suffer not for our desires, but when our desires conflict with our surroundings. The will to live alone is a noble enough reason to fight; a loftier reason will not give us any greater means to achieve it, it will only be less attainable and breed more suffering. And ironically, fighting for "something greater" is a loftier battle than simply fighting for one's own meager self, and being satisfied with that alone.

You speak of "holy books" with the subtle connotation that they are mere dogma the ruling class commandeers to control us; when ironically, desiring "something to believe in" is equally a call of enlistment to holy war, for a cause with no guaranteed reward.

Suffering, or suffering for anything, is not noble in a vacuum. What causes pleasure is good; what causes suffering is bad! There is no need to invert this! To romanticize one's own suffering is the cope of the beaten dog. He has no guarantee his pain will amount to any good in the end; he must tell himself it will in order to treat the pain. But how can a wound be desirable because it compels us to numb it with morphine? Better had the wound never been inflicted, and the morphine never needed.

You say you oppose "every truth that refutes your will of life"; but isn't this struggle the negation of the will of life itself? You are engaged in an never-ending cycle of suffering and struggle, diminishing with every revolution, undermining your strength with each fight. In that state, what will of life are you talking about? Shouldn't it be better referred to as a will of death?

You refuse to make sacrifices to the "selfish God of Truth", but let me ask you: who is selfish by never wanting to suffer? You! Projecting your selfishness on truth is just another trick of your ego to make you run away from pain.

If I willed death, I'd calmly accept the mark for death Nature has placed upon my head, rather than kick and scream for my own good. If suffering for something is noble in itself, I'm on the right track.


The hard boundary of selfish and unselfish is an illusion. If a collective were infinitely unselfish, it would willingly serve the interests of even its enemies. That a group will act to preserve itself demonstrates its selfishness. Moreover, a group's self-interest requires not only the continued existence of some number of its parts, but also the integrity of the connections between them. Whereas an individual's self-interest, in the end, asks nothing but the continued existence of that individual. He asks little, he binds few people to his own will, the ties around him may form and break as they please, but in the end, he wishes nothing but to Be.

Which then is the more rapacious, the more fecund and all-consuming? The one who seeks only his own good, or the engine that demands expansion and compliance? Which one grows and devours more of the heavens, infinitely replicating itself over the immense beauty and diversity that once was, replacing it with concrete, drab, uniform, consistency?
Certainly not the selfish individual. Only the selfish group. The selfish truth. The Selfish God.

[lkdhf qkb]

Passions are the reason we do anything at all. Therefore, everything, even truth-seeking, must be done in their service. When a truth overrides the ego's own will to exist, it's akin to a mind parasite.

Well, I think the ego is the mind parasite. It makes fear of pain bigger than pain itself. It makes hunger for pleasure bigger than pleasure itself. It makes survival the only stake of existence, but existence extends beyond stakes. You don't need an ego to live, but you need to live if you have an ego.

We suffer not for our desires, but when our desires conflict with our surroundings. The will to live alone is a noble enough reason to fight; a loftier reason will not give us any greater means to achieve it, it will only be less attainable and breed more suffering. And ironically, fighting for "something greater" is a loftier battle than simply fighting for one's own meager self, and being satisfied with that alone.

True; but I never said you should look for reasons to fight. Look for reasons not to fight.

You speak of "holy books" with the subtle connotation that they are mere dogma the ruling class commandeers to control us; when ironically, desiring "something to believe in" is equally a call of enlistment to holy war, for a cause with no guaranteed reward.

Again no. Stop putting words in my mouth to feed your ghost. Meaning has not to be rapacious or violent.

Suffering, or suffering for anything, is not noble in a vacuum. To romanticize one's own suffering is the cope of the beaten dog. He has no guarantee his pain will amount to any good in the end; he must tell himself it will in order to treat the pain. But how can a wound be desirable because it compels us to numb it with morphine? Better had the wound never been inflicted, and the morphine never needed.

Of course not. One should not romanticize the suffering one could have avoided. But aren't you willing to fight and suffer to uphold the rights of your meager petty self? This fight and suffering could have been avoided also. You are just not willing to let go, you think you control your existence but it controls you, and the fight you are engaging in is as holy to you as the wars you are talking about. Surviving at any cost, huh?

What causes pleasure is good; what causes suffering is bad! There is no need to invert this!

That is the true motto of the beaten dog. The dog that doesn't understand that he has decided that only pleasure and suffering matter, delimiting the sphere of his existence to his little perceptions. Btw, I never inverted this, you're attacking a strawman dude. What I said is that you're just a pawn if you don't investigate what makes you suffer and what gives you pleasure and define the meaning yourself. Alone. Free.

The hard boundary of selfish and unselfish is an illusion. If a collective were infinitely unselfish, it would willingly serve the interests of even its enemies. That a group will act to preserve itself demonstrates its selfishness. Moreover, a group's self-interest requires not only the continued existence of some number of its parts, but also the integrity of the connections between them. Whereas an individual's self-interest, in the end, asks nothing but the continued existence of that individual. He asks little, he binds few people to his own will, the ties around him may form and break as they please, but in the end, he wishes nothing but to Be.

Which then is the more rapacious, the more fecund and all-consuming? The one who seeks only his own good, or the engine that demands expansion and compliance? Which one grows and devours more of the heavens, infinitely replicating itself over the immense beauty and diversity that once was, replacing it with concrete, drab, uniform, consistency?
Certainly not the selfish individual. Only the selfish group. The selfish truth. The Selfish God.

Why are you talking about the collective now? Why is less rapacious good? This sounds like a so-last rant. It's great if you found your own religion, sp/sx. Tread the path forever alone then, and loose everything you hold dear(last but not least your life the little thing you tried to preserve) because that's what your bottomline seems to be. You choose to write your life as a tragedy, your choice.

[Grendel]

Well, I think the ego is the mind parasite. It makes fear of pain bigger than pain itself. It makes hunger for pleasure bigger than pleasure itself. It makes survival the only stake of existence, but existence extends beyond stakes. You don't need an ego to live, but you need to live if you have an ego.

I'm sorry, but this sounds like dark-mother speak, like a cosmic monster is trying to gaslight someone into thinking "That's not the real you! The real you wants to shed its body, and merge itself with me! Don't you trust your mother?", even if it's a mother someone has never met before, or had no fond memory of.

I'm not saying that's your intent, I'm not trying to sound accusatory, but that's where this line of reasoning always leads. It's kind of irreconcilable, trying to convince someone who has his own good as ultimate value that they should shed it in favor of the whole. It can't really be breached in one direction or the other, so it's all talking past each other at this point.

Again no. Stop putting words in my mouth to feed your ghost. Meaning has not to be rapacious or violent.

"Holy books" is kind of a meme, though. As I said before, what you call "higher truths" were once embedded into these types of text that became what they are now, by the strange distortions of time. The "holy books" meme is a botched understanding of what they began as. We tried to seek higher truth in the past, and warlords allied themselves with our occultists, and they commandeered that meaning to their own whims.

If it happened before, it's prone to happen again. That's why I equate the two. I'm sorry if my ambiguity made this sound accusatory.
"Religion" as being a distinct object, rather than the default that permeates through every other aspect of our culture, is a bit of a novelty. Most of our essential notions of life developed in a "religious" age - we can't remember a time where we became what we are without it. If it goes that deep down into our origins, are we really rid of it? Do we know that what we're doing now isn't some sort of religion of its own? I doubt.

[marooned]

Which then is the more rapacious, the more fecund and all-consuming? The one who seeks only his own good, or the engine that demands expansion and compliance? Which one grows and devours more of the heavens, infinitely replicating itself over the immense beauty and diversity that once was, replacing it with concrete, drab, uniform, consistency?
Certainly not the selfish individual. Only the selfish group. The selfish truth. The Selfish God.

sounds like dogma

[Grendel]

sounds like dogma

I've already explained how that's a thought-terminating cliché.

Back when we were purely lizardbrained, we preferred it when meeting our physical needs was sustainably constant.
Now, we also have abstraction. Would we not also prefer our abstract layer to remain sustainably constant likewise?

[marooned]

I've already explained how that's a thought-terminating cliché.

Back when we were purely lizardbrained, we preferred it when meeting our physical needs was sustainably constant.
Now, we also have abstraction. Would we not also prefer our abstract layer to remain sustainably constant likewise?

i meant that what you are calling truth there, i would call dogma or ideology. it sounds like a collectivist ideology that is imposed upon the individual to force conformity and is more like "this is the truth you must all believe in and these are the rules you must all follow" rather than actual seeking of knowledge (which is a curious process, not an incurious one that demands everyone think the same way).

[Grendel]

i meant that what you are calling truth there, i would call dogma or ideology. it sounds like a collectivist ideology that is imposed upon the individual to force conformity and is more like "this is the truth you must all believe in and these are the rules you must all follow" rather than actual seeking of knowledge (which is a curious process, not an incurious one that demands everyone think the same way).

It was more of a hook or a flair.