Duschia: How can an IEE submit to Dogma?

[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.

[marooned]

It was more of a hook or a flair.

no idea what this means. maybe it means that truth and dogma are indistinguishable from your pov? i would see them as distinct as i see one as living and one as dead. and it seemed you were discussing how you don't want to live by other "truths" imposed upon you and only by your own. although your own may or may not be dogmatic, "truths" imposed on people coercively in my mind almost always are dogmas. and it's true they will be mind viruses, some more harmful than others, as they lead away from truth. things that lead away from truth, lead away from accepting reality as it is, and that causes harm to the self. of course, it's difficult to know what is true. for instance, is the world simply to be reduced to a shark tank in which only the cruel benefit? i can see this perspective, but i don't know that i believe it's "true" since if it were i would think no one can rise via kindness.

[Grendel]

maybe it means that truth and dogma are indistinguishable from your pov?

Yes.