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Re: Meaning and Value [Re: MayaRefugee]
    #25737295 -

The answer potentially lies somewhere within the very reason why you asked it, but I dont know.

The things that I decide have have meaning are as robust...or not... as the concepts that got me there.

Why ask?


--------------------
Just a fool on the hill.

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Re: Meaning and Value [Re: MayaRefugee]
    #25737320 -

Because most of us are not aware of non-duality we are suffering under the assumptions of duality. Compassionate action, skillful means for the alleviation of suffering is an application of the gnosis of non-dualism which is essential Wisdom-Compassion. Think of the image of a Medicine Buddha, or of Christ as physician - not the human beings called Buddha or Christ, but Being Itself as Wisdom-Compassion and Logos being administered to those alienated from their Essential Nature by the suffering imposed by dualism, by subject-object, victim-victimizer. Alleviating suffering has intrinsic meaning since it closes the psycho-spiritual gap that is cause for human suffering, so in my life I have translated this into being a helper, a counselor, psychotherapist, and hypnotherapist. One can help others through the medium of many different activities from customer service rep to Uber driver to surgeon.


--------------------
γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself

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Re: Meaning and Value [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
    #25737368 -

If you consider our true nature an empty chess board, problems don't really arise until the pieces are placed on the board, each piece with inherent meaning and value, all tools in the bringing about of a certain outcome i.e. victory, all begging for our identification.

Could not suffering be the forgetting that we are the board and not the pieces, that the pieces are a game, that it should not be taken seriously, that there is no pressure to win, that there is nothing really to lose, that the game was something we made up, something we gave value to, something without the value that we gave it?

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Re: Meaning and Value [Re: MayaRefugee] * 1
    #25737376 -

Used the board as a discussion point the other day.
Thinking about the pieces perspectives.
What's motivating structured play. 
If left to their own directives.

With no sense of purpose, no guiding hand.
The games would be pointless and ultimately bland.
Given a frame work to operate in, willingly manipulated.
No promise of conclusion means effort capitulated.

So on they move, pretending to be in control.
Sold on the promise of an ultimate goal.
Now perhaps we aren't all that different.
Both we and the pieces deliberately ignorant.

As we look down on the board as only a player may.
We see what really defines the stakes at play.
Seeing that it's nothing without the possibility of the killer blow.
A winner and a loser and some way to know.

It then went on to a change in perspectives.
Imagine the pieces were to see the hands directives.
If both the player and the played were to look in the eye.
Would it mean the game would die.

To see the rules scribbled on some note.
To see the scotch and the drunkards who wrote.
To understand that this life or death struggle.
Was really just a repetitive black and white bubble.

It may be best and necessary for dimensions to exist.
Because we like the game and will not desist.
If the pieces knew they might not come back.
And with still more games to play, that would be crap.


--------------------
Just a fool on the hill.

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Re: Meaning and Value [Re: pineninja]
    #25737421 -

Intriguing, provocative....did you just write that?

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Re: Meaning and Value [Re: pineninja]
    #25737428 -

MayaRefugee said:
Could not suffering be the forgetting that we are the board and not the pieces, that the pieces are a game, that it should not be taken seriously, that there is no pressure to win, that there is nothing really to lose, that the game was something we made up, something we gave value to, something without the value that we gave it?


imo nothing has inherent value, but that does not make it any less real. I agree with you in a way, but why ask the question? You kinda already know the answer, nothing/everything matters if you believe it. I do believe the values we hold are a way of achieving a personal objective.


pineninja said:
Used the board as a discussion point the other day.
Thinking about the pieces perspectives.
What's motivating structured play. 
If left to their own directives.

With no sense of purpose, no guiding hand.
The games would be pointless and ultimately bland.
Given a frame work to operate in, willingly manipulated.
No promise of conclusion means effort capitulated.

So on they move, pretending to be in control.
Sold on the promise of an ultimate goal.
Now perhaps we aren't all that different.
Both we and the pieces deliberately ignorant.

As we look down on the board as only a player may.
We see what really defines the stakes at play.
Seeing that it's nothing without the possibility of the killer blow.
A winner and a loser and some way to know.

It then went on to a change in perspectives.
Imagine the pieces were to see the hands directives.
If both the player and the played were to look in the eye.
Would it mean the game would die.

To see the rules scribbled on some note.
To see the scotch and the drunkards who wrote.
To understand that this life or death struggle.
Was really just a repetitive black and white bubble.

It may be best and necessary for dimensions to exist.
Because we like the game and will not desist.
If the pieces knew they might not come back.
And with still more games to play, that would be crap.


Very beautiful, thanks for sharing


--------------------
Ik hou van je

While you're still sleeping the saints are still weepin' cause things you call dead haven't yet had the chance to be born. -Scatman John

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Re: Meaning and Value [Re: MayaRefugee]
    #25738271 -

MayaRefugee said:
I'm just interested in exploring the idea of meaning and value, particularly how we as actors base our actions on or strive to have our actions reflect the meaning and value we give to certain phenomena.


Without deciding what is important to me (values) I have no basis for making decisions.

For me, my decisions about how I want to live create my life and all it encompasses.

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Re: Meaning and Value [Re: MayaRefugee]
    #25738553 -

Thankyou, no it's something I had thought and written beforehand.
Your previous post would've fit in well with the conversation that inspired it.


Thankyou also Xeny.


--------------------
Just a fool on the hill.

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Re: Meaning and Value [Re: pineninja]
    #25738756 -

Xeny, I think I'm asking the question due to experiences I've had with people where the meanings and values someone has mattered more than the thing that could have those meanings and values. This and watching how many hours of drama and suffering this all caused. I guess I have an interest in the dynamics of prejudice at the moment.

RJ Tubs, totally agree, informing decisions via the establishment of principles is wise but how sure of our principles should we be? Some stick to their principles so vehemently they'll destroy a rain forest, blow people up, commit suicide, etc.

Pineninja, your poem is almost a mirror image of that post. Uncanny.

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Re: Meaning and Value [Re: MayaRefugee]
    #25738976 -

You are free to take your own life as non-seriously as you like if it's all a Lila Rasa, including the pain and suffering. I do not, nor can I ever know if your perspective is so supermundane that you walk on the turbulent waters of existence whilst everyone else flounders, sinks and drowns unless they have the mundane ability to swim. :shrug: I watched with great empathy a lonely man approach two dolled up women on a singles happy hour. They were already whispering when he made his courageous approach but they rejected him summarily. His expression and body language screamed in pain and humiliation as he turned around, going down in flames. I was recently divorced then but I was just there to observe that dance,including  the bar-girls who also took advantage of the occasion to lure obese gray haired businessmen. By that time I knew what the lonely guy was feeling even though I myself had learned not to put all my emotional eggs in one basket. I could handle rejection much better at that point after having been lied to, stolen from and cheated on by a wife of 13 years, 1/3 of my life at that time. There was little I could've done to help that guy although my heart went out to him. Attempting to cheer him up was not what he would've wanted and he would probably have been embarrassed by my observation.

There is no point in trying to intellectualize away pain, suffering, cruelty. These things are some of the 'givens of existence into which we are 'thrown' that existentialism refers to. The human condition, contrary to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's tabula rasa, is not a blank slate. We all arrive with baggage, genetic/karmic/constitutional givens of existence. WE are not the creators of this milieu we find ourselves in. We are not God, we are not even a "true nature." There is no personalizing these absolutes. So long as you and I are having a discussion, I am I and you are you (or I and Thou as Martin Buber put it). This 'I' and 'we' are temporal, dependent entities with form, and it 'makes sense,' which is to say, is meaningful (to me) to maintain the integrity of this changing form to the best of my ability. This includes my psycho-physico-spiritual self but it extends to my immediate environment of house and yard. These, like clothes, are extensions of self, all of which serve a greater purpose. I am not here to accrue wealth, nor to gorge myself on food or sex or games of chance, fame, or glory. If anything, I am here to play The Master Game a la Robert de Ropp. A goodly portion of that singularly worthy game, is the cultivation of compassion because we know more about these givens of existence than the average bear. We see more of the vectors that shape human destiny, we have more AHA! moments than others and we see the kinds of mud and mire the majority of inferior game-players are wallowing in.


--------------------
γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself

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Re: Meaning and Value [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
    #25739021 -

I resonate with the points you make, I would add that there is no point intellectualizing more pain and suffering i.e. birthing games that cause more suffering then there is already pre-games.

I haven't read The Master Game so can't comment on that.

Before things have meaning and value all is equal yeah? The consequences of the meaning and value those girls gave to the dude lead to suffering yeah?

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Re: Meaning and Value [Re: MayaRefugee]
    #25739263 -

MayaRefugee said:
RJ Tubs, totally agree, informing decisions via the establishment of principles is wise but how sure of our principles should we be?


Different things are important to different people. Serial rapists, drunkards, gluttons, and mass murders all have values. 

I can be sure of what is important to me, but beyond that, I'm clueless.

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Re: Meaning and Value [Re: RJ Tubs 202]
    #25739391 -

True, you raise a good point, do they have values or a lack in their valuation for things like autonomy, justice, beneficence, and non-maleficence?

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Re: Meaning and Value [Re: MayaRefugee]
    #25739628 -

MayaRefugee said:
Xeny, I think I'm asking the question due to experiences I've had with people where the meanings and values someone has mattered more than the thing that could have those meanings and values. This and watching how many hours of drama and suffering this all caused. I guess I have an interest in the dynamics of prejudice at the moment.


Yea, can be destructive and alot of people search for meaning in a very obsessive way, but I don't think there's a real alternative. Do you believe there's anyone out there who cares about nothing? Where nothing has meaning? We might say that sometimes in times of desperation but is it ever really true?


--------------------
Ik hou van je

While you're still sleeping the saints are still weepin' cause things you call dead haven't yet had the chance to be born. -Scatman John

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Re: Meaning and Value [Re: RJ Tubs 202] * 1
    #25739638 -

RJ Tubs 202 said:
MayaRefugee said:
RJ Tubs, totally agree, informing decisions via the establishment of principles is wise but how sure of our principles should we be?


Different things are important to different people. Serial rapists, drunkards, gluttons, and mass murders all have values. 

I can be sure of what is important to me, but beyond that, I'm clueless.


this gives us an opportunity to differentiate between compulsions and values, as many of the criminal mind set are not using pre-frontal cortical considerations in their decision process when they indulge their reflex mental inclinations as Serial rapists, drunkards, gluttons, and mass murderers


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:brainfart: _ :finger:

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Re: Meaning and Value [Re: redgreenvines]
    #25740560 -

Xeny, I don't know if it's possible to not care about anything but pondering it makes me think of the absurdists point of view, caring or still having a reason to live despite knowing things don't mean shit fundamentally, things being more about your attitude to meaninglessness than your response or reaction to perceived or fabricated meaning and value. Camus believed the only philosophy that mattered or the only philosophy there is was the one you held in reference to suicide i.e. what stops you from killing yourself once you realise there is no meaning to anything. I would say your philosophy in regard to harming others should matter to someone in this position as well i.e. other people should mean enough to you to not do them harm, respect there right to believe what they want.

Redgreenvines, but don't they possess a valuation of the person they are violating whereby that act is justified? Would instinct be the same as a compulsion in the way you are using it?

EDIT: Where THEY think that act is justified.

Edited by MayaRefugee (01/12/19 05:51 PM)

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Re: Meaning and Value [Re: MayaRefugee]
    #25740814 -

instinct or intuition is a kind of thinking, the mind ruminates and the idea emerges, against the backdrop of one's life experience. the backdrop is the internal consensus.

with compulsion, habit kicks in for a reaction without any internal consensus - so no prefrontal governance.

with compulsion a person is actually denying their own experience has any value. only the full routine matters. It matters in a way that is outside of values, it is mechanical


instinct and intuition are not mechanical.


--------------------
:brainfart: _ :finger:

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Re: Meaning and Value [Re: redgreenvines]
    #25740848 -

redgreenvines said:
this gives us an opportunity to differentiate between compulsions and values, as many of the criminal mind set are not using pre-frontal cortical considerations in their decision process when they indulge their reflex mental inclinations as Serial rapists, drunkards, gluttons, and mass murderers


We'd be ignoring people's humanity and agency to dismiss their behaviors as "reflex mental inclinations". People generally behave in congruence with their quality world (what they believe to be important = values) I have a friend who has lung cancer and she still smokes. Why? Because smoking is important to her. She sees benefits in smoking. The benefits she perceives outweighs other factors. She knows she could stop, but has decided not to.

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Re: Meaning and Value [Re: redgreenvines]
    #25740891 -

So one is monkey seeing monkey doing the other has some deliberation?

Yet cannot deliberated action become compulsive e.g. musicians that can play without thinking, sportsman that react with the right move instinctively, etc?

Would not the choice to develop that deliberated act over others imply that it was the output of a meaning and value schema i.e. this song is good, this is the best technique for playing a D minor, winning the championship is good, these movements are most effective at scoring a goal, etc?

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Re: Meaning and Value [Re: RJ Tubs 202]
    #25740911 -

RJ Tubs 202 said:
redgreenvines said:
this gives us an opportunity to differentiate between compulsions and values, as many of the criminal mind set are not using pre-frontal cortical considerations in their decision process when they indulge their reflex mental inclinations as Serial rapists, drunkards, gluttons, and mass murderers


We'd be ignoring people's humanity and agency to dismiss their behaviors as "reflex mental inclinations". People generally behave in congruence with their quality world (what they believe to be important = values) I have a friend who has lung cancer and she still smokes. Why? Because smoking is important to her. She sees benefits in smoking. The benefits she perceives outweighs other factors. She knows she could stop, but has decided not to.


Excellent point. To not be in a state of thought free contemplation 24/7, I believe, has with it the implicit need for there to be some measurement of one act being more meaningful or valuable than another. The pleasure of smoking is more valuable to your friend then the extension of life quitting might provide. Her choice to make yet people will point the finger.

If all meaning and value is an excercise in delusion why do people take it so seriously? Why do so few people respect peoples right to believe what they want to believe, value what they want to value? If what you do and what you believe don't hurt anybody shouldn't that be the end of the discussion?

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