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MarkostheGnostic
Elder


Registered: 12/09/99
Posts: 14,279
Loc: South Florida
Last seen: 3 years, 2 days
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Quote:
itstarssaddam said:
Quote:
MarkostheGnostic said: Those who trip out and remain centered in instinctual and aggressive impulses are just fixated crazy-assed adolescents who get older but who do not 'grow up.'
How can an animal behave other than instinctually? 
Isn't a state of compassion merely another instinctual response?
No, not as I understand Compassion. Compassion requires detachment from one's own needs and instincts. The stranger who burns his hands and arms rescuing a driver from a burning vehicle is transcending his own instinct of 'self-preservation.' It has little to do with 'preservation of the species' if it's not his own family he's saving, except in the most removed sense. No, that stranger is allowing himself to be motivated by a selfless concern for another, to his own detriment. The selfless act is a manifestation of courage (cour=heart : French), another aspect of the motivation governed by the Heart Center, by the Higher Self or Transcendental Ego which transcends the embodied-ego and the personality.
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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spud
I'm so fly.

Registered: 10/07/02
Posts: 44,410
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Though some psychological egoists will go as far to argue that the stranger who burns his hands and arms rescuing the driver was doing it out of selfishness, because ultimately the act made him feel good about himself. Problem with that reasoning is that the reason it made him feel good to begin with is because he was Compassionate, and that supersedes selfishness.
I was once told this story about Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln and a friend were on a carriage, when all of a sudden they encountered some pigs stuck in the mud beside the road. Abraham yelled "Stop!", and he got out to assist the pigs. After the event, his friend said "Wow Abe, that sure was nice of you!". Abraham Lincoln responds by saying, "No it wasn't, I didn't do it for the pigs. If I didn't save the pigs I would have felt bad all day!" Here is the dilemma, if he was indeed a psychological egoist and essentially selfish, he would have gotten NO satisfaction out of saving the pigs. The fact that saving the pigs brought him sense of happiness in fact illustrates that he was Compassionate to begin with.
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it stars saddam
Satan

Registered: 05/19/05
Posts: 15,571
Loc: Spahn Ranch
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Quote:
MarkostheGnostic said:
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itstarssaddam said: Fair enough, but my original point was that, with all due respect to Markos, his views on the use of psychedelics seem rather dogmatic.
WOOF! WOOF! WOOF!
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MushmanTheManic
Stranger

Registered: 04/21/05
Posts: 4,587
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I recommend reading Markos and Pavlovian Zen by Mushman the Great. Its a truly inspiring work by a very well respected author.
"When you meet another bodhisattva on the road, greet him with neither words nor silence."
Woof woof woof!
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