12-12-2021, 03:04 AM
Wrapping up some big things in part not discussed yet... In large part @Azarnac, given our earlier discussions, including last in the thread "Are those who don't honor logic deceitful egomaniacs?", but I also think this summarizes where I've gradually later arrived at in a way worth adding here. I'll check for responses, but otherwise I've taken a step back from this forum, as I go through another major step of changing direction on my personal journey. There's been some interesting exchanges over time on this forum, good times for the most part, and here I'll simply note my thanks to a bunch of people who I won't try to list.
Lately, I've focused less on abstract philosophy, and I've grown gradually jaded about the point of focusing on questions such as all being matter vs. spirit over the past few years. Because, I think everything of importance exists between the two absolutes, and all the interesting questions are outside the big old battles of thought. All the interesting inquiries fall between the cracks, and usually seem to be captured poorly by formal philosophical frameworks. (Maybe not all the time, to be fair.) Using the usual words and concepts, the field of attention is mostly drawn away from the mental contents they don't fit, and so from most of the interesting stuff.
I think the nature of it all is ultimately mind rather than matter, in the sense of consciousness, but that the universal mind is many steps removed from shaping specifically our experience, so that saying that the universal mind does something is no more useful than saying God does something as an explanation. (I.e., it doesn't really explain anything.) That's why I don't care so much about minimal frameworks tying all to universal mind; the explanatory power seems limited to the most abstract philosophical sense of it being a fit.
Also, I've gradually given up an attachment to old inner belief system structures (mental and emotional associations, and all the rest). It's like to step across a threshold towards the spirit, the first foot can be put forwards by engaging with a spiritual teaching, but the second foot can only be put forward after giving up the spiritual teaching. That's my personal experience, or what seems like a good summary of it -- this is not about the old cult, but about the more general larger spiritual landscape. I increasingly found the larger remaining belief-structures inside to be a wall, or veil, between I and spirit. I've found that I've lost nothing as I've listened to skeptics, learning what I can from them, rather they help me get rid of all the dead weight. Though I sometimes need a reminder to look beyond whatever focus has been recent habit.
These things bring me to how currently, I go through a great dislike of Western non-organized spirituality (or the types of teaching I am personally more familiar with), alongside organized religion. I think there's a self-destructive core to much of it, with the dreams of better futures and associated hopes and fears based mainly on veiled airheaded contrarianism, and if you follow the implications, semi-veiled attempts to reverse the clock on the progress of science and technology (and of humanism, too). "Alternative" people (to use that terribly bad popular terminology) essentially strive in directions that lead right back to the past and all its problems while lost in dreams that something totally different and better will happen instead. An alternative to that "alternative" is needed if there's to be anything worthwhile on the collective level, and it hasn't been invented yet; we obviously live in the wrong era for that. It may take centuries before anything sensible develops (if it does).
I think this pro- vs. anti-science culture war will be a long-term mess, the current hysterical pandemic era neither the beginning nor the end of it, just a more intense little chapter of the story. And I actually think the best hope for the future may be for science and skeptics to "win" until spirituality and "alternative" fields connected to it as popularly known in the present fade away, so that there can be a later reborn spirituality which is not mostly based on ancient rotten habits of thought (all the nowadays well-known cognitive biases and problematic patterns...).
First I think humanity needs to destroy the power of deceptive rhetoric if it is to be able to increase quality of thought in society and develop worthwhile philosophies much further. I think AI can be an answer to that, actually. Imagine a "spam filter" for manipulative patterns of communication, applied to all political discourse, and to the communications of governments and people in positions of power -- and also to screen all those who offer services and goods they claim will help others. Otherwise, there's the ancient problem that deception is produced much more quickly, and spread much more quickly, than it can be countered, dragging the overall level down terribly. I think technology is the only hope humanity has of growing past that obstacle. If the noise of bad rhetoric can be blocked like spam across society, so it no longer drags minds and hearts down, maybe something like a second enlightenment era and philosophy can then in turn fully develop and have an influence analogous to the first such historical period. Eventually there may be a bridging of the gap to a better spirituality.
(Though a bit sci-fi, such an idea doesn't sound technically unrealistic to me in considering what could be developed over the next few decades, rather, it seems socially, culturally, and politically unrealistic. I think the best approach to filtering out manipulative garbage would be to mostly rely on examining the structure of what is communicated, forming a cultural standard of aiming to make messages logically scrutable and rejecting communication crafted to be unscrutable as unacceptable. Ideologically, what I vaguely dream about here is at an almost 180 degree difference from everything e.g. Facebook represents. And it's in complete opposition to everything populistic and the attitudes of most "alternative" movements.)
I don't know what the next turning point(s) may be in where I go, inwardly and perhaps otherwise. But a theme came to mind, three stages as described here: "Nietzschean striving vs. the sinkhole of indifference". Maybe I'll end up revisiting philosophy differently at some point in the future.
Lately, I've focused less on abstract philosophy, and I've grown gradually jaded about the point of focusing on questions such as all being matter vs. spirit over the past few years. Because, I think everything of importance exists between the two absolutes, and all the interesting questions are outside the big old battles of thought. All the interesting inquiries fall between the cracks, and usually seem to be captured poorly by formal philosophical frameworks. (Maybe not all the time, to be fair.) Using the usual words and concepts, the field of attention is mostly drawn away from the mental contents they don't fit, and so from most of the interesting stuff.
I think the nature of it all is ultimately mind rather than matter, in the sense of consciousness, but that the universal mind is many steps removed from shaping specifically our experience, so that saying that the universal mind does something is no more useful than saying God does something as an explanation. (I.e., it doesn't really explain anything.) That's why I don't care so much about minimal frameworks tying all to universal mind; the explanatory power seems limited to the most abstract philosophical sense of it being a fit.
Also, I've gradually given up an attachment to old inner belief system structures (mental and emotional associations, and all the rest). It's like to step across a threshold towards the spirit, the first foot can be put forwards by engaging with a spiritual teaching, but the second foot can only be put forward after giving up the spiritual teaching. That's my personal experience, or what seems like a good summary of it -- this is not about the old cult, but about the more general larger spiritual landscape. I increasingly found the larger remaining belief-structures inside to be a wall, or veil, between I and spirit. I've found that I've lost nothing as I've listened to skeptics, learning what I can from them, rather they help me get rid of all the dead weight. Though I sometimes need a reminder to look beyond whatever focus has been recent habit.
These things bring me to how currently, I go through a great dislike of Western non-organized spirituality (or the types of teaching I am personally more familiar with), alongside organized religion. I think there's a self-destructive core to much of it, with the dreams of better futures and associated hopes and fears based mainly on veiled airheaded contrarianism, and if you follow the implications, semi-veiled attempts to reverse the clock on the progress of science and technology (and of humanism, too). "Alternative" people (to use that terribly bad popular terminology) essentially strive in directions that lead right back to the past and all its problems while lost in dreams that something totally different and better will happen instead. An alternative to that "alternative" is needed if there's to be anything worthwhile on the collective level, and it hasn't been invented yet; we obviously live in the wrong era for that. It may take centuries before anything sensible develops (if it does).
I think this pro- vs. anti-science culture war will be a long-term mess, the current hysterical pandemic era neither the beginning nor the end of it, just a more intense little chapter of the story. And I actually think the best hope for the future may be for science and skeptics to "win" until spirituality and "alternative" fields connected to it as popularly known in the present fade away, so that there can be a later reborn spirituality which is not mostly based on ancient rotten habits of thought (all the nowadays well-known cognitive biases and problematic patterns...).
First I think humanity needs to destroy the power of deceptive rhetoric if it is to be able to increase quality of thought in society and develop worthwhile philosophies much further. I think AI can be an answer to that, actually. Imagine a "spam filter" for manipulative patterns of communication, applied to all political discourse, and to the communications of governments and people in positions of power -- and also to screen all those who offer services and goods they claim will help others. Otherwise, there's the ancient problem that deception is produced much more quickly, and spread much more quickly, than it can be countered, dragging the overall level down terribly. I think technology is the only hope humanity has of growing past that obstacle. If the noise of bad rhetoric can be blocked like spam across society, so it no longer drags minds and hearts down, maybe something like a second enlightenment era and philosophy can then in turn fully develop and have an influence analogous to the first such historical period. Eventually there may be a bridging of the gap to a better spirituality.
(Though a bit sci-fi, such an idea doesn't sound technically unrealistic to me in considering what could be developed over the next few decades, rather, it seems socially, culturally, and politically unrealistic. I think the best approach to filtering out manipulative garbage would be to mostly rely on examining the structure of what is communicated, forming a cultural standard of aiming to make messages logically scrutable and rejecting communication crafted to be unscrutable as unacceptable. Ideologically, what I vaguely dream about here is at an almost 180 degree difference from everything e.g. Facebook represents. And it's in complete opposition to everything populistic and the attitudes of most "alternative" movements.)
I don't know what the next turning point(s) may be in where I go, inwardly and perhaps otherwise. But a theme came to mind, three stages as described here: "Nietzschean striving vs. the sinkhole of indifference". Maybe I'll end up revisiting philosophy differently at some point in the future.
![[+]](https://www.bring4th.org/forums/images/collapse_collapsed.png)