Freewill and Culture: The Prism for Perception.

[John D. Brey]

You know what.. if what I said doesn't work for some people, maybe it is better to handle it like you said. This is one of those things that people are going to handle differently , solutions are probably as myriad as are personality types

Perhaps. But fwiw, I'm genuinely interested in how you, personally, handle the desires of the flesh when, if, they rebel against the spirit of your higher character?



John

 

[amorphous_constellation]

. . . I don't know about that? We're more likely to encounter multifarious life-forms and fascinating living things by veering off the beaten path down a dark dirt road than we are by remaining on the bright lights of the superhighway to hell.

That would be good.. I guess a problem is, that humans seem locked into acting a certain way. It's a huge, complicated question.. many people in forums chip away at it with their keyboards, now and then

 

[John D. Brey]

That would be good.. I guess a problem is, that humans seem locked in to acting a certain way. It's a huge, complicated question.. many people in forums chip away at it with their keyboards, now and then

. . . That sounds fatalistic. Are you saying we're wasting our time? <g>


John

 

[amorphous_constellation]

Perhaps. But fwiw, I'm genuinely interested in how you, personally, handle the desires of the flesh when, if, they rebel against the spirit of your higher character?

Well for example, not everyone is the same.. I don't feel that I have the sort of generalized hangups of various biblical characters. If I were cain, I wouldn't kill my brother, or be jealous of divine recognition. If I were adam, maybe I'd think before eating the fruit? I don't know.. not everyone's body is telling them to pursue only selfishness. And really, selfishness is the only concept I associate with a false desire of the flesh

 

[amorphous_constellation]

. . . That sounds fatalistic. Are you saying we're wasting our time? <g>


John

The hope is that the ship either turns around, or is heading somewhere unexpected, away from hell.

 

[John D. Brey]

The hope is that the ship either turns around, or is heading somewhere unexpected, away from hell.

. . . My advice is abandon ship. <s>



John

 

[John D. Brey]

Great question. And it's fundamental to the discussion. Are our natural [genetically produced] illusions illusory for our own good? How we answer that will determine so much about us and our ideology, culture, religion, even political orientation.

Since the times make it fortuitous, let's take political orientation as an example.

Today on NPR I heard a prognosticator deriding the fact that Republicans are pointing out anomalies and irregularities with the nature of the Democratic Presidential candidate's victory when, according this prognosticator, it was just as anomalous that even though a Democrat won the Presidency, Republicans did much better than expected almost across the board. In his way of thinking, the anomaly of a Democratic Presidential candidate winning in an environment where Republicans were winning the House and Senate races (more than expected) somehow negated the other irregular or anomalous aspects of the Democratic Presidential candidate's victory as they were being laid out by the Republicans.

And yet, from where I stand, it seems like the Republicans could use the fact of a Democratic Presidential candidate's win flying in the face of the success of the House and Senate Republican candidates as one more notable anomaly implying chicanery?

Part and parcel of the "irregularities" the current President and his Republican supporters speak of includes the fact that no President has ever won the Election without winning one or both of the bellwether states of Ohio and Florida. And yet this year the Democratic candidate is said to have won the Presidency while not really coming close in either of those states. . . Republicans call that an anomalous irregularity.

The Republicans note that throughout Wisconsin and Michigan (at least there) the Democratic candidate for President got a lower historical percentage of the votes in the majority of precincts (in relationship to winning the state) while, ironically, anomalously, getting a substantially higher historical percentage of the vote in precisely the counties (or precincts) where a substantially larger percentage of the vote would be necessary to overcome the lower percentages in the vast majority of the other precincts. Republicans see that as a too fortuitous anomaly.

Lastly, comes the irony or anomaly of what's being labeled the "JB Curve" (an ascending curve of Republican and Democratic votes shows a red line slowly, exponentially, gaining momentum over a lower blue line, until just at the point where it appear the blue line is about to turn south, it instead jumps straight up over the red line and then continues it's former relationship to the red line; except that now it's above it).

Now although the foregoing is a long-winded and winding way to get to a philosophical point about whether genetically produced illusions can be good for us, it nevertheless gets there by noting that although an agnostic political personage might want to scratch their head, or produce some thought experimentation about the noted anomalies above, the faithful Democrat might consider ignorance, or a non-attitude toward the anomalies as beneficial to their well-being.

Which leads to the philosophical question rattling around in my head. Does an agnostic attitude toward a falsehood (manifesting as an anomaly or irregularity) that's perceived to be beneficial for the observer necessarily imply that some other observer, or person, might have to suck it up and endure non-beneficial results from their brother's acquiescence to a belief that illusions, manifesting in anomaly or irregularity, can be profitably ignored without creating negative, or countervailing forces, somewhere else on the spectrum (political or otherwise)? Is there an equal and opposite reality manifest as suffering whenever or wherever an illusion, found to be fortuitous for one, or more, is thought to in fact be a boon to one and all? Can illusions, falsehoods, ever, truly, be fortuitous and profitable by being ignored?



John

 

[John D. Brey]

Well for example, not everyone is the same.. I don't feel that I have the sort of generalized hangups of various biblical characters. If I were cain, I wouldn't kill my brother, or be jealous of divine recognition. If I were adam, maybe I'd think before eating the fruit? I don't know.. not everyone's body is telling them to pursue only selfishness. And really, selfishness is the only concept I associate with a false desire of the flesh

It was just after reading your statement above that I improvisationally composed message #87:

Which leads to the philosophical question rattling around in my head. Does an agnostic attitude toward a falsehood (manifesting as an anomaly or irregularity) that's perceived to be beneficial for the observer necessarily imply that some other observer, or person, might have to suck it up and endure non-beneficial results from their brother's acquiescence to a belief that illusions, manifesting in anomaly or irregularity, can be profitably ignored without creating negative, or countervailing forces, somewhere else on the spectrum (political or otherwise)? Is there an equal and opposite reality manifest as suffering whenever or wherever an illusion, found to be fortuitous for one, or more, is thought to in fact be a boon to one and all? Can illusions, falsehoods, ever, truly, be fortuitous and profitable by being ignored?​

If ignoring falsehoods and untruths is never a free ride (and I'm not saying that's the case), then a proclivity for believing untruths can be profitable, or profitably ignored, would be the epitome of selfishness since even if they're profitable for us, their profitable nature so far as we're concerned will still come out of the hide of others.



John

 

[amorphous_constellation]

Now although the foregoing is a long-winded and winding way to get to a philosophical point about whether genetically produced illusions can be good for us, it nevertheless gets there by noting that although an agnostic political personage might want to scratch their head, or produce some thought experimentation about the noted anomalies above, the faithful Democrat might consider ignorance, or a non-attitude toward the anomalies as beneficial to their well-being.

Well, I think the adventure of my bloodline ends with me having liberal or leftist type inclinations, because that is where the paint palette appears to create new culture, to add to humanity's museum of traditional works. It also leads me back to the animism of my ancestors, which treats spirituality as a living and open-ended wind. But that's just the way it worked out for me..

According to one reading of my line, my direct Anglo ancestor was one of the first to erect private property, as a european in america. I have one that was a general for George Washington. I have one that married the daughter of a Native american chief. I think it's possible that I might have a very, very great African American grandmother. I have one grandfather who was caught bootlegging on a river. I have another that was the mayor of London, and an executive in the East India Company. So there is the adventure of my blood to consider, I suppose, if that what you're asking about. I think that maybe, much of this goes into making us some of the most unique people derived from British stock anyway.. Maybe some of these people were bad, and some were good, but with research, I am struck by how boldly many of them lived..

So I think we were selected for that boldness, whether it be errant or justified. You might notice, that we are most 'optimistic' people in the english speaking world. For example, I think our brand is incapable, currently, of producing works like 'Dark side of the Moon,' or 'The Dubliners,' or 'The road to Wigan Pier.' If you notice how we speak, we do not speak with an air of apprehension or contemplation really, but with determination and belief, whether we be republican or democrat. In this way for example, the line could not be stranger or more alien between a Douglas Murray and a Kenneth Copeland. Australia probably does not have sects of snake-handlers, nor does Caledonia have strange woodmen showing us their Likker run operations. So are these idiosyncrasies more important, or closer to the truth, or do they even need to be? For we often belief that what we do is central to the animation of history

We are betting on our boldness, and I suppose we might as well have faith in it. But somehow , we must avoid smugness and self righteousness.. We are more and more in the habit of speaking our views wearing wry smiles, no matter what 'side' we take. What can temper that

 

[PAUL MARKHAM]

The bibles are full of rules that remove free will.

 

[John D. Brey]

The bibles are full of rules that remove free will.

. . . That's something of a paradox in that you need a medium in which to test freewill. And there can be no better test of your freewill than a commandment from your creator to do this or that. That's the first anthropological gem in the bible.

When Adam and Eve are given a commandment from god for the first time, for the first time they start thinking about freewill. And it eats at them, so to say, until finally, as is inevitable, they take a bite. . . Voila. We're in the realm of true freedom of will.

There's a saying that freedom isn't free. Ditto freewill. What a price our founding parents paid to give us freewill. . . Let's not squander it.

Ironically, I was reading Popper the other night saying that most agnostic rationalists don't believe in freewill. Paradoxically, it seems like you would almost have to have freewill to deny you have freewill. The denial seem like it pokes you in the eye as you draw back to smack freewill with your denial?

Jean-Luc Nancy made the paradoxical statement that nothing isn't nothing. A denial of freewill is like that. You need to have the freedom to deny freewill before you can deny it such that we might posit that a denial of freewill is the quintessential manifestation of it. . . With apologies to the agnostic rationalist Popper of course.



John

 

[PAUL MARKHAM]

. . . That's something of a paradox in that you need a medium in which to test freewill. And there can be no better test of your freewill than a commandment from your creator to do this or that. That's the first anthropological gem in the bible.

When Adam and Eve are given a commandment from god for the first time, for the first time they start thinking about freewill. And it eats at them, so to say, until finally, as is inevitable, they take a bite. . . Voila. We're in the realm of true freedom of will.

There's a saying that freedom isn't free. Ditto freewill. What a price our founding parents paid to give us freewill. . . Let's not squander it.

Ironically, I was reading Popper the other night saying that most agnostic rationalists don't believe in freewill. Paradoxically, it seems like you would almost have to have freewill to deny you have freewill. The denial seem like it pokes you in the eye as you draw back to smack freewill with your denial?

Jean-Luc Nancy made the paradoxical statement that nothing isn't nothing. A denial of freewill is like that. You need to have the freedom to deny freewill before you can deny it such that we might posit that a denial of freewill is the quintessential manifestation of it. . . With apologies to the agnostic rationalist Popper of course.



John

So do the bibles remove free will or do they allow it?

 

[John D. Brey]

Well, I think the adventure of my bloodline ends with me having liberal or leftist type inclinations, because that is where the paint palette appears to create new culture, to add to humanity's museum of traditional works. It also leads me back to the animism of my ancestors, which treats spiritually as a living and open-ended wind. But that's just the way it worked out for me..

According to one reading of my line, my direct Anglo ancestor was one of the first to erect private property, as a european in america. I have one that was a general for George Washington. I have one that married the daughter of a Native american chief. I think it's possible that I might have a very, very great African American grandmother. I have one grandfather who was caught bootlegging on a river. I have another that was the mayor of London, and an executive in the East India Company. So there is the adventure of my blood to consider, I suppose, if that what you're asking about. I think that maybe, much of this goes into making us some of the most unique people derived from British stock anyway.. Maybe some of these people were bad, and some were good, but with research, I am struck by how boldly many of them lived..

So I think we were selected for that boldness, whether it be errant or justified. You might notice, that we are most 'optimistic' people in the english speaking world. For example, I think our brand is incapable, currently, of producing works like 'Dark side of the Moon,' or 'The Dubliners,' or 'The road to Wigan Pier.' If you notice how we speak, we do not speak with an air of apprehension or contemplation really, but with determination and belief, whether we be republican or democrat. In this way for example, the line could not be stranger or more alien between a Douglas Murray and a Kenneth Copeland. Australia probably does not have sects of snake-handlers, nor does Caledonia have strange woodmen showing us their Likker run operations. So are these idiosyncrasies more important, or closer to the truth, or do they even need to be? For we often belief that what we do is central to the animation of history

We are betting on our boldness, and I suppose we might as well have faith in it. But somehow , we must avoid smugness and self righteousness.. We are more and more in the habit of speaking our views wearing wry smiles, no matter what 'side' we take. What can temper that

Your comments made me think about the movie, The Last Samurai. ------Like Avatar, The Matrix, and maybe I-Robot, the The Last Samurai transcends the genre of movie narration. It gives us quite a lot for the price of a ticket and a bucket of popcorn.

The movie juxtaposes the supposed good guys, the Samurai, with the story's bad guys, the drunk whore-chasing Westerners. Many of the noble qualities you note concerning animists are echoed in the movie's portrayal of the Samurai. The movie collocates the Samurai with the mindless Western soldiers flawlessly.

Which segues almost perfectly with my statement and your response. My statement concerned whether or not a truth could be ignored in a manner that benefited the ignorer without causing countervailing forces that must be inevitably or eventually dealt with by the ignoring party or else by someone on the other side of the wall protecting him from unseemly truths?

The axis around which the philosophical aspect of the story of The Last Samurai revolves is the irony that the sublime soldiers, full of honor, humility, and general goodness all around, i.e., the Samurai, are pitted against monsters, low-life's, who, by some unnamed evil, are given technological tools that completely transcend the skill and honor associated with the quintessential soldier that is the Samurai.

A Western cavalry officer can sit on his perch guzzling Old Overholt whiskey and puffing on his hand rolled tobacco while mowing down the glory of the world with his Gatlin gun and his Winchester rifle. . . We see the same juxtaposition of aboriginal goodness and tree-hugging simplicity in the movie Avatar where once again it's the bad guys, the products of Western Civilized technology, who are portrayed as destroyers of truth and good.

The Last Samurai's virtue in relationship to Avatar is that it doesn't produces a happy ending as difficult to swallow as a roach in the bottom of the bucket of popcorn. Avatar makes the good guys win through Hollywood theatrics, so to say, while The Last Samurai lets the truth of its philosophical portrayal sink into the very bone marrow of the audience.

And what's the philosophical truth portrayed in The Last Samurai?

That in this godforsaken world, science is the prism, the crucible, the criteria, where truth transcends ideology, religion, politics, humanistic nicety, and delivers up the weapons through which truth will, eventually, deliver up the fallen world to the kingdom of heaven where there will be no more tears, no more pain, death, or want, for the old order of things will have passed away in the bright light of a world freed from the shackles of half-truths and mere manifestations of good, humility, honor, and brotherhood, which are, in their outer manifestations, only fragile, fleshly, chimera, doppelgangers, predisposed, and possessed, in the dark place of their genesis, where they never go, to destroy the truths science and scientific technology, as guardians of God, defend to the death.

The philosophical truth delivered up in The Last Samurai is as hard to swallow as a dead fly in our Coca Cola: that heaven will be peopled by Old Overholt swigging whore-chasers while hell's citizens will be Samurai, humanists, all manner of liberal-minded religious do-gooders, who, while they lived in this godforsaken realm, stated at least one Gospel-like truth that even God can't tinker with: they'd rather live in hell than in a heaven where God's mercy overlooks the flaws and untruths they dealt with through self-ingratiating graft rather than God's grace.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

So do the bibles remove free will or do they allow it?

. . . I would say the bible is the medium where mankind is forced to accept that he's manufactured by god and given freewill by God twoo. Which is to say you're just as free to, of your own will, speak of the bible in plurals, as I am to accept that there's only one God and one Bible, though to outward appearances and perceptions there are, no doubt, two or three of the two.



John

 

[PAUL MARKHAM]

. . . I would say the bible is the medium where mankind is forced to accept that he's manufactured by god and given freewill by God twoo. Which is to say you're just as free to, of your own will, speak of the bible in plurals, as I am to accept that there's only one God and one Bible, though to outward appearances and perceptions there are, no doubt, two or three of the two.



John

Great answer. With one flaw. God never manufactured humans. Humans = Homo Sapiens are the last in the line of evolution Hominids. If a god did manufacture Humans, why are there so many failed previous models?

When religion gets it so wrong you have to ask who manufactured all the religions.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

That seems like a pretty good analogy John. I suppose I do find the concept of grace problematic

 

[amorphous_constellation]

. . . I would say the bible is the medium where mankind is forced to accept that he's manufactured by god and given freewill by God twoo.

I suppose at this juncture, it is about time we bring up the Norns. You will notice that in the bible, becoming a 'seer' is illegalized. This complicates biblical history significantly, making life hard for the few prophets that permeated the filter, and all of this fractioned into the general Christian theological syllabus on martyrdom. In the Poetic Edda however, fate is spoken of as freely as one can breath air, so it isn't really a matter of being pitted with the choice to animate your life with faith and action. Startlingly, this apparently allowed or inspired pagan culture into greater heights of courage, arguably. Comparing the Atalkvitha with a Gospel account, the protagonists do not pray to god or wonder why they were forsaken.. On the contrary, gunnar disbelieves that the huns cut out his brother's heart, because it quivers with fear. And when they throw him in the snake pit, and go on partying drunkenly, gunnar plays his harp instead of wondering why he was forsaken

In the havamal however, Odin says that men are happier if they don't know their fate. I suppose then, that the illusion of faith and choice was thought to be comforting, but it is doubtful that anyone really believed in those concepts until the Christian conversion

 

[John D. Brey]

Great answer. With one flaw. God never manufactured humans. Humans = Homo Sapiens are the last in the line of evolution Hominids. If a god did manufacture Humans, why are there so many failed previous models?

I don't have a problem with that at all. All I would add is that at some point in the evolution of hominids the same mind that guided the evolution finally joined the party. At that point we have a creature who is distinct in an absolute way from everything that came before.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

I suppose at this juncture, it is about time we bring up the Norns. You will notice that in the bible, becoming a 'seer' is illegalized. This complicates biblical history significantly, making life hard for the few prophets that permeated the filter, and all of this fractioned into the general Christian theological syllabus on martyrdom. In the Poetic Edda however, fate is spoken of as freely as one can breath air, so it isn't really a matter of being pitted with the choice to animate your life with faith and action. Startlingly, this apparently allowed or inspired pagan culture into greater heights of courage, arguably. Comparing the Atalkvitha with a Gospel account, the protagonists do not pray to god or wonder why they were forsaken.. On the contrary, gunnar disbelieves that the huns cut out his brother's heart, because it quivers with fear. And when they throw him in the snake pit, and go on partying drunkenly, gunnar plays his harp instead of wondering why he was forsaken

In the havamal however, Odin says that men are happier if they don't know their fate. I suppose then, that the illusion of faith and choice was thought to be comforting, but it is doubtful that anyone really believed in those concepts until the Christian conversion

Right. You appear to be presenting something like an aboriginal, fate oriented, worldview that supposes, "Hey, things are what they are. Who am I to question the fates"?

In this thread I'm arguing that there are still aboriginal tribes, and aboriginal Westerners amongst us; but that if we were all fatalists, if we all disbelieved in freewill, and a human transcendence over the fates of the natural world, there would be nothing like the technology we have today. All mankind would still be like the West Sepic tribes of Papua New Guinea.

I'm arguing that modern technology is fundamentally, seminally, a Judeo/Christian phenomenon based on the non-human authorship of the Bible.



John

 

[amorphous_constellation]

Right. You appear to be presenting something like an aboriginal, fate oriented, worldview that supposes, "Hey, things are what they are. Who am I to question the fates"?

In this thread I'm arguing that there are still aboriginal tribes, and aboriginal Westerners amongst us; but that if we were all fatalists, if we all disbelieved in freewill, and a human transcendence over the fates of the natural world, there would be nothing like the technology we have today. All mankind would still be like the West Sepic tribes of Papua New Guinea.

I'm arguing that modern technology is fundamentally, seminally, a Judeo/Christian phenomenon based on the non-human authorship of the Bible.

I allow for transhumanism , but only if it serves us. In that case, we might call it superhumanism. How do you deal with Nietzsche?