r0ckyreed

If that is true? Why are you only posting videos of GMW? That is the only reason why I made that comment. It just seems like all your information is coming from one source.

Obsession over a guru won’t get you anywhere.

Yes. But watching the breath alone is time that you won’t be engaged in critical thought and contemplation. Contemplation is one of the best ways of gaining understanding, intelligence, and insight. To even type a logical response to this thread requires that you engage in critical thought and not just stuck on watching your breath. If meditation is making you dull, you are doing it wrong. Curiosity is number one.

Bird Box

That's the thing is that anyone who says they fear death are very good at lying to themselves. There is a difference between logical analysis and your emotional response. Fear is emotional, so there is no logic you can do that will eliminate that fear. When the gun goes to your head, your heart will pump blood like there's no tomorrow.

I do agree with what you are saying. I just think that is the missing piece when Leo talks about morality is that it is very metaphysical (which is good) but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of practicality in how to work through these ethical situations, especially when it goes into politics like trying to balance different issues such as drug legalization or whatever. But even these political issues are out of most peoples control and can be impractical for them. I think one of the best principles is devoting time to contemplate and dissecting each theory, the pros and cons, and then to establish your own view of morality.

You don’t know that. If a gun was pointed to your head and asked “what do you know for certain? Tell me a lie and I will blow your head off,” you wouldn’t be making these assertions about death. You honestly think that you are the exception to everyone else? Everyone dies except for you? How selfish of you, you Devil. You are gonna be put 6ft under just like everyone else. This kind of thinking gets us nowhere. You could make the argument that seizures are an illusion because I have never had them and have no evidence that I will ever get them. Yeah, all that sounds good logically speaking, but emotionally, your body knows it is going to die. That is why you have fear. That is the only reason why fear exists. Death is part of Infinity in the same way sleep is. There is absolutely zero evidence that I will lose consciousness and go to sleep tonight. But I will anyways. There are plenty of things in life that are true that have none or limited evidence. Evidence deals with conviction/belief and not with truth. What is true is beyond evidence.

The issue is being too metaphysical is too detached from most people. The masses aren’t going to be at that developmental level in this lifetime.

Right. That is simple on paper but is so complex in practice. Your blog post suggests that it is so difficult to implement morality in practice. We can create laws that are out of good intentions but turn out to have horrific outcomes. I went to Portland, Oregon and saw how the drug decriminalization has negatively impacted that state. Liberals can have utopian ideas that seem good on paper, but when implemented, they don’t turn out the best. Even ethics when it comes to mental health is so complex because mental health is complex. I can be selfless and compassionate and still make dumb mistakes out of my best intentions. I would say that it is more than selflessness vs selfishness. It is about wisdom vs ignorance. Reality vs deception. I consider myself really selfless, but my desire to defund the military out of a selfless desire to end innocent killings could lead to more innocent deaths.

It depends on how I get the sex.

We operate off of these theories whether we think about them or not. I am a mental health counselor and I have to do ethics all the time and I have to consider my ethics in my decision-making. I tend to use different ethical theories in my work. I treat clients as ends and not as means (deontology), and I weigh the consequences when faced with an ethical dilemma (utilitarianism). That video on Goodness is not what I am talking about. It is too metaphysical and disconnected from everyday human affairs. If a Devil were to watch it, they still wouldn’t know how to act good in society.

Please point out a video he has that analyzing all the normative ethical theories such as utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics, contractarianism, Confucianism, etc., as well as articulated the limits of each theory and creating a grand big picture of morality. I am not interested in a moral code. That doesn’t work. I am interested in contemplating the grand picture of what makes a human good, what is the right behavior, what makes human flourishing possible, how to be moral, how to navigate through moral dilemmas, and why be moral. We are making moral decisions every day even when we don’t think about it. I don’t need Leo to answer these questions, I just found it ironic that he has been more political as time goes on and I find it interesting that there is no analysis of morality at a normative ethics and applied ethics standpoint. If there is a video, I have looked and have not found it.

A thought just came to me from reading Leo’s recent blog post on leftist politics. I was just thinking that it is ironic that Leo has a focus and deep critical thought about politics, but he doesn’t really have any content about morality. All of his content so far has been about self-help, metaphysics, epistemology, and politics. There is no content I have found except for the video he made called Why Good and Evil Do Not Exist. But this is a metaethics video and does not tell us anything about morality and the best ways to navigate through moral dilemmas This is what I feel is missing from Actualized.org. It is a deep inquiry and analysis of right action. Yes, morality is relative, but that doesn’t mean we should dismiss all conversation about it. Self-help is relative but we discuss that. Think of morality as another part of self-help that we can call other-help. Morality is the biggest issue in our society. Leo has discussed about corruption but there is nothing on normative ethics. Normative ethics and applied ethics are the missing pieces. We know morality is relative, but that means that there are true and false answers within the context that we arbitrarily define. For instance, we could say that health is relative based off of our definitions of health and other factors like epigenetics. But within our defined scope, there are true and false answers such as eating this mushroom will damage your health. In this same light, we can have true and false answers about morality if we have the parameters defined such as being focused on creating social harmony and social well-being, which those would also have to be further defined. I get the problem. Within every concept we have, people have different definitions but yet we are still able to refer to the same thing. This is the paradox of language. We need to talk about morality more because this is an essential part of our lives and personal growth. How can a Devil learn how to be moral if we never focus on answering the question of how to be moral? Why be moral? If we just say morality is a waste of time because it is relative, then you are missing the point. Your health is relative. Morality is social health.

Probably similar to Anesthesia.

Supreme Court 101