Leo's Blog Discussion Mega-Thread

[Lila9]

8 minutes ago, Anton Rogachevski said:

This makes me quite skeptical of all the "existential" or "truth" matters.

What's more true than the need of a living creature to survive? 

Trying to look for absolute truths in such a vast and a divided reality looks silly to me. It's so natural for a unified consciousness to look for unity in reality.

The absolute truth may be that we are one, not separate (the illusion of separation), that we are consciousness/awareness manifesting/imagining physicality rather than the opposite, and that God is creating infinitely. This may be the main thing, and it is actually very simple and easy to understand, we all know it.

The issue is that humans, especially philosophers, don’t try to integrate this into their lives and are lost in endless theoretical intellectualization.

This is why philosophy and constant intellectualization is not the end game. The end game is to transcend it and literally to embody the “Truth”. Live it.

[Anton Rogachevski]

@Lila9

Both "separation" and "unity" are concepts.

The problem with calling any part of God "corrupt" is creating a separation of nature which there is none. Parts of God are corrupt and evil, the unconscious parts of it.

Edited March 8 by Anton Rogachevski

[Lila9]

20 minutes ago, Anton Rogachevski said:

I'm trying to say that Leo is missing the big picture by pointing at instances of survival as corrupt or wrong or as contradicting Truth. God is a child that learns by mistakes, sometimes that mistake is war ,sometimes it's a Holocaust. It's not that simple.

Yes, I agree that it’s God’s creation and that it is divine and intelligent, doing its experiences and play, and it is as it is. But I think that survival itself requires us to forget that we are not really separated and that we are all God. Survival requires us to forget about the absolute truth in order to sustain the illusion of separation. This is not to deny that there are relative truths within survival and less and more awakened parts of God.

 

[Lila9]

13 minutes ago, Anton Rogachevski said:

@Lila9

Both "separation" and "unity" are concepts.

It may be “just” concepts.

But as I see it, the illusion of separation is a real experience that we feel, even if we are not really separated.
We strongly feel this illusion as the reality, unless we are high or in some ecstasy, joy, or in a love state.

 

[Anton Rogachevski]

@Lila9

If something is "real" experientially, does that make it Real? Experience is pure hallucination.

[Lila9]

Just now, Anton Rogachevski said:

@Lila9

If something is "real" experientially, does that make it Real? Experience is pure hallucination.

I don’t know. May be just a hallucination, which is what the illusion of separation might be. But it feels real enough to believe in it and perceive it as real.

[Anton Rogachevski]

1 hour ago, Lila9 said:

I don’t know. May be just a hallucination, which is what the illusion of separation might be. But it feels real enough to believe in it and perceive it as real.

I'm resolving this conundrum by not being an Idealist, but by an epistemic duality and call the truths of perception Phenomenologically True. If you are hallucinating a unicorn right now, it's True that you have that experience, it's self evident and empirical data about the nature of experience. Nothing about it is "absolute" besides the fact of your absolute immersion in it. I explain it quite thoroughly in my theory of epistemology, you can check it out in my signature if you'd like.

Edited March 8 by Anton Rogachevski

[Lila9]

12 minutes ago, Anton Rogachevski said:

I'm resolving this conundrum by not being an Idealist, but by an epistemic duality and call the truths of perception Phenomenologically True. If you are hallucinating a unicorn right now, it's True that you have that experience, it's self evident and empirical data about the nature of experience. Nothing about it is "absolute" besides the the fact of your absolute immersion in it. I explain it quite thoroughly in my theory of epistemology, you can check it out in my signature if you'd like.

I see. I will check your work.

I just want to clarify: I didn't say that just because the illusion of separation feels real, it means that this is the absolute truth.

As I see it, the illusion of separation feels real enough for most living organisms to perceive it as the sole reality and forget about the unity (the absolute truth or part of it). Which is why survival and the absolute truth can be contradictory (though I am not sure to what extent).

[Anton Rogachevski]

1 minute ago, Lila9 said:

I see. I will check your work.

I just want to clarify: I didn't say that just because the illusion of separation feels real, it means that this is the absolute truth.

As I see it, the illusion of separation feels real enough for most living organisms to perceive it as the sole reality and forget about the unity (the absolute truth or part of it). Which is why survival and the absolute truth can be contradictory (though I am not sure to what extent).

Can contradictions exist in reality? Can reality contradict itself?

[Lila9]

45 minutes ago, Anton Rogachevski said:

Can contradictions exist in reality? Can reality contradict itself?

It feels real enough for us to define it.

Dark and light are experienced as real enough to be defined as dark and light, and they have real consequences in our lives.

For us, as beings immersed in the separation of illusion, it is real enough. We also need it to survive. We need to define things like safety versus danger in order to survive.

Are contradictions absolutely real? I suppose not.

[gettoefl]

3 hours ago, Anton Rogachevski said:

This makes me quite skeptical of all the "existential" or "truth" matters.

What's more true than the need of a living creature to survive? 

Trying to look for absolute truths in such a vast and a divided reality looks silly to me. It's so natural for a unified consciousness to look for unity in reality.

My two cents. There is one thing that's True, identity. The universe and the person looking back at me from the mirror is nothing to do with identity. However that person gives me a few breaths of opportunity to realize my identity. How? Forgive the false identity. How? Forgive the universe I assigned myself judge of. Forgive myself for being judge. And them my identity might appear. If not pray to be granted tomorrow that I get a few more breaths.

[Anton Rogachevski]

5 minutes ago, gettoefl said:

My two cents. There is one thing that's True, identity. The universe and the person looking back at me from the mirror is nothing to do with identity. However that person gives me a few breaths of opportunity to realize my identity. How? Forgive the false identity. How? Forgive the universe I assigned myself judge of. Forgive myself for being judge. And them my identity might appear. If not pray to be granted tomorrow that I get a few more breaths.

What is Truth for you? What are your metaphysics?

You are being quite cryptic here. Why is identity contingent upon a forgiving? Who is forgiving whom?

[gettoefl]

13 minutes ago, Anton Rogachevski said:

What is Truth for you? What are your metaphysics?

You are being quite cryptic here. Why is identity contingent upon a forgiving? Who is forgiving whom?

I told you what Truth is. It's all that exists. Problem is mind blocks it as best it can. Forgive that mind. That means stop blocking Truth. I explained how.

[Clarence]

21 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

It is a rich notion that encompasses a lot of stuff. It includes Truth itself, but also one's relationship towards it. To be truthful, to care about truth, to live truthfully, to use the mind in truthful ways.

Thanks, I think I was missing that. I understood Truth as ultimate reality and truth as what is true, but I didn’t know that it could also encompass the idea of being truthful, caring about truth, living truthfully, and using the mind in truthful ways.

I’ve been trying to understand this for a long time, but it never clicked for me, no matter how many times I heard you use the word.

I think part of the reason is that I assumed those ideas would normally be expressed in short sentences, like in the examples above, rather than implied by a single word.

[Leo Gura]

@Anton Rogachevski What's the problem with bombing 50,000 kids?

[Anton Rogachevski]

7 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@Anton Rogachevski What's the problem with bombing 50,000 kids?

It's not moral. What does this question have to do with survival? Did these kids threaten you? Nature is brutal, many horrible things happen, but they are part of reality, this is the process of God evolving. Who said it was easy?

Edited March 8 by Anton Rogachevski

[Leo Gura]

6 minutes ago, Anton Rogachevski said:

What does this question have to do with survival?

Zionism is survival!

You guys are not connecting the dots.

[Anton Rogachevski]

10 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Zionism is survival!

You guys are not connecting the dots.

Of course it is, if the survival of the jewish people wasn't threatened they wouldn't need Zionism. They can't just forget their identity and pretend they are not jewish. There were many Jewish people who tried that, but hitler didn't mind, he looked in the records, and found the heritage. 

Blaming the Jewish people for antisemitism is the same as blaming rape victims for being attractive to the rapist. I don't see your point.

Nationalism is a part of God's evolution on earth, he can't skip that part.

Edited March 8 by Anton Rogachevski

[Xonas Pitfall]

19 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@Anton Rogachevski What's the problem with bombing 50,000 kids?

Hmm… this sounds like a ‘should/ought to do.’

[Xonas Pitfall]

I think what bothers me is that a lot of talk about truth and goodness sounds clear until you actually try to use it in real life. Saying Truth means no double standards, treating others how you want to be treated, loving your neighbor, etc... all that sounds good and is True, but it doesn’t really answer much questions in the relative. It doesn’t tell you whether human life should matter more than animal life, or how to think about plants, or more unconscious humans, or differences in awareness and identity. You realize you still need some "biased/imperfect" pragmatism to weigh things.

It also feels shallow when moral discussion turns into just pointing out hypocrisy or corruption without dealing with the complexity. That kind of backseat moralizing is easy because it doesn’t require taking responsibility for decisions. It just keeps exposing contradictions in others or yourself without actually offering a serious framework for what should be done when values conflict.

Let’s say you are a high alien race and you realize how fundamentally limited humans are, and you think the only way to expand and propel the universe in a better direction is to kill off the species. How do you reconcile that with truth or goodness? Do you just say higher consciousness has priority over lower consciousness, and if so, who decides that and why should that be accepted? If you imagine yourself as a living being among humans, you would not want to be dead, but at the same time, if you stay aligned with your idea of progress with truth, you might justify it.

Let’s say you see a bunch of rednecks hating on postmodern movements, and in response you create a Jaguar ad to show support and be more open-minded and nonjudgmental. Even if the ad is seen as ugly or not fitting the target audience, you might still defend it by saying you were trying to stay aligned with truth.

In medicine, people have to decide who gets limited treatment. In politics, people argue about fairness versus stability. In culture, people argue about openness versus tradition. Even everyday things like animal ethics or environmental choices force tradeoffs between values.

You need actual priorities and some acceptance that choices will never feel perfectly clean. And as soon as you enter the land of priorities, you enter the land of biases. Who gets to decide those biases? How do we know which bias is good and which bias is bad? You instantly run into the need for some kind of collective moralism, or shared “oughts” and “shoulds,” because otherwise there is no clear way to act.

The spirituality of “Truth” works in the abstract as an ideal, a pointer, or a kind of aid, but in the relative world it gets much messier. Just repeating truth, truth, truth starts to feel a bit backseat-gaming-ish to me, because situations force you to choose between competing values rather than just name them.