Yeah… I’m gonna move all these posts to a new philosophical thoughts thread lol. Anyone looking for drama in here is gonna be super confused 
4 Likes
You got the right attitude and if you’ve had that pattern before in life, it helps raise the belief that success in these sorts of endeavors are possible. I feel for guys who have never had any such success and are told by guys like me ‘you need to believe!’ Lol, I get why it’s hard to believe when life hasn’t given you a reason to believe so far.
But yeah, it’s hard but that’s why I think working on yourself to the point where you gain some sort of confidence in yourself is so important. That training also pushes you to work through strain. Rejection is a strain that you become more comftorable with accepting when you are able to withstand lots of physical discomfort. Also, having things to talk about, hobbies and things you are enthusiastic of… also makes you more confident by nature because you have lots of things you’d love to share.
You got the right attitude brother
1 Like
Oooooh, I agree with this wholly. I have always felt that a therapist/psychologist should have no ego when dealing with a patient. It is through being their mirror that their unconscious can manifest itself.
1 Like
Damn… all these posts are all out of order :X
1 Like
Totally. That’s good writing and character arc.
Ellie realizes that Joel is lying to her at the end and she is willing to accept the lie without judgements because she cares. That summarizes and expresses the whole theme completely.
She understands Joel’s lack and she is willing to occupy the place of his dead daughter because she cares about Joel.
Beautifuly executed.
The rules that I follow are marked by a deep divide: there are rules (and meanings) that I follow blindly, out of habit, but of which, if I reflect, I can become at least partially aware (such as common grammatical rules); and there are rules that I follow, meanings that haunt me, in ignorance (such as unconscious prohibitions). Then there are rules and meanings I know of, but must not be seen to know of - dirty or obscene innuendos that one passes over in silence in order to keep up the proper appearances."
I still can not understand Why did I incarnated in this 3D/Material World, I mean just because an ant is stronger than me (she can lift many times her own weight), it does not mean that I want to experience life as an ant, so, What did I saw here that lured me in the first place (?).
Anyway, there are many possible answers/theories…
“Why did I move here” (in the 3D/Material World)?
“I guess it was the weather.”
Not so Grand anymore, but still, THAT trailer!
1 Like
Another thought provoking gem.
1 Like
Artistic representation of Hegel’s main ideas in Phenomenology of Spirit.
Absolute consciousness becoming self-conscious by negating itself and developing its way back to absolute universal consciousness.
2 Likes
I think that only 3 categories of actions/things (including posts or topics) are really important:
Those that will matter/will be relevant in half a year, a year or even a decade from now;
Those that truly matter/are important now, for you or others;
Those that bring you or others joy, now (or/and in the future as well).
1 Like
Where meaning comes from?
1 Like
I’m not sure it really fits this thread but here goes.
What if truth or reality is not subjective but we just can’t perceive it fully?
A tree is a tree different viewpoints on what it is comes from the ego which distorts the truth. You have the audacity to more or less tell it what it is of course you can’t understand it because you never tried too.
What do you guys think and how could we perceive reality fully?
Appreciation and acceptance of what is and that in turn lets us see more clearly?
1 Like
Well, this is the Kantian argument.
That there is a more real reality outside of us that we cannot access because of our limited schemes. This led Kant to search for a transcendental morality (the highest Good).
Problem with Kant is that he ignored completely the ontological argument, which Heidegger acknowledged (the most influential philosopher of XX century).
According to Heidegger, existence precedes essence, and not the other way around. And it is well justified through a logical argumentation, not just a posture.
Before Heidegger, philosophers thought there was an essence or substance from which phenomena and existence arises (for example, the brain, for positivist thinkers, or the trascendental subject for Kant).
This argument is flawed because before we grasp any understanding or form of knowledge about anything, we exist only rooted in social bond, culture and language.
Therefore, social bond, culture and language comes before any form of understanding about essence, substance, being or “what is”.
Our language and heritage shapes the way in which we understand ourselves as individuals, or the world as a scientific and objectified endeavour.
Lacan, following this Heideggerian premise, uses the term speaking-being, because the fact that we are structured in language allows us to think ourselves as individuals or to give being, essence and substance to ourselves or the world around us.
In fact there are societies and tribes in which people do not consider themselves as individuals, but as an extension of the collective group they belong to.
Individuality is a modern illussion, there is no one looking at anything. Just a void that is deluded to believe that is identical to itself and separated from other.
This makes Lacan an anti-philosopher and anti-ontological thinker. The first of its kind within the Western tradition (and makes him share many ideas with Zen buddhism and Taoism, although he probably didn’t know it).
2 Likes
Well, the thing is that when you get rid of the ego’s interpretation of what a tree is… then you’re just left with a blank slate. A tree has no inherent definition. The definitions derive from our perceptions. A tree just ‘is.’
From the non ego state, the tree is just an extension of everything in the universe. If the whole universe is one thing, there is no separation between the tree and you and the plutonium from planet 4jdfik.34mtb in the sirius galaxy.
This is the reality that people who learn to see beyond the ego, end up seeing. How it is all connected, all one and not separate at all. The classification of the tree as a tree and me as sammy, is what creates the separation between us and the subjective truths. But beyond the subjective truth, is just one truth, and that is that it is all just one thing. And also, nothing at all because it is essentially void. If it comes from the void, it is also void.
Everything is nothing, nothing is everything.
Just my 2 cents is all.
2 Likes
But a good question is, what if someone had omnipotent abilities and can see through the trees perspective, your perspective, mine, everything around him, and also all the mising details that humans don’t pick up. He sees and feels everything! And let’s say, this person was still within his ego’s confines and saw everything separately. Would this person see objective truth?
Well, so as long as this person sees everything from his ego’s lens, truth will always be subjective to that lens. The world as he knows it is still bbased on his experiences and how that shaped the way he sees the world. Even if he can see everything and everyones perspective, he’s still viewing them from his perspective… which is always going to be limited to what you have grown to the know.
With ego, reality is what you think it is. Without ego, reality is what it is. And those without ego, report reality is ‘all one’ and nothing at once.
2 Likes
hmm then would it be possible to see the elements that make the tree more accurate in this state?
To get a clearer idea of what is?
Or is ego necessary to perceive ego?
Also makes it clearer why love is a good way to transcend it connects everything.
I mean everybody here knows about it already I guess :D. Just popped into my head again.
I’m not just asking because of seeing the “truth” in an enlightened way but also to perceive energetic structures accurately to maybe make stuff. Maybe that is then different.
It seems that energy travels closely to the speed of light, which makes sense why we cannot perceive it empirically. Because we lack the technology for it in so many aspects. Although it can be felt through our body awareness.
The problem with ego is that the way in which we are able to know anything it is by a process of reduction, division and fragmentation that is inherent to how we access any form of data or understanding.
This division that is at the core of any form of knowledge is done through the symbolic machine that it is always creating reality through us, without our active participation in it.
This is what Lacan calls “second death” a death caused by the signifier articulation that introduces us into the symbolic order, a death caused by associations between differential units that shape and order our sense of existence and any other form of abstract existences (God, mom, dad, school, people, tree, etc).
IMO, the more dense the articulations, the more ego, the less density, the less ego. Unconditional love seems like a form of very low density, which has less separation and divisions created, which makes us less fragmented and more open to the other, to the point that the other ceases to exist and it is only perceived as an extension of us.
2 Likes
By the way, “The Matrix” is based on Jean Baudrillard’s book “Simulacra and Simulation”, which was heavily influenced by Lacan’s psychoanalisis.
1 Like
Unknowing God
In this conversation Dr. Richard Boothby discusses his latest book, Embracing the Void, which forwards the theory that the unknown is central to a psychoanalytic theory of religion.
Throughout the conversation we discuss the relationship between psychoanalysis and religion, interpretations of the paradoxes of the Oedipus complex, the centrality of Das Ding, and the way he challenges both Freud’s negation of religion and Lacan’s refusal to theorise religion on a universal level.
Ultimately, Dr. Boothby’s analysis of religion and the unknown is used to develop ideas around the historicity of Greek polytheism, Judaism and Christianity.
Finally, we also discuss his future research directions related to Das Ding and an unknowing God.
why or what
seems to matter not