Random thoughts thread

The Social Lounge
#17537

I would say No.

I tend to lean in the direction of Proclus and Plotinus with the view of God.

God is totality, completion, and perfection. Evil doesn’t have openness and deference to God. Evil wants to become God in a possessive sense. To have all the powers for a local sense of Self—to be a lord over others or over elements of their own life.

It can show up, frequently, from Greed and Ambition and it can also show up from Sloth and Laziness. —Remember the 7 deadly sins? lol. Anything that takes something good and adulterates to limited and selfish ends creates an evil.

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#17538

Although I see what you are saying… :smirk:

God is evil then

Evil is part of God’s doing since he is “totality”

Right?

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#17539

So what you call evil is selfishness then? Cus me too

Nvm, I guess I totally forgot the last part of your comment

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#17540

It depends on how you parse things.

Some of the ideas are best exemplified by Yin and Yang in Taoism. Lots of people tend to view it as a simple dualism. But, there are more complex elements to it. Pure Yang, for example, is supported by perfectly harmonized Pure Yin.

The unity of the two if like a cosmic slab of stone that can be engraved. The properties of the stone show up everywhere, but they can be warped in different ways depending on how the carving was done. There’s also some weird thing with layered time that goes on with energy.

So the primordial purity of God is never compromised.

But if harmony is broken, there are blemishes in local time and space. The goodness of God being warped by the essentially Evil will of people.

Essentially yes. A desire to perpetuate a sense of self that doesn’t align with what is best. Whether it is because people are too busy with certain activities or whatever—it is ultimately just too many attachments to things that they shouldn’t be attached to.

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#17541

Good Pun

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#17542

Where do you draw the line between what is best and what isn’t

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#17543

The “best” in this case would be something that leads to more qualities of pure harmony. It shows up physically and metaphysically as the beautiful proportions of yin and yang, which hearken back to the original purify of God at the foundation of creation.

In mundane things, there isn’t usually a “best” thing. It’s usually good or less bad lol

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#17544

Thanks lol

Sorry for the heavy direction of the conversation. Whenever Tao projects get made, it tends to weigh heavy on my heart and mind. I don’t even need to have a visual confirmation that it happened, some part of me just knows it and is pained by it because there is enthusiasm for a new ability or experience but no ownership of the process or deference to those who have gone before . --Under traditional standards, the sort of thing would have been considered worse than Dharma Theft (a grievous sin unto itself). I wish people would just leave it alone.

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#17545

Anyways… on to lighter things

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#17546

Oh my gawd. This is the hardest question people have been working on for millenia.

But if no ultimate good exists how would we recognize evil?

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#17547

I’ve been thinking something like this. It’s as if people automatically feel a need to become in ultimate control if they don’t feel they can trust the ultimate power to take care of them. Or there’s fatalism.

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#17548

Watch out for Bias I guess.

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#17549

It’s good to be balanced…

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#17550

Well let me ask you this then:

Does evil exist for you?

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#17551

What do you mean?

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#17552

Yep, but good will always have greater ultimate power.

I dunno… I was just making a general statement this time lol

—“if no ultimate good exists how would we recognize evil?”, you responded that we should watch out for bias.

You can avoid bias by being balanced… in my own mind, I was seeing that as a way of hearkening back to the idea of harmony that I mentioned earlier. --Nothing that I wrote was without an empirical basis. So I guess I was making a bit of a jibe that watching out for bias would eventually get back to what I was saying earlier.

But, regardless, balance is always good, and bias is good to avoid :+1:

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#17553

I see

Do you have any experiences related to/working with Deities?

Would you say they represent or embody this harmony you are talking about?

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#17554

I’ve had limited experience with deities.

For most of my years, since I had no tangible experiences with them I assumed that they either didn’t exist or, as the Epicureans had concluded, they didn’t care.

So most of my own understanding was just from energy dynamics lol.

But, now that I’ve worked with some NFTs related to deities, I would say definitely. Deities reside in a portion of reality which can (usually) be regarded as heavenly. As a result, they embody harmony to a greater degree than what we usually see on earth—with factors like longevity and power that support this idea.

The ultimate harmony would be beyond determinate forms, though. So, in my mind, the abstract understanding of God that we find in the concept of Brahman or for Abrahamic traditions or the concept of the Great Dao itself would probably most completely exemplify the harmony.

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#17555

Always something better around the corner.

Never fixed, always evolving.

For the better.

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#17556

So, they wouldn’t help me if I were to ask for greater power than that of most humans solely for my own selfish purposes because this implies that my intention does not align with God’s harmony, correct?

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