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techstepgenr8tion
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22 May 2017, 6:34 am

jrjones9933 wrote:
Let's take unrestrained hedonism as an example. It has consequences. Hedonism, the pursuit of pleasure, AIN'T EASY. Let's say our hypothetical hedonist has perfectly socially acceptable vices. Even then, those things cost money, time, and energy. Choices must be made. Speaking as an economist, no one can have it all. It's dangerously axiomatic and intuitive, but supported by the evidence of many dead young rock stars. So, there are natural limits, and Keith Moons to test them, even for that pernicious hedonism.

Is it possible that the idea boxes were dealing with are just really low-resolution and incomplete? I'm not particularly interested in trying to evolve arguments to back up vices as hobbies. You can get reward and stress-relief out of walking or hiking in nature, bike-riding, jogging, meditation, spiritual pursuits, reading good books, listening to high caliber Youtube lectures and debates, learning different kinds of philosophy, teaching yourself a new skill, engaging in philanthropic activity, the list goes on. I think we have a lot of very healthy and constructive tools for enhancing how we feel without reaching for the e's and coke.


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friedmacguffins
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22 May 2017, 6:56 am

friedmacguffins wrote:
Some people believe that free will must be completely unencumbered by rules of any kind.

Do you believe that pain and suffering are ever justifiable, on moral grounds? Is there an objective reason, for it to exist?


techstepgenr8tion wrote:
I have no idea if my way of thinking about this is The Right Way (TM) but, personally, I tend toward a modified utilitarian approach to this. On the most blunt level - the calculus with the least amount of pain and maximum pursuit of happiness and truth wins.

friedmacguffins wrote:
It's been called hedonism.

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
That doesn't actually mean anything unless you unpack it.

friedmacguffins wrote:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonism

Hedonism is a school of thought that argues that pleasure and happiness are the primary or most important intrinsic goods and the proper aim of human life. A hedonist strives to maximize net pleasure (pleasure minus pain), but when having finally gained that pleasure, either through intrinsic or extrinsic goods, happiness remains stationary.

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
Okay, that's great. You still haven't told us anything about why saying 'that's hedonism!' means anything.

I was not making any moral judgment or further application. It was just a label. That was the word for it.

But, there are different attitudes, toward hedonism.

Is it neglectful or abusive?

Are there any further truths, in life, besides to experience your own kind-of pleasure?



kraftiekortie
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22 May 2017, 4:17 pm

Epicureanism is, in effect, a "virtuous" type of hedonism. There is a morally-based restraint in the thought of Epicurus.

A constant life of pure, unadulterated hedonism, in my opinion, will only lead to doom for all who practice it. There are times when one who is an unabashed hedonist will rub somebody the wrong way--or worse.



techstepgenr8tion
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22 May 2017, 6:52 pm

friedmacguffins wrote:
Is it neglectful or abusive?

Are there any further truths, in life, besides to experience your own kind-of pleasure?

Again, I think we have a poverty of terminology.

The flavor people tack on to hedonism is something like a sort of Bohemian hippy trailer park where the kids are living on foodstamps and the parents are outback beating the drums on the weekends, dropping acid or smoking dope, and listening to Grateful Dead. I have no interest in either defending that or trying to explain why I don't support that as any sort of primary mode to such a degree that it starts sounding like what I have to say is 'I am not x', which by social transference means 'I am x and trying to deny it'.

I have a question to ask in return perhaps. Are you suggesting some part of the following? a) We can't do this without Jesus b) the only human pleasures, not expressly sanctioned by organized religion and followed specifically under and account of that sanction, are getting doped up or masterbating all day on painkillers?

My own objection to that - it's worse then pessemistic, I have to additionally ask if that's a suggestion that should we find out that the Jesus of the bible wasn't real in the protestant dead-letter sense of thinking that the only sensible thing to do is human exterminism by DMT and heroin? I mean geez... lets break out the General Mills anti-masturbation flyers while we're at it because without the prying eyes of God to judge us we'd play with it until we starved...

I might be exaggerating a bit there but hopefully you get my point - it seems like terrible sloppy reflection on human nature and it seems to make a lot of assumptions about what most people would do if fear of eternal hell was lifted. I'm sure there are a sizeable minority of people who do need other people or some top-down structure of society to tell them there'll be doom and gloom if they fail their obligations and responsibilities. I'm not even talking about removing the role that taboo and stigma play in society.

What I'm suggesting is we seem to only have two choices here for grounding human progress or right and wrong a) prevention of misery b) divine revelation of holy books. We're at a point where information's too available, taking the holy books literally to the letter is impossible and I think about the only person I'm aware of whose trying to untangle religious myths these days on a public level is Jordan Peterson. There were several big names in the 20th century doing this in their own way - Carl Jung, Manly P Hall, Alan Watts, Joseph Campbell, etc.. to varying degrees of accuracy and they had niche followings of varying sizes and personality-types but they stayed niche. Seeing the archetypal values in these stories is still not the same as literal belief. Without literal belief we're in a position where we still have to argue for the value of preventing cruelty, and pain is about the only obvious thing most people can think of to appeal to. Past that, the absolute worst option, is let humanity simply decide that on the flavor of the decade or whatever's expedient. We went that way 100 years ago and it destroyed Europe and Asia giving us some of the worst mass murderers of history.

If we're going to rule out anything that's not literal faith in one of the big five world religions and if looking at pain as a boiler-plate metric of evil since that's equivocal to hooving pills, what are the great alternatives that leave religious revelation, 'hedonism', and 'let political passions decide it' in the dust?


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jrjones9933
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22 May 2017, 7:03 pm

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
jrjones9933 wrote:
Let's take unrestrained hedonism as an example. It has consequences. Hedonism, the pursuit of pleasure, AIN'T EASY. Let's say our hypothetical hedonist has perfectly socially acceptable vices. Even then, those things cost money, time, and energy. Choices must be made. Speaking as an economist, no one can have it all. It's dangerously axiomatic and intuitive, but supported by the evidence of many dead young rock stars. So, there are natural limits, and Keith Moons to test them, even for that pernicious hedonism.

Is it possible that the idea boxes were dealing with are just really low-resolution and incomplete? I'm not particularly interested in trying to evolve arguments to back up vices as hobbies. You can get reward and stress-relief out of walking or hiking in nature, bike-riding, jogging, meditation, spiritual pursuits, reading good books, listening to high caliber Youtube lectures and debates, learning different kinds of philosophy, teaching yourself a new skill, engaging in philanthropic activity, the list goes on. I think we have a lot of very healthy and constructive tools for enhancing how we feel without reaching for the e's and coke.

No disagreement here. I'm making an argument against the need for universal rules on the basis of testable natural limits. This equally applies to asceticism.


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techstepgenr8tion
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22 May 2017, 7:07 pm

thinkinginpictures wrote:
And just for people to know, I am not an atheist, but I do believe good Scientists like Richard Dawkins have good points needed to be considered seriously.


Out of curiosity what does that mean to you - to be a scientific reductionist but not an atheist?


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techstepgenr8tion
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22 May 2017, 7:25 pm

jrjones9933 wrote:
No disagreement here. I'm making an argument against the need for universal rules on the basis of testable natural limits. This equally applies to asceticism.

Yeah, I think the consequences of wrong action typically speak quite well for themselves. It can be difficult to establish axioms about it because reprisals aren't a guarantee - some people can be absolutely rotten and healthy, some people can smoke and drink into their 100's, I suppose it's considering the general rule and not basing the public dialogue on the exceptions.


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22 May 2017, 7:59 pm

Whether we have no free will or an iota of it, most people will learn from their lives, and from the lives of others. Beyond the justice system, this knowledge should influence our educational system, our parenting standards, and our understanding of ethics. We can concentrate more on shaping people who create more benefits for themselves and society, and less on punishing those who test the natural limits. They do us all a service, the rock stars and the monks.


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techstepgenr8tion
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22 May 2017, 8:25 pm

Agreed.

I also think we'd also have a considerable rearrangement of priorities because we'd have to accept, more than ever, that everything we do has secondary effects and that the people around us aren't infinite buffers for our mistakes, dalliances, etc. As it stands society pushes a person to cracking, is shocked when it happens, puts them in whatever system it will, and washes its hands of all guilt - because its perceived that the person simply made a bad choice, or was the mysterious/inscrutable 'bad apple', and that the contributing factors outside of their culminating actions weren't relevant.


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techstepgenr8tion
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22 May 2017, 8:29 pm

I suppose I have a particular sensitivity to this topic because I did feel, in my mid-20's, what felt like a societal wish for me to slip up. I'd fought to survive graduation of high school, fought for the memory of what I'd been through and my own perceived value, and for as much as I tried to be a stand-up person I had a small group of close friends, a cluster of acquaintences, but it seemed like almost anyone who didn't know me assumed the worst and it went right up through my late 20's. Seems like if you don't fit in there's some neurotic movie-character role people will try to shuffle you off toward, for me that was the antithesis of who I was and I got a really bad taste of how base and childish people can be.


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jrjones9933
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24 May 2017, 3:48 pm

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
I suppose I have a particular sensitivity to this topic because I did feel, in my mid-20's, what felt like a societal wish for me to slip up. I'd fought to survive graduation of high school, fought for the memory of what I'd been through and my own perceived value, and for as much as I tried to be a stand-up person I had a small group of close friends, a cluster of acquaintences, but it seemed like almost anyone who didn't know me assumed the worst and it went right up through my late 20's. Seems like if you don't fit in there's some neurotic movie-character role people will try to shuffle you off toward, for me that was the antithesis of who I was and I got a really bad taste of how base and childish people can be.

People do like to find a simple idea and stick with it. Shouting at them never seemed to produce good results, and waiting for them to process the evidence of my abilities, etc. seems to take a long time. Hard to live long without developing what seems like a lot of patience.


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