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aghogday
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31 Jul 2021, 8:18 am

"We confine our cat to our house interior because she’s our cat and we aren’t going to let her run away. Yet she cannot resist the impulse to escape. It’s not a matter of wanting or choosing to escape—she is COMPELLED to escape."

Versus

"Ummm…cats are known for being naturally curious creatures. I don’t blame the cat for wanting to explore outside. The problem is that we live in an area that is more dangerous for the cat if she were to go outside."

"She’d sometimes go chew on grass to get rid of a hairball, but that was about it. I thought that cat would live forever. Broke my heart when she died."

"She knows our schedule and wakes us up in the morning, snuggles up to me and purrs right in my ear first thing in the morning."



Hehe, AngelRho

i Had a Suspicion

You Might Be Able to

Pass A 'Turing Test'; God Yes,

You Just Passed it With Flying

Colors Expressing Your Deep Love For Cats....

Language in Text Will Be So Misleading And If We Are Not Careful Will Lead

Us to Personal Judgements About People that are totally False Both in Good and Bad ways...

It's Like the Bible my FRiEnD,

If We Are to take An All Loving

Merciful God Who Always Turns

The Other Cheek, Loves the Enemy

Same As FRiEnD; If We Are to take that as a Literal

Expression of Self-Less All Loving Mercifully Forgiving;

We See a Very Loving Part of Humanity; Yet on the Other

Hand Per that Old Matthew Verse of Changing Folks From Sheep
to Goats Who Don't Feed and Clothe the Poor Homeless Person on the
Street As No Greater than Jesus as the Lesser as Matthew Describes the

Poor Homeless Person Or Immigrant at Our Southern Border, A Mexican
Carpenter or Roofer as Such; And then For Whatever Nurture and Nature
Difficulties Another Human Has As A Real Disability in Life of Empty Empathy
And Compassion of Desiring to Help Other Human Beings; Yes, If We Take that

Disabled Person

Through Nurture

And Nature And Burn those Goats

Forever; What Kind of Ignorance Now

Is that my FRiEnD of the Human Condition;

Very Little Emotional Intelligence For Sure; And Surely Not

Worthy of Any Virtue Called Love; And this is a Big Reason why

We Have Christians Who say the Mentally Ill Person who Looks

Otherwise Robust on the Street Should Pull His Boot Straps Up;

They Don't Have the Ability to Walk in the Man And or Woman's Shoes...

If They could,

They Would

Greater Understand

And Lend A Hand

If They Had the Ability

To Feel Sympathy For Someone

Who Perhaps Experienced a Dark Part of Life they Did OR Did Not...

i For One Understand that the Ability to Experience the Feelings
That Underly Empathy and Compassion Will Be Destroyed By Chronic
to Acute Stress in Life for Many Years; It's Similar to What Mother Teresa

Described as Losing Her Very Real Organic Faith/Hope/Love

As An Empath Worn Out By Stress; Soul Drained Away,

She Lost the Feeling of Burning Love For All Others Within...

My Psychiatrist Said it is Very Rare for a Human Being to Lose
Their Emotions Like i did for 66 Months and Much More Likely
to Happen to Someone on the Autism Spectrum; what i Learned in that

Place Still With the Same Moral

Code Learned From Birth, Fortunately

True, As A Habit Learned in Behavior

All Across my Lifespan And Nurtured by a
Mother Both in Inheritance of Natural Propensity
And Gardening in Love Before Is How Different Life

Is Without

The Fire

Of Love inside;

True the Mirror Neurons

Working Properly and the

Ability to Feel the Neurohormone

Oxytocin and a Synergy of All the Other

Wellbeing Neurochemicals And Neurohormones

That Simply Means We As Humans Are Living in Balance,

Loving Balance as Naturally Evolved to Be Now Far Beyond Words And

What We Surely Will Assess of a Human Being by the way they Treat

And Talk About the Pets they Love So Deeply As Furry FRiEnDS...

The Day i Knew i was going to/in

HeLL ON Earth Is the Day

i petted Our Cat

And i could

Feel no

Warmth at

All the Same Day

i Could Feel No Warmth

From the Sun And It Didn't

Have Anything to Do With Heat;

It Was all About the Damage Chronic

To Acute Stress for 11 Years Did to my Brain

And My Nervous System And All Bodily Systems From

to Head to Toe to Destroy Most all of my Humanity

That i was Before... And Moreover, Beyond Words

And Behavior my Cat Could Feel The Death Within me

As whenever my Hand Got Close to His Head

He peeled His Ears Back In Fear Like A

Dark Force Might Be Present to Harm Him;

A Sobering Experience in Hell, Indeed, As A 'Real Devil'...

True, i Screamed in the Mirror like 'That Painting Scream';

There is No Respite for A Devil in Hell Yet Waiting Forever Now to Escape Where all

Is Time, A Second iS A 'Thousand' Years in Hell; Beyond All Numbers and Other Measure...

True, It's why i Surely

Don't Mind it When

my Wife Spares

Some Dollars

For the Homeless

Person on the Street;

And Hey, If a Beer is all that makes

Them Able to Feel something; They Are Much

Better off than me As It's Just Like Losing A Sense

of Smell and Taste After A Virus Like Covid-19 that i Experienced

Well Before That in 2017; You Just Have to Patiently Wait for the Body to

Repair itself And then You Have to Learn to Smell Again; And Often as What

Happened to me as Science Shows, at First Everything May Smell and Taste

Like Doomsday Rotting Human Flesh; There Are So Many Horrible Disabilities

That Humankind Experiences That are Invisible that We Cannot See; Yet to Lose

The Feelings of Love; The Feelings of Emotions i For one will Surely Tell You is

Worse than

Everything Smelling
And Tasting Like Doomsday;

And Worse than the Worst Pain
Known to Humankind, Type Two Trigeminal

Neuralgia From Wake to Sleep for 66 Months too...

And that is Why i Have 'Sympathy' For Whatever 'Devil' Crosses

my path for more than Likely They suffer in a Way Most Folks Can't

Imagine, Is Even Possible in Life; Where All the Feeling they Know in Life

Is the Pain and or Numb They Experience and the Same they Inflict on Other Folks...

That's the Kinda

Person who has
A Worst Disability

of all; That's the Kind of

Person Who truly Deserves

The Most Help for whatever is Possible

to Bring them Back to Humanity; if they
Were Ever A Part of Love to Begin With...

Thing is my FRiEnD, it isn't Everyone Who

Lives in Heaven, Goes to Hell, And Returns to

Heaven to Understand What the Differences And Similarities

Truly Are; i can't Expect everyone to Have Sympathy for 'Devils',

Yet What i Do Know is this; If the Story Book Character 'Jesus' REALLY

Went to 'HeLL' ON EartH and Came Back to HeaveN ON EartH Like i Did/Do;

He Would Never

Burn Less Fortunate

Souls Than

Him Forever;

For He Would Understand

the Parable of Matthew Very Personally to Mean

Those Folks Are Already Separated As GoatS in Hell...

And then He Would Do Everything in His Power to Bring them Back 'Home'...

That's the Part of the

Parable that

Obviously
Got Left Out
of the Book; Yet of

Course People in those Days

Thought that People Like My Wife

Experiencing Partial Complex Seizures

Were Possessed by Demons or They Were Witches

And Burned them to the Stake; Smiles my FRiEnD,

It's the 21st

Century;

We Can and

Will Bring A Greater

'Jesus'; Back to Life As US

If We Truly take the Time

And Effort of what it takes to

Walk in All the Shoes of Humankind

And Not Just the ones We Have Traveled in Life...

i'm Just a Bit More Blessed and Cursed With Gifts to Walk in More than Most FOR REAL...

Anyway; i do have the patience of 'Job' in Hell; And i Don't Mind Waiting Forever for folks

to pass

A 'Turing Test'...

You Get an A-Plus on this one my FRiEnD...

And in the Case of Higher Functioning Autism,

Alexithymia, in Difficulty Expressing Emotions and
Feelings With Words Is Measured At About 50 Percent
in Associated Studies; Some of the Coldest Sounding

People Here in Text

May Have the

Warmest

Eyes of

Love in Real Flesh
And Blood Life; Or They

May not Have the Ability to

Even Express Their Feelings with Their

Eyes and Facial Expressions, Never the Less 'Angels' Within...

Life is Way Too Complicated to Express in a Book with only
800,000 or So Words, Written so Many Centuries Ago; If We

Do not

Evolve

We F IT

All Up for Progress...

Sadly the Bible and
The Quran Are Sorely
Antiquated And Inadequate
For What We Understand About

Existence Now GREATER...

Even the Most Ignorant of Folks

Will Find this out with a Few Google Searches...

The Great Equalizer, Freedom of Information And

Arts of Human Souls Globe-Wide FULLY EXPRESSING NOW FREE...

HUMANITY MUST TRUMP IGNORANCE TO SURVIVE; IT SHOULD BE
MORE OBVIOUS NOW THAN EVER BEFORE...

There is the

Potential

Humanity

May Survive

A Bit Longer;

It surely won't

Happen if folks

Stay Stuck in Books

CenturieS Old in Ignorance...

On the '8th Day' 'God' Creates
the 'Google Search Engine'... STiLL RiSinG...

And Yes Heaven And Hell Is As Real As The
Nose Smelling Rotting Flesh When Sniffing Flowers...

IT

Happens...

And Much

Worse Than THAT...

Yet FLoWeRS Still Exist...

We Do Have Science to Help

Us 'Love One Another' Greater...

i Doubt Seriously 'The Pope' is the

First Person 'He' Would Thank If He

Could Really Come BacK Now; He'd Probably

Find a Scientist

And Pat

Him On the Back...

Perhaps Someone who

Looks Like 'God' or 'George

Burns' Someone 'They' 'Fauci' in Florida...

Thing iS, 'He' Would Probably Help/Inspire Science

Sponsor Research to 'Cure' the 'Trumps of the World' Most

It's Gonna be

A Requirement

if Humanity Is Going

to Hang Around A Bit Longer...

Other than That Pet A Cat Today...

Other Than That Feel the Warmth of God (Love) Purr...

The Only Good Thing About Living in Hell Was, Somehow

i Lost my Allergies to Cats That Closed my Airways; That Feral

Cat Helped Bring Back the Call of the Wild And Eventually Helped me

to Become

A Lap

Cat Again

Yet Gaining And Retaining

the Call of the Wild (God) Loving Free...

Pets Help us Bring Back Our Humanity
Most When Lost in So Many Case-Studies... i Find And Still See...

Our Cat Died in January of 2019; i Really Need Another Master Like that

For Soul

Insurance, Indeed...

All This Dedicated to
'Yellow Boy' With Tears
of Thanks From 'A Real Jesus'...

Just Whining Under A Shed In
A Drought of 'Living Water' For me... too...

Feeding 'Him', Mind/Body/Soul Slowly Healing By

Mind/Body/Loving Furry Free Avenues FOR REAL...



_________________
KATiE MiA FredericK!iI

Gravatar is one of the coolest things ever!! !

http://en.gravatar.com/katiemiafrederick


ToughDiamond
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31 Jul 2021, 8:42 am

AngelRho wrote:
The necessity of God lies in epistemology.

I had to look that term up, but the definition I found wasn't at all plain, and seemed to me to be very muddled. So I've abandoned trying to figure out what you mean by that sentence.

The problem of doubt is there’s really no such thing as absolutely doubt. To commit to doubt in absolute terms, to “doubt everything,” means that you have to doubt everything, including doubt itself. It also means that you must accept doubt itself as a principle that is absolutely certain. Well, if it is absolutely certain that you should absolutely doubt everything, including doubt, then that is a contradiction and absurd.

So…the ideas of subjectivity and doubt aren’t rational. At least something must be certain, and that requires faith.

Well, I've so far been unable to prove that there is always uncertainty in everything, so I can't be certain even about doubt.



AngelRho
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31 Jul 2021, 8:51 am

ToughDiamond wrote:
AngelRho wrote:
The necessity of God lies in epistemology.

I had to look that term up, but the definition I found wasn't at all plain, and seemed to me to be very muddled. So I've abandoned trying to figure out what you mean by that sentence.

The problem of doubt is there’s really no such thing as absolutely doubt. To commit to doubt in absolute terms, to “doubt everything,” means that you have to doubt everything, including doubt itself. It also means that you must accept doubt itself as a principle that is absolutely certain. Well, if it is absolutely certain that you should absolutely doubt everything, including doubt, then that is a contradiction and absurd.

So…the ideas of subjectivity and doubt aren’t rational. At least something must be certain, and that requires faith.

Well, I've so far been unable to prove that there is always uncertainty in everything, so I can't be certain even about doubt.

Indeed. And on that note I’m abandoning the argument. What a big ball of contradiction is the human mind!



thinkinginpictures
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31 Jul 2021, 9:27 am

Religion has killed even more people. How many people were burned alive for expressing their personal opinions?

Science isn't bad. Science = knowledge.

What you do with that knowledge is entirely a matter on it's own. Scientists are not to blame. People are to blame.



ToughDiamond
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31 Jul 2021, 9:32 am

Human instinct is really just reason working behind the scenes.

I see it more as an expected result of evolution. The kind of animals that are thought not to be capable of anything resembling reason behave in the ways they do because of what we call instinct. A fly doesn't think about the situation when an animal approaches it and it flies away, it just does that because back in the day, generally speaking the flies that just sat there got eaten, so didn't get so much chance to reproduce, while the flies that happened to take evasive action tended to live longer and have more offspring.

I constantly struggle with decision-making attempting to ensure every decision is a rational one when the correct decision just “feels” wrong in terms of reasoning. When this happens, I go with the decision that I know already to be the right one, and then I think about it later to try to understand HOW I got it right. It’s not enough to make one good decision for one situation. It’s more important that every decision be correct in every situation. The results of a decision should be consistent and repeatable, and if all I do is go with my gut, how can I know if the results are repeatable in the future? Maybe I only got it right by accident. Understanding why something is so is necessary for discerning which situations a course of action is relevant for. I encourage people to take risks, but there are reasonable risks, calculable risks, and risk/benefit analysis that go into making the best decisions. Gut instinct is fine when an unfavorable consequence is insubstantial, but I don’t see any benefit to making a habit of subjective, instinctive behaviors.


Well, if that works for you then I wouldn't want to interfere. But in my case I don't always have a choice. Once when I took my young son to a swimming pool, I was carrying him through the water and somehow got out of my depth, so that my feet no longer touched the bottom of the pool. My response to the situation had nothing to do with conscious deliberation. To my surprise, I found my arms were automatically holding him above the surface while I, not having my arms free to keep myself afloat, kept getting submerged. I could feel an impulse to use my arms to rescue myself but something inside me had other "ideas." Somehow or other we both survived.
I think instinct underpins every seemingly thought-out action at some level.

Even something like love… Love is a manifestation of value, nothing more. The ideal man, or a woman devoted to him, will always be the objectively best mate for someone.

I see it more as horses for courses. I don't think there's an ideal man who is universally the best mate for anybody. When I was in circulation I would class some women as being more my type than others, but other men had different priorities.

It is also objectively immoral to sleep with someone you don’t love—and no, you don’t even need the Bible to tell you that. Objective morality is linked to reason. To sleep with someone you don’t love, first of all, reveals your own low value to yourself, and second, reflects a mindless reliance on instinct over reason; a human being lacking reason is not a living human being. Even when selecting someone you may have romantic feelings for and there is a conflict between the heart and the mind, going with the mind will almost always be the best way to go.

I've nearly always had a strong tendency to avoid one-night stands, but I don't particularly see it as immoral to do so as long as there's no risk of unwanted pregnancy, because I can't see the harm in it. I just happen to be one of those people who would find things got too complicated emotionally if I screwed around, and as I'd have a hard time coming to terms with being in a relationship with somebody who had a purple past, I tend to avoid acquiring a purple past myself, on the do-as-you-would-be-done-by principle. But if others want to do things another way, that's their choice. They seem to get away with it somehow, though I don't understand how.



AngelRho
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31 Jul 2021, 9:59 am

aghogday wrote:



Hehe, AngelRho

i Had a Suspicion

You Might Be Able to

Pass A 'Turing Test'; God Yes,

You Just Passed it With Flying

Colors Expressing Your Deep Love For Cats....

Language in Text Will Be So Misleading And If We Are Not Careful Will Lead

Us to Personal Judgements About People that are totally False Both in Good and Bad ways...



I have a preference for living my life based on reason over emotion. It doesn’t mean I don’t have emotions. It just means that I choose not to dwell on them. Reality does not “care” about how we feel about it. Reality is cold and unfeeling. It is a cold, bare canvas, but it comes with all the resources we bring to it. What we bring are all the colors of our values, those things that are meaningful to us—people, pets, possessions (yes, we even assume a kind of ownership by claiming those we love as “my husband,” “my wife,” and lovemaking is a form of mutual, physical possession), ideas, knowledge, skills, and so on. I just prefer not to use language that is needlessly emotional because it portrays that reality as either more than it really is or as something that it isn’t. Think logically. If I let my cat out of the house, she will either get hit by a car or ripped apart by the neighbor’s dog. Which is best for the cat, staying inside where we pet her, play with her, give her old cardboard boxes to hide in and keep her claws healthy, and supply her with good food and fresh water; or just kick her out of the house where she will most certainly be brutally destroyed? When I say we confine her to the house, I’m using plain and simple language to describe reality. It is what what we do. There is no need to assign any emotional, moral judgment, nor should I feel compelled to explain myself. It’s not even the main point I was trying to make, but it is amusing that some of us get so hung up on one single word.

Kinda like how people might get triggered over the idea of friends and lovers, maybe even enemies, as being possessions. If they don’t belong to you, if there’s no meaningful relationship, why describe them as using words like “mine” or “yours,” anyway? Now that I think of it, I don’t recall describing many people as being “my” enemy. I don’t really have a meaningful relationship with hurtful people. To do so would require me to claim them as mine in some sense. If that is the case that they chose to be antagonistic towards me, there are options worth exploring. I think the most objective approach would be to destroy them completely by turning them into friends without resorting to aggression, even if they chose to be aggressive first, to convert them from something that isn’t claimable into something that is. If this is not an option, then the next best objective option is simply to banish them and refuse to even acknowledge their existence. In other words, let them go without hanging onto any relationship that has any meaning. It’s better for someone to be nothing to you than for you to claim them as an enemy. Why hang on to a worthless possession? But if someone is worth holding onto, friend or lover, there is no better compliment than saying that person belongs to you.



AngelRho
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31 Jul 2021, 12:37 pm

ToughDiamond wrote:
Human instinct is really just reason working behind the scenes.

I see it more as an expected result of evolution. The kind of animals that are thought not to be capable of anything resembling reason behave in the ways they do because of what we call instinct. A fly doesn't think about the situation when an animal approaches it and it flies away, it just does that because back in the day, generally speaking the flies that just sat there got eaten, so didn't get so much chance to reproduce, while the flies that happened to take evasive action tended to live longer and have more offspring.

Exactly. I’m not going to wade into the evolution debate, but my point about instinct is that the fly does not have the choice when it comes to instinct. There is also “flight or fight,” and the response of, say, packs of wolves or other creatures is always preprogrammed. Other instinctive features allow animals to be controlled by human beings. Taming feral cats, or how my grandfather trained dogs to manage cattle when it came time for auction, or even how I trained Bettas how to jump out of water to take a food pellet off my finger, and on and on, works with the instincts animals have to operate within the boundaries of their own self-interest.

My point was not the denial of instinctive behavior, but rather the difference between animal and human behavior: that humans have the ability to choose visceral, instinctive behavior (physically attacking someone who provokes you versus ignoring them or talking it out). With that choice comes other choices that animals lack. When you say you are acting on instinct, you are most likely choosing one rational course over others which may be more or less rational. Many things are rational even if we aren’t able to see the logic right away, but it is always best to understand that a course of action is rational to begin with should you ever be confronted with something that demands a quick response.

ToughDiamond wrote:

I constantly struggle with decision-making attempting to ensure every decision is a rational one when the correct decision just “feels” wrong in terms of reasoning. When this happens, I go with the decision that I know already to be the right one, and then I think about it later to try to understand HOW I got it right. It’s not enough to make one good decision for one situation. It’s more important that every decision be correct in every situation. The results of a decision should be consistent and repeatable, and if all I do is go with my gut, how can I know if the results are repeatable in the future? Maybe I only got it right by accident. Understanding why something is so is necessary for discerning which situations a course of action is relevant for. I encourage people to take risks, but there are reasonable risks, calculable risks, and risk/benefit analysis that go into making the best decisions. Gut instinct is fine when an unfavorable consequence is insubstantial, but I don’t see any benefit to making a habit of subjective, instinctive behaviors.


Well, if that works for you then I wouldn't want to interfere. But in my case I don't always have a choice. Once when I took my young son to a swimming pool, I was carrying him through the water and somehow got out of my depth, so that my feet no longer touched the bottom of the pool. My response to the situation had nothing to do with conscious deliberation. To my surprise, I found my arms were automatically holding him above the surface while I, not having my arms free to keep myself afloat, kept getting submerged. I could feel an impulse to use my arms to rescue myself but something inside me had other "ideas." Somehow or other we both survived.
I think instinct underpins every seemingly thought-out action at some level.

Ah, but I suspect it was more consciously deliberate than you realize. I think you might have been objective in how you handled it. You value a life with your son more than a life without him, hence why you behaved selfishly in making his safety and survival a priority. The most miserable people in the world are those who constantly view their own lives as forfeit next to the lives of others. They live lives of perpetual sacrifice while harboring resentment towards those who create or earn nice things for themselves. There is nothing at all wrong or immoral about what you did. To hear other, immoral people talk, you’d think they’d be rushing to kill themselves over others.

ToughDiamond wrote:
Even something like love… Love is a manifestation of value, nothing more. The ideal man, or a woman devoted to him, will always be the objectively best mate for someone.

I see it more as horses for courses. I don't think there's an ideal man who is universally the best mate for anybody. When I was in circulation I would class some women as being more my type than others, but other men had different priorities.

I do not hold to the idea that women and men are EXACTLY equal and the same. A woman’s best interest (romantically speaking) is to seek her ideal man, whatever that looks like, and devote her life to him. I’m leaving that wide open to interpretation, because that’s going to mean different things to different women. A man’s best interest (romantically speaking) when he provides for all the needs of his wife. If that seems chauvinistic, I won’t consider it a personal attack if I’m described as one, but I’m thinking objectively. Men do not bear children. Even feminists are unable to frame an argument without first acknowledging feminine vulnerability while scumbag men (i.e. every single one of us) possess dominant brute strength. Not even the strongest feminist argument can be made without requiring male protection for female empowerment. Men and women are different, hence why a complementarian (for lack of a better, non-theological term) approach to romantic relationships is preferable and maximally, mutually advantageous for both men and women.

I can’t stress this enough: it is not enough to think of differences between the sexes as entirely physical, nor is it ever appropriate to restrict gender roles to purely traditional or religious roles. What is most important is that men and women see each other as INTELLECTUAL equals and pair up along lines of shared values. A wife marries her husband and throws all her support behind him because she wholeheartedly believes in his cause, his values, his goals—not because of some artificial or social construct definition of what a woman’s place is, but because his cause, values, and goals were already hers to start with before she ever even met him. It’s why marrying outside your religion is a bad idea. Marriage in the workplace is considered a bad idea because people have such a storied past of not marrying for value but rather for emotion, ending in relationships that disrupt the workplace when things turn sour. Relationships that are objective from the beginning do not suffer from this problem. For the longest time, my wife and I both worked for the same school and LOVED IT. And that’s because our minds are what matter most to us. We both love music and children. We talk about things, share many passions. We don’t always agree on everything, we each have traits that are annoying to the other, but in the end our shared value for the partner makes for what I think is an unusually strong, healthy, and happy marriage.

There’s never going to be an exact, objective “ideal” beyond the basics of what makes anything ideal (I’d argue “maximally conducive to life”), but you can objectively hold something or someone up to an individual’s conception of what “ideal” means. I require a life partner who understands my lifelong commitment to making music. My wife loves music and has a lovely voice. And I’m confident in her commitment to me because she pursued me much more persistently than I did her. Given my past indiscretions, I cannot say I’ve always deserved her loyalty, but I’m darned sure going to work to earn it from the time I proposed to my dying day…and maybe even beyond that if I’m given that option.

If that ideal does not exist, a solitary life is objectively preferred.

ToughDiamond wrote:
It is also objectively immoral to sleep with someone you don’t love—and no, you don’t even need the Bible to tell you that. Objective morality is linked to reason. To sleep with someone you don’t love, first of all, reveals your own low value to yourself, and second, reflects a mindless reliance on instinct over reason; a human being lacking reason is not a living human being. Even when selecting someone you may have romantic feelings for and there is a conflict between the heart and the mind, going with the mind will almost always be the best way to go.

I've nearly always had a strong tendency to avoid one-night stands, but I don't particularly see it as immoral to do so as long as there's no risk of unwanted pregnancy, because I can't see the harm in it. I just happen to be one of those people who would find things got too complicated emotionally if I screwed around, and as I'd have a hard time coming to terms with being in a relationship with somebody who had a purple past, I tend to avoid acquiring a purple past myself, on the do-as-you-would-be-done-by principle. But if others want to do things another way, that's their choice. They seem to get away with it somehow, though I don't understand how.

I have no reason to be dishonest about my past. There have been other women during the years we lived apart. We met in college and began our on/off relationship in the midst of both being on the rebound from unbelievably toxic relationships. Heck, my relationship spanned some 6 years beginning before high school. Even before the breakup it had taken a terrific toll on my mental and emotional well-being. There’s been some minor fooling around that didn’t really go anywhere and one other serious relationship that ended badly, and I seemed to attract women who were as sick of toxic relationships as I was, though part of the problem was figuring out we ourselves were also toxic people. When I moved away for a couple of years, there was another fling with a woman dissatisfied with her fiancé that was taking a serious turn when we mutually, amicably decided it was NOT a good thing. I ended up in a beautiful relationship with a beautiful freshman student who, IMO, was intent on squandering her mind and her musical talent. I loved her and desperately tried to get her to see how much better and more valuable she was than what she believed herself to be. I think she would have followed me home had I asked, but our differences in the end were just too much for me. It broke my heart to let her go, but I think things are much better the way they turned out.

I could have been ok with a single mom. I could NOT have been ok with a previously married woman. Divorce is the dissolution of a life commitment. Like suicide, it is the permanent end to a temporary problem. It is never a necessity. Ok, you can say that domestic abuse or adultery is a problem, but darnit, why can’t people just not abuse each other or cheat? Insanity is a legal cause, but if you love and commit to someone, why abandon them if they are dealing with mental illness they can’t help? So much for better/worse, sickness/health. So because divorce means that the divorced choose not to deal with the problems they brought into the marriage in the first place, there is not rational cause to believe they won’t bring the same problems into their next marriage. In my time as a paralegal I’ve seen this over and over again. I broke up with my fiancée because of her insistence that each new progressive step in our relationship would make things better. If anything, things got worse, and I found I’d rather be in the arms of any other woman but her. Living alone forever would have been better.

Sex by its nature involves taking possession of another person’s body. It is the consummation of a trade of ideas and values rather than mere gratification, the consent to which is just “part of the deal,” something that has already happened before the first article of clothing hits the floor. Without love, there can be no trade, no “deal.” Sexual assault lies in a gray area between armed robbery and attempted murder, hence why sex by force or when consent is expressly denied is immoral. Prostitution exchanges a priceless thing for less than its value, hence why it is objectively immoral (although selling one’s body to feed her children when she has no other choice might be seen as heroic); moral sex requires an exchange, but not in any currency that can possibly be translated into money—it is the currency of two human beings themselves. A ONS is the suspension of reason for the sake of momentary gratification, hence why it is objectively immoral. Loveless sex otherwise lacks value and purpose. It’s the giving of a gift with no expectation of any return, hence why it is objectively immoral.

The objective risks of pregnancy and STD’s also reflect the immorality of loveless sex, but objective virtue is concerned with the intellect over physical gratification. The physical response is simply the realization of an intangible IDEA of love. Without love, your body is just going through the motions. Objective immorality is far more damaging than even the worst of physical disease. A rational person suffering an incurable disease is redeemable; the irrational person has to endure potentially decades of meaningless existence. I’ll never have to fear HIV/AIDS. Living a life that amounts to nothing more than simply waiting for death isn’t something I can accept.



aghogday
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31 Jul 2021, 10:40 pm

AngelRho wrote:
Reality is cold and unfeeling. It is a cold, bare canvas, but it comes with all the resources we bring to it. What we bring are all the colors of our values, those things that are meaningful to us—people, pets, possessions (yes, we even assume a kind of ownership by claiming those we love as “my husband,” “my wife,” and lovemaking is a form of mutual, physical possession), ideas, knowledge, skills, and so on. I just prefer not to use language that is needlessly emotional because it portrays that reality as either more than it really is or as something that it isn’t.




i Suppose First You May Define What Reality

Is As Neuroscience Once Again Shows It's What

We Basically Hallucinate Reality Co-Creating With

Our Mind Based On What We Basically Hallucinate Before

Co-Creating that With Our Mind True too; The Great Scene

Of Life About this is We Do Have the Ability to Co-Create Our

Realities, Where Reality that Our Minds Co-Create May Seem Cold And

Uncaring When Science Shows We Already Are Humanifest of What Science

Show the Reality Of the UNiVeRSE Is Namely Human As Just Another Face of

Nature AKA God

All The Same

For Metaphor

True too; There is

No Doubt that Some Folks

Generate A Reality That You Describe As

Cold And Unfeeling; Yet That is no Part of the
Reality My Mind Co-Creates Now as By Relative Free Will

i Personally Develop A Real Bio-Feedback Through Flowing Contemplative

Meditative Autotelic Practices Nearly Every Waking Hour NoW As i Actually

Get to Co-Create My Reality As Wonderful as i Make it Real Eternally Now...

i Am surely

Not the

Only One;

Science Has Been
Studying Human Heaven
Within For Many Years Now...

It's Real And Far From What You've Described

Here as When One Masters the All in All Within

There is No Need to Own Anything As Anything

Is the Everything You Already Have Making All LiGHT

Thru DarK Holy And Sacred Meaning And Purpose Finding

The Same God in Sub-Particles Spiraling in the Same Dance

You Find Yourself Doing While Random Folks In the General Public

Ask For Your Autograph Just Seeing You Live in Heaven For Free; Yet

of Course

This is my
Reality that

i Co-Create; Yours is Good
Enough for You; Yet Would Never
Meet my Personal Practice of Reality now;

However, In My Younger Older Years of Soul

i Surely Can And Will Relate to A Similar Case Study for me...

What i Experience in this Kingdom of Heaven Within is indeed
Cross Cultural And Scientifically Proven to Be Real; The More 'Tao'
Mystical Version of Jesus in Left-Overs of the Old King James Effort,
And The Gospel of Thomas, And Lao Tzu Basically Describe A Contemplative
Flowing Autotelic Meditation of Being All In All With No Separation; Yes Baby

It's Far Beyond

Words It's What You

Feel and Sense of Life

FRiEnDS With Gravity All In All

Ya Never Thought Even Existed At all;

Not Unlike the Experience of Hell on Earth too;

Not Everyone Gets to Go; Yet Never the Less it is the Reality for Some...



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01 Aug 2021, 7:58 pm

Italicised bits are what you quoted from what I said before. Bold bits are what you wrote in reply. Non-italicised, non-bold bits are my new responses to that.

I see it more as an expected result of evolution. The kind of animals that are thought not to be capable of anything resembling reason behave in the ways they do because of what we call instinct. A fly doesn't think about the situation when an animal approaches it and it flies away, it just does that because back in the day, generally speaking the flies that just sat there got eaten, so didn't get so much chance to reproduce, while the flies that happened to take evasive action tended to live longer and have more offspring.

Exactly. I’m not going to wade into the evolution debate, but my point about instinct is that the fly does not have the choice when it comes to instinct. There is also “flight or fight,” and the response of, say, packs of wolves or other creatures is always preprogrammed. Other instinctive features allow animals to be controlled by human beings. Taming feral cats, or how my grandfather trained dogs to manage cattle when it came time for auction, or even how I trained Bettas how to jump out of water to take a food pellet off my finger, and on and on, works with the instincts animals have to operate within the boundaries of their own self-interest.

My point was not the denial of instinctive behavior, but rather the difference between animal and human behavior: that humans have the ability to choose visceral, instinctive behavior (physically attacking someone who provokes you versus ignoring them or talking it out). With that choice comes other choices that animals lack. When you say you are acting on instinct, you are most likely choosing one rational course over others which may be more or less rational. Many things are rational even if we aren’t able to see the logic right away, but it is always best to understand that a course of action is rational to begin with should you ever be confronted with something that demands a quick response.


I don't think humans always have a choice, notably in emergencies where there isn't always time to weigh up the pros and cons. As for animals being doomed to second place by their inability to think, I think there are exceptions. If I remember right, there was a tsunami in which animals generally stayed safe by instinct, getting out of its path while the humans just sat there not knowing what was about to hit them.

Well, if that works for you then I wouldn't want to interfere. But in my case I don't always have a choice. Once when I took my young son to a swimming pool, I was carrying him through the water and somehow got out of my depth, so that my feet no longer touched the bottom of the pool. My response to the situation had nothing to do with conscious deliberation. To my surprise, I found my arms were automatically holding him above the surface while I, not having my arms free to keep myself afloat, kept getting submerged. I could feel an impulse to use my arms to rescue myself but something inside me had other "ideas." Somehow or other we both survived.
I think instinct underpins every seemingly thought-out action at some level.


Ah, but I suspect it was more consciously deliberate than you realize. I think you might have been objective in how you handled it. You value a life with your son more than a life without him, hence why you behaved selfishly in making his safety and survival a priority. The most miserable people in the world are those who constantly view their own lives as forfeit next to the lives of others. They live lives of perpetual sacrifice while harboring resentment towards those who create or earn nice things for themselves. There is nothing at all wrong or immoral about what you did. To hear other, immoral people talk, you’d think they’d be rushing to kill themselves over others.

Well, I was there at the time and it was a very different experience to my usual ones. Before that, I'd been struggling to come to terms with my loss of freedom because of the arrival of my son, and consciously I didn't think I'd ever risk my own life to preserve his. The experience taught me that I was mistaken. Again, there was no time for thinking, and the only thoughts I could remember were a sense of "oh s**t" and "why is my body doing this, I'm drowning!" I'd always thought of myself as a "me first" kind of person, I still do mostly, and I have a strong dislike of martyrdom. Of course there was nothing immoral in what I did. I don't quite see what you're saying with that last bit.

The rest of what you wrote seems to cover a lot of ideas. I don't know how to summarise it into a few take-home messages, so I don't know how to respond without writing reams. We clearly think rather differently about a lot of matters.