Is There Really An Equal Amount Of Good And Bad In Everything?

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Pattern-chaser
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Re: Is There Really An Equal Amount Of Good And Bad In Everything?

Post by Pattern-chaser »

impermanence wrote: December 20th, 2020, 1:38 pm if good makes bad [and vice versa], how can these two not exist proportionally?
Good doesn't make bad, or vice versa. God and bad make sense of one another, because without one, the other has no meaning. They are comparatives; they need (to be meaningful) to be compared with the other. With this understanding in mind, we can see there is no obvious reason why the two should occur in equal amounts.
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Re: Is There Really An Equal Amount Of Good And Bad In Everything?

Post by Sculptor1 »

Pattern-chaser wrote: December 21st, 2020, 1:31 pm
impermanence wrote: December 20th, 2020, 1:38 pm if good makes bad [and vice versa], how can these two not exist proportionally?
Good doesn't make bad, or vice versa. God and bad make sense of one another, because without one, the other has no meaning. They are comparatives; they need (to be meaningful) to be compared with the other. With this understanding in mind, we can see there is no obvious reason why the two should occur in equal amounts.
I think it would help if people stopped talking about good and bad as if they were forces of nature like gravity, or heat.
Heat is heat, there is not such thing as cold. Heat is a measure of energy, cold is less energy relative to a given state.

Good and bad are both like cold, not heat. They are human values upon things we like or dislike. They are relative to personal taste, not absolute natural phenomena There is no universal measure, nor cosmic accounting system.
The Beetles are Good, Dolly Parton is bad. There is no balance. The world the ratio of bands like the Beetles and Singers could be anything.
In fact the more singers like Parton, the more bad they would be since I'd find it harder to avoid them.
You can do this with Brussel Sprouts and Cake. - any thing.
impermanence
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Re: Is There Really An Equal Amount Of Good And Bad In Everything?

Post by impermanence »

Pattern-chaser wrote: December 21st, 2020, 1:31 pm Good doesn't make bad, or vice versa. Good and bad make sense of one another, because without one, the other has no meaning. They are comparatives; they need (to be meaningful) to be compared with the other. With this understanding in mind, we can see there is no obvious reason why the two should occur in equal amounts.
"...without one, the other has no meaning," yet good doesn't make bad?
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Re: Is There Really An Equal Amount Of Good And Bad In Everything?

Post by impermanence »

Sculptor1 wrote: December 21st, 2020, 2:55 pm I think it would help if people stopped talking about good and bad as if they were forces of nature like gravity, or heat.
Heat is heat, there is not such thing as cold. Heat is a measure of energy, cold is less energy relative to a given state.
Who makes heat and cold?
Good and bad are both like cold, not heat. They are human values upon things we like or dislike. They are relative to personal taste, not absolute natural phenomena There is no universal measure, nor cosmic accounting system.
The Beetles are Good, Dolly Parton is bad. There is no balance. The world the ratio of bands like the Beetles and Singers could be anything.
In fact the more singers like Parton, the more bad they would be since I'd find it harder to avoid them.
You can do this with Brussel Sprouts and Cake. - any thing.
Sculptor1, you misunderstand. The duality does not exist to satisfy your tastes in music or anything else.

It simply "suggests" that [intellectually] in order for x to arise, so must its opposite, y [in equal proportion].

Do you believe in the idea of karma?
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Re: Is There Really An Equal Amount Of Good And Bad In Everything?

Post by popeye1945 »

impermanence wrote: December 20th, 2020, 1:49 pm
popeye1945 wrote: December 20th, 2020, 12:15 pm "To God all things are right and good, only to man, somethings are and somethings are not." Heraclitus

"There is no such things as right and wrong, only thinking makes it so." Shakespeare

Otherwise, things just are. They are either life sustaining or undermine life in degrees of pleasure and pain. Biology defines good and bad/ righteous or evil.
Popeye, if things just are [to which I would subscribe], no need to follow up with things that are just made up, no?
Impermance, What do you deem made up?
impermanence
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Re: Is There Really An Equal Amount Of Good And Bad In Everything?

Post by impermanence »

popeye1945 wrote: December 21st, 2020, 10:49 pm
impermanence wrote: December 20th, 2020, 1:49 pm
Popeye, if things just are [to which I would subscribe], no need to follow up with things that are just made up, no?
Impermanence, What do you deem made up?
I have always assumed that when it is said, "things just are," that this refers to the non-intellectual. You had followed that with a couple of statements that were just "made-up," that is, anything any of us say is just made up. After all, it's not like we are privy to the Truth.

Our reality is just that, our reality. We make it up as we go.
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Re: Is There Really An Equal Amount Of Good And Bad In Everything?

Post by Sculptor1 »

impermanence wrote: December 21st, 2020, 9:54 pm
Sculptor1 wrote: December 21st, 2020, 2:55 pm I think it would help if people stopped talking about good and bad as if they were forces of nature like gravity, or heat.
Heat is heat, there is not such thing as cold. Heat is a measure of energy, cold is less energy relative to a given state.
Who makes heat and cold?

Good and bad are both like cold, not heat. They are human values upon things we like or dislike. They are relative to personal taste, not absolute natural phenomena There is no universal measure, nor cosmic accounting system.
The Beetles are Good, Dolly Parton is bad. There is no balance. The world the ratio of bands like the Beetles and Singers could be anything.
In fact the more singers like Parton, the more bad they would be since I'd find it harder to avoid them.
You can do this with Brussel Sprouts and Cake. - any thing.
Sculptor1, you misunderstand. The duality does not exist to satisfy your tastes in music or anything else.

It simply "suggests" that [intellectually] in order for x to arise, so must its opposite, y [in equal proportion].

Do you believe in the idea of karma?
Yes, this is exactly the sort of BS I was talking about.
Case closed.
Steve3007
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Re: Is There Really An Equal Amount Of Good And Bad In Everything?

Post by Steve3007 »

I think this topic is one example of the very common phenomenon of taking an empirical, descriptive law/theory/principle, creating a metaphorical extrapolation from it and then forgetting that it's a metaphorical extrapolation. It happens with such things as Newton's laws ("every reaction has an equal and opposite reaction") Einstein and Galileo's principles of relativity ("there are no privileged frames of reference") and the theory of evolution ("survival of the fittest"). But there are probably other examples too. Those three examples have all, at various times, been extrapolated from the realm of descriptive science to the realm of prescriptive human ethics. Obviously the first example is the one that is most relevant to this topic.

I think one reason for this being such a common thing is simply that most people are naturally much more interested in human relationships than they are in dry, descriptive science. I've noticed many times in the past, when discussing some scientific principle or other, that many people want to find some way to relate it to the behaviour of human beings so as to make it interesting to them.
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Re: Is There Really An Equal Amount Of Good And Bad In Everything?

Post by Steve3007 »

Typo: Should have been "every action has an equal and opposite reaction".
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Re: Is There Really An Equal Amount Of Good And Bad In Everything?

Post by Pattern-chaser »

impermanence wrote: December 21st, 2020, 9:44 pm
Pattern-chaser wrote: December 21st, 2020, 1:31 pm Good doesn't make bad, or vice versa. Good and bad make sense of one another, because without one, the other has no meaning. They are comparatives; they need (to be meaningful) to be compared with the other. With this understanding in mind, we can see there is no obvious reason why the two should occur in equal amounts.
"...without one, the other has no meaning," yet good doesn't make bad?
Look, good and bad - the terms and the concepts that go with them - are meaningful only in comparison with the other. Good does not and cannot make bad, or vice versa. How could it? Does dark make light, or night make day?

Good and bad are the identifiers we give to the ends of a spectrum of (subjective; human-created) 'preference; how can one end of a linear spectrum make the other end? Can North make South? Surely we've had enough of this?
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Re: Is There Really An Equal Amount Of Good And Bad In Everything?

Post by Pattern-chaser »

impermanence wrote: December 21st, 2020, 9:54 pm It simply "suggests" that [intellectually] in order for x to arise, so must its opposite, y [in equal proportion].
If x and y are not quantifiable, they cannot exist "in equal proportion", a form of words which says that there is an equal quantity of good and bad. How much does a litre of bad weigh? 🙄
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Re: Is There Really An Equal Amount Of Good And Bad In Everything?

Post by baker »

impermanence wrote: December 20th, 2020, 1:43 pmI don't equate a slap as the opposite of a hug. A slap is a violent act. Perhaps the opposite of a hug might be choosing to ignore the child.
So hugging and ignoring even eachother out?
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Re: Is There Really An Equal Amount Of Good And Bad In Everything?

Post by Steve3007 »

If we're not sure whether slapping or ignoring is the opposite of hugging it's probably best to randomly switch between hugging, slapping and ignoring your children. That way, over the long term, it'll even out.
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Re: Is There Really An Equal Amount Of Good And Bad In Everything?

Post by baker »

Steve3007 wrote: December 22nd, 2020, 10:44 am If we're not sure whether slapping or ignoring is the opposite of hugging it's probably best to randomly switch between hugging, slapping and ignoring your children. That way, over the long term, it'll even out.
... like their brain waves.
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Re: Is There Really An Equal Amount Of Good And Bad In Everything?

Post by popeye1945 »

Impermanence, What do you deem made up?
[/quote]
I have always assumed that when it is said, "things just are," that this refers to the non-intellectual. You had followed that with a couple of statements that were just "made-up," that is, anything any of us say is just made up. After all, it's not like we are privy to the Truth.

Our reality is just that, our reality. We make it up as we go.
[/quote]

Impermanence, Well, that is one way of saying the same thing, the physical world is meaningless, it is life/consciousness which bestows meaning upon the physical world. Apparent reality is a biological readout of the senses, and determines what is defined as good or bad.
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