What Makes Philosophy Interesting and Important in Life?

Use this philosophy forum to discuss and debate general philosophy topics that don't fit into one of the other categories.

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JackDaydream
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Re: What Makes Philosophy Interesting and Important in Life?

Post by JackDaydream »

@Sy Borg
I was just looking at Colin Wilson's final book'Super Consciousness' and he clarifies his view of peak experiences as being about reaching higher states of consciousness. In his first book 'The Outsider' he looks at many creative individuals and it may be that some of them became imbalanced in their quest, especially Van Gogh, cutting off his ear and killing himself. Wilson looks at the outsider who conceives as seeing a bit differently. That may be where there can be a fine line between madness and illumination. Of course, illumination is not mental illness and is probably a higher form of functioning than most people can achieve, but to achieve it there may be perils and dangers and there may be many who simply end up as broken shamen or lost souls Of course, this in itself may spark a quest for healing.
Nick_A
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Re: What Makes Philosophy Interesting and Important in Life?

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JackDaydream wrote: November 29th, 2021, 7:25 am @Nick-A
So how does one balance the tripartite aspects of self. Does it involve self mastery, which is important but not always that easy. Based on my own reading of Jung, balance may involve the balance between sensations, emotions, rationality and intuition. Each person has these balanced differently and usually has an inferior one and a stronger one. The ideal may be about being able to draw upon all of them as a way of integral balance.


Read how Plato describes harmonizing or balancing the collective soul or essence From Book 4:
“having first attained to self-mastery and beautiful order within himself, and having harmonized these three principles, the notes or intervals of three terms quite literally the lowest, the highest, and the mean, and all others there may be between them, and having linked and bound all three together and made of himself a unit, one man instead of many, self-controlled and in unison, he should then and then only turn to practice if he find aught to do either in the getting of wealth or the tendance of the body or it may be in political action or private business, in all such doings believing and naming the just and honorable action to be that which preserves and helps to produce this condition of soul.”

“is the chief reason why it should be our main concern that each of us, neglecting all other studies, should seek after and study this thing—if in any way he may be able to learn of and discover the man who will give him the ability and the knowledge to distinguish the life that is good from that which is bad, and always and everywhere to choose the best that the conditions allow.”
The human condition doesn't allow a person to become balanced. Actually the world struggles against it since it gets in the way of the dominance of one or another political causes. Harmonizing the soul requires a certain quality of education but this quality doesn't exist in the world

That explains my interest in philosophy. It helps me to understand why we are as we are rather than defending it and becoming nothing other than a hypocritical creature of reaction
Man would like to be an egoist and cannot. This is the most striking characteristic of his wretchedness and the source of his greatness." Simone Weil....Gravity and Grace
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JackDaydream
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Re: What Makes Philosophy Interesting and Important in Life?

Post by JackDaydream »

@Nick-A
I do feel that spending time reading and writing philosophy over the last year has helped me become more balanced than I used to be. Previous to that, when I was working I think that I was all over the place and was mostly just reacting. I didn't really feel much in control at all and I definitely still don't feel balanced all the time. It is hard to always know how much a role philosophy plays in it, but I would like to believe that it plays a significant part. Meditation may help alongside reading.
Nick_A
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Re: What Makes Philosophy Interesting and Important in Life?

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JackDaydream wrote: November 29th, 2021, 3:10 pm @Nick-A
I do feel that spending time reading and writing philosophy over the last year has helped me become more balanced than I used to be. Previous to that, when I was working I think that I was all over the place and was mostly just reacting. I didn't really feel much in control at all and I definitely still don't feel balanced all the time. It is hard to always know how much a role philosophy plays in it, but I would like to believe that it plays a significant part. Meditation may help alongside reading.
Have you ever had your inner ass kicked? It happened to me. When I was young I thought I had a good grasp of hidden truths behind abstract ideas. I could usually find the flaw in a lot of standard arguments and finding the flaw led to many humorous realizations concerning about the absurdity of social life.

However through my readings in special circumstances I received the shock of my own absurdity and why it was so. The shock was so severe it changed my life. It was also possible that I could not have come to this understanding on my own but needed the help of a higher source. I had my inner ass kicked but rather than being annoyed I felt gratitude.

There is a concept in Christianity called metanoia. Plato spoke of it as when one in the cave inwardly turns to face the light at the depth of their being as opposed to being continually attracted to the shadows. The experience adds a whole new vertical perspective I was previously oblivious of. It cannot be explained but must be experienced. Yet Plato and this quality of philosophy makes it possible to open the mind.

“The greatest responsibility of all: the transmission of the mystery.” —Basarab Nicolescu

I never understood this before. What is the problem? Just say it like it is. I never realized I get in my own way so just argue the shadows. But if and when a person gets their inner ass kicked and experience a new and higher perspective, they experience what they were missing. Socrates assertion that "I Know Nothing" becomes pure common sense once they experience metanoia.
Man would like to be an egoist and cannot. This is the most striking characteristic of his wretchedness and the source of his greatness." Simone Weil....Gravity and Grace
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Sy Borg
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Re: What Makes Philosophy Interesting and Important in Life?

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JackDaydream wrote: November 29th, 2021, 7:45 am Sy Borg
I was just looking at Colin Wilson's final book'Super Consciousness' and he clarifies his view of peak experiences as being about reaching higher states of consciousness. In his first book 'The Outsider' he looks at many creative individuals and it may be that some of them became imbalanced in their quest, especially Van Gogh, cutting off his ear and killing himself. Wilson looks at the outsider who conceives as seeing a bit differently. That may be where there can be a fine line between madness and illumination. Of course, illumination is not mental illness and is probably a higher form of functioning than most people can achieve, but to achieve it there may be perils and dangers and there may be many who simply end up as broken shamen or lost souls Of course, this in itself may spark a quest for healing.
A problem would-be mystics can run into is the idea of "higher" consciousness. There is often a competitiveness about it, with adherents of various doctrines often believing themselves to be superior to others because they experience "higher" states of consciousness. It's a well known trap for would-be spiritualists. I put this down to conditioning and, ultimately, to the evolved competitiveness resulting from harsh natural selection.

What we can validly say about peak experiences is they are a different state of consciousness. No consciousness is necessarily better or worse than others. Rather states of mind can be more or less suitable for given circumstances. For instance, a peak experience occurring while crossing a busy freeway is not "higher" consciousness, it's an unsuitable state of mind for the situation, less safe than calm focus on the outside world.

On the other hand, if one is meditating, focusing on the outer environment is counter-productive (unless focusing on a singular thing). Then a peak experience would be the best possible state to achieve.

I personally enjoyed surprising benefits from my two peak experiences. The transcendent nature of the experiences and the subsequent mental effects - like an intensive session of high-quality cognitive therapy - obviously had me wondering enough about the nature or mind and reality. After all, our senses are famously evolved to facilitate survival and reproduction, not achieve a deeper understanding of the nature of reality.

So our general impressions may be skewed more than we can imagine. Maybe no one has ever managed to understand the deeper nature of reality because that would be like an amoeba* being able to understand corporate accounting? No one knows, but some say they do.


* even allowing for panpsychism :)
Tegularius
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Re: What Makes Philosophy Interesting and Important in Life?

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Sy Borg wrote: November 29th, 2021, 2:08 amAs a matter of interest, why did you choose to join a philosophy forum? Based on these words, you don't seem to like the idea of people thinking about life, the universe and everything. However, based on your body of posts, you are clearly extremely interested yourself.
Clearly you haven’t read much of what I wrote otherwise you would never have made that statement. The site is named Philosophy Discussion Forum but haven’t noticed much discussion as far as I’m personally concerned. I joined to keep the mental gears lubricated. Thinking and writing are really two different activities; one reinforces the other but require separate parts of the brain to form an expression, i.e. to make it visible even if unread or replied to. This becomes more important as one's rearview perspectives expand leaving much less distance to journey in.
Sy Borg wrote: November 29th, 2021, 2:08 amYou are imagining that philosophy is global when it is regional.
It’s always been regional in both time and place and never imagined it otherwise. Can’t negate what history confirms even though it’s done all the time on philosophy forums.
Sy Borg wrote: November 29th, 2021, 2:08 amIt seems unfair to consider the state of the world to be philosophy's failure.
It may seem so which only gives credence to the view that philosophy is nothing more than a compendium of insights and speculations more or less brilliant, a type of Glass Bead Game in which meaningless abstractions are artistically developed to create ornaments of structured meaning. So you’re right, it is unfair to consider the world as philosophy’s failure since most of it was never meant to yield anything more than mind fractals which have no counterpart in reality. It all amounts to making an art of synthesizing many strands of thought into one structure, not unlike a composer using many intertwining themes to create a single symphony. There are, as in most human activities, many bad composers, but also some good and great composers. Philosophy too is a form of mental composition using ideas as themes to device context and structure.
The earth has a skin and that skin has diseases; one of its diseases is called man ... Nietzsche
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JackDaydream
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Re: What Makes Philosophy Interesting and Important in Life?

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@Nick-A
I think that I have come into this life to learn some hard lessons. One aspect of this was in a period of about 4 years, during my time as a student and shortly afterwards, 3 people I knew committed suicide. This really lead me to question everything and I began using cannabis and took LSD twice.

Some people seem to have more dramas in their lives than others and I often wonder about karma. The friend who I mentioned previously who got so upset by Ouspensky's writings often used to say that he thought that he was living his last human life after many previous ones. It is hard to know when we think about such things how much is fantasy. I often think that I am a very 'old soul, who has lived many previous lives, and that this particular life is to be that of a quest to go beyond 'the shadows' of illusion. I even think that even not having a job at the moment is possibly connected to a deeper sense of needing time to read, write and understand reality.
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JackDaydream
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Re: What Makes Philosophy Interesting and Important in Life?

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@Sy Borg

There is definitely some 'superiority' with some people thinking that their own 'mystical truth' is the correct one. I prefer to listen and take people at face value when they speak of experience, rather than make judgements. This is a bit ironic really, because I was working in mental health care, so I was involved in assessing mental states. Psychiatry is one way of labelling what is normal and what is not, and it can be caught up with so many over generalised value judgements.

One important criteria may be how experiences affect the person's wellbeing and also the impact on others. In particular, the biggest problem with delusions may be when it poses risks to harming others. Many people questioned and explored 'higher' aspects of understanding and I believe that Hitler even had an interest in mystical or 'occult' ideas, but with catastrophic consequences.
Nick_A
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Re: What Makes Philosophy Interesting and Important in Life?

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JackDaydream wrote: November 30th, 2021, 7:21 am @Nick-A
I think that I have come into this life to learn some hard lessons. One aspect of this was in a period of about 4 years, during my time as a student and shortly afterwards, 3 people I knew committed suicide. This really lead me to question everything and I began using cannabis and took LSD twice.

Some people seem to have more dramas in their lives than others and I often wonder about karma. The friend who I mentioned previously who got so upset by Ouspensky's writings often used to say that he thought that he was living his last human life after many previous ones. It is hard to know when we think about such things how much is fantasy. I often think that I am a very 'old soul, who has lived many previous lives, and that this particular life is to be that of a quest to go beyond 'the shadows' of illusion. I even think that even not having a job at the moment is possibly connected to a deeper sense of needing time to read, write and understand reality.
Ouspensky wrote of eternal recurrence but there just so many times it could happen. Then the opportunity is lost.

Mary Magdaline IMO was a rebel; a true searcher, and tried everything which is why she became lost on the inside. The Christ allowed her to experience a higher quality of energy (spirit) which temporarily awakened her and she could experience what she was doing to herself and what she was looking for. It made a change in inner direction possible.

There is an old expression that when the student is ready the master appears and a person receives this energy. Hopefully this happens with you in which something clicks and you have that moment which changes everything.
Man would like to be an egoist and cannot. This is the most striking characteristic of his wretchedness and the source of his greatness." Simone Weil....Gravity and Grace
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JackDaydream
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Re: What Makes Philosophy Interesting and Important in Life?

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@Nick-A
I think that I may have had some significant moments, which may border onto 'peak experiences', but not entirely sure. I guess that I am still waiting for the great Eureka moment, which may change everything completely. I guess that the rare few find it and, many remain seekers...
Nick_A
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Re: What Makes Philosophy Interesting and Important in Life?

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JackDaydream wrote: November 30th, 2021, 2:51 pm @Nick-A
I think that I may have had some significant moments, which may border onto 'peak experiences', but not entirely sure. I guess that I am still waiting for the great Eureka moment, which may change everything completely. I guess that the rare few find it and, many remain seekers...
"Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it We must continually suspend the work of the imagination in filling the void within ourselves."
"In no matter what circumstances, if the imagination is stopped from pouring itself out, we have a void (the poor in spirit). In no matter what circumstances... imagination can fill the void. This is why the average human beings can become prisoners, slaves, prostitutes, and pass thru no matter what suffering without being purified." Simone Weil
There are times that philosophy or religion can raise sincere deep questions of meaning. When it happens during a time of depression when the ego gives up and the need is great, it creates a void free of justifying imagination and dreams that can receive help in the form of grace which enables that AHA moment and conscious human freedom.
Man would like to be an egoist and cannot. This is the most striking characteristic of his wretchedness and the source of his greatness." Simone Weil....Gravity and Grace
Tegularius
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Re: What Makes Philosophy Interesting and Important in Life?

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Nick_A wrote: December 1st, 2021, 12:20 am There are times that philosophy or religion can raise sincere deep questions of meaning. When it happens during a time of depression when the ego gives up and the need is great, it creates a void free of justifying imagination and dreams that can receive help in the form of grace which enables that AHA moment and conscious human freedom.
How come none of this stuff is rubbing off on you is a question that should have been asked a very long time ago.
The earth has a skin and that skin has diseases; one of its diseases is called man ... Nietzsche
Tegularius
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Re: What Makes Philosophy Interesting and Important in Life?

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Nick_A wrote: November 30th, 2021, 1:05 pm Ouspensky wrote of eternal recurrence but there just so many times it could happen. Then the opportunity is lost.
...and Ouspensky would know! The crap you write is unbelievable.
The earth has a skin and that skin has diseases; one of its diseases is called man ... Nietzsche
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Sy Borg
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Re: What Makes Philosophy Interesting and Important in Life?

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Tegularius wrote: November 30th, 2021, 5:28 amThinking and writing are really two different activities; one reinforces the other but require separate parts of the brain to form an expression, i.e. to make it visible even if unread or replied to. This becomes more important as one's rearview perspectives expand leaving much less distance to journey in.
Fair point.
Tegularius wrote: November 30th, 2021, 5:28 am
Sy Borg wrote: November 29th, 2021, 2:08 amIt seems unfair to consider the state of the world to be philosophy's failure.
It may seem so which only gives credence to the view that philosophy is nothing more than a compendium of insights and speculations more or less brilliant, a type of Glass Bead Game in which meaningless abstractions are artistically developed to create ornaments of structured meaning. So you’re right, it is unfair to consider the world as philosophy’s failure since most of it was never meant to yield anything more than mind fractals which have no counterpart in reality. It all amounts to making an art of synthesizing many strands of thought into one structure, not unlike a composer using many intertwining themes to create a single symphony. There are, as in most human activities, many bad composers, but also some good and great composers. Philosophy too is a form of mental composition using ideas as themes to device context and structure.
Sure, there's the "Castalia" element of philosophy, ideas and language so oblique they may as well have been written in code. There's no special need for philosophy to benefit the many; there are countless avenues to explore. Just a musician may be happy playing extremely challenging non-commercial songs rather than featuring in world markets, so some philosophers may prefer to quietly operate within their geeky cliques.

To continue the music analogy, there are times (like this week) when this forum seems like a chaotic din to my ear, not wildly unlike music class when thirty children would play Moon River on the recorder.
Nick_A
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Re: What Makes Philosophy Interesting and Important in Life?

Post by Nick_A »

Tegularius wrote: December 1st, 2021, 1:13 am
Nick_A wrote: November 30th, 2021, 1:05 pm Ouspensky wrote of eternal recurrence but there just so many times it could happen. Then the opportunity is lost.
...and Ouspensky would know! The crap you write is unbelievable.
There are many who believe as you do that reality is confined to what our senses can experience or as Plato said what is below the illumination of the sun. All else is bunk.

Nietzsche questioned eternal recurrence as did Ouspensky. They opened their minds to conscious contemplation of reality beyond the senses. You prefer to believe the effort is bunk and you're better off arguing about Trump which is somehow the love of wisdom. But this isn't philosophy, it is secular politics. Love it if you prefer
Man would like to be an egoist and cannot. This is the most striking characteristic of his wretchedness and the source of his greatness." Simone Weil....Gravity and Grace
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