Personal Nihilism

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by gamelord, Jun 7, 2018.

  1. gamelord Registered Senior Member

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    Nihilism means to nullify, or negate. It is an open-ended word but what it has come to mean for me is this.

    Humanity seems to be stuck in a kind of "Mental Nihilism" where the human being is viewed as the Prime Mover, or First Caused Force.
    So in the Nihilistic human mind,
    Humans are the first degree of "world"
    Nature the second degree of "world".

    Laws are circulated to reflect within their own framework. Actions, "free will", choice, is not first evaluated by "Nature" but first evaluated by, "Human", "Law". An action is first evaluated is, "Is it illegal"? Meaning, does a conglomerate of random alpha tribal humans (usually male), of an organized human gang, judge me possibly negatively for doing such a thing.

    Ie. is something right or wrong, based on the legal framework, legal framework of course made by a conglomerate of well to do random alpha tribal humans (usually male of course.)

    Ie. We are all one (human) species and so we must all, unite with Superhero nihilism and keep us "the collective, horde" as what is greatest for the (borg) collective.

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  3. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    Might be better in philosophy fora than politics
     
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  5. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    homo-erotic socialist singularity aside...
    i think your giving the Borg a bit of a bad rep.

    as long as you do as i say everyone will be happy and they wont hate you.
     
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  7. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    An anthropocentric POV falling out of a denial of objective or non-human sources for _X_? Is that the proposal?

    Julian Baggini: The phrase "man is the measure of all things" looks like the zenith of arrogance. Are we really so important that everything that exists has to be measured against our scales, our values and our judgment? But this is not the only way to understand our roles as the cosmic measurers. Rather than assuming importance for humanity, we should instead start by accepting our helplessness. We are the measure of all things simply because we are unable to access any better yardstick. We do not have access to the mind of the deity and nor can we adopt a god's eye view for ourselves. We are condemned to see the world only from a human perspective. Man is not therefore the measure of all things because of arrogance, but because there is no alternative. Even the religious should agree. For when they decide a religion offers the true guide to life, it is the overgrown chimpanzee, not God, who has to choose that it is the right road to follow.

    ~
     
  8. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    An example from American history:

    Legal frameworks are products of their circumstance; the American legal framework, for instance, is a deliberate retort to the British legal framework, and suits very well as such, but runs into difficulty in other application, as it was never really intended to do everything people expect.

    More directly, it was a fine retort from a bunch of second sons tired of paying homage to a king, but what they really, really wanted was to be kings; we've spent the intervening years, all 242 of them, demonstrating the American Usurpation in lieu of a Revolution. In the end, our society made a lot of promises, but when it came time to deliver, we have perpetually sought to renege because, let's face it, all that talk about Liberty and Justice for all was actually reserved to white men with enough money to own slaves. Indeed, in the twenty-first century, desperate supremacists in the United States will refer to our society's Anglican heritage. History reminds that successful revolutions against state tend toward usurpation instead of revolutionary reform, such that the average citizen might say something familiar about the new boss being like the old.

    Part of the American response to its own propositon of Liberty and Justice for all has involved turning the basic idea of a legal, constitutional, or societal framework inside-out in order that we might forestall such outcomes. We actually have constitutional amendments that were built this way, both (A) depending on who you ask, and (B) in effect. In recent years, this dereliction of the American Promise has become so craven that some really are trying to turn legal frameworks on their heads.

    Consider ontology, which considers what it means to be, and how the various aspects therein are related. For our purposes, we can consider that ontology precedes law. In an if/then formulation describing function and purpose of a law, ontology is counted as an if. To wit: If circumstance A, then law B. What we Americans have decided is to legislate ontology, so that the formulat goes: If circumstance A, then preclude B, thus legislate C to redefine A in order to not only permit but actually demand B.

    Here is an illustrating example: In recent years, some American conservative advocates have pushed an idea of "personhood" as a lagislative matter. This comes down to arguments about Amendment XIV and its famous Equal Protection Clause requiring the states to afford people equal protection under the law. The idea is to create a personhood challenge, that to allow certain people certain freedom inherently violates the rights of other certain people; the method is to legislate who gets to be a person, but this is so narrowly and obsessively focused, the entire argument actually rests not on the legislation of a personhood assertion, but the generally tacit and occasionally explicit presupposition that the challenged class does not, in fact, hold personhood. It is quite literally legislative dehumanization for the sake of supremacism. And I can tell you this: I discussed this issue with stakeholders once upon a time, and in over a year, something like sixteen months, nobody invested in the personhood argument could acknowledge the personhood they were legislating against. The effect is that they attempted to legislate the ontology from which their desired legislation would derive.​

    That laws are circulated to reflect within their own framework is a truism; less apparent is the vector such statements travel, because as you might be aware, some tyrants can institute and cancel laws at will, and in other societies there are tests of legislative propriety, such as the American question of constitutionality. Within these parameters, it is much more difficult to resolve precisely what the laws reflect about the framework. For instance, the personhood propositions I referred to reflected more about sponsors and supporters; institutionally, though, there are very definitive clues about the framework. The American constitutional framework is dynamic and flexible despite its sponsors and supporters; where we run into trouble is in presuppositions. Think of it this way, historically speaking, "Liberty and Justice for All" is subject, in application, to particular definitions, namely what we mean by "Liberty", "Justice", and "All". Americans have a hard enough time with the first two, and that might be for the fact of refusing to let the latter simply mean what it otherwise means. Chatter you might hear about angry White Male Christians has to do with this; there are a lot of Americans who would dispute that "All" includes women, people of color, homosexuals, or, when we survey the general effect, anyone not white, male, and Christian. And even then, they still fight among themselves, which in turn reflects Christian history and framework.

    You pose an interesting framework of its own, to be certain, but its antisociality becomes disruptive and potentially preclusive.

    1) Nihilism, in practice, has a nullifying or negating effect, but that is a downstream, latter-gen result. Its defining aspects occur at an intersection of relativity and futility. Argumentatively, nihilism is generally coupled, and usually tacitly, with observation of or relationship with anomie. At the point of your definition, there are countless presuppositions in effect; these need to be accounted for in some way.

    2) The conglomorate of alphas is not random. Consider, for instance, the end of the Frelinghuysen dynasty; while they haven't always been in Congress, the colloquial expression is that the retirement of Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ11) will mark the first break in the family's relationship with the American government since before there was an American government; someone, somewhere in the family has apparently been in public service at any given time, throughout, or so goes the scuttlebutt, and there is no apparent scion stepping up at this time. The family is worth a lot of money, has major P&G investments, and there is even a township in the Garden State bearing their name. There is a reason why this chatter of traditional federal service in the family is attached to wealth and interest, that this isn't a story starting with a poor Irish woman crossing the ocean for indenture. The larger point is that alphas are and do as they will, but it's not random; an insistent disconnection 'twixt what you see will distort the vista rather quite dramatically and exponentially more quickly. Often the gap is largely natural; the difference between bridge construction and dredging an abyss ought to be apparent.

    3) The disconnection from, or absence of history in your telling is also apparent in your consideration of "Mental Nihilism", which concept is, in turn, a result of nihilism, a particular cultivar, as such. The first and second degrees of "world", as such, are not concepts utterly lost, or anything like that, but, rather, the absence of history, which sketches an approximate historical pedigree or philosophical taxonomy°, leaves others uncertain quite how to interpret the concept. One can, for instance, suggest a weirdly recursive aspect; our separation of "world" from nature itself is not unimportant, but the relativist discarding of frameworks emerges, historically, from not so much rejection or willful erasure of, but, rather, persistent failure to recognize the mere fact of differentiation. We can bounce these questions, similarly, around frameworks political and theological, which is probably more important than I am giving credit in the moment, because, historically speaking, I can follow a pathway to human being as Prime Mover, as such, because I have seen various iterations of it in the society around me. In that context, I can easily note human history of aspiring to godhood, but whether that has anything to do with whatever you refer to is its own question°°. And others are left to similarly grasp after your meaning.

    4) Speaking of aspiring to godhood, say what we will about evolution°°°, but the codified literary record, and our historical record, of Original Sin sits ensconced near the heart of the fear and judgment by which we (ahem!) appear to blindly reject or erase differentiation. In any case, Original Sin also perches on your shoulder: Humanity is a social species, yet "borg" is your consideration of collectivity? Something about antisociality and preclusion goes here.​

    ____________________

    Notes:

    ° Perdurabo↱ reminds, "Now and again Travellers cross the desert; they come from the Great Sea, and to the Great Sea they go. As they go they spill water; one day they will irrigate the desert, till it flower."

    °° Or, as Perdurabo↱ reminds, "Nor did He mean what He said."

    °°° There isn't a good Lie for this one, but still, Perdurabo↱ reminds↱ it is easy to simultaneously have a point and think too much of oneself.​

    Perdurabo, Fr. The Book of Lies: Liber CCCXXXIII. 1912. BibliotecaPleyades.net. 8 June 2018. http://bit.ly/2sHAfd7
     
  9. TheFrogger Banned Valued Senior Member

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    "The Law," IS ab-solute, not set by man. It is wrong to kill because the victim cannot return the crime. Thus the C.P.S. (Crown Prosecution Service) press charges because the victim is unable to do so. Murder would otherwise be considered a victimless crime.
     
  10. gamelord Registered Senior Member

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    Tiassa, what I was trying to say is, even though I do not have your gift for writing what I was trying to say is thus.

    Social humans have this sort of nihilism where the negate human nature and imply that humans are a First Cause. It is a form of emotional impulse reaction which overall creates an atmosphere of subjugation. People are not pressed to get into the real cause, only parrot the latest emotions and social reactions of the day.

    For instance, if OJ murders somebody, a hysterical reaction will wave across america. Either he will become more popular or less popular. It will be discussed. What a monster they will say. Even though OJ is simply the result of causes and effects reverberating through out time. In essence, there is no "OJ", he is only a body of motion, propelled through space and time.

    And this in essence, brings me to the topic of Death. People shout in hysterics about the latest murders or craze. They simply say "Death is wrong" without going to say why it is wrong. 1. It is mainly wrong due to hardcoded impulses and emotions present in a social species. In a social organism such as primates it is disadvantageous to attack members of your own tribe or clan. But in America there is no real unity, no real tribes, no real clans, no real loyalty in big cities and seas of people who have no allegiance towards you or your family. So there is a disconnect now between nature and nurture. And in order for cowards to make themselves feel safer, they make up moral frameworks in order to reduce the likelyhood of random attacks from those they wrong. 2. Death is only wrong in so much that the possibility of technical immortality looms, in that it may rob a soul from the possibility. But in ancient times, what is the difference if they live or die? Since they are all dead now anyway. What mainly matters is the quality of life they had, the quality of their descendants lineage (genes), and the quality of their memetics and teachings that have been passed. Quality over quantity, a short life of good quality is better than a long life of bad quality (sans the age of immortality possibilities.)
     
  11. TheFrogger Banned Valued Senior Member

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    ...immortality? Well, you cannot change the past. ☺
     
  12. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    What is best is a long life of quality that isn't prematurely curtailed by a stranger (or anyone else). It's interesting that you portray the man of laws are the coward and not the one who kills.
     
  13. TheFrogger Banned Valued Senior Member

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    "Gripes go up."-Saving Private Ryan.
     
  14. gamelord Registered Senior Member

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    If so then why is it socially acceptable to slaughter animals and eat meat? Obviously because animals have no value to society and do not contribute in any meaningful way.

    For instance if a great inventor like Tesla was murdered, it is a national tragedy. But if a soldier just dies it is part of the status quo.

    Now when you say man of laws, do you mean law enforcers or men who obey laws.
    In essence law enforcers are not cowards themselves, it is just the whole idea of law which is cowardly.
    You are not allowed to have agency, or to stand up for yourself.
    For instance I just watched a TV show where a man with a broken leg was chased for a mile in a sewer gully. The man chasing him threatened to kill him and pretended he had a gun. The man with the broken leg pulled out his gun and shot him in self-defense. As the man died, he proclaimed that the gun was imaginary, and he wanted to die on purpose so he could get framed. An inspector saw the whole thing, and they still threw the man in jail anyway. The system is an absolute ridiculous cesspool of tyranny.
    You might say, it is only a TV show, but I have personally witnessed injustices like that happen first hand.
     
  15. sideshowbob Sorry, wrong number. Valued Senior Member

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    So there are no wars, no capital punishment, etc.
     
  16. TheFrogger Banned Valued Senior Member

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    The Laws are written. Set in stone. They have existed and still exist in writing at a moment, even if erased. The written word exists forever. The Laws are written to protect the innocent...
     
  17. sideshowbob Sorry, wrong number. Valued Senior Member

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    But they are not absolute. They vary to suit convenience.
     
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  18. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Because the alternative, humans dying of starvation or malnutrition, is not acceptable to society. Humans evolved to be omnivorous, so blame nature for that. Human morality only necessarily applies to the needs of humanity, as it should.

    Ideally, and often in practice, we have laws to protect the least powerful, because we don't want to live in a society where we have to fear all the time.
     
  19. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, it was just a TV show. People do have a right to protect themselves but they have to be careful and they are judged to make sure that they had that right to take another's life.

    Some people are so afraid of the world that they imagine every confrontation to be life threatening. You can't go around killing everyone just because you are unusually afraid of life and have "us" (society) just take your word for it.

    This has nothing to do with killing chickens for food.

    Your arguments are all over the place. You want society to provide you automatically with sex but you also want the ability to kill people (in theory) with no consequences. What if someone sits beside you in a bus, you start giving your opinions about the world, they become afraid and shoot you. Is that OK? Wash that "brave" on their part?
     
  20. gamelord Registered Senior Member

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    Yes it is a TV show but I have seen injustices of that calibre happen in real life thanks to the american legal system.
     
  21. gamelord Registered Senior Member

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    I am saying people are morally dishonest and intellectually dishonest about stuff.

    It is how they are inconsistent about killing's consequences. If you kill soldiers in a war it's perfectly acceptable. But if you kill a burglar in certain states that could get you life imprisonment.

    And then they have this warped sense of morality about animals. Like they slaughter thousands of pigs but then call themselves good people and lock a murderer in prison for life.

    And people have no sympathy for the downtrodden or the socially outcast. Like let say some kid was bullied his whole life and stabs a couple of the bullies, the legal system does not care and just sends him to prison for life. Or lets say some poor person always had a tough time getting money and robs a bank, well the news always casts them in a bad light. Meanwhile the banks and corporations are stealing money from honest american citizens more than poor people are.

    We live in this crucifixion culture of the insane, people without hearts or compassion or empathy. There are so many people who say they hate rape-culture but who don't care about all the prisoners who get raped and killed in prison all the time. And the argument is always "longer-sentences" and pandering to politicans and the police state. And when you mention rape in prison, what is their solution then? More solitary confinement.

    It is a kind of mass-delusion of a primitive species. Whatever happen to just, rewiring criminal minds so they turn into good people. Why all the focus on punishment and petty revenge. Cause we are living amongst a primitive tribal species who hasn't evolved.

    Do you know 60% of prisoners are illiterate? These are mentally challenged people in prison, yet we demonize them as monsters. Yet you wont get any sympathy from the lynch mob of society. Republicans, Democrats, they are no different, all are primitive savages with no compassion.
     
  22. gamelord Registered Senior Member

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    Humans can survive on eggs veggie burgers and multivitamins.
     
  23. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    What legal system have you noticed that is appreciably better? No system is perfect and not having a system is even worse.
     

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