I haven’t really I was just referring to what they mean on value. That it is imaginary.
And in my case it’s reckoning with the concept that value is made and not inherent and that to assign value to things and people is to essentially be lying since the reality is that value is just imaginary. That everything is equal. That the world isn’t my image of it or that things don’t have the qualities I assign to them, that everything is inherently null.
It’s a scary thing. It saps life of the magic and meaning I knew or believed it to have.
That makes no sense; why would the fact that something is made involve lying? I have plenty of things right here; some of them I made, some of them I didn’t. Is the stuff I made a lie? What about the stuff I didn’t make?
But you still do believe that things do have qualities, right? Like, if you’re hungry, you don’t say “everything is equal” and consume both of the things in front of you as if they had the same qualities; you still, to this day, remain capable of figuring that one is food that will nourish you, and the other isn’t, and so you pointedly eat one but not the other, because of course you do?
And if you’re deciding whether to eat a sandwich, the question of whether you made the sandwich is irrelevant, right? That sandwich (a) has the same qualities regardless, and (b) wouldn’t involve “lying” just because you made it.
This is a question of value, which is different from what you are describing.
TO act as though things have value and meaning would be to live a lie.
I genuinely have no idea what your point is.
If there’s a glass of water in front of me, and there’s a glass of poison next to it, and I’m thirsty, and I act as though it makes a difference whether I drink from one glass or the other — then, uh, what? Are you saying I’d be living a lie by choosing the water instead of the poison? If I say that I value the one I drink as nourishment, do you think I’m making a meaningful choice or living a lie by turning down the other one?
I’m entirely serious; please let me know.
So, for you, values do not dictate actions. So, value-based philosophies (most religions, utilitarianism, liberalism, objectivism, etc.) don’t tell you what to do. Basically, therefore, you do what your basic instincts dictate until you are forced to do otherwise by someone stronger and/or more willful than you. Hooray: you are a cow.
Of course value is subjective. If it wasn’t no one would pay ten cents for Jeff Koons’ shitty art. But so what? How does this make life less enjoyable? My Pabst is cold and refreshing to me, even if you think it’s swill.
It reminds me of Christians asserting that life has no meaning unless it is eternal.
A cynic is someone who knows the price of everything but, the value of nothing.
Doonesbury 1971. Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for November 05, 1971 - GoComics
Pirsig (recommended above) said value (well, he used the word “quality”) is neither objective nor subjective.
Value as in meaning and worth, not as in what will kill you or not. To pretend that things have value or that one thing is meaningful is to live a lie. I can’t live as though life has meaning and to fabricate meaning and value is to live a lie.
Except quality is subjective because it’s a measure of worth. It’s not based on the relationship between man and experience but mans judgments on things around him. And those judgments bring suffering as you make things out to be more than what they really are. So to make meaning and value is not only living a lie but suffering.
Bullshit. Having things that you value is the opposite of suffering–it is the pleasure in life. I’m honestly not trying to insult you here, you really need to look into the possibility that you need to be treated for clinical depression.
Its not depression it’s seeing what before me. When I value something it brings joy but also suffering when it’s not around or lost. My making it more than what it is I suffer, where as if I assign no value then nothing happens.
It’s compounded by the fact that my values are based on what others told me or what I have been taught is valuable. But when I strip that away I see that there is no value or meaning, nothing about me I can call my own because it’s all secondhand.
Except it’s not subjective because there’s really an “it” and the individual measuring its worth is also real, and exists in relationship to that thing, and the relationship is real. So there’s something substantive and not arbitrary going on there. It’s not objective because it involves the individual’s perceptions but it’s not subjective either because it involves things that exist independent of the individual’s perceptions.
But your — frankly, bizarre — claim was worded like this:
So before I get to whatever you’re on about when it comes to “meaning and worth”, I’m curious: do you of course grant that, no, it’s not the case that everything is equal, since it matters whether things do have will-kill-you-or-not qualities?
If so, then you should probably avoid such weirdly general language.
That said, I’m curious: when I’m hungry and thirsty, I do, in fact, pay money to get what sure does seem to me to be nourishing food and drink; sometimes I pay extra, to get served stuff I’ll find especially delicious; I don’t, at such times, pay any money to get served a tall glass of poison. And, were someone to serve me a tall glass of poison for free, why, I’d turn it down instead of drinking it.
Do you think that’s living a lie? I choose to pay extra for things according to how much I think they’re worth (due to, well, their qualities) and I turn down free stuff when I believe it’d have no value to me (which means: when its qualities would have no value to me). I believe you do likewise, since you’ve managed to keep living this long; more importantly, I believe the people you’re talking about do likewise, since they keep choosing nourishment and turning down poison (and, presumably, they keep paying accordingly). Why do you think they do that?
You really, really, really missed my point.
It has many answers.
[ul][li]Same as two hands, but much quieter, [/ul][/li][ul][li]To get to the other side, and [/ul][/li][ul][li]Twenty bucks, same as in town.[/ul][/li]Regards,
Shodan
I was clarifying a misunderstanding you had. The koans have an answer to them, it’s not just a question to ponder endlessly.
No, the relationship isn’t real, it’s an illusion. It’s entirely based on the subject and nothing “out there”. But I can see what they mean by it’s all just a game, because we are essentially pretending that things have such value and meaning and worth and that all this stuff really “matters”.