Keeping in mind that these buddhist idiots have a habit of pretending that all of reality is a fiction overlaying REAL reality lays bare what they’re going for with this nonsense. It’s part of the hoary bullshit that they’re trying to pull to invalidate reality to make their stupid nonsense alternative to reality look more appealing by comparison.
Firstly, the fact that value is in the eye of the beholder doesn’t invalidate it. Each person defines the places they feel at home. It’s personal, but it’s very certainly not imaginary, because the mind is a real thing and it really does think its home is home.
If you find it heartbreaking to listen to lying idiots tell you that you don’t really like the things you like, perhaps you should stop listening to lying idiots when they say things that are obviously false.
Except you keep saying it’s pretending when it’s not, because from what they say we are the ones pretending.
Value doesn’t exist outside the mind of the beholder, it’s based on made up metrics we created. I cannot find inherent value in anything around me, if it existed then it would be recognized by all. But the fact that it doesn’t means it’s just in the mind. The same thing with countries, cities, the idea of home, much of what we take to be solid and real is just us projecting onto reality. Good and bad are the same as well.
You call them lying idiots, but you have not proven how what they say is a lie. Because as much as I hate to admit it, they’re right. We do pretend much of our lives. Value is just one way. Objectively speaking, one thing is not worth more than another, but I don’t know if I can live that way. If no option is “better than another” then I would be in stasis. But to pretend that something has value or meaning based on some arbitrary distinction doesn’t seem much better. She is sort of right in that much of the suffering in our world is based on our judgments on it. Whats good or bad, whats valuable, whos right or wrong.
As much as I want them to be wrong, I just keep pointing back to them being right. It was similar with nihilism. Much of what we believe to be real is just make believe, and that hurts me a lot.
Of course it’s pretending. They pretend that reality’s not real, and that by nuking your brain cells with meditation and/or drugs you can literally erase reality and access a deeper, harder, more trippy REAL reality that something something something who cares. All while reality manifestly ignores their nonsense and keeps on existing.
And yes, they’re all “no, you’re pretending!”, but they’re dipshits. Dipshits say stupid things that aren’t true.
But seriously, don’t take MY word on whether or not reality is real. Go out and kick a rock really really hard; if your foot passes through it they’re right.
Okay, so let’s talk about definitions of words. Specifically, “imaginary”.
“Imaginary” means “not real”. And merely existing the brain does not make something non-real. To be imaginary something has to not exist.
Consider unicorns. Unicorns don’t exist. The idea of unicorns exists, in the minds of people, and also written down on paper and painted into pictures and such. But unicorns themselves don’t exist. They’re imaginary.
Consider thoughts. Thoughts DO exist. They only exist as part of people’s brain states, but they absolutely exist, because they are really part of people’s brains’ states, and those brains are real. The really brains really have states which really include thoughts.
That’s what imaginary means. It doesn’t mean “in the mind”. It means “not real anywhere”.
So let’s talk about value. Is value real anywhere? But before that, what is value?
Value is what a person thinks something is worth. It exists only in the minds of observers. But it does exist in the minds of observers. People really do value things, with their real thoughts in their real brain state in their real brains. So value is real. It’s not imaginary.
When you say that if value exists it would recognized by all, that’s you spouting the lies those moronic shitbags you listen to are spouting. They are wrong about what value is. They are lying about what value is. They are too stupid to know what value is. Take your pick. But either way, these fuckers are spewing nonsense, and you’re parroting it.
As for “pretending things have value”, don’t be absurd. You know that you value food, and get hungry. You know that you value drink, and get thirsty. You know that “have toilet paper” and “need toilet paper and don’t have it” are not equal-value propositions.
And the dipshits know it too, because it’s literally impossible to stay alive if you don’t recognize the value of things. If you REALLY reject value you’d go all Buridan’s ass and never eat again. But you do eat, because of course value is real and you damn well know it.
A lot of that just sounds like insults without proof, like you’re just saying it’s nonsense without showing how it is so and just saying it. But I know that bit about value, that it still does exist in some form. It might not be objective but the “phenomenon” I guess is.
Easy - they don’t practice what they preach. They perceive value in all kinds of things, including sharing their beliefs on blogs.
What the what now? Half of what I said was a straightforward analysis of definitions. By definition, values aren’t imaginary.
When I point out that the fuckers are wrong, lying or confused, that’s insults. Insults with proof, mind you - I had moments previously proved by defintion that values are real, and thus proved that the dipshits quite certainly are wrong, which itself shows that they’re either deliberately lying or inadvertently saying blatant falsehoods because they’re confused.
Honestly the only comments that weren’t solidly grounded in hard definitional evidence was calling the falsehood-tellers fuckers and dipshits. Those, I concede, are just expressions of my opinion.
I don’t actually need to eat, and there’s no part of me that wants to eat or values eating. But I guess you noticed that I still eat, which amply demonstrates me to be a liar! Um, er, well, -oh, I know! I eat because it’s fun! But not the eating itself; what’s priceless is to do something so pointless and uninteresting as eating, because, er, it’s amusing to waste time! Yeah, that’s it! We’re eating ironically! I’m actually eating my self-importance by doing something silly! I’m mocking myself, emptying my bowls of self-importance by showing I have no value by wasting time on this eating things nonsense!
Now excuse me, I need to go get a delicious steak dinner with the money I get from the advertisement income from the traffic on my site. Ironic delicious steak.
Well on the topic of NEED there are some that suggest that one can overcome sleep and sexual desire by recognizing such things as false. In the case of sexual desire they say it is false because it disappears as soon as the object of desire does: http://www.buddhism.org/?p=435
But as for value I might have to concede to you. Even when I first saw that I knew it was wonky from the get go,but because it was Buddhist I could not ignore it. Though now I am seeing that it is different and that just being Buddhist doesn’t make it special.
Oh my god - when that link finally finished loading I learned that they were just talking about staying awake and tamping down your horndog thoughts while mediating! And here I thought you were pointing me at yogas who were claiming that they could stay awake forever through force of will!
It’s laughable that anyone would think that these things are arguments for values or needs not being real.
Go ahead and see what happens when you attempt to overcome the desire for sleep for more than a few days. Go on and report back.
“They” say a lot of dumb things. Overcoming the desire for something does not in any way make the desire not real. Desires, like all emotions, are temporary states of mind. It is not inherently wrong to experience sexual desire, or any other kind of desire for that matter. It’s fair to claim that some desires may be unwelcome and should not be acted upon. But there is no scientific basis for them not being real.
Quoting Buddhism to support a false claims is about as compelling as quoting Scientology to support the existence of thetans. I wish you would stop spouting this nonsense.
It wasn’t too special; I just didn’t bother closing the tab, and before hitting ‘submit reply’ happened to check it and noticed that it a) had loaded, and b) said laughably less that I’d expected it would. I had to rip out most of my reply due to it being overkill for the triviality in question!
OK so the link was dumb, even I had to admit that.
But wouldn’t living life according to reality be what we strive for? So why pretend that value doesn’t exist when in “reality” it doesn’t? Just like how our conceptions of things don’t exist outside of our heads.
It’s the nature of thought and conscience of the human condition that concepts exist in our heads. Where do they keep such things in the world that you come from?
I don’t know, I’m still trying to puzzle what she said out. If nothing is “worth it” why tell me about this way of life? I’m up the wall trying to figure it out. IT’s pretty much what the nihilists said, but for some reason her saying it makes it more real (though I don’t know why).
That’s what you should be ‘up the wall trying to figure out’. Not what she’s saying; why hearing it from her, instead of from someone else, “makes it more real”.
Have you noticed this sort of thing in any other context? Does it occur to you as you mull hypotheticals? Is there something you’d hear from a Catholic priest, and reject; and then hear from a Marxist atheist, and reject; but if you hear it from a guy who thinks Poseidon, brother of Hades and the uncle of mighty Heracles, rules the seas and chooses when to send earthquakes, you’d say, “whoa, hearing it from that guy makes it more real! The other two didn’t have me up the wall trying to figure stuff out; but him saying pretty much the same thing, wow!”
Because I think that most followers of Buddhism don’t think that Buddhism is anything like what you think it’s like. Not that I’m really up on what Buddhists think since I have better things to do with my time (there’s an idle clicker app that wants my attention), but I get the distinct impression that things you take literally they take figuratively and that the things you take to be tolls of doom sound like opening shackles to them.
It probably helps that most people seem perfectly okay with there being substantial quantities of nonsense in their religion.