Spiritual Individualism

[Gus_R]

There is something I find an absolute shame for any human being to blindly accept: Enslavement to their environment.

Whatever sort of religious outlook you prescribe to, even if it’s the atheistic lack of deity, you are placing yourself into a pathetic stance when you refuse to accept your free will.

To those of you who don’t believe in volition, are you to say that you are not responsible for your life? Do you honestly believe you are nothing but a product of environment? That the circumstances of your life are not your own doing?

What childishness is it to blame your indecision on fate, on parents, on upbringing, on government, on the world, on a god? What selfishness is it to continue living and feeding upon the world, while blaming it for your problems?

Are you too blind and frightened to understand and work within the reality that you are a free being, able to choose how your life plays out? Are you too frightened to accept responsibility for your troubles?

So you have a job you dislike? Instead of complaining about the job, find another one. Well, you might say: But I need this job to support my family! Well, fuck you. You decided to partake in actions that led to a family - if atop this you chose a career to support them, you are living YOUR choices…not a god’s, not fate’s, nothing but your own choices.

So, you have children, and despite your aggrivation with how you were raised, it’s ‘all you know’. Well, fool, awaken yourself to something called creativity - how do you suppose inventions came about? By working only with ‘all they knew’? Use your fucking head to examine needs and wants of your children and yourself - you don’t have to follow any footsteps, you are free to walk your own path.

Of what pathetic mental construct are you incapable of realizing you are a spiritual being, capable of rising above environment? Have you not read, heard, and witnessed millions of people overcoming their environment through determined will? Slaves born into that life, escaping; povert men and women, enriching; ignorant folk, educating; stranded souls, navigating…what more will it take for you to accept your ability to rise beyond the physical realm and create a spiritual tool of your own in order to conquer all the troubles in your life?

Death is all that you cannot conquer - the rest is clay for your spiritual hands to mold.

Each of us humans are bound to this world through life, yet we can grasp beyond with our creativity and imagination - we can craft that which does not yet exist, be it idea, object, or location (through coitus, new individuals as well). We can choose freely what it is we create, and we can choose just as freely to create nothing and remain planted to the soil both of body and mind. What choose you?

[the_PC_apeman]

What is this “free will” of which you speak? Where is it and where does it come from? Are humans unique in having free will or do animals, insects, trees, and water have it too? How could we differentiate the results of free will from randomness?

[QuickSilver]

@Gus_R

What choose you?

I think I’ll have the chicken. I hear that’s good today.

[Revenant_Threshold]

What exactly does this have to do with spiritualism? You seem to be ordering us to do what we want with our lives, but I don’t where you’ve shown this to be something spiritually based.

[Sage_Rat]

Viva la revolution!

[Sapo]

leave the pamphlet by the door, I will pick it up in a minute. Thanks.

[SentientMeat]

Gus, I will echo friend apeman. What is “free will”?

Is it the nondeterministic random element of cognition, such that a dice has “free will” over what face it shows?

Or is it the deterministic calculation element, as in the calculator’s “free will” to show the same output given the same input every time?

If you answer “neither”, and human cognition incorporates both such elements, why bother positing a third element?

[Der_Trihs]

@Gus_R

To those of you who don’t believe in volition, are you to say that you are not responsible for your life? Do you honestly believe you are nothing but a product of environment? That the circumstances of your life are not your own doing?

Environment, genes, and chance.

@Gus_R

What childishness is it to blame your indecision on fate, on parents, on upbringing, on government, on the world, on a god?

I can disbelieve in free will and still be decisive.

@Gus_R

What selfishness is it to continue living and feeding upon the world, while blaming it for your problems?

Since the alternative to living in the world is death, is that your recommendation ?

@Gus_R

Are you too blind and frightened to understand and work within the reality that you are a free being, able to choose how your life plays out? Are you too frightened to accept responsibility for your troubles?

Nope, I just believe the world is bigger than I am. Do you really think that someone in the middle of a war or a depression ( for example ) can make all his problems go away by sheer will ?

@Gus_R

So you have a job you dislike? Instead of complaining about the job, find another one. Well, you might say: But I need this job to support my family! Well, fuck you. You decided to partake in actions that led to a family - if atop this you chose a career to support them, you are living YOUR choices…not a god’s, not fate’s, nothing but your own choices.

Ah, I can feel your compassion from here. You seem an advocate of sociopathy, not free will or “spirituality”.

@Gus_R

So, you have children, and despite your aggrivation with how you were raised, it’s ‘all you know’. Well, fool, awaken yourself to something called creativity - how do you suppose inventions came about? By working only with ‘all they knew’? Use your fucking head to examine needs and wants of your children and yourself - you don’t have to follow any footsteps, you are free to walk your own path.

What ? :dubious:

@Gus_R

Of what pathetic mental construct are you incapable of realizing you are a spiritual being, capable of rising above environment? Have you not read, heard, and witnessed millions of people overcoming their environment through determined will? Slaves born into that life, escaping; povert men and women, enriching; ignorant folk, educating; stranded souls, navigating…what more will it take for you to accept your ability to rise beyond the physical realm and create a spiritual tool of your own in order to conquer all the troubles in your life?

Superhuman powers. No, I am not a “spiritual being, capable of rising above environment”; no one is. i’m flesh and blood, like everyone else. I have limits, and no amount of effort will let me exceed those limits. No one can “rise beyond the physical realm”, and there’s no such thing as a “spiritual tool”.

@Gus_R

We can choose freely what it is we create, and we can choose just as freely to create nothing and remain planted to the soil both of body and mind. What choose you?

Meh. I think I’ll choose to play some City of Heros.

[the_PC_apeman]

SentientMeat, my delight in your generosity is exceeded only by that in seeing your posts in GD again.

[Alan_Smithee]

Oh, hey, SentientMeat! Welcome back!

It was predestined that you would return to us! Or else it was the random collapse of probability functions.

Yup, one of those.

[Bryan_Ekers]

@Gus_R

Enslavement to their environment.

Well, the environment at the very least demands respect since it’s full of things that can kill you.

[Staggerlee]

@Gus_R

Of what pathetic mental construct are you incapable of realizing you are a spiritual being, capable of rising above environment? Have you not read, heard, and witnessed millions of people overcoming their environment through determined will? Slaves born into that life, escaping; povert men and women, enriching; ignorant folk, educating; stranded souls, navigating…what more will it take for you to accept your ability to rise beyond the physical realm and create a spiritual tool of your own in order to conquer all the troubles in your life?

This sounds like the arrogant ramblings of someone fairly well-provided-for who has read Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, or some such mush, and consequently believes that suffering oppression, poverty or anything less than a free-wheeling satisfactory life is just a bad choice. ‘Rise beyond the physical realm’? There is not the opportunity available for everyone, nor the limitless potential in everyone to escape their situation.

Maybe if spiritualists of every sort spent a little less time looking forward to transcending this dirty world, and a bit more time trying to clean things up by furthering social equality…oh what’s the point…

[Contrapuntal]

@Gus_R

Are you too blind and frightened to understand and work within the reality that you are a free being, able to choose how your life plays out? Are you too frightened to accept responsibility for your troubles?

So that two year old baby who was born to a junkie mother, abused both sexually, and otherwise, who dies after being shaken by some random boyfriend of the week, just made some poor life choices?

The tens thousands who suffer daily from the effects of genocidal governments should just buck up and look on the bright side?

The millions of AIDS orphans in Africa just need a little career counseling?

Bah!

[Crotalus]

[Colonel Frank Slade]Oh Christ, they sent me a moron![/Colonel Frank Slade]

[kanicbird]

My view on the matter of free will, is that we are to use that to find out if we want to be with God or not. So yes we have a choice of how we wish to use free will.

For enslaving oneself, in a way, yes, but we get to decide who our master is.

[El_Kabong]

Well, I know we’ve got “free will” out on the table, but when we’re done with that, could someone explain what the heck “spirit” is? Aside from a moderately popular band from the late '60s, that is.

[aclubs]

“Spirit” is also something you put in “mixer” to make “cocktail.”

[Gus_R]

@SentientMeat

Gus, I will echo friend apeman. What is “free will”?

Is it the nondeterministic random element of cognition, such that a dice has “free will” over what face it shows?

Or is it the deterministic calculation element, as in the calculator’s “free will” to show the same output given the same input every time?

If you answer “neither”, and human cognition incorporates both such elements, why bother positing a third element?

It’s the ability of a cognitive mind to create new faces; the ability of the cognitive mind to completely absorb the input and then entirely ignore it when the output is decided - all by the spiritual tools crafted and utilized at will.

The two elements you posited are severely limited forms of thought - they both remind me of mental disorders in which the individual suffering the disorder has no control over their reaction to environment - some major ones related to this are bipolarity and split personality; the individual makes no spiritual effort to control themself, thus they’re left as a product of environment - swaying from mood to mood, persona to persona, as their input changes from one trigger stimuli to another.

[Gus_R]

@Der Trihs

Environment, genes, and chance.

Pathetic. So, if you kill someone, you’re a rotten egg with shitty genes and a streak of bad luck? Fuck you. You chose to kill someone. YOU are responsible for your existence; not your upbringing or social arena, not your genetics (this does contribute to diseases, mind you), nor luck. You choose what fears you overcome, what paths are open and closed, what choices are valid to you.

You’ve chosen to remain fearful of your responsibility, closing off paths that don’t coincide with your constructed belief of determination, invalidating an entire throng of completely useful options…including the option to craft an entirely new set of options.

@Der Trihs

I can disbelieve in free will and still be decisive.

No, YOU can’t, but fate can - if you have no free will, then every last ‘decision’ you make is nothing but a reaction, a forced production of the initiation of the Universe.

@Der Trihs

Since the alternative to living in the world is death, is that your recommendation ?

The alternative, is to quit making shitty choices. Use the brain you were born with to craft and examine new choices; to examine and narrow down choices; and to choose the best option available or created.

@Der Trihs

Nope, I just believe the world is bigger than I am. Do you really think that someone in the middle of a war or a depression ( for example ) can make all his problems go away by sheer will ?

Yes. War: Suicide for immediate relief - fighting; whether he dies or win, his problem is gone; backstabbing, quickly ends a battle and can shift entire wars towards a quicker end. I’m sure there are more available options here…

Depression: You mean fiscal or emotional?

@Der Trihs

Ah, I can feel your compassion from here. You seem an advocate of sociopathy, not free will or “spirituality”.

I’m an advocate of an open mind - sociopathy is certainly an option available, but again, it is arrived at through freely crafted and utilized spiritual tools.

@Der Trihs

What ? :dubious:

A half assed argument against environmental control…meant for nothing but to get a ball rolling. Probably failed though, heh.

@Der Trihs

Superhuman powers. No, I am not a “spiritual being, capable of rising above environment”; no one is. i’m flesh and blood, like everyone else. I have limits, and no amount of effort will let me exceed those limits. No one can “rise beyond the physical realm”, and there’s no such thing as a “spiritual tool”.

Well then, have fun with your life of reaction and distraction from truth.

Maybe something that can help: Science, the pursuit of knowledge, is based upon a clear linear progression by logical switches. There are possibilities and probabilities within science, with the only certainties being conditionary ‘if-thens’.

Life, for humanity at least, is based upon a web of non-linear, non-progressive, illogical nodes that have no necessary connection with any other node. The only time any sort of pattern is apparent in life, is when an individual limits themself to living a pattern by submitting to their physical being.

You’re free to remain reactive and nothing more; it’s clear that you are comfortable being a portion of what you are.

[Revenant_Threshold]

@Gus_R

Life, for humanity at least, is based upon a web of non-linear, non-progressive, illogical nodes that have no necessary connection with any other node. The only time any sort of pattern is apparent in life, is when an individual limits themself to living a pattern by submitting to their physical being.

You claim you do not submit to your physical being.

In this thread, you’ve posed an argument, and in response to the disagreement of others you have posted similarly-worded objections. Sounds like a pattern to me.