Equality -- how can anyone believe this?

[fallot]

It can't be that difficult to establish a distinction between the purposeful toward some quality value, thus perhaps introducing something meaningful, and purposeless, which because some quality is never introduced, is effectively at best non-existence. Assigning meaning to this or that is not itself meaningless because quality and the lack thereof, as evaluations, are definite.

"It can't be that difficult" is not a rational, empirical view. You are ascribing arbitrary value. Taking something to its "logical" (subjectively!) extension is one thing, empirical observation is another. One is confirmable, the other not (even if it is reasoned, apparently "logical"). The only logic is what exists. Reason itself is bounded by reality. You can have your view, but you cannot claim its absolute ascendancy by reason in the absence of sufficient "true" knowledge. Your only real mean is violence. This is the logical extension of this view; and hence why the talk about liberalism destroying society grates on some of us I hope (the irony of it). Where is our error with regards to empiricism? Is there one? Is your point of view truly resolved through reason or through falling in love with reason?

[§Transcix]

It can't be that difficult to establish a distinction between the purposeful toward some quality value, thus perhaps introducing something meaningful, and purposeless, which because some quality is never introduced, is effectively at best non-existence. Assigning meaning to this or that is not itself meaningless because quality and the lack thereof, as evaluations, are definite.

Definite according to what? All your beliefs, your anti-diversity stance, your nihilist philosophy, none of it relates back to any absolute reference point, it only relates back to you. Why do you do it, any of it, why do you get up in the morning? To feel good? Or to be right, to do the right thing? Again, to do the right thing because it feels good to you. It brings you pleasure, contentment, or some positive emotion we don't exactly have a word for. You wouldn't give blood, sweat and tears every grueling day for a cause that didn't benefit you personally, that didn't compensate for that blood, sweat and tears. Or maybe you would, but I ask you: Why, on what grounds? On the grounds you yourself establish? Why do you establish those principles? Again, because of something prior that you yourself thought or felt.

I live for myself, and it gives me pleasure to also live for others, to an extent. I believe it's significantly a part of human nature. Religious people can be 'altruistic' in the weird selfless sense of the word, but they've got a bunch of other stuff going on in their heads, a God judging them, a hell to avoid in the afterlife, and rules and regulations so ingrained into the fabric of their being sometimes they truly don't think twice about doing their moral 'duty'.

There's something else I mean to get at, this is hardly the whole picture, however this is complicate subject matter and I need to do some things for school... I'm pretty tired... I'm hoping you'll identify the rough edges of my reply, so I will be able to expand (knowing precisely how to expand considering the angle from which you approached the rough edges; thank you the medium of discussion forum for allowing replies after every few paragraphs rather than after every whole article or book, it can be much more efficient!).

[scourge]

You are ascribing arbitrary value. Taking something to its "logical" (subjectively!) extension is one thing, empirical observation is another. One is confirmable, the other not (even if it is reasoned, apparently "logical").

Given the abundance of empirical standards for reference, your accusations are incorrect.

The only logic is what exists. Reason itself is bounded by reality. You can have your view, but you cannot claim its absolute ascendancy by reason in the absence of sufficient "true" knowledge.

I don't see where this was stated.

Your only real mean is violence.

You mean will to reference some set of standards from which to derive value and endeavor toward? I suppose that's "violence", just as personal preference, and I see you presume to know mine intimately and personally (are we both arbitrating AND projecting now or just utilizing a crystal ball?):

All your beliefs, your anti-diversity stance, your nihilist philosophy, none of it relates back to any absolute reference point, it only relates back to you.

constitute "hatred" or other value-loaded terminology from the liberal lexicon.

This is the logical extension of this view; and hence why the talk about liberalism destroying society grates on some of us I hope (the irony of it).

The observable effects of liberalism on societies as stated have all been empirical, in many cases historically tested, and thus far a gradually growing consensus attained among select authorities in assorted fields of the relevant subjects addressed. Dermitologists will act with urgency when they detect a little brown spot or two. We have oozing lesions on our society-body.

[crow]

Liberalism:
A loose cannon.
A delusion that creates an irresistible urge to wreck one's life-support-system, before considering what one will use in its place.
A swan-dive of assumption, into an empty swimming-pool.
A get-out-jail-free card.
An imaginary way of turning lead into gold.
A license to bully, without needing any balls.
A pox on all our houses.
Etc.

[Conservationist]

All your beliefs, your anti-diversity stance, your nihilist philosophy, none of it relates back to any absolute reference point, it only relates back to you.

This is a generic insult, not an argument.

[crow]

There is a lot of this "argument" stuff mentioned in forums.
When somebody comments, it is a comment, not an argument.
Often, one is challenged to "back up what they say" or to "provide proof".
How did people get to the point where everything they say is considered an argument that requires backing-up?

Fortunately not everybody behaves like this.
There are those who comment, and allow others to comment, without attempting to control, wreck, ridicule and belittle.
That's communication, as opposed to weakling-warfare.

If counter-equality involves constantly trashing everybody else in order to dominate in one's own imagination, then I hope equality wins out.
Bad as it is, it seems better than the alternative.

[Time Curator 23]

All your beliefs, your anti-diversity stance, your nihilist philosophy, none of it relates back to any absolute reference point, it only relates back to you.

I could be wrong here, but the way I see it:

True, the anti-diversity stance does not have an absolute reference point -- but it does have rather solid empirical (scientific) and semi-empirical (historical) reference points.

The nihilist philosophy, on the other hand, does have an absolute (logical) reference point. Logic can't be refuted -- ever. That is what makes it absolute.

The nihilist philosophy is not a belief. It is completely beyond all beliefs. It is about what is ultimately real, not what is believed to be real.

Finally, is your statement (about the beliefs, anti-diversity stance, and nihilist philosophy being unrelated to any absolute reference point) a mere belief of yours, or something with an absolute reference point?

[crow]

Logic can't be refuted -- ever. That is what makes it absolute.

Logic depends entirely upon all parties agreeing to a framework of reference.
It can not exist, at all, by itself.
This is why logic is futile against leftists, for example.
Not being able to identify what is real, and what is not, logic has absolutely no meaning.

[scourge]

From where or what do the parties in question derive this framework for reference? From an objective absolute. This is why the function of logic exists independently of and operates consistently for any people utilizing it for a moment.

[crow]

There is no objective absolute.
Nothing is real until made so. It is made so by adding yourself, to it.
That is why arguments so often go nowhere: the phenomenon each party knows as reality, differs.
Logic only works where it is agreed upon.
Which is why it so often does not work.
Do you notice how few people agree, on anything?
They inhabit different realities.

[analrapist]

There is one reality, which is reality itself. Individuals can choose not to believe in it and they will find it incomprehensible. But it always wins in the end.

[crow]

There may, or may not be, one reality, that is reality, but if there are those that do not recognize it, as such, then for them, that reality does not exist.
Therefore, to use 'logic', based upon that reality, is an exercise doomed to fail.
Reality is only reality if it can be detected.
It may exist, regardless, but may as well not exist, if it can not be detected.
There is always a dose of truth in the vacuous proclamations of the leftist.
But since the leftist, by his nature, does not understand that truth, it may as well not exist.

We like to demand that 'reality' be recognized, as such, by all.
This is the conservative longing for order amid the chaos.
But who will define 'reality'?
It is different for everyone.

[analrapist]

I don't agree but that is because reality is not different, only perceived differently. I will agree that talking about "reality" to many people is a waste of time as they have no idea what you're talking about. The smarter a person is, the more he or she understands of reality. Dumber people will never get it... better to talk about Jesus or civil rights.

[crow]

Well, yes and no.
The smarter a person is, the more that person depends upon 'smartness' to define reality.
Mileage may vary.
Particle Physics notes, to its bewilderment, that reality changes, depending upon the one observing it.
Consider that. What does that mean???
It suggests that there is no absolute, and that everything, down to sub-atomic particles, and maybe beyond, is infinitely adaptable and variable.
This scares the crap out of some, but to me, it verifies the wonder inherent in the whole.

[Ratatosk]

Through the lens of nihilism we understand that like everything else, human beings lack inherent meaning or value. If inherent human value is the source of human equality in the abstract, then equality in the abstract itself is a worthless concept. Therefore, only our inequities, by the variant values we may develop during the course of our lives, if any, are real. A measure of man's worth is not the fact of his existence but instead what he makes of it.

I disagree. If meaningfulness is a false concept to begin with, then saying humans lack it is as relevant as saying that humans lack purple elephant feathers. In my view to latch onto the notion of meaningfulness, even if "by the variant values we may develop during the course of our lives" as you put it, is to latch onto a false concept. If meaningfulness can be tossed out the window, then what remains? When the mind and its equations are removed from the picture, we still feel emotions, our heart still speaks to us.

One can rightly pursue meaningfulness as much as one can remove their eyes from their sockets and rotate 180 degrees to look back on themselves, or that is to say, affirmation towards seeking meaningfulness is affirmation that meaningfulness is not yet acquired, yet meaningfulness pertains to that which by definition is the most fundamental and inherent of all, that which, well, 'gives things meaning'. If we are free of motives which encourage us to pursue the myth of meaningfulness, then we are free to operate according to our heart's content, without egocentric concern to elevate our self-concepts.

The ego is not based on evil, as if the flaw were a matter of morality in conflict with heart, rather it is based on the illusion that it is possible to make comparisons between people or things on the level of meaningfulness or value. And the heart, for its part, comes in many varieties, to oversimplify slightly--shiny ones, dark ones, fiery ones, etc.

To do something "because you can" is false reasoning, neglecting the reason why you chose that course of action over another. It points to the truth--when all possibilities are open to you then experience itself dictates your path organically, you just do it--yet it takes root in an intellectual reaction of fear or anger towards this choicelessness of 'ISness', resulting in a defiant validation of the ego. Incidentally, operating this way closely mimics the path of the fiery heart, and the two are often confused.

The left-hand path master neither re-makes himself every moment as if choosing among infinite possibility, nor is he shackled by the chain reactions of his past. The key is to recognize you cannot be shackled by those chain reactions because you are precisely them, and to thus work to ensure the various patterns and processes therein are not mutually-contradictory but in perfect coherence and cohesiveness. Where contradictions are found, then the heart may choose which way to go, and perhaps it is inevitable which way it will pick.

However to think it would be a rather dry and un-unique script would be to severely underestimate the breadth of permutations possible in the area of sentient consciousness. Freedom of will is a matter of who's will? Yours. Thus to use it as justification to seek out your will, this seeking is your will. If an infinitely powerful calculating machine could measure every single facet of your consciousness, as well as all of surrounding reality and all possible circumstances you could encounter, then yes it could indeed predict all your next moves. But no such machine exists, nor does any such god exist, the future is truly unknown (though in the great war the perverse lie of 'destiny' is frequently used to enslave). You have it within you to defeat any foe, any would-be deity, because you can still surprise them, and surprise yourself, this is the extent of your uniqueness and your free will, however it requires outside-of-the-box thinking, not a reactionary position against the insignificant absence of choice which indeed grants you freedom through ISness.

Ah, the chains of the past. If you manage to break these with some success, and with some success in calming compulsory desires, leads to a long cold lonely place. The only things you have left are what you will not or cannot throw away.

If they are enough for you they become a path back to where you started, just one level higher.

Otherwise, you may see your things as gifts for the world, to push back the darkness or fix a broken space.

And if you throw everything away, what then? That is to be truly outside, an instance of will embodied yet having no will. If this is possible I don't know what to call it other than using terms barely grasped from Eastern philosophies.

The only starting point we have is: here, now. Everything else is due to local fluctuation.

Thanks for the resonance Transcix.