Karl

Damn how did you know ! Lightbulb moment ! It's all true why did I ever doubt it :-)

Your idea of 'rights' appears very fluid. Perhaps that's what happens when you have no grip on reality because you believe life is a dream ? Seems like it could be. I must be like a nightmare in your dream.

At the risk of stirring the hornets nest further. Is life your dream or theirs ? If you can't state that something is true, if you believe life is all a dream. What's true for you is then not true for them. Even if I believed your assertion, by implication you cannot believe it yourself as you have determined it is not reality.

I know very little about Daoism and quite a lot about Buddhism. I have shown nothing but respect to the people here, that I disagree with you is not a lack of respect. Indeed, it should present you with no issues what so ever instead of using 'heretic' as an argument. Buddhism is about knowing the truth, being enlightened. I'm sure there are no religions that refute the idea the truth is important. How do I 'prevent discussions'. Do I threaten you with a gun, put you in a cell or gag you ? No. I simply disagreed with you that's all and presented a reasoned argument as to why. If you can't cope with that It should make you question yourself, not go blaming me. Don't read the posts, skip on. You can even put me on your ignore list. I'm sure others have.

Provide the proof. There are mass graves all over the world in which there are rotted bodies and skeletons. Do you deny that they exist ? What do you ascribe the rainbow light and disappearing body too ?

Nihlism isn't about human death Ralis. Nihlism is the negation of life not the reality of death. I question what you are doing continually complaining about me instead of answering the posts. It is the forum equivalent of stalking. The question here was about life being a dream. See if you can answer that.

The only matrix/dream is the one the pseudo scientist have chosen to fall into.

This is Christine Largade - Osbournes mate who he worked to promote to the IMF-the same Christine Lagarde who is currently to attend court on a 400 million euro fraud case she has been alleged to have participated in. George needed an endorsement from his pal. A friend in need is a friend indeed.

Ok, what am I thinking ?

The lack of conviction to apply the mind by the use of reason and logic to discover the truth. What you do not yet know, you do yet know. What you cannot know, you cannot know. Yet you already have concepts and definitions of concepts. It's possible to make a logical analysis of those conceptual integrations if you choose to. Ignorance is to refuse to engage ones own conceptions and to mark everything you cannot understand as magical. It is evasion and, if there was ever a sin, that would be it. Buddah did not say to question everything that you are told, but to question everything that you believe. If all you can come up with is magic, myth or some pseudo science with no factual basis then you are refusing to dispel ignorance, you are welcoming it.

Nope, I know you wish to believe this, but life is life and death is death. There is no waking up. Once we are gone we cease to exist in every way except the lifeless corpse that remains. That's not to say I like the idea of death, most certainly I don't and won't come to terms with it until life itself has become a painful burden, or I wink out without any awareness. It's difficult to come to terms with death because we choose life, we aren't animals and so we must gain knowledge to survive and do so volitionally. To contemplate the end of all that work, effort and values which is no longer volitional is hard/next to impossible to accept. However, it is that fear of extinction that drives us to do all we do. If we were ever lasting robots without need of food, water, love or shelter, then we would not do anything. There would be no requirement to try and survive, it would be a given, so no need to accumulate any knowledge or perform any action. Life would be a featureless plane of existence without soul. So, we must accept the end for the joy we can grab out of life. Live it now and to the full.

There is no telepathy, but, I will have the metaphorical kettle on for when you reach that conclusion your self.

Let's not get hung up on Aristotlian logic which has become some kind of bette noir for you. I cannot define that which has no existence. It's pointless to begin to try. I can define only concepts in relation to existent reality. If I'm unable to define the concept I hold, then something is wrong. It's often the case that I believe I have defined a concept only to discover at a later stage that it is entirely foggy. That's one of the things I enjoy doing-discovering what I thought I had correctly integrated and then tearing it apart like a doughnut and putting it right. I can define a dream as an altered state of consciousness. There are many. We have a plethora of alternate states of consciousness, but we should know when we are actively conscious and directly perceiving reality. If we are not, then we can't be sure of anything. Whilst this is a good defence against bad situations, it isn't permanent. We still have to get up, eat, go to the toilet, find food, mend the leaking roof, build the fire. We can avoid and evade, but we cannot put off the inevitable. It will come to you no matter how deeply you hug your pillow, squeeze shut your eyes on pull that blanket over your head. Learn to love it.

What makes you think I haven't had these same hallucinations ? I most certainly have. Talked to God, SRM, grass and trees. Got inside people. Visited new universes, met strange creatures that were half male/half female. Lived in a crystal dome as big as a city in which light beings played and danced, been out of my body looking down on it. Oh hell, I've had most of these things at one time or another, but they were just figments of my mind. Even in AYP they were referred to as 'scenery' on the way to enlightenment. Avoiding reality seems like a good idea, but you can't escape it. If I don't ruin your party, then some other part of reality will do it far more intensely. Better to have someone gently shake you awake than discover a block of flats has collapsed on top of you. I might even bring you a cup of tea once you open your eyes :-)

Very easy. It's lucid dreaming I've done that from childhood. This doesn't translate to reality. It is conceptual only.

No politician fits into the category of productive. Their entire lives are built on obtaining value through other men, not by productivity. Jury is out on Trump, he utilised political pull for most of his wealth from what I understand. Everyone has personal gain. I care for my wife and she does for me. It's a mutually beneficial relationship in which we gain value. If you help your next door neighbour with her shopping you should ask why ? If it is because you get a sense of joy out of the action then that is good. If you do it to gain a value you did not earn by getting in her good books, or looking good to your neighbours then this is not a good. The only good is to serve the self, but to do so ethically and morally. This is rational selfishness. Serving society is slavery/sacrifice. If you do what is good by rational selfishness then society will benefit as a result of your work, but that should not be the aim. The result of serving society resulted in Stalinism. It is anti-life. All sacrifice by implication is anti-life. So, duty, sacrifice, common good or any of those murderous epithets should be discouraged. Do charitable things, be kind, be generous of material and spirit to those who deserve it, who agree and join with your ethical/moral values because it gives you happiness to lift those who can contribute to life. Don't give to despots, thieves, murderers, fraudsters, the corrupt, lazy or otherwise devoid of a moral code or you will be speeding your demise and those of the good.

You asked the question and I answered. It isn't trolling just because I disagree with you. I have stayed completely on topic. Your answer is that 'I'm deeply asleep'. What the heck sort of discussion is this ? It's in general, so I assume you expect a wider variation of view, not just those that confirm your bias.

No implications follow because reality and dream are oxymorons. I know reality directly, I cannot say how it is possible to know it less or more. A table is a table, I cannot know better or less well that it is what it is. So, to say reality is like a dream is like saying a table is not a table. Same old subjectivism, different kind of example.

A dream is a dream, reality is reality. The implications are that those who think reality is a dream are confused. Go to sleep, have a dream, you know it's a dream because you wake up and say 'I just had a dream'. If you wake up and think your dream was reality and reality is a dream you can test it. The things you do in a dream-flying, falling etc- try doing this when you are awake. Try leaping into the air and see how far you get :-)

Your 'science' isn't even magic, it isn't anything. You say the Sun is conscious and yet this is illogical, as is your assertion consciousness can exist without perception. However you persist in your erroneous delusion because you heard a voice in your head that you believe was the Sun. I can tell you the voice in your head was yours and yours alone. You manufactured a perceptual error, there has never been a form of ESP, intrincisism, or divine revelation despite numerous scientific experiments. We can dust that off as false. I don't mean this to be cruel, I think it's important that you come to terms with the error you have made before it gets compounded leading to something more unpleasant. However, as always, the choice is quite clearly yours.

It's another form of acumen. It's also a practical form in a similar sense to an innovator. They produce something useful and profit in some way from the productive value that others place on the product. All productive creators gain by their production in the sense of self esteem, if not by direct profit. There is a lot of merit applied to those who are second handers or non productive. The Royal family being a good example, but there are numerous politicians such as Bevan who are seen as doing 'good works' and yet they do nothing at all. They receive payment regardless of their value and their work is entirely based on the efforts of the productive to finance their 'good works'. So, perhaps we can say that very often the wrong people get praised by others people, but equally demand that kind of praise, where as, the independently productive derives satisfaction out of his work and financial reward is given as an exchange for value and not as a gift.

I wouldn't know and I haven't given much thought to it. There is great irrationality in today's world which tends to substitute emotion for reason. As such, people's values, morals and ethics tend to be corrupted. It means they make greater error in judgement (valuation) so your assertion might well be correct in a certain context. It's true that people generally do not see entrepreneurial business people as having much value, which is why they continually attempt to bring them down. The hatred of the good for being the good. Acts of kindness are difficult to assess. Faux Altruists such as Bob Geldof have likely done more harm than good, as is the case with foreign aid.

I'm going to make mine a lot more messy before returning it. I'm not suggesting a dirty protest by the way ;-) I'm stripping my brakes down and replacing the seals, so it proved a good mat to place the Pistons and seal lubricant. So, it will be a bit mucky by the time it goes into an envelope.

Rand suggests that concept formation is mathematical. That we integrate and differentiate quantities would suggest a strong connection. "Perceptual awareness is arithmetic, but conceptual awareness is the algebra of cognition" Our mental processes consist of retaining the characteristics but omitting the measurements. So that it must exist in some quantity, but may exist in any quantity. Measurement is the perceptual concretisation. So, we see a tree full of apples and omit the number. Then we can concretise it by measurement. We do the same thing with an equation. The symbols stand for some value, but stand for any value. When we plug in the numbers we move from conceptual to concrete reality.

Humans who are ignorant are not happy. The 'happy fool' is a delusion in the same sense as Father Christmas. To correctly understand this is to realise that man uses reason to survive. If he makes substantial errors then he risks his life and therefore his happiness. A fool who discovers he is a fool is unhappy. The onlookers who see the happy fool are not yet cognisant of the misery the fool will endure when he realises his mistake. The 'happy fool' is therefore an impossibility unless the man is devoid of the faculty of reason which would mean a serious mental disability. Someone devoid of reason is not a 'fool' but the mental equivalent of an animal at best. Happiness would mean nothing at all beyond a sensation of pleasure to someone in that position. It is reason which allows the concept of happiness to be interpreted. Of course, the fool who makes a mistake and does not yet know it can be happy with the irrational decision, right up to the point he discovers he was wrong. Gamblers are a prime example of irrational behaviour. Even though they realise they cannot beat the system, they always believe they are just one throw of the dice from financial abundance. The result is the seeming necessity of laws to prevent the irrational from carrying out irrational activity.