Karl

:-)

"I'll never find another you" "I'll will beg, steal or borrow" Old seekers and new seekers. So, 2 kinds.

Yet you ponder it as it isn't don't you ? That all things aren't real. The universe is as we sense it. It is real. We are real.

The universe has an immensity of things to discover and understand. It is humanity in number that works together to make these discoveries. Its everyone working as an individual that allows this to happen. Argumentation is in fact a process of mental intercourse entirely necessary to push forward our greater knowledge, just as sexual intercourse creates stronger human diversity. We are the universe discovering itself by passing around the sperm and egg of ideas through communication. Our arguments fertilise those we communicate with, but we are both donor and recipient. Just as we trade sperm and eggs, so do we trade the handiwork of our own physical production in goods and services, thus do we trade our ideas and thoughts. Therefore there are as many types of seeker as there are people on the planet.

What is the aim of the Nihlist that remains alive ? Anhilation. It is the maggot in everything, it wants to ruin everything. It will support those who use force to get their own way in an active sense. Burn everything is the Nihlist credo.

You want to get jiggy about sounds ? Frequencies and amplitudes, resonance and harmonics. Then you should know that the universe is composed of it. That 'I' is part an parcel of that resonance taken form as word. That every bit of material including your body and mind are composed of the same. Every sense works with frequency and amplitude. A structure feels smooth or rough as you pass a finger over it and feel the number and depth of the surface, a noise is high pitched/low pitched, red shift, colour and all light is frequency. Even food and smells have frequency and amplitude. A Nihlist is the worst kind. It is an abdication of life itself. It is the attitude that nothing matters, that everything is apathy. A Nihlist is a drain, a useless appendage like a rotting limb. It is better that a Nihlist has the courage of their own convictions and ends their own lives as to hang around infecting everybody else's. However, they never have the courage of their convictions and so they are never true nihilists and instead use their philosophy in far more damaging ways. They are happy to support tyrants and dictators.

My view is not materialistic as I have already confirmed. I do not believe that everything is material. Thoughts exist for the thinker of those thoughts. They have neither dimension nor coordinates yet they exist never the less. A reference to authority is bad argumentation.

You are conscious of pain. You are I. It is the same thing. Conscious is neither learned nor assumed it is axiomatic. There is no 'knowing' I. You are I. You feel emotions and sensations.

Existence exists.

You know the live/dead cat was a refutation of quantum theory ? Schrodinger was being sarcastic.

They exist regardless of my ability to experience them. Reality is real. Existence exists and only existence exists.

It's a monist philosophy, as is idealism. One states everything is material, the other that nothing is material. These are the classic definitions of these two philosophies which are somewhat twisted by modern interpretations in a way that no doubt will please idealists :-)

I must add a short book review to add perspective. Perkins book is recommended in libertarian circles but should be considered problematical due to his faulty theory and misunderstanding of capitalism. https://mises.org/library/hit-man-confesses

The materialist says that everything is something in the sense of a mechanical toy. Even thought and emotion are mechanical artifacts. Do you believe it is our ability to reason which produces your greatest suffering ?

the Nihlist says it's nothing, the idealist says it is both. Surely it's time to grow out of these pre Socratic philosophies ?

Your purpose is your own satisfaction of wants and needs-ultimately it is your own happiness. If you are hungry then you must eat, if you are tired then sleep, if you are cold then warmth, if you are lonely then people. Each need requires action. Even inaction is action. You choose one thing over another thing and this is the opportunity cost of that action. You are writing here because it is the action that gives you the greatest positive improvement. Even a self destructive action requires a positive intent.

Because historically nihilists have always proved destructive. You have to be real in order to deny reality. If you weren't real then you would exist. Maybe you think you are something that you aren't, but that is mistaken thinking and not non-existence. As you pointed out, if you keep asking how do you know you don't exist then you must continually rely on existence to prove that you don't. If you go down the neti neti route you will find yourself with a loss of purpose.

And there in lies the problem 'reductio et babbling'. You are reduced to babbling incoherently in order to confirm non-existence because you are an existent being trying to prove a logical absurdity. If you are truly a Nihlist then you are a danger to yourself and everybody else, if you are just playing the role for the sake of experience then, in time you will grow out of it. If you don't, then you will waste your life. Things exist outside your conscious of them. A meteor exists and you exist regardless of your attempts to deny yourself an identity. If you do not exist then you can hardly offer up a meteor of proof of your argument. In effect you are agreeing that things exist outside your consciousness of them and then denying that you have any existence. That's clearly a conflict, which steers me to the view that you are playing with the role of a nihilistic person rather than actually being a Nihlist.

That the Chinese would have a vocabulary and language which mirrored their greater bureaucracy and societal position would make sense. I have seen some new age theories which look at the entire earth as right and left brain with the Is-ra-el representing the mid point. That seems fanciful, as, in reality, there isn't a left/right brain split of logic/emotion and the world itself is a free floating body which has no specific orientation. North/south/top/bottom are entirely human constructs-I have a world map which is upside down, but with all the countries labelled the right way up. Always gets a lot of comments from guests who take several glances without getting it. Some ask if it's an older map of how the world used to be and look extremely confused when I tell them it's a bang up to date modern map.

Your first argument is contradictory. Either something is or it isn't. Either you agree on the necessity of defining terms or you don't. Poetry is trying to describe in colourful words, the poets feelings. A feeling isn't part of a reasoned argument. That somebody 'feels' that a god exists has nothing to do with the reality of the existence of a deity. If you are going to use words to convey concepts, then they must be defined. They are the tools of comprehension. If you want to convey feelings then I can only attempt to empathise from similar types of experience, but I will never have your experience, or the poets experience. There is some merit in Christian morality, God has nothing to do with it as long as God remains undefined. You do not yet know why you are here, what good is it to ask why I am here ? You don't know what an open mind is, you have not defined growth. Think of a builder. Does he pick up random elements and then pile them up in a higgeldy piggeldy manner ? A builder must learn to discriminate, to throw away the poor elements from the sound, then he must precisely place them carefully in order that his construction will be sturdy. At present you are stuck in the random gathering stage and you have no clue to the construction process. Unless you know what you seek, you will be unable to discover it. If you are advocating definitions then you must adhere strictly to those principles, or your seeking will produce nothing useful. Eventually you may hit upon the path, but will have wasted an inordinate amount of time on trial and error in that approach. If you cannot define, then set aside the concept, perhaps one day it might be worth returning to, but for now an undefined concept is worse than useless as it jeopardises the entire construction by its indiscriminate integration. Closing oneself off is not caused by trying to understand something properly. It is not stagnation to evaluate and understand. It is not openness to integrate things that you haven't fully understood, that behaviour is mindless collecting and conscious ignorance. Don't confuse open mindedness for empty mindedness. Our education systems have taught us the latter, to accept what we are told because we have given away our authority to question. We were taught not to question but to accept and that acceptance would bring reward. That questioning could bring ridicule and shame.

How do you know that nothing made you use the word ?

The OP doesn't exist according to him. I was trying to see if he was playing or really believes his assertion. I have no time for nihilists. As he doesn't exist he should stop posting or asking further questions. Someone who doesn't believe they exist has no need to ask anything. There is little point in trying to communicate if you refuse to define the words that you are using. Reality is reality, existence exists. Quoting Aquinus is just another appeal to authority. You have invited mysticism into your life and thrown reason out.

"Even though 'I' wrote" "I have never felt identity" If there isn't I-dentity then what made you use the word ?

I'm absolutely familiar with knowing without conceptualising because that how I do most actions. That's because the conceptualisation so are held as gestalt packets. However, using those gestalt memories requires decisions to be made both prior and during their use. That's why I say that 'beyond mind' just means subconscious action and then there is no mysticism. There is also less thought (mind involvement ) if indecision is limited. The less complex our lives, the simpler becomes the thinking. Limiting attachment and the desires that go with the false self is all part of that. Again, there isn't any mysticism with that. Simplify life and simplify the mess of unproductive thought. Reason and logic are just part of the whole and are a means of identifying reality and reducing error. They are another good option for simplification as they prevent a mess of irrational thoughts clogging up the creative mind and allow an easier tune into our own moral code. The closer we stay to our moral codes the less friction there is. It's all part of the same thing, like a circle. Get one bit out of whack and it acts as the weakest link in the chain.

I'm acting in your play. You don't want to reason, you won't provide definitions so I can have any of these things on my own subjective terms. Reason/logic is in contradiction to rational materialism.