Karl

But my 'perspective' isn't a perspective. I'm not pretending to be something I'm promoting. Anyone can be like I am because they already are, it's their thinking, or non- thinking that is skewed. Do you grasp what I'm saying ? I discovered what was me, minus the evasion of what I thought was, or should be me. I saw that trying to be selfless was causing me to evade and then reality would intrude in my little quiet circle that had been created. You do offer your view as correct, please don't kid yourself, it's your philosophy and you can hardly pretend that it is divorced from you.

Steve you said this: "The Mahayana approach solves the problem of spiritual egoism and materialism through the teaching of Bodhicitta. The spiritual adept vows to achieve liberation specifically in order to liberate others. This is extremely sophisticated and beneficial on many levels. This is reinforced when the aspirant becomes an arhat and has direct contact with the nature of self and the direct experience of unconditional love. One cannot expect to liberate others from a position of ignorance and confusion therefore you must first cultivate and liberate yourself first. Not for selfish reasons but with the intention of continuing to work on behalf of other living creatures. If one liberates oneself for one's own sake only, that is a selfish act and the very nature of such an act is in direct conflict with the path as you point out." "Unconditional love" and you condemn a "selfish act" that is very clear. I'm not being presumptive, you havent implied it, you have said so specifically. I'm not twisting your words, you are preaching selflessness and Love without any 'I' in it. In the previous passage you mention that self liberation is ONLY for the purpose of liberating others. That one should not liberate themselves purely for the self. The church and dictators have been preaching this kind of thing for millennia. It is an impossibility, a state which man cannot reach and thus his failure will result in suffering from guilt from failure. I get the sense Roger knows this, but you are evading the truth by mixing it with notions of 'some sense of self' but with no specifics about how one can go from this to that except by some guru who tells you that it can be done. Your reply to me proves you are still trying, you haven't succeeded, but your tone is that of some adept. Why do you insist on a claim to know something is true, but yet your actions are proof that you haven't attained the state that you talk about with such alacrity ?

Use emotion free logical reasoning to solve the problem-that's a perfect answer.

That would be fantastic as we don't seem to be getting very far with our leaving.

Written by Deloitte and Douche :-) you know them don't you ?

You have no chase, it's apparent you are too apathetic to reach the starting line.

You made a statement and a refutation but failed to produce an argument. If you don't have one that fine, but playing Mr Tease is a might boring.

So neither altruism, nor charity. Fine by me.

I was naive enough to believe that people at least understood the situation was pretty dire. This is the problem of course, they actually have no understanding of why half the population voted for Trump.

You think the beggar should have a claim on your life ? Or that you shouldn't flip him a coin ?

You can't trust the labour reports, they are fictitious. So, better to look at productivity, interest rates and debt (both public and private). These give a far better picture. Remember that interest rates were rolled back in order to ' stimulate' the economy. The FED has stated that it is the jobs number that determines when they raise interest rates, but after 8 years the rate has risen only 0.25% nominally, due to inflation, this means interest rates have continued to decline. Productivity has fallen. If all these people were finding good paying jobs then productivity should have been increasing, therefore wages and tax incomes should have increased, but they haven't. The debt continues to increase, both public and private. We must also factor in the increase in population, when we are measuring employment, the numbers now, compared to the numbers 8 years ago should be greater, but they aren't. Population has increased but jobs haven't, therefore on that measure alone things are worse. Next look up the stats for older workers compared with younger who have entered the work force. It is the over 55s that have been forced out of retirement, perhaps because their pensions are now insufficient due to the destruction of their savings by forced low interest rates, but perhaps also because their kids have had to move back home after college because they can't find jobs paying sufficient for them to go solo. Finally look at the numbers of people first time home owners, this has fallen drastically as people don't have the cash, because they likely have no jobs, or jobs that don't pay well. The idea that the US has weathered the recession is not true at all. Simply put, the Government has printed money like a banana republic. This has created bubbles in assets and tech industries through stock market floatations. Stocks, bonds and the dollar are in a serious bubble. All that money filters down to baby sitters, gardeners, interior designers, cafes, restaurants and all the other services that surround bubble economics. The FED has failed to increase interest rates because it can't. Any uptick will pop the bubbles and plunge the economy into a tailspin. They can only kick the can down the road until one day the market will call a halt.

That isn't what altruism means Jetsun. It means 'selfless' and 'unconditional'. What you are talking about is individual acts of charity and kindness which is fine if that increases your own happiness then all power to you being free to choose and practice doing so. Equally, this means that others must be free to choose not to be charitable and to be equally happy with that decision. The difference here is that people who insist that charity is good for everyone and then attempt to force people to accept that claim as an absolute truth-strangely enough these are the same people who claim there are no absolutes. Neither can you claim 'everybody benefits' from a charitable act, you cannot know if anyone benefits. You van give a coin to a street beggar and they can go and spend it on alcohol or drugs. Certainly it cannot be claimed that pure altruism -unjudged action is any benefit, giving a gun to a murderer that is short of an implement to kill a victim requires judgement, but that altruist would not have a judgement, he must perceive need of another as the prime value in his life. Altruism isnt about flipping a coin at the street beggar, but that the street beggar has a claim on your life. I have never yet heard an cognisant argument that shows why that should be true. Steve is claiming that Roger must let go of his ego, his right to live his life and become a selfless ghost that cares not if he is happy, unhappy, alive or dead. That he is better as a man who takes no pleasure from charity, nor of kindness, who is effectively dead to the world like a rock that can be smashed into dust, chiseled into a statue, or placed as a headstone on a grave. This would be a man who would take a wife, not because he loved her values, but because she was a woman, any woman and he did not care for her, nor hate her, she would be nothing more than dust on the sole of a shoe and she should accept that as normal.

Not to forget racist, xenophobic, fascistic, sexist, mysogenist. She has expressed those views many times, but amazingly her supporters lack the ability to hear it.

You are simply preaching altruism, but do you ever ask why ? Why is it that you believe you should live your life for others, that you should sacrifice your happiness for their sakes ? What argument do you have to support that premise ?

Europe is a sanctuary continent in which its leaders and police force don't care who has arrived illegally.

Exactly. This was my first discovery, that whatever I thought I had managed to gain some distance from, so the necessity of gaining that distance became the goal and replaced the previous concern. When I had done that several many times it became clear that this path I was on did not change anything fundamentally, I simply swapped wine for water. objectivism posits rational selfishness. This is a selfishness which has a set of attached principles which must be independently chosen by each person. These virtues aren't random but should be chosen in the context of supporting your own life and this means respecting all other human lives as a result. It's important to understand the rational part is key, it isn't hedonism, nor is it grabbing power over others. For instance: honesty, integrity, productiveness, independence, justice and pride are a good beginning. Pride in this case is self esteem for keeping with those other virtues. However you can add others in any order as you see fit, but these a self supporting fundamental virtues. Use them to guide all life decisions. You can be both selfish and virtuous. Self esteem promotes confidence and effectiveness in difficult situations, or faced with tough decisions. If you are more effective and confident then you can be more loving and open. There is no longer a need to pretend to be someone, no need to fit in, nor conform in order for others to give you strokes and prestige. Negative criticism simply glances off like off a piece of granite.

There is a correction at the bottom of the article if you made it that far. Funny that the WaPo should be doubting statistics, ironic in fact. ;-)

I provided a link.

He was only interested in the rapists, robbers and criminals anyway as I understood it. He was building the wall to prevent any further uncontrolled immigration. It's the same as the Muslims. Out of context it sounded like he was preparing to expel all Muslims, but he was talking about stopping Muslims coming in until they had 'figured out what the hell is going on'.

You realise Obama has kicked out 3 million criminal illegal immigrants ? Trump isn't promising anything different except a wall, which he now says will be partly a fence-which it is now. However, I do wonder if he will continue to allow the Soros funded anti-Trump league continue their violence on streets and campuses across the USA. I expect that there will be a short hiatus to allow the violence to cease, followed by a Police clampdown and an FBI investigation of the organisations involved. https://www.ice.gov/removal-statistics Sent from my iPad

You are being blindsided by the system that tells you this is how it is. The polls should have confirmed this for you. The fact Trump was elected when everything was going so brilliantly should confirm that this is total bollocks. You can now be assured that the Government, it's staticians and media are lying to you. The USA is 20 trillion in debt and productivity is falling and inflation rising. Why do you think the Fed keeps jawboning about interest rate rises but does nothing except a tiny 25 basis points last December. If the economy was doing so well, then how come the interest rates aren't back to normal ? Come on dude start thinking, you are being conned. All those tech start ups are the results of low cost money subsidies, they are phantoms which will evaporate when the money stops flowing. The blacks were doing fine in the 50s they weren't shooting themselves to death, they had very strong family units a great work ethic and firm moral values. I don't know where you have been living, but do some research, find out, see what lies have been poured into your head. I'm not sure people are duped by Trump, I think they see him as 'not Hillary' as a change from the crap they have put up with under Obama/Bush/Clinton. If they had voted Clinton then they would have been equally duped by a corrupt woman who thinks she is entitled to be president because she has a vagina. I'm not going to list the horrors that are the Clintons and their pizza/spirit cooking friends that indulge in ritual cannibalism activities, child porn, rape and who knows what else.

I don't see it as a lesser of two evils, to me it is an inevitable corrolary of evading reality and thus being pragmatic relativists devoid of the requirement for principles. It's like the Bibles flood stories where God gets angry and visits the Godless immoral with destruction. Trump isn't the saviour, he is the result of evading reality. It could be said that the Democrats created him, but in turn the democrats were created by the people. Every civilisation that tries to evade reality eventually ends up under the rule of a vile dictatorship. As they say, all it takes is for good men to do nothing, to ignore what's going on, or to settle for some kind of compromise and evil will flourish. I don't know if Trump is the flood, but sure as day turns to night the dice are spinning. It is no longer if, but when. If people thought rationally they would realise that they are far better focusing on saving their souls than saving their lives. Hell can manifest in the middle of civilisations as it has done consistently, so it's better we defeat evil in ourselves and not support its proliferation.

That's why I regard existence and consciousness as an axiomatic couplet. In other words existence has eventually produced a consciousness of it. In a sense it is as much a mistake to give existence a conceptual label, without a conceptual consciousness that is able to label it. There is no 'out there' in the conceptual sense if no consciousness is there to percieve it, just as a consciousness devoid of existence is invalid. That's not to say existence is not primary, just that if there is no one around the witness it, then existence would be unexamined. A self creating universe of acting and interacting entities must be capable of a line of causality resulting in a form of creative entity that is something of a prime mover with the universe of laws. It can only be creative if it has motive propulsion and a purpose which is its basic survival. Eventually higher levels of life must form with greater capacities to grasp existence directly, then some kind of consciousness that can grasp it conceptually.

The whole thing is a lie, not just Trump, nor Clinton, it's the economy they told you was great and the education that was improving, the inflation that was low, the just wars, the evil Russia, that there are no genders, that everyone can be equal, that all inflation is good, that all immigration is good, that free speech is dangerous, that rights are priviliges and security means mass surveillance and the curtailing of Liberty. That if you wish it, that it can be and they can make it so. Reject it all. Think for yourselves, don't rely on Governments, be independently productive, stop trying to obtain values by force and substituting altruism for reality. This was always the inevitable outcome of an irrational, evasive and wilfully ignorant people. Eventually a Trump would come. Maybe this isn't yet the final iteration, perhaps a lot worse is yet to appear.

What will you say ? That Trump shouldn't have won, that he won fraudulently, that Clinton was cheated ? I'm saying to you that there is no point imagining a re-running of the election, it's been and gone and you need to accept the result of it. In what context are people 'living better than before' ? Tell that to the blacks living in ghettoes that are parading around with BLM flags, talk to the college graduates who can't get a good job or leave their parents basement, talk to the people that lost a well paying manual job in construction or engineering and are having to manage a couple of low paying part time jobs, tell it to the pensioners who have seen their savings destroyed by low interest rates and have had to return to the labour market to make ends meet, look at the decaying cities with broken factories, split families, crumbling roads and increased crime. America has seen very little progress and where it has occured it has been amongst the wealthy and corrupt. It's now harder to find a job, buy a house, get healthcare, get a cheap car, heat the house, or start a business. America is decaying morally and materially. 8 years of Obama and Hillary have resulted in stagnating economy and food banks for millions. It is no wonder that 'make America great again' was such a rallying cry.