Karl

If you have to sell me the idea that selling something means it isn't worth buying, then that's not worth buying either :-)

It may well put you more in touch with reality by quietening down the clutter, but that's only the first stage-not everyone needs it, but creative/ bright people are often spinning their minds at high rates in an emotional whirl. Everything in its place. There are many who believe that meditation is taking them to higher realms, making their consciousness bend reality, or to float completely above it. There isn't anything to filter out regarding objective philosophy. There may be many things to filter out in Rand's 'opinions'. The world isn't ending, but civilisation can and does. Up until now this has not been catastrophic because there were always more places that people could escape to. Now we have globalism that situation no longer applies. The USA was the last of the places of enlightenment for people fed up of oppressive tyranny. Like everything, competition improves things. The US is dying and I find that frightening because there is no where left-unless you want to live in Autarky in the mountains as happened to Tibetans ( who are even now under threat so remoteness is no guarantee). I don't have children, so, to some extent I don't have a dog in the race, but I revel in the battle to enlighten people to freedom and discourage the evil of collectivism wherever it lurks.

On the second point, that would certainly be true if somebody did - swallow any philosophy whole with applying reason and logic. Meditation is about 'stilling the mind' in other words 'not thinking' and, like a holiday from work it can be beneficial particularly to begin to make sense of the cause of some internal distress, anxiety, panic, low self esteem. However, in respect of the rest of the world, it goes on regardless of stillness. A lot of people don't want any more worry and would rather evade the truth than let the horrors of the world into their private space-that's fine, but you aren't avoiding reality, you are evading it. Accept that this is what you are doing and accept the consequences of not fighting your corner and there isn't an issue, but if you think that meditating is putting you above reality you are suffering a delusion that reality will show you one day.

another interesting lecture on the principles of cultural Marxism, or what should be referred to as Freudian Marxism:

Your mind is your only choice. Don't get diverted from making use of the only tool you have to gain value and survive. So much the better if it can bring you happiness as the result of the values you hold and desire, but first you must obtain those values. Introspective bliss is 'soma' a state of willing sacrifice, of surrender, of going to oblivion with the smile of a happy idiot.

To ask that question is to ask why the fire alarm is ringing. Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.

Thank you Sionnach for starting this thread of truth. I add my own from Rand. Another escapee from socialism and another warning. However, it isn't so easy to escape Rand's and Bezmenovs predictions today. We see it everywhere and we had better wise up right now. No more living in our little bubbles of introspective consciousness. As Bezmenov says, it's only when the soldiers boot smashes into your balls that you will realise you should have done something.

If you don't get what this guy is saying, you are sunk. "Meditation" is brainwashing. It is abdication of the mind, it is to give up on life. "You are at war" every second of every day. "Moral destruction" the principles meant to promote your survival "Distorting reality" the basis on which you must develop principles. The Mystics are here, they are real, they are intent on making men into cattle. You will have no say. Wake up and smell the evil, don't evade or remain ignorant.

I recap: existence is identity; consciousness is identification. Direct perception of reality is the only way we can prove our conceptions. Science is the invention of philosophy, the method by which we can best check our conceptions against reality and the ONLY way we can do that is to use our senses, our perception of reality. What can be said of scientists who deny that they can perceive reality ? They can have no proof. They are lost. They gave up the one thing which they depend on in order to perform their work. Where am I ? How do I know it ? What should I do ? We have let scientists become philosophers, economists and ethicists. The result has been catastrophic. They have become high priests by default and have reversed the role of philosophy and the science that is inspired by it. Instead of science we have scientism, instead of economics economism, instead of ethics ethisism. We have restored the Mystics. Haven't you noticed ?

Reality is reality: existence is existence. In this respect it does not matter what you believe it does not alter those facts, or the fact that you believe such and such a thing. The problem is believing than consciousness alters reality and then reality shows us how wrong we were. When our internal philosophies are to abandon reason for faith by ignorance or evasion, then we step further away from reality and the conflict between what we believe and how things are imposes a greater burden. The delusion is abandon the mind and trust emotion, instinct, premonition, dreams to figure out reality. They are useful, only if we first know their cognitive cause and then use reason to evaluate our actions. It is best if we stick as close to reality as we can at all times. As I said before, we can choose to evade realit , but we cannot avoid the ramifications of that evasion. Despite our best efforts reality will overcome fantasy, it seems wiser not to fall too far from it and avoid the greater shock. In the old Boy Scout parlance 'be prepared '.

There is no answer to that. It's life, pure and simple. We can do our best, but things can still go wrong and we cannot psychologically armour ourselves against our own reaction to it. I've tried to explain this more than once, but people seem deaf to the message. Reality is not only external, but internal. If you get sick, or lose your home, or a loved one, then it hurts a lot, it may hurt so much that we are dragged down into terrible depression and anxieties that are impossible to shake off. At these times it's tempting to believe that all that is required is more practice, but then when we are feeling down it's difficult to do any practices. This makes one feel worse than if we had not practised at all, it adds a further feeling of failure on top of the current one. Everything that we did, tried, thought falls to dust and we feel impotent and rudderless. I've been a manic depressive most of my life. I practised intensely for several years and believed that I had found a beautiful firm of balance, until a situation arose which proved to me that believing that practices provide perfect protection was just another kind of delusion. It's like believing exercise will cure terminal cancer. Practices can be a component of stability, but they aren't a solution, they don't cure you of feeling bad, just as you should hope they don't cure you of feeling good. They say 'any port in a storm' and sometimes there is no obvious path through a sense of internal strife, there is no philosophy or practice that will straighten us out, we just have to work through it the best we can. Friends, family and spouse can help. Time is the healer. If practices help, then do that.

Or in proper British terminology what happened on 11/9

I did not say causality was linear. I wouldn't even know what that could possibly mean. It's like an inch of love. Causality is just a succession of events of objects acting and reacting according to their natures. Humans are a kind of causality because of our volitional nature, but we still have to comply oth nature in order that we can transform nature into things that are useful to us. Man made things like boundaries aren't absolutes, they are conceptual. Lines drawn on a map that are a product of reification.

As to your first, yes, that's precisely what I said. There is no significant difference between making something and making something else except for the process and materials required. The point I'm making is that Time, not the thing you measure on the clock, but the absolute form-causality, has what is referred to as a single direction. Events happen, they don't undo themselves from time to time. Causality doesn't suddenly run in reverse. Pots don't un break themselves by themselves. That's why the analogy is a good one.

Good grief. You were serious: Recycling is where 'we' humans perform some work-like the pack of cards being put back into suits. The pot does not magically reassemble itself before our eyes. Brush up all the bits of crockery and they stay seperated. If you try chucking them back on the bench they don't turn back into the pot. Causality doesn't run backwards. I don't know what you mean about a cup coming into existence by itself. As far as I'm aware, we dig some clay out of the ground, shape it glaze it and fire it. Atoms don't automatically arrange themselves into a Royal Dalton 60 piece dinner service. I don't know what you mean by 'linear' I certainly haven't said so. I said time was a conceptual relative measure of events. I leave the rest of that question to science. An atomic clock is just causality in action. We use that causality to measure causality of another set of events. That's all I know, that's all I'm prepared to say.

Can't tell if your joking ? I presume you are ?

You must of smashed enough cups, picked up enough cards and buried sufficient pets to know how it works.

Nope, change is change, time is a human concept of the relationship between events. We know for certain that events don't reverse themselves. Broken pots don't reassemble themselves, packs of cards don't rearrange themselves back into suits neatly stacked on a table. Dead things don't reanimate.

There is no probability in causality. Nothing happens by accident. Probability is a human conception resulting from ignorance of all the facts. If we apply probabilities to planes crashing we may come up with a probability than one in every million flights crashes, but this is not a concrete, every plane does not actually have that chance of crashing, only one plane will crash and there will be definite causes of that crash.

Mine was vigorous. :-) For much of the walk I had the river to myself, I like to sing as I walk and really stride out, the river gives it all a sense of purpose when it's running fast and high.

There is no concrete time or space these are relative concepts. From that perspective there is only one long 'now' in which causality continues in one direction. There is only a soup of things that we seperate out from one another into conceptual classifications such as planets and moons. We measure distances between these objects in relation to other objects such as the length of our arms. We measure the passing of time in the same way, but what we are really measuring is movement between relative objects as a result of causality. Hence we can discover relative velocity and relative speed wrt relative distance and relative time.

I could look on myself as a breeding ground for microbes, yeasts and assorted critters, a bit like a tree. A big pale pink blob of fleshy ambulating incubation for wildlife. I feel better all ready, my life has purpose.

A quality peer reviewing is obviously non-existent in some journals. For example, DOZENS of papers published in the Modern Physics Letters B with many reputable scientists on the Editorial Board http://www.worldscientific.com/worldscinet/mplb were accepted within 0-3 days, right after submission. Just few examples: Xin Huang and Shuai Dong, Mod. Phys. Lett. B 28, 1430010 (2014) [25 pages] Received: 20 July 2014 Accepted: 20 July 2014 Ikuo Ichinose and Tetsuo Matsui, Mod. Phys. Lett. B 28, 1430012 (2014) [33 pages] Received: 28 July 2014 Accepted: 29 July 2014 Xiaoshan Xu and Wenbin Wang, Mod. Phys. Lett. B 28, 1430008 (2014) [27 pages] Received: 16 July 2014 Accepted: 17 July 2014 At the same time, according to MPLB Peer Review Policy http://www.worldscientific.com/page/authors/peer-review-policy , “Papers will be refereed by at least 2 experts as suggested by the editorial board.” Is 1 day enough to review a 33 pages paper by 2 experts? Or can a 27 pages paper be reviewed within 24 hours? Just another case for a massive retraction...

Surely that's the smoking gun ? Soros funding Clintons presidency and getting her to act on his behalf.

Classical interlude today, listening to Gods fiddler playing Tchaikovsky's violin concerto, it's movement. Sad, beautiful, passionate. Dare to listen ?