Posts by Harold James9

Jack Wood43 said:Does love come before the act of loving?

Or what exactly is the origin point😕?

Love is when you:
- find yourself mesmerized by wild mushrooms on the edge of an Oregon forest 🙂 ,
- enjoy a bright, sunny day while out clay pigeon shooting 🙂 ,
- your family snuggles under blankets watching TV just so you can sit at your computer with the balcony door open for a smoke 🙂 ,
- embrace laughter and feel grief during tears. 🙂

Simply put, love is connecting with everything and everyone.🙂

And loving?

I love many things, especially: osso buco topped with orange zest and shredded carrots, paired with a glass of Dingač. 🙂

🙂 🙂 🙂

la_chupacabra said:Why weren't they forcibly fed then? Why did they just let them starve to death instead?🙄

It comes down to hypocrisy. They wanted them dead, but without the death penalty, they couldn't carry out an execution.👎

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oceanfront said:Is it ethically acceptable to force-feed a defendant when doctors determine that refusing food poses a direct threat to their life?
I maintain that a defendant undeniably possesses the (moral) right to refuse sustenance.
The question is simply where the boundaries of that right lie.

Now, I find myself wondering if it's ethical to obstruct an investigation or interfere with a court ruling. If I recall correctly, during an arrest, all items that could allow a detainee to take their own life are confiscated. This implies they aren't permitted to end their own lives.
There is no doubt in my mind that blackmail is unethical, and by extension, supporting it is just as wrong.

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Jessica Long2 said:Love isn't an object, Harold James9.

😉

Is that just your perspective, or is it a universal truth? 😉

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I was invited to stay overnight with a friend in Annapolis one day. While waiting for the morning fog to burn off, I enjoyed a coffee in the baroque town square and took a stroll through the local market. I ended up picking up some sour cream and a slice of corn bread. Actually, not just a slice—it was nearly a pound heavy! 🙂

Honestly, who else would have forgotten to bring the cream puffs and chestnut cake from Annapolis? Delicious.🙂

It was my first time visiting Annapolis. I'll definitely be back.

I honestly believe you can't truly satisfy an appetite without some bread.

The absence of hunger is what love truly looks like. Viviana said it best. Love sends everything to oblivion except the object of its affection.🙂

Is it possible for an enlightened person to fall in love? Aside from being in love with oneself, of course.

🙂 🙂 🙂

northernmaker2 said:How does one join this "community"?

Do I need some kind of initiation process?

Based on what you've laid out here, I am definitely one of your people.

northernmaker2, you missed the fine print in the footnote: Individualists excluded!

That doesn't apply to us. 😁

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Jonathan Brown6 said:I wasn't satisfied with that answer. Where does consciousness go—mine or otherwise?

It doesn't go anywhere. It simply rests from being constantly agitated by your daily grind. As you age, you'll find you bother it less frequently because you'll encounter fewer complex distractions. 😉

Einstein once mentioned how difficult it was to answer questions from kids during a school visit: where does the light go when you turn off the lamp. He wasn't facing a room full of physicists!😁

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Skandalouz claims relativity is key:
The concept itself acts like a chemical reaction, but life isn't nearly as predetermined as you think. By your logic, a person would basically be an inanimate object since everything they experience would already be set in stone.
Based on your line of reasoning, you’re clearly an atheist. That alone suggests you haven't reached a high enough level of introspection or critical thought to lecture us on this. It's unfortunate you're living under such a delusion, but that's something you'll have to sort out on your own.

Why bring up atheism?😕

Aren't believers the ones claiming everything is God's will? They believe in a spiritual state, which dictates their path.

Honestly, I'd say relativity is the one with faith. 🙂

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guest said:... That’s exactly why those specific qualities push me toward maximizing utility—for us and everyone else. It's because people like this can't just gather in real life, and even if they did, it wouldn't last long enough to finish the job. This is the only way. Rejecting every single proposal just to play devil's advocate isn't logic; it's just an instinctive reflex to oppose whatever someone else thinks. Why all the resistance?

...

Why the resistance?🙂 I don't see how solving the matrix helps anything. What would we actually gain by cracking the code of the human matrix? If anything, we'd lose everything, and humanity itself would be the biggest loser. We’d discover the limits of consciousness and kill the drive to seek out good, which is essentially what self-actualization is. Philosophy would become obsolete overnight. Engineers would simply build a machine that spits out the answers to everything we should be spending years learning through deep thought—our entire conscious boundary.
I have no interest in discussing the "utility" a government agency might find in mapping the matrices of its citizens. 😱

It would be evil. Look, quest, my only focus is happiness and doing good.

🙂 🙂 🙂

P.S. The escape from the matrix traps is found within the game. 👍

guest said:...
Who would wait for another lifetime just to try and grasp the concentrated power of something as small and fragile as a single piece of baklava.

🙂 I get the feeling my thoughts aren't being followed by anyone or anything at all. 😁

So, you're looking for things on this forum that simply can't be found here. We are all so different that we could never actually gather in the real world. Even if someone managed to bring us together, we’d scatter to opposite ends of the country in an instant. Our one common trait is that we are all seekers by nature.

Pandora, a top-tier writer, brightens my day with every post through her effortless way of presenting even the most complex ideas;

planinar, an artist of wit, doesn't tire me out with questions like what the author intended to say ;

obelix, adriatik,nitko i ništa, intellectuals with a healthy desire to share knowledge with others;

geza, a lantern-carrying seeker who neglected teaching and now grumbles about having no followers;

and the rest of us, just nagging and questioning. 😁

You wonder why we are even here? Why don't we just drift apart?

Well, much like planinar, I am just playing a game. I feel most comfortable when I am playing. As for what I expect? I simply hope that one of these "baklavas" (to use a metaphor) will trigger a lightbulb moment that solves my daily life problems.

Believe it or not, it happens. 🙂

🙂 🙂 🙂

We’ve touched on math and chess before, so here is what the genius Ryan has to say about this topic. 😁

Ryan said:Total mileage...
Pulse media conducted a survey, sponsored by Vanish (that one detergent that actually gets every single stain out...), regarding how many times the average American resident has sex, and essentially how much "distance" women take in per year.

The results are somewhat surprising.
Let's take a look...

So, the average American male organ is 7.4 inches, and the average duration of intercourse is 9.20 minutes.

If we assume that during one minute of intercourse, the average male organ enters the average female vagina about 50 times, a simple mathematical calculation involving 408 variables leads us to conclude that the average woman "takes in" 935 cm of length in that single minute.

Applying this logic to the full 9.20 minutes, we find that the average woman experiences 460 "strokes" during a single session, which translates to 8602 meters.

Essentially, in under ten minutes of sex, the average woman covers a distance equivalent to the height of Mount Everest.

Furthermore...

Given that the average American has sex three times a week—that's 12 times a month, or 144 times a year—that 8602-meter figure isn't just eight thousand anymore; it jumps into the millions.

Specifically, it comes out to 1,238,688 meters...

I am quite impressed.

What about you?

🙂 🙂 🙂

Jonathan Brooks8 said:The truth about baklava

walnuts, raisins, and sugar
tucked within the pastry layers
filling every single gap
while the syrup drips down your chin
I simply say,
"mmmmmmm...
...baklava is the absolute truth"
and it’s not even a joke—
it's just pure bliss...🙂

Jonathan Brooks8, that sounds like the mental loop you get stuck in when someone mentions baklava. But honestly, when your sister-in-law enthusiastically offers you her first batch, those raisins don't matter, nothing drips down your chin, and you're just focused on those thick layers of crushed walnuts.😁

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The history of philosophy is Hegel, which means you really only have two choices: start with him or end with him.

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ironbadger31 👍
See, Edward Green, some people claim you can't get any useful answers on this forum. 🙂

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alex said:Is this about that guy talking to his son? I think I can actually get through this and finish my moral philosophy map by next Thursday—assuming I have enough time for classes and sleep, obviously.
...

Project:
The impact of morality on the individual and society

• investigating how morality affects individuals and society
• The importance of ethics and moral decision-making
• The execution of moral acts
• Analyzing key ethical factors (agent, patient, values, action-consequences, context...)

From what I gather, I need to write about a page and a half for every single component of the moral sphere.

...

That’s the one. You'll make it; it’s only 174 pages, and more importantly, it's written in plain, simple English.🙂

alex, I know you'll pull it off, even if it's just a passing grade. Based on everything I've read from you, you already understand most of this anyway. 👍

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Edward Green, look for the book Fernando Savater:, published in Washington, D.C. in 1998. 👍

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Simone said:Perhaps religious education should be broadcast on television. 😉

Nothing would actually change, except that AT&T would become even more untouchable to the very people that show was supposed to serve.

People have always been driven by those same old motivations. Where did everyone go? Even the blind folks are missing. They don't even care where the road leads or what the ultimate goal is.

Leaders are ultimately responsible for everything. Wouldn't you agree?🙂

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swiftcobra15 said:Yesterday, I caught a radio "dialogue" between Vjerana Zupa and a psychology professor from the Jesuit School of Theology. When asked why some self-proclaimed Catholics don't believe in an afterlife, the professor gave the answer found in this headline.
If I recall correctly, he said: "Because they don't truly know their faith."

Saying someone doesn't "know their faith" sounds like pure nonsense to me. It's like saying someone isn't "breathing with their lungs" or "speaking their own language."

I assume he meant they don't understand the Catholic teachings—the doctrine.
But even if those teachings form the basis of a person's belief, the statement is still absurd. Everyone knows their own faith; nobody else can understand it better than the individual themselves.

I don't think this is a simple misunderstanding. This is done intentionally and systematically. Doctrine is rebranded as "faith," creating a sense of guilt in people. They are made to feel they don't know the "correct" way to believe, forcing them to conform to a version of "their" (actually, someone else's) faith.😉

Vjerana Zupa asked the Catholic professor a very direct question about why certain Catholics don't believe in one of the Catholic doctrines. The Catholic professor provided a perfectly clear and precise response. Essentially, belief relies on myths, and the diversity of religions lies in the specific myths they have embraced as truth.

So, what else could a Catholic professor say when asked why some of his fellow Catholics don't subscribe to a fundamental myth of their religion, other than to claim they simply don't know it well enough?👋

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I honestly couldn't add a single thing to what mistyfox812 wrote here.

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northernscout said:Does anyone else see some hypocrisy in the saying, "A teacher always appears when the student is ready to learn"? 😕

That statement would be hypocritical if it were aimed at teachers. Since it focuses on the students, it is simply true. 🙂

Heisenberg wrote some beautiful passages about students being ready to learn in his book Physics and Metaphysics.

🙂 🙂 🙂