swiftcobra15 said:The sixth commandment of the Decalogue sounds incredibly powerful and authoritative, but I honestly feel the translation is inaccurate—it’s almost intentionally misleading.
If we look at how the English version translates the original text: "You shall not murder!" translates directly as "Do not commit murder!" That specifically refers to the taking of a human life, not an animal.
In virtually every language, there is a clear distinction between killing people and killing animals.
You pluck them, chop them, or trim them, but we don't say they were killed (or are dead) even though, biologically speaking, flowers in a vase are indeed dead.
Most languages utilize two different terms, sometimes more. For instance: murder, homicide refers to murder, while the corresponding verbs are used much less frequently (to assassinate); this is distinct from to kill—which applies to animals.
According to Merriam-Webster: murder 1) the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another & 5) to kill (someone) unlawfully with premeditation or …
So, the point is about one human being intentionally (and illegally!) killing another human being.
Setting aside the legal technicalities for a moment, I wonder how vital this distinction between killing humans versus animals truly is, and why this commandment has been translated incorrectly here. Looking at the comments, everyone seems to be discussing only the murder of a person, or a fetus.
Back in the day, this commandment was truly revolutionary because it forbade the killing of humans—yet the slaughter and sacrifice of animals continued unabated in the name of God... even Jesus exposed that hypocrisy, though he used the symbolism of an innocent lamb being led to slaughter just to make his point more relatable to his audience...
swiftcobra15 said:It could honestly be both. Even within a single family—take bin Laden, for example —you can find such vastly different ideologies. The relationship isn't nearly as black and white as people want it to be.
At its core, we're facing a universal challenge: how do we achieve peaceful coexistence?
It seems pretty obvious to me that the vast majority of Muslims have absolutely no interest in any kind of extremism, let alone terrorism. 😕
What I was getting at is this—when you try to draw lines between who "belongs" to which group, the overwhelming majority of Muslims are so far removed from the extremists (who, mind you, aren't even a monolith) that they are viewed as "them" just as much as anyone else refers to them... they are nowhere near being part of the "us"...
I remember seeing a bluebird perched on my backyard fence this morning. It was such a quiet, beautiful moment to start the day. kaže: If we keep dodging the core issue instead of facing it head-on, I fear we’re all heading straight for a disaster. It feels like we're just circling the drain.
I honestly see a major issue here, specifically when certain incredibly powerful interest groups start pulling all the strings. I remember seeing this happen during a local town hall meeting back in Ohio, and it really stays with you. They’re actually bankrolling and organizing these Islamist groups. I saw a similar pattern during my time working in D.C., where certain interests were quietly funding radical movements to shift the political landscape. It feels like everything is being orchestrated just to leave the American Muslim community holding the bag at the end of this.
Of course, the most pressing issue we're facing right now is that moderate Muslims... Most people tend to stay quiet, and you rarely see anyone actually standing up to the Islamists.
I fear we’ve framed this entirely wrong—it's a fundamental misreading of the situation. You really have to ask yourself: when we talk about these "extremist Muslims" versus "moderate Muslims," are we talking about "us" or "them"?
By framing it this way—by being so incredibly specific in our division—are we essentially just washing our hands of it and leaving them to deal with "their" own problems...?
There is a certain kind of mental loop where one successfully dismantles one illusion only to find themselves immediately confronted by another—and frankly, that might be the only real way to permanently deal with being misled. The ultimate fallacy, however, would be the belief that I—or anyone else, really—will ever truly be free from being mistaken again.
It’s a purely theoretical question—every real-world scenario is its own unique beast, after all—but still... when we act out of genuine concern for others, even if that means total self-sacrifice at our own expense, we are essentially looking out for ourselves in the long run. Why? Because we are establishing a standard that others within the community will eventually apply back to us. There is an old American adage that "kindness begets kindness," which serves as a broad moral framework, and from a strictly mathematical or logical standpoint, it actually 😁 holds up—it creates a closed loop. Spiritually speaking, it is the very essence of self-renewal.
Love as a detour... I don't buy that metaphor—it feels more like a companion, a partner by your side. Sure, a path can lead you straight into ruin—it absolutely can, and it often does—but this idea of constantly guarding oneself against disaster, of playing it safe just to avoid falling apart... well, that’s the greatest tragedy of all...
Whenever someone starts tossing around terms like "cosmopolitan" or "cosmopolitanism," my mind immediately goes to a specific lifestyle—one underpinned by a certain level of education that transcends the narrow confines of one's own niche interests or career... Essentially, if a person claims to feel "at home" within cultures and societies far removed from their place of origin, there is a fundamental prerequisite: they must actually understand the nuances of those cultures and possess the social intelligence required to integrate into them.
Take, for instance, a situation where a non-Muslim might wish to enter a mosque—if I were in that position, I would first need to determine whether it is socially acceptable for a non-Muslim to enter at all; and if it is, I’d need to know that removing one's shoes at the entrance is the standard protocol. A true cosmopolitan doesn't walk into a new environment and disrupt local customs with their presence—rather, they respect those traditions as if they were their own.
Consequently, one can't help but feel a sense of skepticism when someone labels themselves a cosmopolitan while simultaneously failing to recognize—or worse, refusing to submit to—the customs of others. Trying to force the rest of the world to conform to your own personal habits isn't cosmopolitanism; that is simply globalism masquerading as sophistication.
The conversation seems to have gone cold... am I the one to blame for approaching this topic with such a "mechanistic" mindset? Listen, Snow White's Dwarf, I know exactly what you're after here. Ancient human culture was far more centered on intuition—it was "dreamlike," if you will—meaning there wasn't that harsh, jagged divide between dreams and reality that we deal with today. In that kind of dreamlike state, materiality was merely an image, a symbol of the spirit; even gold served as a metaphor, whereas you are searching for the lost spiritual essence behind that very symbol. If the remnants of that intuitive culture were ever to be preserved, it would only be through thin, fragile threads of continuity running parallel to the recording of history itself.
It’s worth noting that in the early days—and I use the term "early days" very loosely here—there was no standardized way to measure value during trade; people essentially just swapped their surpluses for whatever they were lacking. It wasn't until later that a true standard of equivalence emerged, starting with items that held intrinsic utility—think animal pelts, for instance. This meant value was defined by a specific set of skills (hunting, tanning, etc.) balanced against the practical necessity of the goods themselves.
In that sense, there was a genuine, chaotic variety of local equivalents floating around. Because transporting, preserving, or even storing these various assets was such a massive headache, efficiency became the driving force—which naturally led to the gradual disappearance of any "currency" that couldn't hold its own against decay over time. While gold likely gained prestige quite early on—largely due to its scarcity (those first nuggets found in riverbeds) and that unmistakable golden luster that set it apart from everything else)—its primary utility back then was purely ornamental. However, once we mastered smelting and modeling techniques, gold gained an extra layer of value as a medium of exchange. Plus, it didn't rot, and it wasn't a nightmare to move around... which allowed gold to function as a sort of supra-local value. So, one must keep in mind that other equivalents were absolutely in play—silver, copper, amber, jade, precious stones—and gold only eventually stepped into the spotlight as the dominant player.
Given those specific traits—the visual impact, the rarity, the workability, the utility, the ease of storage, and its sheer resilience against the elements—gold became the ultimate candidate for money. And since money serves as a symbol of authority and sovereignty... well, to put it bluntly—to prevent gold coins from being melted down into jewelry or simply lost, governments realized they could issue paper currency backed by the gold sitting in their vaults. That is how gold became established as the reserve, the very foundation of monetary value.
So, there you have it—despite any valid criticisms you might have regarding my somewhat casual explanation of the matter...
restlessfalcon5 said:I wasn't sure whether to post this in psychology or just drop it here, so I flipped a coin.
What follows might sound nonsensical, but a disturbing thought just hit me, and I doubt I'll be sleeping anytime soon. What if I am God? Or what if one of you is? I’m not talking about religion here. You can only experience the world through your own eyes; you can't truly step into someone else's shoes. You spend your whole life making assumptions about what might happen next. For instance, if I were to break into someone's House right now, would those people have "always" been there, or did they only begin to exist because I arrived? It’s actually quite similar to that old riddle: "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"...
What if only one of us actually exists? 😲 Take life, for example. To me, it feels like a continuous flow, right? But how can you ever truly know another person? Perhaps your brain is simply manifesting them based on your own perception. Or maybe there isn't even a brain—maybe you just "exist" in some abstract sense. Even everything we learn in school is built on logic, which means I can always argue that my theory is perfectly logical. Even when someone greets you on the street, you instinctively predict their behavior without being surprised. I hope someone gets where I'm coming from, because I'm not going to be able to sleep... Is it possible that everything is merely a byproduct of my own existence? Dammit, I'm confused and honestly a little spooked... It's that terrible feeling, like being lost in a book like *The Catcher in the Rye*...
A person is like a Russian nesting doll—you know, those clever little wooden trinkets—feeling like they contain a whole "God" within their own layers, all while remaining blissfully unaware that they themselves are tucked inside an even larger doll...
Harold Adams5 said:Think about those rigid, unyielding trunks. Unlike the ones that can actually bend with the wind, when a massive hurricane slams into the coast, those stiff trees just snap or get ripped straight out of the dirt. It’s the exact same thing with people—those stubborn, inflexible types who refuse to budge an inch on their views and flat-out reject any kind of change. Everything we need to learn is staring us right in the face, if we'd just bother to look.
👍 "(...) All living things enter this life soft and tender, yet they depart withered and harsh. That is why hardness and strength are seen as companions to death, while softness and weakness accompany life.(...) If a tree stands too rigid, it risks being broken. The mighty and the massive fall downward, while the soft and the weak rise upward."
Lao-Tse, the Tao Te Ching... it really gave me pause...
Jonathan Brooks8 says: ... If this final assumption holds water, then from my current spacetime coordinates, there exists a branching beam of possibilities—where the further we drift into the future, the more sharply they diverge toward entirely different destinies...
A man grows upward... much like a tree he falls dead to the earth after stretching out... just like a tree he springs from a seed... just like a tree the womb is akin to... Mother Earth herself he is bound to the soil... like a tree sending down roots... in the same way veins pulled straight from the root... yielding fruit... and though we consume it differently, it serves as seed—even if the method varies man is social, much like a tree—a forest council gathered in honor of the Sun God, where trees vie for who can catch more sunlight lonely, like a single tree standing in an open field trees embrace a man because it heals him life within a man and life within a tree are one and the same
Harold James9 said:Besides, don't you think communication becomes impossible without some level of uniformity? A watch loses its purpose if the hands aren't in the same positions across an agreed-upon part of the world. Words without shared meanings are just as useless. Concepts like happiness, love, or freedom are hard to fit into universal templates. Next year marks the 60th anniversary of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It's being violated everywhere without hesitation or consequence. That's an example of a pattern that holds all possibilities. Communication in this case happens while someone's hand is in their pocket, so naturally, it leads nowhere.
I am not afraid of patterns—I honestly can't imagine life without them (like a clock)—but I am afraid of having no choice in which patterns to follow.
P.S. Jonathan Brooks8, I really dig the fractal in your selection.🙂
🙂 🙂 🙂
You brought up reading "Antichrist," and it leads to such wildly different interpretations of what was actually read... If "Antichrist" represents the "essence"—the source, the origin point—then the diversity, the richness of interpretation and perception, that is the "explosion"... and that right there is the pattern...
🙂 Even if we're looking at a pattern, that doesn't mean we're dealing with monotony... there's really no reason to fear it. A true pattern actually encompasses every single possibility within itself...
🙂 Consider this little mental exercise; you find yourself staring at a mountain stream in the Rockies—just one specific stretch of it—where the water rushes over smooth river stones, always following that same rhythmic dance, perhaps with just a slight variation in how the surface ripples... a pattern that repeats itself in an eternal loop. Naturally, your mind recognizes—based on its own internal archives, of course—that the water is actually in motion, that the stream is nothing more than a collection of passing droplets, and that at any given microsecond, you are actually looking at entirely different, unified drops emerging and vanishing from sight. But the eye? The eye is tricked; it is "forced" to perceive the flow of the stream as a single, static entity, even though the mind isn't fooled by the illusion.
Now, using that same imagery, you can imagine the exact opposite scenario—one where the eye tracks the movement, that multitude of shifting, jumping images, in such a way that the underlying stillness becomes invisible. In this case, it’s a deception played upon the mind, which is constantly being stirred up, failing to notice the immobility beneath. To truly perceive that stillness, the mind must essentially trick the deceived mind. Only then, when the mind is no longer distracted by the constant motion, can it see a single pattern of movement—much like seeing the pattern of the stream itself.
That pattern can be found in everything we observe as changing—in life, in history, in nature... and that point of stillness is the origin of all change; it is the explosion emanating from the essence.
I guess I’m just one of those people who can’t sit still when there’s a mountain calling my name, because honestly, I feel most like myself when I'm out there on a trail somewhere, probably getting lost or tripping over a tree root because I wasn't looking where I was going. There's just something about that rugged, wide-open American wilderness that gets under my skin, and even though my knees usually pay the price for it later, I find myself constantly planning the next big trek through the Rockies or some deep woods in the Pacific Northwest. kaže: It’s a funny thing when you really sit down and think about it, but I truly believe that the more we stare at something, the clearer it becomes—though, in a weirdly paradoxical way, the more we scrutinize the things that don't make sense, the more attention they demand too, so I guess you could say that the more you observe anything, the more you end up seeing both its clarity and its total confusion all at once.😁
If the observer were part of a "closed system," then everything being observed would also be part of that closed loop, which means that as things become clearer, there’s less ambiguity to deal with—it's a simple trade-off. But since we’re actually dealing with an "open system" where both the observer and the subject are open-ended, it works quite differently; essentially, any increase in clarity can simultaneously open the door to even more layers of uncertainty.
👍
Looking at how Einstein responded to Jasnoća, I can’t help but feel like I’m reading someone who is being incredibly thoughtful and genuinely careful about every single word they choose. The way we go about things. I look at this problem like someone trying to polish a diamond, working away at those tiny facets just to make the whole thing shine a little brighter and clearer. But see, my issue isn't really about shaping the crystal itself—which I suppose would be that "closed set" you're talking about—it’s more about the act of grinding it down, opening it up, creating an "open set" so that whatever we're actually looking at can finally find its own way to express itself.
Quincey:
I honestly don't know why I even bother trying to explain these things sometimes because I usually end up tripping over my own words, but I really feel like we need to take a moment to actually look at the bigger picture here instead of just reacting to every little thing that happens on the news. It’s easy to get caught up in the noise, but if you just step back and breathe for a second, you can see how all these moving parts are actually connected in ways most people completely miss. kaže: I honestly think most of our misunderstandings stem from the fact that we just don't have enough ways to express ourselves. It’s like our knowledge keeps expanding at this incredible rate, yet our vocabulary stays stuck in place, so we end up trying to squeeze more and more complex ideas into the same old handful of words we've always used.
👍 They frame their questions in such a way that both the inquiries and the answers just end up spinning endlessly in this tight, closed loop of a verbal world, never actually getting anywhere.
Quincey:
I honestly can't stop thinking about that stretch of coastline we visited, because there’s just something about the way the water hits the shore that stays with you, and I find myself constantly daydreaming about those endless blue horizons and the salt air that seems to clear your head like nothing else can. kaže: There’s just this certain kind of truth that stays tucked away where words can't reach, something so deeply profound that you couldn't possibly capture it through a sentence, or even try to scribble it down on paper, let alone attempt to find its rhythm in a song or trace its shape with a brush or catch it in a whistle. 🙂
But hey, I guess you could always just call out of work if you really wanted to. 🙂
I follow your logic, and you've articulated it beautifully. This idea of "opening through grinding" strikes me as being akin to pulling back a veil—that veil being the sheer multitude of peripheral events and phenomena that flicker in and out of existence. It's like an explosion emerging from the core; the more intensely we focus on that outward movement (in our attempt to clarify it via observation), the more the actual essence becomes obscured or blurred. It is precisely that external motion, which tracks alongside the movement of our own eyes, that interferes with a clear view of the stillness. Therefore, there has to be a sort of alignment—a need to steady our own perception to match that stillness. In this way, a segment, defined by its boundaries, loses those very borders when it focuses on the unchanging... because those boundaries were really only ever created by our own movement. Ultimately, to see within any segment is to witness the simultaneous dissolution of both its limits and its perceived isolation.
