291 posts shown.
Ethan Gomez82 said:I’m not even talking about human truths or how we construct them. I’m talking about much larger truths that exist far beyond us—truths that simply *are*. We can only catch glimpses of them from a distance using various tools. Human truths are inherently limited by our own flaws, and frankly, they shouldn't be taken too seriously.
Man, you would absolutely love Lyotard
"with the disappearance of the country, thought will cease—leaving this vanishing completely
unthought. (...) If death, as a boundary, is truly that which flees and is deferred, and as the result of which thought must deal with itself from the very beginning—then death is still merely the life of our minds. But the death of the Sun is the death of the mind, because the death of death is the life of the mind."
Sandra Murphy33 said:This brings to mind a certain anecdote often circulated among the religious (and I make a sharp distinction between being "religious" and being a "believer"—we are all believers in the broader sense, whereas the religious are merely adherents to those bloody Abrahamic faiths)
The story goes that a man finds himself in mortal peril and prays to God for salvation. In response, God sends people and circumstances to rescue him, but the man rejects every lifeline because he is "relying solely on God's salvation" (and, predictably, he dies).
I can't recall the exact details, but wasn't Jesus also praying to his "Father" to be spared ("take this cup away") before eventually choosing to remain silent when offered the chance to defend himself—or perhaps just "philosophizing" about the truth? 😬?
If you look at what Fromm was getting at, he'd say everyone is essentially religious; the real question is whether that drive pushes you toward authoritarianism or toward actual liberation. In his essay, "You Will Be Like God," he actually digs into the roots of radical humanism by looking straight at Jewish religion—like, how the God of the Jews can really only be defined by what He isn't. Fromm sees submitting to God in two ways: it could be that mindless authoritarian submission, or it could be a way to break free from human tyranny, kind of like that whole epic saga of the Jews escaping Egypt)
Ethan Gomez82 said:The meaning of any concept is dictated by how people communicate it. How else? A wise person usually communicates with extreme shrewdness and intelligence, so that's what the term implies. Like many other terms, this one is poorly defined, so once you get into the weeds, everyone ends up thinking something slightly different. Of course, egocentric pigs can be wise. Even you can find a bit of wisdom among politicians. Criminals can be wise, too. They are the ones who are so skilled and calculated—who weigh every variable and anticipate exactly what their pursuers are thinking so they never get caught. You can't pin them down; they're just too smart (both clever and wise). It isn't an oxymoron to me. Wisdom isn't a virtue; it’s just a quality, much like strength or speed. Everything depends on how you choose to use it.
The problem is, the meaning of words shifts so much that you can't just rely on whatever some random person on Twitter thinks or whatever slang is trending this week to define anything. Honestly, you’d think philosophers would at least have the decency to stay aware of how easily the words they use can be twisted or weaponized.
jadeheron5 said:Yeah, exactly... if you think about it, even something like meditation—or maybe specific breathing techniques—could be considered wisdom. It’s about having that control, you know? Being able to actually influence the chemical reactions happening inside your own body. And then there's fitness, or just being mindful about what you eat... those are all forms of wisdom too.
You put that really well, kept it concise. That's the kind of wisdom we need more of. 😁
But look, let's be real, those aren't "wisdom" per se; they're just things a wise person might suggest, but if being "wise" just means being pragmatic, then we might as well define a sage the same way we define a corrupt politician.
jadeheron5 said:I’d argue differently... I think a wise person is simply a righteous one. You see, you can be "too good"—just purely kindhearted without any edge—but if you're just a pushover, you aren't really wise.
Look, you can't really be "too good," but you can definitely be naive—and honestly, people trip up on that all the time, thinking they're the same thing. Sure, there might be some overlap here and there, but let's be real, kindness and being a total pushover are two completely different animals.
Geli writes:
So, Xanthippe—you know, the wife of that philosopher Socrates—always got a reputation for being incredibly abrasive and just looking for a fight, basically an endless fountain of nagging and those typical domestic headaches that drive you up the wall. And Alcibiades, who couldn't wrap his head around why she was constantly harping on her husband, actually pulled Socrates aside one day to ask why on earth he didn't just kick such a sharp-tongued woman out of the house. "Because," Socrates says, "by dealing with this kind of chaos at home, I'm actually training myself to handle the even bigger insults and injustices from people out in the real world."
Radical democracy is basically just anarchy, which is a double-edged sword because it carries this dual meaning: total chaos on one hand, and pure freedom on the other.
Thomas Nelson25 said:Yeah, that could definitely be a topic.
Native Americans?
The Chief and the wizard are debating this—but at the end of the day, myth (belief) drives behavior, or more specifically in this case, morality.
..
Back in the day, the church handled it (if you consider that "civilized"?), but now we just have our federal courts. Laws.
At the end of the day, isn't it all just different ways that the "universal spirit" manifests itself?
Thomas Nelson25 said:That’s basically what civilization is built on.
Philosophers helped make that happen.
But honestly, you see stuff like this even in societies people usually label as "uncivilized." If you listen to those primitivist types—and yeah, they've got their own logic—they’ll tell you the whole downward spiral actually started when civilization kicked in and wiped out that era of pure, natural innocence. But hey, that's a whole different rabbit hole we don't need to go down right now.
bluemason3 said:Honestly, it sounds more like someone who can't handle reality—a failure escaping into a fantasy world. I doubt Bezos or Ronaldo spend much time worrying about utopias.
Honestly, who cares if someone is happy or satisfied? People can be content in a gutter for all I care, but being "satisfied" doesn't mean a damn thing—what actually matters is who’s actually telling the truth.
bluemason3 said:It’s the same reason we dream about future utopias—just a basic need to escape into our own imaginations.
But honestly, it comes before the need for things to just be normal again, right? I mean, when someone starts daydreaming about some perfect paradise, isn't that just a massive red flag that everything in their actual life is falling apart?
Harold Doyle3 said:No, that's not it at all... From their point of view, the actual utopia existed maybe 5,000 or 6,000 years ago, but we got kicked out because we completely botched the dirty work.
I mean, honestly, this whole "Golden Age" myth pops up in pretty much every culture on the planet, right? And let's be real, there’s probably a damn good reason why everyone keeps telling the same story.
Ethan Gomez82 said:If that were true, we wouldn't need architects or planners at all; we’d just vote on stuff and call it a day. Most people don't want the same things because we aren't clones, and there is no such thing as an objective metric for "good"—that's entirely subjective. We manage by making compromises, however messy they might be, and that's basically how society functions.
But come on, most societies in America can at least agree on the basics, can't they? Like, we generally all agree that things like robbery, murder, and total chaos are bad news.
Ethan Gomez82 said:😁
An epistemological Big Bang.
The fatal flaw in any utopia is that the architect starts with their own ego and grievances, then tries to force those solutions onto the entire world. It’s a desperate hunt for a paradise born from one person's imagination rather than actual consensus. This proves one fundamental truth: you can theoretically build a utopia for yourself, but you can never build one for everyone else. Just leave people alone.
When people pitch these utopian ideas, they're basically banking on the assumption that most folks just want more of the exact same stuff we already have. They act like there are these set-in-stone, objective benchmarks for what actually counts as "good."
Carol Jackson2 said:Most people end up stuck in jobs that are either mind-numbing from day one or just get boring over time.
That’s why you need to constantly pivot and shift things up on your resume.
Criminals can always find work in the worst sectors; it’s a reality.
Some people actually gravitate toward mining, even though it’s incredibly dangerous.
Men do the laundry at home too.😉
Well, isn't that just what Thomas More was talking about?
Thomas Nelson25 said:You seen it? Yeah, obviously—you've seen Star Trek.
Everything’s already dialed in—no need to waste any time.
We haven't even hit Type 1 civilization status yet... honestly.
Check out the thread below... Kardashev scale stuff.
Yeah, sure I have, but isn't that the whole point? In Star Trek, they just slap a shiny new piece of tech on every single problem and suddenly everything is fine, right?
Alright, let's get real for a second,
Look, implementing some kind of rotation system isn't actually that hard if you're just dealing with a tiny little circle of neighbors or friends who are all on the same page, right? Like, imagine a neurosurgeon out in a small town in Montana—he doesn't need to trek out to some 62 miles remote farmstead miles away; he just needs to clear the trash off his own curb. You could totally wrap your head around that working in a small town. But trying to scale that up to massive cities, or heaven forbid, the entire United States? Forget about it, you can't apply that logic the same way at all. If we wanted a rotational system to actually work globally, the only way would be to break every single country down into a million tiny, localized micro-communities.
Then again, since a setup like that basically requires building a whole new society from scratch with a whole new type of person, you have to wonder if that person even needs any formal organization at all. That’s why I find it much easier to picture a Utopia as this sort of anarchist collective where rules just happen spontaneously as they're needed. Honestly, that sounds way more liberating to me than your typical old-school communism.
bluemason3 said:I’d say it’s actually spot on.
Sure, if you're looking at specific schools of psychotherapy, you could argue otherwise. But since he didn't employ any actual scientific methodology—much like Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and the rest of that crowd—he isn't particularly relevant to psychological science. Real psychology is rooted in the Anglo-American experimental behavioral tradition, which has always been openly opposed to those pseudo-scientific German psycho-philosophers.
It doesn't really matter since he was being brought up here as a philosopher, not a psychologist. Besides, when you're dealing with a single idea like this, does it even matter who originally said it?
bluemason3 said:Just another "philosopher" pretending to be an economics "expert"? 😁
On top of that, his work in psychology falls into that pseudo-scientific rambling category. Honestly, he’s irrelevant in his own field, let alone in this one.
I guess that’s exactly why people find his stuff so damn entertaining to read.
bluemason3 said:So, we're looking at a sort of pseudo-religious delusion here.🙂
It all sounds great on paper, until people get carried away and try to force these grand visions into reality without any grounding.😁
In practice, we've seen how sending experts and doctors out to rural areas often ends up wrecking everything from local clinics to public schools and agricultural programs. Just brilliant.😬
Look, I get that there's definitely a religious undertone to any kind of utopian thinking, but I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing.
I mean, Freud argues that back in the day, during the early Enlightenment, having an anti-religious stance and focusing on a rational, technical mindset actually had its perks since it helped shake off the Church's grip, but nowadays? He suggests that kind of logic is basically just used to defend the status quo of the dominant ideology (you know, neoliberal capitalism).