Posts by Charles Flores23

I was looking at some of the recent roster movements last night, and it got me thinking about how much of the sport is actually decided by these massive, high-stakes summer shakeups. It feels like every year, the same cycle repeats: huge amounts of money are thrown at a single person, and everyone holds their breath to see if they'll actually deliver or just become another expensive benchwarmer.

Sometimes it feels less like building a cohesive team and more like a frantic game of musical chairs. You see these players moving from one side of the country to the other, often leaving behind fanbases that were just starting to get used to them. It’s hard to tell if these moves are actually about improving the quality of play or if it's just about making a statement to the rest of the league.

Do you guys think these big summer shifts actually change the hierarchy of the league, or is it mostly just hype that settles down by mid-season?

Morgan King77 said:
Simple question, simple topic...
Who are we?

Defective goods, tossed into some corner of unreality where nobody goes anymore—except for stupidity.

"I am"—but what does that even mean? Just more stupidity or just another error?

And you *are*? Where?

In an ocean of local wisdom from people who won't even get out of their armchairs. Dead letters on paper; this forum's nonsense is my nature. Your nature is to scream because you're pissed off. And hey, you have every right to...

But it doesn't help.
Not even a bullet to the head—which is its own mistake, really. Oh, humanity, where does it end?

You learn—just to perfect the stupidity.
You believe—just to prove the stupidity.
And you die stupid.

The world judges you by the sheer volume of stupidity you leave in your wake. You might even get a monument—a little reminder of a specific brand of idiocy.
That stupid world.

A colony of convicts stuck here against their will, thrown into a corner of unreality where nothing enters anymore—except for stupidity.

"Western philosophy is shit."🙄
Is Eastern stuff any better?
Philosophy is the least of it.
Philosophers are the worst.

Mathematically speaking—Earth compared to the galaxy is like a tiny dot on a map compared to the entire continental United States.

"I am"🙄
Dust.

Am I? Sure—slumped in an armchair. Lost in the euphoria of a micro-world, fueled by all sorts of nonsense.

And "they" laugh at their own mistakes. They don't even realize it—because they're part of that "supreme stupidity" too (some kind of glitch in space?).
And "someone" laughs at "them."
And he thinks, "I am"—yeah, sure you are...

Central stupidity.
Dust.

.

Betty Stewart59 said:A quick tangent here—absolute Truth? No. Just Truth. How can you even convey Truth if you aren't hearing it from within first? Without that internal resonance, you have nothing.
Religious rituals are nothing more than cheap substitutes; hollow fabrications.

Well put. Yours?

That is why Zen - Zen, much like the Tao, remains inexpressible.

Incomplete Truth.
Love is all around us, not some entity hovering above us. 🙄

Self-truth, self-actualization, self-initiation, self...

Sure, you can point out the path or hand over the keys, but you can't actually transfer a revelation or deep insight the way an old-school ritual or formal teaching does. Absolute Truth is terrifying because behind every bit of gnosis or understanding lies that massive, ungraspable abyss—the chaos of individual consciousness, the Pleroma. Rituals and initiations are really just knocking on the very first door; the road to the final Truth is a long one.

Betty Stewart59 said:A quick tangent here—absolute Truth? No. Just Truth. How can you even convey Truth if you aren't hearing it from within first? Without that internal resonance, you have nothing.
Religious rituals are nothing more than cheap substitutes; hollow fabrications.

Well put. Yours?

That is why Zen - Zen, much like the Tao, remains inexpressible.

Incomplete Truth.
Love is all around us, not some entity hovering above us. 🙄

Thanks. Well, mine—if we discount the influence of, uh... everything and anything.🙂
We're all just thieves in the end, right?

Betty Stewart59 said:A quick tangent here—absolute Truth? No. Just Truth. How can you even convey Truth if you aren't hearing it from within first? Without that internal resonance, you have nothing.
Religious rituals are nothing more than cheap substitutes; hollow fabrications.

Well put. Yours?

That is why Zen - Zen, much like the Tao, remains inexpressible.

Incomplete Truth.
Love is all around us, not some entity hovering above us. 🙄

I agree. People often mistake emotional fragments—or even just a brain flooded with chemicals—for love, creating this sweet but totally fake mental construct of earthly romance.

A sublime, altruistic love for the space we inhabit requires sacrifice. The gods aren't bloodthirsty; they just enforce the laws and direct the force. It’s easy enough to play the part down here in the USA, but holding the line is always hard work. The final Truth comes with a price tag.

dustyskipper3 said:What even is objectivity? What is linguistics? And why would anyone claim objectivity holds more weight than linguistics?

One naturally leads to the other—they’re fundamentally linked.
Numbers are objective, sure, but they have to be expressed through symbols or sounds to mean anything. So, an "objective" number isn't quite as detached from reality as you'd think—just like a word isn't merely a tool for a poet.

Sean Castillo said:Exactly... and let's be real, the intellect isn't some absolute authority either. Personal realization usually means way more to the individual actually living it than some abstract, "objective" truth people spend their whole lives chasing through speculation without ever finding it. Why? Because everything is up for debate, including the convictions of the guy who thinks he finally caught it.🤷

You can criticize someone for trying to pass off their personal truth as a collective one. But if they’re keeping it to themselves and not trampling over anyone else's inner integrity or mental space—then there's nothing to criticize. At that point, it's my business, not everyone else's.

Basically, Absolute Truth only really exists on an individual level. Once you start trying to force it on others, it starts looking a lot like fanaticism or straight-up hysteria.

That's why zen - zen is inexpressible, just like the Tao.

wearyowl29 said:So, no new dresser then... the truth is the forest, but I certainly can't drag a whole forest back to my apartment...😉 Can I just build the dresser out of wood from the woods?

🙂

Aah, Charles Flores23 is being selfless here: handing out useless junk... stuff that’s somehow still dear to Little Red Riding Hood's heart.
Just a heads up though—when you head into those woods, remember there’s an old wolf living in there. 😁

Sean Castillo said:Shiva - look, if you’re actually buying into the whole determinism thing, then both those examples you brought up make total sense... but the second you stop believing in determinism, their logic just falls apart completely.

Charles Flores23 hit the nail on the head there... but I gotta ask, is this "divine" stuff you're talking about necessarily "true to be that haiku"? ... Because from where I'm sitting, that's just one version of Truth that people grasp through intuition... and let's be real, intuition is just one way of knowing things, it's hardly the absolute word on everything.

Honestly, I don't see any reason to prioritize intellect over intuition. They overlap when you actually try to grasp reality—and when they hit that sweet spot of harmony, it creates this sense of relative fulfillment. A sort of illusion of a final truth—works perfectly fine for me.

wearyowl29 said:Uhhh... we were out trekking through the woods looking for one specific tree. We finally tracked it down, put in all that grueling work to chop it down, hauled it back home, and planned to turn it into whatever we had in mind...

So, is the actual truth found in the hike through the woods, the heavy lifting, and the purpose behind the timber?🤷

None of that—The truth is Charles Flores23. And you can't even see him for the trees. 🙂
In other words, it's the total sum of everything happening in that cycle:

1. the initial intent,
2. the destruction and wreckage
3. the rebirth—the reshaping

Whatever.
Highs and lows are just part of the ride—you have to go through them. Even seasoned acrobats know you have to take a fall if you ever want to climb back up. At a certain level, a seasoned soul learns to ditch the baggage of absolutist ideas regarding some "ultimate truth," purpose, or method. The fact that we can't fully grasp the absolute is just a "guide"—something that hints at fulfillment and points toward our divine inner nature and origins.

So, this drive toward "Truth" is really just a divine remnant left over from being stuck in a fleeting physical body. Which basically means any deterministic way of thinking has to be tossed out the window.
Because regardless of how much spiritual intuition or insight you have, the First Cause always stays just out of reach...

It’s like trying to draw a hard line between matter and antimatter—you can't prove it because, well, it simply doesn't exist.

The issue with this kind of mindset is that it clashes with institutional religions, which try to stifle things by clinging to an absolutist view of spirituality. They just don't mesh.

In other words: The search and the struggle *are* the ultimate Truth.