Posts by Kenneth Peterson5

mistyfox812 said:Whatever. You can't own metaphors, so there's no such thing as theft here. Besides, I'm not even "passing it off" as mine (honestly, you always try to spin this into me stealing or scamming or some other drama every single time). Look, I already made my stance clear on this: Everything I write on this board is totally unoriginal—nothing groundbreaking, nothing wild, just stuff that's been written somewhere else before.

In philosophy, originality doesn't mean squat—it's truth that matters. If something is true, then it's universal. It doesn't belong to me, or some random guy, or even Heidegger or Rockefeller.

😕

Look, if we're playing this game where originality doesn't mean squat compared to actual truth—and let’s face it, philosophy is a total mess because nobody can actually agree on what "truth" even is—then you end up with this weird paradox. If a bunch of people are out there cranking out "universal" answers that aren't actually true, then a bold, gutsy statement is way more "original" than some universal consensus that's just floating around aimlessly. It’s all a bit of a joke, really.

Look, Jerry Green59, this PDF is basically just a massive collection of quotes translated from English, German, and whatever else—but they aren't even labeled as quotes. They’re just presented like the author came up with them on their own.
Honestly, I don't see the big deal. At the end of the day, who said what doesn't really matter; what matters is that we get to share these high-quality insights with one another.

In this specific instance, the guy just used a line from Weizsecker; so what?! Personally, I think it's great he did, and clearly, plenty of other people feel the same way.
I don't get why you feel this desperate need to point out exactly who someone copied from—like, why even bother?

I actually tried to hold up a mirror to you using my super-fake clone to show how negative you were being during that "difference between good and right" debate, but apparently, being treated exactly how you treat everyone else isn't enough for you.

So, on my own behalf, can you please just chill out a little? Comments like yours are exactly why these contests lose their value—it kills any chance for actual, meaningful discussion between users who actually want to talk and explain the reasoning behind their answers.

Seriously, let's just drop this pointless attacking. All you're doing with that attitude is creating tension and making things awkward.
We're all here to level up, and if someone else isn't doing that, it doesn't mean you have to follow their lead.

Thanks for understanding.

Dennis Rogers6 said:It makes perfect sense within the scope of your particular worldview... though, if I'm being completely honest, I still can't quite wrap my head around it.

What is the point of all this suffering? I can already see the answer coming my way, but I suppose I have to ask anyway, don't I?

Casey Gomez2 said:We aren't the ones creating suffering, so why bother asking what its purpose is...
Suffering is just an inherent part of existing in the material world. You might be able to mitigate it through wisdom or offset it by finding meaning, but you can't simply wish it out of existence.

Look, if we stopped comparing our lives by asking "who's having it worse," there wouldn't be any real suffering—just different ways of carrying the pain we're dealt.

Is it possible that everyone is hurting from something?
Is it possible that everyone feels their own pain is the heaviest?
And finally, could we ever just accept that our own agony is just as crushing to us as someone else's pain is to them?
If we did, would we still be "suffering"? Or would we just deal with the ache in some other way?
So, is suffering really just the fallout of a bruised ego?

............
If the heart were nothing more than a muscle acting as a pump, then every attempt at a transplant would end in a total disaster.
The fact that we humans love to lean on these cheesy phrases like "my heart and soul are aching" is just an open invitation for things like Reiki or whatever other "totally original" 🙄 money-making manipulation schemes are out there.

placidharbor7 said:Isn't curiosity basically what journalism is all about? To me, spiritual seeking is like breathing—it's the very lifeblood of existence. Do you really think one can chase a daily headline sensation while claiming to be deeply, personally immersed in the soul?

Look, I’m hitting you with these questions because you’re making big-time claims here. And if you’re gonna make a claim, you better actually back it up and explain yourself.
For instance—if you’re insisting that spiritual seeking is this vital, pulsing life force, then you need to prove you actually get what that means before you start trashing journalism as being less "deeply personal."

If you decide to dodge my questions, I’m gonna take that as a sign that you’ve got zero interest in actually talking this through.

Later,

placidharbor7 said:Seriously, what are you doing using those short, telegram-style answers for such deep, philosophical questions?

I just toss them into a little box labeled "Wisdom" and keep it right next to my pillow—maybe if I stare at it long enough, it'll actually jumpstart some brain cells and fix my circulation.
or
I try to actually talk to people who make big claims, because honestly, I just want to know the logic behind their nonsense; call it curiosity, I guess.

(Look, if you decide to stop answering my questions, you’re basically directly responsible for my descent into progressive dementia, but since this is all just some sort of digital spirituality, I'll let it slide. )

placidharbor7 said:It’s that strange sensation where you feel like you’re rushing toward some version of yourself that exists "outside."
But honestly, isn't that perspective a bit backwards? Think about it: "YOU" are the core on the inside, while everything else is out there—even that very concept of an "inner life" is just part of the vastness outside of your true self!

So if "everything is outside," including our supposed "inner life," does that mean one thing swallows the other up? Like, does "everything external" encompass "everything internal" because, at the end of the day, everything we feel inside is just what builds the world outside?

mistybison said:In what sense?

If we view existence as "the self within the world," where there is a clear divide between "me" and "everything else," then we naturally question whether free will exists. After much thought and searching for evidence, people arrive at various conclusions. From that specific perspective, the concept of free will is a valid subject for discussion. However, if we look through the lens of unity—where the self and the world are one—then questions regarding free will or freedom become unnecessary, as does any further speculation on the matter.

Are you asking if God is an idea created by our minds, or if our mind is actually God/the creator?

You brought up this whole illusion of "free will"—this thing we're supposedly "given" so we can play the game of choosing between opposites, you know? Like "yes vs. no" or "left vs. right."
That’s why I was wondering: do we actually need to experience those contradictions just to realize what's already been set in stone?

placidharbor7 said:And that right there is exactly how "lack of free will" shows up! It’s this constant tug-of-war that tricks our tiny bit of focus on our inner workings. Poor little humans actually think they’re having these deep "internal debates" with themselves, don't they? But really, they're just acting in the name of some "higher purpose" or those big values you see listed in everyone else's textbooks.

The "I," or the self, is all woven together from that one single strand of "(un)will." Stop trying to split it apart and you'll finally see the whole picture!

But what even are these "internal dramas" anyway?

mistybison said:That is precisely how the dynamics of existence unfold. 🙂 We wouldn't perceive anything as an event, a progression, or a change if there weren't opposing forces within ourselves and our environment creating that sensation. While you struggle between "I want" and "I don't want," that very dilemma is "given" to maintain the illusion of free will. This sense of choice—as we experience it—is essential for the "self" to exist as something distinct from the rest of the world. It creates the necessary mirror effect for reality to function.

So, do we need to feel that conflict just to realize what's actually real?

placidharbor7 said:Isn't it perfectly logical, though? It all stems from that same lack of true freedom!

Look, whether it's logical or not—I don't know, man—but I definitely don't get it.
If I don't actually have free will, then I can't choose anything because everything's already been decided for me... but then how come I keep choosing to "reject" exactly what I'm supposedly stuck with?

placidharbor7 said:I mean, really, what kind of "will" does a person actually have to merit anything at all?🙂

If a person doesn't even have their own free will—meaning there’s nothing they can actually *do* to earn anything—then why on earth do we spend so much damn time "denying" what’s already been handed to us?

placidharbor7 said:The "known" is dead, and the "unknown" will eventually die too; the only thing that stays truly alive is the Unknowable—assuming it even exists!

So, here's the kicker: is "change" something you actually earn, or is it just handed to you?

placidharbor7 said:If you were to ask Ram Dass that, he’d probably tell you that both the topic itself and whoever started it are just products of free will within the scope of a technically observable "future."

placidharbor7 would likely fire back at you with a counter-question: "Then what is the purpose of Surrender?"

To find its purpose, obviously.

But can you actually reach the "known" by traveling through the unknown?

Alright, so what’s the actual point of this thread, given the title?

placidharbor7 said:Well, if we're adding qualifiers, let's be honest—it's because we're talking to OURSELVES!
You can't bake a single, solitary, absolute TRUTH about CONSCIOUSNESS.

In fact, you can't even prove whether it EXISTS or NOT.

Can you apply that same logic to God?

placidharbor7 said:Because that "self" is nothing more than a continuous stream of thoughts and mental constructs; it’s just a dead shell, yesterday's discarded husk, or some old, frozen snowdrifts from a past season...
Try to taste the "here and now" without a single thought about who you are or what you're doing. You won't be able to do it!

"CONSCIOUSNESS itself has neither color nor taste, yet it is far from bland," placidharbor7 once remarked. Honestly, that’s about as much as you can say about it—and even then, we're just using our blunt, clumsy senses to describe it.

You simply cannot capture CONSCIOUSNESS through any specific technique or action. All we can really do is celebrate it, like singing a beautiful, improvised hymn.

Trying to hunt it down with logic or tools is like a child still believing they can catch a rainbow in a net, despite everything they know.

Look, if Consciousness lacks color, taste, or smell—meaning you can't really describe it using basic sensory input—then why bother adding that it "isn't bland"? Why even include that little qualifier? Is he just trying to fill the silence?
And what does he even mean by "basic sensory input" anyway?

placidharbor7 said:The idea of a literal "present moment" belonging to a "self" just isn't possible.
But that "apparent present moment" of the "self"? Oh, that is absolutely possible! In fact, that's where all those shamanic tricks and "spiritual" Parsifal gimmicks actually live.

So, why is the actual, literal "present moment" of the "self" impossible?

placidharbor7 said:If we follow that logic, then you’ll also have to admit that consciousness is completely immeasurable, right? It evades any kind of objective check or observation.

Which makes this whole claim from Master Raman an absolute absurdity, so let me just apologize to everyone right off the bat!

Think about it: when you and Parsifal claim to be "conscious," you aren't actually *aware* of that awareness. Instead, you're both just projecting your own memories onto a concept of "self" and "identity." It's like a coroner measuring a corpse (the past) while loudly shouting about how full of life they are! Oh, the irony! Honestly, trying to define the "self" is about as productive as snoring through a lecture—it's just a much more polite way of being foolish.

placidharbor7 explained this ages ago: it is fundamentally impossible to achieve what you, Parsifal, and all those other misguided believers call being "here and now." Because if you are truly "here and now"—you aren't "YOU"; and if you are "YOU"—then you aren't "here and now." Makes sense, doesn't it?

That "here and now" which you two, and so many others, so desperately label as "consciousness" is nothing more than a clumsy attempt to grab God by the beard.

"Consciousness" and the observer can never actually meet. All these claims regarding "consciousness"—especially in your specific case—are nothing more than pure spiritual amateurism.

Man, that's some deep stuff right there.
But honestly, how would you even label the "present moment" for a specific "self"? Maybe just call it a "glimpse of the past"?

mistybison said:The contradiction lies in starting with the premise that a person chooses to 'want' or 'not want,' while simultaneously claiming free will doesn't exist. If there is no free will, choice is an illusion and one simply exists as they are in any given moment. However, if we can work toward becoming an 'oak' instead of just an 'acorn'—then free will certainly exists.

If we aren't TRULY enlightened here (and it's obvious to both Milton and Priscilla that we aren't

while Buddha and the clerk at the local corner store—Nisargadatta and Aunt Bernadette—are), then all this philosophizing is just spinning our wheels compared to how the world actually functions outside this little bubble of a forum.

But what if it isn't?
What would become of our (non)enlightenment if we had never heard the stories of that clerk or his aunt?
You see that, in the end, everything comes down to FAITH. 🙂 (And just like that, we are back to the beginning of the topic. 😛 ) Many people embark on a 'spiritual path' because they believe someone else has walked it before and reached the destination. But consider these possibilities:
1) No one has actually achieved 'liberation,' but rather just one of many possible mental or physical experiences attainable through training and effort—experiences that are never final, as one experience always leads to another.
2) People have achieved 'liberation,' but not through their own striving; instead, it simply 'happened' to them, like a glitch in the matrix of their holographic program 😍 which they then interpreted as 'enlightenment' and began teaching others about.
?
There are endless possibilities, all of which should be considered; we can test them all, but clinging to them creates limitations. 🙂 It is much the same with all these theories of consciousness. They are all fascinating, but if we discard them all—what remains? Any entanglement in ideas is similar, whether they are scientific, religious, spiritual, or philosophical 'truths.'

It is clear there are two schools of thought... one saying the acorn is essentially the oak, and another that rejects that idea.

I believe there are far more than just those two schools. 🙂 There is also the school that rejected the entire debate regarding acorns and oaks altogether. 😉

I intend to eventually take the time😛 to pull out the high-quality posts and split them into two separate threads—one on the meaninglessness of philosophy and one on consciousness (which was my original plan anyway). 🙂Right now, we are in the middle of a site reorganization, so I will handle it once that is complete.

I am totally digging what you wrote here.

@shamantrixx,
Look, if "I" am not actually the one thinking my thoughts—if instead those damn thoughts are the ones doing the thinking *to* me—then free will belongs to the thoughts, not to "me." In that scenario, there isn't even a conscious "self," just a bunch of thoughts that think they're "me," being aware of this supposed single identity.

@parsifal
If "I" don't control my own thoughts, and those thoughts are actually driving the bus, then yeah, "I" definitely don't have free will. But here’s the kicker: if I don't have free will, then all those deep questions I ask myself aren't even *my* questions—they’re just questions that were posed *to* a single "I." So, that whole idea of "Is doubting your own consciousness just a process within consciousness that proves you're conscious?"—well, that's also just a question being thrown at a single "I." It basically means the "I" isn't self-aware; it's just the thoughts running the show, being aware of the "person" they're using to exist.
.........

(If life were some straight line, we could always look at the past to predict the future—you know, find the cause and pinpoint the exact result.
It’s really only in the last 50 years or so that we finally realized life is non-linear, which is why we can't ever be 100% sure what kind of mess a specific cause is going to trigger.
)
Nowadays, we even know that chaos itself is deterministic, meaning a single cause can spiral into incredibly complex, totally chaotic behavior. Honestly, that chaos almost proves free will exists, because even when chaos unfolds, it does so freely, even if it follows certain rules.
Which leads to this: if God created the world, He left room for independent thought—for free will, basically. It’s like that old saying: man proposes, and God disposes.
..........

Lately, these kinds of thoughts have been circling my brain like vultures. But whose thoughts are they, really? Whose are they? Is it even possible they belong to me? 😕😁

Edward Flores4 said:I always think of oak leaves when I try to wrap my head around "free will"—it’s probably the best metaphor out there. Every single leaf is its own thing, making its own way, but at the root level, everything is interconnected. We’re all part of the same tree, so one leaf's movement ripples through the rest because we're all drawing from that same shared foundation.

The whole free will debate is really just one big paradox. You can only really define free will by contrasting it against things that happen *against* your will—you know, those moments where stuff just happens to you without your input. In a weird way, if we didn't have those external forces acting upon us, the concept of free will wouldn't even exist. And honestly? If every single little thing happened strictly because we willed it... well, that sounds like a nightmare. You'd be stuck making a million tiny decisions every second and would probably lose your mind within thirty minutes.

At its core, free will is just the capacity to choose when an actual choice is available. If there's no option, there's no free will. Think about simpler organisms—they basically operate on a basic "action-reaction" loop. But humans? Because we have memory and complex perception, we get to operate on a much more advanced loop: "action—perception—choice—reaction."

“The spoken word was the first technology by which man was able to let go of his environment in order to grasp it in a new way. There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening."
Marshall McLuhan

It couldn't be put any more simply than that.

Look, I get what you're trying to say—really, I do—but I don't see how anything can even be "against my will" when this whole concept of "me" isn't even mine to begin with? It's just a collection of thoughts, and honestly, I don't even know if those thoughts are actually *mine* or just some random brain noise, so how am I supposed to know if I have free will or not?
Plus, you totally dodged my question about "self-awareness."

Look, the reason I keep hitting you with these questions is because what you're claiming is actually pretty interesting—really, it is—but it's equally "interesting" how you won't give me a straight answer and instead just dance around the point. So, hey, if I'm getting under your skin—which, by the way, maybe that nerve isn't even yours, but mine—just say so and we can drop the whole "me" vs "you" thing. This topic is one of those things where you can talk forever and never really get anywhere, and honestly, I don't even know how to finish this sentence without making it a total slog to read, which might lead to a misunderstanding, but whatever, since misunderstanding usually comes before understanding anyway... and since the whole goal is to eventually understand, I guess I'm just overcomplicating everything just to see if I can provoke you into being simple for once. 😁

Edward Flores4 said:I always think of oak leaves when I try to wrap my head around "free will"—it’s probably the best metaphor out there. Every single leaf is its own thing, making its own way, but at the root level, everything is interconnected. We’re all part of the same tree, so one leaf's movement ripples through the rest because we're all drawing from that same shared foundation.

The whole free will debate is really just one big paradox. You can only really define free will by contrasting it against things that happen *against* your will—you know, those moments where stuff just happens to you without your input. In a weird way, if we didn't have those external forces acting upon us, the concept of free will wouldn't even exist. And honestly? If every single little thing happened strictly because we willed it... well, that sounds like a nightmare. You'd be stuck making a million tiny decisions every second and would probably lose your mind within thirty minutes.

At its core, free will is just the capacity to choose when an actual choice is available. If there's no option, there's no free will. Think about simpler organisms—they basically operate on a basic "action-reaction" loop. But humans? Because we have memory and complex perception, we get to operate on a much more advanced loop: "action—perception—choice—reaction."

“The spoken word was the first technology by which man was able to let go of his environment in order to grasp it in a new way. There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening."
Marshall McLuhan

It couldn't be put any more simply than that.

Don't go throwing imperatives at me, come on, you know how this works. 😁

Edward Flores4 said:On the surface, I don't really see a distinction... but when we're diving into topics like this, you kind of have to use an analogy to back up your conclusion—otherwise, you might actually be able to spot where those differences lie.

Look, I don't really have some massive, definitive stance on this whole "problematic mess"; right now, I'm just asking questions—you know, following that old school rule where curiosity doesn't kill the cat.😲😁

I’d love for you to clear a few things up for me:
If the thoughts passing through my head aren't actually *mine*—if they belong to some other "me"—then the whole concept of "self-awareness" starts looking pretty shaky, doesn't it?
Plus, it feels totally backwards to claim we have free will within a "self" that isn't even truly ours to begin with.