DIALOGUES page 5
Mood swings?
Who knows anymore at this point. | Doug wrote: |
| A quick answer: I figure if we all lose no one will be. |
Don' t take this as an attack but simply an observation on my part. It is, I believe, another of the the damaging things about PC thought. It has led to a negative connotation about winning that doesn't have to be. Have you ever watched animals at play? They win and lose. Do the psychologists of their species protest that it is damaging to self esteem? I personally think such games are natural and beneficial. The harm comes from the artificially created attitudes we develop towards winning or losing.
If we take winning and losing as learning experiences as do animals and recognition of a natural hierarchy of development within a skill, then it is IMO as it should be. Once winning and losing begins to become associated with "good and bad," is when the trouble begins. PC thought tends to stress the elimination of natural competition all animals use including humans, to develop their skills. Most find this unnatural but because of the PC pressure, associate winning and losing with good and bad all the more. So the idea for me of winning and losing is perfectly just. The harm comes through our unnatural acquired attitudes towards this natural distinction.
I just had a new idea for a phallic symbol: the white flag. In the future the state will invent a pill that will gradually change a man so that instead of an erection rising up at the appropriate time, a white flag will stand up instead. This should assure that there will be no "friction" leading to tensions between people and everything will just be nice and instead.
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| I think i get it now, unnatural activity is striving for something which is impossible to attain. natural activity is striving for something attainable. |
Specifically, I say natural activity is reaching out to the limits of our capacities. It is one of three equal components in what I consider to be the ideal reaction to the void which is to reach out to the limits of our capacities, to others and to God. I believe that natural activity begins at conception and, assuming for the moment it is not terminated or interfered with, will result in us becoming what we are capable of being physically/mentally/spiritually. There is no list of natural activity comparable to the list of unnatural ways we try to fill the void. Our capacities are unique and thus so are the natural activities that expand our realized potential capacities. So we all have our own list; but even so it is not a complete list that we can follow. We make our list of natural activities as we live. I don't know for sure but I think the list will be complete only when our activities end. The consequence of natural activity is self-realization which can be attained.
Although self-realization defines the specific "something attainable" there does seem to be something more. It is a feeling I associate with natural activity that has been described in a number of ways over the millennia, and that incidentally seems to minimize the effect of the void. While the simplest unnatural activity will feel like wading through thick mud, it seems that when engaged in even the most challenging natural activity we will "soar on wings like eagles" to borrow a simile. The feeling could be Nirvana with the proviso that it is not restricted to "the state of being...attained by the extinction of individuality". It is true that it is only by extinguishing all individual attempts to fill the void that we can reach out to the limits of our capacities, any description of the "feeling" has to include this natural activity. During conversations with tentative and Mastriani I learned enough about "The Way" of Tao and its metaphor of flowing water to see its relation to the feeling I associate with natural activity. There are also others. I have even described it in another way in another place. Here however, it is enough to acknowledge the efforts to explain the feeling, to think of it as being one with ourselves, others and God and say that it is attainable; but I leave it unnamed to avoid a distracting tangential discussion.
So, how do we attain self-realization and that "unnamed feeling"? How do we make our list of natural activity with no apparent direction? Well there are 2 or 3 techniques we can use. The number isn't definite because the second could be part of the first so whether there are 2 or 3 is an insignificant matter. Before we get to them though, recall that in my original post I suggested our present life activity is a blend of natural and unnatural; there has to be some natural as a condition of life; and that the unnatural component of our activity dominates our fabric of existence. So though we may not be aware of it due to the massive interference by unnatural activity, we each do have a list of natural activity and we have experienced the "unnamed feeling".
Now one of the ways we can build on this platform is to eliminate conflict from our lives. The way I see things, unnatural activity is the source of conflict. It occurs because when trying to fill the void we direct our activity toward the void within ourselves. So if I direct my activity toward myself and you direct your activity toward yourself, our directions are opposed. On the other hand, we reach out to the limits of our capacities on unique parallel paths. Consequently, if we remove the conflicting unnatural activity from our lives we will have to replace it with natural activity. Our list would become clearer and grow; and we'd get more of the "feeling".
Analyzing and then changing our activities could be the second way we attain self-realization. Using religious/philosophies as an example, though I maintain filling the void with one is impossible, because or the necessary presence of natural activity, there is nevertheless a measure of "reaching out" associated with them. So if we were to discard all the unnatural activity designed to make a religious/philosophy different while forcing us to be the same, we will end up with the common natural activity that allow us to be unique. Similarly, if we examine the activities in our relationships we will find some unnatural that consume love and other natural activities that generate love. If we weed out the unnatural and encourage the growth of the natural we will eventually generate nothing but the emotion that motivates us to hug ourselves, wrap our arms around others and embrace God.
The final way to write our list and attain self-realization is to reach out directly to the "unnamed feeling". It could be a good idea to practice this technique because if we did eliminate conflict from our lives and all unnatural activity, reaching out to the "unnamed feeling" will be the only technique by which we can reach out to the limits of our capacities. Who knows, by that time maybe we will have agreed to call that feeling "God" or something.
Whatever Trevor, this is a good place to end what could be wild fantasy that might more appropriately belong in the creative writing forum. I have no idea if any of this is possible. It's like, life. We can't know until we try. I don't know if it matters. Maybe "the universe is unfolding as it should". I happen to think it may not be and in order to explain my views I needed to define the specifics of natural and unnatural activity to you. I think I have accomplished my purpose. If you intend to, don't be in too much of a hurry to reply. I want to talk to Nick and return to your reply to what I thought might have been a concluding post on our different concepts of success and failure. I can't imagine where I will find the time if someone else decides to offer their help which would be welcome of course. I also want to write another poem for the creative writing forum. But most importantly, I am going to take my mother for walks. It's been 2 days since our last one; and she is my number one priority.
Hi Nick. "I don't want to play if we both can't win" was my response to kriswest when an exchange of replies inadvertently became what she described as a "rock piling contest". Recall she joined me in an exchange of replies with as much effort as you. It was very beneficial for me. I know the way to end a matchup is to declare a winner so I turned around to face the same direction as Kris and kept the conversation going. I needed her to keep pushing me to explain.
This notion of needing each other to help ourselves comes directly from my definition of the ideal reaction to the void which I think by now you know is to reach out the limits of our capacities, to others and to God. Going back to our beginning we can see if we hadn't reached out to our mother we would not have become what we are capable of being. The generally self-destructive nature of our educational system notwithstanding, had the system not been in place we would be without what limited expansion of our realized mental capacities we now have. We can't learn much alone.
I play tennis. I compete with friends and that helps me improve. I watched the Wimbleton final on Sunday. What I saw was Roger Federer being pushed to a level he had not been before. I saw Raphael Nadal being pulled up to a level where he had not previously been. It was a great match. I saw two winners. The rest of the world saw a winner and a loser, the last one to join the rest of us. As I watched the winter Olympics I was inspired to write for my own site, "Life: an Olympic journey". My point in it was that I adore the Olympic effort athletes make to reach out the limits of their capacities; but I abhor the Olympic goal of declaring and worshiping a gold medal winner and ignoring a bunch of losers.
Declaring winners and losers helps to 'colour' our present fabric of existence. No one likes to lose. When we lose we don't just lose a game or an argument at ILP. We lose ground in a losing struggle to give meaning to our lives. Winning, being number one in the world, being the best and all other forms of pre-eminence, we perceive to be a way we can fill the void. We go to extraordinary lengths to be pre-eminent at something. War is a pretty good example. Taking performance enhancing drugs is another. In the extremist cases some of us willingly lose our lives to win; and the more we lose the more extreme we become. Striving for pre-eminence is such a self-destructive and totally ineffective activity. It will destroy us. No one will win; so I don't want to 'play'.
The only activity that won't destroy us is to reach out to the limits of our capacities, to others and to God. There can be no competition, for the goal is expanding our unique realized capacities and we need each other to achieve self-realization. This is the 'game' that we all win. I want to 'play'. Thanks for your willing participation.
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Nick_A 07.13.06 13.5 (5)
I get the impression from your description of the tennis match that you find value in competition but harm in our attitude towards its results. Is determining a temporary "better" and "best" objectively harmful because "no one likes to lose" and it takes meaning from our lives or does it just display an unnatural slavery to the self importance of egotism?
As you know I'm not PC (politically correct) so don't expect this to be fashionable but I believe that hierarchy is good and natural for the soul but only offensive to our acquired personalities. It is perfectly natural to want to determine where our skills and even the level of our being stands in relation to others. It is our pride and vanity that find it objectionable and these are acquired personality traits which are taken advantage of by others.
| Nick wrote: |
| To get power over is to defile. To possess is to defile. Simone Weil |
The harm is not competition but the psychological weaknesses we have that allow us to be taken advantage of. What defiles are those that acquire power through our weakness.
| Nick wrote: |
| Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty. Simone Weil, |
Profound psychology and usually overlooked in the misguided belief that somehow people "know better." We forget our weakness that allows and justifies such perceptions. This "winning" has nothing to do with anything from our essential selves but strictly the blindness of our ego's need for self justification which for it is winning the good..
You would seek to eliminate competition and the "win" though you admit that in the tennis match, it spurred on both competitors in the Wimbleton Final. The reason seems to be because of the attitude towards losers: "but I abhor the Olympic goal of declaring and worshiping a gold medal winner and ignoring a bunch of losers." But suppose losers didn't have this weakness to consider themselves as "losers"with all the bad connotations you are suggesting, is it still so bad?
How can one learn how to lose in the presence of people looking at him as a loser? That is the more important question for me. It is equally important to the question of winning and how to remember that it is temporary and of relative importance so as to be able to put it into the higher, more universal perspective of "meaning" itself.
Winning an losing is perfectly normal and natural IMO and as such, will always exist. The trick then as I see it, is in learning how to win and lose so as not to cause ourselves more psychological imbalance then we already have.
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Doug 07.19.06 13.6 (5)
Nick, although I would use a different language I believe the concepts in Simone Weil's quotes are congruent with my views. Furthermore, I agree with much of what you say about winning and losing in the context you are viewing; but then I change the context. You are right that I "would seek to eliminate competition" but my context is life. Now, the figures aren't important but suppose 1 billion of the present 7 billion people in humanity are at this moment losing the competition for life. In my context I have difficulty thinking that if "the losers didn't have this weakness to consider themselves as losers...(they wouldn't think losing is) so bad".
You could be right that this competition is natural. If it is then I still maintain it will result in the death of humanity. Suppose for the sake of agreement that our environment survives the competition. Then at the end there will be 2 people and one will kill the other to claim the prize just before realizing that in winning he had really lost. If this competition is unnatural then it will similarly result in the death of humanity unless we eliminate the goal of pre-eminence from our fabric of existence and replace it with cooperative mutual testing that raises the level of all humanity.
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Nick_A 07.19.06 13.7 (5)
Doug wrote: |
| You could be right that this competition is natural. If it is then I still maintain it will result in the death of humanity. Suppose for the sake of agreement that our environment survives the competition. Then at the end there will be 2 people and one will kill the other to claim the prize just before realizing that in winning he had really lost. If this competition is unnatural then it will similarly result in the death of humanity unless we eliminate the goal of pre-eminence from our fabric of existence and replace it with cooperative mutual testing that raises the level of all humanity. |
People compete because there is something either realistically imagined worth competing for. I cannot believe two people or a bare minimum of people trying to repopulate the world as long as there is clean water, growing food, and shelter available will compete. It is obvious at this point that cooperation is advantageous.
But how do you define the death of humanity. Are you referring strictly to human bodies or inner qualities? Some may think that the death of humanity is approached by lowering human quality. Since we don't know what this is, it is a volatile question. But now I'll give you an example of a current problem that in a PC world is difficult to deal with
Somehow I raised a pair of young angelfish into maturity. They began to breed even though my water is considered to alkaline and hard for angelfish to breed. Somehow, this pair of beautiful semi veil black marble angelfish avoided the books and let nature take its course. Now they produce broods of several hundred with no problems.
I've learned that ethical breeders only put the best on the market and stunted or deformed which worsen the gene pool are destroyed or fed to adults.
I went through it. I didn't know that this pair would do the unusual where I live and breed in this water. Pet stores are glad to buy these young once they are nickel size. On advice of breeders and officials in aquarium societies, I now don't sell or give away anything that doesn't meet the standards of the adults.
In the Amazon river, the natural home of angelfish, a female can lay 500 to a thousand eggs and whatever hatches competes for life. The stunted and deformed are weak and an easy catch for predators. My tank has no predators so I've come to believe that it is my responsibility to do what is required by nature for the gene pool..
Initially I thought that it would be nice to donate some breeding pairs that I can easily raise and since these new breeding pairs will have acquired the parenting skills from their parents care, I thought it would be nice to donate some to schools to show the kids how they lay and take care of the eggs, remove the fry from shells and place them on a leaf, pick them up in their mouth, clean them off, and spit them back out. Then they guard them for the seven days required for the fry to be free swimming and once free swimming, they protect them.
In this day and age where care of young is becoming obsolete, I thought it would be good to show young students what these fish are capable of as parents. It is biology. However, when it comes to maintaining the gene pool by destroying the runts, stunted, and deformed, teachers don't want to deal with it. It is not PC and can lead to difficult questions. How does a teacher explain that it is our obligation to compensate for the loss of natural competition for the good of the gene pool?
So, if you were an elementary school teacher taking over a class with a healthy breeding pair of angelfish that are excellent parents raising a brood and you learn that for the preservation of the gene pool and in the absence of life's normal competition, you will have to destroy a sizable portion of young fish, How would you explain it to the class?
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Doug 07.24.06 13.8 (5)
| Nick wrote: |
| But how do you define the death of humanity. |
I am referring strictly to bodies as in complete self-destruction of humanity, self-extinction. I do believe "that the death of humanity is approached by lowering human quality." if you allow me to define "human quality" as the "ideal". Each step we take that moves us further from the ideal is another step toward ultimate self-destruction.
I won't quote the set up to your question,
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| So, if you were an elementary school teacher taking over a class with a healthy breeding pair of angelfish that are excellent parents raising a brood and you learn that for the preservation of the gene pool and in the absence of life's normal competition, you will have to destroy a sizable portion of young fish, How would you explain it to the class? |
but I will say it was lovely and that it was considerate of you to give me
| Nick wrote: |
| In the Amazon river, the natural home of angelfish |
to start my answer.
It seems to me that by putting the fish in an unnatural environment you have created an ethical question that does not need to exist. In my view, with our unnatural activity of trying to fill the void, to give unnatural meaning to life, we remove ourselves somewhat from the natural environment we create with the natural activity of reaching out to the limits of our capacities, to others and to God; and generate countless ethical questions that will remain unresolvable in the unnatural environment we have created.
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Doug 07.28.06 31.1 (5)
Thanks faust. You were the third person to visit this thread. Check it out. You entered with one of your attempts to lighten things up and I assumed you were 30 years younger than you are. In "Where is civilization heading?"
| faust wrote: |
|
As I said in that other post I define humanity as the population of human beings. I heard recently that there are only 80 or so white rhinos on the planet and a couple hundred right whales. For some reason I can't explain I feel sorry for these species. It could be that what happens to humanity is none of my "business" either; still I can't help feeling sorry for us as well.
When I first read that you considered yourself a perspectivist/materialist/ particularist I thought it was another one of your jokes. I took a chance though and looked up perspectivist. I didn't find it but deduced it was someone with a point of view. I found that materialist is someone who prefers material things over the spiritual or someone who believes that nothing exists but matter and its movements and modifications. A particularist I discovered is someone with exclusive devotion to one party or someone who believes in the principle of leaving political independence to each state in an empire or federation or someone who believes the theological doctrine that some but not all people are redeemed. Given the options I had to make choices so I decided you are telling me you are an opinionated Republican with a few possessions who wants to be left alone.
What I know about Woody Allen is purely accidental. Knowing he is a humorist, if he actually said, "(we) can not be happy as long as there (is) one person on the planet that isn't", then it is likely that he was just trying to get a laugh. However, consider the possibility for humanity if the statement was reworded to read "(we) can not be (satisfied) as long as there (is) one person on the planet that isn't (happy)" and we approached life with this purpose in mind.
| faust wrote: |
| There is no single reason why we use weapons...and any attempt to reduce this to one is not particularly useful. |
This statement was in response to my contention that there is a single reason why we use weapons. I would like to tell you how I come to that conclusion and now suggest that if life matters it would be useful to identify the reason we use them before the continued use of weapons results in our self-destruction.
I suggest that though, as you accurately observe, there are any number of identifiable superficial reasons, our use of weapons is ultimately and solely due to our trying to fill the void. In my original post I describe life as a reaction to the void. Trying to fill it is one of the ways we can react to the void; and out of the eight ways we can try to fill the void that I describe, trying to fill it with money and all the things it can buy is the most dominant reaction to the void in our fabric of existence. Trying to fill the void with religious/philosophical answers is a close second and the two mix.
Filling the void is not possible. More of whatever we try to fill the void with will never be enough. As you wrote, "If everyone had everything they wanted, they would find new things to want". One of the manifestations of trying to fill the void with money is "greed". Another is conflict over insufficient resources and in conflict we use weapons. We could say we use weapons in our wars over resources; we could say we fight with weapons over money because it is our nature to be greedy but down at the bottom we find that we use weapons in our desperate efforts to fill the void.
At this point I could go on to explain that though it seems to be, conflict is not necessarily a part of our common nature. But this post is already too long. Perhaps you will encourage me to explain this statement after I plug the holes you find in this post.
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faust 07.28.06 31.2 (5)
Doug - We may often say that the population of a species has "suffered" great losses, but this does not necessarily mean that any individual suffers as a result. I can't understand how one can feel sorry for a species. A species is a manmade idea, a set. Sets are not real, rhinos are.
Perspectivism is what the philosophy of Nietzsche is often called. My view is something of an amended Nietzscheanism, which I prefer to call contextualism. Since that is my own coinage, I avoided it, and used what I thought would be the more familar term.
I would define, in accordance with the second definiton you provide, a materialist as someone who disavows metaphysics of any kind. That is not a complete definition, but I think it will do for now.
I am a particularist in the sense that I think, in accordance with materialism, that only particulars exist - this is opposed to rationalism, idealism, theism, and, again, any metaphysic. It has nothing to do with politics, nor does my philosophical thinking. I am registered as an independent, for the record. I am opinionated.
These are partial definitions, but I think sufficient for present purposes.
The Woody Allen paraphrase is from, I believe, Annie Hall, a comedy. It's from some comedy of his, at any rate.
| Doug wrote: |
If life matters it would be useful to identify the reason we use them before the continued use of weapons results in our self-destruction. |
You see, I would stop right there, given the present context (contextualism). "Life" doesn't matter - individual lives may or may not matter to a given person. We don't all use weapons, so the term "self-destruction" is, for me, a generalisation of limited utility. This sounds like rhetoric to me ears - a platitude. Grandiose verbage. The collectivisation of humanity as having some common Will, some common Purpose - a commonality that I would not accept without argument.
Such is the gulf that divides you and me, Doug.
This void - I am still not sure what it is. But I suspect that it is a feeling that you have, and that others might. I don't think I have it. I will review this thread to see if I can get a better handle on it. But I think you should know more about my position after reading this post. I will try to learn more about yours.
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faust 07.28.06 31.3 (5)
Okay, Doug - is this void a lack of Universal Meaning? This sounds to me like a religious crisis that an individual may or may not have had. I have never had a religious crisis. I have never posited a Universal Meaning. If my understanding is correct, then there is a void if we think there is a void.
Do not here mistake my tone for flippancy: I don't get laid enough. That is the only void I can think of, and has nothing to do with meaning, universal or otherwise, as far as I can see.
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Doug 07.29.06 31.4 (5)
| faust wrote: |
| Doug - We may often say that the population of a species has "suffered" great losses, but this does not necessarily mean that any individual suffers as a result. I can't understand how one can feel sorry for a species. A species is a manmade idea, a set. Sets are not real, rhinos are. |
Would you have understood if I had said I feel sorry for the last 80 remaining white rhinos that will soon be 1 who will not necessarily suffer when the other 79 are shot; and that I feel sorry for the approximately 9 billion human beings because the sum of our existences has been diminished to the point someone will kill the last remaining rhino, cut of the horn and make an aphrodisiac so some other guy can fuck up something else.
God, I hate labels. Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, Roman Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox Jew, Sunni, Shiite, American, Canadian, Iraqi, Palestinian,..............perspectivist/materialist/ particularist. They are nothing more than the consequences of our efforts to fill the void. I won't be satisfied until no one on the planet has a label, not even human being because we already know we can't agree on what being human is.
Sudden insight!!!! Human beings are label makers. We make them in an effort to fill the void which can't be done so that will keep us going forever if we don't self-destruct first. Self-destruction happens when a walking breathing human self-construction puts a gun to his head, pulls the trigger and instantaneously becomes a self-destruction. Of course the collective can't self-destruct because it is an abstract concept created by the individuals. However, if all the individuals put guns to their heads and pull the triggers the collective would no longer be a concept. We can put the guns to each others heads and accomplish the same result. It is not even necessary for all individuals to have guns. One individual with a few nukes could blow the concept of humanity into non-existence. It is not even necessary to use weapons. We can be the weapons that destroy the concept of humanity. We just need to continue destroying our environment; but maybe that doesn't matter because "Life" or Life "doesn't matter". God, I'm so confused.
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Doug 07.29.06 31.5 (5)
| faust wrote: |
Okay, Doug - is this void a lack of Universal Meaning? This sounds to me like a religious crisis that an individual may or may not have had. I have never had a religious crisis. I have never posited a Universal Meaning. If my understanding is correct, then there is a void if we think there is a void. Do not here mistake my tone for flippancy: I don't get laid enough. That is the only void I can think of, and has nothing to do with meaning, universal or otherwise, as far as I can see. |
As long as you don't mistake the tone in my previous post for sarcasm. I would give you 95% for comprehension. You would get 100% for: The void is the sense there is no meaning in life. This sounds to me like a life crisis that an individual may or may not have had. I have never had a life crisis. I have never had the occasion to question the meaning of my life. If my understanding is correct, then there is a void if we explain the sensation we feel upon losing a part of our life by saying, "The loss left such a void in my life".
If we are lucky we can get through life without ever questioning our lives. We inherit a reaction to the void. So if we keep the peddle to the metal we might get to the end of a shortened life without ever examining it. That's probably the purpose of life anyway. Good luck.
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faust 07.29.06 31.6 (5)
My main objection to your thinking here is that you seem to be willing to think for me, and everyone else. Yours is one of the strongest cases of projection going. What if I told you that the vast majority of humans on the planet don't care about rhinos? You would just claim that they should? That is your judgement, not theirs. You are upset about the rhinos (and there is nothing wrong in that), but to claim that the extinction of the rhinos hurts everyone, should upset everyone and would if only they knew what you knew is a bit narcissistic, in my view.
The void is not the loss - it is a judgement you make about the loss. That's okay. What doesn't make sense is to project this emotional reaction onto the Universe, and treat your emotions like others can experience them. I had a tooth that was really bothering me. I had it yanked. I do not feel any void.
There is no meaning to life. Why is that even a problem? Why is it even noticeable? Why should I even care about the question? You have to invent possible meanings to even talk about the "loss" of them, or the absence of them. You are just making trouble where none exists.
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Doug 07.30.06 31.7 (5)
faust, you wrote, "There is no meaning to life". I agree. There is no answer to the question , "Why am I?" I see that as a "problem" because everyone including you at the least "invent(s) possible" answers to that question every day. You at least project your philosophical views more forcefully than most on the membership of ILP. It is noticeable in the conflict you create. You make "trouble" where there should be none, as do other members and Jews, Hezbolla, Hamas, Americans, materialists, capitalists, communists and on and on and....... Now, none of this matters of course because life doesn't matter. However, my guess is you like our meaningless existence better than the alternative and although I don't want to think for you I suspect you would like it better if there was less conflict. So I can only guess why you object to me projecting my vision of life without conflict.
I would have written this post Sat. morning but I took my mother raspberry picking instead. I could have rushed home to work on it but we had lunch out. I had to have a nap when we got home because I was up until 3 AM working on my last reply to you. When we got up Mom and I bagged the raspberries together. After supper we played scrabble. I would say we have played at least 5 nights a week since she and Dad moved in with me in 2001. Upon finishing the scrabble game Mom played solitaire on the computer. She is almost 91. I taught her how to play in Nov. She's played every night since under my supervision. Last week my narcissistic sister-in-law brought me an injured flicker she knew I couldn't refuse to care for. I must have spent 2-3 hours over two days capturing ants for it to eat. I was sad to see it die for the same reason I am sad to see the rhinos and great numbers of my fellow human beings die because of what the rest of us do. It is the same reason I spent 40 years working just enough to survive while I tried to figure out and then explain the source of conflict in our lives.
My problem is not genetic for my narcissistic brother who lives 5 minutes from us has spent maybe an hour alone with our mother in over 5 years. No my problem is likely a simple chemical imbalance that causes excessive and utterly foolish interest in others and the foolish fantasy that I think I feel better looking after my mother than I would have had I let her die in a nursing home. I will get it checked out by a doctor when my mother dies to see if there is a cure. In the meantime faust, you write down what you did yesterday and the highlights of what you've done over the last 30 years. I will need a good counselor when I begin transforming myself into a narcissist. If you qualify I'll interview you first.
You wrote, "I had a tooth that was really bothering me. I had it yanked. I do not feel any void". Did you try feeling it with your tongue?
I began this post at 10 PM right after Mom's perfect game of solitaire. It is 2 AM. I am such a fool. I will need another nap tomorrow right after we return from the farmer's market.
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faust 07.30.06 31.8 (5)
Doug - you have changed the example - which is okay, but it is not a direct response to my post. I'm just trying to stay on the same page - this does not in itself constitute any objection to what you have said. To wit: there is a difference between inventing answers and inventing questions.
The question "What is the meaning of life?" is different from "what is the meaning of my life?", for one thing.
I have never answered the question "Why am I?". That is an entirely different question, if I understand the question at all. The answers I look for are more in line with the question "What should I do?". The difference is between looking at my life as a single entitiy, a fait accompli, which is impossible, and as an activity or process. Unless I misunderstand you, my questions are very different than yours.
Real trouble is that which cannot be resolved - it is not disagreement itself. To say that life has no meaning is not to say that life doesn't matter. You are slipping and sliding around with meanings here.
I love flickers and would be sad to see one die in my care. I would be sad enough to see a rhino die, I suppose, but to be sad about an individual is not the same as being sad about a species. That's my view. To be sad about a manmade, abstract entity is a waste of emotion - you may think I am uncompassionate - I am not - I save it for real things.
But I am not sad when I eat a hamburger. We kill. Are you sad for the ants you fed the flicker? You're just gonna wind up sad all the time. Ants have feelings, too. Ants' lives matter to those ants. How could you be so cruel to those ants? How could you murder them like that over a flicker that died anyway? Do you see my point at all? Are flickers sad that they eat ants?
My mother recently went into a home. She would have died if she hadn't - in fact, she very nearly did. I will drive five hours tonight, after work, to see her tomorrow, and then five hours back to work the same day. For the record.
I enjoy feeling the "Void" with my tongue. I actually enjoy it.
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Doug 07.31.06 31.9 (5)
faust, it is 12:45. I have been working on my reply to you since my mother finished another perfect game of solitaire at 9:45. I haven't finished but this time I have decided not to press on because I would not be doing it justice. I will finish it later. I can tell you however that you did not make the short list of possible counselors that could help me become narcissistic; but I have another lead. I can also tell you the gulf between us seems to be getting narrower. When we first started talking I thought it might be too wide for a handshake. Now I think it might be narrow enough for a hug, so be careful.
I am truly sorry to hear your mother had to be put into a home. I trust her health has improved and I hope she has more than one compassionate child. 5 hours there and 5 hours back! That sucks!! If this is the same trip you alluded to in your "first hour report" you've done it before. Had my father not left a pension that pays our expenses I would not be able to hang out with my mother 24/7. I know you don't like me to think for everyone but I believe you should have the same opportunity to tell your mother by your actions that her life mattered. The fact that so many don't is for me a further piece of evidence that our fabric of existence, the sum of what we all do, is diminished.
I'll talk to you later today.
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faust 07.31.06 31.10 (5)
Doug - I make the trip frequently. My mother has dementia and probably alzheimer's disease. She also has a variety of physical ailments that require round-the-clock care. Home care was not an option, for reasons beyond even the financial ones. She is quite happy in the home, or I would make the trip even more often. But there is no reason to be sorry.
That's actually on topic, I guess. My mother is in a private-pay facility. She had been a board member for years, as her mother was before her. She knows many people, when she knows anyone, which she still does most of the time. Her health is better than it has been in several years - what had been a daily battle to get her to eat (between her and my father) is now a routine. I won't go into all the details, but the stereotypical image we have of nursing homes does not describe her circumstances.
My mother is old. Some of her problems are due to her aversion to doctors. She had a chronically bad back, which caused her a lot of pain, for many years. Her back feels fine, now. No one knows why, but it is so. We've just redecorated her room, with a beautiful antique four-poster bed that was her mother's. She has a view of the river. She is about a mile from my father, who sees her daily. Her sister- and brother-in-law reside at the home. The food is better than it is in the restaurant that I work in - I worked in that home, cleaning toilets and such, in my youth, and had to go off the meal plan - I was getting too fat.
I have more, but won't belabor the point unless you make me.
Why are you sorry? We are all very happy to see her in such good spirits (which she often was not at home) and in such good health, and free of the constant pain she had been in. Looking back, we should have done this a couple of years ago - we were blinded by compassion - misdirected compassion. We didn't realise how much better she would be - we still have no idea why her back is pain-free. She often didn't take her meds at home, but that doesn't explain it all.
Don't be sorry. Be glad for her.
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Doug 07.31.06 31.11 (5)
faust, I am happy for us all. You've just moved the sum of what we do closer to the ideal.
I've always thought that our variously unnatural "reactions to the void" generate a continuum of conflict both between us and within us. My contention is that if we diminish the unnatural component of our reactions to allow an increase in the natural, conflict between us will diminish and 90% of what we call illness will disappear.
My mother and father were married for 64 years. I'd never heard an angry word between them until they moved in with me in 2001. I couldn't believe the viciousness of my mother's verbal attacks. A few weeks after they arrived Dad had an episode that made me think he had died. He didn't but in case he did I moved him into my bedroom so Mom wouldn't have to discover him dead. It was a separation of less than 30 feet but by the change in my mother's attitude you would have thought it was a million miles. I slept on my couch for 3 years but it was worth it to see my mother give my dad a bit of a hug and a kiss on the forehead each night. Who knows what tension lurks beneath the surface that could be causing pain?
I am enjoying these exchanges but give me a chance to catch up eh. I am still working on the one before the last one and I have been here long enough. I am going to work in the garden with my mother.
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faust 07.31.06 31.12 (5)
Okay. I'm hitting the shower, then din-din with Dad, then off to see Mom. I will take her outside tomorrow - there is a very nice garden on the grounds.
I think a lot of my mother's improvement has to do with the fact that she is not constantly fighting with Dad. That is a complex dynamic, those fights - he reacted badly, but with good intentions, to my mother's failing health, and she reacted, in turn, badly to him. They get along much better now. She is much less tense, now, which is part of the easing of her pain, I suspect.
Incidentally, I am almost never ill. I used to get the flu every couple of years, but even that frequency has diminished. I have not had a major illness since I was nine (rheumatic fever). I live much less stressfully now that I have given up most of my possessions. I have made other changes as well, that I think contribute to my physical health. I would be interested in hearing more on this subject.
Maybe there's something to this "void" thing - I am not sure how it is connected. Maybe you can elucidate me through this avenue of health.
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Doug 08.01.06 31.13 (5)
Hi faust. Before I get to our health I want to go back to the flickers, the ants and flickers, hamburgers and question and answers but I need more time. I had completed my reply except for sorting out the part about the questions and answers when we started talking about our mothers. The language I used was appropriate for philosophical arm wrestling. You push and I resist by pushing back. Then today you quit pushing so now I have to change my language. Tonight I only have time for the flickers because I am going to bed early. I think I am going to have the best sleep I've had in awhile.
| faust wrote: |
| I love flickers and would be sad to see one die in my care. I would be sad enough to see a rhino die, I suppose, but to be sad about an individual is not the same as being sad about a species. That's my view. To be sad about a manmade, abstract entity is a waste of emotion - you may think I am uncompassionate - I am not - I save it for real things. |
We are together in feeling sad if a flicker in our care died. I don't think I will be wrong in assuming you would be as sad as I would be if two flickers in our care died. I dare say you would still be with me if we skipped right to 10 individuals. I will say here that if I can be sad that 10 individual flickers died I can be sad if all flickers died which scientists would describe as the extinction of a species. Are you still with me or have I crossed an imaginary line that separates individuals from the sum of all individuals.
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Kriswest 08.01.06 61.1 (5)
Hi Doug, Flickers? Its been too long since I have been here, What the heck is a Flicker? Dare I ask? LOL
Natural void critturs, Doug. Some of us are so attracted to the void that it is like moth to heat. You ever see a lunar moth? It would take your breath away. Its beauty has no words. It is probably larger than your hand. Seeing a picture does not compare to the actual living creature. This wonderous creature strives and fights and batters itself against a window or screen to get itself near the light in the house. Once you see it ,you try to protect it from itself, It is the most wonderous creature to behold. How can it wish to try so hard to be near the light at the cost of its own life and freedom of flight. It will actually destroy itself in order to get inside. That is natural. The light inside is not. The moth sees it as natural because for it ,it is.
At least once a year I see one and I try to get it away from the lights, out into the woods, the durn thing generally beats me back. Sometimes it flys away towards the deeper woods. Now I will take this creature only so far out in the woods, then it must be on its own. Cuz no way am I going any further. There are things that will harm me severely.
this is a true hmmmmm story incase you didn't get it 
I am glad to hear your mom is well my friend.
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Doug 08.01.06 61.2 (5)
Geez Kriss, had you not left I wouldn't have to explain. It is nice to hear from you again though. You are one of the significant strands in this thread. I always wonder how many people enter the thread at the beginning and how many at the last post. Then I wonder how many of the people who enter by the last post go back to the beginning or go back into the thread far enough to pick it up. I have to do a poll someday.
A flicker is a bird I brought into my conversation with faust when we were talking about being sad for the loss of a species which was a metaphor for humanity. faust, who I think must have read the entire thread, was arguing against feeling sorry for a species until we started talking about our mothers then he just up and quit arguing.
Your metaphor of the moth was beautiful. Your moth is analogous to my flicker. Its completely natural flight was interrupted by a completely unnatural 10'x10' picture window my brother put in the middle of the flicker's natural environment. My admittedly naive purpose at the moment is to do my best to point out what I think are the unnatural 'lights' and 'windows' that are restricting our natural 'flight'. This brings us back to the flickers, rhinos and moths and my conversation with faust about whether or not we should even care. Do we stop at ourselves, after our mothers or do we extend our concern to humanity, the sum of us all?
If you have the answer please restrain yourself for a few days. I don't want to lose control here. I have to leave now to make breakfast. How is your mother bty?
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Kriswest 08.01.06 6.13 (5)
wheew, see I remember a candy called flickers or flicks I was trying to figure out what the deuce an old not made anymore candy had to do with rhinos, whales and extinction, thought you all had lost it for a moment. 
With our friend Faust one never knows where he goes. I hold my reply, my friend. enjoy your time. My Mom is bad off but, Hey we go on.
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Doug 08.01.06 61.4 (5)
Kriswest wrote:
thought you all had lost it for a moment.
You could be right. You are a perceptive woman. Remember the place you have in my memory. I'll talk to you again.
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