We’ve spoken before on quoting ancient parables and maxims at a fellow seeker, Ms. Tsukiyo. I’m well aware of the story and its variants.
You’re not demonstrating that you understand anything at all, or that your eyes are clear-- only that you can cite parables.
You know it is not demonstrable, why expect it?
But anyway, hold tight to your remaining values, they suit the martyr narrative.
And to be clear, not an offense. The more roles of characters in the world the merrier, and i have a feeling you are one of the few who do it with their eyes wide open.
It’s demonstrable enough for my purposes, Ms. Tsukiyo. Telling me you understand tells me nothing, but you can show that you are aware, that your eyes aren’t clouded by the rejection of convention.
Reflect the argument, in your own words. Explain to me my own point, and you’ll have shown me you understand, at least, enough that I don’t have to worry you’ll just embrace a contrary perspective out of a pure and careless desire for novelty.
You seem to want to explore the outer bounds of human experience and potential, and there’s no doubt value in that. But do you see why that’s a worrying path?
I don’t particularly see myself as a martyr. A martyr’s life has value for its own sake; its loss is a sacrifice for a greater cause. My own existence is something tainted, by my past, if not my present. It’s not something I’d want to offer on the altar of any cause.
When I disappear, I hope I vanish with barely a ripple. … I say that, although I know it won’t be so simple. Worldly entanglements are too enticing. Regardless, I don’t expect to be in this world forever. And though I expect, in time, to vanish, I do want to see, to understand, first.
That would imply strong feelings one way or another.
Sure we are hardwired biologically to feel a certain range of emotions and to have some alarm systems that say “good” (like pleasure, satiation) and “bad” (like hunger, thirst, pain) but those are just alarms trying to maintain cohesion of a dying vessel. There is nothing wrong with death and if one choses so, it can be a path taken at any time if a situation is too shitty.
As Slitcher said in his topic, There are worse fates than being left to decide your own destiny.
Roses are red, violets are blue, crappy thing happen and good ones too.
Except they aren’t crappy nor good, they are just things happening and our perspective place meaning on them, stories being told to make sense of a senseless event.
Why in your mental framework the direct restriction of choices from most in Nation is worst than the indirect restriction from the Empires? If you accept the universe as it is, there is no room to differentiate anything from anything else. If we can’t meet eye to eye on that, i don’t know how else to communicate that there is only what it is. Period. No judgment, no strong feeling about anything.
Stuff happens, that’s it.
Poor choice of word from my part. Penitent was what i was looking for.
Arghhhh, this. You cherish this “taint” so much you carry it everywhere every time. If your infomorph is not corrupted by the end of the universe, everyone involved will be dead, the documents will be lost, no one will even remember the location or the names of whatever happened, and yet, there you will be, ruminating about the “taint” that you so preciously carry, even if the universe collapsed behind you it will be you and the taint that can’t go anywhere because you won’t let go of grasping that little piece of space-time that exists only in memory.
Just let it go girl, let’s grab a drink and have some fun.
This feels like judgment.
This is the core of our difference, Ms. Tsukiyo, and it’s why I don’t want to hear maxims and parables from your mouth.
You know the stories and sayings, but you haven’t understood them at all.
What is your understanding?
An assertion.
It makes no difference if she decides to go around with one open eye or none of them, but as mentioned, some hardwired mechanisms are present and the feeling of frustration appear sometimes, akin to a family member almost getting there but not making it.
But no sleep loss over it, everyone in their rythm.
And you hotness in red, making progress on a middle ground with your antagonists?
That there’s a gentleness and warmth that pervades the teachings, to which you seem blind. That the teachings are long on kindly humor and consideration for others, and short on violent acts. That understanding doesn’t make us exempt from our duties as part of our society, or of humankind generally.
It doesn’t change where we are. It only allows us to perceive where we stand.
You said, before, that you murdered your master, did you not? I suppose at that time you believed you had learned all you needed, that there was nothing more for you to gain there. But the arrogance, cruelty, and extremity of such an act suggests otherwise.
Of course, I’ve done the same: believing myself exempt from human rules, I, also, killed my teacher, who was also my grandfather. (I would guess our reasons were different, though.) Worse, I taught. I spread my foolishness to others, students eager for truth. I stained other minds with my error.
Now I feel my way forward with faltering steps. I don’t trust myself, any longer, to see clearly, to understand. I’m clever, but not wise, and now I understand better, maybe, the dangers that come from that.
My path is unclear. I think I’m making a little progress, though. At the least, I can look back, at my former self, and at you, and say with conviction:
Lost one, you understand nothing.
An assertion, but one fraught with judgment. If it made no difference, there would be no ‘Arghhhh’, no attempt to persuade away from that position. In effect, you are arguing against your earlier assertion that there’s no room to differentiate anything from anything else.
As for me… uhm… I think it’s going pretty well. I’ve been spending about half my time drunk and half of it sober, so I think that qualifies as a good middle ground between myself and the only real ‘antagonist’ I have: sobriety. Which one were you thinking of?
Force your will and break your weakness. There is no use to returning to the events past. If you did something wrong, punish yourself, improve yourself, and don’t let it hold you anymore. If someone did something wrong to you - punish them, and never let them get away with that. Be just, be honorable, and deliver you will at the tip of your sword. Never give up, never surrender, would it be to your enemy external or your enemy internal, including your own feelings. For them are the hardest enemy to defeat, enemy that will try to decieve you and cover your eyes. Don’t let them. Ever. Be sharp, be smart, be strong. Do what you must, and let it be what will happen.
I had many masters, but these are the lessons I have went through myself.
And these false teachings are part of why God has given the Achurans over to destruction.
The Blood of the Achurans gives Occult Powers to the Chosen. Even so, may the Blood Age come quickly. Amen. Amarr Victor.
Do you forget, ignore or deny the other side? The one of horror, coldness and the ugly face of totality?
There is no whole if you limit it, hence the one eye open. That is the key i keep pressing with you, the denial of the parts you don´t like and you close your eyes to them. The “Oh look, let´s get the Oneness, but split it into parts. These i like, these i don´t. Forget those”
The name that can be named is not the eternal name
Why do you limit the limitless? Why look at one side and ignore the other?
Symbolically dear heavens! As in “Thank you for your directions bringing me so far, now it is time for my own journey” She is still teaching and making a lot of people angry to this day.
I didn´t murder my parents either.
Words of wisdom.
To me, that is exactly why the warmth is important.
We are not the center of this world. The Totality doesn’t-- can’t-- see us, doesn’t-- can’t-- notice us. It’s a wonder, but it’s not here for us. It doesn’t care whether we understand it or not. Why would it? The spirits and gods are metaphors. Nothing’s looking after us. We’re not even real, as separate beings, ourselves.
But our subjective experiences of this world are very “real” to us. We can suffer. We can bring suffering on others, who can bring it on us, too.
You ask me why I limit the limitless. In fact, I don’t-- why would I? It would do no good if I did. The Totality is the Totality. It needs no purpose but itself.
If you’re okay with suffering, then, so be it. But if you bring it to others, and if others object, and respond, you won’t have much reason to complain. The Totality isn’t looking out for you, either.
We’re in this world together.
“Killing your master” symbolically normally means bringing new insight, “killing” the person they were before you met, not leaving. Everyone has more to learn.
I’m a little relieved you didn’t mean that literally, though. That’s something I don’t want to learn I have in common with a lot of people.
For myself, though, I’m guilty. I’m a kinslayer, Ms. Tsukiyo.
I had my reasons. I even know what they were, and there are worse things in this world. In time, my crime, like all crimes, like all human affairs, will be lost in the sea of time like grains of dust in the desert. In an absolute sense, you’re completely correct if you say it doesn’t matter.
The bizarre law of the capsuleer seems to agree: what’s one little murder in a sea of blood? I can’t even remember my home anymore, or what I did there. Justice doesn’t exist in this world.
But it matters to my community. It matters to my family. It matters to me.
I’ll never set foot on Achura again. To live in exile, with no memory of my home, seems the least I can do to apologize to Grandfather.
It isn’t enough. But I’m not quite so riven by guilt as to want to suffer what maybe I should, for I crime I don’t remember committing.
Is that what the warm fuzzy feelings is about? I make you feel good and expect you to make me good too?
Everyone has more to learn until they learned it, then they move on. And once ou are done you are done.
You kill the representation of the person and their values. You walk with borrowed legs until you use your own. And if you know there is ground to be covered and you are stuck because of the persons borrowing the legs, be it parents, teachers or special figures, then you kill them and move on.
You may be a kinslayer, but that doesn´t need to mean you are guilty. Nor that you need to carry that guilt with you unless you want to.
And since you want to, i ask what to you mean to achieve by carrying it. If you understand the purpose and embrace it with open eyes, good for you. If you carry it by walking with the legs from other people, it´s all good too, but since you are a seeker i would invite you to reflect upon this.
You still haven´t killed your parents, you regret the murder of your teacher but he is still quite alive within you. Borrowed legs all the way.
Would you consider going back there and apologize? Would you consider not doing the trip alone?
It is not easy to let go certain things held dearly, but it can be done.
Shall we?
It’s less about good feeling. Cruelty can feel good. So can blood-lust satisfied.
It’s more about keeping suffering to a minimum, or existential courtesy, if you like. The Totality doesn’t respond in what we might usually think of as a “moral” way-- it doesn’t impose justice-- but it absolutely does respond (notwithstanding that what it’s responding to is part of it).
It’s rude to splash about in the Totality, to make trouble for others. Avoiding this calls for restraint. That’s actually the root of a lot of moral sensibility back home-- in your community as well as mine, I’d guess, Ms. Tsukiyo. Living together in peace requires us to be careful of trampling one another’s lives.
Otherwise, someone may be tempted to physically set you on fire and ask whether the Totality knows or cares how much pain you’re in. (It doesn’t, but, in the moment, that won’t matter very much to you.) As philosophical ripostes go, it’s kind of crude, but the point they’ll be making isn’t very subtle, either-- even if it’s one you seem to want to resist.
It won’t be justice, but probably someone will feel good about it.
If I don’t carry it, I’m more likely to once again accept the ways of thinking that led me to it. Accepting that it was a shameful act, one that could even be said to demand my life … even if I don’t deliver myself up for that kind of punishment, it’s still something that will shape my thinking. Productively, I hope.
I won’t be killing my parents without access to a time machine a little more efficient than the limited causality-busting engines we have so far. They’re dead long ago. Grandfather was probably the closest thing to a “father” I had, mostly, growing up.
And there’s nothing shameful in borrowing legs for the parts of the journey those legs will help you traverse easily. Insight pointed out by others isn’t a shameful thing. Only, there aren’t a lot of teachers or well-trod paths for our situation. It was my mistake, before, to think that was something I could fix, myself.
Not for nothing, though, Aria, but everything makes trouble for some other part of the Totality. Animals consume animals which in turn consume plants. Erecting a structure casts a shadow that alters flora distribution in the affected area. Tectonic activity alters the course of rivers, destroying lakes full of fish, which in turn leaves massive salt deposits that choke the life out of the soil nearby as the wind blows it across hundreds of kilometers. Travel in space disturbs particle flow as ships move through the stellar wind at subluminal speels, which can be disruptive in ways we haven’t even bothered to study.
[Edit for completeness of thought: And the reverse applies: Those animals - if they don’t kill other animals, their own young starve. If the structure isn’t erected, people aren’t housed, services aren’t rendered, or other needed functions aren’t met. If those lakes don’t die, that salt is never mined to meet the needs of populations distant enough to have their own arable land. If the ship doesn’t travel through space, medical supplies don’t get to where they’re needed.]
Everything you do makes a splash. Everything you don’t do makes a different splash, only it’s usually in a much more diffuse, unpredictable, and often bigger way… because the splash you know about is one you can mitigate. Why is, for example, the disruption of a dozen lives you’ll never interact with more significant than the disruption of a thousand lives you’ll never interact with, just because of which kind of mammal one set is?
Hee. Well, this is one way to get me talking again.
The Totality’s not something static and still; its really something pretty active. I mean, it’s the universe, all universes, if you need more than one. Within that, most things basically stick to certain particular roles, even if that role is to do such-and-such a thing with great force: it’s the role of a hawk to try to catch the rabbit, the rabbit’s role to try not to be caught, and (although the stakes are a little lower, probably, in typical encounters, for the hawk) both of them play their parts as though their lives depend on it, which they do.
Struggle, then, can be part of the appropriate shape of the Totality, as long as it flows along with the patterns of the world. Usually, nobody has to encourage the rabbit or hawk to do as they do (unless maybe you’re talking about animal rescue or something). Often they don’t even have to be taught: they just play their parts without thought. Nobody has to instruct a typhoon.
Human affairs, as you’d expect, get more complicated. We’ve talked a little about this before. “Right action” tends to consist in flowing with what the world is calling you to do and be-- and it’s not necessarily calling you to be still.
Usually, though, it’s not calling you to randomly stab your neighbor.
That’s the kind of disruption I’m talking about, albeit an extreme example. The Totality flows on, but ripples spread: the Totality might not care, but your neighbor will, and her husband, and her relatives, and your other neighbors, and the local authorities. Consequences might obviously rebound on you, but, less obviously, also rebound on those close to you. Your daughter’s likely to spend a fair few years as, “that girl whose mother stabs people.”
It can even rebound on total strangers, like the guy who didn’t get out of the way of the ambulance fast enough and ended up needing one himself.
Knowing what action (or inaction) is appropriate is, of course, not such an easy thing; societies tend to set certain defaults as normal expectations, and it can be hard to spot the exceptions.
That’s why wisdom-- being able to know right action-- is something I aspire to, not something I claim to possess.
You didn´t randomly killed your grandfather. You killed him because it was the thing to do in a certain context.
Yet, you keep looking back and second guessing yourself, traveling in time bringing to the present elements that don´t belong to it.
But since we are coming to points already discussed, once your journey of repent has had it´s due course, and if you are willing to go say your heart to the present-figure-of-your-past in Achur, and willing to have some company, give me a call.
Or if you want to skip all that and just go grab a drink.
Right, and it’s always splashing. Its very nature is one of constant disruption—in fact, of disruptions of disruptions: the hunting fish, devoured by a larger predator, for example. The forest fire doused by a hurricane.
And human affairs are part of that. If you take the position that the Totality is what is real, that the individual pieces aren’t… then any appeal to human morality is lying to yourself. Because as you’ve said: the Totality doesn’t care. There is no ‘right action’, there is only impulse. Stimulus and response. And yeah, often enough, that impulse is to lash out, to get what you want right then and there and screw everyone else. We don’t, because there are countervailing impulses, but neither one is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in this context… because the Totality is what’s real, and the Totality doesn’t care.
‘Right’ and ‘Wrong’ are a product of caring. Of making the distinction between the two. And in your framework… nothing real makes that distinction.
By the same token to assert that human experience is at all meaningful in that framework is also self-deception. If the individual parts of the Totality have no reality unto themselves, then no, they are not meaningful. They are lies. The only experience that has meaning is that of Totality, and Totality does not experience. It simply is.
My neighbor is meaningless. Her husband, her relatives, my other neighbors, they are all meaningless. Consequences are simply the ‘patterns of the world’, playing out as they always must. No action is appropriate or inappropriate, because all actions are simply the Totality existing in accordance with its nature.
In order to have that smaller framework matter… for it to have meaning… we must be real, unto ourselves. If we are not, then no… we are meaningless.