Nerian
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Posts posted by Nerian
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Sorry for necroposting but I don't wan to start a new damn thread just to reply.
I had the exact same thought recently and found this thread through google. (coincidentally, I'm already a member here) Male fashion is so boring. Men in our culture tend to be very utilitarian. Suits are all the same. If you're lucky you get an interesting tie or one colour other than white, black or grey.
I've decided there's no good reason why men shouldn't or couldn't decorate themselves and dress in interesting ways like women.
If anything, the ancient Greeks would be disappointed to see only women celebrating their natural beauty.
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On 1/3/2018 at 5:03 PM, Easy Truth said:
Good point, but where does "liking" fit it? I see no way around "liking". If "an objective factor" is to guide your life, then you "like" an objective factor guiding your life, or you would not be pursuing it.
Instead of "liking", the word "attracted" is less subjective.
Also, the problem of obesity is not a problem of "eating", or attraction to ice cream. It is a problem of not knowing what is enough.
I think everyone knows what is enough. It's really a problem of not caring.
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2 hours ago, DonAthos said:
I don't mean to address, let alone take issue with, your entire thesis, but I wanted to comment on this part...
I think it's a mistake to expect that Objectivists will share the same sorts of interests. While I believe that there are some mistakes habitually made with respect to "enjoying oneself" (based on a widespread misreading/misunderstanding of "life as the standard of value"), which can potentially result in some of what you're talking about, even if we all shared the same understanding of the same fundamental standard, there would still be Objectivists who would be more or less into fitness, more or less into fashion, more or less into intellectual pursuits, etc. There would still be Objectivists that wouldn't "make sense" to you in that way (just as you would not make sense to others).
It's like: take architecture. Not really a big deal for me. Howard Roark and I may have some awkward moments at a cocktail party, searching for a topic of conversation. But that's okay: I respect his passion for that pursuit, even though I do not share it.
It's not a matter of liking health, it's a matter of it being an objective factor to your enjoyment of life. I cannot fathom how you can enjoy your life while eating yourself into obesity and thereby disease, ugliness and early death. It's not a matter of liking fashion, it's a matter of recognizing the objective reality that how you choose to present yourself in society has important and inescapable effects on your quality of life.
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I've always found this to be a huge gaping hole in Objectivism. What exactly IS my interest. What exactly IS the standard. How exactly do I deal with the particulars of being a man? Maybe it was obvious to Rand but it's not to me.
I always identified those three aspects of man you mentioned a bit different. I identified them as spiritual, mental and physical. Spiritual (pleasure/happiness/joy), mental (mental health, character, mindsets, knowledge, skills), physical (corporeal health, fitness)
I like where you are going with this line of thought and it reminds me of some thoughts I've had myself. I postulated complex happiness and complex well-being, even using the term complex, in the naming spirit of complex numbers.
I've felt at odds with Objectivists who only focus on one thing about man. Many types of Objectivists make no sense to me. Objectivists who don't care for their health and fitness. Objectivists who pay no attention to their appearance or dress. Objectivists who don't care about actually enjoying themselves. Objectivists who think they have to be serious intellectual types.
I've been trying to come up with a practical guide to living beyond ethics. What are the actual things we want? What does living well mean concretely? What are the concrete values of life?
I'm trying to integrate scientific knowledge about man's nature and his needs into a more robust and practical conception of self interest. Your self interest could be stated as your flourishing comprising of well-being and life satisfaction. (Scientific Knowledge such as Positive Psychology, Maslow's Hierachy of Needs, Nutrition, Evolutionary Psychology, 16 Basic Desires Theory)My working thesis is as follows:
Flourishing → Well-Being (Subjective and Objective) and Life Satisfaction → Joy1(Mental and Spiritual values), Health (Psycho-physical functioning), Wealth (Material values)
1 - the psychological state, not in the sense flourishing. Not just the specific emotion of joy, but joy in living, all types of enjoyment. I use the term joy to avoid confusion with the word happiness.
There's a lot packed in there because I know what I mean by the terms. The words are distillations but the parenthesis give some idea of what I mean.
Joy, or happiness or better called joy in living: Mental values means virtuous character, mental strength, self-esteem, mental powers. Spiritual values means all sources of enjoyment of life in all its forms physical and mental, active and passive, leisure and work. The day to day, month to month, year to year life as experienced, concrete meat and potatoes. In my conception, health and wealth are only instruments to joy in living, but joy in living is the point (although their attainment can contain enjoyment, the endorphin after a run or the rush of making a million dollars.). However, flourishing cannot be simply joy in living, since a person can experience short term joy in living, while their actual state with respect to reality is declining, such as their finances draining and their health deteriorating. This will also cause a long term drop in joy in living.
Health is mental and physical and has to do with the functioning of the mind and body. Psycho-physical functioning means psychological functioning and physical functioning. You want your body to function right. You want your mind to function right. Mental and physical health essentially. In order to have physical health you must meet certain needs of your body. In order to be psychologically healthy, you need to meet certain psychological needs. Some examples of psychological needs are a feeling of autonomy, relatedness and competence.
Wealth is your access to material values in the world, including but not limited to goods and services. In the modern world, your access to goods and services is mainly determined by how much money you have, but it's the things in themselves that you want that constitutes the wealth. Some wealth is free such as books from a library, playgrounds, parks, wifi, etc. Furthermore, some people need to work for money. Some people don't. What you really want is access to goods and services, and our base physiological needs are all physical, such as food and water, shelter. The Bottom of Maslow's Hierachy.
You can flesh out some of the concretes but the list is often personal. What one person likes, another might not. Here are a few I thought of. The list is non-exhaustive.
Examples of Actual Joy in Living→
"Positive Experiences", Self Esteem, Competence, Growth, Accomplishment, Relationships, Engagement, Meaning, Contented, Connection (Friendship), Romance (Love, Sex),Positive Experiences →
Basic Desire Satisfaction, Pride, Fun, Engagement/Flow, Curiosity, Laughter, Corporeal Pleasures, Joy, Love, Beauty, Lifestyle, Self Actualization, Personal Power, Sense of Adventure,
You can integrate PERMA (Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishment) into this but I wanted to be more concrete.I think that a part of happiness is experimenting with yourself. Figuring out what kind of life makes you happy, and what kind of things you like to do and experience. Listening to your heart. Perhaps this is what Branden meant by following your bliss. You can't just sit there and figure out what constitutes joy in living for you. Everyone's wired up in their own way. You discover it through doing.
Other values such as a job or career are subservient to happiness, health, wealth, as far as I can tell. A job that makes money is just to attain wealth. A career is really something else. It really aims to serve joy, health and wealth.
Happiness, health and wealth can all feed back on each other. A gain in peace of mind (spiritual value) mind through meditation might improve your ability to handle stress and thereby increase your work capacity improving your work and further improving your self esteem (spiritual value) and your income (material value).
It can be an upward spiral.
Love, in my conception, is a value because of how it makes you feel, and so it's part of 'joy in living' (spiritual value)
These are just working ideas. I don't suggest that this is how it really works. And it's just outline.
Ultimately it'd be really cool to create a Dao of Flourishing. Something you can read through everyday to keep your mind on what matters. A compilation of wisdom and practical tools for living. 10 Commandments. Various maxims, pithy one liners included. How do you set up a new habit? What habits should you set up? How do you follow a routine? Stoicism offers a lot of great mindsets too. THROW IT ALL IN
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Is there really anything wrong with just working an easy job to make money while you pursue your interests?
For instance, Jujimufu, a trickster and bodybuilder, deliberately got an easy job so that he could have plenty of time and less stress for his leisure pursuits: tricking and bodybuilding. This is the kind of life that makes him happy. He made enough money to support himself, but his work was not his life. He took steps to make his work even easier so that he had plenty of time to go to the gym in the middle of the day. He got all his work done, and he never asked for a raise, so his boss loved him. His leisure pursuits take real commitment and he gets actual joy from them, but they aren't productive. They don't produce anything of value except to him. He enjoys doing flips and showing off. He enjoys having a big muscular body and lifting weights. He's living a life that he enjoys. How could anyone say that he is not being productive, or that he's being self destructive?
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Spend your time in
greedyselfish pursuit ofmaterial wealththe creation of values througha career you loveproductive activityYour career doesn't have to make money. It just has to be productive. Productive means it creates values. Material wealth is one value. There's a difference. You could make money at your job, and make no money at your career.
I like the virtue cheat sheet idea!
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38 minutes ago, CartsBeforeHorses said:
I have achieved bliss voluntarily through psychological methods, whenever I desire it, so I know that it's at least possible for one person--me. I don't know if it's my particular brain chemistry which enables me to do this. That is why I am curious to hear others' methods. Also if others have achieved this through purely psychological means such as meditation.
Ayn Rand wrote about the "inexplicable personal alchemy"... she believed the universe to be benevolent, and that certain people had an unknown force of goodness inside of them. It is certainly her most interesting piece of writing as she leaves this question unanswered.
From my research, raw cacao contains anandamide, also known as the 'bliss molecule'. I suspect that I got a mild anandamide high.
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13 hours ago, CartsBeforeHorses said:
That's a very interesting experience... I have always seen bliss as an emotion which you must actively pursue, but perhaps mine is the wrong way to go about it. It sounds like you didn't pursue bliss at all, that it simply happened to you.
Objectivism holds that emotions are the result of our premises, whether conscious or subconscious. Have you examined what premises that you held at the time, that you were focused on? Have you tried meditating upon those premises again? I think that might help you more than another smoothie would
Trust me. It was the smoothie.
I know you're looking for a psychological method... but chemistry is the only way I've ever experienced bliss.
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One time I had a bag of raw cacao nibs. I bought them thinking they would be a nice healthy snack, but they were way too bitter and didn't taste good at all. One day I was making a smoothie and I thought why not just dump them in this smoothie? I knew if I didn't use these nibs they would eventually go off, so I thought I may as well experiment. I dumped most of them in the smoothie and blended them in. The smoothie was very grainy with all these nib pieces and wasn't very nice at all so I just chugged the whole thing.
What followed was the closest thing to bliss I have ever experienced in my life. I experienced a sense of profound well being like I cannot describe. I was also very motivated to fix anything wrong in my life, and I was happy to accept the challenge. Nothing could bring me down in that state. The world seemed bright. Everything seemed right.
I tried to recreate this feeling with another smoothie but I felt nothing the second time... much to my chagrin
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19 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:
I'd just like to point out that if "happiness" was an innate value (at least in any more conceptual form than the raw sensation of pleasure, which is built into your nervous system) then your post would've been gibberish; nobody else would've been able to understand it ("what the Hell? Happiness means 'worth it'") and you wouldn't have been able to think it, in the first place.
I did understand it, though. I've been there. And it's worth the struggle to break through it.
Don't give up.
How is it worth going through all that mental suffering for a rare ephemeral scrap of mental enjoyment?
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4 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:
Actually, though, this one is much better.
Thank you, kind stranger
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On 10/5/2017 at 4:10 PM, Harrison Danneskjold said:
Well, in one sense, such "feelings" are introspectively self-evident. They may or may not be appropriate responses but (like the senses) you can't really help but know what they are. Even the most hardcore evader who was hell-bent on hiding the nature of his own feelings from himself would have to settle for evading their content (the thing to which he's responding), instead.
In the other sense, physical pleasure and pain literally are sensations with inherent valence.
No, an identification is not an analogy; it's much better.
"The combination of the pain it gives me (if any) and life time it costs (if any) are less than the joy it gives me." Maximizing the area, remember.
Beyond that, you don't need to justify nothing to nobody.
It was the same for me.
None of the values you listed earlier are innate (I'm a bit rusty but I plan to explain why fairly soon) and neither is this one. Have you read Atlas Shrugged?
Dear God, moderators, please! Did you see that run-on sentence?!?!! Just give him what he wants!!!
Are they innate? I don't know. I don't know anything anymore. I don't know what there is even to do in life. What's the point of any of it. What's innate, what's learned? I don't know. But there seems to be nothing worth the struggle. Happiness? A brief spurt of emotional pleasure in a long drag of suffering and effort. How is that worth it? I don't know. It seems like nothing much is worth it.
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On 21/07/2017 at 7:27 AM, William O said:
I think the lesson of this thread, which has been exhibited in the forum's reaction to more than one participant, is that if you confront a bunch of people who hold an ideology with a vague or non-specific objection to that ideology, the resulting discussion will generate more heat than light.
All non-zero temperature bodies produce electromagnetic radiation so generating heat in some sense always generates light
Just playing.
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On 18/07/2017 at 6:24 AM, Nicky said:
Okay, thanks. I heard all I needed to hear. You just don't understand, or care to understand, the topic.
Now I know why it took you several weeks to get passed the meaningless generalities and try to make an actual point.
Sorry you feel that way.
On 17/07/2017 at 11:28 PM, Eiuol said:That's good, but we probably have a couple thousand hours.
Who in their right mind would say I haven't at least done due diligence after all that?
I just think a better philosophy can be constructed around the ideas that stand up. A return to egoism and a focus on individual happiness is so sorely needed for one thing. I value Rand's work immensely.
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3 hours ago, Grames said:
So, "life in itself" is considered to have no content, is empty, has no identity as in particular place and time and no need to take actions to continue living? Yeah that is a pretty sterile concept of life. However, any existent shorn of all its attributes simply does not exist. Your concept of life (human life in this specific context) is faulty because it does not refer to or include any of the biological attributes of life. But there is no life without moment-to-moment experiences, pre-rational desires and satisfactions of biological needs, therefore no valid concept of life can omit them.
Concepts are open-ended, thus the concept of life in Objectivism refers to all of the attributes of life and not just some of them or the abstract rational attributes.
Then can we throw out life as the standard of value? Unless you want life with its particular concrete values to be the standard of value, in which case, we are using values to determine a standard of value... which to my mind is about as circular as a circle.
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6 hours ago, New Buddha said:
I don't really see a lot of evidence in your posts that you understand the nuances of Rand's position - irregardless of whether you think they are right or wrong. You seem to be putting up a lot of Straw Man arguments.
I guess a couple hundred hours of study wasn't enough for me then. My bad.
.... or maybe the ideas don't make sense. I guess I can only go with my own judgement. That's all I have.
I think I'm aware of the nuances that supposedly solve the problems, I just disagree with them. They are like backward rationalizations and switching meanings mid-argument in most cases.
I don't think anyone would say I didn't put in enough study, if they knew how much time I've spent reading and listening to lectures about it.
And anyone who thinks I never really understood the ideas, I dunno what to say. No true scotsman I suppose.
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13 hours ago, KyaryPamyu said:
How is choosing to pursue life a 'subjective whim'?
What facts of reality make valuing that process of self sustaining action objective, when in the foundation of a system of objective values we have not yet established any objective values? (Since objective values stem from the choice to live in Objectivist theory, surely you cannot use these values to establish the very same values.)
13 hours ago, KyaryPamyu said:Survival is not a passive state, but a continuous process of pursuing and enjoying your values.
And in Objectivist theory, the values you enjoy are supposed to be rationally, objectively determined by the standard of life. Life is the standard of value, and enjoying life is part of life, and how does ne enjoy life? By pursuing and achieving ones values. What values? Those rational objective values, those that support your life! Can you see the problem here? How is this not sophistry?
Does Objectivism really sanction enjoying yourself for its own sake? This is condemned as whim worship. Doing something 'because you feel like it' is an Objectivist sin. You're supposed to enjoy life the Objectivist way, the rational way! Otherwise you're not really happy, not really enjoying life. You're on a road to self destruction and your subconscious knows it!
13 hours ago, KyaryPamyu said:The pursuit of pleasure and the pursuit of life are the same thing.
Isn't this just a convenient redefinition of terms?
First we define it as a process of self sustaining action. Argue from this basis, and then we throw pleasure in because it's convenient.
13 hours ago, KyaryPamyu said:It also teaches you how to avoid the things that damage your ability to feel pleasure in the long run, i.e. self-destructive activities.
but those are some of the most enjoyable activities.
13 hours ago, KyaryPamyu said:The drive to eat food is not pre-rational, it just is, it's a fact of nature. Only your choice to follow the drive is rational or irrational, according to your context.
And whence comes the judgement of rational?
What I'm trying to point out is that the ethics cannot support the meta-ethical foundations of that very ethics.
It's rational if it serves your life... which you value because you choose to live... which you choose on what rational basis? Remember what is rational to you is defined by your ethics and that is the very thing you are trying to establish.
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54 minutes ago, Eiuol said:
where survival and happiness are one in the same as far as -doing- life.
Happiness surely includes the positive emotions sometimes labelled joy. Feeling joy is doing life? How is this empirically true when there are millions of people living counterexamples right now? People doing life, living, surviving, in some cases doing very well, but suffering, unhappy, miserable and in some cases actually depressed. There are high functioning depressives out there. If happiness does not include that, then I have no idea what we are talking about by happiness, and I have little interest in it. What a chore if there's no reward.
If you just redefine that as not really living, then that convinces me of nothing about reality. Let's just use terms in their plain meanings. Playing with definitions is meaningless. I really don't see the point in it. I want to get to truth about reality, not play with definitions until my model of reality fits conveniently.
59 minutes ago, Eiuol said:If you want to argue against someone, you better get their argument right. That's hard to do unless you're an expert or studied that topic a lot.
For many Objectivists, they never even read the original works! And they feel justified in this.
1 hour ago, Eiuol said:Kind of off topic by now.
True. But I just gave some opinions and people asked me questions and I responded. It has diverged away from the point, but isn't that the fun of a discussion forum? A spark leads to a fire. It'd be nice if there were a way to split a thread organically, rather than start a new one.
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On 01/07/2017 at 5:29 AM, gio said:
If there is no innate ideas, and if emotions derives from the ideas, why the newborn cry ?
Boom.
Because it's a drive, an inclination, an instinct. Man has a nature. Man has innate drives. Values are not chosen.
Don't be afraid to throw out tabula rasa.
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9 hours ago, Eiuol said:
people are resistant to arguments where one person says two things are simultaneous so they work in unity
Isn't that just an apology for a circular argument?
9 hours ago, Eiuol said:but happiness only happens when one survives
People survive all the time and aren't happy. The idea that you need to survive to be alive, and you need to be alive to bhappy, I have no problem with. Obviously, life is a prerequisite for, but doesn't lead to. And the fact that life is a prerequisite says nothing about what in life will make you happy. Achieving life might be in itself pretty boring and unfulfilling. Meaningless even. Life to life, what a drag.
9 hours ago, Eiuol said:By the way, innate drives are still not as obvious as you say, as it does not address how that then translates into a behavior.
All behaviour is based on a drive. What other type of behaviour could there be? Non-driven behaviour? If you choose not to act on drive A that's just because drive B - not to act on it for some other drive - was stronger. I want the cake, but I don't want to be fat, so I don't eat it. A behaviour without a pre-rational drive is in essence a causeless behaviour. I find that logically incomprehensible. Perhaps you have a solution?
9 hours ago, Eiuol said:but throwing that out doesn't undo Rand.
Well, her whole idea that value's can be based on reason is a pretty big part of Rand. One can only reason from one's pre-rational values, to determine higher order abstract values. because abstract, rational values only have value if they fulfil some pre-rational value. I have no problem with principles that help guide one's actions like independence in matter and spirit, integrity, etc. But living by those principles isn't the path to happiness, nor are they totally required for happiness. They are just functionally useful for getting through life with less problems.
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7 hours ago, softwareNerd said:
This sentence interests me more than anything else in your post. To my mind, personal experience is a crucial litmus test, regardless of how logical an idea otherwise seems. So, I'd be interested in an example of this.
What makes life worth living is not living life. Life for its own sake is tedious, boring, dutiful, meaningless.
What makes life living is the concrete experiences one enjoys within it. The pleasures one derives from things. Satisfying one's desires. Pre-rational, visceral, gut-level enjoyment. Withouth rhyme or reason, you just like it. And then life has value as a means to those experiences. Life is not the end, it's a means to an end. Strikingly opposite to Objectivist thought.
In my direct experience that is the case.
All the Objectivist virtue and ethics couldn't make me happy or make me want to live. It's when I started listening to my own desires and pleasures, and enjoying things for their own intrinsic pleasure that life started to have value and happiness seemed possible.
When you're depressed, the only thing that matters is how you feel. That life is a value has no power to shake them from their depression, because it's not true for them. Life is only a value if your specific life is a value to you for other things.
Many Objectivists will shift gears and agree that's what they meant all along but they are doing a bait and switch with the meaning of the term life, and it contradicts the fine print of the ethics.
- DonAthos and softwareNerd
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9 hours ago, Nicky said:
Where in Ayn Rand's works did you read that one ought to choose to live?
Objectivism presents an ethical system for those who choose to live. It doesn't not tell people to choose to live. It states: "If you choose to live, here are some principles to help you. If you don't choose to live, Objectivism is not for you." There's nothing circular about that.
As I explained above, you're wrong. That would be a circular reasoning, obviously, but it's not a line of reasoning that is a part of Objectivism.
But that aside, what do you mean by "sterile"? Is there some actual meaning you were trying to convey with that word, or is it an insult?
If you are founding an objective morality, and you start that morality with a subjective whim, how can you call that an objective morality?
When I say reason or an idea is sterile, I mean it to mean without any motive power.
In OPAR, Peikoff condemns one who chooses not to live to lowest rung of hell.
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5 minutes ago, dream_weaver said:
Why this comes off as trying proving a negative escapes me at the moment.
It escapes me too. It's not trying to prove a negative at all.
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44 minutes ago, dream_weaver said:
What does the concept tabula rasa refer to? Why would such a concept arise, and furthermore persist, if it were invalidly based?
Another way of asking this is: What was the logic and evidence, or reasoning, that gave rise to the concept of tabula rasa?
(Hint: John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding would be a good start. What, since this, has been discovered that obsoleted his investigative report?)Modern cognitive science, neuroscience, behavioural genetics and evolutionary psychology
Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
QuoteWhy would such a concept arise, and furthermore persist, if it were invalidly based?
Persistence of concepts is no sign of their validity. (if that's what you are insinuating)
You can water down tabula rasa and it has some validity. It's true that we aren't born with proper knowledge or innate ideas of objects. But Rand herself said, you don't even have any innate tendancies and that man has no instincts, etc. She meant it in the strong sense, not the watered down sense.
Why are men's clothing so boring?
in Beauty
Posted
It's really a preference, isn't it? How can it be a waste of time if you enjoy being decorated? It doesn't take any longer to put on an interesting shirt than a boring shirt. It doesn't take that much time to put on a necklace or something. I'm not saying everyone ought to do it, but many women enjoy it, and if I was a woman, I'd love to do it, I'm jealous they can do it! I want to do it more as a man. It'd be time well invested.