Your Style Philosophy

[Faust]

that sounds WAY too much like an advertising write-up for something.

I think he meant classic with a twist.

[Shucks]

philosophy has always been a light to me in dark times, perhaps precisely because it doesn't try to comfort but only to address the stark reality in the most direct and honest way.

and this sounds like a first semester theory of knowledge student trying to impress his older sister's hot friend

[DudleyGray]

Heavy stuff, DudleyGray. Hopefully, you will have a turnaround in terms of your bleak vision of humanity. We are also animals who write poetry and launch spaceships :-)

True, it's not all bad. Sometimes I get carried away or even hamfisted with angst and melodrama if I'm writing. I do think that if my view on humanity changes, my style philosophy would stay the same, that it's ultimately rooted in self-expression. I loathe to think that it would ever revolve around things like, well whatever makes people turn to the J. Crew look. Not that they're not being expressive, but you know.

^ yeah and animals are cute; nothing wrong with animals

Some of them eat poop. A lot of them rape.

There is, I think, a hidden irony in this view of things. That is: taken to its logical conclusions, it leads to its own negation. You can hardly be disappointed in humanity pretending to be other than they are, if they're just animals - like all animals, they are forced to be what they are, viz. in this case a deceiving and self-deceptive animal. Despising (or having distaste for) them/us is like despising oranges because at some point one decided they should be apples. But this is what we are. Like cats, we go to the bushes to defecate.

I mean, the only reason those animal actions you refer to, or our obfuscation of them, have a negative weight in our minds is because of the various human valuations we ourselves have given them. Separate yourself from human values, and you no longer have a criterion with which to find those same values/mores/behaviours repellent or alien. They just are. And you just are. Stuff spins on its course. (Using the universal second person there, not just meaning "you" personally.) As Nietzsche put it, nihilism leads us back to being like a child, free and creative, once even the values that had us resenting other values are also overturned/dismissed.

It's not so much the value or non-value of the animal side of things, but many of the ideals of society that I feel disillusioned with. Love, freedom, morality, things of that nature that society deems to be on some sort of higher plane than an animal existence.

Writing that out, it sounds bleaker than I intend, or maybe not. I could just be going through a phase, I suppose. I never had to go through a questioning of faith as an athiest, but then there were other hidden things I unknowingly believed in. So maybe it's more just a questioning of ideals. Hard to say, lot of gray area. I love gray.

edit: I know that may not change any of one's actual feelings regarding these things, but philosophy has always been a light to me in dark times, perhaps precisely because it doesn't try to comfort but only to address the stark reality in the most direct and honest way. So didn't mean to scorn how you feel about these things, just to offer my own, contrasting feelings.

Of course. I have loved philosophy, it's terribly fascinating, but lately I feel that it is very difficult to apply it, not that that is what it's for. At the end of the day, explanations of how or why I feel certain ways end up seeming arbitrary to me; regardless of heady reasons, the end result is the same, the feeling remains.

[Michael_Robartes]

dudleygray,
i have in the past and still often tend to think and agree with some of the things you are saying.
I'd be very interested to hear why you feel disillusioned with love, freedom and morality.
You should read Straw Dogs by John Gray and his books if you haven't already, brilliant book covering all these topics with a particularly bleak outlook, if read the wrong way. One thing, you can always keep your head up by realising that all the people regarding themselves on higher planes than animals with the quasi dedication to fashionable but certainly contemporary set of morals etc etc seeking salvation and bolstering humanity into something more than it is.. they're shallow and delusional and thats probably why they wear j crew. You perhaps should take salvation in the fact you know there is no salvation and you can get on with being you and living your life skilfully.
on style philosophy, i have some strange perhaps bleak world views and think people on the whole are too cloudy and silly to realise whats going on so i think my style of trying to be a bit different and dress a bit differently derives from trying to alienate people from myself because of my thoughts and it flows into trying to dress exactly and completely how i like but try do it skilfully (which needs work :] )
Thats why i read lots and lots of books on everything because i wish to live skilfully as i grow older so i can do things more easy and focus on getting more skills.
Seriously read his books as well will greatly improve and collect your thoughts as you read it because it is thought provoking

[DudleyGray]

I'd be very interested to hear why you feel disillusioned with love, freedom and morality.
You should read Straw Dogs by John Gray and his books if you haven't already, brilliant book covering all these topics with a particularly bleak outlook, if read the wrong way. One thing, you can always keep your head up by realising that all the people regarding themselves on higher planes than animals with the quasi dedication to fashionable but certainly contemporary set of morals etc etc seeking salvation and bolstering humanity into something more than it is.. they're shallow and delusional and thats probably why they wear j crew. You perhaps should take salvation in the fact you know there is no salvation and you can get on with being you and living your life skilfully.

Sorry it took so long to get back to you. I've been dealing with some personal things lately. Why I feel this way is too much to get into in text, and it would just end up being a jumbled mess anyways. It's not even something I'm sure of myself, just a feeling I've acquired from life experience and reading. But I think a lot of it is just the incorrigible discrepancy between my and others' ideals and how they come into play or are interpreted in practice.

Thanks for the words of encouragement, but my aim in life is not to be happy our satisfied, but to get by on my own strength or to be able to know it's there when I need it. Happiness would be secondary or coincidental, and despite my outlook or perhaps aided by it, I often find myself happy. I find myself despondent on occasion as well, possibly due to my mental condition or life events or general outlook. It's very hard to say with these sorts of things, reasons for things like that seem arbitrary and not to be given too much weight, I feel.

[interest1]

dudleygray,
i have in the past and still often tend to think and agree with some of the things you are saying.
I'd be very interested to hear why you feel disillusioned with love, freedom and morality.
You should read Straw Dogs by John Gray and his books if you haven't already, brilliant book covering all these topics with a particularly bleak outlook, if read the wrong way. One thing, you can always keep your head up by realising that all the people regarding themselves on higher planes than animals with the quasi dedication to fashionable but certainly contemporary set of morals etc etc seeking salvation and bolstering humanity into something more than it is.. they're shallow and delusional and thats probably why they wear j crew. You perhaps should take salvation in the fact you know there is no salvation and you can get on with being you and living your life skilfully.
on style philosophy, i have some strange perhaps bleak world views and think people on the whole are too cloudy and silly to realise whats going on so i think my style of trying to be a bit different and dress a bit differently derives from trying to alienate people from myself because of my thoughts and it flows into trying to dress exactly and completely how i like but try do it skilfully (which needs work :] )
Thats why i read lots and lots of books on everything because i wish to live skilfully as i grow older so i can do things more easy and focus on getting more skills.
Seriously read his books as well will greatly improve and collect your thoughts as you read it because it is thought provoking

Someone please sig.

[Faust]

Well spotted, ma'am - hats off.

[interest1]

Well spotted, ma'am - hats off.

It's 30 seconds of my life that I am still mourning.

[interest1]

I'm shallow and delusional and I wear Rick & Ann.

Looks like I have more in common with those seeking salvation than I thought.

[casem]

[interest1]

Lions and tigers and grumpy cats, oh my!

casem83 - Grumpy Cat IS my salvation!

[Dorje]

Dudley, it's only compassion that saves us from the depths of nihilism.

Understanding that is the key to finding meaning in life.

[Faust]

Dudley, it's only compassion that saves us from the depths of nihilism.

Understanding that is the key to finding meaning in life.

Or as Woody Harrelson's character in Natural Born Killers said, "Only love kills the demon."

[Shucks]

i'll take any excuse to post clips from that movie

[Michael_Robartes]

Dudley, it's only compassion that saves us from the depths of nihilism.

Understanding that is the key to finding meaning in life.

Oh you white devil! falsify elsewhere
My opinion,
Nihilism at least explains the transparency of human compassion and morals. How strong and constant are our human morals in practice? Think back two hundred years, the morals then didn't hold us back from making a pretty 'buck' on the back of enslaved races. From Russia to America, England to South Africa was enslavement. Think about today, from person to person, country to country, morals differ. There is no consistency, no universality or history to them. They are mere trends.
We are creatures of self-deception, creatures of simply reward and punishment. When it is rewarding to have morals, we have them, when it is punishing to have them; we abandon them. Test yourself, do you really hold true to what you like to say you believe? Or do you like to just think you are a moral person. You have instincts.

Of course, i do not intend to offend you but merely point out imbalances in what your saying. I can speculate, for example, that you as a subscriber to a high-fashion forum are well acquainted with spending $300 on a t shirt. Whatever reason you feel like rewarding yourself, whether you worked hard for it or not, you can. Then when the conversation arises about moral philosophy you talk of 'compassion', and what a heart-felt sentence of tip-top morals you just dropped, please, think next time you think to spend $300 on a t shirt, buy the $3 one and give the rest to charity. As you understand the suffering of others, and there's lots of it, lest you wish to live a 'meaning'LESS life. Albeit, i am basing this on speculations about your subscription to this forum.
As Dudley was saying before, morals and human behaviour can be a little bewildering and paradoxical.

Other than that nihilism just accepts the human categories of the world by saying its meaningless; its neither meaningless nor meaningful. What makes us need a meaning to life? Animals don't have a meaning? They have a function, perhaps we have some function however its seemingly a parasitic one. Nature does not care for meaning! Nature will wipe us off the face of the earth when she pleases. If it were to give meaning what makes you think the human one would be so platonic?
It's human nature to deceive oneself into a lullaby. Otherwise, wait, what the fuck ARE we here for?
Maybe someone made us, beats me