Understanding

Hold on , my lady .. Will get back with you with a follow- up response (hopefully soon as in today or tommorrow --if all goes well) .
(Lately, I'm rebutting the relativist statements of a relativist over at the 'Ways To Change The World ' Thread . Sad sign of the weird era --that some people would unfortunately rather respect paltry opinions (i.e. sell -out) instead of change the world towards a more beautiful , heroic state of affairs ! ) .

Enrika Posted : Again, Jason, thank you.

The Response : Your quite welcome, m' ylady .

Enrika Posted : "Bittersweet endings are bad --better to have endings with sweetness and light ---full of sentimental nurturing joy ."

Enrika Posted :This is my own personal preference as well, although I recognize that not everyone feels this way.

The Response : Well they *should* feel that way. If they don't feel that way then the belief they have to the contrary is perverse, weird, murky, paltry, fiendishly vapid and unwholesome and so------- piss on the goofy opinion those people hold to the contrary.

Chances are the reason you prefer the ending with sweetness and light is because you have (in regard to that issue) rightly aligned the way you think and feel with objective principles of virtue . Hence, don't dilute the truth of the good inclination that probably buds and mayhap blooms with verdant spark in the soil of your mind by downplaying it with that postmodernist lingo about it merely being "your opinion" when it isn't mere opinion nor mere personal preference , but, instead, the only right way to conceive of the issue . So sister Enrika , say it loud and clear that endings full of untrammelled sweetness and light with no hint of the sordid ., is right and , furthermore, that it is totally right that you believe that endings of various affairs of men , women, children , and the other living creatures be that of pure sweetness and light ...


Enrika Posted : : I always want happy endings, for myself and for everyone else. But the reality of life isn't like that much or most of the time.

The Response : Well it should be .!

'Should' is the key word here .'Should' is the word that looms large where value is at stake . The 'should be' takes precedence in terms of values over the situational 'what is' . M ' lady , never let the weird , inchoate thought creep into your tender soul that would have you believe that the situational way things are is somehow the way it should be, because it is . Situational reality is never self-justifying .

We should strive relentlessly to kick situational reality's sordid ass . Make situational reality say "uncle" . 'To strive , to seek, to find , and not to yield' ---weren't those the words that the Victorian man of letters: Alfred Lord Tennyson penned of the hero Oddesius and his fellows .? Well that ought to be the motto for all generations . ' To strive when your arms are too weary, to run where the brave dare not go '---as Peter O' Toole sang in the play 'the Man Of La Mancha '. Too damn every last scintilla of the sordid , of the paltry , of the crass and sweep it clean away--- leaving neither root nor branch and , then, to dance on the proverbial ashes---that should be the banner and charge of every nation .

But maybe that will never happen on the mass scale ---maybe we will only be able to build protected oasis here and there ---enclaves of untrammelled purity ---sweetness and light (if even that) . But it still worth fighting for even if it is never achieved. ! For here's the rub : integrity is a matter of thought and not just action . It is not enough to merely act righly, we should strive to think righly too .

Resignation is never right . Appeals to resignation are *never* even partially right . And by the light of those insights, we can see that it is worthwhile still to speak the truth regardless of whether the truth prevails in the affairs of this globe we live on . Speak the truth though the heavens fall ---as it was apparently said over a hundred years ago by the abolitionists . The road to ruin has *never* been paved with good intentions . The road to ruin ---nay the cul -de sac of ruin is paved with duplicity / the respectible mediocrity of people "looking at it from different perspectives" instead of being singular about virtue and truth . Regardless of what the road to "hell" may be paved with , the road to ruin on the ethical and esthetic fronts (which is incidentally far worse than any hell of literal fire) ...that road to ruin is paved with *bad* intentions and with being conflicted ... paved through and through with the ambivalence that gets people to sell-out for the sake of balance ---that is the essence , the sin qua non of ruin !

Enrika Posted : As long as death exists, the reality of life will never be like that. And, of course, the absence of death would bring with it its own horrors.

The Response : Well we should be working on ways (with help from the Good Creator) to abolish death as well . Be it by prolonging life through means currently in reach and/or by more exotic means yet to be found . 'Raise the dead , heal the sick, cleanse the lepers '---to quote an ancient Jewish text . The absence of death would bring with it it's own horrors ?---you maintain . Well not if all other forms of physical suffering ---as well as all sordid motifs in the affairs of living beings were to be abolished along with death , right ?

Or do you maintain that the abolition of death would bring its own horrors *even if all forms of physical sufferring also to be abolished* and that the reported horrors of abolishing death are not merely limited to the presence of physical sufferring continuing without death ? If that is what you maintain then how would the abolition of death result in horrors even if physical sufferring also no longer manifested ?

"The descriptions of pleasure and pain were concerned with sensory qualia because that is what those terms are used to refer to ."

Enrika Posted :It would be far more accurate to say that *you* use those terms strictly in reference to sensory qualia. Most people don't.

The Response : Well popular language in the present day and age is a funny thing . Guess I use those terms in a retro way ---maybe .

"I suppose one in a metaphorical sense could refer to emotional pleasure and pain ...but that's a different affair."

Enrika Posted : We disagree here. In my opinion, it is not metaphorical, and the two are inextricably linked.

The Response : Inextricably linked ---? How so ?

"so the cliches that claim without tragedy/sadness/loss one could never appreciate joy is shown to be a false claim !"

Enrika Posted : I tend to agree, although I am by no means certain of this.

The Response: Well if you reflect and reflect , hopefully you will soon acknowledge yourself certain of this --without any deference to the claims of those who would say otherwise . The reason you probably agree, is because you are right on about it . Don't hesitate to agree with what you agree with in full .

Enrika Posted :However, I do think that the depth of appreciation of joy is enhanced by past experience of sorrow.

The Response: What about the argument that one could have a contrast between lesser and greater degrees of joy ---and that other kind of contrast could help you appreciate joy , without the sort of contrast between joy and sorrow .

"I hope that you didn't think that I espoused some sort of emotionless approach to life , and /or an approach to life without an esthetic sense."

Enrika Posted :I didn't know either way, which is why I asked. But I certainly hoped not. Your answer suggested that it was entirely possible that you did, which I found deeply disturbing. I'm very relieved to find that this is not the case.

The Response : Fair enough .

"And yes, good emotions like joy , devotion (or even emotions like anger) provided they are applied in the right context with the right sort of pattern of thought behind them--- can enhance the approach we take to deep ontological meaning of existence ."

Enrika Posted : :So can pain and sorrow.

The Response: Well sorrow can help us know that we care--- in the sort of world where we can (but don't have to) get lost in a swirl of various events and distractions (not limited to distractions of a sordid or crass sort ...moreover...but everyday domestic concerns and trivia or semi-trivia of a not necessarily sordid sort ) . But it is possible and not remotely so, for a person through the right regimen of cultivating the right mental habits (including those of contemplation , and specially structured types of introspection) to get in a rythmn of inner life where they don't require sorrow to remind them that they care , or how much they care .

Let it then be said that sorrow can be *extrinsically purposeful* in promoting an inventory of whether we care about other persons, places, beings and so on (and to what extent we care) , but it is NOT *intrinsically puposeful .*

As for (physical?) pain ---its role is also at best *extrinsic* rather than intrinsic ---in so far as it serves the Good by telling us what we should ostensibly not due to our bodies --exceptions being circumstances where (in an ethical loss versus benefit inventory) there is a state of affairs wherein the physical factors are, by dint of bad luck, stacked in such a way as to present parameters wherefore in order for that person to help others in time , the helper must help the person by entering into physical states of affiars that cause pain to the helper in order to help the other . Example : the brave fireman or firewoman who runs into a burning building and gets the skin burned off of most of his or her arm in order to rescue a person from the burning building .

But that merely *extrinsic* desirability *in special case scenarios* to enduring physical pain is : a totally different context from the weird, murky outlook that claims that it is somehow intrinsically desirable to endure pain either for the sake of alleged spiritual growth being *allegedly* caused by that ordeal , or the murky notion that somehow accepting pain puts one in touch more with situational reality (which is really a weird mystification that presumes that being put in touch with situational reality has some ad hoc desirability aside and , somehow, weirdly over and above any specific problem solving role that such endurance may only incidentally have) , or the notion that pain serves some mysterious purpose that we are allegedly not meant to know (a notion not supported by the Judeao-Christian literature without twisting the interpretation, as in much Calvinist doctrine and other murky attempts at non-systematic theology )

<-----Those last two notions of the three (wrong) pain- suppporting notions are the most ideationally sinister as well as the most mendacious of the three , it should be mentioned .

If one wishes to present an argument that professes that a savoring of the joy in life would somehow be less intense if it were encouraged by *other qualities* different than pain being the one's contrasted with the joy and , hence, that pain provides a more intensifying type of contrast than other types of contrast such as the types which involve non-jarring qualities being contrasted with pain , then ..yours truly will fairly read and study that argument and test it . (But it is a safe conception that one would be hard-pressed to give grounds as to why the contrast with pain , *as opposed to a different contrast with other types of qualities that are different than pain but which don't involve a net loss* in the sense of well-being, is the one best able to promote a more intense savoring of joy later ?) .

"We should try to foster a world where such bad states of affairs happen no more ; where only good events happen ."

Enrika Posted : A noble goal, as long as one realizes that the goal is not achievable.

The Response : Well whether it is achievable ---either in our lifetime or some far distant possible future--- some thousand or million years hence ----is up for grabs .

It is possible, granted not every possible state of affairs has to causally manifest . It could ...

But , regardless, of whether it is achievable (and I think what you stated is consonant with the following realization) it is good . The worthwhileness of an agenda is to be ultimately guaged in terms of the qualities sought in what Aristotle called final cause + the *quality of the methods* to *try* to achieve those qualities. Whether an agenda is worthwhile is *not* to be guaged in whether the agenda is achievable given the bad luck involved in the physical factors of situational reality . Regardless of what wisdom the character in the Star Wars trilogy named Yoda may have had, he was quite wrong when he claimed " there is no try" . There certainly is a try .

(There is a try when it comes to attempting to arrange affairs despite the contrary bad luck of external physical factors that in varying degrees may be physically beyond the ability of one to causally control. And there is a try when it comes to wanting to want something . For example, the addict to narcotics that aspires to be contrite and that, hence, wants to want to not get the fix that he would be physically predisposed to want to get...but that's a longer discussion) .

(Situational reality , by the way, being a whole different affair than ontological reality ---in the sense of spatial parameters and what not ....)

Enrika Posted : It reminds me of Data on Star Trek (before the existence of the emotion chip, which I had problems with) always trying to become human although he realized that his goal was impossible.

The Response : Well, lets hope that the task won't be quite that daunting .

Enrika Posted : As the cliche says, it is the journey, not the destination, that matters. (Again, not something that I necessarily agree with entirely or 100% of the time, but I recognize as having significant value, for a variety of reasons.)

The Response : Well, in a somewhat muted sense the journey can maybe have some felicities that the destination alone might not have, but that prospect would take time to unpack conceptually . Furthermore, though the journey might have some felicities that would be lacking to the destination sans journey---it is rather rash to say that the destination doesn't matter only the journey .

But I'm interested in reading the specific way that you propose that the journey and not the destination reportedly matters ? I ask that with earnest curiousity ....Truly curiousity wells up .

We should be setting about trying to help build a perfect new world here on this earth .' A new world in the morning ' , to borrow a phrase sang of by a Scottish folk singer named Roger Whittaker ( whose music my late maternal Grandmother used to love to listen to a lot in 1984 ) A utopia; an ointment without any flies, is long overdue .

It is here on this earth and *not* merely in some afterlife that we should be looking for perfection . The ancient Psalm writer wrote of a time period when ,

'truth shall spring out of the earth' .

We should single-mindedly seek with unflagging fervor that time period. It is long overdue .

Which brings the observation that virtue involves a truth based ethics ---an ethics of veritas , wherein intentions are sought to align thoughts, and actions , and statements with truth ....and by 'truth' is meant truth in the deductive sense primarily ....a fitting alignment of significance with the categorical forms of significance ---where relevance and internal consistency are at hand and vivid reception of concept and relation prevail in thought and action .

The word ' truth' is not used to mean some honorific catch- all notion , but is used to refer to that which is much more specifc . Such truth dovetails quite well with themes of kindness , generosity , justice, and beauty .

Enrika Posted : Two more questions:

First (and totally setting aside for the moment that pain and pleasure, emotional or physical, are not actually opposites of each other, but hopelessly entwined through aesthetic appreciation), what are your thoughts and opinions on pleasure itself; its value, or lack thereof?

The Response : Well sometime I'd like to hear why you postulate that they are reportedly intertwined, but to get to the question you asked : pleasure (in the sensory context of the word ) and provided it does *not* involve some sort of hormonal excitement with the attendant potential for lassitude--- fosters a sense of a stengthening ; an invigoration---or to address more the crux of the topic: a sense of anti-lack ---in the case of the pleasures that are more chaste and , hence, do not involve lassitude.

One should differentiate , by the way, in pleasures that are indeed chaste , and the different sort of pleasures that do involve lassitude . Examples of the latter sort of pleasures being the sort of pleasures encountered by daredevil adreniline junkies, tailgate football party revellers , casino betters , or people who engage in sex , not for having children , but for the purpose of sexual fun (yuck !) .

With the latter types of pleasures that are *not* chaste ---the person seeks a surplus NOT to compensate for any perceived lack nor to assuage that sense of lack and urgency in the psychological affect away--but , instead , out of an arbitrary love of the superflous and extra itself ----of the sense of gorging on the affective energy merely because one can and not out of any desire to savor the vogor of abundance nor to remove any affective sense of lack or urgency .

Getting back to the main of the topic to address the question , let it be known that the former category of pleasures (the chaste ones e.g. eating tasty food, drinking a good thirst quenching beverage, sharing humorous riddles with friends and laughing in good cheer, floating in unpolluted river or ocean water when the climate is nice , sleeping in a bed with clean linens, dancing to good music with friends or wife husband ect ).....provides a sense of anti-lack ----a sense of saturating a collective threshold of somatic-sensory-and affective mood related reinforcements, to wit that the feelings of scarcity and moreover (and here's another nuance....*affective urgency* ) are rendered null . There is a sense of abundance --and hence of cognitive-affective-somatic generativity ...of fecundity .....that is an energizing , a dynamo -like quality of *vigor* to the being-in-the world ---aka the niche of that person or being in the larger lifeworld ( lifeworld being a term used by the philosopher Husserl) .

That vigor mirrors albeit crudely --foreshadows in microcosm ---the more abstract and higher level ontological vigor that is involved in the ongoing process of deep knowing and seeking deep conceptual knowledge .

Enrika Posted : Second, you do realize that everything you've said is your own personal opinion and not objective fact, right? Because you state it as objective fact, so I can't help but think it's possible that you think it is, in the same way that I couldn't help but think it was possible that you "espoused some sort of emotionless approach to life , and /or an approach to life without an esthetic sense."

The Response : Your are joking right when you claim that what those who believe as i do espouse is mere opinion and not objective ? Please tell me you are kidding , Enrika ....You are kidding right . ? Oh , geeze , say it ain't so Joe , say it ain't so . You haven't gone over to the sinister postmodernist/relativist pod people crowd have you ......? Oh, please tell me she's kidding ......

(Psssst...... It would be downright bizarre and outrageous to have beliefs contrary to the absolutist ones in regard to virtue and the like...)

Enrika Posted :Completely as a side note, I think it's really funny that you throw "itching" in with all the rest of this stuff. I mean I understand and take your point, as it frequently occurs to me that unrelieved itching is worse than some kinds of unrelieved pain, sometimes far worse. But in discussions of such magnitude, of pleasure, pain, joy, awe, blinding sorrow, and overwhelming love, I can't help but laugh when the word "itching" is thrown into that mix. :)


The Response : Well in regard to that I don't blame you for finding a laugh with regard to the reference to itching . It is a humorous coupling of terms ...I didn't quite realize until you revealed how humorous it indeed is . Itching I would even wish on Satan ---if we presume there is an actual volitional agent called Satan --rather than Satan being an allegory---as some would propose (and I'm open to the latter prospect) . Nor would I even wish it on people who may have been worse than Satan ---academic relativists like Bruce Aune , or yuppie-minded smut reporters like Mary Hart from Entertainment Tonight .

I wouldn't wish physical pain on them either , for that matter ---though saturating them with an immense, huge ocean of embarassment and guilt would be good to cleanse their souls (if they still have them ) ......