The Dudeism Forum

Yeah man, blows your fucking mind ...

"If you think you can talk about quantum theory without feeling dizzy, you haven't understood the first thing about it."
&
"Some subjects are so serious that one can only joke about them."

Niels Bohr - Quantum Dude

This is what happens when I go back to work, I miss two pages of discussion on some new shit

Much like Meekon, I'm as Brit who's down with global awareness, and it's hard not to be aware of the US.  It always seems to be that we pay a lot of attention to our western cousins but the interest never quite reaches back across the pond in the same way

This sort of fundamentalism is, yes, quite scary, and this perhaps more so by the very fact that it's seeping into politics.  In the UK, mentioning religious views in politics is a death sentence.  Anyone remember when that nob-head Blair revealed he was a closet catholic?  People are still gasping now, five years on   And yet, in the US, a man like Obama, who clearly isn't into the whole "god" thing, has to put in little phrases like "God bless America" and the like or he'll be run out of town.

I think the idea of insidious and forceful religions to be repugnant.  I actually like Jehovah's Witnesses, because although they have to try and spread the word of their faith to you, they're not pushy, and fully accept if you politely tell them "no thank you" and will return with "have a nice day".  They can be quite dude, as far as borderline sect-like fundamentalist go (I stress the borderline, there).

Yes, we dudes abide the beliefs of others, but we can certainly stand up and gawp at people who cross line like these guys obviously are.  Religion, even Dudeism, should not take part in the rational world of politics (yes I said rational, and no, I'm not joking, I'm just aware than the reality of politics is heavily ironic) where we need to set aside those sorts of views and come together to work out things sociologically and economically.  Of course, religion can be a good ethical guide, because no religions work on principals of negative ethics, but of course there are discrepancies between the outcomes of persuing those ethics (like the subject of abortion, to name one).

I'm certainly against religion and politics mingling, especially these sorts of far-right religious types, the same way I'd be about far-left religious types like the Hare Krishnas (even if I do love those guys) getting involved in the political world.

Still, we watch and wait and see what the votes say.  Because, of course, unlike in the world of organised religion, you can always vote against the nutters if you can't abide them running your country

Quote from: Reverend Dog on August 25, 2011, 11:52:18 AM
BTW: talking of the deity schmaltz, there's a great & extremely far out book written by the Professor Of Quantum Information Science at Oxford University, Vlatko Vedral called Decoding Reality ...

The premise of the book is that the fundamental fabric of reality is information & that "everything" is, some sense, "infomation".

Funny how he finishes the book with a quote from the Tao Te Ching ...

Here you go: Skeptical Idealism 2.0
http://dudeism.com/smf/index.php?topic=847.0

Quote from: Reverend Dog on August 25, 2011, 02:23:28 PM
Hi BikerDude: Now here's a funny thing ...

Freddy Nietszche was actually considered to be a gentle wandering human by all those who came across him.
He, in fact, earned the name The Little Saint.

His whole philosophy was not based on nihilism(which he saw as the legacy of Christianity) but on how to go BEYOND nihilism.
He rebelled, in his way, against what he saw as the hypocrisy of Christianity & the 2000 years of culture that entailed. He also spoke very highly of both the Buddha & Epicurus (two of our dudely predecessors). & he brought fatalism (or Fuck It, Let's Go Bowling) back into philosophy where it had been hidden since the ancient Greeks.

I have always found his books to be joyful & humourous with a good healthy splash of sarcasm & it has been a shame that FN influenced both good & misguided thinkers but that is the nature of controversial & free thought.

I 've been reading him for years & have never felt the urge to piss on anyone's rug out of spite.

Yeah I've seen there is a real move afoot to distance Nietszche from Nihilism.
It's a tough sell for me. I mean it seems the basis of his philosophy is rooted in and arguably the foundation of Nihilism. It's the old question of the 2 nihilisms that this is all about.
Kierkegaard I could argue as warning about the inevitable dead end of nihilism but I can't really find the same deliverance for Nietszche
He says....

Quote
Among philosophers, Friedrich Nietzsche is most often associated with nihilism. For Nietzsche, there is no objective order or structure in the world except what we give it. Penetrating the fa?ades buttressing convictions, the nihilist discovers that all values are baseless and that reason is impotent. ?Every belief, every considering something-true,? Nietzsche writes, ?is necessarily false because there is simply no true world? (Will to Power [notes from 1883-1888]). For him, nihilism requires a radical repudiation of all imposed values and meaning: ?Nihilism is . . . not only the belief that everything deserves to perish; but one actually puts one?s shoulder to the plough; one destroys? (Will to Power).

It's true that he saw the outcome of this to be destructive. But I read it that he posited the destruction as inevitable and desirable. Akin to sweeping away illusion and misconception.
I read him as wishing that people could get over their delusions, especially Christian delusions.
For him it was a desirable inevitable outcome. The overturning of ridiculous foundations that we build upon.

His most basic precept was that life neither possesses nor lacks intrinsic value. It simply doesn't apply. Believing that a realization of that fact will result in destruction is immaterial IMHO.
If one believes that the foundations of human values are baseless in my opinion he's a nihilist.
Doesn't mean he's a bad guy. And hell he's probably right. Trouble is it's a dead end IMHO.

I tend to think differently, that Freddy saw the acceptance of life as-it-is, or as he saw it- Amor Fati, as the highest ideal. It was his Joyful Science, as he called philosophy.

He seemed to have been a man who was possessed by thought & had the guts to take that thought to the bitter end & run with it, without compromise & with the brazen bellowing of a lion tamer, not knowing where he'd end up.

He is, at the very least, a interesting cat to ponder.

Quote from: Reverend Dog on August 25, 2011, 03:41:48 PM
I tend to think differently, that Freddy saw the acceptance of life as-it-is, or as he saw it- Amor Fati, as the highest ideal. It was his Joyful Science, as he called philosophy.

He seemed to have been a man who was possessed by thought & had the guts to take that thought to the bitter end & run with it, without compromise & with the brazen bellowing of a lion tamer, not knowing where he'd end up.

He is, at the very least, a interesting cat to ponder.

Indeed.

You know I hate to do it but I have to. This all has caused me to get out my old text (yeah I a philosophy minor) and dig back into some of the Nietszche  crud.

Nietszche did see Nihilism as an inevitable consequence of the flaws of christian morals and saw it as destructive of them and as such desirable.

Lets take a moment to take stock...
He believed that Human Altruism was impossible and everything is a will to power.
He believed that life has no intrinsic value and that Christian morals have no basis in the "real world" which led him to classify criminality as "rebellion" which is not to be punished but to be suppressed.
And as a substitute for our silly commitment to things like altruism and morality he suggested Das Ubermench(the superman) and the creation of new values which wouldn't have anything to do with the same old christian values.
And beyond that all life would be given meaning by how we advanced these new values in coming generations.

Ring a bell?
And where does this lead?
HITLER AND THE THIRD REICH OF COURSE.
Yeah "Old Freddy" was a hell of a guy.
Gimme a break.

I'll buy the epistomilogical argument that life may be without intrinsic meaning (although I don't agree with it) and I'll buy the necessity of reaching "the abyss" or Nausea or Nihilism in order to find <fill in the blank>. It's a common theme in most existentialism. Sartre, Camus etc...
But Neitche is a particularly loathsome individual who lived a life of physical sickness and depression living with his sister in a boarding house in constant pain and suffering while spewed a horrible brand of bile that was entirely a product of his condition.
I suggest that had he ever had a more "normal" life he might have found something resembling intrinsic value. Had he ever had children he certainly would have.
But that just like my opinion. IMHO he was a horrible individual.

We shall beg to differ on this point, BikerDude ...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/articles/personalityandindividuality/morals.shtml

& I couldn't resist ...

http://dudespaper.com/great-dudes-in-history-nietzsche.html/

Anyway, enough of this philosophical mass-de-bating, I still think that empathy is the most important thing in truly giving to people ...