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Thanks for the pointers, but my computer won't log into irc any more seeing as how my home machine has aids. Why? I don't know, I have aids.

To everybody else:
are you malachite?
no, so lol

I exploded and reformed to tell you such

Current projects: Destroy loli and weak thinking [in that order]
Expertise: Philosophy, Christianity, learning how to fit in
Goal: If I can't stab a pedophile, might as well destroy his favorite website. That is all.

If and only if there is one cave.

You?

Intelligent Design does pose a slight chance of corresponding to reality (its arguments that evolution is not possible are pure fallacy of course), but there is no evidence of this at the moment, and nobody will run the experiments that are necessary to find out.

What experiments are these?
I'll lend a hand or resources, if of course we aren't proving a negative.

New Saint Andrew's College: Moscow, Idaho
Something about, "Jesus didn't first say seek thou a technical education." [polite laughter] and "It's your duty to vote for the worst of the two evils to speed up the end times."

Can't say I have really much to add, other than less than 8 years ago that was me sitting at the table with the goofy doo. We used Bob Jones University science books, I studied the classics of Western literature to show how all their problems are generated through sin, and I spent my first two years of university at:
http://www.nsa.edu/

My plan was to go to Patrick Henry and study constitutional law for a Congress gig.

If it wasn't for Monty Python I wouldn't have had any idea there could be something else; discordia being the only other groups of well read bitterly sarcastic tards.

Now I simply cannot believe the foolishness, and it burns my fucking craw to see my little brothers use /me/ as a punching bag to practice their Christian rhetoric.

There is only one real quality we can use to get into their minds, only one.

They are all either dumb as shit, or fucking bored.

Think about it: how many hours can you play with jesus legos by yourself?

Just.....fuck.
-Sputnik

Fr. Puck: The Hippies failed because they were living in a dream world and based their philosophy on bullshit, but mainly they failed because the only Enemy they ever had was some vague notion of The Man, Man. We, on the other hand, have the benefit of another 40 years of evolution, plus the ability to laugh at ourselves. Plus, we have more Enemies than we can count. Also, Discordians tend to be less addicted to Free Love for its own sake.

Of course the hippies philosophy was deluded, however, my concern is how does your proposal differ? What have we learned in the last 40 years that will make the cut? I feel if we can lay this layer this may just present a serious option for the disenchanted.

I feel Ratatosk brings up a good point; if the nexus of governance was local instead of national we would have a greater variety of living options, which seems to be the point of the damn thing, at least for a few generations. Early Grecian [and to some extent early Roman] rule is a relatively good analogy; central governance, local power.

I love the thoughts vex, preach it brother. If am am wrong please pardon the analogy, but it seems that your line of thought was expressed analogously by the baby boomer's commune ideal, although it seems you wish for a more splinter cell type approach. If this is a correct summation, what made those fail and how can we avoid those issues?

You can have whatever you want, as we are quite passive this century. You are saying artistic endeavors are a feasible way of attaining a fulfilling life? Seems good to me. Of course for it to be an ethical system it has to be the way of proper living, if it isn't it will be better defined as some subset of relativism. Do you have any interesting arguments?

But I guess I'm not really seeing a practical difference between Virtue Ethics and the others. Its motivation is to achieve eudaimonia; the others' motivation is to avoid some kind of catastrophe. But in both cases you have a list, either of rules or "virtues," and you measure your actions against that list. Beyond that the only differences I see are only semantics.

Short and sweet distinctions:
deontology = motives hold ethical primacy [Kant]
utilitarianism = outcomes hold ethical primacy [Mill, Bentham]
virtue ethics = character traits hold ethical primacy [Aristotle]

The first two deal with action [how and why], the third deals with possession of sorts [what], as such, can be used as a super or sub category in either of the first two.

If you're thinking about declaring a superior ethical system you're thinking about short-circuiting the process of interpersonal relationships, since when two people know each other the question of ethical systems becomes background noise.

For the 'declarer' sure, but we all have a superior ethical system, their's is on their sleeve, making it far easier to know them as a person; just keep them from gaining any real power through distraction/self-hate.

My head's still a bit fuzzy, but if virtue ethics is based around someone's character, then do we run into the same arguments about moral relativism?

That is, one behaves morally because it's their nature, and conversley the amoral cannot be blamed for amoral actions.


That's a crappy way of explaining it, but I hope I got some point across.

Yes, virtue ethics does suffer from moral relativism unless a standard is agreed upon. Since we have no such standard, Ratatosk's comment is quite insightful. This perhaps is the hub of the idea of Aristotle's seeing society as a basis for morality [right/wrong], although not necessarily ethics[what constitutes a good life].

Deontological, I think.

Anyway, building on the back of my book review and Cram's rant on virtue, this is something I have been thinking about for a while.  Namely could virtue ethics be not only a more Discordian way of approaching moral dilemmas, but also in some other respects, a far more useful way of thinking about problems?

I should probaby explain the distinction first.  Ethics, as we normally understand it, is kind of like a checklist.  If we want to take an action, we check it against this list we have (based on BIP factors such as education, culture etc) and if it lines up, then it is 'good'.

Virtue ethics, on the other hand, is about the cultivation of a certain mindset or character, who, when faced with an ethical problem will act in accordance with what is right because of their character.  For instance, if there is a car crash, a virtue ethics person who believes in courage and charity will run over and help because its the right thing to do, as an expression of these virtues.  Its about the creation of a person who will act right because of certain inherent traits or instincts, instead of an external, metaphysical morality (this may not be the best description, so do some googling for greater understanding).

Anyway, the former is a very legalistic and structured way of looking at ethics.  As such, it may not be the best way of approaching morality if you not want to compromise a chaotic or discord based ethic.  The latter does have some historical precedent for being a more anti-structural system, embraced as it was by Nietzsche, among others.

Anyway, thats just an introduction, as it were, to get some discussion rolling.  I'll likely add more later, when I have time.

If virtue is subjective, it would reduce virtue ethics wholly to the individual level, with problems occurring when personal and public interests conflict; a standard must be set of some sort under which the society could feasibly detain harmful people. Aristotle believed that eudaimonia was only possible in a society. Thus we have to assume that Aristotle meant virtue to be something externally defined and assimilated into the self to the point where the self becomes the external values. These external values were assigned by the biotic status of the individual [human/animal/plant] and the society. Who has the right to deciding right and wrong? Consensus, social contract, iron rod authority, a philosophical law? Aristotle certainly seemed to favor the latter [the golden mean].

One of the largest problems facing virtue ethics is that it can be reduced to absurdity in offending our intuitions of right/wrong [which is really not a huge problem if one is sympathetic to subjectivity]. This is possible because it seems nearly impossible to define just what a virtue is. Virtues become situational, and some things would be praised by virtue ethics that would be shunned in nearly every other virtue theory, such as killing and looting the neighbors to feed one's family when resources run low. What qualities does a virtue possess that a vice does not?

Additionally, it would seem that people who act consistently according to their own thoughts of 'best' are not necessarily being ethical. Thing is, the core meaning of eudaimonia is not directly translatable into any language I speak, it being interpreted flourishing or happiness. Flourishing seems the best in my mind, which leaves us with a quandry, which party's flourishing do we weight, the individual or the group? Shall we choose another end to which ethics should aim, should we discard a goal entirely?

Here is a dude currently working out a system of virtue ethics:
http://askesisphilosophyandcarnivorism.blogspot.com/

When I made changes they were carefully thought out and designed to build upon each other. There's only so much one can absorb from shocks to their system.

True enough. If you will permit an analogy? Assuming one's initial mental state before the shock to the system is represented by one, building on one's thought patterns can be seen as a movement from 1 to 1.1, what I am positing is that changes can be made in this matter:
Core mental patterns [y]: 1
Current mental patterns [z]: 1

One can change in such a way that [z] changes from 1 to 2, while the core mental self progresses from 1 to 1.1. Theoretically, one could change [y] 1 to 2, religious conversion being such an example, but I have always been stubborn to those types of changes. Preferring an analytic approach to reality, I make my changes to [z] while holding [y] relatively stable and incorporating the information of the relationship changes slowly and methodically. I am quite young and haven't had much time to fully explore this idea, but perhaps in the future I will either see the need or become daring [reckless?] enough to fully change my relation. This leads me to a question I've had: Where does genius lie? Should we pursue the skill sets of a DaVinci over an Einstein? Would the individual [thus society] as a whole operate better with more specialized or more flexible skill sets? Clearly our brains are capable of either. As it seems the answer will be relative to the individual's preference, do we need to more clearly define genius?

The only thing I don't get is why you feel it is first necessary to enter a dissociative state if one wants to meta-percieve, metaprogram, or othewise meta-anything. All that is required for a meta-state is considering something in your imagination from a point of view other than through your own eyes. Boom, dissociative state achieved.

Perhaps you could be more clear on what you mean by dissociative state. In my mind, that means anything from self-reflection to a full blown out of body experience. What is being dissociated from what? Or are you using the term in a psychiatric sense? Is there another term that describes what you are referring to with more specificity? Could you give examples that illustrate what is and what is not a dissociative state?

Thanks for the comment.

It seems what you are describing is awareness of another paradigm in another, and while this is essentially what this piece is trying to accomplish in one's mind, I personally did not think to apply the "relativity" of the situation to myself. As such, it is the goal of this method to apply the "freedom of thought" specifically to one's self. I posit that many people enter this state frequently enough, but are not aware of the possibilities this state offers.

As per your second query, both self reflection and OOB are both sufficient but not necessary types of acquiring this state. When the core assumptions on which one's mental state are founded are truly doubted by the believer one has successfully provided arguments against one's prior beliefs, there will be no complete return to the previous states of thought [unless the subject is particularly forgetful]. I am not sure what definition a psychiatrist may use to define this state, so I'm afraid I cannot answer that question.
As for other terms, perhaps "clarity of madness", the christian/chaos magician's "gnosis", or some sort of "vision of one's own black iron prison" would give analogies to my term.
What is a disassociative state?
- Awareness of self in relation to reality
- Awareness of the nature of one's mental state
- Knowing that the previous mental state rests on certain assumptions that are not indubitable
- Enough sobriety to recognize the current observation as real and now

It is harder to say what it is not, as people will experience it differently. I can comment on things that they are not in my experience.
- They are not like confused drug induced states, although those could conceivable be used
- They are not religious enlightenment [not supernatural]


Let me know if I have further confused the matter.