Posts by IronGland

6

NBA playoff thread!!

by avishai in

your picks?

IronGland

I hope none of the players will assault or rape someone at a club or hotel after a game.

5

Musings on our place-A logansrun type post

by IronGland in

jw
friends

last night, as i lay in my pod meditating i began to consider the folowing:.

from g. f. r. ellis's, "cosmology and verifiability": .

"the problem with determining [the structure of the universe] is centered on the fact that there is only one universe to be observed, and that we effectively can only observe it from one space-time point.

IronGland

Parody?

Not at all. It just struck me as the sort of post LR would make.

5

Musings on our place-A logansrun type post

by IronGland in

jw
friends

last night, as i lay in my pod meditating i began to consider the folowing:.

from g. f. r. ellis's, "cosmology and verifiability": .

"the problem with determining [the structure of the universe] is centered on the fact that there is only one universe to be observed, and that we effectively can only observe it from one space-time point.

IronGland

You dislike? Found humourous?

5

Musings on our place-A logansrun type post

by IronGland in

jw
friends

last night, as i lay in my pod meditating i began to consider the folowing:.

from g. f. r. ellis's, "cosmology and verifiability": .

"the problem with determining [the structure of the universe] is centered on the fact that there is only one universe to be observed, and that we effectively can only observe it from one space-time point.

IronGland

Last night, as I lay in my pod meditating I began to consider the folowing:

From G. F. R. Ellis's, "Cosmology and Verifiability":

"The problem with determining [the structure of the universe] is centered on the fact that there is only one universe to be observed, and that we effectively can only observe it from one space-time point. Because it is a unique object, we cannot infer its probable nature by comparing it with similiar objects; and we are unable to choose the time or position from which we view it.Our predicament is analogous to that of a premaritime man living on a small island in an ocean, who observes around him a host of other small islands apparently scattered at random on a seemingly limitless sea. Unable to move from his island, his theory of the world in which he lives can only be based on this partial view"

I wonder: how is this analogous to the manner in which we come to understand who we think we are? Or how we see the world around us as "I"?

In a sense we are also isolated on "islands". No one has ever lived our life.....not as we have; and thus no one can really understand the world the way we do. There are just too many variables coalescing, colliding and conflicting....skewing it into a vertiable infinity of permutations.

But unlike the islanders in Ellis's metaphor we can get up and go....we can explore other islands [people] by observing what goes on and by asking questions; and by accummulating and collating our perceptions into conceptual conflations that can be defended as more or less reasonable.

Still, just as there is [as far as we know] only one universe we are trying to understand from "inside" it, we can't detach ourselves from our own existential roots [or day to day trajectory] in order to garner the necessary objectivity to delineate where "I" and "all that is other than I" begin and end.....how the two parts are intertwined. Especially when we acknolwedge how the relationships are constantly shifting about, becoming entangled in all manner of configurations and reconfigurations as we evolve [and change] over time.

To me this is obvious. It's just commonsense. But the implications of it are deeply disturbing to others and they insist that, on the contrary, who they think they are is who they should be. The most reasonable way to be. As though everything "out there" revolved around their own point of view. Instead of how it almost certainly really is: the other way around.

59

Obliteration of the ego

by logansrun in

jw
friends

at long last i feel i have come to a great spiritual truth: the human ego stands as an impediment towards self-realization and must be obliterated, or at least diminished.

i have seen this as a running thread throughout many of the readings i have done -- from buddha and shankara to meister eckhart to arch-skeptic and atheist dr. albert ellis, the idea is to get beyond this concept of i. .

what freedom this could be!

IronGland

At long last I feel I have come to a great spiritual truth: The human ego stands as an impediment towards self-realization and must be obliterated, or at least diminished.

I believe Buddha beat you to that truth by a few thousand years. Also Richard Gere.

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