WELL SAID!

Fictions we cannot love, no matter how hard we try. Love only exists in a family context. Our spouse in whom we find beauty and wonder, and our children in whom our hopes rest. We are a generation that we know will embrace death, yet we hope our children, or our children's children will evade the inevitable. What does this make us?

@rcandlish ultimately motivated by self interest? I have no spouse or children yet I love just the same. If I do have children I don't really have the vaguest hope that any of my future generations will achieve immortality. Immortality is what most of us are looking for metaphorically in passing down our genes, if thats what you mean, true. And theres an argument to be made that love is a chemical trick in the brain to reward us for passing genes down and caring for progeny on a biological level. All positive feelings regarding socialization could be cheapened in a sense by considering the biological imperative that invented them. Without cooperation and coupling we never would have survived so reward mechanisms are in place for them. But at this point love exists independent of the desire to procreate. Not always or even most of the time, but enough to know that it exists.

@Wurlitzer Anyone who believes that love is a chemical trick of the brain has never experienced the reality, I agree love and procreation are two separate things. I can only speak personally, there came a point in my life when I was open to the possibility of children. It was not my decision alone, but an agreement. The birth of the child, changed my life and values in a way I would never have thought possible. For the first time in my life I understood the concept of altruism. All I can do is encourage you to experience this for yourself. It will change your perspective in a way nothing else can,

Dogma* sorry

Having denounced all religious affiliation, I still recognize the strings that once drew me.To dismiss these attachments would be dishonest. The idea of transcendence has recently taken on a Sci-fi significance which goes beyond the original intention, which was the question: In what sense do I as an individual have meaning, and how do I appropriate this meaning?

@rcandlish dismissing your own attachments and claiming a universal characteristic for religion itself are not the same thing. i don't know about the sci-fi (a term i hate) significance of the word transcendence. i know what the word means in real life. we have no way of knowing, from your question, that you intend it to mean something else. the thing you now offer as your question wasn't even in your post so how can you say it was the question? your assertion seems ridiculous to me and it doesn't help that you appear to be changing your assertion/question now.

g

@genessa Do you think you live for yourself only, or for your progeny? If you have no progeny, I'm sorry, but you have not yet gained the qualification to answer.

@rcandlish i have no progeny and you are not qualified to tell me i have not gained the qualification to answer. i can live for the progeny of my peers or just of my species. your assertion is again wrong. and regardless of my answer, you said that religion provides transcendence of self, which it doesn't necessarily do, and that secularism doesn't, which it isn't even designed to do. transcendence can occur without regard to whether or not one believes in a deity or follows a religion. your original post's assertion is incorrect, and your assertion about my qualification to decide for whom or what i live is extremely arrogant and quite incorrect.

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@irascible ... not to mention the arrogance! feh! telling me if i have no progeny i am unable -- unqualified -- to determine my own raison d'etre. as if he even knows me! (as if he'd know me if he tripped over me!)

g

@genessa -
Arrogance, or insight from experience? Perhaps the arrogance is your own, assuming you are whole when you only have part to tell. Best Wishesa.

@rcandlish your best wishes are meaningless, and you are arrogant indeed. you don't know me. you will never know me. it's your loss. i judged your words and you presume to judge ME. insight? maybe IN is the only direction you care to look. maybe you're not too good at it, either. feh. i have no more interest in anything you have to say.

g

I'm not sure your argument holds It's more a question of parameters. Self Plus always broadens the horizon, Efficiency is another variable though. Some people never reach beyond themselves.

@rcandlish the people that never reach beyond themselves were incapable of helping others even if they were to follow your idea.

Are you saying there are no big questions? I am not religious, but at the same time I am not evasive.

@rcandlish certainly there are. Science deals with them. Philosophy deals with them. They are raised and addressed by a multitude of physical and social sciences. Religion, based on fairy stories and mythology, does not. What religions do is recycle and rehash and dumb down serious issues raised by credible fields of human inquiry, wrap them up in theological clap trap, peddle them as fraudulent religious snake oil, and take the money. Religions evade the big issues, not deal with them.

Self-transcendence is never truly achieved in the absence of others. It is our privilege to carry, and be carried. Everything else is a lie.

@rcandlish

I suppose little, if anything, is achieved in the total absence of others, but the original root of the word monastic meant “to be alone”. That’s how it was done historically, to the extent possible. Solitude is conducive to structural (developmental) transcendence. Carrying/being carried is functional, rather than structural, and is in less need of training and years of devoted study and practice, being part of our natural evolutionary inheritance. Structural transcendence is not “natural” but a product of deep skill-building, and maybe rare, but not a lie.

@skado In all religion there is a perverse tendency to solitude. Those of an aesthete inclination expound its virtue. Perhaps there is some truth to their perspective. If the herd instinct were true, escape into what would be the question. But humans are the top of the food chain, we have no predators except ourselves. Yet, we live in a community of need, a community of greed. Evading the issues that stare us in the face might just be a cowards response.

@rcandlish
The fact that the overwhelming majority of humans, religious and non, adopt popular misconceptions of religion notwithstanding, the legitimate practice of religious solitude is the diametric opposite of escape. It is the ultimate act of facing and confronting ego death - a thing that is indefinately avoidable while immersing oneself in the distractions of daily life among family and the general population.

@skado Perhaps we all deserve to die. That is the judgment of religion that seeks to enslave. I personally never claimed the right to live, and yet I'm here! Regarding my offspring, I feel the responsibility to do whatever I can to guarantee her happiness, And since she came into the world. this has been my primary task. This I believe is love transcendent. Call it altruism, or whatever you want. I am a father, a true father, and this has nothing in common with any religious parody of the term.

@rcandlish
Any “religion” that seeks to enslave is a false religion. The true goal of religion is spiritual liberation. Corruption of ideals is the norm of course, but no one is obligated to follow the norm, or take it to be the true ideal.

Sounds like you are a good and proper father, and I agree, you don’t need religion for that. You only need “religion” (self-discipline) if you want your “spirit” (attitude) to be free.

@skado Freedom is an interesting question: Freedom for what?

@rcandlish
Freedom from suffering, mostly of the psychological type. Freedom from emptiness, OR depression, OR malaise, OR ennui, OR lack of enthusiasm for facing each day, etc.

@skado In other words, the freedom to express meaning without any external restraint. In this I concur.

@rcandlish
I would say freedom to express meaning without external constraint is more of a political issue. Religion is more about freedom to experience and express meaning without internal constraint.

Nothing against weed, but weed don't guarantee reality. Open to partake in the next spliff!

@rcandlish Geez, don't be such a party poop. Merry Xmas!

Religious/Secular just conventional terms. The task we face is getting the questions orientated in the right perspective so that truth may be grasped by all who would ask,

@rcandlish whose truth? you speak as if there is one "truth," like one big thing we have to find in a gigantic scavenger hunt called life. that's a good way to miss out on what life really is about, and no, don't ask me what that is, because it's not one thing either, and it certainly isn't the same for everyone.

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@rcandlish Good luck with that.

And this is the problem, can we understand anything beyond ourselves?

@rcandlish yes

@rcandlish it sounds like your starting to be "woke" questioning everything.. its painful at first but it gets easier

@rcandlish "The Path of a Taoist " Group helped me.. and made it worse lol