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The random philosophy thought thread

Tengri

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Mar 19, 2016
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558
I look at it as a question of membership in ideological tribes.

Membership in ideological tribes requires wearing a straitjacket. Because at some point, ideologies always come into conflict with common sense. Tribes are exclusionary as much as inclusionary, and exclusionary/inclusionary boundaries demand black-and-white thinking at some point.

On the other hand, avoiding membership in ideological tribes can be equally problematic. Man is a tribal animal, and it gets lonely outside the tribes. There's also the problem of how you relate to members of tribes, who will try to hit you with either exclusionary (rejection) or inclusionary (recruitment) tactics, and so on.

My opinion: Smart people keep aloof from tribes but adopt protective coloring: Wear the grays of the non-participant when tribes conflict (for example, refuse to participate in political arguments by insisting that you're apolitical); or camouflage yourself as belonging to the predominant tribe when one tribe is in the ascendent (don't question the "truths" that prevail in a dominant culture).

An alternative is to maybe play the fool, the idiot, or the madman: For example, the comedian who does "edgy" stuff and crosses the line in comedy routines. That can be good camouflage when life puts you outside the bounds of the dominant tribe and there's nothing else you can do to hide your outsider status and deflect criticism.
Great insights. Reminds me of a deepfake comparison video put out by impressionist Jim Meskimen just this past week. This ties into your thoughts a bit
 

The Cat

Just a Cat who hangs out at the Crossroads
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It was always going to fall out this way. We're all just characters in someone else's story.
 

Maou

Mythos
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Do I find myself drawn to religion out of strength, or weakness?
 

Earl Grey

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I think my view on religion is very simplistic but also it really is just; I consider faith to be the most irrelevant part of religion- if that god up there loves me and is interested in the best for me and is truly the paragon of forgiveness, then he'd forgive my lack of faith in him, because my goodness is independent of how I view him. Conversely, if he isn't loving nor interested in the best for me, then why the fuck should I listen to him
 

Schrödinger's Name

Blessed With A Curse
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Jul 20, 2019
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Not even sure if it's philosophical but... Apparently 'The odds of you being born as you are about 1 in 400 trillion, or more.', or 'The probability of you existing at all comes out to 1 in 102,685,000 — yes, that's a 10 followed by 2,685,000 zeroes! Binazir concludes that the odds of you being alive are basically zero.'
Anyway, don't know which number is correct but just think about it... And does it make us 'special' or rather insignificant? Out of everything 'you' could've become, you own your body, you are you... You could've turned out the be a fucking ant for god's sake. But look at you! Reading this post, in this thread. Ain't it weird how it all came together?

Anyway. Just came here to say that I am glad that I was born in Europe. If you take a look at how big the world is, there are so many other places I luckily didn't get born... (Though, I would've preferred not to be born as a human, that aside) But then again, who would 'I' be if I was born in another country?
 
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Sep 12, 2017
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869
The last thing the oligarchs want when this debt-based, fiat ponzi scheme collapses is an armed populous. Therefore, the economy will be propped up until gun-control legislation can successfully disarm the populous. There's no limit to what they would do in order to achieve this. Boom. No more Civil War 2.0
 
Joined
Sep 12, 2017
Messages
869
"The thing about postmodernists is that they don't take their own philosophy far enough. If you keep deconstructing, you end up with something that looks like the reconstruction of values and hierarchies (the good, the true, the beautiful), just from a "construct aware" perspective. Let's assume that they are correct in saying that basically everything is a social or linguistic construct and there is no essence, no great narrative, no absolute truth. All we have are arbitrary constructs. Fine. But that also applies to the postmodern view. So we're stuck with arbitrary constructs. But now we have to live somehow, so we have to decide which constructs function better in a given context; and here, a hierarchy of constructs starts to emerge again. And that hierarchy does something like depict the underlying value structure that we have to live by. So by following deconstruction or postmodernism to its end, we transcend and include postmodernism, keeping the construct-awareness but at the same time re-constructing all the things that postmodernism was trying to rid the world from (like great narratives, truth, beauty etc). Somewhat like modernism taken to it's end leads to postmodernism (you can see that in how the philosophical tradition developed from Kant to Hegel to Marx to the postmodernists)."
 

Scaven

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Jan 10, 2020
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I’m the master of my future self and slave to my past self. If I’m a good master I will have had a good master.
 
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