Desperate Degenerate Support Group

[promethean75]

Of course. I've explained all this elsewhere. People tend to experience any change in the world around them - culturally, economically, politically, etc.- as a digression in quality and content. But this is a natural reaction to what is unfamiliar, and while the experience is reducible to only this and certainly not founded on any pervasive reasoning, it becomes the basis of a philosophical attitude and orientation unbeknownst to the thinker.

In five hundred years, not only will these new and unfamiliar changes be obsolete, but the resistance to them will be as well. Then changes will begin happening anew and result in the next generation of cynicism. So on and so forth.

[Urwrongx1000]

most people unwittingly subscribe to a philosophy because it supports and justifies personal preferences which develop before they begin to think philosophically. the philosophical livelihood then becomes a process of reinforcing what was already wanted, although it seems to the person that they're doing philosophy objectively, with disinterest, and at the ready to accept 'truths' they find disagreeable.

That's right, 'degenerates' use philosophy for political purposes, and these are political types, not philosophers. Even "scientists" do this. Philosophy is achieved through a 'purer' motive, with honest intentions. Those without honest intentions, are easily exposed by philosophical types. If your aim with philosophy does not begin with "Meaning of Life", "Does God Exist", "Purpose", etc, then your intellectual dishonesty will be exposed over time, and eventually if not soon.

and more often than not, a philosophy that claims not to be subjective is in fact extremely subjective... by that i mean it is dubious enough in character to be rejected by those whom wouldn't be able to reject it if it were only clearly sensible in the first place. but in that case - in the case that a philosophy provides indubitable facts - it's no longer philosophy, but science. so philosophy, almost purely subjective in nature aside from, say, linguistics, which has as its purpose the study of how language works and is used, is usually nothing more than an elaborate intellectual defense of personal preferences which are covertly imposed on the philosophical thinking process. and i have seen some wonderful instances of this. one's entire world-view is completely out of touch with the 'truth', and these are often the very one's who swear they are being the most objective.

I point you to the previous answer. If the motives are impure, tainted, or corrupt, then yes, "philosophy" will be as well.

but here's the thing. it isn't always that they're 'wrong', see. it may very well be that what they are saying is so garbled it can't be right or wrong. and it's here that the request to 'bring it down to earth' is so appropriate; it forces the thinker out of his abstract language game and asks that a thesis be shown rather than explained. unfortunately, due to philosophy's obscure nature, very little of it can be demonstrated, and because of this very fact it is usually impervious to critique. that's both the curse and saving grace of philosophy; that because none of it works, all of it works.

Philosophy is obscure because philosophy is rare. And philosophy is rare because honest/pure/innocent motives are rare. If a rare individual comes along, who really-really-really does want to know the "meaning of life", "existence of god", "higher purpose", etc. then that individual is a potential philosopher, or at least, somebody who can fully utilize philosophy. Do you know anybody like that? Is there anybody like that, here? Not really, again, because it's simply extremely rare in nature, for individuals not to be corrupted or side-tracked along the way.

In the end, even if there were a "potential philosopher" in the midst, people become bogged-down or distracted by simple vices and pleasures. It's easier to sell-out, start using philosophy for devious and deceptive ends, rather than to keep-the-focus on the "Big Picture". In the end, most people want to pay their rent, watch their movies and television shows, drink beer at the bar, do drugs, bang hookers (mr. reasonable), etc etc. than they want to keep the pure-motive alive.

Most potential-philosophers' wings are clipped early. You're not smart enough. You're not moral enough. You don't have the right genes. Etc. So, one-by-one they fall.


As you point-out, ulterior motives are the norm. It's not about "objectivity", but rather about which subjective biases are in operation. Which values do people have, and are they trying to strengthen, thus calling that their "philosophy".

[iambiguous]

My aim here is to shift the discussion of the "Desperate Degenerate" to an actual context. Like this one:

"For example, Jim says that, yes, it is a fact that he is a homosexual. And he can provide any number of additional facts about his life as a homosexual. Facts that everyone can agree on.

But: σᾰ́τῠρος then intervenes and insists that Jim left out the most important fact of all: that homosexuality isn't in sync with nature itself. It is therefore irrational behavior. And, for some, that makes it immoral behavior.

Then they go back and forth with sets of assumptions: Jim points out that human beings are a part of nature and, therefore, anything that they choose to do [sexually or otherwise] can only be construed as natural. In turn, Jim points to homosexuality in other creatures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexua ... in_animals "

Which σᾰ́τῠρος then completely ignores. Instead, he'll go on and on, post after post, regenerating ponderous intellectual contraptions of this sort:

Nature is frugal.
What is of no use atrophies and is filtered out of a gene-pool.
But nature is also dynamic, fluctuating, uncertain, so life evolved a method to deal with the unforeseen.
It produces mutations which then are tested in natural environments, and gradually culled out of the gene pool if they offer no advantage or produce a negative effect.
This is where man intervenes to protect and to shelter.
The goal, for the Desperate Degenerate is a world of equal outcomes - the antithesis of natural selection, which is founded on un-equal outcomes selecting for fitness.

And

This is not a rare occurrence. This is the norm...among nihilists.
They begin with an idea/ideal, a goal, a motive....and work back ward, but when this idea fails, they do not question it, but the world that failed to validate the ideal they've presupposed.
This is Top<>Down emoting. You use words to arbitrarily define and fit concepts into a desired outcome - in most cases parity of outcome for one and all, echoing the Christian - Abrahamic - salvation Messianic complex.

Never [to the best of my knowledge] is any of this actually related to a particular context in which things like homosexuality are examined substantively in existential exchanges -- exchanges in which actual behaviors are chosen and then attacked or defended.

Stay tuned...

Note to others:

If perchance you are familiar with arguments of his that are not basically intellectual contraptions in regard to Desperate Degenerates, please link us to one.

[promethean75]

well you're on your own private biggs because arguing with that fellow becomes too much of a chore for me, too much like work, and with very little return. but i will humor you for a minute or two for the hell of it.

Nature is frugal.

one could also argue that nature is bountiful, excessive, wasteful, and careless... characteristics that are anything but frugal. but you can do this with metaphorical language, and such characterizations would be no more or less true than the others. it depends on what you want to do; write poetry or do philosophy. philosophy proper would omit such subtle anthropomorphisms.

What is of no use atrophies and is filtered out of a gene-pool.

hold that thought in mind and read this...

But nature is also dynamic, fluctuating, uncertain, so life evolved a method to deal with the unforeseen.
It produces mutations which then are tested in natural environments, and gradually culled out of the gene pool if they offer no advantage or produce a negative effect.
This is where man intervenes to protect and to shelter.
The goal, for the Desperate Degenerate is a world of equal outcomes - the antithesis of natural selection, which is founded on un-equal outcomes selecting for fitness.

now watch me flip this one totally around.

the first obvious error is in classifying anything any animal does as 'unnatural'. that one's obvious and simple enough. but there's more. what defines an adaptive feature as useful must also include a summary of what is being demanded by a particular environment. sounds strange, but here's an example. take the claim that intelligence levels are dropping in the general population. we look at this and immediately think; something is wrong, man is digressing, etc., etc. but it is precisely because that lost level of intelligence is no longer needed to survive a particular environment. environments change as much as the genome, and there is no 'standard' environment to be used to judge adaptations against. of course, what was useful then may not be necessary now, and to compare the animal from then to the animal now would be unreasonable.

you also have to ask; where is the line drawn between 'natural' and 'artificial' (granting this false dichotomy for the sake of argument). should a society that hasn't learned to build wagons and participate in cross country trading be left to die of scarcity? isn't the wagon an artificial and unnatural kind of advantage? what about the use of antibiotics? aren't doctors of medicine sheltering those who should be left to disease and death? i could go on but you get the picture.

the point is, any kind of intervention by man is natural and adaptive. but this isn't really the point this fellow is on about. what he wants to say is there is a category of people, culture and/or philosophy that is inferior to what he likes to think he has identified as a superior category of people, culture and/or philosophy, and that any force responsible for promoting/preserving the existence of the inferior is 'artificial sheltering'.

now of course all this is negligible at best, but even if it were true, he's again not able to take into account the fact that a particular environment no longer requires its inhabitants to possess a specific set of qualities and characteristics in order to adapt and survive. today, we no longer have to dispose of our retarded babies because we haven't the resources to afford for them. he's stuck in sixth century sparta or something, i dunno. neither do we need to be alarmed by a rise (if any) in homosexuality. and the new creepy incel culture is perfectly harmless (shout out to my boy, E! wud-up E! you got that blue coat on right now, doncha?) and lesbians. and all the little dysfunctional idiosyncratic sub-cultures that evolve in the western world. none of this jeopardizes the species 'man' and is nothing if not an expression of the abundance of nature and its excessively gratuitous behavior.

but you see how this becomes a chore, man? like why did i have to just explain all that shit? why do i still feel like i should explain all that shit? i don't even enjoy being right anymore. i used to be like 'hells yeah!', but today i'm just like 'meh'.

alright one more, man, then i gotta take a shower.

This is not a rare occurrence. This is the norm...among nihilists.
They begin with an idea/ideal, a goal, a motive....and work back ward, but when this idea fails, they do not question it, but the world that failed to validate the ideal they've presupposed.
This is Top<>Down emoting. You use words to arbitrarily define and fit concepts into a desired outcome - in most cases parity of outcome for one and all, echoing the Christian - Abrahamic - salvation Messianic complex.

like yourself, i haven't a clue what any of this means. but i can tell you this. what's happening inside his head is a kind of ongoing monologue that is arranged around the way he's learned to use specific sets of words/ideas he feels certain about understanding. and this is precisely what philosophy is. the beauty of it all is that you can devise a perfectly consistent system of axioms and definitions which work uniformly within a given model of your thinking... and not have even the slightest contact with reality in terms of real verifiability. most of that stuff is along the lines of psycho-babble anyway, where the analyst pretends to know the intent of the subject and the cause of his behavior/beliefs. so you really can't get anything clear from it... other than what we can be sure is what he believes 'nihilism' is. and there are countless other philosophers who believe nihilism means something not even remotely like that, or less than that, or more than that. but never just that and only that.

it's what happens when you take a basic tenant - a general outline of a specific position (nihilism) - and then set out to examine and explain why the position is what it is. there are a gazillion ways to do this, and they all work because there is nothing against which they can be tested. 'skating on frictionless ice', as W put it.

[MagsJ]

I’ve been listening to this (and the live version), and this ..both, songs, my mother wouldn’t approve of, but I like those tunes.. so what’s a gal to do.

Just bear in my mind that it is not the (occasional) explicit wording that I am drawn to, so I feel that I am degenerate by default, and not intentionally.

[Meno_]

And I interject occasionally when reference breaks in to delineate the progression , when it can be made , and to keep down the surging hyperbole that can withstand the onslaught of irreverence toward complexity versus the irrelevant.
Where it comes in, goes out, appears in more subtler ways, before it is partitioned.
It is no longer the question of what it is, or even what it is not,but "how it is", for it is all a fix.
Nihilism, atheism, theism, alienation, mystical sobriety, ages' held musically constructed quietism, existential aristocratic despair, mental sobriety , all proofs of some tenacious attempt to avoid total despair .
The nothingness of fastidious forebarring none.
The acid test of trying to be everyone and anyone. That is the ticket that exploded you think before the bucket is kicked, may as well try it before it's too late.
Just....stop.
What else is new? Embryonically speaking were all at all stages in utero, the loss of the final product is what is dreadful.
The goal is an insurance policy against. total regenerative loss, an artificial eternal bank where everything is referentiable and identifiable .

[iambiguous]

See, Desperate Degenerates do not want to explain phenomena like homosexuality, morality - behavioural patterns, that is - by using an objective standard - as does science - but they want to retain these concepts as subjective as possible, i.e., as pure ideological constructs.
They despise clarity...anything that discriminates and brings into focus. they want all to remain obscure, difficult to differentiate; complex and muddy.

It is an objective fact that human beings are a part of nature. It is an objective fact that some human beings engage in homosexual behavior. How then can homosexuality not be construed as natural? It is simply pursued by fewer men and women.

Also, it is an objective and documented fact that other animal species also engage in homosexual behavior.

Finally, it is an objective fact that sexual interactions among human beings is often not related at all to reproduction. It is instead pursued because it is pleasurable, or because it is a way in which to communicate and reinforce feelings of love or friendship.

Instead, the part that becomes increasingly subjective revolves around the complex, idiosyncratic interactions of genes and memes embodied in the particular life of any particular individual.

As for "clarity", that is easy to pin down among the objectivists. You see things clearly only to the extent that you see things exactly as they do.

Even regarding those things where there are clearly many, many conflicts even among the objectivists themselves!!

[promethean75]

yeah what this fellow is more or less doing is trying to come up with a way to explain something he doesn't personally approve of - homsosexuality - in philosophical and/or pseudo-scientific terms that will demonstrate it to be undeniably wrongful. and he may have this process of reckoning backwards; he may believe he finds homosexuality abhorrent because he thinks he's found a coherent philosophical/scientific theory which proves that it's wrong... while in fact he's unconsciously created a dubious philosophical/scientific theory that claims it's wrong because he finds it abhorrent.

[iambiguous]

yeah what this fellow is more or less doing is trying to come up with a way to explain something he doesn't personally approve of - homsosexuality - in philosophical and/or pseudo-scientific terms that will demonstrate it to be undeniably wrongful.

Exactly!

But he is now so firmly embedded in his own intellectual contraptions, I doubt he will ever come to see them as just that. As a reality that he has constructed out of "general descriptions" of human interactions. A world of words in his head that allows him to make that crucial distinction that all objectivists crave. The one between "one of us" [who understand it all] and "one of them" [who understand nothing].

On the other hand, where this takes me is to a place that is often hard to accept: to the belief that any and all human behaviors can be ratrionalized as natural. After all, if human beings are inherently a part of nature then how can anything that they do not be natural?

In other words, divided only into behaviors that more people choose to do than others.

This is clearly one possible conclusion to be drawn given the components of my own moral philosophy in a No God world.

And I suspect it's the thing that people are most queasy about in confronting moral nihilism. What if their own "I" becomes fractured and fragmented? What if they too tumble down into the hole that is "the agony of choice in the face of uncertainty"?

Surely, there must be some human behaviors that, even in a No God world, are necessarily immoral.

And there may well be. Only I can't figure out a way in which to believe that myself without one or another transcending font [shown demonstrably to exist] able to resolve conflicting goods.

[Mr Reasonable]

I drove a friend about 200 miles yesterday so that he could buy a porsche cayenne, and then he insisted that we celebrate in a strip club. So I went with him and we spend a few hours in the VIP rooms and when it was over they gave us a bill for 1200 bucks. So even though either one of us had the money, I kept on about how he said he was paying, and then he went on about how he was confused about the price, and we haggled it down to 180 bucks and pretended like we didn't carry credit cards and that all we had was a little cash. It felt amazingly degenerate. Then we drove from Atlanta to Birmingham at speeds topping 130mph, slightly tipsy and laughing the whole way about cheating those strippers.

[Karpel Tunnel]

yeah what this fellow is more or less doing is trying to come up with a way to explain something he doesn't personally approve of - homsosexuality - in philosophical and/or pseudo-scientific terms that will demonstrate it to be undeniably wrongful. and he may have this process of reckoning backwards; he may believe he finds homosexuality abhorrent because he thinks he's found a coherent philosophical/scientific theory which proves that it's wrong... while in fact he's unconsciously created a dubious philosophical/scientific theory that claims it's wrong because he finds it abhorrent.

Which one can all seem silly until one realizes that most people do the same thing about pedophiles,pyromaniaccs, psychopaths....

And since this is likely to be interpreted as a prohomophobic argument, it's not. I have no problem with homosexuals and I do with the others. But we tend to find the latter patterns abhorrant also, and many people have scientific theories about where these patterns come from.

[iambiguous]

Desperate degenerates are so obtuse, so mentally ill, that they cannot even perceive how their declared victories and arguments, are exactly what exposes their true essence.
Imagine a sexual deviant declaring sexual deviancy healthy, and whoever disproves of it as "unenlightened" or harbouring a secret irrational resentment.
Defending homosexuality always hides a private fact....

At least with matters of sex, things are clear in nature.

Crystal clear. Human beings are a part of nature. Some human beings engage in homosexuality. As do many other animal species. That certain behaviors deviate from the norm doesn't make them unnatural.

Nature just takes different paths for different members of different species.

And then of course the part where nature evolved into a species [on this planet] able reconfigure biological factors through ever evolving memes -- ideas -- about human behaviors. Unless of course memes themselves are no less entirely encompassed in a wholly determined universe.

If we study all forms of paraphilia, from paedophilia, to peeping-toms, to homosexuals, to lamb lovers....we find a organic factor. In nature homosexuality, as I've explained before, emerges for specific reasons...none of which are to be considered part of the rule.

Part of the rule. In other words, unless you agree with him regarding what the "rule behaviors" are, you are necessarily wrong about the behaviors chosen that are outside rule. And, of course, as noted above, the "rule behaviros" are always those behaviors that he personally approves of.

Then around and around in circles he goes:

1] I choose rule behaviors becasue they are natural
2] rule behaviors are natural because I choose them.

Meanwhile behaviors that are not in sync with the ones most choose are no less in sync with nature. Nothing is not the nature of things in the universe.

[iambiguous]

I drove a friend about 200 miles yesterday so that he could buy a porsche cayenne, and then he insisted that we celebrate in a strip club. So I went with him and we spend a few hours in the VIP rooms and when it was over they gave us a bill for 1200 bucks. So even though either one of us had the money, I kept on about how he said he was paying, and then he went on about how he was confused about the price, and we haggled it down to 180 bucks and pretended like we didn't carry credit cards and that all we had was a little cash. It felt amazingly degenerate. Then we drove from Atlanta to Birmingham at speeds topping 130mph, slightly tipsy and laughing the whole way about cheating those strippers.

How would one be able to determine if behaviors of this sort reflect either the right or the wrong behaviors to choose? In my view, they can only be construed as behaviors that someone of our own species did choose. They are not the sort of behaviors that most of us would choose. That's true. But how could it be determined that they are not in sync with the nature of things here on Earth? How could it be demonstrated that they are not natural behaviors? How would anyone be able to judge these behaviors other than subjectively/subjunctively from the perspective of "I"?

Instead, from my frame of mind, these behaviors were chosen given the actual existential trajectory of Mr. Reasonable's life...such that a particular sequences of experiences and relationships predisposed him to choose these behaviors rather than others.

[iambiguous]

There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.

Ideologies – freed from the limitations of natural order – abandon themselves to market forces. They fall in and out of fashion, sometimes increasing in popularity, and then falling out of favour and declining towards a fashionable niche distinction. A thrill offering pleasure to those who can feel it by being on the forefront of what is trending.

Let's bring these intellectual contraptions down to Earth in regard to the relationship between nature and homosexuality.

From wiki:

Ayn Rand, author and developer of Objectivism, held controversial views regarding homosexuality and gender roles. Although her personal view of homosexuality was unambiguously negative, considering it immoral and disgusting, Rand endorsed non-discrimination protection for homosexuals in the public sphere while opposing laws against discrimination in the private sector on the basis of economic freedom.

Now, how would she respond to my argument that the human race is a part of nature and that, therefore, any behaviors chosen by any man or woman can only be construed as natural? That, in fact, it really comes down to behaviors that are chosen more rather than less given how mind-bogglingly complex the relationship must be [for any particular individual] between each and every genetic factor and each and every historical, cultural and experiential [interpersonal] memetic factor.

Basically, as an objectivist, Rand is insisting that, in regard to homosexuality, only the manner in which she construes the distinction between rational men and women, irrational conformists and equally irrational "fashionable non-conformists", counts.

But: she would also insist that to the extent σάτυρος does not in turn share all of her own assertions regarding homosexuality above, than he is being irrational himself.

Thus her own ideology of choice here is Reason. Just as σάτυρος's ideology of choice is Nature.

And to the extent that each of them refuse to share each other's contentions they are necessarily wrong.

What we would need now is a debate between them. In order to determine who would back down first regarding how all rational and virtuous men and women are obligated to think and to feel and to act with respect to homosexual behavior.

So, are there any Ayn Rand objectivists here willing to set him straight. Unless of course he does in fact agree with all of Rand's contentions above.

As for σάτυρος's pedantic reaction to Rand above, what on earth is he telling us here?! How is it even related to the point Rand makes about conformity or fashionable nonconformity? Relating to homosexuality or anything else.

[iambiguous]

Sexual deviance, from the primary function, exposes the need/desire it is gratifying, as a secondary function.
In nature homosexuality, or any sexual dysfunction or unfitness exposes a lack or some stress factor that requires alleviation - libidinal energies requiring expunging.

Yes, homosexuals deviate from the norm in regard to their sexual preferences. But how does this make homosexuality itself unnatural? Are not all biological creatures that we call human beings inherently a part of nature?

And, sure, if you reduce human sexuality down to reproduction and then further insist that the reproduction of the human species is necessarily a good thing, you can become alarmed if, one day, everyone of us became a homosexual and the species stopped reproducing. Though, I suspect, this is unlikely to happen in our own lifetimes.

As for exposing, "a lack or some stress factor that requires alleviation", this is a classic intellectual contraption from him. Paragraph after paragraph of the same dense, ponderous, didactic prose. What on earth, for all practical purposes, does that have to do choosing same sex relationships? Let him cite particular examples of this for us.

Either due to an absence of mates, or as a display of dominance, or as a method of hierarchy reaffirmation and group stress relieved through harmless displays avoiding violence, or as a manifestation of hormonal imbalances....it all points to a secondary need/desire.

Okay, perhaps. But none of it is unnatural. It is all a manifestation of nature itself. Same with heterosexual relationships. They range across a wide spectrum of chosen behaviors --- from committed and loving monongamous unions to casual sex to rape. From the missionary position to whips and chains. From every imaginable position in any imaginable set of circumstances.

Sure, behaviors here more or less deviate from the norm. But how on earth would it be demonstrated that any of these chosen behaviors are not natural?

We can't even demonstrate for certain that any human behaviors are chosen freely.

[iambiguous]

In my dealings with Desperate Degenerates over the years, one thing never fails to materialize.
In their effort to discredit my points, and as they predictably declare victory and themselves superior, or whatnot, or when they declare their responses "irrefutable" counter-points, they are validating my arguments and presenting themselves as real-world evidence of the things I describe in generalized theoretical terms.

Again: No actual context. What argument in regard to what set of circumstances? And the irony of course being that it is precisely objectivists of his ilk that lay claim to victory merely by insisting that unless others share their own point of view they will be dumped disdainfully into one or another rendition of his own "dungeon" there.

As for reacting to the arguments of "one of them" you can be almost certain that what you will get from objectivists like him are "generalized theoretical" arguments.

They don't really offer a counter-argument - so they are harmless - but a methodology - a strategy of coping with what is threatening to them and their idealized world-view.

Translation:

They don't really offer a counter-argument because any and all arguments that are not entirely in sync with his own are not worth of being called arguments at all.

He is just a particularly egregious example of the scholastic pedant living in his own idealized world of words accusing those who don't go up into the clouds with him in parroting his intellectual contraptions of being the idealists instead.

Or, rather, so it seems to me.

[promethean75]

As for reacting to the arguments of "one of them" you can be almost certain that what you will get from objectivists like him are "generalized theoretical" arguments.

two things. the weberian in-group/out-group is a phenomena that is biologically hardwired in people, and a group of people need not be 'right' or even in agreement in what they think they undertand each other to be saying, to still feel a sense of indentity with each other.

'agreement' in such groups usually exists and is formed around a few catch-phrases, cue words, and smaller, easier to manage, basic philosophical statements. i say basic because those that aren't will most certainly be subject to intense scrutiny if someone were around to offer it, in which case they would be taken apart... and nobody could agree with them (because they wouldn't be). but once enough time has passed where certain premises aren't challenged, they become part of the furniture and everyone sits on them absentmindedly.

for example, you could have a group of racists... but everyone in this group thinks racism is something different than the other guy. this difference, however slight, need not be known by everyone so long as it's purpose is to support a 'general' attitude. it becomes a cue-word, and insofar as it attempts to become a thesis, it risks losing its enduring coherency by virtue of the fact that none of them can agree on what it is. when you see this happening it gives you a chuckle.

but the thing with generalized philosophical theory is that 'particular' instances in which it can be tested are so numerous that there will almost certainly always be an exception, revealing the unique nature of that instance. 'systematizers' don't like this, so they avoid it. stirner and i dont like systematizers, so we avoid them. systematizers don't like me and stirner, so they avoid us. ideologues are like idiot logs, biggs. i told you, if you want to know what is 'true', you don't have to look far. only a few things are truly true or self-evident by definition alone. spinz can catalog them for you. everything else is partial and/or emotional knowledge. that is, fruity and inferior.

as rational nihilists we work only in absolute truths (show us the money), and because there aren't many of these at all, we spend most of our time on vacation toying with philosophers. admit it. you ain't tryin to help nobody, biggs.

[iambiguous]

He is just a particularly egregious example of the scholastic pedant living in his own idealized world of words...

Here are some classic examples of this. All from one post!!

Desperate degenerates are childish naive idealists - some fall into the category of romantic idealists.
A few are recovering and bitter naive idealists.

The naive idealist does not believe in the real. This is why he is obsesses with the subjective experience of the miraculous.

It's a state of retarded psychological development - usually brought on by a traumatic event, such as contact with reality.
Trauma is easy when you've been sheltered from reality and your spirit has atrophied and has become brittle. Any contact with reality will be shattering.

He, now, concludes that all ideologies are equally naive, because - and this is where he jumps into his nihilistic idealism - there is no reality; all is ideology. In other words, all is nil, concealed by superficial ideologies. If there is anything real it is the ego - lucid self - and its fantasies; all else is nil.

Reality is ideology; nature is ideology - from the nothing ideology emerges to conceal it - logos as the Christians used the concept. First was the word.

Either/Or.
Either the experienced world hides, conceals, a more real world of magic and miracles, or it conceals emptiness.
The experienced must be rejected, one way or another.

The "mature" naive idealist has matured - progressed - out of his previous more infantile naive idealism, but not towards realism. He simply found a more powerful idealism - that of the nil.

What on earth does any of this have to do with the arguments I raised in regard to homosexuality above?! Or to any other conflicting goods of note.

Indeed, I challenge anyone here to reconfigure any of his assertions above into a context in which his observations might be seen as applicable to actual flesh and blood human beings.

How are they applicable to your own interactions with others in which you might be deemed to be or not to be a Desperate Degenerate"?

[iambiguous]

as rational nihilists we work only in absolute truths (show us the money), and because there aren't many of these at all, we spend most of our time on vacation toying with philosophers. admit it. you ain't tryin to help nobody, biggs.

In all honesty there is no "in all honesty" here. Not when it comes to "I". There is no way in hell that I could ever possibly grasp my motivations and intentions in posting here. And that is because there are simply far, far too many variables in my life [going all the way back to the cradle] that were/are either beyond my understanding or control.

I suspect there really is a part of me that is very much sincere in greeting and then grappling with arguments that might topple my own. After all, look at all the things I have to gain if I really were able to yank my fractured and fragmented "I" up out of the hole.

And then the part that is rooted in this:

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

Parts of me take this seriously, parts of me don't.

And then someone back in my Ponderer's Guild days once suggested that I am the philosophical equivalent of the AIDS patient who feels compelled to go out and infect others...so that they too can suffer as he does. That was me there he argued. "I" am "fractured and fragmented" down "in my hole". "I" am convinced that human existence is essentially meaningless and ends in oblivion. So, sure, why not "infect" others with the same sense of hopelessness and despair. Get a little empathy going.

I just don't know. And I just don't know because I suspect that I just can't know. In ways that are far beyond my grasping, it really is "beyond my control".

You know, assuming that I have any capacity to exercise free will here; and going back to whatever the explanation for existence itself is.

[iambiguous]

His reaction to my post above?

Why just more of the same of course!

Self-hatred, and insecurity, is the pathos fuelling nihilistic hyperbole.
The absolute simply displays their absolute awareness, as the Last Man - omniscience; and their hypothetical omnipotence, as the creators of their own reality.

Rule of Thumb
Hyperbole attempts to hide the opposite of what is fact.
So, be sure, that a couple displaying an exaggerated public display of their "love", is hiding a troubled uncertain relationship, in private; a man repeating hyperbolic displays of masculinity, - hyper-masculinity - is secretly unsure of his manhood...

When you've lost all trust in the world; when you've lost all trust in others; when you've lost all trust in yourself and in your own judgements, what then?
You pretend....or you turn to the last and final certainty....Cogito ergo sum; the ego speaking to itself of itself.

You turn to the nil, and its certain power to deny and erase everything and anything - a last and final defence against an uncertain and threatening world.

You pump them up with verbal confidence and repeating self-confident flattery; all else you ridicule away....your hyperventilating gesticulation feeling like orgasmic releases, and in those moments of weakness you turn to self-numbing chemical joy.

What does any of this intellectual gibberish have to do with human behaviors that come into conflict over value judgments relating to real issues like homosexuality?

Or, sure, maybe his whole point is to "trick" me into bringing this autodidactic babble here "to a wider audience".

Well, unless of course I'm wrong.

[promethean75]

And then someone back in my Ponderer's Guild days once suggested that I am the philosophical equivalent of the AIDS patient who feels compelled to go out and infect others...so that they too can suffer as he does. That was me there he argued. "I" am "fractured and fragmented" down "in my hole". "I" am convinced that human existence is essentially meaningless and ends in oblivion. So, sure, why not "infect" others with the same sense of hopelessness and despair. Get a little empathy going.

I just don't know. And I just don't know because I suspect that I just can't know. In ways that are far beyond my grasping, it really is "beyond my control".

nah i don't think it's like that. i don't sense any ill will in you. instead i think you exhibit a perfectly natural love of debate with a special interest in proving those who have offended you, wrong. and it isn't that you're angered by people who feel that easy, self satisfied certainty from an unexamined life which brings them a tivial happiness you can't have... because i think you feel that these people are below you (and you should). so i don't think it's that shallowness that offends you. these are just kids playing and you realize that. i think it's only when the debate is made personal - and this is an inevitability with the warthog satyr - that you go into 'objectivist terminator' mode. and let's face it, you're like a gorgias on steroids when you do that, man, and that'll shake a muthafucker up.

but see i know you aren't totally miserable even in waiting for godot, because - well from what i know of you here - you keep yourself occupied with, and are a lover of, music, literature and cinema, and you have a working sense of humor. so you're not dysfunctional, man... it just seems like you are in comparison to typical forum philosophers because your nihilistic position is as uncommon as it is something they want to avoid at all costs. though completely epistemologically sound - some would even argue the most rational - your nihilism is an unwelcome guest in the house of most philosophy. plato would despise you... well because you'd throw a wrench in his whole program. i think aristotle would dig you though. he was a cold thinker who approached the facts like a detective and it made no difference to him if what he found was disagreeable.

anyway i can't see you over at knowthyself because you're in the dungeon, which can't be seen by forum guests. my queston is; why are you still going on over there? i mean shit man, if something hasn't happened by now, it probably ain't happenin. and believe me, nobody over there is getting anything of value from what you post. not that what you post isn't valuable - it's incredibly valuable, in fact - rather they already drank the kool-aid and nothing can be done for them.

the thing with satyr is that he creates a wealth of material for debate and criticism, and yet i've found that nothing ever sticks with him. he's the kind of guy who you'd tell that two plus two equals four, and then the very next day he's back to saying it equals five. believe me, i've gone blow for blow with this dude for months on end and my lesson was well learned. i could've built my philosophical muscles better picking strawberries or being shipped off to military school with that goddamn finklestein shit kid (cheech and chong reference there for ya).

what i like about your style is its kinship with the latter wittgenstein period; an anti-philosophical tenure that is focused on grounding vast philosophical generalizations in ordinary experiences where we are able to 'look' at examples, see particular instances, and force grand philosophical explanations into real, lived contexts. so i think your nihilism doesn't manifest in some inability to find value and meaningfulness, per se, but only that you appear as a nihilist when you rigorously scrutinize philosophical formulas and systems of thought. what you almost sense instinctively but maybe aren't able to articulate is just how and why philosophy is so suspect. you have a sixth sense, you might say... you just don't know how it works. when you get that gut feeling that something is bullshit, there's an internal logic working that is fully formed and ordered for cornering very subtle problems with language and the rules/logic of grammar. you sense it, but you can't explain why or what it is. for that, you need a professional.

[promethean75]

From South Carolina to Maryland - that Americana desperate degeneracy - I see them creeping and peeping

that's us, biggs! *high five*

btw, what's new in baltimore? anything going on up there?

i wonder why he put it like that. know what i mean? is part of this guy's fantasy that we read his posts because we are secretly impressed with his brilliance? this is what i mean when i say nothing sticks with this guy. i told him years ago i scan his posts looking for cheap pot-shots at me so i can shoot back. and here he is still thinking everyone is mesmerized by him. if there is anything mesmerizing here, it's how dense he is.

what is most frequently entertaining is when he gets into his head that he's not only got me 'figured out', but that i must secretly know he's got me figured out, and i'm terribly ashamed and embarrassed because of it. no shit, man. this has been going on for years. i'm not kidding.

but we had also established years ago that i know he knows i know he's full of shit (that's our little secret), and that it no longer mattered to me if those who read his garbage believed him. at first, i was concerned about being slandered in the company of people who, at the time, i thought were prospectively interesting people who's opinion of me would matter. as time passed, i discovered they were not, and from that point on, no longer felt the need to defend myself in their company. so i let him roll with it, and he's been going ever since. this, of course, he interprets as 'winning' - i'm finally broken and can't fight back, so on and so forth. - while in reality, i'm no longer interested in making an example out of him for a small handful of insignificant people at a philosophy forum.

in any case i think his vitriol increases in proportion to the decrease in attention he is given by whatever readers. you'll note the waning membership participation at KT, and funnily enough, i doubt even the older members even read his posts anymore. this would be like listening to a CD that's been on repeat for months.

and the strange thing is, there was actually a short period of time at POD that we - he, joker and i - shot the jovial shit together on vocaroo. and i'll tell ya what i've gathered from this.

that incident worked post-hoc to increase my disrespect for him to a point of no return. here's how; ask yourself why he's being friendly with a desperate degenerate he so loaths. either he doesn't really think this about me, which makes him a liar... or, he does think this about me and lacks conviction, which makes him a flake. in either case, a great revelation can be made about his ultimate character. stick with me, biggs. i can teach you a thing or two about real psychoanalysis.

and ya know i get no joy from this like i used to. i don't really want to hurt the guy because he's no real threat, so i feel like i'm almost being unfair. but on account of these most recent developments over the last couple years, i am absolutely certain we are never getting back together. i just can't do it, biggs, and i'm sorry.

stay tuned, because he's really gonna turn the heat on after this. i can see him now scrambling for the keyboard on the computer desk in the spare bedroom as we speak.

[MagsJ]

Lol.. why KTS still gotta hate on ILP. Two opposing Houses of Philosophy, like two opposing Schools of Kung Fu.

I’ve seen all the movies.. I know how it always ends.

[promethean75]

well because ilp is a filty nest of desperate degeneracy. duh. but it's me, biggs, jakob the fixed barbarian, and pezerocles (to an extent) that absolutely infuriates him the most. that's what's so delicious about the kt/ilp saga. it's like an amateur wittgenstein/moore incident without the fire poker and a few garage philosopher dummies instead of academics. but i imagine every major forum has these same dramas... where a handful of regulars become an arch-nemesis to each other.

and even if there were no drama between us blokes, we'd still find something to argue about.

[iambiguous]

Homosexual behaviour among prison inmates does not indicate a homosexual identity nor a homosexual preference; no more than homosexual behaviour in nature is an indication of homosexual exclusivity and preference - if it is then something severely wrong is occurring in the specific organism exhibiting such preferences - because homosexuality is a genetic dead end.

I've already addressed this of course. Homosexual behavior in prison reflects that particular context. A place where heterosexual males have no access to females. But their libidos are still no less fully functioning, right? And there are still inmates who choose homosexuality [in or out of prison] because they have no interest in having sex with females. Now, perhaps this has a biological basis...or perhaps it is rooted more in their individual experiences.

But how is their behavior demonstrated to be unnatural given that human beings are inherently a part of the evolution of life [nature] on planet Earth?

Here, of course, the religious folks have God to back them up. God created human beings in His own image. They did not come into existence as a result of evolution. Homosexuality becomes a Sin.

But where is σᾰ́τῠρος's equivalent of that by way of demonstrating that homosexuality is unnatural and therefore wrong.

All he basically does is to insist that only his own definition of nature counts. He demonstrates nothing that isn't contained almost entirely in his "general terminology" precipitating his "general theory".

And, in turn, he has no real argument at all in regard to this point:

...it is an objective fact that sexual interactions among human beings is often not related at all to reproduction. It is instead pursued because it is pleasurable, or because it is a way in which to communicate and reinforce feelings of love or friendship.

Instead, the part that becomes increasingly subjective revolves around the complex, idiosyncratic interactions of genes and memes embodied in the particular life of any particular individual.

And...

And, sure, if you reduce human sexuality down to reproduction and then further insist that the reproduction of the human species is necessarily a good thing, you can become alarmed if, one day, everyone of us became a homosexual and the species stopped reproducing. Though, I suspect, this is unlikely to happen in our own lifetimes.