Trump and Metaphysics: A Continuing Thought-stream

I realized during the discourse, right before your mind changed, that you were in an environment that made it impossible to value Trump, because every single one of his supporters you heard was an asshole and a moron. So yes, environment is indeed extremely important -

and yet, Ive seen that a lot of people just are repelled by certain information -
most of all people who have actual confidence in HRC. That's truly a mark of a lack of foresight, and it's not at all abnormal that normal people lack foresight in politics. The Electoral College - Brain analogy once again applies.

A rich harvest.

♄

Sisyphus wrote:

Fixed Cross wrote:

But as it happens this is wisdom. Or so it begins to seem. I am laughing more and more, and no longer only at myself.

And don't forget to sing and dance.

I forgot it once, I'll never forget it again.




[edit - this is seriously the most disturbing scene Ive seen in a long while]

Yes, disturbing. But how close to reality?

Fixed Cross wrote:

I realized during the discourse, right before your mind changed, that you were in an environment that made it impossible to value Trump, because every single one of his supporters you heard was an asshole and a moron. So yes, environment is indeed extremely important -

and yet, Ive seen that a lot of people just are repelled by certain information -
most of all people who have actual confidence in HRC. That's truly a mark of a lack of foresight, and it's not at all abnormal that normal people lack foresight in politics. The Electoral College - Brain analogy once again applies.

A rich harvest.

♄

Indeed, due to the fascism of political correctness in America today, unless you live in the south or a rural area you aren't allowed to voice support for Trump. Probably I am around secret Trump supporters every day but they can't say so. Funnily enough my mental health clients are more free to openly express their political beliefs, with a few of them hating Clinton and liking Trump, than the employees are.

I had to cut out mainstream news because that was the source of the distorted picture of Trump supporters. Yeah some of them are crazy, a few are KKK members, but most of them are decent people more or less. Certainly not philosophers but then again neither are Christians, yet they are still able to resonate with the Christ-Sign subjectivity, are able to instantiate a metaphysical idea.

Clinton represents no metaphysical ideas, except for the "idea" of slavery-death or Thanatos. Her supporters want to stop the burden of living, their "life" has become an orgy of denial of pains. Trump forced his way into that sick paradigm and made them contact hard reality, most especially in themselves. "Victory is all you need".

By the way, what I said about no one being destined for a given threshold of development, and about how we become what we are most able to become given the environmental influences we are e posed to, this in no way means that we do not "own" that which we are. We do indeed own what we are, we have ownership over and responsibility for both our strengths and weaknesses. Determination doesn't absolve morality; rather, it creates it. We are after all always ourselves, and responsibility or ownership simply means this, to be that which one is. We should indeed take pride in our strengths and shame in our weaknesses, not despite environmental and genetic determinations, but because of them. We are precisely what we are, to our pride or our shame.

Fixed Cross wrote:

"I like signing checks" -D.J. Trump

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vrrfRnqqus

Nice interview.

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I don't disagree, but I see influence as another environmental factor of society at large. For example, without help from Fixed and Parodites I would probably still be thinking about Trump and politics the way I used to. We simply need good influences to reach our potential and push through all of the bad influences. Sometimes those good influences are other people, sometimes they are books (people from the past who continue to influence in the present).

On the other hand this is the environment you created, where we thrive. It was besides this your aim to get to the truth.

Very true. I've had an unshakable desire and need for truth since I can remember. I stumbled upon philosophy in college and that was probably the most fortuitous moment for me. Sometimes I try to imagine what would have happened if I had never stumbled onto it. Possibly my drive for truth is strong enough that I would have eventually found contact with something that led me to philosophy. But again that moment of exposure is critical. And yeah we made BTL, certainly the best forum for philosophy on the entire internet. Maybe the best way to spread our values is to create environments. That way we expose the largest number of people to our own values.

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I don't believe anyone individually is destined for any given level of conscious or philosophical development, rather we become who we are  through many complex procedure that are mostly beyond our own control and rooted in the larger social, cultural and family environments that we are exposed to.

I think it is wise to not expect predestination, even though I do believe the future may be fixed, I do also think we can not know it - and that by half-knowing it we have a slimmer chance of getting to know ourselves fully. (Oracles and such work to reveal all sorts of things, but they dont reveal what it is that they reveal. So they merely enforce certain thought patterns.)
What I can say is that quality is a consistency that acts like gravity.
You did not accidentally happen upon the thoughts of the other philosophers of this school.
Modesty is good, but you may recall what Schopenhauer said about those that are too modest.

Can you remind me what Schop said here? I see predestination or whatever we call it the same way as you do, I think. It certainly exists, I believe in causal determinism because that is logically necessary given the principle of sufficient reason, but as you said we cannot know that much of our own determination, especially looking forward to the future. Therefore we balance freedom with necessity and these work out to be the same thing in what we call our human subjectivity.

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This is why self-valuing is such a huge demand of responsibility. We affect one another and others have affected us, helping us become what we are for better or worse. The more influence that we have the greater is the responsibility-power.

Yes. It's enormous. And it's bigger than any of us expected - once the selfvaluing principle took hold in politics, the whole world polarized absolutely. The very electricity of that tension is where our arguments happened. The change of mind was thus pretty much literally like a lightning strike.

The tall tree waits for the lightning, as N said. The world is the tree, philosophy is the Lightning. But the world is also created previously by philosophy, Parodites was saying that philosophy is not constituted by the values it creates; what then constitutes philosophy?

It's really great to have a leader who you can imitate and laugh about because he is amusing in a positive way, rather than stupid or just clever. Im extremely amused by how Trump always praises whoever he praises twice in the same sentence.

It's still really hard to imitate his sentences because he always has things to say that only a man like he has to say. I am seriously considering beginning every answer to a question with an expansive praise of something partially related I just happen to think highly of.

'I gotta tell you, this salt you have here is pretty great actually, and it does what it should do really, really well. I like it really on my potatoes which are great, which I always have actually and enjoy it, tremendously, and also I'll have it now too because I will be ordering breakfast, where everything comes together you know, and it's really great, so thank you for having me.'

this is really hard, but it feels noble to try for.

Haha oh yeah, it is great.

Fixed Cross wrote:

It's really great to have a leader who you can imitate and laugh about because he is amusing in a positive way, rather than stupid or just clever. Im extremely amused by how Trump always praises whoever he praises twice in the same sentence.

It's still really hard to imitate his sentences because he always has things to say that only a man like he has to say. I am seriously considering beginning every answer to a question with an expansive praise of something partially related I just happen to think highly of.

'I gotta tell you, this salt you have here is pretty great actually, and it does what it should do really, really well. I like it really on my potatoes which are great, which I always have actually and enjoy it, tremendously, and also I'll have it now too because I will be ordering breakfast, where everything comes together you know, and it's really great, so thank you for having me.'

this is really hard, but it feels noble to try for.

Cute!

Trump has a somewhat hypnotic way of talking, it's something I used to dislike about him when I was plugged into the matrix of the media. But now I definitely appreciate his style, he is off the cuff and stream of consciousness. It is clear that he is absolutely comfortable speaking in front of any size crowd, and that he has absolute confidence in himself and his ideas. The danger would be this confidence turning into narcissism, but I've seen him change his mind and be reasonable in the face of ideas or evidence, plus he seems genuinely open-minded about many issues (such as he said clearly many times about global warming). Being the pragmatist he is, it would be almost impossible for him to be narcissistic except perhaps on a few pet ideological issues that are fixed in his values, such as tax cuts for the rich for example. I can definitely see him ignoring the data on that and going forward with it anyway. Same with the debt ceiling issue.

The thing with global warming is that it almost doesn't matter if he believes in it or not, any solutions to the problem must not cripple our own economy. Basically Trump has the value of American success and economic health as #1 and global warming is at best a secondary value; whereas for the neolib media and political elites their values hierarchy places global warming far above the value of American success and economic health.

So once Trump can find a way to address global warming without compromising his #1 value, I think he will do that. And there are plenty of ways of doing it.

Yes, I agree.

Also, it bas been solidly proven that these globalist climate agreements are hollow, for several reasons, the first being that the worlds main polluter China doesnt give a shit, Trumps hard tone vis a vis them is bound to do infinitely more. Another is that its obviously not evident that it is really controllable by just reducing emissions. The formal agreement to reduce or contain the worlds average temperature by some definite values made me laugh so uncontrollably when I read about it that I was crying. Is may have never before heard something quite so stupid, and the praise they got for it was the perfect punchline. The weatherman cant even predict if it is going to rain the next day.

"The "social cost" of carbon dioxide emissions may not be $37 per ton, as estimated by a recent U.S. government study, but $220 per ton."

--some Stanford study or something

Haha.

Yeah, what we really need is to create positive values around mitigating global warming. I've seen plenty of the science and I do not think it is a hoax (of course some of it might be). The irony is that it will take someone like Trump to really find solutions.

I like the continued shift into renewable energy technology, better batteries, and carbon capture tech. I also think we can build huge floating biobags of photosynthetic compounds that will convert CO2 and sunlight into oxygen, as well as do some serious funding for saving the largest forests in the world. And since a lot of the excess CO2 gets trapped in the oceans we can submerge thousands of huge photosynthetic biobags in the oceans and draw off energy from these as they absorb CO2 from water.

Capable wrote:

"The "social cost" of carbon dioxide emissions may not be $37 per ton, as estimated by a recent U.S. government study, but $220 per ton."

--some Stanford study or something

Haha.

Also, 1+1 is estimated to be 117. By some scientist so good his name can't be revealed. We will have no choice but to recalculate all everything in light of this Science, which was made by a minority, so obviously more valid than anything you say.  So shut up, racist.

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Yeah, what we really need is to create positive values around mitigating global warming. I've seen plenty of the science and I do not think it is a hoax (of course some of it might be). The irony is that it will take someone like Trump to really find solutions.

I like the continued shift into renewable energy technology, better batteries, and carbon capture tech. I also think we can build huge floating biobags of photosynthetic compounds that will convert CO2 and sunlight into oxygen, as well as do some serious funding for saving the largest forests in the world. And since a lot of the excess CO2 gets trapped in the oceans we can submerge thousands of huge photosynthetic biobags in the oceans and draw off energy from these as they absorb CO2 from water.

These sounds like advanced ideas, maybe a good idea to make a thread in Science on such techniques?

I am deeply against windmills, they are extremely expensive and carbon intensive to make, last a few years and really don't produce nearly enough energy for all that cost.
Same largely with solar panels, they are energy intensive and costly to produce and don't make a dent.

I am personally in favor of nuclear energy. Im not clear on why we should want nuclear warheads and not nuclear plants. France is getting most of its energy from them, and thats a reliable type of state to handle something like that. I wouldnt be happy if China switched over to them.

On global warming, I don't think there is any hoax in it, it is obviously getting warmer, glaciers are melting or already disappeared. There surely are a lot of extortionist politics centered around this fact though, the Paris agreement is certainly a "hoax", since they agreed on accomplishing something of which the causes are very opaque and the means to even address the clearest of possible causes are virtually nil.

In any case, your ideas are new to my ears. If you can find the time I'd love to read some technical elaborations.

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The University of Wisconsin, Madison is offering a course in the spring semester entitled “The Problem of Whiteness,” which aims to ask “what an ethical white identity entails, what it means to be #woke, and consider the journal Race Traitor’s motto, ‘treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity.'”

All of this shit is so unthinkably sick...

In Berlin, in the wake of the truck attack, left-wing cancercells had the nerve to demonstrate against the ones demonstrating in shock against the countless murders by immigrants, calling the mourners nazi's.

It's in part cause to a dark glee, since it is all so sick that it has no alternative to death.

If you want to legally live in Germany, all you have to do is go there and destroy or hide your identity papers. If they can't figure out where you are from, they are forced to allow you to stay, and probably you can collect welfare as well.

In the meantime the industrial German workforce, the people working at VW and BMW and Benz, is always underpaid.

Saddest country ever.

Germany: where your daughter gets raped and killed, the authorities force you keep it from the police and the papers, and you are labeled a nazi for mourning her.

It would be nice if this was an exaggeration. Last new year there were 1300 sex crimes committed by immigrant refugees, and the government forced the media to keep silent on it for 10 days.

And still the Germans are swallowing it, like they swallowed Hitler and the Camps. I think we need to accept it wasn't ever meant to be a sovereign state. What a fucking losers.

Yes it's  really fucking pathetic. Fuck Germany, I suppose. They need to get their shit together. Maybe this is a kind of reverse onto-epistemic process for the deep soil out of which Germanic spirit produced so many great philosophers, writers, musicians. The collective soul there just can't "biologically" or "psychologically" handle all that spiritual greatness and the heavy fate of responsibility for it, so they are collapsing into non-entity as a kind of entropic Thanotic escape or pressure-release valve.

MTV ran a Christmas thing here too about white people being stupid. My answer whenever anyone brings up or says or refers to any of that shit is always the same: I throw their own mechanism right back at them and just say "that's racist". Get them to think about the fact they are racists even in their own terms. The insane left-liberal paradigm is racist but things it's ok since they're racist against only the "bad" race, namely whites, which isn't even a fucking race, but we can simply throw their own criticism back in their face.

The good thing is that most humans feel deep soul-pain and aversion to all that shit. Trump's win is proof of it. This is also why the left-liberal paradigm became the global neoliberal PC paradigm, a pure fascism. Their perspective is a very minority one thus must be enforced at the barrel of a gun.

I thought of a potential way for us to introduce cures for the sickness. Let's start talking about how there is no such thing as "white", there is only American, German, French, British, etc etc when it comes to culture, pride, identity. National identity here is much closer to a "race" than the stupid label "white", after all there are distinct genetic types associated with these nationalities. Nationalism is on the rise now, thankfully, so we can fuel that wave by cutting down the label "white people" and replacing it with national identity.

Every time you see or hear the label "white", always respond the same way: "That's racist. There is no such thing as "white", you are (Canadian, French, etc.), not "white"."

The partially self-addressing racism against whites (the category) is unique to the US though - it is mind bogglingly perverse, the depth of the lobotomy. This is why I say the US is the Superman as well as the Last Man. Both much higher and much lower than Europe.

If someone tells me some racist line about white males, my only reaction is an amused frown about the desperate fate of this zombie. I dont care to educate such folks even if it were possible, it is cleaner to let truth wash them away. It feels like watching rain on the windshield, very calming.

Capable wrote:

Yes it's  really fucking pathetic. Fuck Germany, I suppose. They need to get their shit together. Maybe this is a kind of reverse onto-epistemic process for the deep soil out of which Germanic spirit produced so many great philosophers, writers, musicians. The collective soul there just can't "biologically" or "psychologically" handle all that spiritual greatness and the heavy fate of responsibility for it, so they are collapsing into non-entity as a kind of entropic Thanotic escape or pressure-release valve.

Germany must be split up in its original states again. They all will be fine. Since they tried for a single state in 1870, theyve been deteriorating the relations in Europe with relentless consistency. It's been almost 150 years and Northern Europe is at the brink of political crisis - and rebirth, if Sauwelios and I have anything to do with it.

It's a sometimes considered notion that all German genius is exception - Germans are either genius or really placid. I think this is why their geniuses are so pure, they aren't contaminated with any near-genius around them.

Likewise, the Germans do not in general have a sense of humor, except when they do very radical things - their glee is comical almost beyond any other forum of humor. So they use humor as violence, one might say, or violence as humor.

This is why they must be split up. Europe is way too powerful in its diversity for any single country to dominate like that - compare me to an Italian and then to a Bulgarian - the degrees of difference are almost terrifying.

Paris is unequivocally the most beloved city of the Continent, as well as a brilliantly constructed and conveniently located for grand style federal government. And European federal government in sensible terms is largely military. Economically it is anti-ontic; it constantly cuts off excess by an absurdly crude regulation of interference: Brussels.

Since Germany started uniting under Bismarck, the overall power of Europe across the globe has gone from near absolute to something that is really hard to interpret as power at all.

Yes supposedly Germany was the last European state to constitute itself, and I've read this was a primary cause of WWI, and also of WWII considering how WWI was a primary cause of WWII. I also really like Parodites' theory of the economic inability to export excess across borders, the fact that what America did in the 1800s and 1900s was something that the European continent could only approximate.

Look at how much further along we are now: modern leftist types (globalist PC fascists) are preaching the end of the world due to Trump and Putin, yet WWI was trigggered by the assassination of the archduke while just the other day a Russian ambassador was assassinated and ...nothing. We are beyond the point where a single flash-point event can trigger such massive degeneration into military conflict.

I turn on the news now and all I hear is "we don't matter". By 'we' I mean the news casters (attempted spellcasters), they know they are irrelevant now. It's funny to listen to their "news" now, post-Trump. If you pay attention they are for the large part either highly relieved at their own new irrelevancy, or in a state of near-psychic break.

I was telling a German young guy the other day online, who was defending Merkel and all the immigration and globalist policies, that I hope he enjoys the coming German-Islamic State he will soon live under. Of course I hope im wrong, but we shall see.

Capable wrote:

Yes supposedly Germany was the last European state to constitute itself, and I've read this was a primary cause of WWI, and also of WWII considering how WWI was a primary cause of WWII. I also really like Parodites' theory of the economic inability to export excess across borders, the fact that what America did in the 1800s and 1900s was something that the European continent could only approximate.

It was indeed.
If you want to know precisely what happened in those supermilitaristic decades that lead up to WW1, do yourself a huge favor and make time to watch this German film from 1940.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynUTU03gbU8

It's astoundingly well made and historically accurate. It conveys the Prussian perspective so well that it is hard not to sympathize with a desire for a united Germany. However, when stepping back, it is equally easy to see the disastrous consequences that had to follow.

Obama is apparently just quite dumb, and as intellectually as lazy as your random lumberjack Joe. He probably just refuses to think about what he does, goes about stroking his balls thinking he's so classy to have attained this office, and others are so jealous of him for objecting to his actions, the consequences of which are clearly not comprehensible to him in the least.

I can just see him puzzling over why people care so much about having to pay some measly thousands of dollars extra, you can see that is really small money to him, and he doesn't know what you can buy with it. "Only a percent of my car", he'll think. "Thats nothing."

Then he'll go on an internal rant on how racist Americans are for not wanting to give up all their money for him to have his name on a law. He'll order some dronestrikes on the usual targets, schools and weddings and such, to clear his heart, brush the dirt off his shoulder and do another hip press conference about how not being black is racist.