"Materialism" is Idealism

a reply to: ImaFungi

Would you suggest that if all 'occurrences of what you deem to be idealism' were to cease to exist tomorrow, there would be one unarguable method of how humans would function and exist from then on? (and lol, would that be the most ideal means of existence, one that is idealess?)

For one thing I don’t think it could ever cease. It is what we do and how we operate and probably one of our most important faculties. In my ideal world, we would be honest about it so that we can control it rather than let it run rampant.

About 'society', you say it is ideal that we speak of how they should exist instead of how they do exist. But is it not true, that idealizing 'went into' how the society that exists now, exists? So we know the future will occur, we know society exists now exactly as it does, and because the inevitability of 'time', the way in which society exists now is always slightly changing, which over more and more time, offers more and more changes. Since we have the power to aid and shape change, we think and view society as it exists now, and say, how will it exist in the future, and what are the best ways to aid its change.

You’re absolutely right. However, this idealism requires much more than just an ideal to strive for. In order to gauge the probabilities of what something might become, it is necessary to first understand that something, what it does, and its relationships to other things. And in order to understand that something, it is necessary to observe its material, and the behaviour of that material. Only after we accept materialism (in the metaphysical sense) can we rationally use our idealism in any practical way.

You say, we dont see things for what they are, but I will paraphrase and say, we see thing with personal biases, and that is ideal. I suppose I have lost your point a bit, and now think I remember your main argument was to 'philosophers' who use the term ideal and materialism to refer to 'good, wishful thinker' and 'evil capitalist pig'. And your argument is that this type of thought is wrong, because seeing and knowing material as it is...compels one to use it in novel material ways? And that is ideal?

Yes my argument was that we cannot truly value something unless we value it for what it is, which, if we apply observation, is of a material existence, a material value. Money for instance is materially worth the paper it is printed on. It only has an ideal value. Its material value is quite valueless, for we cannot eat it, wear it, or use it to defend ourselves. In the material world, money is valueless. In the ideal world, which in our case is an illusion we all support, it is worth a great deal more to us, that one will irrationally destroy material value for ideal value. I think this is completely backwards.

The same is found in religion, where “spirit” is more valuable than “body”, and the other-world more valuable than the world.

If we didnt have personal relationships to materials, and see them for what they could be, we would still be monkeys right now. I suppose this is your argument to the spiritualists, who say materialism is bad, you are saying that they are asking to erase all human progression, they are asking to be monkeys.

Yes this is another angle. I’ll remind you of the definition:

1 a tendency to consider material possessions and physical comfort as more important than spiritual values.

First, the idea that materials exists so that we can possess them, or that what is physical is simply means to comfort is idealistic in origin. This would be a more apt description of idealism than anything called materialism.

If we didn’t have any relationship with the material of the world, there would be no world in which we could idealize.

Ok, well I thought you might have been arguing other things, my bad be well.

I purposefully made it confusing. I expect confusion. Be well.

a reply to: LesMisanthrope

You could probably win the nobel prize in narrowmindedness, if there were one.

aeon.co...

Some food for thought for the "real philosophers" that haven't even gotten around to explaining the most fundamental of questions, and to boot refuses to investigate the possibility with any amount of effort, besides taking a shallow look and proclaiming how reality functions. Laughable really.

a reply to: TheLaughingGod

Some food for thought for the "real philosophers" that haven't even gotten around to explaining the most fundamental of questions, and to boot refuses to investigate the possibility with any amount of effort, besides taking a shallow look and proclaiming how reality functions. Laughable really.

I can see your ideology speaks for you. Your inability to forge your own argument makes this apparent, and you are left searching for others to argue for you.

In reality, you have read something and posted a link to it, likely without once using your own reasoning faculties.

It should be simple to refute narrowmindedness (is that even a word?). So let's hear it.

a reply to: LesMisanthrope

I don't need to refute you, my life has already refuted you and your views time and time again a long time ago, they appear to me childish now, I used to be a materialist, I shed that skin 10 years ago, now it is myopic and extremely limited.

Science will catch up when it's ready, and all of your diatribes will end up in the garbage can of history, a relic of a dark age of ignorance, because here's the inside scoop Shirley, reality does not care for nor conform to you or your expectations, and nothing you ever think can ever change that.

I don't have the time to go tit for tat back and forth with you, I avoid such things, I don't care enough for you to, you're a lost cause, but for anyone with a genuine interest I think they'll know where to find the evidence, there's vast amounts of it ever since the 1800-hundreds.

This is the century where it will probably finally be revealed, the spiritual dimensions of reality, I really can't see it any other way when science gets advanced enough, this paradigm shift is needed and of enormous importance, it will be the industrial revolution all over again, and aside from a some earthshattering disaster it is all but inevitable.

Your arguments on the internet will come to naught, there is no need to refute you, reality already does.

a reply to: TheLaughingGod

So in other words, you cannot refute it?

Oddly enough I shed the costume you now wear years and years ago as well. It was a security blanket I no longer needed. It reeks of self-deception. Not only is it boring and self-centered, it is contradictory, paradoxical and untenable. They are fisher-price doctrines for fisher-price minds. But I don’t mind if people remain in the sandbox, as long they stay out of the way.

“Science” has nothing to catch up to. Your doctrines have not produced a single thing besides division. But I suppose you will still wait regardless. Meanwhile, your superstitions have been falling one after another. This is all the folks of your ilk have been doing since the beginning of recorded history—waiting—well, besides hindering human progress, condemning humans to death based on specious reasoning, and polluting knowledge with myth and fairytale.

You avoid and don’t have time to go tit-for-tat yet here you are. You claim evidence yet cannot produce it. This method is simply tiring to pay attention to due to excessive contradiction and vacuous ideas. But I wouldn’t expect anything less than this sort of dishonesty from an idealist.

“Spiritual dimensions”? Sounds profound. But sounding profound is all your spiritual rhetoric can ever do. Keep waiting.

a reply to: LesMisanthrope

No, that would be exoteric religion you speak of, mystics of all kind were the ones hunted by the church remember..

Mystics were largely behind the Enlightenment, so you can thank the idealists for that one.

As for your claims, I find them dubious.. there is no going back when realization is attained, you are a fraud. But then again, you did claim enlightenment in an earlier thread, a preposterous claim if there ever was one.. then you "grew tired of it".. yeah, I won't be drinking that Kool-Aid anytime soon.

The only way you would get rid of the "security blanket" in the first place would be if all you ever had was blind faith. Which would be funny, coming from you. Seems all you ever was was a dabbler, if you haven't found an iota of what you searched for. Yet you proclaim our experiences invalid for ourselves, we don't care about what you know.. you're a child using big words mentally masturbating.. you're understanding is still that of a petulant child, what you think you know is moot in the face of reality.

Oh, and I don't need waiting, I already know what I know, I'm waiting for science to free itself from dogmatic fundamentalists like yourself. If anything, you're running with the crowd partially responsible for holding mankind back, thanks for that champ, you're a tool and you don't even seem to know it, quite proud of it too.

a reply to: TheLaughingGod

No, that would be exoteric religion you speak of, mystics of all kind were the ones hunted by the church remember..

Mystics were largely behind the Enlightenment, so you can thank the idealists for that one.

Simply untrue. But I imagine you get your facts the same place you get your “realizations”.

As for your claims, I find them dubious.. there is no going back when realization is attained, you are a fraud. But then again, you did claim enlightenment in an earlier thread, a preposterous claim if there ever was one.. then you "grew tired of it".. yeah, I won't be drinking that Kool-Aid anytime soon.

A fraud? What am I pretending to be? And I claimed enlightenment? I don’t believe there is a such thing as enlightenment, nor have I claimed it. Simply untrue. I’m not sure where you’re getting this nonsense from, but I imagine it comes from the same place you derive all your facts. Here is the only thread I’ve written about enlightenment. Some “realization” you have there.

The only way you would get rid of the "security blanket" in the first place would be if all you ever had was blind faith. Which would be funny, coming from you. Seems all you ever was was a dabbler, if you haven't found an iota of what you searched for. Yet you proclaim our experiences invalid for ourselves, we don't care about what you know.. you're a child using big words mentally masturbating.. you're understanding is still that of a petulant child, what you think you know is moot in the face of reality.

...Says the one speaking schoolyard antics and slander, reinforced by bad grammar. I apologize if English is your second language—for if that is the case it is not half bad—but I can tell you didn’t realize much more than the nature of reality during your spiritual experience. For instance, how to formulate an argument, or about how ridiculous run-on sentences are. It isn’t that difficult.

Oh, and I don't need waiting, I already know what I know, I'm waiting for science to free itself from dogmatic fundamentalists like yourself. If anything, you're running with the crowd partially responsible for holding mankind back, thanks for that champ, you're a tool and you don't even seem to know it, quite proud of it too.

You know what you know—absolutely brilliant. Do you have a bunch of monkeys back there churning these profundities out? Fallacy. Name calling. Hypocrisy. Slander. Baseless assertions. Empty insight. We should frame your posts as an example of the extent of mysticism and idealism.

a reply to: TheLaughingGod

I would be interested if you could take however much time you need to respond with 1 claim about the nature of reality that might differ from the perspective and understanding of LesMisanthrope's. Therefore we may have some actual substance to discuss? Though your symbolic battle I just read was quite exciting.

a reply to: LesMisanthrope

It is true, occultists and alchemists were the proto-scientists during the renaissance & enlightenment, you should know this.
Newton, René Descartes, Da Vinci. The masonic roster itself would contain probably hundreds of examples.

Or maybe you should thank the greek masters of Antiquity, responsible for the foundations of western thought itself.


I'm sorry, I must have confused you with another poster, a materialist also, that did claim enlightenment in a thread, only to brush off further inquiries.

Yes, English is my second language, so yeah, apology accepted. Do return the favour by accepting my apology for mistaking you for another member.

You accuse me of ad-hominem attacks, which I admit I am guilty of to a degree, yet you turn around and start criticizing my grammar in the same sentence.. funny stuff, eye for an eye I guess.

I don't need to be omniscient or perfect to have realized a thing or two, I am content with my run-on sentences especially since my English education is largely autodidactic as well as not being a priority.

Well I do know what I know, and it is this knowledge that makes me not really give a damn about your diatribes, since you have already been proven wrong long ago by reality itself.
And yes I do claim evidence, only for myself though, not for you, though I do think your attempts at finding the truth through spirituality must have been lacking if all it ever was for you was a costume.
But do remember, just because you were shallow enough to wear spirituality as a costume doesn't mean that applies to all of us, we'd rather hide these inclinations than share them with a world that is not ready, and that has been the M.O. all throughout the ages.

I am about done.. my experiences will never be enough to change your mind, merely being seen as lies or perhaps mental illness, and your skepticism will never change the life that I have lived. Thus, this is nothing more than an exercise in futility.

But thanks for the grammar correction I guess, like I said earlier, you'll have me off studying English grammar someday.

a reply to: TheLaughingGod

I do apologize for the grammar criticism. Now that I know English is a second language, I also know that I was wrong. And if that is the case, you write in English better than most English speakers.

To be fair, there were no arguments or claims to invalidate, and thus no ad hominem on my part. My schoolyard bully tactics are always directly inverse to what I receive.

Anyways, I'll concede defeat and give you exactly what you want, and I'll declare it to anyone who might come across this thread.

Dear reader, The Laughing God knows the truth about reality and our nature, and should be considered an authority. I, on the other hand, am just a fool and speak nonsense.