There's no contradiction, you just quit reading before you got to the end of that sentence. I believe that imperfection is the reason FOR freedom whereas you seem to me to view imperfection as the reason AGAINST freedom. You appear to me to shun freedom because of it's imperfection. If not every man can have freedom, then no man can have freedom.
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I wasn't, I think, so much arguing that imperfection is a reason AGAINST freedom as I was trying to point out what appear to me to be contradictions in holding rigorously to the somewhat confusing notion that imperfection is a the reason FOR freedom. It goes back to this freedom vs. responsibility thingi. You don't want people to have any freedom, but responsible freedom, right? So you have to limit the freedom of the irresponsible to act irresponsibly by imposing consequences. Then you have to split hairs over who is responsible and who isn't, right. So we're into trade-offs and bargaining and tuning and adjusting and figuring out how to relatively adjust things. We right away get liberals and conservatives. We get all kinds of difficult questions like what does it mean to be responsible. What does it mean to be free. Do we have free will, are we bio-determined, is personality and temperament genetic, all kinds of gray area difficult, painful, questions. We get into the question 'What is it to be human.' Who has a better explanation. How should we view these question. Is man a machine, a spiritual being, a sleeping god? Who are we?
I answer these questions, I think, differently than you do. I have a different inner experience. Could we perhaps hold as a theoretical possibility that the person who knows himself can better answer these kinds of questions than one who does not. Could we concede some knowledge to the introspective that we might find absent in the externalized, etc. Lots of questions, lots of value judgements, lots of grades of insight, perhaps.
I was suggesting that some people may know themselves better than others. I might even go so far as to postulate that self knowledge might lead to unimaginable insights, unimaginable, that is, to those who have not had them. My experience has caused me to suspect that there appear among us occasionally some real weirdoes like this dude. I love him because he's outrageously difficult for a normal American mind to try to wrap around. But if you really look into what he says, you'll find, I think, that he's playing with a deck that has many more than 52 cards. "I am the one so many seek and so few find." Hehe.
So if there is a truth and it is found within than surely we need the advise of those who know the way. RIIIIIIIIIIGHT! Like I would listen to anybody. Oh no baby, I gotta be free, I gotta be me. You talk about your catch 22. Suppose the truth is the last thing you want to know. Wouldn't that be a pickle now. Imagine that we are God, like Meher Baba, but we hate God. We got to discredit God or say he's anywhere but where he is. There's a catch 22 for ya.
What if irresponsibility was beaten into us at an early age? Wouldn't life be a mess?
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"I believe perfection is unattainable. To be perfect, one would have to be everything, which is impossible. For example, is a perfect person cruel? One would hope not. But to attain perfection one would have to be perfectly cruel while simultaneously perfectly kind. Perfection itself is a contradiction."
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See the meaning of avatar.
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I might like to live in this Utopia you describe. (me too) It's a fantasy that will never be realized unfortunately. (See catch 22 for the reason) In order for such a non-system to exist, everybody would have to agree not to take advantage of the fact that there were no system in place. (There would be no taking of not taking advantage. There is only being) That agreement is itself a system. (This I believe is a sophistry, a trick of logic without a corresponding reality)Without this agreement, the first person to step outside of that system-created-to-avoid-a-system and try to carve power or possessions out for himself would require the others to stop him, or have their world ended. (This would presuppose that the healthy can't take care of the diseased.) These systems are the cause of and solution to all of the worlds problems. (I think not. They are merely an endless series of treatments of symptoms. ) The reason Hitler had so much power was because there was a system at his disposal. (The reason Hitler had so much power is because humanity is asleep.) The only way we stopped him was with a system. (We stopped him with a different form of sleep) It's a horrible catch-22. (Ain't dat da truth.)
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What is the yearning for freedom? Is it not the result of a subtle, almost unconscious recognition that something is wrong, that we aren't quite right in the head, that life is missing something, a bit short or empty. Isn't the search for freedom a longing of the soul, a desire to return to our source. We are trapped in a world of duality, a world of names and words. What is the mind free of thought, free of identification with words. What is the mind that sees reality without a veil of memories. Isn't the mind that see the universe without recognition the universe itself? Isn't freedom the loss of self? How afraid we are to be. How hurt we were when we were.
The rat that comes to the end of his maze will be amazed.
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I wasn't, I think, so much arguing that imperfection is a reason AGAINST freedom as I was trying to point out what appear to me to be contradictions in holding rigorously to the somewhat confusing notion that imperfection is a the reason FOR freedom. It goes back to this freedom vs. responsibility thingi. You don't want people to have any freedom, but responsible freedom, right? So you have to limit the freedom of the irresponsible to act irresponsibly by imposing consequences. Then you have to split hairs over who is responsible and who isn't, right. So we're into trade-offs and bargaining and tuning and adjusting and figuring out how to relatively adjust things. We right away get liberals and conservatives. We get all kinds of difficult questions like what does it mean to be responsible. What does it mean to be free. Do we have free will, are we bio-determined, is personality and temperament genetic, all kinds of gray area difficult, painful, questions. We get into the question 'What is it to be human.' Who has a better explanation. How should we view these question. Is man a machine, a spiritual being, a sleeping god? Who are we?
I answer these questions, I think, differently than you do. I have a different inner experience. Could we perhaps hold as a theoretical possibility that the person who knows himself can better answer these kinds of questions than one who does not. Could we concede some knowledge to the introspective that we might find absent in the externalized, etc. Lots of questions, lots of value judgements, lots of grades of insight, perhaps.
I was suggesting that some people may know themselves better than others. I might even go so far as to postulate that self knowledge might lead to unimaginable insights, unimaginable, that is, to those who have not had them. My experience has caused me to suspect that there appear among us occasionally some real weirdoes like this dude. I love him because he's outrageously difficult for a normal American mind to try to wrap around. But if you really look into what he says, you'll find, I think, that he's playing with a deck that has many more than 52 cards. "I am the one so many seek and so few find." Hehe.
So if there is a truth and it is found within than surely we need the advise of those who know the way. RIIIIIIIIIIGHT! Like I would listen to anybody. Oh no baby, I gotta be free, I gotta be me. You talk about your catch 22. Suppose the truth is the last thing you want to know. Wouldn't that be a pickle now. Imagine that we are God, like Meher Baba, but we hate God. We got to discredit God or say he's anywhere but where he is. There's a catch 22 for ya.
What if irresponsibility was beaten into us at an early age? Wouldn't life be a mess?
-------------
"I believe perfection is unattainable. To be perfect, one would have to be everything, which is impossible. For example, is a perfect person cruel? One would hope not. But to attain perfection one would have to be perfectly cruel while simultaneously perfectly kind. Perfection itself is a contradiction."
--------
See the meaning of avatar.
--------
I might like to live in this Utopia you describe. (me too) It's a fantasy that will never be realized unfortunately. (See catch 22 for the reason) In order for such a non-system to exist, everybody would have to agree not to take advantage of the fact that there were no system in place. (There would be no taking of not taking advantage. There is only being) That agreement is itself a system. (This I believe is a sophistry, a trick of logic without a corresponding reality)Without this agreement, the first person to step outside of that system-created-to-avoid-a-system and try to carve power or possessions out for himself would require the others to stop him, or have their world ended. (This would presuppose that the healthy can't take care of the diseased.) These systems are the cause of and solution to all of the worlds problems. (I think not. They are merely an endless series of treatments of symptoms. ) The reason Hitler had so much power was because there was a system at his disposal. (The reason Hitler had so much power is because humanity is asleep.) The only way we stopped him was with a system. (We stopped him with a different form of sleep) It's a horrible catch-22. (Ain't dat da truth.)
------------
What is the yearning for freedom? Is it not the result of a subtle, almost unconscious recognition that something is wrong, that we aren't quite right in the head, that life is missing something, a bit short or empty. Isn't the search for freedom a longing of the soul, a desire to return to our source. We are trapped in a world of duality, a world of names and words. What is the mind free of thought, free of identification with words. What is the mind that sees reality without a veil of memories. Isn't the mind that see the universe without recognition the universe itself? Isn't freedom the loss of self? How afraid we are to be. How hurt we were when we were.
The rat that comes to the end of his maze will be amazed.
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