From: Michelle (michelle@barrymenasherealtors.com)
Date: Wed Jan 09 2002 - 18:16:15 MST
Joe, that was beautiful, and I think it even brightened my period-induced doldrums... I'll print it out and contemplate it tonight, and I thank you all! I won't be checking again till morning, but this seems like a really heartening and useful question to ponder every once in a while. I hope there's more!
-----Original Message-----
From: joedees@bellsouth.net <joedees@bellsouth.net>
To: virus@lucifer.com <virus@lucifer.com>
Date: Wednesday, January 09, 2002 5:02 PM
Subject: Re: virus: more important than love?
On 9 Jan 2002 at 15:11, Michelle wrote:
>
> So Joe, it floats your boat but what then? What do you do with all that knowledge and insight? You teach
> here, in a sense, and it seems like you'd do that anywhere - ultimately, is the value in gaining the knowledge
> or passing it on? (which would then kind of fall under the Casey-Love-Team) Or is there another use for
> it? Do you invent things or make things or write books or what? (What I mean is that it floats my boat too
> but it seems more like a step than a result.)
>
I teach and write, but those are secondary, to me, to the thirst to KNOW. Ultimately,
everyone, including me (of course) is gonna die and whatever we learn and whoever we
love and relate to will be blown away like dust in history's forgotten winds (especially if
we figure up until the Big Crunch or Universal Entropic Expansionary Heat Death,
whichever alternative manifests), but while I'm alive, sentient and consciously self-aware
- and that is, apparently, a very rare thing for matter-energy in this universe - I derive a
great deal of satisfaction out of understanding more, rather than less, of what, who and
where I am and where/when I find myself, and how things work here. Nothing can
change the fact that I will die and all that knowledge I so value will dissolve as my
material substrate dynamically recursive brain patternings which encode it decompose,
but nothing can change, for me, the fact (or its significance for me) that I strove, while I
was here, to understand, to comprehend the structures and functions of myself as a
perceiving and conceiving being, my perceptions as paths, and the perceptual source
world around me, and achieved some measure of success at same.
>
> What is it that keeps the nihilism at bay?
>
Value. All values are ultimately existential ones - that is, they are self-selected, imposed
by us upon a fundamentally meaningless cosmos, and do not, in fact cannot, depend
upon an absent divine fiat. My primary value is true knowledge of self and
surroundings. I consider truth to be awe-inspiringly beautiful, and in fact, the knowledge
of truth to be the primordial source of the conceptual experience of beauty in the world.
And nothing we perceive can be beautiful to us unless we conceive it to be so. As Kant
said, I would rather be Socrates unsatisfied than a satisfied pig, but, further than that,
there is satisfaction and great joy to be found in beholding with rapt comprehension the
simplicities, symmetries, complexities and sublimities of which both we and our common
home are comprised. New knowledge is a source of ecstasy to me, and its pursuit is a
matter of personal passion. It would have been sad to have been born dense, but it
would have been even sadder to have been born bright and wasted it by still dying
mired in ignorance and false and unexamined beliefs.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: joedees@bellsouth.net <joedees@bellsouth.net>
> To: virus@lucifer.com <virus@lucifer.com>
> Date: Wednesday, January 09, 2002 2:56 PM
> Subject: Re: virus: more important than love?
>
> On 9 Jan 2002 at 12:42, Walter Watts wrote:
>
> Understanding the true nature of things is what most floats my boat.
> >
> > I have to line up behind your lovesick friend on this one, Michelle. If
> > there is something more important than love, I sure haven't found it.
> >
> > Speaking of love, have you seen "A Beautiful Mind" with Russell Crowe?
> >
> > Very moving, indeed.
> >
> > Hugs,
> >
> > Walter
> > PS--IMHO, money barely makes it into the top ten, and then only because
> > time can be purchased with it.
> >
> >
> > Michelle wrote:
> >
> > > I'm still reading The Story (thanks Kalkor!) and about 100 posts to
> > > catch up on but I have a question for the group: The predominant meme,
> > > at least where I've been, and among the young, is that love is all you
> > > need, love lifts us up where we belong, and various other corny lines
> > > strung together well in Moulin Rouge. My middle-aged, sick, nicotine
> > > and caffeine withdrawing (needless to say cranky) boyfriend said
> > > yesterday in response to a friend of ours falling in love that there
> > > are more important things in life than love. Like what? His first
> > > response, and I'm not sure if he was joking, was money. What else?
> > > What really is the most important thing in life, in your esteemed
> > > opinions? Remember there are many definitions of love... Thanks for
> > > enlightening me*sigh*
> >
> > --
> >
> > Walter Watts
> > Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc.
> >
> >
>
>
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