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Luna wrote:So what im saying is , how bad their life is , how much they suffer , and how much they can
endure , continue on with a smile on their face , a fire in their heart , a spark in their soul ,

can also be changed within.

Or you are simply expecting to much from most people. Just because one person can do a spiritual backflip after being mauled by an ape or something, has very little to do with how someone else would be able to cope with it.

Also, smiling is overrated... unless you do it with a smile.

Wrexasaur wrote:

Luna wrote:So what im saying is , how bad their life is , how much they suffer , and how much they can
endure , continue on with a smile on their face , a fire in their heart , a spark in their soul ,

can also be changed within.

Or you are simply expecting to much from most people. Just because one person can do a spiritual backflip after being mauled by an ape or something, has very little to do with how someone else would be able to cope with it.

Also, smiling is overrated... unless you do it with a smile.

No , of coures if injustice is done , we need to do our best to make sure it results fairly.
However what im saying is , there are things BEYOND our control.

And when there are events that are absolutely impossible to be changed , we can either
accept it via crying + peeing on the floor , or try to be strong , and atleast use the hate / anger to make ourself stronger.

SO wrex and EF , let me ask you this then.

If something bad out of your control happens , will you
a) cry and feel sorry for yourself till the day your life ends
or
b) try to be strong and go on?

Which do you deem more positive?

Like i have said before you 2 went rabied on me ,
we can change how we look at our fate , i just never said its easy.

Emperors Faithful wrote:@JEB_Stuart: C'mon, you have to admit that deriving humour from the prostitution of little children would have to be just a little bit 'out there' from the image of a powerful and loving god that we're told about.

On the other hand, if God views us as playthings, why should we feel any respect or affection for him?

I was referring to your demand that God could and should intervene because you think it is the right thing to do. I highly doubt God finds much humour in any of the cruel and awful things we do to each other, but I do think He finds joy and happiness with our compassion and love for our fellow man.

Wrexasaur wrote:Also, smiling is overrated... unless you do it with a smile.

Sure, if you say so.
Personally i think our faces and our expression are a mirror .
When you show happy face and smile , people that see your face will most likely respond the same way , a warm smile back ( and no they dont know why you are
happy , but if they see you are happy , they might be like "aww! good for you! " )

And just like if you make an awful mean face , people will probably not look at you anymore
or give you a dirty look
or beat you up.

LunaHound wrote:
SO wrex and EF , let me ask you this then.

If something bad out of your control happens , will you
a) cry and feel sorry for yourself till the day your life ends
or
b) try to be strong and go on?

Which do you deem more positive?

Or option three, get fed up and give up. You don't have to go out crying, in fact, I would bet most go out quite empty inside.

If I were to look at this from a zen perspective, it really doesn't matter either way. The fact that one may cry, while another is simply empty, and another is full of rage and hatred, means absolutely nothing. It is nice to think about, but all in all, life sucks quite a lot, most of the time. Perspective is much more powerful than simply 'succeeding' over an obstacle, it is a personal experience, that all of us struggle to maintain.

I find humor to provide myself with a bit of positive perspective, but denying the fact that I cannot ignore my emotions, is simply not part of the game plan.

LunaHound wrote:
Sure, if you say so.
Personally i think our faces and our expression are a mirror .
When you show happy face and smile , people that see your face will most likely respond the same way , a warm smile back ( and no they dont know why you are
happy , but if they see you are happy , they might be like "aww! good for you! " )

And just like if you make an awful mean face , people will probably not look at you anymore
or give you a dirty look
or beat you up.

Not sure why you quoted that twice...

Expressions are basically meaningless. I can lie just as good as I can tell the truth with my face. I can do the same with my body language. In fact, I can lie to myself, and tell the truth to myself; as you can and do. If I really believed in a smile meaning anything besides a warm feeling inside, used by many to manipulate others into doing something, I would be in dire straights to this day. Just because you know a handful of people that are honest with their faces (and how many of them are truly...) doesn't effect that most of the time, people are lying with their faces. In fact, emotions are a lie, even though they are inexplicably real.

I can change my mood a bit, as well as see my mood differently; and not as I would see the outside world. More along the lines of how I would see a thought. The only thing that is real in that scenario, is what I think about it; thinking about thinking, yeah?

Ok wrex , before we end up discussing things further and further away , can we get back to why you think im intolerant?

Your opinions, they always seem to be based on respect.

I could easily think that you are have been insinuating that people who are not able to 'be happy', or whatever that really means, are just weak. Or people that are able to 'be happy', are strong, or some such nonsense.

Most people I know that have succeeded through hard times, had support, whether they liked it or not. No one person is an island, though many would love for life to actually work that way.

Wrexasaur wrote:Your opinions, they always seem to be based on respect.

I could easily think that you are have been insinuating that people who are not able to 'be happy', or whatever that really means, are just weak. Or people that are able to 'be happy', are strong, or some such nonsense.

Most people I know that have succeeded through hard times, had support, whether they liked it or not. No one person is an island, though many would love for life to actually work that way.

For gods sake , why does my sentence HAVE to be insinuating anything?
IT IS WHAT IT IS . I just wanted to say not everything is always grim and hopeless , we can try to change our perspective to make it
more positive , which is especially important when dealing with something that is already done / in the past.

We cant change whats done , we cant change what happened in the past .
But we can change how we feel about it
we can change how we deal with it
and we can change how the past incident effects us.

"Edit"

The [can] i keep saying is not a measurement if someone CAN do it or not.
The CAN i used is meant to show an alternate possibility , a CHOICE.

What is the worst thing that has ever happened to you?

You are just assuming that you can change how you feel, deal, and cope with trauma. Some cannot, that is just a fact of life. Others are practically in the same boat, just barely being able to work their way into a positive mindset.

Some things are just too much to bear, and that can vary in many different ways, for all sorts of people. Maybe the fact that being sad all the time is possible, is the reason that people fight so hard to be happy. Maybe happiness is just a reason to do better, not the reason to do better.

Luna wrote:The CAN i used is meant to show an alternate possibility , a CHOICE.

Assumption.

I can choose to do a backflip... and? I can also choose to attempt to fly... either one is firmly out of my true potential. I could spend weeks, or months training to do a backflip, or jump through a hoop, but why? What purpose would that serve? Is this about making yourself, or others feel good? It sure as heck sounds like a recipe to help other people cope with your pain... and that is their problem, not yours.

Is it so hard to imagine a person being truthfully compassionate even with him or herself, Wrex? Lunahound speaks of "strength" to go on and that seems to be your stumbling block. But why not focus on another word she uses--acceptance. This is not about "controlling" oneself like a machine but rather about letting go of guilt and blame.

Wrexasaur wrote:What is the worst thing that has ever happened to you?

You are just assuming that you can change how you feel, deal, and cope with trauma. Some cannot, that is just a fact of life. Others are practically in the same boat, just barely being able to work their way into a positive mindset.

Some things are just too much to bear, and that can vary in many different ways, for all sorts of people. Maybe the fact that being sad all the time is possible, is the reason that people fight so hard to be happy. Maybe happiness is just a reason to do better, not the reason to do better.

Luna wrote:The CAN i used is meant to show an alternate possibility , a CHOICE.

Assumption.

I can choose to do a backflip... and? I can also choose to attempt to fly... either one is firmly out of my true potential. I could spend weeks, or months training to do a backflip, or jump through a hoop, but why? What purpose would that serve? Is this about making yourself, or others feel good? It sure as heck sounds like a recipe to help other people cope with your pain... and that is their problem, not yours.

As i 'll say again , the "can" is a choice , a possibility / option that is available . Did i ever say it'll be easy? no did i ever say people will always take it? no.
people can choose to try and pick themself up and go on living instead of living with sorrow for the rest of their life.
As i said many times. Life is often out of our control. Very often WHATS DONE IS DONE . How we deal with the after effects CAN be chosen by us ,
as the paths DO exist . Whether people TAKE THE PATH OR NOT again is their CHOICE.

Manchu wrote:Is it so hard to imagine a person being truthfully compassionate even with him or herself, Wrex?

No, of course not, I know an awful lot of pretty good people. If you read through what I have said, I was never making a blanket statement like that at all.

Lunahound speaks of "strength" to go on and that seems to be your stumbling block. But why not focus on another word she uses--acceptance. This is not about "controlling" oneself like a machine but rather about letting go of guilt and blame.

Guilt and blame for being hit by a train? I don't get it... that is not what I got from her posts at all. Try depression, rage, hatred, and pain; skip the nonsensical psychosis. I enjoy being painted with the wall though, please continue.

Luna wrote:As i 'll say again , the "can" is a choice , a possibility / option that is available . Did i ever say it'll be easy? no did i ever say people will always take it? no.
people can choose to try and pick themself up and go on living instead of living with sorrow for the rest of their life.

By assuming that everyone can actually make that choice, or even has that choice sets a standard that a lot of people simply cannot live up to. I can make the choice to try and fly, but it doesn't mean anything.

Keeping in mind the beginning of this thread and giving Lunahound the benefit of the doubt, isn't it true that when terrible harm befalls a person or his/her loved ones that the person often questions the existence/nature of God? The seemingly random event of pain and suffering lead to questions like those posed by EF earlier. When you talk about depression, rage, and hatred, I think these are the symptoms of such questioning. Perhaps it's not tied explicitly to a religious notion but there seems to be some cosmological connotation to the question "why must I suffer?" And, again whether or not the answer is explicit, the answer is often given in terms of guilt and blame. Faith, not just in God but in the self and the other and humanity at large, is lost when those categories are used to assess the situation. I think Lunahound is saying that one does not have to settle for those categories. She expresses it in terms of stoicism: taking responsibility for yourself and your destiny. I express it in terms of Christianity: being merciful to yourself and your neighbor and finding justice, where the heart can rest, in that mercy.

Emperors Faithful wrote:If there is a god with the power to make everything better than he has one sick sense of humour. What sick person could get such a kick out of so much pain and sufferering?

The human race has a long tradition of bloodsport. Hell, many wars have been fought simply because one nation or another desires catharsis. Pain and suffering mean absolutely nothing if the observer isn't subjectively connected to the experience. That's why dehumanization is so dangerous. Its also why a necessary nonhuman observer would struggle to connect with the desires of the species he was observing. Sure, it might love the object of it's observation, but that doesn't mean it fully understands what is going on.

Knowing is not the same as understanding, and one has to understand something in order to really connect with it. Any conceivable being would have its own tendencies, desires, and predilections. These, in concert with knowledge of the thing to be acted upon, will serve to inform it's actions in the same way that they do for us.

Wrexasaur wrote:By assuming that everyone can actually make that choice, or even has that choice sets a standard that a lot of people simply cannot live up to. I can make the choice to try and fly, but it doesn't mean anything.

Lunahound's assumption seems to be that people have a dignity that is deeper than the chance misfortunes that befall them or the willful trouble the wreak upon themselves. It is the assumption of a compassionate mind not, as I think you take it, a cruel and cold one.

Grignard wrote:

JEB_Stuart wrote:Hardly. Christ himself was probably hysterical, just think about some of the things he said. "Don't pull the speck out of your neighbors eye, when you got a freaking log in your own!" Paraphrased of course, but imagine that without all of our modern day amenities. It would be even funnier if he did pull a log out of someone's eye! I find God to be quite humorous, he did allow France to come into being after all....

It was a revolutionary idea actually, being nice to people. I'm not sure it is right or not. Sometimes that turn the other cheek thing doesn't work for me

The Turn the other cheek thing is a holy injunction against side-hugging.

I belive in God as some all-powerful good being and that's that.I am enjoying my simple belief.

Manchu wrote:Lunahound's assumption seems to be that people have a dignity that is deeper than the chance misfortunes that befall them or the willful trouble the wreak upon themselves. It is the assumption of a compassionate mind not, as I think you take it, a cruel and cold one.

I never accused her of being cruel, possibly a bit cold though. One word: intolerant. That was all it took... I did not even mean to offend, it was just an observation.

As to compassion, it is clear that she is not, as being compassionate would involve having an amount of understanding for most situations. Just by her opinions expressed in multiple threads about different types of crimes, etc... I would say she is caring, but clearly not actually compassionate. If I have compassion for someone close to me, or someone I identify with, that only makes me compassionate towards them; not compassionate in general.

I wasn't even trying to go all goodie/baddie, just having a conversation about how people are all different in my eyes, and logically so at any rate.

Wrex, isn't it a bit unfair to read insinuations into other people's posts but feign ignorance when that person reads some insinuation into yours?

I agree that people are different. But at the same time, it seems obvious to me that there is a great unity in human identity and experience. The details of what is valid for one person may not be valid for the next. But we are speaking about themes rather than details.

Wrexasaur wrote:If I have compassion for someone close to me, or someone I identify with, that only makes me compassionate towards them; not compassionate in general.

Now you are setting high standards for peopel!

Manchu wrote:Wrex, isn't it a bit unfair to read insinuations into other people's posts but feign ignorance when that person reads some insinuation into yours?

What? Explain in detail how I am feigning ignorance.

I agree that people are different. But at the same time, it seems obvious to me that there is a great unity in human identity and experience. The details of what is valid for one person may not be valid for the next. But we are speaking about themes rather than details.

That is nice and all I guess, but I was trying to make this conversation a bit more lively than that. All snails are small... we could have a conversation about that too, .

Manchu wrote:

Wrexasaur wrote:If I have compassion for someone close to me, or someone I identify with, that only makes me compassionate towards them; not compassionate in general.

Now you are setting high standards for peopel!

I am sure that was just a joke, but to be clear, I would not be inclined to call someone an angry person after seeing them get angry once. Same thing.

LunaHound wrote:

Wrexasaur wrote:I could easily think that you are have been insinuating that people who are not able to 'be happy', or whatever that really means, are just weak. Or people that are able to 'be happy', are strong, or some such nonsense.

For gods sake , why does my sentence HAVE to be insinuating anything? IT IS WHAT IT IS.

v.

Wrexasaur wrote:I never accused her of being cruel, possibly a bit cold though. One word: intolerant. That was all it took... I did not even mean to offend, it was just an observation.

See what I mean about Insinuation Street? It's two ways.

I seemed to me like this was becoming a battle of . . . nothing. Just trading insistent posts and going nowhere. Don't let me get in your way, I guess.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Wrexasaur wrote:I am sure that was just a joke, but to be clear, I would not be inclined to call someone an angry person after seeing them get angry once. Same thing.

I get what you mean but good example. The difference is that getting angry is a response to something external. It is passive. Being compassionate is a response to something internal. It is active, it requires a conscious decision. Mustering the moral courage to be compassionate toward your loved ones can be more difficult than simply going through the motions with strangers. For example, being considerate of your wife's feelings all Saturday when she has you doing chores instead of playing the Warhamms is much, much harder than being adequately polite and helpful to coworkers.

Manchu wrote:See what I mean about Insinuation Street? It's two ways.

That would be nice if I had done anything besides state how I feel personally... I never 'feigned ignorance', but nice one... I guess.

I seemed to me like this was becoming a battle of . . . nothing. Just trading insistent posts and going nowhere. Don't let me get in your way, I guess.

A battle? What? You have officially lost me mate. I actually had a conversation offline earlier with a very similar tone. Bananas? WHAT? Okay...

I get what you mean but good example. The difference is that getting angry is a response to something external. It is passive. Being compassionate is a response to something internal. It is active, it requires a conscious decision.

Mustering the moral courage to be compassionate toward your loved ones can be more difficult than simply going through the motions with strangers. For example, being considerate of your wife's feelings all Saturday when she has you doing chores instead of playing the Warhamms is much, much harder than being adequately polite and helpful to coworkers.

What exactly is a conscious decision? Did I make a conscious decision to buy a Coca-Cola, or was that decision partially made for me? Do people really make a conscious decision to be compassionate? I would guess that it is not the case at all.

State how you "feel personally"? How has anyone else done anything else but that in this thread or any other? But, okay, I'm fine with agreeing that no one knows what you really meant but you. Carry on. ::puts hands up, backs away slowly::

Manchu wrote:State how you "feel personally"? How has anyone else done anything else but that in this thread or any other? But, okay, I'm fine with agreeing that no one knows what you really meant but you.

Wrex wrote:That would be nice if I had done anything besides state how I feel personally...

Yet again, what? At no point did I say that was not the case, but now it seems we are simply in circles on it.

You are assuming that I am working with an underlying goal, when I am not, and at no point did I not try and make that clear. Is all of this about Luna?

Wrexasaur wrote:What exactly is a conscious decision? Did I make a conscious decision to buy a Coca-Cola, or was that decision partially made for me? Do people really make a conscious decision to be compassionate? I would guess that it is not the case at all.

The tendency to reduce things into absolutes is misleading. Absolute freedom is a delusion. Even abstractly, the concept is nonsensical. As you pointed out yourself, am I free to flap my arms and fly? No, but that hardly means that I am not free at all. There are lots of factors that play into a person's ultimate willingness to act compassionately. But none of those factors impede or reduce to absurdity the universally human capacity for compassion -OR- the manner in which compassion is exercised in the world, that is, through the reality (not the theoretical fantasy) of free will. If you cannot concede that you have chosen to drink a Coca Cola, then I do not know how you expect me to carry on a discussion with you. You might as well say something like "but how do I know you actually exist beyond this text"?

It's a bit like this:

Manchu wrote:If you cannot concede that you have chosen to drink a Coca Cola, then I do not know how you expect me to carry on a discussion with you. You might as well say something like "but how do I know you actually exist beyond this text"?

I did not say 'soda' mate, I said Coca-Cola, which is a brand, and I even included a picture of that brand in a rather iconic form. I happiness is Coca-Cola, and sadness is Shasta, and all I can get is Shasta, then I must be sad... right? That is all I am trying to point out in that example.

Happiness and Sadness, are both brands, they are both ideals of what people expect from different situations. As soon as Happiness is no longer so happy, I can also think that Sadness is no longer sad. Now, clearly people do convey 'true' emotion through their expression, but limiting how you percieve a persons emotions through how you percieve your own, is a fool's errand dressed in the devils details.

It's a bit like this:

I actually take offense to your comparison there. With the many different examples available to you, why was it so compelling to place me in the shoes of a wingnut? I am crazy, don't get me wrong, but seriously mate; I have not asserted anything of that sort.

I cannot understand what you mean, at least when you put it this way. How can "happiness," the abstract quality of being happy, ever become less happy? Further, I don't know what connection you're making between this and the limitation of self-perception to limit one's perceptions of others, if I'm even stating that correctly. And how is this related to whether optimism is possible for all people, medical conditions aside, even those who have suffered greatly?

Divine sense of humor? Here's an oldie but a goodie:

Wrexasaur wrote: but limiting how you percieve a persons emotions through how you percieve your own, is a fool's errand dressed in the devils details.

I don't see how you see that as negative. If I compare your sensation of stress, to my sensation of stress, it only matters that we both have an understanding of stress about which to communicate. I think you're confusing the thing to which any given emotion might be attached with the emotion itself.

Its certainly true that any any given person can have any given emotional response to any given event. However, the emotions themselves are comparable in nature, if not in degree.

Edit: I also think you're conflating nature, and degree.

Wrexasaur wrote:I actually take offense to your comparison there. With the many different examples available to you, why was it so compelling to place me in the shoes of a wingnut? I am crazy, don't get me wrong, but seriously mate; I have not asserted anything of that sort.

Whoops, now you're misquoting me. I said that conversation in the video is a bit like dealing with someone who will not admit things of common agreement for the sake of puffery in argument. I never said that 's what you were doing. (Insinuations, insinuations )