Ye Olde Pub (The English Pub)

[Bear^]

Damnation will only come when no light can be found. Why do we have shadows? So we can learn to appreciate the light.

[Moraelyn]

If I had to sacrifice fingers to display my degree of appreciation toward light, I'd give two pinkies and a ring finger. My wife is the history-lover in this house. I'd gladly dwell in the darkness if given the choice.

 

 

Edit: Hmm. I'm getting too tired to make proper sense. I don't know what fingers have to do with anything.

Endret 12. mai 2010 av Moraelyn

[Moraelyn]

For you, Bear: A talentless glimpse of the coro di miseria that inhabits my soul. Enjoy its raspy, bitter taste.

 

Mmm...

[Bear^]

Why persist on living in misery, when the choice always is open for you? You choose to act upon the impulses of misery yet it's of your own choice, and yet other options are open for you, you choose to live in that, why so?

 

Even though free choice might be an illusion created by those with power it's not so that you as a person has to rely and live on those impulses. You can still choose the aspects of your own life, and so be free, but you still persist on tormenting yourself, and though that's your choice to make, it's not clear why you're doing this.

 

Whether it be the past or the shear fear of the future I don't know, but whatever it is it's always an option and a choice open for you. As my signature say - so wisely spoken in Kung fu panda - The past is history, the future a mystery, today is a gift. So why not live it as a gift?

 

Do also remember that your life is like a flower, nourish and look after it and you'll grow and prosper, but neglect it and in the end it will wither and die.

[Moraelyn]

Okay Bear, that was just a little bit rainbows & sunshine fruity. You mentioned accurately that it was "my choice" to partake of the darker, brooding emotions. Certainly true. Hell yes.

 

I'm not unhappy. I'm not suffering. I'm in a really great place in my life. I choose to plumb the depths. I enjoy the more complicated emotions. How far down this road would you like to follow me? Here is a brief bit I wrote about a closely related subject: Gaming.

 

 

"Let's briefly take a glance at why Computer RPGs and story are important to me. I will spend hours upon hours reading every line of text in every dialogue of a game. I don't like voice-overs; they kill the formation of abstract feelings. You study the stories of these characters lives, doesn't matter that they don't exist, they are feelings. Feelings and ideas. Somewhere near the end, where their abstracts become a clearer sensation, you give them a name. Their name becomes the word for a feeling.

 

"One such example for me personally would be Deionarra, from Planescape: Torment. She is a ghostly specter you meet early in the game. Later you find that she was a brash young woman in life, desperate, willing to follow you anywhere, because she truly loved you. However, you killed her. This was your intention from the very beginning of your relationship. You used her to serve your purpose. Love was the knife you slew her with. At your hands, she died in a Fortress of Regret; a place between the realms of the living and the dead. You did this because you needed eyes in a place you could not see. And her specter serves you still.

 

"Deionarra knew she would die. She still believes you will find a way to save her from this state, or join her in death. She still believes you love her, and that your fates are woven together. She exists in the ether, trapped between the physical realm, and one filled with unfathomable horrors. Waiting-- for you. To serve you. To belong to you. To love you.

 

"But she is never saved.

 

"Deionarra is a feeling of brooding, longing sadness, of being forsaken, abandoned, drowned in misery, forever. There is no sunlight, no warmth, no kiss, no end. You cry out in utter futility. I love this feeling. It is a grim fate."

 

 

I periodically delve into these deep, compounded emotions. I like them. I don't need to analyze the why; feeling bad makes me feel good. Decipher that. Occasionally I script a piece of music that can take me back to a particular emotion -- just for me -- and I'll listen to it for hours on end, soaking up the feelings, chasing ideas in my thoughts, getting closer to god. And by 'god', I mean me. But that's a different discussion.

[henbruas]

How someone can be this philosophical in the middle of the night beats me ...

[Bear^]

Well, I can understand that dwelling in the part of nature that is - for some misery - will lead to enlightenment and it is said by some that the true path of happiness is to actually understand what misery is all about.

 

It might be easy to see why you then thrive in the emotion of feeling bad, because that way you actually manages to see the good parts more clearly.

 

It is said also that humans can't live in a Utopia - a perfect world. We can't live in perfection because with perfection we would have to create misery ourselves. I think that perhaps misery and feeling bad is an inlaid emotion of the human mind and as with love, hate, fear and other emotions we have a need to feed on it to balance the equation.

 

What if we are just that, an equation? A complex network of mathematical precision in need of solving and balancing, miss one part and the equation needs to be balanced. Take as an example - since you're in the game department - Bioshock. They made the perfect world underneath the sea where everyone lived in harmony, which in itself lead to its demise.

 

To find the greater meaning and understanding of your existence would be to find and understand why you are here - the meaning of life even. In religion we've always said that the meaning of life is to serve the one God, but I'm not religious so I don't agree to that. I don't like that thought that we're only created to serve an unseen entity that created the world and everything in 6 days. That just don't make too much sense. I think the meaning of life is more profound than that. It reaches down more on the individuality of each of us than just a superimposed answer like serving an unseen entity. My main reason to say this is that it's too simple, an answer without any meaning. And I don't think such questions as this have such an easy answer as that.

 

It might be Moraelyn that you're on to something, that through your line of exploring the depths of your mind that you're on the road to finding your meaning of existence, the reason you're here. By exploring your depths, you find that feeling bad, makes you feel good. A contradiction for some but I actually see the connection because of my believes in a equation and a balance. You're feeling bad, because you've felt too good too long, and your inner need is to balance the equation. By feeling bad, you balance out the "feeling good" side and so actually balance out and equals the equation. And so you've reached a semi part of enlightenment, a meaning. You explore this by music, drawing your feelings into that song, which in terms give you a meaning; a balance.

Endret 16. mai 2010 av Bear^

[Moraelyn]

Henrik, I'm married with children. There's not much else for me to do on a Saturday night.

 

 

Bear, I give you an A+ for that post. It's full of sound reasoning and well written.

 

In a post I have since removed (thread killer), I touched upon what we need, as humans, to survive. We need strife, and we need Time. A life without some form of conflict cannot be defined as "life". Your post made me think and reflect upon that. To know right, you must know wrong. To know happiness, you must know sorrow. My wanderings into the deep dark places of myself shine a light on all the positive elements, and amplify them. What might have been taken for granted, is then recognized and appreciated.

 

Andrew Ryan designed Rapture to be the essence of capitalism. There was no harmony to be found there, no utopia; it existed to promote competition. Competition can bring out both the best, and the worst in people. A fall was inevitable, but also intrinsic to the developments of its society. There was beauty there, if one could only recognize it beyond the ruins and scars.

[Bear^]

The ruin of Ryan's vision however came with the invention of Adam, and super powers to the humans. What does someone with power want? More power. That inevitably lead to the downfall because everyone strived to get hold of Adam and gain more power, and so as well take down those with lesser power that posed a threat towards their own power.

 

In retrospective that also reflects how the world is build as per today. In most cases the world is divided by those with power, and those without. Those with power try as they might to withhold power from those without, and those without power try to gain it. It's an everlasting struggle, and though some people gain power, it also leads to someone losing it. In other words, balance.

 

In the very good (near Epic) game "The longest journey" the balance is the centre of the world, by all means. Stark can't exist without Arcadia, and visa versa. The flow between the worlds needs to be upheld, and so the Guardian and his realm was born when the Draic Kin separated the world into the 2 known components, science and magic, logic and chaos. Though still, an order had to be found, a balance. Even so strong that it became the religion for those in Arcadia, while forgotten by those in Stark. "By the balance" a barmaid at the Journeyman in would say, more than once, both to April and later on Zoe.

 

Can't that in some way also be seen today? We might look at ourselves living in Stark, we ignore everything we can't explain as Voodoo or pagan believes. Everything needs to be placed in the comfort bounds of the human mind, to reflect and to bend it to logic; to order. But by that I think we bring on our own demise as humanity, what if a warning is given to us that our end is near, but in such a fashion that it seems - to our minds - incomprehensible? And so we ignore it, because we can't explain it. Is our world so different from the vision depicted in "The longest Journey"? We might even be living in Stark without knowing it, and we might be living under this balance without a heed in the world, or knowledge that it exist at all.

 

I've been reading a lot by Stephen King, who touched more than once the realm of other worlds, the existence of more than one world, and several versions of the worlds, even the one we live in. Per example "The Dark tower" series touches upon this with Roland and his companions travelling across several worlds, and several versions of these worlds. I think that King might be on to something, that we exist merely in one world, and that there are more to it than we know about. It might be only the Stark and Arcadia that I've touched upon before, but it might be even more so. As an author - or so I hope one day to call myself - I explore these depths of thinking, exploring the possibilities that there might be more to our world than meets the eye. It's too simple as it is now, too strait. A popular philosophical thinking is that we - as humans - are sitting in a cave around the fire, with a glass at the end of the cave. Behind that glass is another cave, with other people, and they as well are looking at another glass with another set of people behind it. But if that glass is broken, we move from one reality to another, one world to the other. It's a matter of perspective and how we perceive the world, or worlds. Where is this illusive glass, and how can it be broken? In the King novel "The mist" he actually goes into this thinking, how science unlocks these gates - or break this glass - bringing unknown horror into our world, hidden by mist. That is the glass breaking, and that's a reality from one world brought into our world. But why not the other way around? Can we one day perhaps understand and see these illusive worlds we fantasise about, to actually travel there? And if so, would we want to do that?

 

I think that even though knowledge should always be sought for, we should also exercise caution, and not delve into that which we don't know anything about, not until at least we know what we're dealing with. A glass wall can be made clear, and we can observe what's on the other side before breaking it. Like a gale, you don't want to open your window until the wind has calmed down. Knowledge is after all power.

 

Which leads to the end, if that even exist (which is a topic for another time). Power. The key, the need, the driving, the end.

[Moraelyn]

I'll discuss this one tomorrow. Right now, the bed is calling. You bring up several things there which I can chime in on, and mutual discussion of these topics may further my own concepts. But my head is fuzzy. So, god natt.

[Moraelyn]

Well, first off, I believe in the soul. I also believe in god, but not in the usual sense. The fundamental difference between me and religious folk is this: They believe god created man. I believe man created god.

 

Too much paranormal evidence exists to believe that there is nothing more to this reality than what our eyes can see. Do we comprehend it? No. But I believe we can touch it. Science can't explain every force at work in this reality-- yet. I believe we have the ability to touch other levels of perception beyond what we understand.

 

The very thing that traps us in this dimension is this energy that I refer to as the soul. I think of dimension and reality as elastic bubbles. We change it merely by our presence. As we adapt to an environment, the environment adapts to us. This is the reason we do not freely travel between dimensions/realities. We can't. We are too attuned to this one. This one envelops us like a prison. We created the borders that hold us inside. This attunement prevents us from entering foreign environments (other dimensions/realities). Children are often said to see things we as adults cannot. Most adults call it imagination. I think it's because they are still fresh to this environment, still able to see just a little beyond the veil. The veil is your invisible glass.

 

Back to the soul: it has more attributes than shaping your world. Will is a force to apply, and that force comes from the soul. If enough people will it, anything is possible. It is this thinking that leads me to believe in god. As a sentient deity? No. Rather, as a source of interactive energy, a collective power well, to be drawn upon. Lurking inside me is the ability to access this well. Unlocking the knowledge of how to use this ability is what is referred to as "enlightenment"; unlocking the ability to alter this reality on a conscious level.

 

Do I believe in thinnies? (Dark Tower reference)

Absolutely.

 

Do I believe in a core dimension?

No. I think of dimensions as a fisherman's net. It may have a center, but it's just one link in the pattern, no more vital than its neighbors.

 

Do I believe there are countless versions of myself in other dimensions?

No. If there were, I believe I would have at least limited collective thought between us.

 

I've read the Dark Tower in its entirety. But have you read The Chronicles of Amber? (First five books, anyway.) A lot of these themes are present in that series as well. Bits of both series make sense to me, but not the whole.

 

If an "end" exists, would you want to know?

[Bear^]

Man has always created the reality that suited them best, they created the "evidence" for witchcraft, and condemned them after this. In all time this is just a part of the creation man has made to place judgement on his fellow being. In so terms yes, God was created by man, and why so? Another form of control, how many people have been judged and killed because of this "God"?

 

Though I'm not religious I think that there are more things than we can explain, or even perhaps comprehend. As I said, as the world is now it's too strait, too easy. If it was this easy to understand, why is there then so many things that many people choose not to believe in? Again we put our fate in science to explain everything for us, and those things that science can't prove, isn't there. The funny thing however is that science is very unreliable if you look at history, because science have been wrong countless of times. Funny how we have the ability as well to be selective about what we choose to believe in.

 

I don't believe though in paranormal, though I believe in what you like to refer as "the soul" but I rather see it as energy powering the human mind, and when the machine is spent this energy fluctuate through the dimensions of reality to power another machine, another place. It's based on the same view as the Buddhists, the wheel of reincarnation. Though my views stretch beyond the veil. I think as well that is what these clairvoyant people are sensing, the other side of the veil, the other worlds. The worlds might be linked - or are linked - close to each other, which can as well explain why we sometimes see things that can't be there. Have you ever seen an animal you're sure can't exist in this world? I have, twice. First time it was during the night so I waved it of as shadows. The other time however was in broad daylight, middle of summer to be exact. This is what leads me to believe that worlds do collide, and when they do realities from one world ends up in another. Perhaps it's even so that we're seen in other worlds, and can't be explained. Perhaps even now there are those that debate this very topic, another place. Even perhaps around a camp fire, or in a bar, one closely resembling one of our bars.

 

So to speak our views aren't that far away, though you refer to it as the soul, a will. As I refer to it as energy, fluctuating the layers of reality. This body is a prison so to speak, we can't see that which we can't understand. The mind limits us from it, we need to place thins in the safe boundaries of reality.

 

Though I don't say there are countless versions of ourselves, that would contradict the theory of the energy, what you call the soul. The energy is what makes us who we are, therefore only one of us can exist at any given time. But worlds however are not bound to the same limitations. There might be worlds that are close to our world, but not with the same people. They're shaping the world as they see it, just as we are shaping it. It all boils down again, to choice. How we choose to act, and how that choice reflects on the story we leave behind. How would you like if you discovered the other side of the veil, to find a world close to our, but with people that have actually managed to find a solution to poverty? They say that "The answer is out there", what if they meant that the answer is finding this other realities, to see how they have done, and what they haven't done, and learn from that?

 

About the end, I don't know if I would like to actually know it. In some terms, ignorance is bliss, because without knowing certain things, you're able to live in bliss. However if you knew how and when it would end, you might as well appreciate the time given more, and spend it differently. However you might as well panic, and rush forward on things without consideration, because you know when the end will come, and so you might make more mistakes. Perhaps at some things it's better to leave it at it is.

 

I haven't read "The Chronicles of Amber" but I'll be sure to pick up a copy of it now.

Endret 16. mai 2010 av Bear^

[Moraelyn]

When I spoke of man creating god, I meant it literally, not figuratively. An untouchable, yet tangible thing. Gods were not created for control; religion was created for control. Gods and religions are two distinctly separate concepts to me. Witchcraft and magick certainly exist, but they are exercises in will, reaching out for something incorporeal. Religion set itself to judge others, to control others. Science is often a religion unto itself, served by a clergy who only believe what their primitive eyes can see, what their fumbling hands can grasp, and what their feeble minds can understand. Servants of the first five senses, nothing more.

 

Anything beyond the first five senses gets lumped into the sixth sense, where science laughs at and ridicules it. I believe there are more than six senses, but we have no criteria by which to create divisions in what we cannot fully comprehend.

 

I think of the mind as merely a part of the body, a physical, biological thing. I have to, because I don't believe the soul is bound to a body. I've never seen an animal out of place. I have however seen and experienced "things" which still cause the muscles in my forehead to tighten and my eyes to water, any time I think about them.

 

I'm a selfish person, Bear. My only interest is in bettering myself, not society. I'm very antisocial. The solution to poverty is the eradication of currency and equal rationing of food and materials regardless of career. But that's never going to happen: too much greed, too much lust for physical possessions, too many lazy, useless people, poor educations, too many births, not enough deaths. We're living longer lives and having too many children. We exacerbate the problem merely by existing and reproducing. We really need to start sanctioning childbirth. That's one thing China actually got right. Now if only the rest of us would.

[Bear^]

But then did a God - or Gods - exist before man created him, or them? Did Zeus, Odin, Thor, Aphrodite, Hades, Freya and all the other Gods exist before man created them? You speak of Gods yet what Gods, those created or those that are? And who are those Gods who are? Do we even know? The Gods we learn about and know about are the Gods created by man, by our minds, means of controlling, scaring and holding the masses. Who then are the Gods but figures of our imagination, and who are then these Gods that aren't created by us - the Gods who are?

 

Science is a trap, a dead end. They believe what they can see, and touch. Yes, as you say, a prison for the senses. Nothing more. That which can't be seen, touched or placed in the safe boundaries of of logic is washed of as nonsense, a figure of our imagination. Funny though that there are things still that science can't prove yet claim are because it makes sense, in their way. The earth was created by a big cataclysmic explosion because they found particles in space that they believe was there when the universe was created yet they can't prove it so they make a lard particle cannon. I think science only wants to prove for themselves that they can, a way to show that they are needed. Indeed a religion to place the world into safe boundaries for those feeble minds that can comprehend a world outside the box.

 

You say you're a selfish person, that your only interests are to better yourself, yet that's the most selfless act there is, because you yourself admit that you're not perfect, that there are changes that can be made, and those changes start by changing who you are. And so by doing that - inevitably and without your consent - that will change those around you. You're a antisocial person you say, yet further up you say you're married, with children. If I'm to deduct something here that means you might have a job, and so you interact with other people. You go shopping, take your children around, meet other people. Your children meet other people, and what they learn at home reflects how they act out there. Your wife interacts with other people, and also with you. You say you're selfish, well, you try to correct yourself, and so like a domino you're just a part of the great puzzle that is life. Who knows, your actions in home might lead one of your child to travel to another part of the world, and through the actions of you, use its knowledge and learnings from home and create a better tomorrow. We're just one piece of the puzzle, yet we can't stop interacting with other people, and so one purpose leads to another. You might be antisocial, but will your kids be the same? You're selfish, yet selfless. Again, a contradiction with meaning.

 

Isn't it strange, how we deem ourselves selfish yet can't grasp the greater picture? Are we not simply a pawn in the game that is played out? In the great books by David Eddings - may be rest in peace - about Garion, the world is controlled by two prophecies, one dark and one light. Both are the realities of what might be, and they are beyond time, time makes no matter, they can be where in time they are needed. And so people are born with one task to fulfil in their life, and though that task may seem insignificant that task is crucial for the world to move on. If that task isn't completed, the world will stand still until that task is done. It might be that we're just that, pawns born into the world to create a task set to us - which one we don't know - one task that we must complete in order for the great wheels of time to move on. Again it brings us into the whole meaning of life, that which is down to the individual, to who we are. Call it karma, or call it "What I am here to do". It fills the same slots.

 

We can't stop who we are, we will always lust, we will always greed, we will always want more. It's who we humans are and we can't stop that, it's perhaps even our doom. The thing isn't that we give birth to too many children, the problem is the distribution of the goods. We here in the west have a lot of food, those in the poor countries haven't these riches. They have to fight for it. We throw it away. Tons of food goes to waste every day, to rot, where it might have come to use. Instead of helping those countries that don't have enough food, we tell them to stop having sex, send them condoms, teach them about protection and all that. The solution however would be simply send the food we just throw away in heaps, as well as educating them. But then again, this costs money. And people never use money if they don't think they can earn something from it.

 

We're a deeply flawed race. We think the world is ours, we use it as we see fit. We cut the trees, dig the earth, level seas. We think we're the master race of the earth. The truth is however we're just pawns, small ants controlled by an unseen force of lust and greed. Yet when we've come to the point of no return all our technology wont help us, all our knowledge will be for naught. We will go down eventually, a doom we've brought upon ourselves. And despite it all we will then find out the answers to questions we didn't know we had. And to the age long questions; who made us. For me however it will be a discovery of worlds because I still firmly believe we're just energy stuck in flesh and bones to this world, and when we one time die our energy will fluctuate to another world, another time. You call it the soul, or the will. I link the word "soul" too much to religion. I don't believe we're a soul, I believe we're simply energy, an energy that's too valuable to waste. So we're send forth through the veils of the world to inhabit the next stage. Who knows, this might be the 10th world we've been born into. For what purpose? Or need? Now that's the question, and finding the solution to that question, would be to find the answer to the meaning of life.

[Moraelyn]

Happy anniversary to me.

[Frohman]

Seriously you guys, what's with the novels?

[Bear^]

The world isn't so simple you can debate it in one sentence, hence the novels

[Gjest Slettet+13412342564]

I gotta be honest with you, I think the novels killed this thread

Endret 6. juni 2010 av Slettet+13412342564

[Bear^]

Lack of answers killed this thread

[henbruas]

No one has the time to write replies to your novels about God and society and the meaning of life and God knows what, let alone read them.