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This thread title has no topic indication because I can't come up with one

M

Moonbeam

Elite Member
I am an American citizen by birth and have lived here most of my life. I grew up thinking my country was the apex country in the world when it came to such moral values as democracy, justice personal freedom of belief etc., thew best of the best. I don't know how to define the moral questions I have as because I don't know the name of the dilemma I feel, but when you look at what we do in the world compared to what we say and what I was taught we stand for the two are poles apart. Have we been brainwashed? Are we more devil than god? Are you. am I just a brainwashed believer and a profound hypocrite. What do you feel. Should I ignore the issue as too provocative to deal with emotionally? It's not exactly comforting to consider that your beliefs are a joke.
 
Moonbeam said:
What do you feel. Should I ignore the issue as too provocative to deal with emotionally? It's not exactly comforting to consider that your beliefs are a joke.
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It certainly isn't comfortable to stare reality in the face. But part of that belief in a good, moral and just America has a lot to do with the education to adhere to the concept of Enlightenment. If that leaves any questions, all I can do is point to the definition and say... it essentially defines Western Civilization. The concept of human rights. Of Democracy. It should be the core principal of who we strive to be. To rise above the human animal that we actually are.

Enlightenment​

The Age of Enlightenment (also the Age of Reason) was a period in the history of Europe and Western civilization[1] during which the Enlightenment, an intellectual[6] and cultural[6] movement, flourished, emerging in the late 17th century[6] in Western Europe[7] and reaching its peak in the 18th century, as its ideas spread more widely across Europe[7] and into the European colonies, in the Americas and Oceania.[8][9][10​
​
Characterized by an emphasis on reason, empirical evidence, and the scientific method, the Enlightenment promoted ideals of individual liberty, religious tolerance, progress, and natural rights. Its thinkers advocated for constitutional government, the separation of church and state, and the application of rational principles to social and political reform.​

I suspect this topic was rather inspired by recent posts, and by current events. By Americans proving to have ignored all of this. To cast aside all pretense of striving to do better and wallow in self righteous destruction. With vote after vote used to dismantle much that we hold dear. To the point of not recognizing our own nation. It was already deeply flawed, choosing profits over wellness. But now our people openly choose tyranny and fanaticism over Democracy. They abandon the rule of law. Their purpose appears to increase pain and misery for all.

In hubris, our American Dream included an idea of Heroism and of Superiority. That our people were better than other people. That we would bring Democracy to them. By force if necessary. That we were better, more evolved. This is all flawed. We are still the same savage animal that marches across a continent and commits Genocide. If we do not believe in our capacity for evil, then we lower our guard. We do not teach ourselves to prevent its emergence. We allow charlatans to rise up and lead movements to unmake our civilization.

The concepts of our civilization are antithetical to our base desires. They will ever be in conflict. As with slavery and segregation, we continue to fail to live up to our lofty dreams and aspirations to do better. We are only ever one unprepared and uneducated generation away from losing it all and returning back to whence we came. In this topic, I see a reflection of the current state of our struggle.
 
Jaskalas said:
It certainly isn't comfortable to stare reality in the face. But part of that belief in a good, moral and just America has a lot to do with the education to adhere to the concept of Enlightenment. If that leaves any questions, all I can do is point to the definition and say... it essentially defines Western Civilization. The concept of human rights. Of Democracy. It should be the core principal of who we strive to be. To rise above the human animal that we actually are.

Enlightenment​

The Age of Enlightenment (also the Age of Reason) was a period in the history of Europe and Western civilization[1] during which the Enlightenment, an intellectual[6] and cultural[6] movement, flourished, emerging in the late 17th century[6] in Western Europe[7] and reaching its peak in the 18th century, as its ideas spread more widely across Europe[7] and into the European colonies, in the Americas and Oceania.[8][9][10​
​
Characterized by an emphasis on reason, empirical evidence, and the scientific method, the Enlightenment promoted ideals of individual liberty, religious tolerance, progress, and natural rights. Its thinkers advocated for constitutional government, the separation of church and state, and the application of rational principles to social and political reform.​

I suspect this topic was rather inspired by recent posts, and by current events. By Americans proving to have ignored all of this. To cast aside all pretense of striving to do better and wallow in self righteous destruction. With vote after vote used to dismantle much that we hold dear. To the point of not recognizing our own nation. It was already deeply flawed, choosing profits over wellness. But now our people openly choose tyranny and fanaticism over Democracy. They abandon the rule of law. Their purpose appears to increase pain and misery for all.

In hubris, our American Dream included an idea of Heroism and of Superiority. That our people were better than other people. That we would bring Democracy to them. By force if necessary. That we were better, more evolved. This is all flawed. We are still the same savage animal that marches across a continent and commits Genocide. If we do not believe in our capacity for evil, then we lower our guard. We do not teach ourselves to prevent its emergence. We allow charlatans to rise up and lead movements to unmake our civilization.

The concepts of our civilization are antithetical to our base desires. They will ever be in conflict. As with slavery and segregation, we continue to fail to live up to our lofty dreams and aspirations to do better. We are only ever one unprepared and uneducated generation away from losing it all and returning back to whence we came. In this topic, I see a reflection of the current state of our struggle.
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I fancy myself to be the product of that enlightenment, even perhaps the product of an older tradition from which that enlightenment sprang.


The flaw you lament is the very flaw I see you have, the conditioned belief that the true nature of man is evil. The whole theme of The Enlightenment is that reason and rational thinking point to the fact that it is the enlightened man who is real, and the nature of ignorance of that fact is conditioned self hate. You profess belief that education and training can raise one to a higher state. What you fail to see is that learning is unlearning false belief. What real confidence in the value of life can you have if you believe your true nature is evil? Nobody can achieve a state of enlightenment that does not accord with one’s nature. Enlightenment is blasphemy. It is a statement that throwing off the shackles of self contempt one becomes the Alpha and Omega of all things. The truth is not out there. It is within you on earth as it is in heaven.
 
dank69 said:
So here's the thing about tying your identity to the patch of dirt you were born on.
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"A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit
To satisfy, ensure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not forget
That it is not he, or she, or them, or it
That you belong to" ... from Bob Dylan's It's Alright Me, I'm Only Bleeding

If I had to pick a single song as Dylan's greatest it would be this.

The whole song's lyrics:

[Verse 1]
Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child's balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying

[Verse 2]
Pointed threats they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool's gold mouthpiece, the hollow horn
Plays wasted words, proves to warn
That he not busy being born
Is busy dying

[Verse 3]
Temptation's page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan, but unlike before
You discover that you'd just be one more
Person crying

[Chorus]
So don't fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It's alright, Ma, I'm only sighing

[Verse 4]
As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons, great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don't hate nothing at all
Except hatred

[Verse 5]
Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Make everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It's easy to see without looking too far
That not much is really sacred

[Verse 6]
While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the President of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked

[Chorus]
And though the rules of the road have been lodged
It's only people's games that you got to dodge
And it's alright, Ma, I can make it

[Verse 7]
Advertising signs that con
You into thinking you're the one
That can do what's never been done
That can win what's never been won
Meantime, life outside goes on
All around you

[Verse 8]
You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks they really found you

[Verse 9]
A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit
To satisfy, ensure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not forget
That it is not he, or she, or them, or it
That you belong to

[Chorus]
But though the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to

[Verse 10]
For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destiny
Speak jealously of them that are free
Do what they do just to be
Nothing more than something they invest in

[Verse 11]
While some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And say "God bless him"

[Verse 12]
While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society's pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he's in

[Chorus]
But I mean no harm, nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it's alright, Ma, if I can't please him

[Verse 13]
Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult, and stare
While money doesn't talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares?
Propaganda, all is phony

[Verse 14]
While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer's pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death's honesty
Won't fall upon 'em naturally
Life sometimes must get lonely

[Verse 15]
My eyes collide head-on with stuffed
Graveyards, false goals, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say, "Okay, I've had enough
What else can you show me?"

[Chorus]
And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They'd probably put my head in a guillotine
But it's alright, Ma, it's life, and life only
 
@Muse. @dank69

By the time that song was written I had already died from the inner anguish it and he expresses in that song and others. All my sacred cows, all my naive dreams about everything I had been conditioned to accept as truth and would endlessly suffer without, gone in a single flash of realization that not a single bit was ever needed or mattered. Every thing I had ever longed for gone and returned in the act of letting go in sweet surrender. The truth I thought out there was always there, untouched, free, just hidden by all the garbage piled on me by the misery of others who strove to protect me from the very pain that saved me.

I am a traitor to God and Country. I know at what cost.

None the less there is the matter that the American ideals represented that animated our founders spring, at core, from that very rejection of Authoritarian and Church rule. They were traitors too. I am asking something deeper than attachment to country. I am asking about whether anything we thought we stood for is real, given the reality of not what we say but what we do.

Is the hypocrisy so great justice will require we be removed as a threat? Is it time to pay and what form should that take?
 
The idea that there is justice is the problem. I have seen no evidence that it truly exists. Maybe it exists after we're done here, maybe it doesn't. I certainly would not bet anything I would not want to lose that it exists.
 
dank69 said:
The idea that there is justice is the problem. I have seen no evidence that it truly exists. Maybe it exists after we're done here, maybe it doesn't. I certainly would not bet anything I would not want to lose that it exists.
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It is subject to a simple psychological law, in my opinion. You cannot long for something, have it as an ideal unless there is something real to which the thing behind the word does not exist. I think you should ask not if it exists but what it really is. As the real self and the false self exist as a product of the product of real and false identification, so too I think does the justice suffer a similar fate. Justice is a word we define and imagine. A definition is not the thing. I see justice, again in useless words as what a conscious being present in the now manifests in life. It arises spontaneously from the joy of being our true nature. Justice is a manifestation of love. Injustice is the product of the need for a substitute by those who feel unworthy.
 
That IAMIOBleeding song by Dylan is back to back with Gates of Eden, and it shouldn't be hard for you @Moonbeam to get to that one. The whole idea of it is that all these confusions dissolve with a frame of mind, a state of mind, a serenity (no doubt it can manifest variously) that allows clarity, etc.
 
Moonbeam said:
It is subject to a simple psychological law, in my opinion. You cannot long for something, have it as an ideal unless there is something real to which the thing behind the word does not exist. I think you should ask not if it exists but what it really is. As the real self and the false self exist as a product of the product of real and false identification, so too I think does the justice suffer a similar fate. Justice is a word we define and imagine. A definition is not the thing. I see justice, again in useless words as what a conscious being present in the now manifests in life. It arises spontaneously from the joy of being our true nature. Justice is a manifestation of love. Injustice is the product of the need for a substitute by those who feel unworthy.
Click to expand...
Justice is one of those words, like "good" or "evil," that humanity might never 100% agree on. They are constructs, and what one thinks is justice, another will see as injustice, and there is no definitive way to determine who is "right."
 
dank69 said:
Justice is one of those words, like "good" or "evil," that humanity might never 100% agree on. They are constructs, and what one thinks is justice, another will see as injustice, and there is no definitive way to determine who is "right."
Click to expand...
As I attempted to express, justice is not a thing to which a word can be put. It is whatever actions are performed by an enlightened being. Acting justly is not the product of adherence to a of which there are subjective millions. It’s what you do when there is no ego or fear. It’s like being sharing. You don’t need proof. It’s self evident.
 
Moonbeam said:
As I attempted to express, justice is not a thing to which a word can be put. It is whatever actions are performed by an enlightened being. Acting justly is not the product of adherence to a of which there are subjective millions. It’s what you do when there is no ego or fear. It’s like being sharing. You don’t need proof. It’s self evident.
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Self evident to you. Things that are self evident to others look like lunacy to you.
 
dank69 said:
Self evident to you. Things that are self evident to others look like lunacy to you.
Click to expand...
That is because the words ‘self evident’ like ‘enlightenment’ were coined by people to point to an experience of self realization only those who have experienced it can really understand. They are pointers to something potential for you which your conditioning is there to deny. It’s really that what is self evident to me looks like lunacy to you, in part the reason for my name. Another part of that choice of name refers to the fact that whatever illumination I can provide you with is a reflection of something else. Thirdly, to refer to someone as Moonbeam intends to imply one is far too down to earth to buy into what they express. I don’t eye a lunatic:

 
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