Strelnikov wrote: ↑Tue Jan 28, 2020 9:56 am
Is it true that if we claim something does not exist, it cannot harm us?
You can deny that Gamma radiation exists, until you are exposed to it and possibly die from radiation poisoning. The world and Cosmos exist outside of human language and human concepts of how they work, though we do our damnedest to create scientific models to describe how they work and where they came from. We know a lot now as a species, but there are gaps, and there may be lethal things in those gaps waiting to zap us.
To be sure, I was reading Whorf before I was 20, and most people are ignorant of basic semantics and ontology. Most of us believe that there is a "world" outside of our mind or minds. That's a fantasy, obviously, but, again obviously, a useful one. A "stand" is an idea that we make up and use as an axiom, and sensibly we realize the difference between factual report and interpretation, including axiomatic ones.
My stand is that there is only one reality, though there are as many stories or interpretations as we invent.
So does "evil" exist? How do we answer questions like this? The really weird but oh-so-common view is that what we believe is real, and if believe something, it is not real, and that those who believe differently are "wrong." Yet that requires a definition of the thing (Buddhism would call it a "dharma") that supposedly does not exist, or the proposition is not testable and is therefore certainly unscientific (while we condemn the "believers" as pseudoscientific).
"Evil" is an interpretation. It is a shared interpretation by many, and there are persistent reports of an "identity," a personification of Evil. My understanding is that Evil
exists in the collective human mind, i.e., the shared human consciousness. If it exists in the mind, does it "exist"? We like to split reality into the mind and the "material world," but the division is quite artificial, or do we believe that the mind is a separate reality? Obviously, the mind has physical effects. And we all have stories that we believe without question.
Oliver Smith, I see today, believes or assumes that
the world is bad place, hence antinatalism because it is evil to inflict the world on innocent children. Schopenhauer. If I were to suggest to him that the logical consequence of his position would be murder and suicide, would that be evil? And is someone who believes that "sane"?
What does "sane" mean? I suggest "fit for function," actually operating in the realm of mind in ways -- and with actions -- that create life worth living. That is, of course, another stand. But the stand of "life sucks and then you die" is quite useless for creating inspiration and joy and love and all that good stuff.
For me evil is entrenched denial and hatred. The Qur'an is explicit that it's mostly metaphor, and Satan is, then, I gloss, a metaphor for personified evil, an archetype, and people act that out, follow it. And the end of that is misery for them. Hell. And more than an end, it is a present condition.
And hating evil and especially "evil people" is a trap, it is evil itself. "Resist not evil."
But stand for justice and truth.
And expect to be attacked for it.
As for Vigilant, he is an Internet tough guy - match wits with him on the telephone and he would fall apart like a wet paper bag. Face him on the street and he will run. Tarantino is the one to "fear" because he seems to have IT detective work down, and he will expose people he does not like. That said, he is only powerful on the Internet, and to the Wikipedia milieu.
This recent affair is exposing the reality of Vigilant. He can easily be seen as a hater, who will lie and deceive to express his hatred of humanity, most of whom are "shitheels" (who are the exceptions?), and his job is to "hold their feet to the fire." Who wants to burn people in the fire? (In the Qur'an, a common name for Hell is "the fire.")
It's obvious.
Tarantino arouses no negative impression for me. I do not fear the truth, I love it -- and don't believe I know it, necessarily, though I do know and report what I have seen, and I create verifiability (often called "wall of text").
Whether or not exposure is evil or meritorious is not an absolute. Mostly I look at justice. I would happily dox Vigilant, because he attacks from behind a veil of anonymity (which also, by the way, matches the Qur'anic description of Satan (he speaks to us from a place we do not recognize).
However, I have generally glossed that with a meaning that he speaks to us in our thinking, and we think it is ourselves, and don't question our own thinking. Discovering this -- and using it -- was incredibly useful in dealing with addiction, which, among other things, is rooted in lies we tell ourselves and believe.
Vigilant has power because he speaks to that voice in each of us, that judges and condemns and holds in contempt.