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Atom Smasher

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You do not create your own reality.

First, reason should be considered a half way house to reality - it correlates in some way but is not definitive, or representative of it. Language is figurative and analogical, NOT literal.

Reason/ philosophy has largely fallen into disrepute because it too readily associated with rationalism/ ideology, where language is serious, literal, and artless.

The existential reaction to this is to say you can create your own reality, which is essentially irrationalism [a shadow form of reason]

Rather, reason should be seen in some kind of dialogue or dialectical movement with reality. Consider it a dance, even an erotic dance of sorts... as the Greeks did.
Shorthand, my friend.

The trouble with excessive rationalism/reason is that they blind one to the incredible power of hitting the reset switch and considering oneself capable of that which he "knew" couldn't be possible for him.

I suppose I live in a state (or "world") where I have a bit of a knack for leveraging the best of rationalism and also creative instinct that dares to challenge the "known" or "established".

I've often quoted Shakespeare with his "Assume a virtue if you have it not" because no one that I know of has ever expressed better the power of a man to challenge his very reality and acquire new abilities based solely upon on acting as if. When a man acts as if something is true, even when all empirical evidence screams the opposite, he can move the immovable and can affect how others regard him.

I know that what I describe is simplistic, but it was enough to turn my life around and to free me from my former helplessness.
 

ChristopherColumbus

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Shorthand, my friend.

The trouble with excessive rationalism/reason is that they blind one to the incredible power of hitting the reset switch and considering oneself capable of that which he "knew" couldn't be possible for him.

I suppose I live in a state (or "world") where I have a bit of a knack for leveraging the best of rationalism and also creative instinct that dares to challenge the "known" or "established".

I've often quoted Shakespeare with his "Assume a virtue if you have it not" because no one that I know of has ever expressed better the power of a man to challenge his very reality and acquire new abilities based solely upon on acting as if. When a man acts as if something is true, even when all empirical evidence screams the opposite, he can move the immovable and can affect how others regard him.

I know that what I describe is simplistic, but it was enough to turn my life around and to free me from my former helplessness.
It's quite similar to the Socratic injunction to 'know yourself'. For Socrates, all knowledge was ethical... everything else sophistry.

As for modeling an 'as if', the hypothetical, this is also very Greek. Given the innate disposition, they posited the ideal, in the intelligible realm, and then strove toward it. The ethical path.
 

ChristopherColumbus

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Freedom is a ethical imperative. It's what humanizes us. If we abdicate it [the fear of freedom], we are in for a world of hurt.
Further, to run with this idea, this world of hurt is not something to just eventuate in the political sphere, but is felt very much in our own lives. When the ethical instincts of the self are denied, a gnawing sense of absence ensues. Why else is it so common for people to seek an escape [from themselves] in drugs, or sex, or mass ideology, or whatever. There is a lack of resiliency/ fortitude, where people are deluded into thinking they are entitled to some ethereal happiness, instead of seeing life as the grinding journey that it is. And with false expectations they become disappointed, looking not so much for solace but distraction from a misery that they are ill-equipped to cope with.

Of course, this was all intentional. Dissatisfied people make for the best consumers. But this kind of consumption can never be fulfilling. The dissociated self becomes a black hole wanting to consume more and more. It can never say enough, for what should be the means of existence, what should serve the ends of life, has become the ends themselves.

The Greeks never really posited the Will. This came later in early modern thought. What they posited was rational desire [and irrational desires]. If desire is not directed rationally to its rightful goal, and is instead at the whim of passion [irrational desire] then a man is not free. Freedom is therefore an ethical achievement, and is primarily freedom over the self.
 
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ubercat

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And don't be try-hard. Nobody's dominant all the time and nobody should try to be.
 

ChristopherColumbus

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Freedom is therefore an ethical achievement, and is primarily freedom over the self.
... and :)

This kind of freedom is actively discouraged in mass society, for it is only in a condition of unfreedom that men are compelled to consume. Their passion is unrestrained by reason, or rather their reason is chained by passion, where they are subjected to images to titillate the senses as opposed to contemplating the immutable forms to which the mind should turn as a plant to sunlight. Think Plato's cave here.
 
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