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What I'm really interested in is that in your former post, you worded yourself in a way that seemed to connote that as an individual, you (or an individual, really) is capable of bettering the condition.
Yes. We all are.
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Given that we are experiencing this condition on a subjective level, how can an individual genuinely perceive what can better the human condition if we ourselves are incapable of truly and wholly grasping the full nature of the human condition?
We cannot grasp it because we get in our own way. The human condition is that we cannot grasp what it is. The idea of bettering the human condition comes not just from the idea of improving quality, but more specifically building a world where trying to understand it becomes easier for all individuals.
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What makes your perspective of the human condition rightfully better than another in such a way that you can act out, and perhaps even override the idea of another's idea of improvement?
By the perspective that it can be improved at all. Those that make the human condition worse, if you bother to look, are the ones that are the most cynical of it, the ones who feel humanity is doomed, and feel that there is no way for humans to better their own condition.
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I concede and agree with your point, but talking about the non-linear nature of time belongs in a completely different thread.
Then you misunderstood. I was trying to point out that you laid your premise that the human condition was a function of time, and that my beliefs, workings, views, and efforts stemmed from the completely inverse view that it is time that is a function of the human condition and experience. Got it now? (IMG:
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That aside, the point of that sentence is that who are we as individuals to claim to understand any of it?
The universe is as much a part of us as we are a part of it. By understanding the holographic parallels, and by looking within ourselves, you will discover that it is the degree by which we understand ourselves that reflects the degree we understand the universe.
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To us, our subjective present is all that exists,
To
us? Or to
you? Clearly, I have a different viewpoint, hence, the
us does not apply...until you prove it.
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By only being able to see through the personal lens, then as individuals we are incapable of seeing what's best called the 'objective world' in any real way to make utilitarian (since we are trying to better the world) decisions.
Personal, individual, utilitarian... what does it mean to you (rhetorical question)? Are we really all that different? The more you explore and understand metaphysics, the more you understand the unity of the Great Machine (universe, work, machine, however the allusion is, but it all refers to the same meme). We really are all connected, almost as one entity. Physics has proven that. When you get to the smallest increments, there is absolutely no way to tell where one entity begins or ends. We are, at best, just nodes in a great webwork. But are we nodes? Or are we webwork? Objectively speaking, the nodes are absolutely webwork, but the webwork are not necessarily defined by the nodes. Similarly, the human condition and experience is something experienced by an individual human being, but you have to understand that because all humans are (arguably, on different levels and through different angles of argument,) the same, then it would be prudent to extrapolate that the factors of the human condition are justly the same. The study of these various factors (and the basis of their similarities on the premise that humans are arguably the same) have been subdivided into sciences known as Sociology and Psychology. Other branches and disciplines exist, but I am too busy devoting my mental energy to addressing your post using as efficient of a means as possible, instead of going into too much detail.
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But, who are you to say that you are capable of understanding the rest of this alleged tapestry?
I'm human, just like you! I have as much license as you do! Look at me now, I can do it, and you can too!
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And in such a way, who is an individual to have the audacity to claim anything we know nothing about?
Correction:
You choose to know nothing about. You speak in haste, my fellow scholar. How do you know
we cannot know anything about it? I've made great strides in understanding myself, and through my observations, held others in my life to the same standards, and came out correct. Not to mention, my brother, his wife, my father, my uncle, and late grandfather are all psychiatrists. They taught me a few tricks in understanding other human beings. (IMG:
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As much as your nihilist-style argument does a great job at nitpicking and hairsplitting, you are forgetting a fundamental concept: Magick and metaphysics is meant to
create reality. It is in retrospect that humans analyze what they have made for themselves. The collective mix of every factor from every reality of every person alive, and the legacy of the realities left by the dead, playing upon each other simultaneously,
THAT is human condition. When we make something that does not ensure both the survival of the species and our happiness, we deconstruct it. If it serves those interests, we keep it.
This post has been edited by Xenomancer: May 31 2010, 03:14 PM