From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Sat Jul 20 2002 - 05:59:18 MDT
On Fri, Jul 19, 2002 at 10:38:28AM -0700, Sehkenenra wrote:
>
> >Personally I find much to admire in buddhism, but I also disagree with
> >the fundamental tenet that all is suffering (this is why I enjoy Zen,
> >which is rather far from this). Just as I see something positive and
> >downright exuberant in existentialist freedom (unlike most
> >existentialists :-) I think the real message of buddhism seems to be
> >"existence is suffering if you feel so, ecstasy if you feel so".
>
> Hmm... I always saw considerable exuberence in the writings of Nietzsche-
> but then again, he was more of a pre-existentialist than a true
> existentialist. I've wondered if our rather "grim" understandings of
> existentialist philosophy might have more to do with trying to understand
> the vocabulary and the ideas from a traditional western (read: Christian)
> viewpoint than from anything inherent withing the philosophy. (Especially in
> Sartre's "Being and Nothingness")
I don't think so. If we had been discussing a much earlier philosophy or
one from a different culture, then the distance could have made it hard
to understand. But the existentialists acted less than a century ago
within western culture and left plenty of papers and interviews behind.
The low mood seems to have been there from the start, like in the
statements of Sartre in _Existentialism is a Humanism_ that making
choices inevitably would give us anxiety (and if you don't feel it, you
are just repressed).
Maybe the problem was that the existentialists got started within a
traditional viewpoint: when they said that man was utterly free to shape
his life, they were saying something very new and powerful. Nietzsche
had done some of the earlier work, now they did the next step. But they
still had a hard time seeing this as something pleasant, their context
simply did not allow it. It may be that only now a few generations
later, in a world where the existentialist ideas of being allowed to
live one's own life have recombined with their counterpart
liberalism/enlightenment ideas in an affluent setting allowing them to
be practical, that one can really start to build a happy existentialism.
> > What do I care for your suffering? Pain, even agony is no more
> > than information to the senses, data fed to the computer of the
> > mind. The lesson is simple: you have recieved the information,
> > now act on it. Take control of the imput, and you shall become
> > master of the output.
>
> Alpha Centauri quotes! Those were one of my favorite aspects of the game.
> Chairman Yang's futuristic Mao/Tao - ism was a most amusing (and somewhat
> scary) synthesis, I thought.
Yes, he is one of the more intriguing characters in the game. While I of
couse enjoy Provost Zakharov, he is just a science for science's sake
guy, while Yang has a kind of warped transhumanist vision.
Another relevant Yangism is :
I maintain nonetheless that yin-yang dualism can be overcome. With
sufficient enlightenment we can give substance to any distinction: mind
without body, north without south, pleasure without pain. Remember,
enlightenment is a function of willpower, not of physical strength.
-- Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, "Essays on Mind and Matter"
He certainly isn't very orthodox about either buddhism, marxism or
taoism. I see this questioning of everything, even the sacred or natural
law itself, as very transhumanistic. Too bad about the rest of his
morals.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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