Who said this? Certainly not Jesus of Nazareth.

It is either the feminine ideal or the Son of Man speaking through Jesus. I am purposely wording it this way because it is an unproductive to think of Jesus as singular. It can also be thought of as God or the Kingdom of Heaven speaking through Jesus. Read the quote from this viewpoint.

I don't know whether it's real "quote". If it is, from whom? Mathew, Mark, Luke, some monk in a monastery masturbating? C'mon man. You can do better.

Thanks for reminding me.

There are people who recognize ominous patterns in the status quo and make rebellious, heroic moves. Then there are the people who recognize ominous patterns and become flaccid, irreverent, cynical, and/or mindless propagandists.

That's the craig I know, and will never understand. Just keep doing it.

There is a movie called The Fountain that contains through both the story and the symbolism much of what I have shared in this thread. It is the most important piece of art produced in the modern era that I am aware of.

I'm more familiar with The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. It goes something like this:





It's 8 minutes, but worth it. You can just go to 4:25, if you want

The movie Inception also covers a lot of the territory I described. Basically any movie that is salient, captivating, and affecting is so because it is speaking to the Grand Narrative, but those two movies stand out.

This might be one of your worst takes yet.

You've just described the fairy tail machine known as the wonderful world of Disney. Music, film, animation, charitable acts, inspiration around the world, and not forgetting all the castles.

If you think I am communicating directly to you, and that’s why you keep responding, that is not the case. I will quote you if I am speaking directly to you. Since you seem to have no interest in the ideas I am talking about, then I would prefer you to stop posting in this thread.

craig, you have no choice in the threads I post in. And I read everything you write.

So it is about Disney?!

Neither do you. Just like the drug addict has no choice about getting his next fix. Unless he has a wake up call which provides opportunity for choice.

"Choice" is a fascinating topic. Where would you like to begin?

I mean, I began long ago on this forum. A lot of what I post here is about emphasizing the importance of playing the choice game heroically and what that looks like using metaphor and story.

I know what you've done here. But after 15 years, it's difficult to remember what you, or I, have said.

How about the choice of using legal marijuana?

The real ‘choice game’, the game that I speak to, you won’t want to or be able to talk about because it exists in the scary place and it has to be played blindfolded. You are too attached to the social and to persona, but that has to be transcended to actually play the choice game.

The game that I speak to can only be played in the place that is dead quiet, pitch black, and where you have no voice. It can only be played on the periphery of consciousness, intuition, and feeling. To equate choice only to the decisions that are allowed to be held in memory and conscious awareness is to be in ignorance. The actual choice game can only exist in perpetual doubt because, like I said, it has to be played blindfolded.

That's too bad. No one can say I didn't try.

Keep doing what you do. I hope it makes you happy in your dark place.

If it matters, then you should probably put a substantial effort into making it easier to understand, right? (eta: in review, this reads as rather hostile! But it was just an observation)

I made the effort to go back and re-read this entire thread, but I'm no better off for having done so. In fact at one point I even found myself wondering whether a similar version could be written using AI.

Maybe I'm just not thoughtful enough to understand you. Maybe you're not doing a great job of explaining yourself. Maybe it's somewhere in the middle.


re: meaning
As simply as possible:
In what does craig1120 find meaning?
In what could an atheist find meaning?

What is the difference between discovered/identified meaning vs. created/ projected meaning, that only the former can be fulfilling? How could someone tell whether some meaning they thought they had created themselves wasn't some meaning they had in fact identified?

Choice on self-awareness?

Let me try to explain why it’s not this simple by comparing life as a game to a typical video game. In life, unnecessary exertion is costly and evolution has selected against it. In other words, we default to playing the game of life on the easiest difficulty setting. In a typical video game, you can beat the game on ‘easy’, but in life, you can only get so far (meaning) without increasing the difficulty level.

The sticking point is not identifying rationally what we should find meaningful. It is more about realizing it’s not that simple while deciding whether or not and how to increase the difficulty level.

So let me go back to the beginning and try to be more clear. Think of the young child who is completely engrossed in the environment and commits some type of transgression. An adult responsible for socializing the child will reprimand or punish the child. Perhaps the initial punishment is not severe enough to change the child’s future behavior at all. The adult should then incrementally increase the level of punishment. Eventually, the punishment will cross the threshold where the child feels shamed which will induce a wake up call for the child. The shaming experience is sufficiently threatening and painful enough to cause a momentarily transcendence or disruption between the child and the environment.

Now, the child will strongly dislike the break in engrossment and will probably cry. In this moment, the child will be able to intuit a choice between two realities. The first option is always to re-enter and be re-absorbed into the status quo reality. However, when the child makes this choice, they will be in the same state as when they initially transgressed. That means their behavior won’t change and they will later find themselves back in the same place of transgression + shame + transcendence + choice. Except part of them will remember that they have been in this spot and they will begin to feel frustrated.

At this point, they can recognize that choosing the status quo reality does not just simply equate to comfortable re-absorption but also shame, frustration, etc. Usually this results in a concession of choosing the second reality where they change their behavior properly. Still, just because they now recognize the choice they need to make, that doesn’t mean they have properly committed to that reality. There is a part of them that actively resists leveling up in this way and uses deception.

The next progression is the child back in the same position of punishment with even more frustration. Eventually, the child realizes that choosing the new reality is not enough and that they have to commit to it fully by cutting themselves off from the status quo reality. After this commitment, there now will exist a permanent separation between the child and the environment. That is the required sacrifice for the child to enter into the reality where they no longer repeat the same transgression. Soon enough, the child will transgress again in a different way and face the same situation. Each cycle that separation between child and environment gradually increases.

Again, I am claiming that this happens intuitively at the periphery of awareness. If you cannot accept that children have this level of sophistication, and you have a different model for how we progress, then nothing else I have tried to communicate that stacks on top will land with you. To be clear, it is not essential at all to consciously hold this model in order to make the proper moves. Children progress with no conscious understanding of what I have explained.

Meaning

As we mature through the socialization process I just detailed, we become more permanently alienated from the cover and protection of the feminine. An initial response to this vulnerability is often to try to re-absorb back into cover and protection. The call of the Sirens in the Odyssey represents this pattern.

A better response to the vulnerability and suffering from the alienation is to counter it with meaning. This will work for a period of time until the meaning we are using inevitably becomes hollow and we are thrown back in lack. This puts us into a similar position that the punished child was in previously except instead of being punished and shamed by an adult, we are being punished and shamed by reality. Or, to personify it, we are being shamed by the feminine ideal, which is the highest form of meaning and a version of God.

Again, shame -> transcendence -> choice between status quo reality or sacrifice for new reality. Initial response is almost always to re-enter into status quo by doubling down on familiar and accessible meaning sources, often leading to forms of addiction(s). Analogous to the punished child situation and as I mentioned earlier in the thread, the move of progress is to commit to the new reality by cutting yourself off from the status quo reality, which means cutting yourself off from familiar sources of meaning that worked in the past.

Once in the new reality, higher levels of meaning will become salient. The problem is that we will try to avoid making that permanent commitment and permanent separation from the status quo. We will try to identify higher levels of meaning while keeping one foot in the status quo reality with the misguided intention of merging them somehow.

Completely pointless metaphor. You can't just "flip the switch" from easy to difficult in real life.


Children do not possess any level of sophistication. They are children. I am concerned that you are still a child, or worse, that you wish you were.


You are really, really bad at this.

However complicated this is, or isn't, does not stop you from describing examples of meaning - whether from your own life, and from what you would consider 'appropriately meaningful' for an atheist.

As simply as possible refers to the description of the meaning, not how you get to meaning.

In what does craig1120 find meaning should be particularly easy for you, craig1120, to answer.

I have to describe the process so that when I say, “the process of transcendence and transformation is what I have found to be most meaningful”, then you can have an idea of what I am referring to. This process is what is most meaningful no matter if someone identifies as an atheist or not. It is the promise of the highest quality of life that gives it the highest meaning.