2. What is the Soul? (The return of Relativism)

Now this is a particularly hard topic and I am going to approach it this time with reference to Truth and the Soul. My investigation is going to focus on the process of distorted and manipulated truths from the outer interactions of the social ego (D) to the ego (C) to the "self" (B) to the witness-consciousness (A). Here I have a difficulty positioning my previous idea of the Soul and this will prove interesting. My main argument is that relativism exists in all dimensions of interaction within and outside of ourselves (as a composite identity of A, B, C and D). What then happens to the Truth and how can we regain it? My assertion is of a realist-rationalist approach of reflection and circumspection.

Before we embark on the processes, we must understand the various composite parts of our identity. Allow me to start with the witness-consciousness, which is known as the saksi-pratyaksa in Hindu philosophy. I have used the similar term because linguistically it makes a lot of sense to my understanding of it. However, I am not agreeing with the romantic notions of its origin. That much is out of my scope as a moral-realist.

Now what is the witness-consciousness, you may ask. Well, follow me with a little experiment and it will quickly be apparent. Tell yourself a definite truth statement. Next, tell yourself an untruth. That little voice which speaks out against your untruth is the witness-consciousness. Sometimes it speaks in the form of a tentative doubt-ridden pause in response to your untruth. The witness-consciousness is the part of you that knows all. It has witnessed all but is passive in a sense. It may "counsel" you in your deliberations but it is unable to affect your final decision. It is the "entity" to which we speak when we engage in self-justifying talk. But ultimately, we find that we cannot lie to our witness-consciousness. We may placate our "self" but we can never lie to our witness-consciousness.

This is the first level of story-telling in which we construct (or attempt to construct) before our witness-consciousness a more ideal image of ourselves.

When we engage in story-telling, we engage in self-justification of our actions and denial against the voice of our witness-consciousness. At the most basic level, story-telling is when we tell our witness-consciousness that we need what we want. Yes, it is oxymoronic for wants and needs are different in priority. But to be able to acquire what we want to better ourselves, we must need it. We must try to story-tell to our witness-consciousness that we need these things, not want them. So our acquisition of them are perfectly justifiable and then we can live with ourselves.

Our witness-consciousness is in essence truthful. In this quality, then lies the possibility for all truth. Indeed, our witness-consciousness acts as the source of radical doubt (Descartes: where the slightest suspicion of a doubt will be enough to make me reject any one of my beliefs.)

5. Positive Revenge: Bad Grace and a flash of optimism (Do we deserve happiness?)

Bad Grace occurs when we are acting good begrudgingly and are not doing it out of the goodness of our hearts. Hence the outcome may be moral but the origin is not. When we do something begrudgingly, it is born out of injustice and unfairness. Partly we may be expecting something in return as well (be it material or an act of gratitude). Hence its origins are calculative.

In order to achieve Positive Revenge in the moral sense, we are to give of ourselves without the occurrence of Bad Grace. Bad Grace limits the good that the agent will do and in turn also places a burden upon the person who has benefited from the act of good.

This is something which I am highly conscious of now and am highly critical of myself for my past incidences of Bad Grace. But today in a very mundane setting, I found myself with Bad Grace once more.

I allowed two children of two different families to take a seat before me in the line. Their parents did not say a word of thanks. And wonders of all wonders, one mother even jumped my queue in the end though she had clearly stated that her son would go after me earlier. And there I was thinking: Hey! How come these people did not even say a word of thanks? How come she jumped me in the queue?

Bad Grace? Yes! But I did not react upon it though I did feel like stating it out so that I could enlighten them of the fact but then thought against it. Still, I am troubled by my reaction. Will be back to write more after I deliberate on this.

Meanwhile, I had a flash of optimism which I must admit has been more rare than a blue moon for a long time now. As human beings, I understand that we are not entitled to happiness and this is only right. We may not even deserve it but then I suddenly realized that we can be deserving of it. And the way to work towards being deserving of happiness is obvious: to do our sincere best to be good and deserving human beings.

4. Positive Revenge and "The Heart of Darkness" (Joseph Conrad)

Through the novella, I came to confront "Positive Revenge" through the idea of Kurtz's brave and insane embrace of Death. Why Insane? Because it is against every biological imperative of survival that is programmed into our physical being. And this is our very natural reaction and aversion to death which later, I shall reveal to be but an anti-climatic and lackluster phenomenon.

Of Death, there are many kinds but the two of the gravest importance to me are of Physical Death (where we become null and inactive agents) and the Death of the Ego (symbolised as Kurtz when he willingly steps over the edge as opposed to the "Hesitant Foot" that Marlow presents. Indeed, Marlow still seeks to preserve himself, to still hope for benefits to himself and lacks the conviction.)

Conrad writes of the lackluster and anti-climatic struggle that we pit against Death.
Why is this the case? Because for all that we resist and run away from, death is pre-determined and indeed it is within our very nature itself to perish. In turn, in our escapism, we prioritize wrongly and place too much value on existence for its own sake. We drink at it as if it is a drug and forget that existence is nothing without deed and deed is nothing without death.

When our perishable Ego perishes, Legacy of deed is then all that is left. These are the forces that are set into motion by us and that which can exist into infinity. It is through our deed/s that we set our feet firm and renounce ourselves as "mere playthings of time". As shown through Kurtz's lover (which his death is almost continuous, never withdrawn from her by the passage of time), we should not be prone to forget, to get waylaid by obstacles and not prone to tire under the passage of time. True enough, our love for the good will ensure the execution of our deed/s and their persistence even after our deaths.

Of the phenomenon of Death, various factors come into play. First, I mention of "That which kills" and argue that from colorful and loud agents of death come great possibility for beautiful Positive Revenge.

The agent of Death can deliver its act as according to various reasons. It may be of chance. To which I stress the importance of actively seeking to enact Positive Revenge with every precious moment before the random executioner comes to rest on us its cleaver. That which kills can also come upon us out of carelessness and non-intention. Lastly, it may be of agenda. This is most often the case whereby the agent has knowledge of the consequences of its actions but still chooses the course of action nonetheless.

The second factor in the phenomenon of Death is the process by which the Ego comes to pass and becomes the deceased. The measure of a man is how he acts in Pain as opposed to Pleasure. Why is this so? This is because it is always easier to give of oneself and rise above oneself in a privileged position of pleasure (of satisfaction, adequacy and possible abundance) but only in pain, can we determine if the man is able to possess conviction and purpose, to rise above and beyond the innate drive for self-preservation. Will he persevere to make meaning of his existence and to leave a mark of infinity? Many great men have done so, Socrates, Jesus and Gandhi.

The last factor of the phenomenon of Death is the audience (immediate and extended). We come to consider the effects of the death of the Ego on the audience. How has Positive Revenge affected the audience? Sad to say, many of us remain trapped in our immediate human sphere of concerns and would not be able to learn value from the act of Positive Revenge if we do not consider of the loss of things (even people) that are of no apparent value to them. We do not consider of others in such a manner because we do not see the stark reality of us being a family of man and instead focus predominantly on our kin. Reflection and moral education is then brought about if there are spiritually mature individuals to make light of the Positive Revenge of the deceased. Through the colorful nature of the process of death, personal moral education and reflection can also be brought about.

18. Love: Romantic Love, How much and Why?

After settling the integration and redefinition of Romantic Love, I move on to explore new aspects of the topic. The first question that I wish to delve more into is "How much should we love?"

The unconditional nature of Romantic Love makes it seem as though we must forgo ourselves. The answer is yes and no. Total forgoing of ourselves would not be optimal as since by being unloving to ourselves, we in turn pose a burden on those who have to care for us. Thus we must care for ourselves in order to care for others effectively. As Grayling puts it, "We owe to our neighbors as much as we owe to ourselves." But the unconditional clause means that we still prioritize the other above ourselves as both the exalted and destitute as Levinas puts it.

The second question is "What do we stand to gain from Romantic Love?"

Physical Love grants us physical pleasure, egotistical pleasure (on being valued as a sexually attractive specimen) and the continuation of our genetic line. There is no growth of the individual in this sphere.

Spiritual Love then accords us more benefits as individuals and as a unit. Its unconditional nature teaches us to give of ourselves above self-interest. Thus we learn to move beyond our ego and identity and relate to others as equally important human beings.

Secondly, we also learn of the genuine and honesty by engaging and reciprocating in spontaneous and neutral action.

Thirdly, we acquire the skills of spiritual appreciation of another's Inner Beauty and we come to know what moral knowledge and action is and in turn what the Good is.

We are also not afraid to truly be who we are because we are accepted by our partners in their spiritual love for us.

All of these benefits enable us to achieve Spiritual Growth and derive True Gratification. We then move on to consider the losses form failed Romantic Love to better understand its benefits.

When others engage us with Physical Love but no or inadequate Spiritual Love, we feel hurt from being objectified and from not being accepted as a subject.

17. Love: Integration and re-definition of my understanding of Romantic Love

16 posts later and my thoughts on the topic have expanded much. Thus it is time to do a comprehensive integrative re-definition of my understanding of Romantic Love.

My current understanding of Romantic Love is the combination of Physical Love and Spiritual Love.

Physical Love is the initial stage of Love where human/sexual appreciation of our partner's physical beauty (sexual attractiveness) occurs. This type of love is exclusive in nature since it operates on a conditional "Best Fit" nature. The partner is appreciated and valued as a tool/object of means. Since the biological goal is fixed (namely continuation of the species), this form of love is limited as it is uni-directional, exists in a fixed form and on fixed points of engagement.

In the intermediate phase, Physical Love flows into Spiritual Love. At this point, both are of equal importance. Spiritual Love occurs when there is spiritual appreciation of our partner's inner beauty (moral knowledge and action). It is all-inclusive and unconditional in nature. Our partner is accepted and loved as an "other". There are no fixed directions or form or points of engagement. The point of origin and evolution emanates from a fixed point of being between the two partners' common point of being.

In the final/complete phase, Spiritual Love comes to dominate over Physical Love in importance where True Gratification occurs (both partners grow spiritually) and we are enabled to move towards grasping and practicing True Love through the experience of Romantic Love.

In this complete and final realization of Romantic Love, the partners engage each other in spontaneous and neutral action in full appreciative view of the fragility and finitude of their interaction. The partners love each others as subjects and recognize the possible trappings of ourselves as objects and in turn actively try to overcome such trappings. They then give birth to Love as a force which continues into infinity. Love is indeed all they ever need since it informs and determines its own existence.

To better put across my current understanding of Romantic Love, it is best at this time to state some of our common confusions for Romantic Love.

Confusion 1: Confusion of Methods occurs because Physical Love and human/sexual attraction are innate and do not need to be cultivated. Thus we often confuse and translate its methods to Spiritual Love. This in turn leads us to Confusion 2.

Confusion 2: Confusion of Loins occurs when Physical Love dominates over Spiritual Love. What then happens when we encounter another person who is a "Better Fit"? We then trade up if we base our actions on the falsely prioritized importance of sexual/reproductive goal.

Confusion 3: Confusion of Gratification occurs when others enter into our lives and fill up apparent gaps/voids, it is then easy to mistake that we are in Love as we experience the pleasure of Gratification since a want/need is fulfilled. This is very much similar to the case of Physical Love where a Fit occurs. This Gratification is only temporary and transactionary in nature.

The simple test would then to determine if we still would love the other if they do not fill up those gaps? If we do not, then we are not of the appropriate spiritual acumen and do not possess Spiritual Love for the other. The prevention would be to educate yourself so that you do not need others to fill gaps. You must educate yourself to only need the love of someone and not need anything from someone's Love.

16. Love: Multiplicity?

I move to consider the notion that we can be in romantic love with more than one person. Given the way my thoughts on the topic have grown, I find it necessary to once again define what Romantic Love is. Romantic Love is the combination of being in love with a partner's physical beauty (human/ sexual-reproductive level) and inner beauty (spiritual level).

I started off thinking that it is very easy and human o be in love with more than one person on the basis of physical beauty.

But yet again, it is possible and only right to be in love with every person on a spiritual level. This is if we possess the correct spiritual acumen, then it is only natural that we will be able to appreciate and love all.

So indeed this led me to realize that ironically that is on the human level of physical beauty that we keeps Romantic love as love for the few/one rather than love for the all since it is only natural on a reproductive basis that we want our physical partners exclusively to ourselves to better ensure the success of our offspring. Physical beauty also keeps romantic love an exclusive nature because of its "best fit" nature as opposed to spiritual love's "all fits" nature.

15. Love: Learning how to love Blind

What I wish to construct is an education of how to learn to love blind: past Physical Beauty. I understand Physical Beauty to be physical/sexual attractiveness.

The evolutionary idea of Physical Beauty can explain its importance because it gives clue to the physical health and probability of good genes of our partner. It is the product of good genes and cosmetic upkeep.

Why then would we not pursue Physical Beauty to the maximum? Why then would we not all blindly pursue the most physically beautiful specimen? I agree with Schopenhauer and argue that because it is not merely a case of maximum utility, rather we are programmed biologically to be attracted physically to others on basis of "a best fit" theory, whether its purposes are to counter our genetic flaws or better improve certain strengths. In that sense, Physical Beauty is very much in the eyes of the beholder. Some people are physically endowed so as to be able to "fit" many individuals, thus they are more attractive whereas on the other hand, others are meant to "fit" a more select population.

Physical Beauty however is often not indicative of Inner Beauty, as justified by the Socratean view. My understanding of Inner Beauty is the combination of Moral Knowledge and Moral Action (which is put into effect with determination).

There is then a clash of our reproductive needs with our spiritual needs, our primal love with our romantic love. Indeed, this is another flaw of romantic love whereby the initial engagement may be flawed. Because we are first engaged on a physical plain, we often allow that to mar and dominate our further aesthetic appreciation of the person's Inner Beauty. If we allow our loins to lead, then we may confuse Physical Beauty with Inner Beauty which is not necessarily true, our reproductive drive may invoke our imagination to fill in the then void knowledge of a person's Inner Beauty at early interaction and later counter-refute any discrepancies we should encounter.

I dare not say at this point which is more important since both have noble goals, one the continuation of the species and the other the fulfillment and growth of our spiritual self. As I have stated before, to enter a loving relationship is an unconditional and in turn binding pledge from one spiritual being to another, so to love truly means that one must bear the task and responsibility of integrating the two and create the perfect case scenario of the attraction of Physical Beauty and appreciation of Inner Beauty.


In order to love in an ascendant manner like Plato propounds in "The Symposium", the lower rungs of the ladder would be of Physical Beauty and the higher rungs would be of Inner Beauty. With reference to my previous posts, we find that spontaneous neutral love and de-objectification and re-humanization of our partners can only exist in the spiritual realm of love of our partner's Inner Beauty. In the realm of Physical Beauty, we only value and interact with each other based on qualifying attributes that we find in each other. Since this is based on qualifying attributes, Physical Beauty is in very essence conditional. With conditionality, we will never be able to see our partners in their full glory. Likewise, we would not be able to understand our subject-object dialectic. Our concern is how do we achieve this ascendant love.

First, we must have patience to outlast our loins and indeed endure the possible loss of our loins.

Secondly, we must act out the romantic engagement with appropriate aesthetic appreciation skills: fair-minded, impartial, cultured, knowledgeable, unbiased, balanced and truthful. (as put forth by Hume)

Does this answer the question of being in love with flaws of our partners? Yes! Because to possess appropriate aesthetic appreciation skills, we would be able to be fair-minded and accept. To be accept is to love.

Does this also mean that by appreciating, we judge? No! Appreciation is not the same as judging. Judging involves deciding between what is right or wrong from a fixed point of evaluation. Appreciation involves seeing clearly and acceptance.

This Life will be Long

The Killers- Human

I did my best to notice
when the call came down the line
up to the platform of surrender
I was brought but I was kind
and sometimes I get nervous
when I see an open door

close your eyes, clear your heart

cut the cord
are we human or are we dancer
my sign is vital, my hands are cold
and I'm on my knees
looking for the answer
are we human or are we dancer

pay my respects to grace and virtue
send my condolences to good
give my regards to soul and romance
they always did the best they could
and so long to devotion,
you taught me everything I know
wave good bye, wish me well

you gotta let me go
are we human or are we dancer
my sign is vital, my hands are cold

and I'm on my knees
looking for the answer
are we human or are we dancer

will your system be all right
when you dream of home tonight
there is no message we're receiving
let me know is your heart still beating

3. Positive Revenge: On Becoming a more Responsible Person

Firstly with my understanding that time and existence is finite and to achieve the ideal of the "Eternal Return" (for those that I love, I may have failed my philosophy and my old teacher but as of this moment, I am not spiritually akin to state that I wish for any "Eternal Return" for myself) I strive during this holiday period to communicate with and establish a genuine human connection with those who have enriched my life.

Also with my understanding that as humans possessing a constructed identity, we often are not even completely honest with ourselves. Indeed, we often engage in too much self-justification and think of ourselves as better than we actually are.

So I have to be honest with myself as a true and erroneous being, not the much more wholesome and justified identity that I wish to see myself as. I must try to get past the identity that I put before my witness-consciousness so that I don't engage in self-deluding hypocrisy.

6. Art: Parallels and re-considerations from "Aesthetic and morality ( Elisabeth Schellekens) "

"Aristotle and Plato- all art has a moral nature . Affect the way in which we see and relate to the world. Direct our sympathies and emotions. Constitutive element of our broader morality. Music is most directly moral, un-mediated correlation with our emotions"

Here is the first parallel, which is the moral nature that I am interested in propounding for art: as a means to bridge towards the truth and the good.

"Plato- art as representational art forms (painting and poetry) rejected because of their metaphysical poverty. The objects of the world are already mere imitations of the ideal and universal forms of such objects, theses art forms are then imitations of imitations."

The second parallel rests in this idea that art should be a means to bridge and not merely the artist's attempt at reproduction and representation. Stark and confrontational art that breaks the consumer out of his/her comfort zone and to make the attempt to grasp the bridging process for his/her own.

"The aesthetic value: of a thing, person or event has in virtue of its distinctly aesthetic qualities. An aesthetic experience is characterized by 3 features: unity, complexity and intensity. When we engage in aesthetic contemplation, we adopt a unique mental stance with a certain kind of detachment. When we appreciate something aesthetically, we do not look at its practical function. This attitude is marked by a detached and open awareness. This aesthetic experience can be: contemplative or reflective, active or passive."

This is an aspect that I had not explored into. So now, I seek to integrate the idea of Schelleken's "Aesthetic Experience" with my understanding of Art as means of Bridging towards the Truth.

What follows is a synthesis: I am interested in the active (consumer to take ownership of the process of bridging) contemplative (thinking beyond oneself) and reflective (thinking of oneself) effect of art on the consumer when the consumer has an aesthetic experience )when the real and imagined senses of the consumer are engaged) from interaction with the work of art.

Before we move on, I wish to spend more time on discussing the contemplative and reflective aspects. Contemplative effects of Art can take the form of broadening our moral knowledge into unknown areas (perspectivism) and to be beside ourself and our cultural mores to adopt controversial positions (to satisfy curiosities and purge taboos). Contemplation should and often flows into reflection where the consumer reassesses and reaffirms his/her moral thought. When contemplation flows into reflection, the consumer has taken a positive step towards bridging the truth.

Good Art is aesthetically appealing and creates a positive aesthetic experience. A positive aesthetic experience is when good art is able to engage and enthrall the consumer to take up the process of owning his/her own bridging towards the good/truth.

What then makes Good Art aesthetic appealing? Good Art is when the tools of its art-form are made use of in a balanced way to to engage real and imagined senses in a "Pure" manner.

Aesthetic appeal then translates into the ability of the engaged consumer to see the truth and want to channel his/her energies towards ownership of the process of bridging towards the truth.

Now it is important at this point to take note that I do not wish to reduce art to a mere epistemological tool. In fact, I see entertainment and pleasure as a prerequisite of Good art. In order to explain this assertion, I will compare representational art and Good art and its pleasurable and entertaining effect on its consumers.

With representational art, pleasure derives only from appreciation of it as a good replica of its subject and the skill of the artist is often appreciated. The pleasure is of a very here-and-now and immediate form.

Whereas with Good art, the consumer is engaged and has take-aways from the interaction. There is a deeper and prolonged resonance. There is both the pleasures described above and an ingrained pleasure via the active process of contemplation flowing into reflection where the consumer has made the aesthetic experience a part of his/herself.

The Hope

Much doubt begins to take up residence in Dean's mind. It is unlikely that it can be a rat, he thinks to himself. Something more subversive, something more low-brow, something more disturbing. He lines up his suspicions before him, as if before a firing squad and he names them one by one. His brutal pain reveals itself in the deprecatory female names thet he levels upon them. He feels the illusion of being in greater control as he exercises and successfully dominates them mentally.

One night, he awakes from slumber for no apparent reason except that his pain has willed it. His eyes fling open and for the brief moment before his thoughts catch yup with his action, he is but a skin vessel with functional muscular contractions. The vacuum suck of harsh reality rapes him form the temporary respite of slumber into the conscious skin vessel. He is awake, now. But what? The thoughts flood into their usual progression of questions without answers, self-pity, self-loathe, anxiety, hurt and empty meaninglessness.

The rustle! There it is again! Flipping onto his stomach, he probes the squalid and small space that is his room,. Nothing in sight. But the movement rings out constant. It is very much alive. The suspects now line up in his mental-scape once again. Roaches, they must be cockroaches! A breeding mass of them in a dank cupboard ox under his bed is hardly solid anymore. It is probably chewed up, eaten, shit out and re-consumed. He imagines the the pile of dry bits and pieces that the cockroaches perpetuate in motion by crawling and burrowing within and without. The cockroaches must be so aplenty that they bored, climb all over , fornicate with and defecate on each other. Each is a part of the whole yet each is the whole because if even one ceased its devil dance, the whole would collapse into non-existence.

Dean holds his breath and is once sick to his core at the mere thought that he shares the same air as the circus orgy beneath him. He hols it bravely and fens off his anxiety attack. Good clean air, he repeats to himself. Good, clean air..... But suddenly, he lets loose his tightly clamped lips as if involuntarily and takes in a huge drink of air. And then a sly smile begins to form on his face as he closes his eyes and dreams of the visual scene of the orgy. As he revisits the sandman once again, a tear streaks down upon his cursed face.

Lil Dean and his Hope

Lil Dean had a hope. But recently, he is under the impression that he has lost it. To be perfectly honest, he has not lost it. He let go of it and it was torn from him. Not taken, mind you but torn. You may ask how can anything tear away from us something which one gives up? It can be done and has been done. The answer is simple: something that matters a lot but has no way of becoming reality. Dean was a curious bystander as the action was committed with force but with a good and generous demeanor. It was for the best, the puzzle master said. It was for the best.

How so? What is the good to be born out of this? Lil Dean does not know. Perhaps he will never know. The mechanics of this yarn of crushing tale is not open to him because the puzzle master has yanked the truth and held a stubborn prisoner along with it, his hope. The puzzle master, she is love yet she is the enemy. Lil Dean knows all this but of the truth, he knows nowt.

So he lies in bed, day and night. But it is at night that he hears things. It sounds like a plastic bag rustling. Like something is moving. He turns and illuminates his room with the strobe light that he keeps by his side. Nothing. He observes, peering into the dark like a stealthy jackal prowling. Still nothing. And so he lies. Still, again. And he slips into slumber. But there, it goes again. The rustling sounds again. This time, it is tentative and shy as if it senses his stirring. He awakes. His memory tells him: yes, you did hear something, you swine! And so he repeats the routine. Illuminate, nothing. Lay ambush, nothing.

The next night, he does not even sleep. He just lies there and listens. It rustles fervently. More and more. It must think him a fool and asleep. Lil Dean imagines some kind of infectious rat. But how could a rat have made it into his room? From where and what does it feed on? As his mind wrestles with the possibilities and improbabilities, the perverse rustling continues. It even purrs. Or rumbles. The sound that it makes sickens Dean to his core. And that, it hits him. In all its grotesque truth, it is his hope.

He imagines his hope in the form of a putrid rat with disease-ridden cantankerous teeth. It probably has bristling fur made yellow and stringy by neglect. It is hungry and mean. It is scared and it is this fear which makes it strong. It is no longer of him but has mutated and persisted in form and purpose in a rabies driven mad biological creature. It is vile and it sickens him to his core. To think that with every breath, he is drawing on a part of its expelled air. On its life.

5. Art, Music: As tool to Bridge towards the Truth

With Hendrix, we observe acid blues rock at its best and we see that with music, we can tell how people have changed.

Back then people could appreciate this because they bothered to sit back and listen
and ponder to find meaning out of the apparent jibble-jabble of notes and sound.

But now you find that people want catchy repetitive hooks that they can identify with quickly. They don't want anything too complicated as they are lazy mentally. They want their gratification fast and easy.

2. Positive Revenge: Parallels from "Socrates in Love" (Christopher Phillips)

We should live Love. All our dealings, large and small, impact others and we should act so that they will be moved to live a life of unconditional love. We don't have to look at saving a life in a grandiose way.

To practice unconditional Love, you need to be wholly interested and devote a great deal of effort to discovering their deepest hopes and do what is best for the beloved with no though or expectation of personal reward.

We need to dispense with all pejorative labels and see ourselves as flawed and foible and never put ourselves above anyone.

Not only must we love those that we are ordinarily not predisposed to love, we should also allow ourselves to love by those who don't love us. Or else we will be keeping ourselves only in situations when we have control over the "loving situation".

Bertrand Russell expounds the Socratic and Buddhist ideal over the example found in the New Testament because in unconditional Love, no one really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment. Socrates, upon his death, never exhorted his followers to exact revenge on his persecutors. Instead, he told them to reach out to others in love, more than ever. (Positive Revenge!) Russell finds this more worthy than what is advanced in the New Testament where anyone who does not believe in Jesus will not be able to escape the damnation of Hell and shall not be forgiven.

The Old Testament also speaks of Unconditional Love of Man for God. Job is in anguish because he has apparently been forsaken by one he himself would never forsake. Indeed, his very actions and persistence to stick to the course of Love in a Loveless world is a form of positive revenge and encourages all who strive.

To give birth to Unconditional Love, empathy must be gained. Can you "teach" empathy? Do you have to first suffer cruelty and harshness yourself to identify with others who have suffered? Nussbaum asserts that all intelligence has its emotional component. Once emotions are suffused with intelligence and discernment, an awareness of value or importance is achieved and this cannot easily be sidelined in accounts of ethical judgment.

Positive Revenge brigs about a heroism and intensity of thought, feeling and acts of love which continue ad infinitum, irregardless of the mortal lifespan of their agents.

As my mum has contended, would not people who make positive revenge a way of life be "fools"? The moral-realist's position is that if you believe the worst in people, they will be all too happy to comply and show you their worst. But if you believe the best in them, they may be inspired to bring out the goodness within and act accordingly. And since our end goal is love, we must believe and act in the course of love so as to give it room to grow.

14. Love: Socrates in Love (Christopher Phillips)

Eros is free love, a realization of a higher desire.

How do we know what we should desire? If you fulfill a desire and yet afterward it leaves you feeling empty or ashamed, then you have not fulfilled Eros. Eros can only be one that makes you happy and that makes happier all those with whom you are doing the fulfilling.

Then there was a double standard that many feminists and the rest of us often fall into as well. According to Nin, she states that women should focus on reeducating men about the true ways of Eros because women are the only gender still fully in touch with true Eros. This leads us to often apply double standards and accuse or put the blame on the male partner when a relationship fails.

An analysis of Oedipus shows his path towards Eros as he persisted in his search for the truth out of love for his people, even after being warned by others. Likewise, those who loved Oedipus tried to derail him from his efforts even if it meant putting themselves in harm's way.

Of Sexual desire conflicting with the achievement of Eros, Cephalus argues that we control and channel our passions in ways that lead to the loving pursuit of those that matter more- how to become a more excellent human being and how to make our world a more loving one. Plato supports that we first must indulge our appetites neither too much or too little, just enough to lay them to sleep and prevent them and thier enjoymenst and pains from interferring with the higher principle.

Heavenly Eros is then achieved through searching within your beloved for such manisfestations of beauty when we learn that the beauty of our partner's soul is more valuable than the beauty of thier bodies.

Socrates distinguishes between the 3 kinds of lovers: the "evil lover" who is out to serve him/herself and makes him/herself agreeable in order to enslave and deceive another and loves only as wolves love lambs, the "non-lover" whose excessive prudence does not stir any emotional response and attachment from his/her partner and the "noble lover who does not seek tat which is best for him/herself but is concerned only for his/her beloved.

The best lovers are creative and make their partner feel more free than when they were before they entered into them. There is also total acceptance for each other as they act as each other's non-judgmental mirror. They lovingly and gently reveal aspects of ourselves that may be difficult to acknowledge, showing only as much as we can take in at any given time. The best lovers are inspired to make beauty out of what at present is its converse.

Gasset states that we can find in love the most decisive symptom of what a person is.
If a person is not sensitive, how can his love be sentient? If he is not profound, how can his love be deep? As one is, so is his love.

Heavenly EROS outlet

4. Art (Alain De Botton)

Artists and philosophers not only show us what we have felt, they also present our experiences more poignantly and intelligiently than we have been able to: they give shape to aspects of our lives that we identify as our own yet could never have understood so clearly on our own. The greatest works speak to us without knowing of us.

"The Sorrows of Young Werther" is an example of this. It is a book which even Napoleon used to read on his campaigns. It tells of how the apparently kind and yet infinitely cruel manner with which the person who does not love deals with the one who does. And falling out of love "grants" one the license to hurt.

1. Positive Revenge: I AM MANURE! (The Positive Revenge of the Virtuous)

Barrels loaded against the Injustice of it all, the Virtuous will launch a last stand. A fatalistic rebel cry that will not yield and add to the cycle of blame, pain and suffering.

When hurt, people normally lash out at others (without concern or taking responsibility for their actions) and thus perpetuate and feed the monster that is suffering and unhappiness, inadvertently unleashing it upon others.

The Virtuous refuse that fate! Instead, their Kamikaze dive will be a tongue in cheek middle finger to all selfishness and injustice of the world.

I understand that I am already dead.

I was wrong to think that I had a right to experience happiness. How deluded was I to think that I could experience happiness and comfort like others?

I was wrong to think that my sadness was special in form and existence. When all around me, everyone is in pain.

Adopting from Seneca, I do not expect any positives from this world. Fickle fortune can only take away from me, not tear away.

Adopting from Nietzsche, I will fight and strive to extend beyond myself and use pain and suffering as manure to feed come what may.

Adopting from Schopenhauer, I understand that pain and suffering are inescapable facts of life.

When I combine all these understandings, I strive to make it so that all that dies from me will become nourishing life for others. I strive to make a positive out of a negative, to make something out of a null, to fill in for others with my hollow self.

What greater beauty can be afforded? In my process of un-becoming, how great would be if someone could become.

My ideal death would be a outwardly giving one, not in the hope of being lauded a hero but only to give injustice and unhappiness a slap in the face.

4. On pain: Ignorance of the Virtuous

Of course we are never fully virtuous beings but there may be some unethical acts that we have never done and can never imagine doing.

Part of forgiveness must arise from understanding and coming to terms with the inner motivations of the perpetrator.

But if we are virtuous in that aspect, can we ever really know of that angle of human motivation? Perhaps we can never imagine it. Thus perhaps we can never forgive it and never transcend the scars with which the act has etched upon us.

Seneca supports me here. He defines frustration as the collision of a wish with an unyielding reality. We are then hurt mot by those we least expected and cannot fathom. So the task is here to prepare for our wishes the softest landing possible on the adamant wall of reality.

Wisdom is then learning not to aggravate the world's obstinacy through our own responses, through spasms of rage, self-pity, anxiety, bitterness, self-righteous and paranoia.

Seneca states that what makes us angry are dangerously optimistic notions about what the world and other people are like. This is critically determined by what we think of as normal. We are only angry when we are denied an object that we think we are rightfully entitled to. The sad fact of reality for the Virtuous is then that we cannot always explain our destiny by referring to our moral worth. All that transpires is often a cruel but morally meaningless by-product of random elements.

To him: Happiness is a productum, something preferred.

I Persevered (Apocalypse Now)

So I did. It beckoned me.

Seems like we all came to the end of the river. And all the hanging corpses and decapitated heads were of no shock value. They did not even register. Even the water buffalo which was hacked into severed pieces, its eyes lolly-gagging at the sea of humanity before it rang short and little.

The cruelty and insanity of life (made cruel by Roles and Egos) was incomparably scarier than whatever Death could bring. We dehumanize and treat each other to such an extent that even death is a welcome embrace.

How many of us would be content enough to face death, lord over and deprive death, teach death, talk to death, befriend death and then allow death to do its job?

How many of us would be content enough with the meaning of our lives to do all that?

I Gave Up (Apocalypse Now)

Yes, I gave up midway. I had to watch some funnies to clear my head.

Never since American History X have I been so mentally disturbed by a film.

And here I was thinking that Duvall's Lt Col Kilgore and his "Ride of the Valyrie" sweep upon that village to secure good 6-foot swells to surf was insane.

But as they pushed upriver, each encounter turned more cruel and mad. (From the Playboy bunnies "Doll" scene to them wasting a sampan full of farmers.)

And of course it is fiction. But still.....

There was a time when I would just condemn such film representations aside and smile at the nihilism of life. But now, it just turns my stomach and makes me so sad. You may say that it is just fiction but I know that the reality of the war must have been worse.

If ever you have been in a situation whereby you have witnessed human cruelty or hostility, you would have remembered how your heart pounded. You would have remembered how your breath then turned heavy and inward. Remember that and imagine that every moment of your experience feels like that. To the point that maybe you just give in to the overwhelming otherness of the feeling and stop being you.

I wonder if I have the testicular and more importantly mental fortitude to watch on.

My Moon

Who are you? Who are you to me? Look at you, floating in silence beside my being as if we are of one unit.

When we spin as we do in cosmic dance, my people have seen and still see you. They have worshiped and still worship you.

Remember when you turned red, we laughed as they scurried and killed each other in blood-letting orgies and justified obscenities on our innocent brother Sun's infracted beams of light.

In a sense, I was to blame as well. My atmosphere had blocked and bended selectively. Perhaps, it was in me to secretly want to belittle and intimidate my people as they kill me daily in so many ways. Maybe it was out of a vengeful spirit. But yet as we laughed at how they scurried, I then later cried in solitude as I felt their blood soak my soul and you.... You just turned your beautiful featureless self away to let me cry in bitter loneliness. Abandonment in space echoes so much greater since solitude is the norm in such expanse.

When we first danced, we wrapped each other in embrace tightly as we spun in revolution. Your weight of being used to trash my waters and my waves made impressions on the surfaces of my earth. Your weight formed me on the surface.

Now calmer waves prevail. As time has passed, you have slipped further. My dance pattern is to blame as I foxtrot to a faster inner rhythm and the waves of my oceans spin you with feckless torque outwards and outwards.

Who am I? Who am I to you? If my being of being is what denies our eternal Dance.

3. On pain: Freud and Eliot on Happiness

Freud states that our pleasure is entirely subjective and not only is our pleasure idiosyncratic, it is revealing of our idiosyncrasy.

If you want to find out who you are, recognize what makes you happy.

Pain is not the ultimate mode of self-realization. It is merely provisional and a protest…Pleasure is Nature’s test, her sign of approval.

We need only understand our pleasure so we can get to our pleasure.

Pain is a protest against the absence of pleasure.

It is only through pleasure that individualism becomes possible.

The problem which I posit is how modern man as “clever animals” then safeguard and sustain their pleasure-seeking and how pleasure-seeking informs their daily decisions as the lifeline to everything that matters in life. Also, the tool to individualism is exclusionary and often can be used as a camouflage in order to deny others (who become barriers to their realization of personage) of their right to pleasure as well.

T.S Eliot counter-argues by stating the parallel text. We are always driven to approach and avoid the objects of desire and what makes us feel most alive makes us feel like we are risking our lives. (The numbing ordinary of “Happiness” or contentment)

In this life, uncanniness is way in excess of canniness and we feel like we are ineluctably involved in our lives yet we do not know what we are doing.

A sense of aliveness displaces a sense of certainty as a paramount consideration.

Our Needs (real or imagined) inform our direction in life and if needs then become the only sole and paramount informer of our directions in life.

Who are we to trust anyone and their future actions upon the pledges of today? This is highly disturbing. Does a change in need then justify a 360 degrees change in direction? Does a person with different set of needs then exist wholly as a new person from which previous engagements are null?

If we all operate from self-orientated need system, then this is what we can give each other: temporary and disguised Happiness.

Around and about madness (Adam Phillips)

The mad- people who, by not playing the game, makes us wonder what the game is.

Indeed why the rest of us have consented to play it?

They are the Cultural outlaws or odd prophets who are unable or unwilling to follow rules.

The term "Mad" is also normally used about someone when their sociability begins to break down.

Talking about madness, in other words is a way of talking about our preferred versions of a life that we protect and nurture or prefer to be rid of

A Conundrum about "Mad" people: are people mad because they are isolated or are people isolated because they are mad?

In their isolation, the mad are dispossessed individuals who are prevented from adding to the stock of available reality. This raises the question of powers of representation and its influence on who society terms as "mad".

In other modern accounts, madness can also be understood as a person’s ingenious though debilitating self-cure for the obstacles thrown up by his individual development

"Madness" is then the ways that we have found to protect ourselves or cure ourselves- defences, symptoms, eccentricities- both the problem and solution

Peter Goldie: Moral and Ethical Responsibility and Punishment

I have made a booboo of myself and my actions. I have wrongly associated and enacted punishment with holding others morally and ethically responsible.

As I was discussing with Leung, I hold people responsible for their actions and the consequences of their actions if these actions are voluntary.

I rightfully do not hold people responsible for a morally-flawed disposition or character trait. But that is as far as I will go because being a moral-realist, the actions and consequences of rational beings affect others. And it is on this plain that we can very much control and remedy.

But as often is the case with such understandings, justice and fairness comes into consideration. Should I extend and expect this moral and ethical responsibility to others? Is it too demanding of others? When a lot of people that I know of just want to feel good about themselves and their actions or maybe even just feel good. At what cost? They kinda bugger all.

Because many others do not think of the consequences of their actions, they operate on a reactionary level. They flatten themselves out, "It's not my fault, I can't help it, I'm just a...."

It is perhaps because of this frustration that I have wrongfully associated punishment with the failure of moral and ethical responsibility. Who am I to punish anyone?

Yes, at the end of the day, it is the same. I can only show them love and give them happiness, I should not expect anything back from them.

But since we are reflective creatures and are able to remedy past actions and circumspect against future actions, we should and this is what I preach and what I will be doing. Circumspection and forward planning against our future selves is important since strength of will may come too late or not be enough. Thus by planning against our future selves and putting things in our way (so that we are unable to carry out the wrong actions even if we wanted to), we in effect guard others against our possible failings.