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PaperclipPerfector  23d ago (text post)   3368 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 24, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Looking for a fun Friday reading? This man claims to be free of all emotions and passions, and of living a wonderful life:

http://an.actualfreedom.com.au/

I live in peace and tranquillity, beholden to none. With no loyalty to bind me, I have nothing to defend. With nothing to defend I have no need to attack.

Do you think if I threaten his kid or his wife that he wouldn't jump to their defence? Or at least have the impulse to do something

Or am I reading his words incorrectly/too literally?

I kinda hope he’s not being that literal as I think a life with no feelings would be one with little joy or connection or compassion. If I can kill without feeling anything, I’m capable of being a moral monster.

You have to go a step deeper to see it. What is it that drives one to kill? It is the malicious instinctual passions that humans have inherited due to our animal nature.

These automatically form themselves into a 'self'/'Self', which is what you who is reading this right now are experiencing yourself to be.

The key with actual freedom is that this self disappears in its entirety. Along with it go the 'good' and 'bad' feelings which includes the malice that would drive one to kill (even without remorse or in a "cold" way). Absent that, one is automatically & intrinsically benevolent.

The only way to really understand this is to have a Pure Consciousness Experience where you can temporarily experience being alive in the manner described above. You can read people's descriptions about it here, it is extremely common and probably everybody has had one at some point in their life: http://actualfreedom.com.au/actualism/others/corr-pce.htm .

Honestly I wish you could turn feelings off. I dislike feeling envy, anger, hate, despair etc. It would be nice if I could just get on with my day without always questioning what's the point.

Interesting read but I think there is no useful information in that post. However he has another post that has a link to a video that says that the digital yuan will take over the petrodollar as the reserve currency. Glad I saw that, I found it convincing. I'm going to try get in early.

Honestly I wish you could turn feelings off. I dislike feeling envy, anger, hate, despair etc.

What about the "good" feelings though?

You can't turn off your aforementioned "bad" feelings because they are inextricably linked to the "good" feelings. For eg., hate is linked to love. Which is why, Richard advices minimizing both the good & the bad feelings, while maximizing the felicitous & innocuous ones. Then, you will eventually have a PCE, wherein the feelings are in abeyance.

I would forgo the good feelings if it meant I’d also get to forgo the bad. But then, I’d count melancholy, dissatisfaction, and ennui as bad feelings, even though it seems to me that each of those is as much the absence of any particular emotion as it is an emotional state in itself. So the whole thing is probably impractical from the get go.

(Edited to fix grammar)

Great! You can do it, then - I speak from experience :)

The key is that there are certain feelings, termed felicitous feelings, that are distinct from the 'good' feelings in that they can occur without any specific condition triggering them. The very basic level of it is generally being in a good mood. What Richard discovered, and many have replicated, is that it's possible to minimize the 'good' and 'bad' feelings, while maximizing the felicitous feelings. The latter is important because you can't just turn feelings off completely -- that affective energy has to 'go' somewhere, and the felicitous feelings is where it can increasingly pour into.

It is possible to experience being conscious sans feelings entirely, but this is only doable by 'you' (as in the 'ego' currently thinking and the 'soul' currently feeling whilst reading this) going temporarily into abeyance in 'your' entirety. As 'you' are 'your' feelings, when 'you' go, so too do the 'feelings', because they are one and the same. This experience, termed a Pure Consciousness Experience (PCE), is where you can experientially see that you do actually exist, as a flesh and blood human being, and that the 'identity' that was just thinking and feeling itself do substantially exist, doesn't, actually. The identity is very 'real', but not actual -- exactly like Santa Claus is very real to a child, but does not actually exist. Absent identity in its entirety, life is intrinsically wondrous, enjoyable, and the universe is experienced to be what it actually is, which is intrinsically benevolent, benign, and friendly.

I cannot recommend it highly enough. For various descriptions of PCEs, see: http://actualfreedom.com.au/actualism/others/corr-pce.htm .

I must ask that you post these with your original account.

I messaged you about this

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Can mods officially confirm that using a second account--for whatever reasonable purpose--is categorically disallowed?

(For the record: I'm not OP, nor do I have a 2nd account)

EDIT: It is in the rules

We strongly discourage people from making alt accounts without good reason, and in the absence of a good reason, we consider alt accounts to be bannable on sight.

Alright, so alt accounts are permissible with good reasons provided.

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