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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: one_less who wrote (82332)	2/8/2010 9:15:32 PM
From: LLCF	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

youtube.com Golf ball sized conciousness... sound familiar? Pope Greg? LOL youtube.com DAK

To: one_less who wrote (82332)	2/10/2010 10:29:58 AM
From: Solon	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

"To the adventurer, however, mystery represents more than the potential of discovery, it is opportunity to go beyond and become more…more, not less." Firstly, the true premise that mystery is the unknown or the unexplained leads to the inevitable acknowledgment that MOST of existence is a mystery to MOST people--whether they are elite "adventurers"--or not. Secondly, the opportunity to reduce ignorance (to make a bit of the unknown...KNOWN) is an opportunity which has no predictable outcome (as you agree) and therefore it is also an occasion to become "less"--as you judge these things. "Information revealed while engaging a mystery might be difficult or impossible to incorporate into the accepted order and explanation of existence. Disorientation can be debilitating for some people" No doubt. In which case the mystery remains unsolved. "So the adventurer must engage mystery with the hope of betterment" Referring to humans as adventurers because they engage the unknown on a daily basis is quite quaint and sweet. Like every day is through the looking glass! Survival prods us to "hope" for the better when we confront our ignorance or peer behind a tree. We would prefer to find food than to be food. But hoping for a good outcome (when outcomes, as you say, are unpredictable) is neither surprising nor mysterious. The urge to survival goes far beyond the human species and has been well researched. "In that sense, specific goals are meaningless but a vision of becoming something better is purposeful in and of itself." That sense (that humans engage ignorance with hopefulness) does NOT speak to specific goals being meaningless--only that EVERY SINGLE GOAL carries within it the hope of survival and the anticipation of positive value. "So by the very nature of engagement in mystery, I am defining it as a virtuous endeavor." Nonsense, really. Virtue is FAR MORE than hoping for the best in an unpredictable outcome. ALL humans do that and ALL humans peer behind the veil of ignorance into "mystery". If one asserts that all humans are thus virtuous, then one removes all moral value from human existence. The word becomes meaningless and the exercise of TRUE VIRTUE is rejected or dismissed. The unknown has no moral quality inherent in the condition. And the (unknowing) people striving to know have no inherent moral quality by virtue of this striving to know. Seeking to remove ignorance is an evolutionary trait for survival. It is the method life uses to adapt to environmental conditions and manage surroundings. Virtue and vice are human constructs for categorizing our behaviors. What was virtuous to Hitler and millions of others was anathema to those against his ideas. So we cannot know the nature of the unknown ethereal. We cannot even presume that the ethereal includes insubstantial agents capable of virtue. Nor can we ascribe either virtue or vice to individuals confronting the unknown except on an individual basis with regard to precise facts and human consensus.