A Quote by Ayn Rand
When one turns from reason to faith, when one rejects the absolutism of reality, one undercuts the absolutism of one's consciousness - and one's mind becomes an organ one cannot trust any longer. It becomes what the mystics claim it to be: a tool of distortion.
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At some point free expression absolutism becomes childish and unserious.
Psychologically experienced consciousness is therefore no longer pure consciousness; construed Objectively in this way, consciousness itself becomes something transcendent, becomes an event in that spatial world which appears, by virtue of consciousness, to be transcendent.
Faith was intended precisely for the simple, but the quest for certainty and simplicity becomes dangerous when it leads to fanaticism and narrow-mindedness. When reason as such becomes suspect, then faith itself becomes falsified.
Those who claim absolutism is merely a myth are right that it has been misused simply as a byword for political centralisation.
Man is aware; he perceives and interprets the world around him. When he uses logic as a tool for interpretation, it becomes science; when he uses feelings for interpretation, it becomes poetry; when he takes a longer view of his observations, it becomes wisdom.
As brain functioning becomes more and more integrated, consciousness - the mind - becomes more and more invincible, and then any dictate of the mind is immediately followed by the body.
Absolutism is a guarantee of objectionable morals in the same way that absolutism in government is a guarantee of objectionable government.
If faith is a valid tool of knowledge, then anything can be true 'by faith,' and therefore nothing is true. If the only reason you can accept a claim is by faith, then you are admitting that the claim does not stand on its own merits.
For now, decisions are upon us and we cannot afford delay. We cannot mistake absolutism for principle or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate.
Consciousness, when its unburdened by the body, is something thats ecstatic; we use the mind to watch the mind, and thats the meta-nature of our consciousness; we know that we know that we know, and thats such a delicious feeling, but when its unburdened by biology and entropy, it becomes more than delicious: it becomes magical.
Consciousness, when it's unburdened by the body, is something that's ecstatic; we use the mind to watch the mind, and that's the meta-nature of our consciousness; we know that we know that we know, and that's such a delicious feeling, but when it's unburdened by biology and entropy, it becomes more than delicious: it becomes magical.
Distortion upon distortion: . . . the more one uses the mind, the more confused one becomes.
Accumulating knowledge is a form of avarice and lends itself to another version of the Midas story ...man [is] so avid for knowledge that everything that he touches turns to facts; his faith becomes theology; his love becomes lechery; his wisdom becomes science; pursuing meaning, he ignores truth.
The man of authentic self-confidence is the man who relies on the judgment of his own mind. Such a man is not malleable; he may be mistaken, he may be fooled in a given instance, but he is inflexible in regard to the absolutism of reality, i.e., in seeking and demanding truth.
We may sing, 'Crown Him Lord of all,' and rejoice in the tones of the loud-sounding organ and the deep melody of harmonious voices, but still we have done nothing until we have left the world and set our faces toward the city of God in hard practical reality. When faith becomes obedience then it is true faith indeed.
It is hubris, claim the critics of 'absolutism', to suppose that we could ever even approximate to a true description of how the world anyway is. It is bad faith or 'bullshit', respond 'absolutists', to suppose - as the rhetoric of postmodernism implies - that we could seriously live and act with the thought that truth and value are simply our own projections. An attractive feature of 'ineffabilism', as I see it, is that it evades these accusations.
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