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Its agreed upon by almost every reasonable person that fighting, possibly even killing, to defend your self or others against aggressors isn't evil in any way, so if Arjuna fought back it would be fine. I don't know about Vishnu telling him to do it because he's 'in the warrior caste' though.Quote:
Originally Posted by SunTzu123
alright um there was actually several reasons one reason was that Shri Krishna said that the true self never dies and your actually helping them on there path to enlightment
"Thou must look at thy duty. Nothing can be more welcome to a soldier than a righteous
war. Therefore to waver in this resolve is unworthy, O Arjuna!
Blessed are the soldiers who find their opportunity. This opportunity has opened for thee
the gates of heaven.
Refuse to fight in this righteous cause, and thou wilt be a traitor, lost to fame, incurring
only sin.
Men will talk forever of thy disgrace; and to the noble, dishonour is worse than death"
Who rated my thread 1 star? Apparently they don't like OT going back to the old days.
Anyway, keep up the conversation guys! You're doing good so far :D
It's that auto-rating bug. I haven't been able to rate a thread in months, but every thread says I have already rated it.Quote:
Originally Posted by joemanf
H'm, When did this happen?... Oh well. Lol. Thanks for the info :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Rota
Hello.
Here is an essay that I wrote with this particular topic matter in mind:
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The Dilapidation of the Human Condition and the Loss of Innocence
By Conrad Jalowski
In general, humanity is a repressed agglomeration of individuals that lacks self-autonomy and is enthralled to the whim of petty and pestilential passions. Humanity is incapable of altruistic acts and unconditional love. Humanity is torn asunder between a dichotomy of individualistic desires and the desires of the societal/collective order. For a coherent order to emerge as well as ameliorating oneself to become a more balanced, moderate and loving individual capable of pure emotions and concepts, there must exist an equipollence or a balance of powers amongst civil society and individualism. If the demands of society are overbearing and puissant, the human individual becomes repressed and devoid of any inwardness and noted by a lack of self-knowledge. If individualism is too powerful, it will break the bond of the sense of familial duty and one's participation within civil society and overall self-worth within the greater context of the world. Furthermore, I maintain that humans are incapable of altruism as any feelings of love or any bonds to the family, community and civil society are mere pawns to the inescapable embrace of hubris. The human individual's desire to feel and to be deceived into believing in their own superiority coupled with the denigration of other individuals in this world is too powerful and fierce a passion. Such a pestilence corrodes even the most stalwart and self-sacrificing of individuals as it sows dissonance within the human character, and impinges general discord and turmoil amidst participants of a community. The passion of hubris erodes moral integrity with the complete disregard of the autonomy, self-worth and sovereignty of others: it is encompassing and can break the bonds of family and the sense of community amongst fellow citizens. The desire for the imposition of one?s own will upon others and for the complete mastery of other individuals is rampant without the placement of order, justice and discipline to stymie such barbarous propensities that inflict all of humanity. In addition, I will describe the main facets of the Realist Tradition of Thucydides and Thomas Hobbes on the moral dilapidation of humanity and the inability of people to truly be devoted to any external cause without the passion of hubris and/or the instinct of self-preservation from occurring and occupying the tenebrous recesses of the human character.
The Hobbesian and Thucydidean traditions regard all human actions as contained within the frame of power struggles with debasement occurring through the ascendancy of lascivious desires, putrid passions and other temptations that weaken the body and dull the vigor of the mind. Thucydides took as his example of the baseness and vulgarity of humanity the horrors and fratricide set during the great Peloponnesian War in which civil society was torn asunder for societal/collective hubris. Common city-states that were united with a Grecian heritage fought amongst each other in terrible warfare. The common ideas of brotherhood, family, liberty and concord were shaken amidst the sheer slaughter of the innocent. The lands of the Greek promontory were ravaged and torn apart to petty hubris. The concept of unification alongside common language, heritage, values and culture devolved into a fissiparous or a highly divided political landscape. Overall, political disequilibrium closely mirrors human nature in which the facets representing both the political scene and the actions of human individuals are intertwined and interrelated: one cannot be separated from the other.
Thomas Hobbes disregarded humanity in its primitive and savage stage and was a major proponent of an absolute and encompassing civil society that totally repressed and constrained the individual. Unrestrained freedom corrodes the sense of duty. Such was the view espoused by Thomas Hobbes of the requirement for order and restraint. However, the view that I uphold is that individual autonomy can be led astray by base and petty passions and become inimical to love with a general repugnance for humanity in general. However, if civil society becomes puissant the multifarious representation of humanity would be standardized, repressed and broken. Since humanity is unable to reach equipollence or maintain a state of equilibrium between the poles of civil society and individualism, it is doomed to alternate in cycles of hubris and pusillanimity in periods of extreme elation and ebullience that are overvaulting and unrestrained, and in periods of timorousness through the degeneration of the sense of purpose within the individual being.
My emendation that altruistic acts are incapable of being performed by human beings in a collective representation is taken further into account by the grand experiment taken by the French Revolution in relation to Friedrich Schiller's "On the Aesthetic Education of Man". Influenced by Kantian tradition, Friedrich Schiller viewed the world as a dichotomy of mind and body, as well as the individual and the collective whole. Friedrich Schiller depicted the Absolute Ideal that was to be carried on in a similar fashion by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel as achieved through apolaustics in which the human individual is able to perceive aesthetic beauty and to comprehend the will of the incorporeal or the divine as opposed to the common, decrepit, customary, palpable and corporeal. Friedrich Schiller in his "On the Aesthetic Education of Man" initially viewed the French Revolution as a grand and noble experiment with the complete integration and synthesis of the individual with civil society.
Friedrich Schiller was also influenced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau regarding the individual and individual autonomy that is integral to the coherent functioning of the multifaceted whole. However, while Rousseau advocated the whim of the collective whole as central and key to civil society, Friedrich Schiller argued that the rights of the minority were disregarded and violated leading to dissatisfaction, disequilibrium and a disconcerted state. Friedrich Schiller believed that a bond linking individuals into a large conglomerate of differing beliefs linked together through a harmonious synthesis between the collective consciousness and individual autonomy would result in a coherent and self-sufficient society that would be maintained by an utmost devotion to aesthetic beauty; that the sempiternal beauty and glorious renown found within art, music, philosophy, literature and poetry would unite all of humanity through the appreciation of the sublime, virtuous, good, pulchritudinous and symmetrical. Such an optimistic and euphoric abstraction or theoretical model would dissolve at the sight of the course of events taken by the French Revolution that rooted Friedrich Schiller into atrabiliousness or sheer melancholy and despair at the savagery, irrationality, vulgarity and cruel nature of humanity.
The initial course of the noble experiment being the French Revolution was for a moderate and balanced form of government that was in accordance with the whim of the whole nation of France. However, with the temporary power of Alexander de Beauharnais in the National Convention, the French Revolution came into the hands of perfidious and hubristic men who had no sympathies with the oppressed classes. After the fall of Alexander de Beauharnais and the intense and hotly contested struggles between the Girondist and Jacobin political organizations, the rise of the revolutionary triumvirate of Danton, Marat and Robespierre plunged France into great terror and carnage. With the decaying flesh and the mass slaughter of the innocent, the noble experiment of liberty, universal peace and concord that was envisioned by Friedrich Schiller in his "On the Aesthetic Education of Man" fell into ruin and was sown its abjuration or utter dissolution.
Friedrich Schiller assumed that humans would coalesce together into a universal brotherhood through the harmonious amalgamation of the individual and civil society on the sole basis that humanity was capable of breaking free from the obsequious chains of bondage and from subservience and servitude to vulgar and base desires. In further letters and essays in his "On the Aesthetic Education of Man", Friedrich Schiller lamented the death of aesthetic beauty that had previously inspired the great men and women throughout history who harbored visions of human progression, excellence and moderation. The love and dedication for aesthetic beauty characterizes excellence in a human individual and allows for the emergence of virtuous conduct. This would then stymie hubristic passions and result in the regard for other human individuals as opposed to petty self-preservation and enmity to the autonomy and self-sovereignty of others.
[Continued]:
Altruism is incapable by human individuals in a collective representation or in the societal context. I agree with Friedrich Schiller that it is only through aesthetic considerations, or the love of beauty, glory, the virtuous and the sublime coupled with a desire for companionship, concord and peace that humanity can transcend from its vulgarity or baseness and stymie its barbarous propensities. I have maintained the position that human individuals in a collective representation are incapable of altruism and are obsequious to prejudices, preconceived notions and putrid desires. Overall, I have maintained that human beings as a whole are morally repugnant and abhorrent.
ok can u do a abridged version
This is Conrad Jalowski we're talking about. He could, but he won't.Quote:
Originally Posted by SunTzu123
I think I understand this sentence but I want to ask you to clarify, just in case I'm reading it incorrectly.:) Is it humanity in general that lacks self-autonomy in your opinion, or is it the individual?Quote:
Originally Posted by Conrad_Jalowski
Does the need to achieve a balance necessarily indicate that a balance can't exist, or that such a balance might not even be the default? (I think you answer this question later, but I would be interested in seeing your expanded thoughts on the topic)Quote:
Originally Posted by Conrad_Jalowski
So individual altruism exists in stalwart individuals?Quote:
Originally Posted by Conrad_Jalowski
So is hubris a "built-in" feature of humanity? If so, in what sense can a moral dilapidation occur if it was an ever-present feature? Also, dilapidation implies the ability to restore something in the future to its former glory. How could we achieve that, and what would it look like?Quote:
Originally Posted by Conrad_Jalowski
Communitarian or individualistic politics? Or both?Quote:
Originally Posted by Conrad_Jalowski
What do you mean by aesthetic beauty? Can you provide some examples? Earlier you said that humanity is incapable of unconditional love, so is conditional love of the aesthetics going to be enough to allow this balance to occur? In your opinion, is the establishing of conditional love in such an arena intentional or spontaneous?Quote:
Originally Posted by Conrad_Jalowski