Personally I have no problem with his part in broke back mountain and am even confused as to why that is at all relevant. It’s just a sad waste of a privileged life. There are too many other things in the world that require our constructive compassion than the guy who plays the joker in batman because he overdosed on sleeping pills in a hotel room. RIP - your children and family will not!
Such people exist as examples to all: appreciate what you have, there are people in the world who do not even have food to put in their mouths. I have no sympathy for you my friend. My sympathy lies in far better places.
And the guy on this thread - the mule - saying other people should be ashamed should be ashamed! I have seen more heartfelt feelings and well-wishes posted here to a dead actor than on my entire thread on human starvation.
Damn, I was really looking forward to seeing that!
Frankly, I've got one thing to say here. If he ruined his privileged life in such a world as this where people live in states of destitution and misery, he deserves it.
Mark my words: the unification of Europe itself poses the biggest threat to America!
At bottom, what do you think the unification of Europe is all about?
All we need is Turkey and then a Muslim country is a part of Europe (but first there is the issue of their occupation of Northern Cyprus) . . . Once that country operates under European standards, consider where Syria, Irag and Saudi Arabia are?
What will happen when such counties, so close, see the advantages of being members of the European union?
Who was it, Anaximander?, who said: ‘Man has made the Gods in his own image’? The problem is as old as philosophical THOUGHT itself! And it is one of the main pieces to solving the puzzle of the mystery and riddle of our existence, the knowledge of good and evil: the enigma of the metaPHYSICally true story of Adam and Eve. The problem of freewill IS the tree upon which the forbidden fruit hangs!!! And the snake the influential FORCE. And - ah my friends! - Adam and Eve . . . hopelessly predetermined to fall prey to those influential forces and TAKE of the forbidden fruit. Ah!, and so . . . Did they really have the CHOICE not to take the apple? The freewill as such? Of WHAT are they guilty? Ah, God, once again I GLIMPSE you!
Tut-tut . . . hugs and kisses and all who here perceive no ‘problem’ as such! Ah, but fortunate for them . . . here there be philosophers!!! . . . We ancient agents of the mystery and riddle of existence . . .
We eminent minds KNOW that it is not possible that we are completely free-acting agents and are not deluded by the wrong (even evil) choices we have made in life, we do not feel GUILT for them as such; when we realise we took the proverbial ramp, we call it ‘right’, when we threw ourselves down the proverbial stairs we call it ‘wrong’ BECAUSE OF THE CONSEQUENCES in both cases. But sometimes we were compelled to go down the stairs by 'the forces that be' . . . But to another man the stairs would have presented no problem and he may take either the ramp or the stairs. He may even opt for the ramp, but in abstracto the ramp is no more suited to him than the stairs are to the wheelchair user. He is just exercising his ‘freewill’ and enjoying the illusion!!! Should he be a man in a wheelchair he will not ENJOY the illusion - for he will see it as just THAT before his eyes: an ‘illusion’ of freewill. Bah! I have to take the ramp! Freewill to CHOOSE . . . Psh! Of course, the eyes of most minds are CLOSED to the problems of freewill. On the other hand if the we, the wheelchair user, chose the path of most resistance to our ‘predetermination’ it is a fundamental mistake and we ultimately end up back in hospital a second time only to wheel out of it again and take the RAMP this time - if going down the stairs the first time DID NOT seriously set us back or even END us. Ultimately we HAVE to take THAT path or we do NOT progress - we even REgress. To our tragedy and doom!!! No one can overcome the will of nature: there is really only one choice. The way of the will of nature [God’s will, for the God-heads] or the hospital! The rest is illusion with room in which to move - in the wrong direction. Ah, but what moves us in the wrong direction? . . . Do you see what I’m getting at? There really is only one choice. Do NOT eat the apple, with an interesting clause: that we are MADE to eat it even though we are told not to. It would APPEAR that there is a ‘choice’ but determinism reveals otherwise . . . Consider the story of Adam and Eve . . . Tell me my friends, if all this is the consequences of eating the apple, presented with the apple again, would we make the same choice? Of course not. Now, given my academic understanding of the problem of freewill, I am here inclined to recall the statement I once made that sometimes when I talk to ‘normal’ people I feel like a little girl trying to talk to her doll, and it makes ME feel stupid. I am not one for too many hugs and kisses . . . Who cannot see that my character is utterly determined? In fact, the best statement ever made on predetermination was made by Homer in the Iliad and placed into the mouth of Achilles: he is asked why he chose the life he did, only to reply: ‘I chose nothing: I was BORN this way, and this is the way I AM’. This notion even predates the first philosophers, and the fundamental problem of freewill they took up when philosophy began in Greece; that is to say, as minds slowly awoke from their slumber of mysticism we now call their 'mythology' and started to question the Homeric notions of the Greek Gods and their validity. Even their - AUTHORITY!
No, there is most CERTAINLY a problem of freewill but one that is evident to more penetrating, philosophically-inclined minds (that is to say, more introSPECTIVE minds), and has been for over two and a half thousand years. The problem of freewill is very, very real and very, very complex. That we are determined to a degree in all our deliberations and therefore the actual outcome OF all our deliberations (and furthermore and moreover IN the outcome of all our deliberations), there can be no doubt [even BEFORE social influential forces BEGIN to act as ADDITIONAL deterministic agents]. I am talking about ‘inborn’ character-determination, and therefore the application of utterly different subjects to the same objective world and their supposed complete ‘freewill’ to choose in it. It is then a question of to what DEGREE we are determined (and therefore to what degree we are ‘free’), and which of our actions/non-actions pertain to our individual 'predetermination'. A gross simplification of the problem [sigh, for it will leave many holes in it!] would be a man in a wheelchair coming out of a hospital who has the choice in front of his eyes to take the stairs or the ramp down to the pavement below. A GROSS simplification, mind! The ‘freewill’ to choose is objective appearance and not subjective reality [as OXYMORNIC as that may sound to those who UNDERSTAND the problem], since freewill is totally subjective and not objective at all, and appearance as such has always been attributed to the subject and ‘reality’ to the object. [Quick dullard schooling (ha ha): the subject is that which knows but cannot be known (by its antithesis), the object - its antithesis - is that which can be known but cannot know (the subject)] So . . . Outside the hospital, he could try to wheel himself haphazardly down the stairs to his tragedy and doom, or take the ramp. Even WE can determine his action/choice and WHAT determines it -before he even MAKES it. Because we can see what determines his choice. Yet imagine this concept in abstracto? Imagine that the wheelchair under the man is his inborn character, predetermined and unalterable, and the two paths presented before him are a metaphor of two abstract choices he can make given his predetermined character (physical/mental limits/advantages/disadvantages, character etc). Which path does he take? Ah, that his choice is determined to a great degree who can DISAGREE?; but it is NOT absolute robotic-determination and hereby hangs the ‘appearance’ of freewill!: for in a paradoxical sense, it IS robotic-determination!!! But the stimulus that controls it is OUTSIDE the proverbial ‘robot’. You see, Freewill is a necessary illusion while we in fact conform to the absolute will of nature and the NATURE OF OUR WILL in accordance with it.
I mean, take a look around you? Is life really just survival of the fittest? The healthiest, the strongest, the most intelligent, the most beautiful, the most talented, the most wealthy, the most fortunate, etc . . .
Invert all of those attributes and what do we have? Someone who is going to excel in the world? His/her offspring? . . .
Is life just survival of the fittest - or to what degree is it, or on the other hand is it not? etc . . .
'faith doesn't disprove the contradictions.... in fact it only mires it further in confounded silliness.
I find forgiveness in my fellow man and myself, doesn't require faith or belief in any mumbo jumbo, nor does it take away my own sense of responsibilty for my life and my actions. Faith is dubious crutch for those unable to stand on their own.
In response to: If not, don't talk about something you don't know about
god is something you don't KNOW about. Something mired in faith and lofty nothingness yet you talk about it as if you know .... as if faith is knowing ... curious... its this kind of knowing and talk about it that keeps the wheels of dogma spinning.' - Bnatural
Well said B!
These arguments being made against what you are saying fall flat on my academic ears with their mass-appeal - and I am a BELIVER in ‘God’: that is to say, an unknown non-explanation behind existence to which man has attributed his own qualities, good AND bad.
'I won't likely read any books, one doesn't need to to see the sheep blindly accepting their path to the slaughter. '
It’s one thing to see these problems (ie in India), it’s quite another to read The Law Code of Manu and see PRECISELY where they are coming from . . . and postulate what can be done about it
Where is Riya? I wonder what she has to say about The Law Code of Manu?
'You know what strikes me as absolutely foolish is the acceptance of christians that this jesus died for our sins, meaning ALL of our sins, ALL of us, forever and ever .. yet our conduct results in some heaven or hell? ... one needs to sin to make hell (assumes we haven't really been absolved at all)... yet he died for them so I have none (being as he already died for them?); in this absolute belief? Seems to me we are all going to heaven.... or he died for nothing. '
I remember reading in Ghandi’s autobiography a few years ago, a good case against Christianity in a similar manner. It was in Ghandi’s reply to a letter from a priest trying to convince him that Christianity was the one true religion and get him to convert, and even pointing out to him its advantages over other religions to an individual.
Ghandi said he could not accept a religion where a man died to absolve HIM from his wrong-doing and could not see how he did OR could have . . .
In the end he said after reading all the religious texts that he felt more lost than he ever had in his whole life, and it was then that he said ‘God is Truth’.
And that is what is on the front cover of his autobiography.
EastbayRay Forum Posts (781)
RE: RIP- Heath Ledger
Personally I have no problem with his part in broke back mountain and am even confused as to why that is at all relevant. It’s just a sad waste of a privileged life.There are too many other things in the world that require our constructive compassion than the guy who plays the joker in batman because he overdosed on sleeping pills in a hotel room.
RIP - your children and family will not!
Such people exist as examples to all: appreciate what you have, there are people in the world who do not even have food to put in their mouths. I have no sympathy for you my friend. My sympathy lies in far better places.
And the guy on this thread - the mule - saying other people should be ashamed should be ashamed! I have seen more heartfelt feelings and well-wishes posted here to a dead actor than on my entire thread on human starvation.