#false progress

[locusnegotium]

The idea that it'd be "wrong" for a world to exist wherein entropy had less of a hold and change were merely lateral rather than downward is, itself, a religious belief, likely born from a desire to rationalize, soften, or cope with the harsh realities with which we live in ours.

[locusnegotium]

[locusnegotium]

being a Believer is so tiresome you'll see people being like, "change is good!" and then five years later they'll caveat it with "*as long as the change is in a positive direction. (translation: maybe we shouldn't be abandoning good things just for the sake of change, especially if they result in regresss instead of progress)" as though you haven't been sitting at the top of that metaphorical mountain the entire time all while being called names like "immature" and "unenlightened" for it :/

[locusnegotium]

I've said this before, almost in these exact words, I'm sure, but a thing being finite, brief, limited, isn't what gives it value--those are secondary, unrelated traits. Progress can exist above a zero-limit (at perfection), without needing to be reset. A broken leg now healed "adds" to a person's life not from its brokenness but because of its being cared-for. A sunset is beautiful because it's beautiful: this beauty is found in its appearance (its colors, its brightness, the contrast between the rim of the sky and the darkness above, and how this combines with our ability to perceive the dimension of aesthetic beauty), and it would stay beautiful if you captured it in a photograph or painting. If you visited a planet whereupon the sunset was permanent, it would be beautiful there, too (it gets like that a few days a year around the polls at each of their high summers on our own planet. They are just as beautiful even while they last longer. We call it a "sunSET" in our language but it's just the state of the sun being angled near a given horizon.) It's human folly to conflate the bad bits with the good, to say that a thing's brevity, even though unrelated, somehow "gives" it its other traits. You're human, you have a brain--you know how to dissect these elements, separating good from bad. Otherwise, nobody would've ever made antidote or blood pressure medicine from venom. Some good things can exist independently. It's your job as a creature with a brain sophisticated enough to develop a sense of ethics whether or not it wants to to find them. It gets old when even old people praise such sentiments for their "wisdom"--a thing isn't beautiful because it can die. What are you talking about. Think further.

[locusnegotium]

You know an analogy is bad when it says that the capacity for growth is finite, and that suffering is the ultimate test of our progress. (Just read that mountain-metaphor on my own tl lmao)

[locusnegotium]

U think it’s woke to be indifferent to death and suffering? It’s “just the way nature is?” R.I.P. to y’all but I’m different xoxoxo

[locusnegotium]

If it’s true that, “It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society,” (Jiddu Krishnamurti), one can therefore only extrapolate that (only on account of the world’s negative aspects, for this exercise), to develop any kind of “strength” for withstanding this world’s various struggles is merely reactionary, and that said strength does not have any intrinsic value of its own, but only extrinsic usefulness for a given situation. It seems better for a creature to come into existence already perfectly-suited to its environment, and its environment to it, than to have to work toward that goal from the bottom. Strength, by that definition alone, would then mean the level to which the original state of the self (physical, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, etc.) has been exchanged for the newer, more “suitable” state. 

This is one more distinction between True and False Progress--True Progress extends beyond the state of neutrality, of being perfectly-suited, of zero, into the positives of discovery, whereas False Progress merely reaches to neutrality from the negative, from the imperfect, from the under-prepared and suffering states. After True Progress has been accessed, strength’s purpose is no longer merely reactionary, but a means to more sophisticated ends. 

*Note: This is because it’s inadvisable to set the bar below “zero.”

[locusnegotium]

The idea that evil is necessary, I think, goes hand-in-hand with the idea that humans have more Free Will when they’re allowed to choose between good and evil, rather than two good options. 

It doesn’t make sense to me, though.  Let’s spare a second thought for what we have been fed.

I have a view of evil (like Augustine) that it is merely lesser--that it is a mere privation of good. Therefore it is useless to me to be forced to choose between a basket of fresh apples and a basket of rotting ones at the same price, when I could choose between *fresh* apples, oranges, bananas, pears, and so forth. Thus, to attribute any kind of necessity to anything but that which is purely good is fallacious in my eyes. 

Philosophers of many walks of life have, at some point, arrived at this conclusion (“The Problem of Evil/Suffering.”) Whether Atheist, Christian, Hindu, or other, a handful of each has (rightly) discovered that evil is only evil, loss only loss, pain only pain. This isn’t to be taken from a cynical angle, but in the context of the rest of this post: from an angle of compassion, and giving Good its due credit, which is being faithfully attributed all other synonyms of good (like ‘necessity.’) 

The view of evil as having necessity makes no more sense from a Theistic/Heaven-oriented perspective than it does from a purely Naturalistic/Secular one.