Comments by "Peter deWolf" (@StoneShards) on "Jordan B Peterson" channel.

  1. "Existence is suffering" should be interpreted with a neutral definition of "suffering". In popular parlance it's often found with "pain", as in "pain and suffering". But that's not neutral. Suffering == Experience. You may suffer "joy" as well as "sorrow". But the "suffering" itself is a function of existence, which provides the facility for Experience. Knowledge roots in Experience/Suffering. Existence without Limitation is inconceivable, conceptually contradictory. Limitation is the methodology of Existence. Manifestation is a process of limitation/Godification of the Primeval Chaotic Void: Once upon an eternity, there was only the Void, perfectly indistinct, multiform potentiality, a seething chaos. As hoped for by the designers of universes, there arose a statistically impossibly unlikely state of repetition in the Chaotic Void. This created a Paradox: the chaotic void exhibited "memory". "Reflection" is implied by "repetition" and itself implies Time...this is the birthing of Order by Chaos, to isolate the Paradox, as it threatens the "existence" of the Chaotic Void Itself. To keep the Void from venting, Order expressed Time as Consciousness and Physical Reality in the Big Bang. How's THAT for a modern myth?!
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  2. Your "dark", shadow side is dark because it doesn't get much attention from timid souls. It's hidden because you hide from it, until you muster the courage to know yourself. Stripped of artificial standards, there is no dark side secret self; there are only guilt-avoidance mechanisms of personality. Do you believe you are "a person who"? Then you have the pertinent standards; failure to comply with those standards inculcates guilt, and precipitates the soap opera of the standard guilt avoidance behaviors that pass as everyday life.
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  3. Commonly, "faith" is what you call what you have when you are "confident", to the point of "certainty", about something. Faith is also something you DO. "Confidence" and "certainty" are "judgements" you perform. There's a further aspect of "faith", which is the character of "persistent expectation" as the method of practice of an indefatigable faith that your will will manifest in the "next" moment.
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  4. Scientists should be committed only to the faithful execution of the scientific method, which has no truck with the likes of "truth" in the metaphysical sense, since such transcendental values as "truth" are not falsifiable. The confusion between "fact" and "truth" drives the atheist fantasy.
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  5. A good friend spouting nonsense on twitter; if you don't correct them you're being inauthentic to the truth?! What?! Nonsense! Gad thinks it's actually possible to "tell the truth"! hahaha...I thought he was a philosopher! 🤨 First, you measure your duty; then, you act according to the best intent you can manage. There are many ways to get your friend to play with you--sanctimony is NOT one of them! Save the sermon! Wonder out loud, instead...Your friend deserves that much respect--if you really think of him as your friend.
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  6. "Manufactured fear" is none other than "terrorism"! The core of "fear" is the emotional response to the unknown we see when we look beyond our death. The atheist sees only a permanent nothingness, so his life is of supreme value to him. The religionist enforces a "somethingness" instead of the atheist's "nothingness", so his life's great value might be subsumed in something greater, after the style of "sacrifice".
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  7. I once read a book, "Microcosmology 101", that resonated with me. Every person you meet makes an impression of authoritativeness that remains at some level of strength and character within you're being. These are the characters that occupy our internal worlds. Parents are the primary actors we internalize as authorities. They live within us as our internalizations of them; they behave semi-autonomously. They are important memory complexes to which we refer relentlessly in the conduct of our lives. In all of our considerations "they" voice their characteristic opinions for our edification. "My pappy told me 'don't accept any wooden nickels'...so why am I thinking of that right now, as a certain stranger approaches?"...because awareness filters the possibilities with a peculiar alacrity in matching "known" to "unknown" with great accuracy...as if guided by the spirit of truth...
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  8.  @asliketheson  <--You would know, I guess, since you created him. Your attribution of "reality" to an emotional attachment is precisely the mechanism of the "evil" you purport to fear, or hate, or dominate...You feed this evil your energy, and it uses it to grow stronger and correspondingly more able to upset whatever psychic balance you may lay claim to, tricking you into further feeding it from you personal energy. This is a bonding relationship. The "peace that passes all understanding" is your only protection--embrace it!
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  9.  @asliketheson  <--"Possession is nine-tenths of the law."
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  10.  @asliketheson  😄 troll
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  11. "The goodness of God"? That's kind of a bad idea, implying God is only "good". This is a setup for the good vs evil canard, and the conception of a cosmos in conflict. This ideation denies the omnipotence of God. The God who is "good" is not the true God. The true God necessarily encompasses all that is. I also do not understand the group's insistence on the short-term perspective of a single lifetime when considering spiritual matters. Pain and privation serve a useful, or "good", purpose, as Jordan illustrated, countering the popular notion that pain and privation are not only bad, but evil, hinting at a failure of God to properly manage His Creation. I'm getting the impression some of these guys haven't really thought about this stuff very much...
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  12. "The spirit of voluntary play" is "the willingness to associate", in my terms. It is also properly conceived as the Life Force...The Holy Spirit.
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  13. "We don't know how...Thoughts manifest themselves in the theater of our imagination"! Wow! That's the mess in a nutshell! hehehe...C'mon, Jordan, piece it together: what is the process of imagination? What is the value to the individual of linguistic articulation outside of the societal context? Is imagination just a projection screen where we see what we fear/desire? Or, could it be the only uniquely human creative facility to which we are heir?! As sensation bubbles the emotional cauldron, the meaning of sensation is determined and submitted for evaluation to the lower mind, which, by basic computational means, makes comparisons to associated values in memory; the results of these activities are internally expressed by imagination as fleeting imagery. The traces of these fleeting images are thoughts awaiting articulation, whether internally or externally. Internally, the articulation of thought solidifies or embeds the value of that thought by stamping or identifying the peculiar pattern of sensation --> emotion --> mentation --> imagination --> articulation as a distinct perception, forever available to make comparisons with other values. Every perception is a building block...of...yourself...Using good blocks, you get a good building...
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  14. It sounds like the standards this board would impose would actually result in the violation of the rationale for those standards!! How can such a situation be allowed to persist!? It is self-destructive in its irrationality, which should be contrary to the board's founding purpose.
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  15. The "potential" that you could have done something with is a trivial complaint parents are prone to as the opportunity to "parent" presents itself! hahaha...Does it help to point out that you're underperforming? Help what? And what is the value of any accomplishment! So what if you are the greatest everything?! Does it matter?! If the grave is your final end, then, no, it doesn't matter, at all; if "you" continue in any wise following "death", everything matters! Everything! Every nuance of thought and feeling, every observation, every movement of personality, then, matter to the development of your CHARACTER--the only thing you can take with you when you go, so to speak.
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  16. Sensory stimulus elicits a compensatory response from any system susceptible to the stimulus, engendering habituation to the stimulus, according to the intensity and persistence of the stimulus, in the form of a behaviorism--an "emotion". At this emotional level, associations to experiential memory interact to contribute to an organic complexification, a "symbol", by which the complexification can be handled, controlled. The lower level of mind, the automatic level as opposed to the abstract, is characterized by the perpetual operation of linguistic articulation--WORDS. The mental basis of this operation is observation and identification in a tight loop referencing associations from experiential memory. "Narratives" are CONTEXTS! The "story" is the context in which a person sees himself. The only thing a person can truly understand is himself, a person; that is each person's basis for understanding. We must understand everything in terms of ourselves. What is not self is other.
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  17. Observe and identify, where, "identify", is the act of contextualization by association with experiential memory. If you can learn to suspend the identification process you may enter Samadhi, but that is both here and there...🤔...😏
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  18. "The commonalities of stories amalgamate into archetypes"...ok, but the forces expressed by the archetypes originate macrocosmically, and, so, microcosmically within the individual. That's why we create the stories we do. The archetypes are human productions, incidentally-powered by self-originated archetypal forces. That goes for "evil", too! You guys are fixated on "evil"! "For as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he", is worth remembering. What would be a linguistically respectful definition of "evil"? Abstract it to reform its resonance.
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  19. "Almost nothing has obvious boundaries"?! What?! Boundaries produce "thingness", itself! Everything is defined by its boundaries. Lacking all such definition is only non-existence. This vid is six years old. Recent scientific studies have proven the rather ancient idea that the body doesn't recognize the difference between the experience of external reality and the experience of reality in imagination. The body responds to imagination as if it was real, neurally. O.M.G. Consider the import! We may be entering a period of "scientific mysticism"...
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  20. 2:18:15--I don't with John's notion of "consciousness", at least terminologically. "Consciousness" is that "spark of divinity" that indwells everywhere/everything and produces the "governing principle of the cosmos": "association". "Consciousness" is the capacity and inclination to associate--responsiveness to "spiritual gravity", mystically speaking. "Evolution" is the process of complexification according to the divine pattern of manifestation. "Intelligence is the way reality is realizing itself", John! argh...not useful..."Intelligence" is the operation of the urge to associate, which, granted, culminates in "reality realizing itself". Intelligence is the essential feature of the One Universal Mind, which each of us operates as best he makes himself able, all the while imagining it is his personal possession. By the strength of our awareness we form "memories", experiences impressed upon the universal substratum of existence, the OUM. "Imagination" is the seat of spirit, the "true self"--it will lead you true if you can keep your mitts off the steering wheel, for half a second...hehehe. The personal inner world is purely associative...
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  21. "Intention as a moral act" is not resonating with me. The direction of intention may have a "moral" component, but intention, itself, is the other side of the engine of awareness from attention. Attention and Intention are the Yin and Yang of the Tao of Awareness. They chase each other faster than you can think, at the speed of the cosmic clock tick, perhaps! I think Jordan is loading down the word "intention" with extra functionality, like "prioritization"--it's an inefficient complexification. These are separate processes: First you observe, then you identify, then you contextualize, continuously...But it should be possible to observe without identification--total abstraction! Samadhi? INtention works by the projection of certainty, conviction, "faith", if you like, of what is true. Attention provides feedback on how Intention is doing; Awareness modulates the interplay.
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  22. "Words can bring images to mind." The linguistic articulation of images is what mind spends most of its time doing. Emotion presents to this articulation level of mind images; this is where you make word-sense of what you "know" by experience. This is where mind and emotion interface. And it's where all the action is! 😉
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  23. "What sublimation is" is seeing through to the source, or origin, of an "urge", repeatedly, until a sufficient habit of understanding forms to naturally discharge the "urgency" value into a different "channel", or direction, as directed by the understanding.
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  24. I think men are generally funnier than women because men are more language-oriented, so "articulation" for men is more linguistic than for women. And that's what humor requires.
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  25. Your inner life is built with the "bricks" of your experience; and you walk around in that world continuously, recalling what you know from experience..."events", like paintings hung on the walls, we remind ourselves perpetually who's who and what's what. This self-programming produces a sense of self with direction...and--a box, to fuel a desire for liberty.
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  26. So, basically, twitter users are party crashers! His analysis is insightful. Makes me think we need to accept "insanity" as something less devastating and more functional than Hollywood images portray.
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  27. Medicine ORIGINATED in witchcraft! Modern medical professionals like to forget that...
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  28. Karl's good! Real good!
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  29. The currency of existence is authority, or that which persuades of genuineness. Parents, as the primal authorities, are the first authorities internalized by the child. They forever after operate as authoritative representations internally to the child. They produce characteristic statements, which may usually be mistaken as one's own thoughts. Every other person you meet is retained as an internal authority, capable of participating in decision-making processes. They are not just memories, but semi-autonomous simulacra created in the act of experiencing reality. Every experience attaches to the time and place of its occurrence. It becomes a marker, a sign post, in the fabric of reality...an aid to navigation...
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  30. Provocative! 👍
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  31. If you want to "command happiness" you have to charge the word, "happiness", with your intention that it will trigger the "happiness" you intend, which requires you to entertain the state of "happiness" within you. The more you charge the word, the stronger and more potent the effectiveness of the word for its intended purpose. Without such extensive practice, the word's triggering effect is weak and ineffectual, as Jordan complains. You CAN deliberately entrain emotional energy to word values and thought trains! You do it, anyway, whether deliberately or not. Intentionally accentuating the process is potentially advantageous.
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  32. At 44:31, Jordan: "Is there a path I could walk down that would be so rich and meaningful that I would find the challenge of dealing with the tragedy and malevolence ennobling and worthwhile?"..."you bring yourself into alignment with discovered values"..."freedom is limited" naturally and valuably...Alright, experience constrains, focuses, and rallies awareness. There is a path, Jordan: the path of awareness formulated in the interplay of attention and intention in imagination, compared to memory and the moment! It's the instantaneous dynamic of the psyche. Diligent persistence in the current moment "lights the path"! Ideas are born into awareness as to "what is next" in order.
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  33. I know it seems collective vs individual is a legitimate opposition, except that the collective has no agency! The individual is primary, and the constituent element of the collective. The collective is an aggregation of individuals. So comparing the collective to the individual is an apple-and-oranges comparison...not legitimate. The contrary implication is a deception...
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  34. Sacrifice is willingly foregoing the lesser for the greater. In the personal sphere we crucify desire on the cross of practicality in the service of the survival instinct. So, the atheist must be incapable of sacrificing his life since, for him, there is nothing "greater" than his own life. The religionist, on the other hand, holds "something else" in higher regard, so he may sacrifice his life deliberately.
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  35. So...science proceeds from religion, and precipitates the formation of "secular" society that recognizes science in the place of religion? I see political interference with the conduct of science precipitating a "willing blindness" to the religious implications of scientific frontiers, like the "quantum" realm underlying the phenomenal reality that science hides behind as it avoids the sight of God (i.e. religion). A science unencumbered by politics would turn itself to explicating and exploring religion quite naturally. Basic religious indoctrination facilitates the development of critical sensibilities, like self-control and imagination, love and righteousness--civilizational values.
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  36. "Individualism has caused so much death..."? Ok. So what? What is the value of life, living? More importantly, how is that value utilized?! The numbers of the dead are not meaningful in an absolute sense. His position seems to be that bad Muslims are not bad because Islam is bad. Which is facially disingenuous, in light of even a cursory study of Koran.
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  37. Did they ever decide how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? "Faith" is a state of emotional expectation. You don't have to go any further than that in describing what faith is. Spend some time talking about what you can DO WITH IT! "The unconditioned good is God"...is there a payoff at the end of this word game?! I understand the value of a common terminology in communication; and I understand the distraction inherent in such a pursuit. I don't see either of them bringing it all "down to earth".
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  38. At 25:30, Kreeft says when you get to the end you'll find out if you were right or wrong, about God, I guess, and that's a popular notion. What if it's not that simple? What if the lifetime practice of your belief CREATES your "afterlife" experience! What if the lifetime practice of atheism prevents you from having an "afterlife"! Then, no matter what you believed, you will have been RIGHT! hahaha...I love it...the internal balance of Nature making everything TRUE. They say, "Nature abhors a vacuum"! Think thrice before using terms like non-existence, eh? The logical principle of "negation", while having local utility, is philosophically invalid. In the same way, there can be no such thing as "absolute evil". What you have is a human filter pattern overlay of Natural law in execution, calling it "evil", the only meaning of which is available in myth and legend. Your perspective, your interpretive framework, or context determines your descriptors. The language of the religious perspective includes terms like good and evil, so a variety of sense is made of such words for the edification of adherents. Some perspectives, though, lack the language for certain concepts, so those ideas would be invisible within that perspective. You gotta speak the same language to see eye-to-eye...
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  39. "Consciousness arises out of the interplay between Order and Chaos"? Except for one thing: Chaos cannot play together with Order; their natures are too diverse to blend. I understand the sentiment, but "interplay" is a deceptive oversimplification--as is, "consciousness". It's not as simple as "ordering the chaotic"--the real "chaotic" has little to do with "disorder". "Chaos" is NOT "lack of order"; it's unorderable by its nature, though, the "energy" of Chaos can be transmuted to drive Order.
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  40. There is, and can be, only Truth--Falsity is illusory. Logic suggests Truth should be polarized, like everything else; this is logic's mistake: negation is, ultimately, an illegitimate operation; a fantasy with utility, in less-than-ultimate applications. Nothing cannot exist--the contradiction resounds!
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  41. A definition of "divinity" as "the deepest most profound" is no good for its vagueness. All we know of "divinity" is self-awareness! Otherwise, it's just another philosophic technical term of no direct utility; the name of an idea--"identification". How does "God" fit in? As pinnacle of greatest hierarchy? Ok, then, flesh it out! Connect the dots! You possess the "spark of divinity", a "sliver of God", that forms your spiritual identity, in potential. The realization of that potential is a dynamic process of stimulus and response in awareness. Imagination sits between spirit and awareness in both refractive and reflective capacities: spirit offers a leading from its side of imagination; from the other side awareness accepts it, naturally, as having a degree of reality. However, that leading of the spirit may be obscured by self-interest on awareness's side. As "our spirit" works to make the human being and body more responsive to it, so does the macrocosmic God work to redeem matter to responsiveness to spiritual gravity...toward an end and purpose unimaginable.
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  42. As an introvert...Nature offers the experience of the quiet power of eternal persistence. It's uplifting and..."biggening"...hehehe
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  43. Gentlemen, I think your conception of the origin of the "first lie" in the Garden of Eden is radically amiss: it is not the serpent that lied! It spoke the truth, Adam and Eve would "be as God", knowing "good and evil", which is to say, having the capacity of "judgement". Adam and Eve "lied" in their attempt to deceive God. That judgement was wrong, and the "original sin". There was nothing wrong with wanting to be like God; that desire is love. So, the "sin" of disobedience to God's command to not eat of that tree was forgivable because they didn't have the judgement to balance their desire to be like God in order to remain obedient. God would have been able to overlook the transgression if they'd only been contrite, instead of deceptive, which would have been the right judgement for them to have made. So, using our judgement to balance our desires has become the nature of the inner life, which, finding expression in the outer life, shapes our world.
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  44. The Bible says no sex for one week of the month? Well, no kidding! I think we can guess WHICH WEEK that would be! 😈
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  45. A great conversation! It is made difficult, though, for me, by the clash of neurological and psychological terminology. The relationship between neurological operations and "sense of self" is drawn crudely with many connection dropouts--how do you get from here to there, from sensory reality to psychological reality. Implications abound but seem taken for granted, unworthy of special attention. Andrew represents the animal origin, and Jordan, the spirit origin of behavior. The neurology drives the animal behavior; the psychology drives the sense of self. The animal state is the default, because it will operate without attention. The psychology develops out of the awareness of the animal state as it develops over time, by comparison of states. What's the psychological counterpart of the "dopaminergic system"? I think Andrew's position is that the neurology precipitates the psychology, while Jordan's is likely that the patterns expressed neurologically INFLUENCE the developing psychology, perhaps being essentially universal. I'm not sure they agree on whether psychology can INFLUENCE neurology, but Andrew seems willing to entertain the possibility.
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  46. "Our era doesn't like racism", doesn't make sense! "Eras" can't DO anything, let alone "like" something! Clarity of thought starts with the words you use. Treating "era" as a sentient thing is a colloquialism--not philosophy, or reason. It leads to confusion and error.
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  47. "Satan is an evil clown", Jordan? Is your conception of evil evolving? Or only your image of "Satan" as a container of "evil"? Evil is a product of distorted human apperception. A container for the spirit of disorder and possibility...we give it reality by our attention to it...its peculiar form an expression of ourselves. Nothing can be said to exist that does not have a "body"...a container...a form...a boundary set between an "inside" and an "outside"...Every conception is an attribution of form to the formless, so that it can be "known"...that's how "naming is knowing"...
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  48. Intelligence is fundamentally the speed of awareness, accounting for the alacrity of attention. Iow, how fast can you finish noticing something?
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  49. I have an idea to aid the shadow integration effort: neutralize your vocabulary, by studying the dictionary on the words YOU USE, especially in describing your shadow integration efforts. This should lessen the "trigger power", or specific emotional resonance, of the words that come back at you when you search yourself for the causes of difficulty.
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  50. Chaos supports existence by a "pressure", from below; Order imposes structure, from above. Where they WOULD meet, if they could, is a barrier region, an interface region that is the One Mind, the mechanism of manifestation of phenomenal existence, in its entirety.
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