Is it wrong to be self-centered?

(air giutar) Van Halyen(sp?)

Bill Preston
Ted Thedore Logan

What?

How can you misspell Van Halen?

(air guitar) Van Halen-Runnin' With The Devil!

Yeah I know. At least I did not "assume" (quotes for another person in another posting) that is how his name is spelt. I knew it was wrong. And it was late or early morin' and I was not going to go searching how to really spell it.

So sorry if I offended you. Not my intention.

Yeah I know what you mean, but I assumed it was common knowledge.

It should be. That would mean I am not too common. Sadness.

I still don't know what you were thinking...

On with the game



Is murder wrong?

Let's establish a new definition of murder and then see.

Let the definition of murder be the intentional dispatching of another human being to paradise.

Can murder still be wrong?

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From: "Man's Religions", by John B. Noss, 4th printing 1951, Chapter X, page 360.

Confucius circa 4th century B.C. ---

Tsu-lu [a desciple] said: "The prince of Wei is awaiting you, Sir, to take control of his administration. What will you undertake first, Sir?"

Confucius replied: The one thing needed is the rectification of names."

Tsu-lu [a desciple], bewildered, said: "This is far fetched , Sir! Why rectify tem?"

Confucius replies in rebuke: "If names are incorrect, words will be misused; and when words are misused, nothing can be on a sound footing; good taste and music will languish, law and punishments will not be just, and people will not know were to place hand or foot; this is why one cannot be too careful about words and names."

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But then, what the hell does he know?

Confucius is just another long-dead man!

:wink:

Long dead are Jesus, Shakespeare, Genghis Khan, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Abe, but they're still quoted and remembered. We should be so remembered after we are gone.

One only wishes.

truth
Back to the question, "Is it WRONG to be self-centered?" I don't think it is morallly wrong, but it reflects an INCORRECT view of the nature of one's self.
By the way, if someone in the world were quoting something I said, and I did not know it, what good would that do me? After I die, the same situation applies. People who want to be famous even after they die, are just plain "wrong." Artists who paint for fame but are ignored all their lives, and after death are made famous by galleries who wish to make money from their manufactured fame are tragic figures.

What do you mean by "INCORRECT view of the nature of one's self"

I just noticed that! BILL AND TED!!!

Egocentrism is normal at a young age, but it is expected that we grow past that stage. I had a vague definition of egocentrism until I saw John Bradshaw, a Houston psychologist, on PBS.

He had a simple definition. Egocentrism is the inability to put yourself in another person's place. If you asked a four-year-old girl whether she had a brother, she would reply, yes. However, if you asked whether her brother had a sister, she would be totally confused. Egocentrism is normal at four, but at later ages, it becomes more complex and damaging.

There are many other "centrisms," none of which are flattering, and some that are very destructive. Anthropocentrism, a holdover from the time we still believed the Earth was the center of the Universe, is the feeling that all animal and plant life is on the Earth only as utility to humans.

Actually, I think putting yourself in other people's places is more egocentric - after that, all your relations to the outside world simply become relations to yourself. There's nondualism for you.

truth
Individual, by "incorrect" view of the nature of one's self" please look over the long complex nature of the Self in the Reality thread.

truth
Good contribution, Coluber. I tend to think of four centrisms:
*Egocentrism (where you and your point of view make up the center and standards for all else),
*Ethnocentrism (where your social group and its cultural norms constitute the center and standards for evaluating all other groups),
*Anthropocentrism (where our species constitutes the center and standard for the evaluation of all species),
*Geocentrism (where earth is the center of the cosmos).
All of these centrisms have the fault of depriving us of the realization of our inherent oneness with everything else. They separate, or alienate, us from, rather than integrate us into, our world.

Re: truth


Why not seven?

*Our-universe-centrism

*Not-our-universe-centrism

*All-that-ever-was-is-will-be-centrism

With the seventh we escape separation and become integrated with that which we know little, or perhaps worse, cannot know much more than little.

Why not call *All-that-ever-was-is-will-be-centrism, Godcentrism?

Then we would become one with God. Hmmmmm! :wink:

I wonder which other animals and other living organisms consider themselves, or are capable of considering themselves, one with us? If none, then perhaps our obtaining wider integration before we are one with each other may lead not to our betterment but to our extinction.

But if someone were to recognize the "oneness" of everything, one might not realize that other people have different experiences, and not experiences that are the same, or at one with each other. I would think that's rather narrowly focused. In order to realize that you can see things from other perspecitives, you have to first understand that everyone's perspective is different.