Love you Lola

Thank you Dalehileman. Have we met under another name? I thought my response would just sit there and exist surrounded by the profound thought processes of others. But I am grateful you've noticed and want to expand.


I don't think generosity exists in a pure form. If I do something for another, I do it because I want to do it. I'm getting something out of it, or I wouldn't do it. What I get may be a good feeling that someone I depend on and/or love is being helped or feels good. That's what I call altruism. Some people feel this takes all the meaning out of generosity. But I've never understood this idea. Explaining how something works does not, for me at least, interfere with the experience of or with it. Like.........being concrete here, explaining how a car engine works does not interfere with the pleasure of driving the car.



I don't believe there is anything about me but my body and what it produces. I include my brain and it's activity in my definition of body. What I leave behind, when I die will be my children and others (friends, students, etc) and what I have taught them and the memories. Also the real consequences of my actions while I was alive. Of course, my actions and what I have communicated to others is subject to the interpretations of others in their experience with me.

It will be very nice if I learn differently (that my soul continues on) when I die. But I doubt it. I see no reason for it and no evidence of it either. But this thought or belief of mine doesn't interfere too much with my appreciation of my life experience. Why would it have to last forever to be worthwhile? Why isn't the experience of the moment enough? It is for me. Especially since, it's all I can see that I will get.

And also, if we didn't die, it's hard for me to think of what worthwhile things we would have to do in life. Without conflict, there would be nothing to do, no book to write or read, no story worth telling. Well no story. No life.

So I live that way. I try to make my life as good or pleasurable as I can. That's impossible, of course. Because life is full of things that cause pain. Loss is unavoidable. But there's enough really good stuff that makes it worthwhile for me.

What answer do you give them?

I admit, Lola; obsession, compulsion, addiction

Well, I've met some really good friends (I even married one) on a2k and Abuzz before that. So I do it in order to have some conversation with fun (most of them) people that have become friends over the years. I learn a lot and have a lot of fun by reading the posts of others, looking things up in order to participate, etc. Basically, the people I find on A2K are better informed and more intelligent than the average person I happen to meet locally. So that's why I do it.

Don't think so unless you were someone else

Judging from the response so far we haven't much fattened

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But wouldn't use that term Lola, as it means generosity

I was merely being excessively technical inasmuch as I had never heard the word "selfless" making ref to the dualistic philosophical notion

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…...denying its abstract quality, …….. the concrete and the transcendental

That makes you a materialist--that is, in the second of these two senses

http://onelook.com/?loc=rescb&refclue=only%20physical%20objects%20exist&w=materialism

….which is of course perfectly okay but now you're required to draw that elusive line

The Soul in the abstract sense as I've described lives on but the idea that it can continue to think and feel in the same sense as now, is of course absurd

Not for me. I'd still look forward to popcorn Friday night and three exotic imported brews Tuesday--forever

Yes for the most part they are. There's a hard core however who participate in order to find anything in the typical posting, however innocent, to become indignant about; those who seem terribly angry at all times about nearly everything, expressing their displeasures thru the anonymity of a username or often as a scurrilous tag that doesn't require even that much ID

Eventually you to will become a victim. We must treat one as if he didn't exist