{"id":15895,"date":"2012-04-16T06:34:37","date_gmt":"2012-04-16T13:34:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=15895"},"modified":"2012-04-16T06:34:54","modified_gmt":"2012-04-16T13:34:54","slug":"from-man-alive-the-high-cost-of-mindlessness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/15895\/from-man-alive-the-high-cost-of-mindlessness\/","title":{"rendered":"From Man Alive! – “The high cost of mindlessness.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

From: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind.<\/em><\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

Extract from Chapter 9. The high cost of mindlessness.<\/a><\/h3>\n

Because you never trained your mind to think about the ontology of human nature – don’t fault yourself for that; no one else did, either – you thought they were just talking about you. You’ve known your whole life that you yourself have never been able to live down to the perverse ideas of “virtue” that evil philosophers and their mindless minions have never tired of preaching at you, but you thought the fault was yours alone. You thought that, since everyone incessantly repeats<\/em> these inverted moral prescriptions, everyone other than you must be conforming<\/em> to them, as well, and it must be you alone who is defective. You could not succeed in condemning – damning – your life and still living it, so you called yourself a “sinner” for committing the awful crime of continuing to live as a human being after insisting to yourself not just once but a thousand times that the self – the cardinal value in the uniquely-human life – is evil. How could you possibly claim to be<\/em> good if you could not ever seem to do the things you insisted to yourself are<\/em> good?<\/p>\n

You didn’t know that nearly every other human being swims in that same steaming sewer of longing and shame, each one of them perpetually and persistently failing to uphold “virtues” that are – by diabolical plan and intention – impossible<\/em> to practice. You didn’t know that no one<\/em> can practice those perverse ideas of virtue – because no entity can both be and not-be itself. That is the essential statement of ontology, the law of identity, and we can characterize virtually all of moral philosophy, until now, as anti-ontological teleology: You should<\/em> be only what you cannot<\/em> be. But that proposition is inverted, too. What virtually all theologians and philosophers have insisted, for all of human history, is that you should not<\/em> be the only thing you can<\/em> be – a self, a being of rationally-conceptual volitionality, a free moral agent.<\/p>\n

Why would they make Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind. Extract from Chapter 9. The high cost of mindlessness. Because you never trained your mind to think about the ontology of human nature – don’t fault yourself for that; no one else did, either – you thought they were just talking about you. You’ve known […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,212,29],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15895","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-egoism-in-action","7":"category-flourishing","8":"category-group-therapy","10":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":15898,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/15898\/from-man-alive-a-mindful-catalog-of-mindlessness\/","url_meta":{"origin":15895,"position":0},"title":"From Man Alive! – “A mindful catalog of mindlessness.”","author":"Greg Swann","date":"April 17, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"From: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind. Extract from Chapter 10. A mindful catalog of mindlessness. I like to play a philosophy game I call Backstory. I will look at someone \u2013 anyone I happen to see \u2013 and try to project backward in time to the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Egoism in Action"","block_context":{"text":"Egoism in Action","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/egoism-in-action\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":15845,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/15845\/from-man-alive-speaking-in-tongues\/","url_meta":{"origin":15895,"position":1},"title":"From Man Alive! – “Speaking in tongues.”","author":"Greg Swann","date":"April 10, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"From: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind. Extract from Chapter 3. Speaking in tongues. One of the things that protects humanity from all of the philosophers and academics who insist that we are nothing special is the power of speech. Not speech deployed to argue against them;\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Egoism in Action"","block_context":{"text":"Egoism in Action","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/egoism-in-action\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":15904,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/15904\/from-man-alive-indomitable-you\/","url_meta":{"origin":15895,"position":2},"title":"From Man Alive! – “Indomitable you.”","author":"Greg Swann","date":"April 18, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"From: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind. Extract from Chapter 11. Indomitable you. We all know that slavery is abominable, a vile and vicious practice, indefensible on any grounds. And yet we may not know \u2013 or may know but do not want to admit we know\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Egoism in Action"","block_context":{"text":"Egoism in Action","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/egoism-in-action\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":15786,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/15786\/its-sunday-and-ill-be-damned-if-i-aint-thankful\/","url_meta":{"origin":15895,"position":3},"title":"It’s Sunday, and I’ll be damned if I ain’t thankful!","author":"Greg Swann","date":"March 25, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Jimmy Klein and young Gavin M. George got my Sunday started right. I love Sunday despite the fact that I don't believe anything I don't have to, and most especially do I love to start my Sunday with the Sun God of my own idolatry: The blinding brilliance of a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2592,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2592\/stash-that-cod-piece-im-not-waxed-fruit-and-you-are-not-a-rock-star\/","url_meta":{"origin":15895,"position":4},"title":"Stash that cod-piece: I’m not waxed fruit and you are not a rock star","author":"Greg Swann","date":"February 13, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I should probably stop picking on this little nebbish, but he's such a champion at leading with his chin that I find him hard to resist. His theme? \"Rewriting the book on how to kick ass.\" I wish I were joking. I'm gonna guess that he wasn't among the first\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":15835,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/15835\/from-man-alive-youre-in-this-all-alone\/","url_meta":{"origin":15895,"position":5},"title":"From Man Alive! – “You’re in this all alone.”","author":"Greg Swann","date":"April 8, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"From: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind. Extract from Chapter 1. You\u2019re in this all alone. Each individual human being is his own first and best philosopher, like it or don\u2019t, for this simple reason: You are not born knowing how to stay alive, and, absent some\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Egoism in Action"","block_context":{"text":"Egoism in Action","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/egoism-in-action\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15895"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15897,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15895\/revisions\/15897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}