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SHOTGUN_TRUTH

                                    October 21, 2007

Sartre's Existentialism (there are others)
lends itself to self-reinvention.  Today
is the first day.

In comparison, Buddhism lends itself to--
but is certainly not limited to--                 Even without looking it
fatalism and acceptance.                          up, I guarantee that some
                                                  Buddhists have observed
  You might very well                             that striving to end
  evaluate these                                  striving is just more
  things on social       I myself wouldn't        striving; and there's no
  and psychological      want to call that        point in making yourself
  effect...              criteria "truth"         suffer more by denying
                         (though I suspect        your nature to strive.
                         I have).

                         PSYCHSOPHY

   The actual effects of a philosophy
   are difficult to evaluate.

      This doesn't                    How *does* one get from
      make the task                   Christianity to the Crusades?
      less important...
                                         The temptation is to say
                                         that there's no connection:
      Like Russell, I tend               whatever the dominant
      to be critical of the              philosophy, it will be
      critics of "objective              warped for base ends.
      truth".

        If anything, the intervening
        decades of hippie freaks and
        new age flakes have made me
        even more critical.


               When I hear someone intone "there
               are many truths" I don't exactly
               "reach for my shotgun", but I do
               wonder how they might feel about
               the truth of a fist-in-the-face
               ("I refute it *thus*").

                   The many-truth model
                   might even make sense on       (Listen young man, don't you
                   some level --                  tell *me* about irony.)
   CLOUDS
                   But the people who do say
                   things like this are typically
                   using it as an evasion, not a
                   path to truth or truths...

                                       The social effects of
                                       evaluating truth based on
                                       social effect aren't pretty--


                                           There I agree with
                                           Russell... odd if
                                           *he* missed the
                                           irony, though.




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