++> From an exchange between Frank Masingill To David Martorana
 ++> examining "Value measures"
 
 FM>  I cannot argue with you as to what your experience is for
 FM> you know that better than I.  Nor can I argue that reality
 FM> ultimately might not look like something very different from
 FM> that which I and other people living in the western world with
 FM> its symbolism and differention accumulative over centuries
 FM> appears to be.  If there is nothing but the nihil as far as we
 FM> are concerned then you certainly are correct and not only has
 FM> the meaning evaporated we are not only dead (along with God)
 FM> but never were alive in the first place. Nihilism certainly was
 FM> a strong symbolism in the wake of "enlightenment" and as it
 FM> moved into Russia in the 19th century was quite strikingly
 FM> celebrated as the Russian novelists, like Dostievsky, so well
 FM> depicted.  We would just have to say in such an eventuality that
 FM> the nihil was all there ever was in the beginning and all there
 FM> is in the beyond or eschatologically.
 
      Though complicated by seeming self contradictions, and
      the trauma of defeatism, the negative philosophies must
      not be denied, at very least, as part of the universal
      equation.      We just don't know it all; and choosing
      the better-to-feel, may be more genetic predisposition
      than reasoned insight. Even Socrates showing that Protagoras'
      "all of importance is relative" being self defeating, only
      illuminates that one of "better words" might prevail over
      another.
 
  Of the "beyond", and mixed into "eschatology" we develop judgement
  insight packages ...BUT!!! these candle flickers (so far) do not
  translate beyond the "nihil". Myth and "positive-mind", separate,
  or in combination, do not an understanding make. A fatalish mixing
  along Protagoras, Gorgias, Dostievsky, and Nietzsche might well be
  a more univrsally correct image of what _LITTLE_, reality can actually
  mean (beyond gravity and arithmetic)!  However we make of meanings,
  consciousness itself is our only primal reference and ALL is relative
  to it. The Sophists could yet win out!!!
 
 FM> Perhaps, since this is what we attribute to OUR minds we can
 FM> even say that this is OUR great discovery and reality has simply
 FM> tried to fool us into thinking something otherwise by maintaining
 FM> us in that cave facing the wall and disputing shadows with only
 FM> the FALSE impulse to turn and seek a truth of existence not filled
 FM> by "meaningly shadows" endlessly disputing the meaning of their
 FM> movements.
 
     Most move beyond the primitive "nihil" stages as perhaps one day I
     will also. It is essentially a base line camp that I move out from
     in exploration and quest. At worst it is a false premise, at best,
     a clean path to explore. Some of us (me) need a clean path. With the
     exception of atomic-ish "laws of the universe" and "numbers",
     nothing I've heard, read or thought about, presents more than a mix
     between a seeming negative "nihility" and the positive confusion
     of consciousness. I'm still unable to work out this awkward comraderie
     between such yoked enigmas. You might say I'm having some difficulty
     moving past ground zero on the more serious questions .
 
 FM> But, then, if such has turned out to be true why philosophize at
 FM> all or rather is there really anything to philosophize about.
 
     Philosophy and its many cousins of evaluation, have a good
     mind-feel; and has been brightened by evolution into a hungry
     button in our nerve system. Also?  the "nothing-ish" conclusions
     might be in error or partly so. There are ever even third-ish
     possibilities that meanings may be other than  "nothing" or the
     "somethings we have invented them to be,
 
 FM>  In such a situation (if that is where human beings are) certainly
 FM> "God is dead" and so is the man who experiences God as his "measure."
 FM> In that case "history" does not have its original meaning of "man
 FM> in the present under God" It is simply a symbol whose meaning has
 FM> changed so that it now is a kind of description of "events
 FM> transpiring in time" as though they were meat going through a grinder
 FM> and becoming in their "meaninglessness" simply an empty process.
 FM> That is not much different, in fact, than the situation when "man is
 FM> the measure."  In such a situation I'm not sure I wouldn't go all
 FM> the way and buy into Nietzsche's "eternal recurrence" so that in
 FM> some future turning of the wheel there would be another Plato,
 FM> Moses and Paul to undergo another revelation of greater luminosity
 FM> of reality within man and on and on ad infinitim.  Faith (not religion)
 FM> leads me toward another view and a hope that whatever love of man
 FM> I have experienced is not false but it IS FAITH and not assurance
 FM> - of that I am completely aware.
 
     At this stage of our knowing, to think we know something is an
     awkward game. Faith as an insight motivator, might have a valid
     ring to it ....and it also _might NOT_. Being only "unsubstantial
     choice", it cannot really provoke, or respond to  "measurement" nor
     compete clearly with searchable ideas. If real "in its way", it
     is in a class by itself?  ...perhaps a "measure on another's
     scale" ??? then again ......perhaps not at all !!!
 
 FM> What else could I say?
 
     Not much more ....and you have said it well!
 
                                !^_?!,
 .."Life is what happens to... _/o0"\_ ...Dave...
 ...us while we are making        > >
 ...other plans..........."
--- Maximus/2 3.01
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