I guess thats one way to state it, just as “time preferences shrink towards the immediate over the long term” is another abstraction of the same thing.

it all boils down to what is an acceptable amount of time to put into something.

the religious communes, like the quaking shakers are noted to have lasted much longer than the secular ones. why? because faith increases the acceptable amount of time to put into something.

when waiting, how long do you wait? when working towards something, how long do you keep trying before you move on to something else.

the big question being what goes out of our grasp when we no longer have the faith to proceed long enough to accomplish the goal?

if one were to look through the lens of faith, one could see that many things would be different if we had more faith. both good and bad, as it also matters what you put your faith in.

the socialists put in “blind faith” as few of them have the capacity to understand and work with the arguments, they parrot mostly.

zealots also have “blind faith”, while the jihadis arent so clear cut. we would like to think that they are zealots as that would put them in the crazy bin for most, but they are too consistent to be that. so i suspect for them its a tool, insincere as that tool may be, for them its good. [if one were to analyse the situation they are getting a lot of bang for very little buck and have literally gone toe to toe with vastly superior foe (based on what we consider superior)]

faith needs no proof, for proof undoes faith

in order for one to invent, somewhere, one must make the choice that to sit and toil towards some end without any certainty of solution, in competition with unknowns, and the normal forces of economics and opinion arrayed against you, to continue on through constant failure, till you, if lucky or what ever it may be called, end up succeeding in solving the problem. to which the whole journey only begins!!! for after one solves it, one has to have enough faith in it to swim upstream, a kind of pig headedness of the most useful kind. are you certain because you know, or you dont really know and am wasting your life on a crackpot item?

this is why people steal ideas… they are actually hard to come by in the good way. ideas themselves are a dime a dozen, like flowers… but only saffron is saffron, which is a flower unto itself.

Could you also add that, “As one loses faith, the more one requires proof?”

I guess what I am getting to is more a crisis of faith.

Feminism ultimately is born from a crisis in faith of the family, in faith of their husbands, and more.

Inventions are a process in which perseverance is required, and in order to have that one must have faith in oneself, faith in what one knows, faith in the ability to be first, and faith to carry it through.

One has to have faith in the patents… and faith that the system will allow it, or that it will make it to end.

Faith, is not just the cornerstone of religion… it’s a cornerstone of much that we hold and think are natural without help.

Religion gives one practice in faith, which is why those who practice are less likely to divorce. And why, behind every great man is a woman… a woman who was celebrated for having the faith in her husband!

Today… we don’t have faith in much… and so women got on this wheel AFTER faith was destroyed with god, and so they don’t invent. They don’t have faith in their husbands, or themselves, or their abilities.

Those that do, invent, and we don’t hear much about most inventions… those that don’t, don’t invent and we hear even less of that.

the more we lose faith… the practice of faith… the more materialistic we become.

the more we only have faith in what our eyes see, our tongue tastes, and more..

the less faith we have the less we wish to put money down on a bet in which the end result cant be known before you start.

the less faith we have the less we wish to put ourselves down on a bet in which the end result cant be known.

it doesnt matter if its invention, a business, a journey, etc… all fall as soon as the faith of the people involved ends.

and by definition, faith is the belief in somethign in which you have no proof.

faith is the cornerstone of religion AND society…

after all… business on a handshake, is faith…
after all… trusting what someone sells you is faith…

you can see that many chinese dont have faith as they cheat their own and and poision their own, and such.

in the absence of religious and social faith, its the faith in the states punisment that gets us to move… nothing else except maybe selfishness… but even selfishness needs a certain amount of faith, whithout that, you dont even get that motivation.

How dodgy is that sort of comment?

How dodgy is it to accuse someone of being a Martha Stewaart clone, without evidence, and refusing to either acknolwedge or apologize for it?

How dodgy is it to say something is SUBJECTIVE (because you SAY it’s subjective), when I’ve stated how one can use Nature to evaluate approaches. If one approach is objectively better than another, then how is that subjective?

“And Mike was right, it’s silly but it just goes on and on.

How dodgy is it to demand something that doesn’t work, and then get mad when the non-working thing isn’t provided? Would you go up to a KKK rally and demand that they start treating minorities better? Would you go up to a feminist and demand that she drop the whole “oppression” thing?

I can understand how you feel Elder and I are guilty, but I don’t understand how the Objectors can believe they’re so utterly innocent?

It’s goofy for a lot of reasons. I think this whole thread shows that already.

Why is it a religion? See my post above. It’s anti-scientific and it’s irrational (i.e. not a philosophy in the Western tradition). What else is left? Eastern religion.

I think wtexas is right. It’s subjective. That makes it contrary to Western religion, Western science and Western philosophy. In other words, it’s contrary to progress and therefore, if we were to put a gender label on it, it would have to be feminine.

It’s also touchy-feely. I.E. feminine.

EG has some good points, but his dodges are childish.

And Mike was right, it’s silly but it just goes on and on.

At least EG and I agree it’s not worth arguing about.

These concepts, as we know them today, came from protestant Christians. However, the secular, and the humanists, would love them to be some natural part of something. In this case “maleness”, which is very untrue, and all it is what those in the past call a vanity.

Truth got its start as we know it from Plato, and other great philosophers of the past. It died when the modern philosphers, with political agendas built in, killed it with relativism. Its these that we follow now, thanks to the work of the Frankfurt school, and men like adorno, and marcuse.

Reliability can Constancy, even in that order can be quoted in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. However, these two things are conservative doctrines, and have been extinct since the social revolution. For one cant be constant if one is a trollop, an adventurer, and a selfish get.

These ideas were conceptualized by men, but I will point out that they were conceptualized under religion. That they stem and come whole from the concepts premises in Christian faith, which everyone took up without the source (at least in the west).

The key to our having all around us is not that men were inventive more than women, but that religious men wanted to know god, and had no way to get closer to him than to examine what they presumed to be his work. All of reality.

I will agree that we are becoming blind to abstract and invisible value, but that’s only because the secular can only measure what they believe is real. and they cant come up with the math that can convince them that the way we used to act, polite, helpful, etc, is a benificient way to go about things.

And the nail that closes that coffin is that they cant see that these ideas are for the long term benefit, vs the short term benefit.

The secular, the atheists, and such cant see past their life times. They don’t believe past their lifetimes, despite any lip service they may use. the world is studded with gothic cathedrals, some taking half a millinium to create. Give me one secular enterprise that lasts like that? even the united states, born in the ideals of religion (“endowed by their creator”), is falling apart when that glue is no longer there.

Why should a secular person have children? PROVE that having them is better than not having them. Your arguments will be about everything else except for the person who creates them. So the secular don’t have them in great numbers.

Why should a secular person invent? You might say that if he does the world gets better. but the secular will snap back and say, what about nuclear bombs, what about this, or that, etc. they will not side with you that inventions are needed. They will even push you aside and say that its better to be the person that uses inventions than the person that invents. Just look at the history of those that invented! Here on these pages, you disparaged a womans invention, even though at the time, and around her, the people gave HER credit. Any secular worth his salt will tell you… why should I invent if I am going to get treated the way you treated her!

Even now, as we get more secular, we give less money from the state towards pure science!!! remember, that it was the church that did the early science work. it was the realization of the premise that if the world was created by god, then if you study the world you are studying the product of that force.

It was precisely the concept of creationism that gave birth to its own demise!!!!

And its precisely the death of creationist concepts that the secular look at the world. To make this clear, you can see it in the challenge that the bible is a book made by men. but their argument leaves out that the men, the pages, the ink, and everything that lead up to it was credited to god. In their view the bible is a thing that some claim is made by god that exists in something that is not made. In the view of the religious, the bible and everything is made by that force, and that discovering how everything is made gets you closer to that force. The arguments of creationism and such are really the argument between everything being plopped down in one place as it is, and everything that exists blossoming out from a set of universal premises. This is why the catholic church doesn’t side with the creationists! After all, it was the catholic churches realization that everything is a work of god, and then promoting science to know, over populist philosophical arguments that settled that long ago. The backlash from literal creationists is a backlash against this. against the truth that came after the plop theory of creation, and before the removal of god because he didn’t plop it all down at once!!!

Right now, in the past few months in science and other mags they are asking the question whether pure science should be funded.

And true to form, we have been removing the funding for that, in favor of socialist go good programs.

And you can go to the lemelson area of mit… and their ideas of creating inventions believes that the group think model works best… even a recent science article promoted the idea that a large group think of agents can do the same thing as a creative person (more and more creative ways to make marx right no matter how wrong he was).

Thank someone that the person that wrote the article wasn’t group think oriented… they pointed out that in the battle between the chess god and 50,000 agents, the chess god won… and that it would be much more expensive to have to set up 50,000 plus agents to not reach the same level as the one man!!!!!!!!!!

Ack… go to go… its late, I have to meet my wife…

Sorry…

Durn it!!!

I am pleased to explain my viewpoint to anyone who shows interest; however, if they are just interested in poking holes in it I see no purpose in accommodating them. I’m not running for office and don’t need to prove anything. I felt the two of you were interested, as did others, and during the past two days at least a half dozen people have been explaining things to you on this blog site and on the one I posted this morning, yet you have not indicated that you learned anything from anyone. That being the case, why continue?

I don’t visit the blog sites of those whose writings I disagree with except for occasional curiosity. Why waste their time and mine? They do likewise.

I’m not responding to anymore of your questions until I sense a shift in interest.

This last weekend I attended the Men’s Equality Conference in Washington, D.C. One presentation was done by Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young, authors of Spreading Misandry and Legalizing Misandry. Nathanson began their presentation by talking about the differences between males and females in terms of their “rites of passage” into manhood and womanhood. He pointed out that, historically, males’ rites of passage have been much more rigorous and distinct than those of females. In older cultures, men have been sent off to hunt, have had to endure painful or dangerous rituals and tests, have had to overcome some challenge. Today, men register for military conscription. They put their personal safety on the line in defense of their loved ones. They continue to embrace the provider role (despite female reentry into the workplace). Societal expectation upon males to be protectors (risking their lives) and providers (expending their time and effort) takes the form of a rite of passage, in my opinion. One additional “rite of passage” is the conformity to societal perceptions of what constitutes “maleness.” To fail at that rite of passage (or any other) is perceived as a male “not being a real man.” It’s the failure to conform to an externally-imposed standard that results in the designation of a male as “not being a man.”

I would counter that the only fair “rite of passage” that distinguishes a real man from a boy is a mental state of mind. That state of mind is the one that says, “I refuse to substitute the judgment of others for my own judgment. I have a mind and I will use it, and will not be shamed into suppressing my ability to decide what is best.” To be a real man, then, is to reject anyone else’s prescription for what constitutes “real man,” and instead to pursue that which conforms to your values, your reason, and your independent judgment.

This makes no sense. If Nature exists to arbitrate between effective and ineffective approaches, then how can people “just do whatever they want”? The only way this makes sense is when you remove Nature’s arbitration from the picture.

“Therefore, Joe can beat his wife because his “unseen inner knowledge” says its the right thing to do, and Dan can burn his competitors house for the same reason.

Okay, so first you tell me that I’m a Martha Stewart clone, and then you say that Elder supports wife-beating and house-burning? And when we point out that, in the absence of ANY evidence,these accusations are childish and weak, who’s being unreasonable?

Why pay lip-service to logic and reason when you’re firing out these highly illogical and unreasonable accusations?

“When you base your actions on subjective “unseen inner knowledge” then you’re going to get different behavior at different times by different men under different circumstances because each man will interpret what he feels differently.”

But Nature will arbitrate which of these “subjective” approaches is most effective. But, if some approaches are clearly superior to others, how subjective can they be?

“Cause it’s SUBJECTIVE, based on what you FEEL, nobody can say that anyone is wrong unless you are a mind reader and know that Joe is lying.”

Saying that Joe is wrong can either be based on the SOCIAL perspective (You’re wrong, because the majority says you’re wrong) or on the NATURAL perspective (You’re wrong, because Nature doesn’t respect your approaches.)

Who removed the Natural approach? Not Elder.

Why is it goofy? Does it fail to make a man more masculine? And why is it a religion?

You seem to be asserting ideas that you have no interest in proving.

Now if someone wants us to use a system where we use some kind of instinctive knowledge, then what you would have is men acting however they wanted, and you can’t tell them they are wrong because their “inner knowledge” says it is so. Therefore, Joe can beat his wife because his “unseen inner knowledge” says its the right thing to do, and Dan can burn his competitors house for the same reason.

When you base your actions on subjective “unseen inner knowledge” then you’re going to get different behavior at different times by different men under different circumstances because each man will interpret what he feels differently. And, because its SUBJECTIVE, based on what you EEL, nobody can say that anyone is wrong unless you are a mind reader and know that Joe is lying.

Wrong.

“If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not.” (John 10:37).

Anyway, I won’t debate religion because I think that’s a waste of time and is not what this site is all about. I just wanted to know what we were dealing with here. And what EG is offering is Eastern religious philosophy.

His trick is to lure people in by saying they will be more masculine if they take his goofy approach, which he won’t admit is a religion.

Yet Christ also got very frustrated with those people who asked Him to “show us a sign”.

In Christianity, the Truth of every individual’s relationship with God is between God and that Individual. The Church (the social aspect) is considered far secondary.

Not at all! If we’re discussing gender, which is a natural construct, then the use of social constructs will never work. Gender and nature define which methods of investigation are ineffective, not Elder, nor me.

EG, by trying to dodge my question, I think you have answered it. You are promulgating an Eastern philosophy/religion. Your dodge is to reject the “Western” concept that religion, science, and philosophy are distinct and relatively easy to define.

You said: “Have you ever heard the saying, ‘You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free?’ Truth is not provable infidel, it is understood. I can’t embellish that. You’re looking for proof and I can’t give it to you.”

In Christianity, truth *is* provable. You quote Christ, but Christ offered miracles as proof he was the Messiah. Therefore you are misapplying the words of Christ in order to support your competing Eastern approach to “Truth”.

Western education believes it can pour knowledge into you. It cannot. It does not deal in knowledge—it deals in information. Information is how to bake a cake or construct a bridge. It is material and provable. Our time is called the “information age,” it is not called the knowledge age or the truth age. It does not even know what truth is.

I make few attempts at pouring information into you; I work at extracting knowledge out of you. The knowledge is already in you; your creator placed it there.

I recommend you read my article Cubists, which can be found on my website under Men’s Action news.

Western man is always developing theories because he does not know the truth, and is always making studies because he has no understanding.

The truth is within you. Look for it.

If gender is a natural concept, not a socially constructed one, where do definitions fall in? Definitons involve people arguing, while turing away from the natural world, about the nature of what they study. Hence, “clear definitions” of what gender really is, falls under the “socially constructed” method – which doesn’t work.

“Now what you are saying is that us men should not question, that we should be satisfied with flowery, vague, nuanced statements, and that we are wrong to apply logic and reason to these matters.”

Not at all! But I am saying that certain forms of questioning will be 100% ineffective. To rely on these ineffective methods is unreasonable. If it doesn’t work, and will never work, why do it at all?

“You Sir are the new-age male analog of Martha Stewart.”

Wouldn’t it be more honest and reasonable to meet me first, to ask me questions, before you state such inane accusations?