[Lady Sidhe]

(TS in quotes)

"... to qualify that, if the usefulness is pleasure then it is useful."


Yes, I can vouch for the fact that he thinks that if it's pleasurable for him, it is therefore useful, and therefore OK, no matter what it is.



"And why does everyone say that boring is bad?....Why can't we reverse the trend towards higher standards?"


I've been asking you that for a year, and haven't gotten an answer yet.


quote:Originally posted by Shattered Soul

Right on, Zenchou. That, I think, is what TS doesn't understand. "Useful" to him, it appears, is what he himself deems so. Anything else is a waste of time, again, because he believes it to be so.


That's true.



"My standards are based on a desire for improvement and simplicty that is derived from the greatest thinkers if time, Kant, Plato, Epictetus, Epicurus, Hobbs, Socrates, and so on."



Many of those also had very unemotional views of life. I can see why they drew your attention. However, lack of emotion is a flaw, as we can see by observing serial killers, other sociopaths, and some other personality disorders. Without emotion, and the resulting empathy, people don't care about anyone but themselves. In other words, if it's pleasurable to them, it serves a valid purpose, no matter how it affects other people. That isn't an improvement.



"If I have one belief in this world it is that only humanity can save humanity."


Humanity is made up of individual people, and if individual people don't care about anyone except themselves, and view things that cause them pleasure as being ok despite how it affects other people, humanity will keep going downhill. Without emotion, things like family, marriage, and the like, the things that knit society together, cannot be sustained.



"People are migratind towards a degree of complex shallowness and venality that is truly staggering."


I'm not even going to comment on the audacity of you making that statement.

Sidhe