Players prayers

@sometime sun,

That the priest was giving away one of his trade secrets?

@jgweed,

jgweed;145527 wrote:

That the priest was giving away one of his trade secrets?

:lol:excellent question

@sometime sun,

Being that he was a preist he was likely refering to human nature in regards to the chains of sin and hell. As in, 'it is human nature to commit sin and be weighed down by the chains and punishment that come with it.' Sin is often explained as an action of self imposed captivity. And i believe something similar, not necessarily sin, but that people tend to have the natural tendency to impose behavioral/emotional/spiritual captivity upon themselves.

@sometime sun,

sometime sun;145290 wrote:

A priest told me this today;
'Humanity does not want to be free'

What do you think it means?

My guess is that it probably means humanity wants to serve the Lord, wants it fundamentally, spiritually - longs for it. For only in service to Him do we become fully what we are, or are meant to be.

@sometime sun,

sometime sun;145290 wrote:

A priest told me this today;
'Humanity does not want to be free'

What do you think it means?

That he thought that profundity and confusion go hand in hand.

@sometime sun,

Nobody wants Freedom. People get freedom confused with Rights. You don't any everyone free to go around killing people, you want the right not to be killed. You don't want everyone to be free to acquire as much money as they can, anyway they can, you want the right to earn a living.

Humans prefer to live in communities so that our Rights can be observed and protected. Very few of us prefer to be free in the wild and left to our own means for survival.

Granted the priest probably meant that people don't want to have to invest the time and energy it takes in developing their own Knowledge of Understanding and that they would rather have their responsibilities to the universe dictated to them by an accepted authority, which, for the most part is absolutely true.

@trismegisto,

trismegisto;145718 wrote:

Nobody wants Freedom. People get freedom confused with Rights.

I suspect that many people do want freedom, but they see their freedom as coming with certain responsibilities, the obverse side of their rights, which guarantee their freedoms.

@PappasNick,

PappasNick;145721 wrote:

I suspect that many people do want freedom, but they see their freedom as coming with certain responsibilities, the obverse side of their rights, which guarantee their freedoms.

I would agree that when polled most people would say they want freedom. However, I would also say that most people have not actually spent the time considering what they mean by that. Freedom is a great catchphrase that everyone can rally around because when it is applied specifically it is often on the side of the just. However, Freedom in general means nothing and has devastating consequences when taken lightly.

@trismegisto,

If people in general get freedom confused with right, that would mean a minority doesn't. If the majority, in the western civs equalling almost everyone, then I would propose that the minority is confusing right and freedom as seperate things when operationally in western civ's behavior they are the same.

@GoshisDead,

GoshisDead;145740 wrote:

If people in general get freedom confused with right, that would mean a minority doesn't. If the majority, in the western civs equalling almost everyone, then I would propose that the minority is confusing right and freedom as seperate things when operationally in western civ's behavior they are the same.

I don't think ignorance is a justifiable excuse.
If ten laymen say a man is dead and one doctor say the man is in a coma, the doctor is not confusing dead and coma and just because the ten laymen cannot tell the difference it does not make the definitions of the words the same, although, I suppose in time the laymen may come to use the word dead to define coma but in all likelyhood the doctor will by that time have created a new word to mean coma so that the two separate and distinct conditions are not confused.

@trismegisto,

trismegisto;145726 wrote:

Freedom is a great catchphrase that everyone can rally around because when it is applied specifically it is often on the side of the just.

On the side of the just - can you say more about that?

@PappasNick,

PappasNick;145710 wrote:

My guess is that it probably means humanity wants to serve the Lord, wants it fundamentally, spiritually - longs for it. For only in service to Him do we become fully what we are, or are meant to be.

[CENTER]:bigsmile:

Who believes a priest now-a-days ?

A banker ?
A congressman ?

Your Senator or Our Queen ?
:eek:

GOD ZIJ MET ONS
(GOD BE WITH US)

pEPIJN sWEEP
Magister, QXY
Laughing

[/CENTER]

@PappasNick,

PappasNick;145752 wrote:

On the side of the just - can you say more about that?

Well, when one group oppresses another group there is an unjust balance amongst the two. Those who attempt to balance the two groups usually act under the banner of freedom.

However, in most cases it is not freedom the oppressed desire. In most cases the oppressed simply desire the right to equality. They usually do not seek the freedom to oppress those who have previously oppressed them.

@trismegisto,

trismegisto;145749 wrote:

I don't think ignorance is a justifiable excuse.
If ten laymen say a man is dead and one doctor say the man is in a coma, the doctor is not confusing dead and coma and just because the ten laymen cannot tell the difference it does not make the definitions of the words the same, although, I suppose in time the laymen may come to use the word dead to define coma but in all likelyhood the doctor will by that time have created a new word to mean coma so that the two separate and distinct conditions are not confused.

This is assuming that to begin with dead and coma can be equated somehow with rights and freedom. For the death/coma analogy to work freedom and rights must be completely seperable and non-synonymous. So it is not ignorant of the 9 lay people to act as if freedom/rights are the same thing if they are the same thing.

Look at is as one being a semantic subset of the other. Like one being [chair] and the other being [rocking chair] they are both still chairs and have the same basic function of use except one encompasses all forms and specified function of chair in a prototypical sense and the other just one. In the mind of the average person if one says, have a seat in that chair and points to a rocking chair the person having a seat is not likely to correct the other person saying "this is a rocking chair please don't confuse the two." Thus Freedom and rights have a relationship. Freedom is a functional subset of having rights and really has nothing to do with absolute ability to do whatever a person feels except in certain fringe political elements (i.e. Anarchists etc...), and yet even in those fringe segments there are limitations to said "freedom". Saying that freedom is X and being in a severe minority is much like saying that the guy in a coma is dead, but the minority not being the doctor.

Which brings me to analogy issue number two, The doctor analogy hinges on the fact that a doctor has skills, prestige, knowledge and social capital the other 9 do not have, yet in the social function of freedom as you have portrayed it, only fringe elements of society hold this opinion, fringe elements that do not have the skillz, prestige, and social capital that the doctor had.

Notice I left out knowledge, this brings me to the third issue with the analogy. in the doctor analogy the doctor is assumed to have specified knowledge the others do not have. in the freedom/rights debate who is sconsidered to have this knowledge? and elite group of people given the right to pronounce things thus or thus, or to mandate defenition?

Also there is the issue of semantic overlap concerning freedom that is considerably less pronounced when talking about death, especially when death in the analogy implies an institutionalized medical definition of death.

@GoshisDead,

In modern western thinking, rights are actually a subset of freedom in ideological sense; or rather rights is a manifestation of freedom. It is only in this ideal of the Enlightenment, and this general notion of individualism where the notion of freedom reigns supreme, where all it truly means is a set of rights, a certain set of rules and legislation granting people to do as they see fit in various situations.

Though in truth, when one refers to "Rights", what is being intended here is the conformity to standards, the opposite of oppression, the notion that one has the "right" to proper living, one has a "right" to work where one chooses, one has the "right" to carry arms, etc. etc. - or in other words, that these are not "wrongs".

Freedom reflects a different notion, it is essentially the right to deviate in general. One is "Free" to do something, if he wishes; it is not particularly his right to do it, it is not a canonized action, it is not sanctioned, but it is included within the subset of being free.

Thus while indeed in some perspectives freedom can be a subset of rights and vice versa, they refer to different directions and different cultural outlooks. In western society there is a popular discourse to deviate, to be free, to be individual etc. - this individualism itself expresses itself via freedom, not rights. One is "Free" to do things, one is granted agency to act within the breadth of this freedom, one is free to think, but yet we do not say one has the right to think.

One has the right to equality, but we do not say one is free to be equal. Rights refer to a legislative power, they refer to the confines, limits, constraints, logic, and categorization imposed by a power; when one has a right, it becomes, to some extent, a cultural obligation or at least a cultural, collective expression to partake, to relish in that right.

What the priest was most likely referring to was the fact that people wish not to deviate, that individualism and the impetus to deviate is not natural. People do not wish to be contrary, they do not wish to argue with others, they do not want to form their own world, but rather to be part of somethiing else, to have their rights delegated to them etc.

@GoshisDead,

GoshisDead;145777 wrote:

This is assuming that to begin with dead and coma can be equated somehow with rights and freedom. For the death/coma analogy to work freedom and rights must be completely seperable and non-synonymous. So it is not ignorant of the 9 lay people to act as if freedom/rights are the same thing if they are the same thing.

Rights and freedom are just as separate and distinct as dead and coma and as such whether or not one is aware of this simple but basic fact does not change the paradigm.

GoshisDead;145777 wrote:

Look at is as one being a semantic subset of the other. Like one being [chair] and the other being [rocking chair] they are both still chairs and have the same basic function of use except one encompasses all forms and specified function of chair in a prototypical sense and the other just one. In the mind of the average person if one says, have a seat in that chair and points to a rocking chair the person having a seat is not likely to correct the other person saying "this is a rocking chair please don't confuse the two." Thus Freedom and rights have a relationship. Freedom is a functional subset of having rights and really has nothing to do with absolute ability to do whatever a person feels except in certain fringe political elements (i.e. Anarchists etc...), and yet even in those fringe segments there are limitations to said "freedom". Saying that freedom is X and being in a severe minority is much like saying that the guy in a coma is dead, but the minority not being the doctor.

I cannot subscribe to this analogy as Freedom has no relationship to having rights no matter how hard you want it to be so. If we wanted to use this chair analogy the correct way to apply it would be that chairs are rights and anything you choose to sit on is freedom.

GoshisDead;145777 wrote:

Which brings me to analogy issue number two, The doctor analogy hinges on the fact that a doctor has skills, prestige, knowledge and social capital the other 9 do not have, yet in the social function of freedom as you have portrayed it, only fringe elements of society hold this opinion, fringe elements that do not have the skillz, prestige, and social capital that the doctor had.

The ability to discern the complete and severe difference between freedom and rights does require a prestigious skillset. That of conscious contemplation. Without spending the appropriate amount of time and energy consciously contemplating such things, not just reading the advice and opinions of others, one will never be able to make sense of such lofty ideas like freedom and rights.

GoshisDead;145777 wrote:

Notice I left out knowledge, this brings me to the third issue with the analogy. in the doctor analogy the doctor is assumed to have specified knowledge the others do not have. in the freedom/rights debate who is sconsidered to have this knowledge? and elite group of people given the right to pronounce things thus or thus, or to mandate defenition?

As already stated those who utilize their time in conscious contemplation all have equal access to the same knowledge of understanding.

GoshisDead;145777 wrote:

Also there is the issue of semantic overlap concerning freedom that is considerably less pronounced when talking about death, especially when death in the analogy implies an institutionalized medical definition of death.

People rely too heavily on this perceived notion of semantics. Words have no value other than that of the ideas in which they have been employed to convey. We should try not to get bogged down in the words people choose rather focus on the idea they intended to communicate.

@trismegisto,

Tris:

So what is being conveyed here is only through contemplation on the terms is one able to differentiate the two and only those people enlightened enough to do it are skilled enough to make the difference all the rest of humanity are mindless sheep acting as if the two were the same?

A real understanding of language and how it is cognitively processed would hold such a notion as specious at best. Language and semantics are not operations that can be in any way neatly divided between concepts. One must when relating language to human behavior must approach it through a sense of the applied semantic. What people actually act upon when they process any bit of information. These things are wrapped up in socio-cultural schema, cognitive schema, prototypical frames, target ideology etc... one cannot simply say, "oh freedom is not rights because it thought about it deeply"

As for the analogy of freedom being a subset of right, obviously this went awry, maybe try thinking deeply about it in the context of how freedom and rights are actually used within the language, culture and behavior, of those using the word.

Freedom is by its very nature a a relativistic word. It is a quality modifier, a state of being expression, applicable in a plethora of situations and completly valid in all of them. From an overprviliedged teen becoming "free from the oppession of my overbearing parents" to At this time I have "the freedom to choose which color of Prius I want." free/freedom is a direct modification/quality descriptor of state of being or implied state of being. It by its very grammatical nature is semantically and situationally relative. This is not even delving inot the affore mentioned series of contextual, and cognitive frames.

@trismegisto,

Quote:

People rely too heavily on this perceived notion of semantics. Words have no value other than that of the ideas in which they have been employed to convey. We should try not to get bogged down in the words people choose rather focus on the idea they intended to communicate.

Maybe ideas are nothing except the words that are used to convey them.

@Baal,

Baal;145837 wrote:

Maybe ideas are nothing except the words that are used to convey them.

May be

ideas are nothing

exept the words that are used

to convey

them

To what does "them" refer ?

The ideas ?

Pepijn Sweep ud Jisp

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