Being

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Applications

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Basic Message of Sermon On the Mount

As far as I can tell, the basic message of the Sermon on the Mount is something like, "assume that Being is good, and that your role is to further that good, and that the most appropriate way to do that is to tell the truth and to concentrate on the day." Something like that. That strikes me as… Well, it strikes me as extraordinarily wise.

To Understand Virtue First One Needs to Understand Being

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I think that you can’t really understand what makes up virtue until you modulate or modify your notion of what constitutes being. This is a hard thing to do.Modern people are fundamentally materialistic. And there’s some utility in that: we’re masters of material transformation. And the fact that we’re materialist in our scientific philosophy has made us extremely powerful, maybe too powerful, for our morality. Extremely powerful from a technological perspective, but it’s blinded us to certain things. And I think one of the things that it’s really blinded us to is the nature of our own being. Because we make the assumption that the fundamental constituent elements of reality are material. We fail to notice that the fundamental constituent elements of our own reality are not material. They’re emotional, they’re motivational, they’re dreams, they’re visions, they’re relationships with other people. They’re conscious: they’re dependent on consciousness. And self-consciousness. And we have absolutely no materialist explanation whatsoever either for consciousness or self-consciousness. And we don’t deal well, from a materialist perspective, with the qualities of being. And everyone knows those qualities exist, I mean for most people there’s nothing more real than their own pain. Pain transcends rational argument in that you can’t argue yourself out of it: it’s just there. And, materialist or not, there are very few people who are willing to allow the claim that their pain is merely an epiphenomena of some more fundamental material process. Pain is fundamental. Consciousness is fundamental. And I think that unless you understand that, you can’t think properly about virtue.

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Soul of the individual eternally hungers for the heroism of genuine Being.^{[Citation Needed]}

Interpretations

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Two ways of being

1. You are trapped in the past
2. Can you be someone with infinite future possibilities, and choosing one? This is to be conscious, awake. [This is pure quantum]. Consciousness takes a potential and turns it into a reality [collapses the wave function]

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Live in a manner that justifies the fragility of being. You justify being by how you choose to exist. You can live in a way that does not justify being, but I don’t recommend it.

We have to make some basic decisions: Love: Being, is worthwhile. "I'm going to act as is Being is worthwhile." Truth: play the game with a straight bat. "I'm going to act as if truth is the path to enlightenment."

We must commit to this.

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You should live in a way that justifies the fragility of being. Justify being by how you choose to exist.

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Is life terrible? It depends on how you live!  

See Also

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• How to Act (Action)
• Love
• Truth

 

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