My recent travels....Your thoughts.

This Christmas, I have been on a spiritual quest through Southern Asia. I have been looking for the meaning of man..
What have I seen and discovered, that Georgetown in Malaysia is a rat infested sewer of a place. The fleshpots of Bangkok can still get you a virgin and that Cambodia has a new religion, neither Hindu or Buddhist, it is simply the almighty dollar. Everyone wants a piece of you, life just seems to be a way of struggling to overcome each other. For every true smile we come across a thousand false ones. Ones whose soul purpose is merely to take. Afterall everyone wants something from someone, often just to feel superior or to hurt. Cute children holding snakes, you can take their picture for 'ah dollar', massage and 'boom boom', in Siem Reap I was offered a 13 year old girl today - I declined and made my excuses. In Angkor Watt, beautiful child beggars will sell you 'the book' for 'ah dollar' and older ones with try and scam you for 'ah dollar' more.
I met a lovely taxi driver; who, I hired for two days for 70 dollars. He had been a primary school teacher, an educator; yet, in Cambodia a taxi driver earns more in two days than the 66 'doller' a teacher gets in a month. False Policemen on the take, real Policemen on the take. Yet of all the places i've travelled, through Egypt and Africa, Europe, Iceland, China, Japan and almost everywhere else; nowhere, has touched and disturbed me this much. Vietnam in a few days and the floating villages of refugees on Reap river have perhaps given me a taste; although, they say Vietnam is much a game of two halves these days and eveloping quickly. Have I learnt anything spiritual? I've seen shanty towns of unbelievable poverty yards from a KFC. I've seen children mutilated to be better beggars. I've seen the dollar destroy religion (good or bad?).

I've seen the killing fields.

I've met mystics and shamen and still I've seen no miracles, nothing to convince me that any of us have a purpose on this small ball of rock orbiting a non-descript star, in an unimportant arm of an average Galaxy, in one of countless un-special galactic clusters, in the vastness of the Universe.

I still think Life is a joke and the punchline is 'nothing matters'.

Care to convine me i'm wrong?

Sounds like New York in the early 90s.

Nope I was in New York in the early nineties, mid eighties and noughties. New York is as nothing to this. I grew up in South London and parts of that are as bad for violent crime as anywhere in New York, it's one of the reasons we had more heavyweight boxing champions in the nineties from London than New York or anywhere in the US for that matter.

It was a joke. I'm sure if you spent all your time in these places, you'd find meaning in something. You can't really talk about how important and devestating the dollar is when you went there to spend money on your vacation.

I've had an idea for a movie for a few years, about a group of yuppie Westerners that take a hedonistic mission through India to "discover" themselves, only to have a major interpersonal crisis in the group, and eventually, to die in the tsunami that struck the east coast of India on boxing day (the same one that wiped out much of SE Asia), with absolutly no sense of resolution of any issues [actually, ending the movie where a traditional film would be just about to resolve the issues, lol, ok, I wont rant on it].

I don't see why people go to these "mystical" places to try and find themselves. Of course all you will see is the suffering and the poverty, the world wont make you feel better if you look at it through the eyes of someone who thinks there is no purpose. You have literally biased yourself away from ever being able to see the positive, as you have an a priori position that there is no positive.

Find meaning for yourself, don't expect the universe to do it for you, then you will be able to see how wonderful some things are.

Originally posted by skekUng
It was a joke. I'm sure if you spent all your time in these places, you'd find meaning in something. You can't really talk about how important and devestating the dollar is when you went there to spend money on your vacation.

I realised that, the dollar is not what's devastating, it's need that's devastating. Desire is the problem, I find little positive in desire as it's perpetuated by the pervasive cultures. I think it eats away at the soul.

I don't know. The desire to eat when you need to and shit indoors doesn't strike me as cultural.

Originally posted by skekUng
I don't know. The desire to eat when you need to and shit indoors doesn't strike me as cultural.

That's semantics, desire tends to be more about obsession and need in the context i'm applying it; Although, it can be used your way, I didn't think I needed to define that far.

Originally posted by inimalist
I've had an idea for a movie for a few years, about a group of yuppie Westerners that take a hedonistic mission through India to "discover" themselves, only to have a major interpersonal crisis in the group, and eventually, to die in the tsunami that struck the east coast of India on boxing day (the same one that wiped out much of SE Asia), with absolutly no sense of resolution of any issues [actually, ending the movie where a traditional film would be just about to resolve the issues, lol, ok, I wont rant on it].

I don't see why people go to these "mystical" places to try and find themselves. Of course all you will see is the suffering and the poverty, the world wont make you feel better if you look at it through the eyes of someone who thinks there is no purpose. You have literally biased yourself away from ever being able to see the positive, as you have an a priori position that there is no positive.

Find meaning for yourself, don't expect the universe to do it for you, then you will be able to see how wonderful some things are.

Ahh, you miss the point of my post. I was there when the Tsunami strck btw, not far inland from Phuket. Thailand has changed so much.

Tell me of these wonderful things oh wise one.

But you are saying that the desire for wealth has left the desires(needs) of the majority of people in that part of the world in the streets begging for "ah dollar", yes?

Originally posted by skekUng
But you are saying that the desire for wealth has left the desires(needs) of the majority of people in that part of the world in the streets begging for "ah dollar", yes?

Sort of but not exactly, i'm saying quite a bit more, that when people have very little and they see people with what they percieve as a lot, it makes them think the values thehy have are 'worthless' even though the intrinsic value of these vlues has a greater 'worth' in itself; However, Cambodia given it's history... Is always going to be a place with a need, like a child that has never been held by it's mother, it will want more than most. Happy smiles, hard eyes.

Originally posted by Khmer_before
Ahh, you miss the point of my post. I was there when the Tsunami strck btw, not far inland from Phuket. Thailand has changed so much.

no, i don't think so. You want to find meaning in the world, though you have decided there is none, and now you gripe that you only see meaningless suffering.

That is a self-fufilling prophecy if I ever saw

Originally posted by Khmer_before
Tell me of these wonderful things oh wise one.

LSD is fun

Originally posted by inimalist
no, i don't think so. You want to find meaning in the world, though you have decided there is none, and now you gripe that you only see meaningless suffering.

That is a self-fufilling prophecy if I ever saw

LSD is fun

Actually LSD isn't always fun.... Flashbacks can be a *****, especially if they are bad trips.

I would like to find meaning, I see little if any purpose.

Originally posted by Khmer_before
I would like to find meaning, I see little if any purpose.

you can't find meaning though

there is nothing out there, only what you infer from it. meaning has to be personal.

there is no search

Originally posted by inimalist
you can't find meaning though

there is nothing out there, only what you infer from it. meaning has to be personal.

there is no search

Really so you're saying we ascribe meaning to our reality? Isn't that a bit like "do what thy wilt"?

Originally posted by Khmer_before
Really so you're saying we ascribe meaning to our reality?

I suppose, but more that our own perspective biases the inferences we make about meaning.

Originally posted by Khmer_before
Isn't that a bit like "do what thy wilt"?

no... its a bit like cognitive psychology

Originally posted by inimalist
I suppose, but more that our own perspective biases the inferences we make about meaning.

no... its a bit like cognitive psychology

Cognitive psychology hilarious stuff....

Anyway moving on....quickly and no offense the epistemological psychs out there......but what your saying isn't really that and what they say is incredibly subjective... Ha, did you see what I did there? Subjective......Haha.

What is your meaning and purpose and do you matter?

Perhaps there is more meaning to be found in the religion forum.

couldn´t be arsed to read the long post to be honest.. so "don´t give a toss" would be my thought.

Originally posted by Khmer_before
Cognitive psychology hilarious stuff....

oh ya, attentional biases toward schematic difference and generalizations are funny stuff. I normally bust a gut when I read my latest TiCS. ap&p is nothing but a good time too, that crazy jeremey Wolfe and his guided search 2.0

Originally posted by Khmer_before
Anyway moving on....quickly and no offense the epistemological psychs out there......but what your saying isn't really that and what they say is incredibly subjective... Ha, did you see what I did there? Subjective......Haha.

my only guess here is that you have a much different idea of what "cognitive psychology" means, than do, oh-I-don't-know, cognitive psychologists...

Originally posted by Khmer_before
What is your meaning and purpose

I actually spend little time on questions such as these. I do wank a lot, so I guess we do have that in common

Originally posted by Khmer_before
and do you matter?

yes?