Why does society view us this way?

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An important question. If souls do not exist, then there is no need for us to fear for their eternal fates, and all we need to concern ourselves with is material existence.


Conformity ... no. The worth of an individual is determined by their ability and willingness to maintain survival for both themselves and the community.


Yes, if by "Good Survivors" you mean "Living", and by "Bad Survivors" you mean "Dead".


Our survival, their survival, and everyone else's survival in the community.

Agreed! The concept of the soul can be used as a metaphor as well which I was using. If one has to become a bad guy then is survival worth it? If one has to sell out his noble virtues then I ask is survival worth it? If one has to become a monster and lose his humanity in the process of survival then how is survival noble?



This is where you and I differ. I believe it is wrong to put this price tag on a human being. To me, human life has intrinsic value. You and other people in America see other people's life as a commodity. To me, this is morally wrong. By seeing it this way, a terrible price has to be paid which is the soul. This is a cost I think that is to much.




Not necessarily. Sometimes survival is not the only way to win. If in a possible scenario life and survival costs one's soul or humanity then to me the cost is to much.

With all due respect to CubedDemon, how does this relate to the OP?

That is sage advice.

The guy who wrote the article, whoever he is (Goad must surely be a pseudonym!) is scum.


http://takimag.com/article/the_art_of_n ... h_jim_goad

What a Delta India Charlie Kilo.

I hope he gets effed up in war, and needs pain meds to get by, then let's see how smug the little filthsack is.

^ Haven't you heard? Pain is imaginary! All you need is the right attitude, and it will go away!

There are certain people who are the wisest of sages of all times. I simply just want to understand as I am an ignorant man. Certain people make certain assertions. I just want to understand how they come up with them. I simply want to know what the truth is. For whatever reason that I don't grasp I just seem to annoy them.

Ignorance to the subject.

Because to most of the world, aspergers doesn't exist and it is simply seen as an excuse not to take responsibility for oneself. It's as if it was its own form of Scientology.

So we are nothing but animals with a larger intelligence than most species?



Oh yes, just what I meant, survival of the fittest. So bad survivors should really feel inferior to good survivors because they are fundamentally of less worth?

An unsuccessful guy with Down Syndrome or Asperger Syndrome should feel inferior to many successful people, because he really is inferior on a fundamental level?



I wonder if such a superficial world is satisfying for you to be a part of? You have no internal worth, your worth is exclusively a matter of performance?



You feel you truly love others even when the love is conditioned on them being able to keep up their current performance? If they suddenly start to perform a little worse (for instance as a result of being injured in a car accident), you love them a little less, because they become a little less lovable as a result?

People's lovability is really a function of their performance? The worse performance, the less lovable? That is true love?



I must admit, this is hard for me to accept. If this is so, I don't really see why I should keep loving myself, the way I do now. Because in that case I'm just a physical object with certain needs and abilities. Loving myself would be like loving a rock, just because it happens to be beautiful. How is that possible.

This is important for me, because I've struggled to fall in love for that exact reason. I cannot fall in love with a well-polished rock the way people expect me to. I begin to believe my source of confidence truly is different from that of other people, i.e. soul vs. abilities.

I can only love others for their abilities if their abilities is an expression of their desire to ensure the survival of their soul/spirit. So it's only if the abilities is indirectly an indicator for the love for the soul/spirit, not the abilities themselves.

I'm glad you challenge me on this Fnord. I need to understand this.

Thinking it over, I realize Fnord is right.

The less one views the world materialistically, the more one lives in an illusion. You are nothing but a physical object in a physical world with some abilities and needs.

True love is an exchange of servies between compatible humans.


One only has a problem with this if one believes one's thought to be reality (to some degree) instead of only the world surrounding oneself. If you intensely believe the immediate world that is around you is the only reality there is, you don't have a problem with this, because you stop thinking about it - you fully become a (clever) animal ! !

Some aspects of the world are horrible, but if one stops thinking about it, it becomes this nice paradise.

The tough thing for an autistic is that we have to consciously stay materialistic, where for many others it happens automatically.

One thing is for sure: confidence levels seem to raise extremely as soon as you start to view the world materialistically. So does motivation.

I really don't want to go around and fool myself anymore. Whether one believes in souls or not, the only person one hurts the most by not thinking materialistically is actually oneself. Unless one believes the soul is independent of one's physical body of course. But think about it, when you die, do you think that soul is still here? We are mortal, that's why life is so precious.

Last edited by qawer on 13 Jun 2013, 7:34 am, edited 1 time in total.

Looking at the article, I could only point out one person who literally had the EXACT same mindset and ideas about "unconfident people" as the people have writing and replying to this article, his name was Adolf Hitler.

Because society is filled with idiots who think they know everything about everything and heaven forbid if anyone should think otherwise.

I know what Fnord is saying. What Fnord is saying is we have to accept our society the way it is and play along. What he is saying is we have to follow the script as is no matter how crazy it may seem or how inconsistent it is. In America one is supposed to project confidence and a positive attitude no matter how things are. With children one is supposed to tell them the same positive affirmations that everyone else tells their children and then once they're adults one has to preach to them that they're entitled to nothing and life is not fair whether these phrases have any meaning or not. Eventually, they're expected to realize they're supposed to follow this script and do the same thing. What Fnord is saying is one has to follow the canned script with little to no deviations from it.

Americans project themselves that they're tolerant, open-minded, welcoming when Americans are more of a conformist and closed culture. We're supposed to project the opposite of what really is. What Fnord is saying is we're supposed to play along to get along. This is the core of Fnord's message. What Fnord is saying is we're supposed to shut the f**k up and sit the f**k down and do as we're told and follow everyone else without question. This is Fnord's expectation and this is his experience.

My response is eventually one has to replace the spoiled milk. Fnord wants to fiddle while Rome burns. He wants to follow the script when the script itself is the problem. This is why Rome is burning.

I don't have to believe in a soul as something literal to use the term metaphorically. The truth is what motivates most people is emotions. A reference to having a "soul" is usually a metaphor for experiencing emotion. For some people the only way to survive is to desensitize yourself by killing your emotions. You don't want to make yourself vulnerable by ever having the appearance of relying on anyone else. The problem is that only works for one personality type. People of this personality type have the annoying tendency to project their coping mechanisms onto everyone else. It also doesn't work for people who can't delude themselves into believing that they don't depend on anyone or even the society around them. The problem is in an extreme capitalist system people relate to society in a very impersonal and materialistic way. This creates the impression that we are completely on our own when in truth we rely on impersonal systems and institutions for our survival.

Marshall, it does not work for my personality. I am not able to delude myself into believing that as well. Marshall, this whole capitalistic system is the problem. Look at our nation. It is falling apart. The issue is a good amount of the world's land and resources are concentrated in a certain group of people's hands. This means they set the policy. They dictate how things are, the constitution be damned.

Personally, I am agreeing with Morris Berman,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Berman, on what he says. This capitalistic system is part of the American cultural DNA. America was built on the hustler culture and doing business. What made America great is what is now destroying America. In order to fix this country we would need a different kind of people. Personally, I do not believe Occupy Wall Street will succeed because of this even though they have excellent intentions.

To fix America, a discussion needs to be held in a major sense about who we really are as a culture and create a new identity from the ground up. America's problems are ontological. This will never take place. If the goal is to change anyone's mind when presenting our case Marshall we will fail on this.

I start to wonder whether feeling one has a "soul" is a matter of being stuck in one's own mind/world.

Because in the "real" physical world, you are nothing but a physical "object" with certain needs and abilities. You do have a personality, but in the end you are built up from lots and lots of atoms in a physical world.

What do you think? Is materialism the actual truth?