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[invicta]

[invicta]

[filoraene]

[invicta]

[Guest_Vylence]

I'll show you the light, its on the street... color yellow. Preceed with cation.

Anyway you two are kinda arguing over nothing it seems to me, or maybe I am just losing the point here? What exactly are ya'll trying to say?

Seems like you are both saying freedom is what you make of it... even into slavery.

Though there are certain physical addictions that you really can't change or supress, if you believe you can supress or change them you are delluding yourself. Now the line between emotional and physical addictions seem to be hard to find in certain cases. Someones hurt, they turn to drinking. The want to stop drinking they get fat. The rest of their lives they whine about how Slim fast just doesn't do them right.

That didn't actually go anywhere did it, and now that I think about it an addiction is a detrimental habit that a person is compelled to continue. Normally compelled even though social, and physical well being are negatively affected.

Thats how my psych book defined it, or something like that. My book also said that as much as 70% of people who are addicted fall back into addiction within a year. Which means either most people who become addicted to something don't have very much will to begin with, or that its really hard to become unaddicted to something.

Now virtue is objective, mainly because there is a good that goes beyond a single person. Whether any one person cares to admit it or not. That good maybe just as little as the greater good, the good of the whole, or it maybe that there is a higher good. As in a good that trancends, I make no guesses whether there is a higher good, but know for a fact there is a greater good.

[invicta]

[filoraene]

[invicta]

[kesa82]

Hmm, maybe I'm missing the point somehow, but here's my 2 cents;
Some of our basic historical assumptions are incorrect,
That is, the American and French Revolutions were a mistake, and the Industrial revolution was an outright catastrophe. The trend - the result of world war 2 not withstanding - is toward totalitarianism , which is not sustainable, perhaps merely simply because it isn't BAREABLE. Which is to say that I think that maybe, long term, we are headed hopefully ( ? ) towards the high middle ages. Now, I can't comfortably say that the middle ages was paradise compared to this, but then again, that's the rub - after all , the Soviets always told the Russian people that they were so much better off than under Tsarism, but then I think that Aleksandyr Solzhenitsyn makes a pretty could arguement that they were full of shit. And in any case, who among us actually remembers when things were different ? Sometimes, when I think about things like pissing in a bottle when I don't even smoke Pot or want to, when I think about how how suburban commune seems to derrive such pleasure from torturing me for smoking a lousy cigarette, when after all the reason I like to smoke is I'm required to forebare fucking all the 17 year old cheerleaders as I woul like to do, I'm given to wonder, WERE the forests so tyrannical? WAS it so bad to live in a dirt floored shack and have an oxen and a chicken for a best friend? Was the aristocracy such a terrible evil, when the contemporary democracy exercises a degree of control apon the free man that the most demonic of mercinary Barons could NOT HAVE DREAMED of exercising over the downtrodden serf?

[virtue?]

First define virtue:vir·tue (vûr'chū) pronunciation
n.

1.
1. Moral excellence and righteousness; goodness.
2. An example or kind of moral excellence: the virtue of patience.

The above thanks to Google.

To claim an excellence or righteousness is to assume you have the right to define it, to the exclusion of all others (assuming you didn't preface your use of the word "virtue" with a disclaimer that this is ONLY your opinion, and does not reflect what some or all other positions may or may not be.) I did not notice any such disclaimer.
So "virtue" is only a relative attitude, not an absolute attitude. "Virtue" should never be an objective, since any objective would only serve to justify your goal and/or belief. Objectives can never be for an abstract (and thus neutral) reason, they can only be viewed as justification for itself. Rather, "virtue" should be expressed as a possible venue, just one page in a book with many other pages. And only by reading the whole book can be make an honest assessment of the merits of that ONE single book. Only by reading other books by other writers can one develop an objective view on the subject.
This is not a "religious" thought, but it is an expression of relative non-objectivity. For it to be a religious thought, it would have to convey a belief based on the "laws" of a Superior Being. And "virtue" is not found anywhere in the Bible as a verb...rather it's used as an adverb and/or a noun.
But this is just this person's opinion...tnv

[SIO]

Google is great, but I prefer wikipedia for definitions.

Virtue (Greek αÏ?ετη; Latin virtus) is the habitual, well-established, readiness or disposition of man's powers directing them to some goodness of act. (1) Virtue is moral excellence of a man or a woman. The word αÏ?ετη is derived from the Greek arete (αÏ?ετη). As applied to humans, a virtue is a good character trait. The Latin word virtus literally means "manliness," from vir, "man" in the masculine sense; and referred originally to masculine, warlike virtues such as courage. In one of the many ironies of etymology, in English the word virtue is often used to refer to a woman's chastity.

In the Greek it is more properly called ηθικη αÏ?ετη. It is "habitual excellence". It is something practised at all times. The virtue of perseverance is needed for all and any virtue since it is a habit of character and must be used continuously in order for any person to maintain oneself in virtue.

[Stuckasfook]

[wordwatcher]

(Reply 2 Bourne's original post)

Bourne, the first 4/5s of your post reminded me of something I wrote in college (not for class, just in my journal). Then, at the end, you lapse into Rousseauism.

Please help me understand how we are to consider the cannibal as a superior type of human. Also, have you yourself withdrawn to the jungle (or the veldt)? If so, does wireless computer work way out there in the boonies?
_________________
Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties. (John Milton)

~~~INTJ ~~~Cognitive style: Perceiver/Teacher hybrid