Your Choice Here...

[DÛke]

All I ask here is that you be as honest as you can be. No one will know what you voted or why - so please make it sincere. Plus, if you believe something completely different, I'd be, first, quite lucky to hear what it is! Don't get too picky, or if you want, make some clarifications in a post or something.

...

Choice 1: You have total command of your feelings, repressing, revealing, and concealing whatever it is you feel necessary. Thereby, you are capable of at least common sense, and in return, maybe even a good capacity for reasoning, moralizing, legalizing, constituting, building, destroying, etc. Yet, you believe that the course of life is predestined, that although man is in control of himself, responsible for himself and his actions, life in totality has a sort of a certain phases in which it must necessarily enter, that there are events that are inevitable…

Choice 2: You have no command of your feelings – in fact, what you feel amounts to just exactly that, what you feel. Instincts are guidance. And thereby, there is no room for common sense, much less, reasoning. Man is irrational, either doomed or glorified from the very beginning; the same with the individual. You are not in command, but you are commanded. Responsibility, in reality, does not exist. Life is fatality. Yet, free-will does exist, but only as a socio-moral-political phenomena, usually the result of civilization. The ability to choose where to live, what to eat, what to wear, what to say is of course there, but essentially and speaking in totality, we never have a choice…

Choice 3: Responsibility for our actions, crimes, feelings, extremes, dogmatisms, fanaticism, and all the obscurities and conclusions, does not exist. Not only is man incapable of rationality, but he is incapable of responsibility even when he claims to be responsible! He is moved by inner psychology, everything that follows stems from this psychology – everything revolves around physiological needs, and in that case, no one has a choice. “Reason” is an ancient lie, or at least a misinterpretation of what the man animal is: a reaction to himself! And only a reaction! Motto: "Man is the effect..."

Choice 4: Man is clearly capable of thinking rationally, hence he is able to reveal the systematic order of the universe, which is, mathematical. There is no such thing as fatality: life is but choices and responsibilities. One has always a choice, and not just common and everyday type of choices, but grandiose choices as well. We are capable of being rational simply because we are able to doubt our instincts, to question Nature, in fact, to pull ourselves apart from pure naturalism and look at things almost objectively. Everything is possible, because man is free to choose, all his feelings, his reactions, his reasons, and how the world as it appears is…he is the shaper and ruler. There is always a choice to build, destroy, make-better, or make-worse! Always! Motto: "Man is king over himself!"

EDIT: I did not vote, and will not vote to make sure there is no bias created.

 

[Spiderman]

How are you going to see the results then? The poll looks like it's open indefinitely... do you want me to add a "Duke's Viewing" option so you can see the results? Or is that not necessary, this poll is just for other people to vote on?

 

[Thallid Ice Cream Man]

What does "View Results" mean?

 

[Spiderman]

Rando was always saying he had to vote to see his results in his adventure polls... I was assuming it was the same here. But I guess that will work (since I voted, I automatically see the results and don't get the View Results option).

 

[DÛke]

...

I can see the results just fine, without voting. I always had the ability...

 

[Spiderman]

Rando must have been dopey then...

 

[Ferret]

Originally posted by DÛke
...

I can see the results just fine, without voting. I always had the ability...

Anyone can view the results if they're not logged in, I believe...Or using a second user account...

-Ferret

"makes talking to yourself that much easier..."

 

[Killer Joe]

But, Choice 4 was the closest I could come to vote with.

In a "Lickert" poll, it's best to give 5 choices with one being void or almost void of any association to the subject. ie
1.) Very Likely
2.) Likely
3.) Note sure <---------
4.) Unlikely
5.) Very Unlikely

also, each distractor should be worded with the essensce and of the answer in the first sentence, which is what you did for choice 1 & 2 (I liked that).

Finally, it's our nature to have feelings in response to stimuli. There's a moment between stimuli and reponse that we, as humans, could control. Some are better at it than others. It's not lying to yourself or others, it's just composure and presentation.

of course, I'm probably not *UNIQUE* for expressing my opinion in such a way that indicates I'm brainwashed by the evil US gov't or some crap-ola like that.

Damn OINKin' right! I'm PROUD to be an American!

"Inside every Vietnemese is an American just waiting to burst out!"
~Some random quote from a movie, you could replace Vietnemese with non-American

"Got goat?"

 

[DÛke]

...

Yellowjacket:

In a "Lickert" poll, it's best to give 5 choices with one being void or almost void of any association to the subject. ie
1.) Very Likely
2.) Likely
3.) Note sure <---------
4.) Unlikely
5.) Very Unlikely

I would do that if I wanted to attract complete and pure losers. I try to avoid people who have no opinion, no saying, no personality. If you're "not sure" about something this important, or you've never given it a thought, then I'm not going to endorse such ill-natured personality with my offering a comfort with a "not sure" option. I don’t care for those who “don’t know" - they haven't a knowing to share, so let not their lacking become public. Those who at least know enough to say something - anything - are far better.

If you're "confused," please make sure you're always at least few hundred miles away from me...as I tend to get very unnerved just simply smelling the air of a confused animal…

 

[Apollo]

DUke--but putting such an option would keep those vile people from voting for one of the other options and contaminating your results.

 

[DÛke]

...Indeed! But I actually was looking at it from a different angle: that the results will be contaminated in any case of events. What? surely there are some out there that have a profound tendency of misunderstanding their own physiological and psychological signals, misinterpreting their own well-being, looking from a lower perspective...who knows? I rather have a person choose the at least closest thing he "thinks" is truthful, than just give up and say "not sure.”

 

[Thallid Ice Cream Man]

Besides, either there's 1 answer, in which case the ambivalent option is wrong, the truth is somewhere between 2 answers, which would mean an ambivalent answer wouldn't work very well, or the entire poll is meaningless, in which case all the answers are equally wrong.

Basically we don't need an option like that.

 

[Rooser]

Hey, this poll has put Duke in a new light. When you think about it, all of the points the two of us have disagreed on can be boiled down to my determinism versus his free will.

Well I picked option 1, but I'm not too pleased with how Duke phrased it, but as Duke is obviously aligning with option 4 it can be forgiven.

I could say much on this subject, but I will keep my argument simple and brief:

I believe there is a greater logic to the universe that cannot be denied. However, one mind cannot possibly know the greater pattern - and if you know the story of Dr. Faustus you should understand that perhaps one mind should not comprehend the manifest order of things; as Douglas Adams joked, perhaps if one mind ever had all the answers, the universe would just blink right out of existence. So it is only natural for us to assume and trust free-will. Perhaps our decisions are ultimately predetermined, but as we can never know the greater order, the illusion of free-will is what drives us forward, lest we never take action due to our uncertainty. We must construct morals so that we can guess at the ramifications of our actions. Without this notion of free-will, we would be inert, and such would simply not fit logically with determinism.

Anyway, that is how I reconcile the two, and that is why I chose option 1.

Option 2 is remarkably dreary: A terrifying and random universe of which you can make no change? What would be the point?

 

[DÛke]

...

Once again, Rooser, you try to guess but you fail. You have an artful knack of playing guess-and-fail. I'm "obviously" aligning myself with option 4? No, not just am I aligned with it, but "obviously" too! How...drastic. And how not obvious!

I wasn't going to respond here concerning what I think because it might create a bias. But it has been a good time, and sorry...but I can't help listening to presumptuous statements made without attacking them. And...sadly...this one is easy to attack and win-over: I tend towards option 2 and 3. Option 4, in fact, is the most laughable option, the one that, looking at it from any perspective, cannot be the case. Option 1, in my opinion is far more truthful than option 4 (and to some extent option 3). Again, I tend mostly towards option 2. But 3 seems more real day by day...

You say that life is worthless if we had no choice or at least the illusion of choice. Well, my friend, here's what I tell you: that life is worthless to you if you had no choice, because without it, ultimately you, the lover of the free will, are worthless. Some of us Fatal Creatures who were given what your type calls "destinies," and great destinies I should add, never think of life as anything less than too much - too much beauty, too much value, too much desire, too much life and intoxication all in one little entity that we call "the body"! While you free-willers are, without your illusionary will, worthless...because you have nothing. And instead of too much! you rather say enough! But intoxication with life is never enough! It is always too much, but never enough! If civilization is another form of cover up, like I have theorized in political threads, then it is covering up a grand worthlessness which would perish if it wasn't for the "free will" it creates through the socio-political structure.

How much “free will” a creature thinks it has is a measure of its worthlessness.

 

[Ferret]

One thing that I've learned is that no matter what happens everyone ends up where they need to be when they need to be there. I find it amusing that those that believe the world is chaos and disorder still end up in their pre-destined spots and then they call it coincidence...

...I know that there is a strange order to universe and since I'll end up where I'm supposed to be no matter what I do "what I want to do" and enjoy myself. Eventually my destiny will find me and I'll achieve it.

-Ferret

"I like Chaos - as long as it's orderly"

 

[Chaos Turtle]

I don't think any of these really gets at what I think is true.
I would have to say that #2 is most correct, but there are some elements of the others that are true as well.

Here's my synthesis:

You have no command of your feelings. Feelings, in fact, are merely a set of chemical interactions in the body which have evolved over the eons to improve our chances of survival, on every level from the individual to the species.

We are capable of reasoning, however, and we have as a species developed the ability to exclude ourselves from the evolutionary process. Instead of adapting to the environment, we adapt to environment to us. This is not "good" or "bad" but simply the way it is.

Life is experience, but there are choices to be made. We are fully capable of ignoring our biological imperatives. We can in fact choose not to eat, refuse to mate, and even voluntarily end our own lives. Such decisions are not made easily, and it could be argued that such "decisions" are so irrational as to be evidence of insanity. It could also be argued that such decisions might be made in order to give one "more biologically deserving" better evolutionary opportunities in the future, thus improving the species. But the choices are still choices, rational or not.

Given time, Man could eventually reveal the nature of the universe. It is not mathematical, however. Rather, mathematics is what one uses in order to describe the findings. There is of course no point to it, other than to satisfy curiousity.

In the strictest sense, Man is in fact doomed. The universe is finite in every dimension we can imagine. We will come to an end. There is no way for us to become "glorified" except according to our own standards, which are irrelevant to everyone but ourselves.