Inversion of Values

magilum
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Inversion of Values

Nietzsche's criticisms of Judaism and Christianity referred to the inversion of values; taking the obviously desirable qualities of life, strength, happiness, and power, and commanding people to shun them. In the case that religious leaders are lying about an afterlife, this means that people are forced to condemn the only things they have to strive for and enjoy in this life, for literally nothing. This being something of a clever ruse for the grubbing lower classes to rot the bourgeois from the inside by convincing them what they have is bad for them, and that they should give it up (for the religious leaders to later rationalize taking for themselves, or course). Imagine clasping your empty hands in front of a dog until it drops its bone and runs over to you, finally convinced you have something better.

The idea is so pervasive and so perverse, and you find it in so many tragic thoughts and behaviors motivated by this religious interpretation. Even the rejection of evolutionary theory can find justification in the inversion of values. Evolution implies that things go from simple to complex; from poorly adapted to much better adapted. This is a reversal of the ideas at the heart of the Abrahamic religions. The first thing is a perfect god, and everything that follows gets progressively worse. God creates a perfect world, but it gets corrupted by Original Sin. The most important part of you, your soul, is something you can't even become aware of or prove; yet the senses are limited and corrupt. As though we're limited by, rather than to, sensory data; our only real window into awareness.

It's just a tragic waste of brain power, trying to fit the world into this inverted view.

 


Jeffrick
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???????

 

   Magilum   (wich means  wisedom follower)  what are you talking about;  or better yet what are you on?--and share some man like I am strait;   I think.

    Are you asking about religions that preach  "peace on earth and brotherhood" then organize mass murder and genocide or religions that preach  "motherhood and apple pie"  then get caught in motel rooms with hookers?

"Very funny Scotty; now beam down our clothes."

VEGETARIAN: Ancient Hindu word for "lousy hunter"

If man was formed from dirt, why is there still dirt?


lieutenant24
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...

I don't think he asked about anything. He was making a comment on one of the core problems with a belief in an afterlife. The things which one should value in this life seem trivial in the light of an eternal life to follow.

COME TO THE DARK SIDE -- WE HAVE COOKIES


magilum
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lieutenant24 wrote:I don't

lieutenant24 wrote:

I don't think he asked about anything. He was making a comment on one of the core problems with a belief in an afterlife. The things which one should value in this life seem trivial in the light of an eternal life to follow.

Yes, and no. Life isn't merely damned with faint praise by its comparison to the afterlife, nor is it even disregarded: it's outright condemned. Some Christian sects condemned it wholesale in the past, but now it condemns its components piecemeal until the effect is the same. It teaches people not only to distrust specific processes which progress from simple to complex, from worse to better; but to disregard the very idea of a process. The Christian view is that things go from zero to their apex, and then decline from there; contrary to how most everything is shown to actually work.


magilum
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Continuing...Another

Continuing...

Another outgrowth from inverted values is this idea of "purity." That is, whatever is untouched, untested, uncomplicated, unformed, undivided, undifferentiated, is preferable to what is. A simple example is the idea of childhood purity. I recall my childhood fairly well, and the points of view I had were largely displays of ignorance, tactlessness, pointing out the obvious, and finally the occasional novel view worthy of some praise. But a common religious view is that children are "closer" to a spiritual truth; that is to say, that a human starts out with a clearer picture of the world that gets foggier as time wears on. Once again, this is a complete inversion of the way knowledge comes about! Experience, the gradual etching of detail into the homogenous slates of our earlier perspectives, is one of the most valued, and hard-won, things a person can have. It's a defining trait of human survival and adaptability; the core of our ability to learn and anticipate. What bullshit it is to disregard it with a few trite words about "purity!"