You are unique like everyone else

[Spiderman]

If indeed everybody is unique, could that actually mean that nobody is unique ?(because everybody else is just that).

Let's say everybody was weird. Could that simply mean that everyone is normal? Being weird and unique is normal. Therefore, there is nothing strange, abnormal , or unique about being weird or unique. Lol!

 

[Sunstone]

Human worth does not depend on being unique. On the whole, people tend to be similar to each other. Makes you wonder why we have so many wars.

 

[Spiderman]

Human worth does not depend on being unique. On the whole, people tend to be similar to each other. Makes you wonder why we have so many wars.

I talked to a man who was in the Korean War, and he said communist soldiers and South Korean soldiers were sometimes in the same bar drinking and getting along. They were simply drafted. Then they go back to killing each other. Many people who kill each other would get along just fine if they sat down, hung out, and had a few drinks. It's unfortunate!

 

[Unveiled Artist]

If indeed everybody is unique, could that actually mean that nobody is unique ?(because everybody else is just that).

Let's say everybody was weird. Could that simply mean that everyone is normal? Being weird and unique is normal. Therefore, there is nothing strange, abnormal , or unique about being weird or unique. Lol!

Eh. We are all human, but we are and live and defined by our uniqueness and differences. Thats how we understand ourselves and others when we know there are unique things about him or her thats not like us. So, if everyone was weird, I assume everyones expression of weirdness would be different.

The emphasis on different expressions as a foundation not just because we are weird. That means nothing by itself.

There is only but so much you can learn if everyone is alike. There are countless things to learn when our foundation is our differences.

 

[Augustus]

I talked to a man who was in the Korean War, and he said communist soldiers and South Korean soldiers were sometimes in the same bar drinking and getting along. They were simply drafted. Then they go back to killing each other. Many people who kill each other would get along just fine if they sat down, hung out, and had a few drinks. It's unfortunate!

Was watching a documentary film about WW1 called They will not grow old (very good btw, everything has been restored to colour by Peter Jackson).

In this there was a story about a German rugby team that was playing in England. The players and their English hosts were having an evening meal and a drink when war was declared. The players weren't sure what they should do now they were 'enemies' and wondered if they should take the Germans prisoner. But they decided that, for them, the war would start tomorrow instead so they could enjoy the rest of the night together.

 

[Geoff-Allen]

"We all have these beautiful qualities that make us peerless in our own right. Yes, each one of us is peerless because nobody else is a precise replica of ourselves. Yet I see many who desperately try to replicate the characteristics and accomplishments of others and waste entire lifetimes striving to reach that unattainable goal. People tend to feel they're nobody unless others give them some type of acclaim or recognition. That's pure ego. That's thinking that greatness or self-worth is not achieved unless one's ego gets stroked and stroked again. That's ignoring the beauty within oneself - that natural and inherent beauty of the spirit - that is always there, always waiting to shine forth. To recognise this truth is to reap its benefits. We alone can tap into our greatness. No audience is required."

~ Mary Summer Rain

I have only just started 2 read "Tao of Nature" - it's rather good so far

 

[PureX]

It's just a matter of perspective. If we look at how we are unique, we will see how we are unique. If we look at how we are similar, we will see how we are similar. Because we are complex beings, we can be both of these things simultaneously. And if we take the time to try, we can see both of these aspects of ourselves, and of each other, simultaneously, too. Taking the time and making the effort to appreciate the whole being, in all it's complexity and it's contradiction, is a sign of wisdom, I think. Something too often neglected in our hyper-fast, hyper-critical culture

 

[Twilight Hue]

I talked to a man who was in the Korean War, and he said communist soldiers and South Korean soldiers were sometimes in the same bar drinking and getting along. They were simply drafted. Then they go back to killing each other. Many people who kill each other would get along just fine if they sat down, hung out, and had a few drinks. It's unfortunate!

Kind of reminds me of this during World War I.....

Did German and British troops really stop fighting and play soccer 100 years ago?


Snippet.....

"It’s a way to hide the horror under one layer of spectacle and another layer of moral virtue — a way to pretend that war is like a game, that there are rules, that there is safety. A way not to look into oblivion. We missed the cruel irony in all those soccer balls that show up in World War I photos. Nothing is a metaphor for war. War is a metaphor for nothing".

 

[Epic Beard Man]

I talked to a man who was in the Korean War, and he said communist soldiers and South Korean soldiers were sometimes in the same bar drinking and getting along. They were simply drafted. Then they go back to killing each other. Many people who kill each other would get along just fine if they sat down, hung out, and had a few drinks. It's unfortunate!

Having something to intoxicate you just to get along with someone else is not sincere. A nice open fire with meat on a spit, and some nice conversation would do just fine.

 

[Jollybear]

Human worth does not depend on being unique. On the whole, people tend to be similar to each other. Makes you wonder why we have so many wars.

I know exactly why we have wars.

Its because some people/parties refuse to understand the other party/person and instead of understanding, they give off redicule. Theres no understanding and respectfully disagreeing that goes on. And then the one being misunderstood and rediculed gets angry at this and retaliates and this then fuels war.

The bigger question i have is why isnt the fire starter willing to understand, and respectfully disagree?

 

[sealchan]

If indeed everybody is unique, could that actually mean that nobody is unique ?(because everybody else is just that).

Let's say everybody was weird. Could that simply mean that everyone is normal? Being weird and unique is normal. Therefore, there is nothing strange, abnormal , or unique about being weird or unique. Lol!

Everybody is unique. This is an excellent example of the problem of self-reference in language.

To say everybody is unique is to say that all people equally fit into a certain category and in that context are the same. This directly contradicts the meaning of unique which indicates each person is different from the other.

Of course, we can see right past this because we know that each person has many characteristics...as such they can be both similar and different from others simultaneously. But our minds seem to delight (or reject) such thoughts as seem to concisely contradict themselves. Sometimes we use such thoughts as "explainers" of mystery showing that even language must "turn back" from the darkness of the unexplained.

So is the answer to every mystery which, when dressed in human language wears the inscrutable cloak of self-reference, appears to resist the efforts of human language to analyze or clarify what it is that there is a complexity underlying that mystery which will dispel it?

 

[sealchan]

"We all have these beautiful qualities that make us peerless in our own right. Yes, each one of us is peerless because nobody else is a precise replica of ourselves. Yet I see many who desperately try to replicate the characteristics and accomplishments of others and waste entire lifetimes striving to reach that unattainable goal. People tend to feel they're nobody unless others give them some type of acclaim or recognition. That's pure ego. That's thinking that greatness or self-worth is not achieved unless one's ego gets stroked and stroked again. That's ignoring the beauty within oneself - that natural and inherent beauty of the spirit - that is always there, always waiting to shine forth. To recognise this truth is to reap its benefits. We alone can tap into our greatness. No audience is required."

~ Mary Summer Rain

I have only just started 2 read "Tao of Nature" - it's rather good so far

In our day and age, our subjective natures, subjective truths are just devalued with respect to objective knowledge. This makes us all start off in a deep pit of unimportance...which, perhaps, is why there is reputed to be/have been a generation that was raised to think of themselves as special and unique...with being able to demonstrate their accomplishments in any competitive way. As such it, as the story goes, seems like an empty claim.

The answer, I think, is that our subjective truths are not in our unique qualities but in the story in which we find our unique perspective. Any particular piece of our story is an adventure that someone else, somewhere has, perhaps, already accomplished and did it "better". But no one has been quite on the same path. Each of us can enter into the unknown and expand the frontier of human experience merely by walking the path we are on and taking a step no one has taken. The smallest steps have a way of reverberating into our future and creating possibilities that are truly unique. Many times we don't even know we are taking such steps.

 

[sealchan]

I know exactly why we have wars.

Its because some people/parties refuse to understand the other party/person and instead of understanding, they give off redicule. Theres no understanding and respectfully disagreeing that goes on. And then the one being misunderstood and rediculed gets angry at this and retaliates and this then fuels war.

The bigger question i have is why isnt the fire starter willing to understand, and respectfully disagree?

At some level we are all deeply insecure and build our lives on certain interpretations of mythic ideas. We put our lives on the line, so to speak, for these interpretations and when someone comes along and questions that we feel deeply threatened to an extent that we literally lose control of ourselves. The person becomes our enemy and we feel deep fear, anger and hatred.

 

[Jollybear]

At some level we are all deeply insecure and build our lives on certain interpretations of mythic ideas. We put our lives on the line, so to speak, for these interpretations and when someone comes along and questions that we feel deeply threatened to an extent that we literally lose control of ourselves. The person becomes our enemy and we feel deep fear, anger and hatred.

So the key is not to be insecure.

But, question: can someone have knowledge and it be questioned, with redicule and THEY get angry still?

 

[sealchan]

So the key is not to be insecure.

But, question: can someone have knowledge and it be questioned, with redicule and THEY get angry still?

Right!

But in order to have that level of self-confidence one must be willing to question one's own myth and to realize the precariousness of one's own mythic assumptions and to accept them as one's best bet. That in itself is an ordeal.

To your question: it is all a matter of the level of confidence and the maturity of that confidence. One can be confident but quick to emotion when challenged. One, through a long term effort at self-knowledge, can be compassionate toward one's ridiculer knowing that that desire to ridicule comes from that person's own lack of self-knowledge and that one can empathize with our common predicament of being creatures of "truth" with a mythic core but who also espouse reason as an ideal.