Michael Mitchell: Archive

This is what happens when you think communication is more important than reality, i.e., what you're actually communicating.

For instance, if I say "hard work is good for the soul", but I also say (at a later time) that souls don't physically exist, am I guilty of a contradiction, a hypocrite? If you think the answer is yes, then you don't know the meaning of the word "soul". You've never actually understood what the word refers to in reality, never properly formed the concept. It refers to consciousness when viewed from the perspective of how individuals think and act, not some mystical, imperceptible force inside of them. Most people believe the latter, though -- historically speaking -- so if you think I'm a hypocrite for believing hard work is good for something that doesn't physically exist, then you think what I think is real is more important than what you think is real, and that belief will lead you to say or affirm shit like what's in the quote below.

Every concept he uses he uses wrongly, and obviously so, but he "gets away with it" because not a single word refers to anything physically perceivable, anything that can scientifically falsify his statement. He actually says free will -- the essential function of human consciousness, if concepts are gifts from God -- is evil, not because it "makes evil possible", but because it makes the existence of free will impossible, and also love and joy, and even good and evil, too, of course. Why? Well, if such "things" can only be the product of human choices...