Enjoyment, pleasure, emotions

Dear Ferri

You certainly don't sound funny, you sound silly.
If you want to disregard the whole last 400 years of history of
philosophy and turn us all into idiots, that's your prerogative. I
definitely strive in the opposite direction. You should lift yourself
higher rather than trying to force me and all of the rest of us lower
in our understanding of the human condition.
The poverty of the English language should not stop us from learning
more about ourselves and our condition and become wiser. The French
terms "jouissance" and "plaisir" are definitely NOT synonyms. And in
the world of philosophy and psychoanalysis (Lacan, Derrida, Deleuze)
jouissance is translated as ENJOYMENT in English and plaisir is
translated as PLEASURE. You can always LEARN more instead of wasting
energy accusing me of things by READING Lacan yourself. It is highly
recommended:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacan
I have already written all of this and I actually rather dislike
having to repeat myself. Please read what I have written before making
unfair accusations against me again. OK?
As for emotions in Zoroastrianism, but OF COURSE emotions are a
central aspect. Mazdayasna means the CELEBRATION of mind. How could we
possibly celebrate without emotion???
But emotion is the product of the worship/celebration. Not its cause.
The emotiveness of Christianity and the anti-intellecualism of Islam
(which literally means "obedience"!!!) is alien to Zoroastrianism. As
it should be! It is precisely the emotiveness of these religions that
has caused so much havoc in religious wars over the past 1,300 years.
And unfortunately still does!

Ushta
Alexander/wants to loft people up, not knock them down, and what could
possibly be more Zoroastrian than that!

2008/12/14 Ferri :
> Alexander,
>
> I don't want to sound funny but I think you getting in such depths
> that make things irrelevant and take them out of context. In my
> opinion, there is no relevance in the description given on pleasure
> and emotions in the context of what was discussed actually. Even if
> you look at the dictionaries, pleasure and enjoyment are synonyms
> (e.g. http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_/Enjoyment.html)
>
> You are also mixing emotions and devotions in your second point.
> Exactly as it is the case in Christianity and Islam, there is also
> devotion in Zoroastrianism, namely the devotion to Asha. This devotion
> has emotional aspect to it as well. One could argue/ask whether this
> devotion was developed first or the emotion. Hard/impossible to tell!
>
> I though agree to certain degree with your third point. However the
> reason why life and environment are sacred is due to the fact that it
> has been created by the good. If death had been based on the same
> chain of thought, it would have been considered sacred as well. Now I
> don't wish to get into the question what death is as it's quite a
> complicated one.
>
> It is important that we don't get too deep with things as we might
> draw ourselves or take ourselves in the wrong direction. This is how
> fundamentalism is created. I am not inferring that one should believe
> blindfolded in things but that one should not take things out of their
> context while making them sound as they are valid.
>
> May good thoughts be with you
>
> Ferri
>
> --- In Ushta@yahoogroups.com, "Alexander Bard" wrote:
>>
>> Dear Ferri, helen and friends
>>
>> 1. Enjoyment and pleasure are definitely NOT the same thing.
>> Pleasure is the opposite of pain.
>> Enjoyment in the world of philosophy is merely the consumption of
>> life, the enjoyment of the intensity of living itself. Enjoyment can
>> be derived from pain as much as from pleasure. It is an existential
>> experience of the intensity of living as such, rather than anything
>> specifically pleasurable or painful. Uncontrolled, enjoyment can be
>> destructive as well as constructive.
>> In French, the term for enjoyment is "puissance" and the term for
>> pleasure is "plaisir". I say because most texts on psychoanalysis and
>> existentialism are French and not English.
>>
>> 2. Zarathushtra stipulates that thoughts preceed words and words
>> preceed actions. We then beocme the actions we undertake, we are bound
>> to identify with our actions, which then affect the thoughts we have
>> in the next generation of the feedback-loop. Emotions are the products
>> of the feedback-loop but not essential to the loop itself (this is
>> also the case in contemporary psychology), this is why Zarathushtra
>> does NOT have emotions involved in this ethics. His ethics are
>> rational and inherent to the feedback process itself. This is in
>> accordance with Spinozist and Nietzschean ethics too and opposed to
>> for example Christian and Muslim morality where the emotional
>> attachment to "God" or "Allah" is fundamental to the faiths.
>>
>> 3. No, the FUNDAMENTAL positive view on life is not built into every
>> religion, Quite to the contrary, both Christianity and Islam are
>> focused on the after-life and see the current life as vulgar and
>> inferior compared to the after-life. This is why the current world and
>> life are not sacred to these religions, which it is to Mazdayasna.
>> Christians and Muslims have always plundered te current world without
>> regard for its survival while Mazdayasni have always had an ecological
>> take on nature and our surroundings. Because this is the only world we
>> have. And it is our world and not the world of a foreign divinity.
>>
>> Ushta
>> Alexander