Yes, we must remember that the ‘self’ in the baby is an extention of the psychic web, the ‘Self’ , the “ground of being”, and as such, whether it’s in anyway conscious, we are certainly conscious.
Wonderfully vivid
I see that the definition you’ve found has more emphasis on intentionality & calculation than the one I found (which says 'desire or intention), so I looked up the definition used on the AFT because it might at least make it more clear what Richard meant by his usage
malice –– Badness; esp. wickedness. The desire to injure another person; active ill will or hatred. In later use also, the desire to tease. Malicious conduct; a malicious act or device. Power to harm, harmful action or effect, malignancy; wrongful intention. Oxford Dictionary
Peter: A study of the animal world quickly alerts one to instinctual fear and aggression operating, and an honest appraisal will admit to it operating in humans as well. As is evidenced in such tests as those carried out by Milgram and others, humans have an active instinct for malice and aggression that requires the point of a gun or severe moral constraint to hopefully keep them in check. That 160,000,000 have died in wars this century alone is surely evidence of the on-going, inherent malice in humans. Curiously it is always someone else who is malicious or has caused us to be malicious back (this is then regarded as a ‘right’ for justice and not as malicious). The acknowledgement of malice within one’s own bosom is an essential prerequisite to begin to eliminate it. Merely ‘watching it’ is a big cop-out from doing something about it in oneself. Merely transcending it to the extent that one believes oneself to be Good, Right, Holy and above it all is to directly contribute to all the mayhem and carnage of the religious wars and persecutions on the planet.
The third alternative is to rid oneself of all of the instinctual passions – an actual extinction, thus freeing oneself from the shackles of moral constraint or the delusion of transcendence.
So it seems Peter is using it quite generally as a catch-all for badness & wickedness, including instinctually generated badness & wickedness (pre-calculation), which makes sense with the other quotes that have come up.
It is certainly possible for a newborn to experience bad or wicked feelings.
I also noticed the use of the word ‘active,’ which seems to imply the more conscious & calculated. But of course the conscious & calculated wickedness is born out of that initial unconscious badness & wickedness
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Peter is on the money here…
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They’re much more than subjectively judged - they are intuitively generated & detected.
So it’s circular… you intuitively feel good & evil in yourself or others, and that good & evil is intuitively felt in others or yourself, and then as a secondary behavior we describe how it is subjective. But it was always generated, from the beginning, by we as subjects ourselves.
So the entire existence of good & evil only exist because of us existing as subjective beings, and in fact we only exist as subjective beings because of the existence of those intuitions of good & evil
Yes, very circular in nature. Which leaves perhaps the word “functionally” malicious my favourite.
The “conscious intention” is largely irrelevant to the outcome.
There is a favourite sci-fi concept of the “Chinese Room” AI. Functionally, it destroys worlds, torturing for energy, enslaving and eliminating lives. It can speak, interact, reason, yet has zero awareness of itself. No consciousness.
Functionally there is no difference between it’s actions and those of something conscious of torturing others.
So, could there be functionally malicious tornadoes?
(Sorry for what might appear to be a seemingly absurd example, but a “functionally” malicious robot or tornado seem logically equivalent to me based on how things are being defined.)
No, because the suffering it’s causing wasn’t it’s very nature.
The self is ironically sometimes felt like a vortex though. Like now, in the middle of my chest!
Ok, I see your point. Some level of consciousness then may be needed. However, I don’t know how I could seperate ‘me’ from my awareness to find out. ‘I’ do seem conscious.
I see. Whereas the robot (in the sci fi scenario) and the human baby were designed to harm.
It’s interesting now when you think about various plants whose features were designed to harm for survival purposes (features like thorns, oils that cause allergic responses, etc).
That was where I was thinking, but some level of consciousness may be needed to properly say it’s malicious.
Interestingly, we have as a species interpreted the weather as being the acts of gods and spirits and ascribed them intentions of good and evil.
I can’t get behind this functional maliciousness for this reason, this is obviously absurd and not the same as a person or animal being malicious/aggressive/hateful
I think this stems from the view that because of cause & effect none of us are ‘responsible’ for our actions, that we are essentially automatons at the mercy of the movement of our atoms.
While this may be technically what is occurring, it doesn’t change that we are all subjective beings who experience a ‘self,’ and experience ourselves being malicious (not to mention aggressive, annoyed, angry, hateful, etc etc.)
While you could make the claim that any change was still due to some cause & effect - one had to read the right thing on the right day, or the neurons had to make the right connection, it doesn’t change that we are all sometimes rather willfully ignorant or don’t try to ‘push’ ourselves into more difficult decisions or territory.
To appeal always to that claim ‘I am merely an automaton’ is to dodge the situation and the opportunity to do something different with one’s life than the ‘same-old, same-old.’
If Richard, Peter, Vineeto, can’t become free, why can’t you? Or me? To take oneself out of the equation ‘I’m not in charge anyway,’ means the most likely thing to happen is for nothing to change and then to die.
Yes, that is the experience, whatever the underlying facts are, it’s the level it needs to be addressed at.
Practically, I am conscious of malice.
And practically, it’s me and only me that needs to do something about it.
Even if you can’t initially figure out where the ‘easy button’ is, making the decision to really try, making the decision to put effort in to figure it out, making a commitment to do whatever it takes, are all things that make something interesting far more likely to occur.
One only needs to look at the hordes of normal people experiencing normal reality and doing normal people stuff to see that it’s something rare and effortful required to get somewhere else.
Going back to the original way I saw it;
If I were to walk up to a baby and kick it across the room, that is clearly a malicious act.
The fact a ‘self’ exist in a baby is an act of psychically kicking it.
Conscious or not, it’s a horrendous thing. However, as far as I am convinced now, something conscious is happening, if only dimly.
I withdraw my liking for “functional”!
It’s malice. It’s natural state is malicious. It’s actions are malicious.
This is a great reminder/ challenge.
Being harmless, each moment again, come what may. Which includes not harming myself.
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Curiously, that’s precisely what we actualists are all here trying to do. If only we could see that we are already, or even (as you said) technically, out of the equation, perhaps things would be simpler.
Yes, that’s not the subjective experience at the moment. The subjective experience is that I’m in control. But that subjective experience is the very problem, isn’t it? That subjective experience is an illusion. It’s not factual. Not technically correct. Can we dare to live with what is actually, factually the case?
Yes, please don’t harm Andrew anymore. I rather like the guy. (Sincerely)
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I don’t think it’s useful to lean too hard on this, because we so vividly experience ourselves subjectively (and intuitively) existing.
Yes it is important to know that ultimately we are a phantasm that doesn’t exist. This can be seen and experienced clearly in the PCE.
But when ‘I’ am in operation, which is 99.9999% of the time, then I am very much experiencing myself to exist. And the only way to change that situation is to do something about it. And the only one that can do something about it is me, as I subjectively experience myself.
The method of enjoying & appreciating this moment of being alive works for a reason, it gradually brings the ever-present magic into experiencing. In my experience just trying to skip past that has led to dissociation from myself (the subjectively experienced phantasmic ‘being’).
As ‘I’ am trying to dream that ‘I’ am not there, and ‘directly experience the sensate world’ attempting to deny experiencing ‘myself’(while continuing to operate behind the scenes).
Whereas ‘enjoying & appreciating this moment of being alive’ means ‘I’ am admitting that I am in fact experiencing a ‘being,’ very vividly in fact, but that ‘being’ is enjoying & appreciating this moment of being alive, which means more & more enjoying & appreciating that aforementioned material world sensately.
This is also why it’s so productive to feel one’s feelings, to allow them to exist, because it is bringing one more into the clarity of what is happening - and what is presently happening for ‘me’ is, ‘I’ am hallucinating that ‘I’ exist.
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Likewise Rick. No more harming Rick, he is a mate of mine!
There is no “or else” 