I think you are correct on the gene thing, Bette. I don't see how selfish is always a bad thing though, or how the nature of consciousness isn't selfish by definition.

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I eat ego's for breakfast!
Sincerely, Ego.

Lumpy, regarding your definition of 'selfish' -

Consider a circle indicating you

Consider an arrow indicating your intent, intersecting the circle.

Does your definition have the arrow pointing in or out ?

Pointing both in and out? My intent would be set on lowering my own entropy. The most efficient way for me to do that would be to focus my intent outward with love, but for a selfish reason(Lowering my own entropy). The thing about it is that if I lower my entropy it is good for you, and vise versa, because we are both part of the same consciousness.

_________________
I eat ego's for breakfast!
Sincerely, Ego.

Thanks for the reply. Interesting that you couldn't answer the question as asked.

Good Luck in getting to that point.

some thoughts on selfishness

I think the conventional PMR use of the word refers to giving a very low weighting on the impact of your intent, decisions and actions, on others

"Other" could be anything outside your FWAU, including acting toward your spouse as an "other", which is the sociopath

"Other" could be anything outside you as a couple, including your children, which would be "bad parenting"

"Other" could be anything outside your nuclear family....and so on...up to your race or country or nationality or socio-economic class

==

Some cultures draw the line at family, and some cultures draw the line at nation. Older cultures tend to evolve toward family-centricity, which ends up being very very efficient. Younger cultures tend to be in the earlier phase of national loyalty, which increases the propensity to sending sons to die for the country, and this latter culture runs the world, where it manifests.

PMR selfishness is subject to DNA evolutionary forces which are described in the concept of "kin" perception, and as well are subject to meme evolutionary forces that sculpt group values over time (trial and error).

the selfish sweet spot is a family-centric culture (old culture - thousands of years) that is parasitic on a nation-centric country (young culture - hundreds of years).

==

Jesus introduced the concept of extending the line of "other" beyond the threshold of "enemy", and advised us to treat our enemies as friends...which is why Christian nations dominate public affairs. And this works whether "there is a God" or not. If God did not exist, it would be a useful delusion to create, if its impact was to trick you into acting better.

Islam draws the line at fellow-believer, which is one of its self limitations.

Judaism is a most powerful meme for its adherents, judging by its results, but it is self-limiting at the macro level by its ethno-centricity, perhaps for an intentional AUMian purpose, or self limited by some other factor that is beyond my understanding.

==

The irony is that Judeo-Christian-style selflessness actually produces better material results than selfishness, PMR-wise - even if NPMR is not true. Life success is 99% networking and integrity. Good relations with many people and a reputation for integrity, is the key to success - and is a side effect of authentic spirituality.

Its like the irony of the monkey and the coconut trap - letting go of the banana, releases the banana

focussing on good relations, integrity, effectiveness, rather than being grabby materially, ends up producing the best material outcome, as a side effect, not the primary intention

==

Separately, we have this NPMR dimension interacting with the PMR ruleset described above. It turns out, when you pull back the virtual veil of the PMR simulation, we are more the AUM sheet than the individuated bumps on the sheet....

harming other bumps on the sheet (IUOCs represented by FWAUs), or failing to give appropriate weight to the impact of your decisions, on those bumps on the sheet, is just plain stupid...due to karma or Tom's feedback mechanism.

love is merely smart...ergo, love is Selfish...., when you see the big picture

so, a very low entropy dude would not carry any do-gooder pride or vanity - and would understand that they are a Selfish asshole like everyone else.

Selflessness in the NPMR sense, would be to direct your intent toward lowering the entropy of others...oh wait...this reminds me of something

"I renounce pursuing my own enlightenment, until everyone else is enlightened first" - Budda's "Bodhisattva" vow

_________________
Does this PMR make my butt look big?

Lumpy, you may find this helpful (from MBT's Moral Code):


From http://wiki.my-big-toe.com/index.php/Mo ... D_-_Part_I

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Mike

I know. You're missing the point of why. Why is an action only moral in so far as one intends to act in the overall best interest of others regardless of ones own interests? Because acting in a loving way is the most efficient way to help yourself, which is the goal before hand in the first place. Yourself being the same as others in the case of consciousness because all IUOCs are simply different parts of the same thing, we are not separate. We focus on lowering our own entropy and it benefits the whole.

_________________
I eat ego's for breakfast!
Sincerely, Ego.

What direction was your intent pointing when asking me the question in the first place?

_________________
I eat ego's for breakfast!
Sincerely, Ego.

Lumpy,

to see, that Consciousness is not selfish, you need to part with PMR definitions and views. A superset cannot be defined by a subset rule-set. What, how and why Consciousness decided to 'do' this could not be solved by intellect. This is a question to be answered on a being level, and not all FWAU are ready to receive this answer. A question could not be asked from an ego (intellect) point of view, because any answer on a being level would not sound right or acceptable. An answer could be found only personally, since it comes with a personal experience on a being level. One doesn't have to OBE to find this answer, but meditation could be helpful, i.e. meditate on your question a month or two, or as long as it takes. If one really wishes to learn, to become aware of this answer, and when one is ready, an answer will come almost by itself.

Lena

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'Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance.' Confucius.

How is consciousness not selfish, as in it is only concerned with it's own growth? ...If there is nothing other than consciousness. No one seems to be getting my thinking here. All I am saying is that selfishness is not always a bad thing, and that the nature of consciousness lowering it's entropy is selfish by the PMR definition that this whole thread is suppose to be about. The only reason I even came on to this thread and said anything was because I wanted to share what I noticed about most people assuming the word selfish goes only with a bad intent, because I see it differently.

Lena, can you explain more about a super set not being able to be defined by a sub-set rule set? Wouldn't the nature of the process of entropy reduction be beyond comprehension because it came before dim awareness of consciousness? So in turn it would not be intellectual at all. Consciousness just has to abide by it's nature, or rule-set, right?

_________________
I eat ego's for breakfast!
Sincerely, Ego.

I think selfless behavior is really about rational selfishness. True selflessness doesn't really exist because there is always a profit motive of some kind. Goodness depends on the purity of the profit motive, if you act because you feel an urge to alleviate suffering or make the world a better place to live in for yourself and all, then your very selfish motivation is good. There is no other good besides rational selfishness.

I believe negative selfish behavior is born of stupidity, ineptitude or the fear of struggle, as in high entropy, but sometimes a selfish person can play along in society and have great success while caring for no one but themselves. Not all forms of negative selfishness are the same and selfishness is not always high entropy, relatively speaking.

Consciousness is concerned with growth. Leave the "its own" out and there you are.
Love
Bette

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All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

True, but everything is the same consciousness. It's not a whole bunch of separate consciousnesses interacting.

_________________
I eat ego's for breakfast!
Sincerely, Ego.

indeed, it appears to me that the philosophical bottom line of MBTOE is that we are feedback grazers

_________________
Does this PMR make my butt look big?

you may be overshooting

IUOC - we are individuated units of conciousness

individuation= bumps on the (AUM) sheet
non-individuation/oneness=the sheet

this is how I connect the dots (some of this is extrapolation of MBTOE):

the process begins with a disorganized (high entropy) fresh IUOC incarnated into a meat suit of some kind, possibly an earth worm...and through incarnation cycles, they work up through the system with increasingly broad decision space

for early IUOC PMR human life the focus is on mastering individuation and feeding back data to the IUOC so that it can become more organized (less entropic), and part of this is integrating and entraining its IUOC (real) methods relative to the AUM sheet - "becoming love" in PMR speak -

I cannot believe that individuation is some sort of screwup that needs to be repaired - it must rather be a "good" which needs to be optimized and then balanced with the non-individuated aspect of our construction

If we are a jerk, this may be due to one of two separate conditions

1) our IUOC is fresh, entropic, and naturally "a jerk", but this is a beautiful thing...like how the carver loves to see fresh blocks of stone come in the back door.

2) OUR IUOC is seasoned, low entropy, not a jerk - and rather, it is our FWAU which has not yet discovered the inherent low entropy of its IUOC pilot

- my personal belief is that the primary contribution of conciousness ecologies (religions, philosophy, psychology), is to wake people up to their inherent IOUC syntropy (non-entropy), which is not manifest in their FWAU, which can be done through the mental level by trying on various perspectives, behaviors and practises, and monitoring the immediate feedback.

I think some care needs to be taken to not pretend to be lower entropy than you actually are - this is sort of like trying to live according to someone else's feedback mechanism, at the mental level. Rather, I think we need to find our own internal GPS, and work on that next thing our own con-science is nagging us on.

_________________
Does this PMR make my butt look big?