'Is casual sex immoral?'

[Udayana]

I don't think people know or understand what they want and that is the root of most of the angst. 

[Sriram]

Perhaps at risk of diverging from the topic, but how denying who and what you are constitute 'increasing our higher nature'?  What even is our higher nature?

Sounds dully - if you have no wants, no desires, then there can be no satisfaction, no enjoyment, no achievement, it's just an apathetic pointless existence.  That doesn't sound like something to aspire to, it sounds like the sort of philosophy pushed out to try to pacify people whose lives are already miserable.

And I think that's a laudible goal, but your method for it appears to be to try to dismiss any emotion or aspiration, and to merely exist - that seems to me to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I'm failing to see a point in achieving it at all - I get you have this 'ascension' idea in the next life, but I just don't see any reason to think that a) it's' there or b) if it is that we have the first clue about what we might or not need to get there or to do there.

O.

To understand what I am saying, you need to understand spirituality....as different from religion.  Only when we understand spiritual objectives  can we understand morality  in an absolute sense.

Morality as a social requirement is fine at one level.

[ekim]

The higher nature you describe still seems to have a want - it wants to not want anything so the higher nature can never be free of wants.

Or I have not understood your use of words. What do you see as the definition of a want in this scenario?

A way of describing it is, rather than as a higher nature, it is what you truly are, which in the Hindu tradition is Atman (in Islam... ruh, Hebrew ...  ruach,  Christianity ..... spirit).  However, mankind identifies with Ahamkar (Islam .... nafs,  Hebrew  ... nefesh,  Christianity self/ego) which is comprised of attachments to desires for the worldly.  The 'spiritual desire' is to be free from those attachments.  Once free, identity with Ahamkar begins and all self centred desires and 'spiritual' desires cease.  This is followed by the realisation that Atman and Brahman are in union.

[Sriram]

The higher nature you describe still seems to have a want - it wants to not want anything so the higher nature can never be free of wants.

Or I have not understood your use of words. What do you see as the definition of a want in this scenario?

There are different level of needs and desires. At the final stage of spiritual development the need for Self Realization will be extremely powerful to the extent that the person would give up even food and drink and shun all social contact just to achieve that state. This kind of a hierarchy of needs is built into the system.

Once that state is achieved...all desires cease (at least, as we know it).  Bodily needs will not however cease completely as long as the person is in the body.

[Outrider]

To understand what I am saying, you need to understand spirituality....as different from religion.

To understand what you're saying you'd have to be able to relate it to something tangible, demonstrable, and it doesn't appear to have that quality.  If there were any element of morality that related to the individual rather than a broader culture, then I can't help but feel that to reject the one life we do know that we do have on an unsubstantiatable hope about a possible next life strikes me as being something that might be considered immoral.

Only when we understand spiritual objectives  can we understand morality  in an absolute sense.

Which, given I don't 'fail to understand' spirituality so much as don't see a basis for accepting that it's actually thing, just serves to reinforce the idea that morality is a cultural expression.

O.

[Sriram]

To understand what you're saying you'd have to be able to relate it to something tangible, demonstrable, and it doesn't appear to have that quality.  If there were any element of morality that related to the individual rather than a broader culture, then I can't help but feel that to reject the one life we do know that we do have on an unsubstantiatable hope about a possible next life strikes me as being something that might be considered immoral.

Which, given I don't 'fail to understand' spirituality so much as don't see a basis for accepting that it's actually thing, just serves to reinforce the idea that morality is a cultural expression.

O.

There is nothing supernatural or other worldly about all this. It is just a hierarchy of needs that is built into the system. Base needs, social needs and intellectual needs  are in that order. Even in this there will be differences between person to person.

It is about self development and not about any reward in the next life.

[Outrider]

There is nothing supernatural or other worldly about all this.

Given that it doesn't demonstrably interfere with this world in any measurable way, then if it's not otherworldly it doesn't exist at all.

It is just a hierarchy of needs that is built into the system. Base needs, social needs and intellectual needs are in that order. Even in this there will be differences between person to person.

So far, so Maslow, but then you go and upend the whole apple-cart by suggesting that the point isn't to build a life where you focus higher and higher up the hierarchy of needs, but where you actively try to drop off them bottom because...

It is about self development and not about any reward in the next life.

What next life? Even if there is a next life, won't we have to try to not live that one either... in which case what's the point?  Why go through a sequence of increasingly tedious lives, each one getting less and less rewarding for the opportunity to not enjoy the next one?  At least Christianity suggests that the next life they can't evidence might be better than this one.

O.

[Sriram]

Given that it doesn't demonstrably interfere with this world in any measurable way, then if it's not otherworldly it doesn't exist at all.

So far, so Maslow, but then you go and upend the whole apple-cart by suggesting that the point isn't to build a life where you focus higher and higher up the hierarchy of needs, but where you actively try to drop off them bottom because...

What next life? Even if there is a next life, won't we have to try to not live that one either... in which case what's the point?  Why go through a sequence of increasingly tedious lives, each one getting less and less rewarding for the opportunity to not enjoy the next one?  At least Christianity suggests that the next life they can't evidence might be better than this one.

O.

 

I know that for an atheist it is all so OTT and unnecessary.

I will explain my idea of spirituality in a separate thread instead of derailing this one. 

[Nearly Sane]

The Spycops case illustrates that consent is insufficient to me. See the following.


https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8969285/amp/Spy-cop-claims-sleeping-activists-undercover-like-sampling-drugs.html?__twitter_impression=true