Comments on Self, Portrait by CK MacLeod

@ bob:
btw - fixed a typo in your e-mail address - may have something to do with why your comments are going into moderation... tho there are... complications...

bob wrote:

I did, but even if I didn’t, why?

To obtain either an answer or at least a framework that wasn't tautological or circular.

Good life = good
selfish = bad
unless
Good life minus selfish = good enough
or unless
good - (selfish * x) = good enough
good - (selfish * y) = bad
or unless (Ayn Rand or even JS Mill in a different way)
selfish = good

but the issue might be less how you define the terms and whatever theoretical position you take then what you're trying to accomplish or are insisting on or forcing.

You get into a number of interesting paradoxes and contradictions sooner or later, and the manner in which you evade or move beyond them might be more important, might be the only important thing, the only conceivably important thing.

bob wrote:

And then this, can the good life be selfish?

You'd have to pose the question more philosophically.

@ fuster:
possibly not, but you can possibly understand the reasons why you kant.

@ Scott Miller:
Several ancient civilizations - and perhaps all - went through movement and counter-movement in this general topic area, which eventually falls under the heading of eudaimonism - or, from the messianic/monotheistic perspective, the eudaimonic/pagan fallacy - in short that spiritual and material "worth" (in quotes because "worth" itself is at issue) will tend to coincide. It gets revived again in the critical divides within Christianity, and therefore the fundamental antinomies of modern civilization, or, alternatively, between modern and ancient moralities.

I think because the antinomies cannot be resolved, we end up having to define life, ourselves, as the simultaneous suspension and operation of that non-resolution, [correction here] not in time because productive of (the same as) time. Because the antinomy re-states opposition between free will and determinism, we cannot even claim it as either the condition of freedom or something about which we have no choice without contradicting ourselves.

but Scott's comment - which coulda beena post - raises an interesting question all the same. Doesn't yoga, as practiced today, to the extent it's not a purely physical regimen, promise a positive alignment of physical and emotional states? The yoga teacher has to appear, and is likely to appear, physically and emotionally healthy, which, together, will necessarily overlap with attractiveness in a very basic evolutionary-biological way. If she starts out with the kind of equipment that happen to be in fashion, and has any youth left at all, then sure she's going to seem date-worthy. Add some yogical serenity, and she's going to seem relatively approachable, too.

Or consider the Charlize Theron counterexample. Done up at all, she's one of the beautifulest women in the world, and smart, too. But she put on 20 or so lbs and did some ACTING and came across as a bullish murderer that no one would want to meet in a dark yoga studio.

There may be no perfect correspondence between outward "physical attractiveness" and intrinsic or spiritual worth, but if there is no general tendency toward convergence, then what's yoga for?

All it will take is for some Quasimodo-lookin dude like me to break out in the yoga world and then everyone will want to be ugly.

"Looks like a writer" is too uncomfortably close to "face for radio."

Situated in the foothills beneath picturesque Mount Baldy, the Upland area's got all sortsa horsecrap goin on, so probly burros, too. However, am much more likely to get burrito in that inverse pimple, or old razor blades, or nests of vermin, than burro.