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Knowledge or wealth

Knowledge or wealth


  • Total voters
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Of course, we need a good definition of terms .. that all can agree to .. which is all but impossible ..
IMO, "ignorant" means uneducated, more so than simply stupid ..
"Knowing the truth" , in whose opinion ? .. this is so open, we have been here on this orb for 6,000 years and are not even close to knowing the truth ..
The old adage "a fool and his money are soon parted" is so very true .

Not necessarily, both of those terms mean different things to each person....even that is illuminating.
 
If you had to choose between being ignorant and wealthy or being poor but understanding the truth, which would you choose?

I'd take knowledge over wealth.
 
I'd pick c)life experience.
 
I am very grateful that we are not limited to those two options. There is no shame in being ignorant because that is a correctable condition. So I think I would take the money and then use it to obtain knowledge. Of course those who have knowledge are unlikely to remain poor unless they choose to remain poor, but I would think having the financial resources to begin with would be more efficient and a lot faster. (Acknowledging that approaching it from this angle violates the philosophical point of the thread.)
 
I made exactly that choice several years ago. I chose knowledge. I gave up my lucrative corporate career to get back into academics, making about 1/10th what I was making. I would give up even more than that. Money, in a very real sense, complicates and confuses people like nothing else. A certain amount is necessary for basic survival plus a little more. But most people will do things they know to be wrong and invent all sorts of justifications for doing so, to get more money than they need. It's a very strange thing.
 
That you believe this will cause you to be happy is your illusion.

That you believe you can declare authoritatively what will or won't make me happy is your delusion.
 
The point jamesrage is that regardless of whether one is wealthy or not, he will experience various types of mundane happiness and distress. However, such experiences are transient and therefore the wise have concluded that they are illusory in nature. What is constant through these types of experiences is the phenomenon of sentience itself. The is because the soul, the atma is of the nature of a superior, transcendental spiritual potency that has come from the Supreme atma, the Paramatma, or God. The mundane, material energy is also an energy of God, but it is of an inferior nature and produces various types of illusory, mundane experiences for those who prefer those types of experiences. However, thoughtful and intelligent persons come to understand that these types of experiences do not give satisfaction, and therefore they turn their attention towards the substantial happiness that can be obtained through activity that is supported by the superior, transcendental, spiritual energy of God. These experiences are eternal in nature, like the atma, and it is there that real substantial happiness is to be found.

When you have to live in a dangerous neighborhood because you can't afford to live in a decent neighborhood,when your kids have to attend lousy schools, when you manage to actually get something nice you have to wait until your neighbors are asleep so that they are not plotting to steal from you and many other things that poor people face then come back and let me know if you would rather be poor and know the truth or wealthy and ignorant.
 
If you had to choose between being ignorant and wealthy or being poor but understanding the truth, which would you choose?

the latter one.but we know life is a heaven when you are both ignorant and wealthy
 
I'd take knowledge over wealth.

I am happy to hear that. I hope you never make the big mistake of choosing otherwise.
 
That you believe you can declare authoritatively what will or won't make me happy is your delusion.

That you believe that it is me making the authoritative declaration is another delusion. I don't have any authority over anything, including my life. What I have done is to declare what persons, whose vision is free from delusion, have said. A hog thinks it is very happy eating feces, however an intelligent person understands that is a delusion.
 
When you have to live in a dangerous neighborhood because you can't afford to live in a decent neighborhood,when your kids have to attend lousy schools, when you manage to actually get something nice you have to wait until your neighbors are asleep so that they are not plotting to steal from you and many other things that poor people face then come back and let me know if you would rather be poor and know the truth or wealthy and ignorant.

I was not born in that type of circumstance. However at one time, right after I got out of high school, I worked as a musician. As a result of that I actually lived in the projects with this chick for a couple of months. The very first night I was there, a guy smashed all of the windows out of the place that was directly in front of the one where I was staying because his girlfriend would not let him in the house. So yeah, I know what it is like. Despite all that, people there experience both mundane happiness and distress. Regardless of whether one is rich or poor, he will have that experience. A person who is wise understands that this is merely the illusory activity of the material energy and knowing that the self is transcendental to such activity, is not disturbed by such changes.
 
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the latter one.but we know life is a heaven when you are both ignorant and wealthy

Yep. Like I said before, a knucklehead girl! :lamo

Any rate, at least you got it half right.
 
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Hm. Not lookin' like quite the Truth I had in mind. :)

Come one Goshin. You have the heart of a warrior. Don't get all weak minded because the task of self realization is daunting.
 
I am very grateful that we are not limited to those two options. There is no shame in being ignorant because that is a correctable condition. So I think I would take the money and then use it to obtain knowledge. Of course those who have knowledge are unlikely to remain poor unless they choose to remain poor, but I would think having the financial resources to begin with would be more efficient and a lot faster. (Acknowledging that approaching it from this angle violates the philosophical point of the thread.)

Actually unless one is very advanced in terms of real knowledge to begin with, having the money is likely to be a very big obstruction on the path of knowledge. Usually people have to give up such things first.
 
Yep. Like I said before, a knucklehead girl! :lamo

Any rate, at least you got it half right.
too bad .I wish I was ignorant like you :mrgreen:
 
Come one Goshin. You have the heart of a warrior. Don't get all weak minded because the task of self realization is daunting.



The Vedanta is not my Way.
 
LOL, Bush is much smarter than most Americans. Even White House Counsel Lanny Davis admitted that Bush was a genius when it came to understanding other people and being able to get along with them


His military IQ test demonstrated he scored higher than either Kerry or Kennedy. and like it or not, you cannot graduate from Harvard Business school if you are a moron.

when Bush was a pledge back in the days Yale had fraternities, he and all the other pledges were in some meeting with upper class members. Pledges were asked if they could name all the other pledges in the room and Bush not only did that, he had learned their home towns as well

sorry DF-Morons cannot do that sort of thing.

Though this is not about Bush, I agree he is no dummy. He does have a reputation for being intellectually lazy, which is about ignorance, not intelligence.

I do agree that one can not graduate from either HBS nor HLS without some serious grey matter.
 
When you have to live in a dangerous neighborhood because you can't afford to live in a decent neighborhood,when your kids have to attend lousy schools, when you manage to actually get something nice you have to wait until your neighbors are asleep so that they are not plotting to steal from you and many other things that poor people face then come back and let me know if you would rather be poor and know the truth or wealthy and ignorant.

This is something you feel is of value to most people, correct? These things are not 'conveniences?'

For most people, not all of course.
 
LOL, Bush is much smarter than most Americans. Even White House Counsel Lanny Davis admitted that Bush was a genius when it came to understanding other people and being able to get along with them
Then Davis is a sycophant. Bush 'understands people'? I'd be surprised if he understands how to wipe his ass without redecorating. Tell me this was an idle jest.

His military IQ test demonstrated he scored higher than either Kerry or Kennedy. and like it or not, you cannot graduate from Harvard Business school if you are a moron.
Depends how big your daddy is. Prince William went to Edinburgh, despite his failure to attain the requisite grades for eligibility.

when Bush was a pledge back in the days Yale had fraternities, he and all the other pledges were in some meeting with upper class members. Pledges were asked if they could name all the other pledges in the room and Bush not only did that, he had learned their home towns as well
You find this to be impressive, because?

sorry DF-Morons cannot do that sort of thing.
Of course they can. A paltry feat of memory hardly equates with inordinate cognition. He might treat us to a verbatim recital of Shakespeare's entire works. It means nothing.
 
Actually unless one is very advanced in terms of real knowledge to begin with, having the money is likely to be a very big obstruction on the path of knowledge. Usually people have to give up such things first.

I have more faith in human nature than that. Yes there are those who become fools when they acquire large sums of money they didn't earn, and there are all those stories of those who won the lottery and were poor again within months or a few years, but I don't believe most of the uneducated, given opportunity and the wherewithal to become educated, would choose to remain ignorant.
 
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