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Stances: responses to meaningness

“Stances” are simple patterns of thinking and feeling about meaningness.

This section of the book explains what stances are and how they work in general. The next section looks at many specific stances in detail.

  • Stances trump systems
  • Stances are unstable
  • Fixation and denial
  • Nebulosity
  • Confused stances come in pairs
  • No middle way
  • Accepting nebulosity resolves confusions about meaning
  • Confusion, completion, misery and joy
  • Pattern
  • Adopting, committing, accomplishing, wavering, appropriating
‹ Acknowledgements up Stances trump systems ›
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Book contents

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  • Meaningness
    • Introduction
      • An appetizer: purpose
      • Preview: eternalism and nihilism
      • Misunderstanding meaningness makes many miserable
      • Acknowledgements
    • Stances: responses to meaningness
      • Stances trump systems
      • Stances are unstable
      • Fixation and denial
      • Nebulosity
      • Confused stances come in pairs
      • No middle way
      • Accepting nebulosity resolves confusions about meaning
        • Not a general dialectic
      • Confusion, completion, misery and joy
      • Pattern
      • Adopting, committing, accomplishing, wavering, appropriating
    • Resolving confusions about meaningness
      • Schematic overview: all dimensions
      • Meaning and meaninglessness
        • Schematic overview: meaningness
        • The puzzle of meaningness
        • Meaningfulness and meaninglessness
        • Extreme examples, eternalism and nihilism
        • Eternalism
          • Kitsch
          • Armed eternalism
        • Nihilism
          • Spam from God
          • Wavering nihilism: emotional dynamics
        • Meaningness: the complete stance
        • No cosmic plan
      • Unity and diversity
        • Schematic overview: unity and diversity
        • The Big Three stance combinations
        • Monism
          • Critiques of monism
            • The dualist critique of monism
            • The nihilist critique of monism
            • The complete stance’s critique of monism
        • Dualism
        • Participation
      • Purpose
        • Schematic overview: purpose
        • Mission
        • Materialism
        • Enjoyable usefulness
      • Self
        • Schematic overview: self
        • The true self
        • Selflessness
        • Intermittently continuing
      • Personal value
        • Schematic overview: value
        • Specialness
        • Ordinariness
        • Nobility
      • Capability
        • Schematic overview: capability
        • Total responsibility
        • Victim-think
        • Light-heartedness
      • Ethics
        • Schematic overview: ethics
        • Ethical totalitarianism
        • Ethical nihilism
        • Ethical responsiveness
      • Authority
        • Schematic overview: authority
        • Reasonable respectability
        • Romantic rebellion
        • Freedom
      • Sacredness
        • Schematic overview: sacredness
        • Religiosity
        • Secularism
        • Kadag
      • Contingency
        • Schematic overview: contingency
        • Causality
        • Chaos
        • Flow
    • Appendix: Terminology
      • Terminology: Complete
      • Terminology: Emptiness and form, nebulosity and pattern
      • Terminology: Non-dual

Metablog

A blog about the book.

I seem to be a fiction
Spiritual smugness
Dr. Bronner’s monist soap
New Earth, Big Lie
SBNR: system-free monism?
The New Age: appeal and limits
Acknowledging Romantic Idealism
An improbable re-animation
Bad ideas from dead Germans
Pop spirituality: monism goes mainstream
more...

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Topics

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  • Atheism
  • Authority
  • Buddhism
  • Causality
  • Conformity
  • Dualism
  • Essentialism
  • Eternalism
  • Ethics
  • History of ideas
  • Materialism
  • Meaningness
  • Mission
  • Monism
  • Nihilism
  • Nobility
  • Ordinariness
  • Purity
  • Purpose
  • Rebellion
  • Religiosity
  • Responsibility
  • Romanticism
  • Sacredness
  • Self
  • Specialness
  • Starting points
  • Terminology

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Discussion

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  • Spiritual But Not Religious - monists?
  • Nihilism and its discontents
  • Questions on the "meaning" of your points
  • The whole book, for printing
  • Can we have the whole book
  • Chapman said "Monothesism"
  • Tolle and monism
  • I'm guilty too, probably
  • probably guilty as charged
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Elsewhere

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  • Making a kangling for chöd
  • Tantra is anti-spiritual
  • Your self is not a spiritual obstacle
  • There are no spiritual problems
  • The power of an attitude
  • Diversity, generalization, and authenticity
  • “Now you something say”
  • Why I should shut up
  • Automata in Tibetan Buddhism (&c.)
Copyright © 2010–2012 David Chapman