User:Fyrius

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Call me Fyrius.

I am a nineteen year old student of Linguistics, living in the Netherlands. Wikipedia has been one of my primary sources of information for the last few years, though I created this account not too long ago (on the fifth of March 2006; yesterday evening on the time of writing).

Any other thing you might want to know about me will probably be described below.

[edit] Interests

There are many things that have my interest. The greater of these include developing fantasy worlds (see the Elfwood link below for details on this), drawing artwork (mostly centered about said fantasy worlds), fantasizing in general, certain branches of philosophy, Tai Chi Chuan, and modern as well as old video games. Particular video games that have fascinated me include Final Fantasy 5 and Half-Life 1.

Some of my probably more temporary interests are nebulae, some obscure video games, and the anime series Azumanga Daioh.

[edit] Philosophies

(Largely unfinished due to other projects with higher priority. My apologies.)

In the course of my life I have thought about many things. I'll be glad to summarize some of my thoughts for those who are interested. If any of you would like to discuss my views or have them explained in further detail, please feel free to ask me in the discussion section of this page.

[edit] Peace And Unity

There are two things that I strive to achieve, to which I usually refer as Peace and Unity. Peace refers to inner peace of mind as well as its results in interaction with the world, and Unity refers to a sense of universal solidarity with everything in existance.

[edit] Peace

Simply put, Peace is just the most calm state of mind. When the mind is at peace, one will not only be free of any negative emotions, but one will also experience clearer thoughts and quicker reactions (and also, with the proper training, a more balanced stance and more efficient movement). Other virtues of Peace are patience, forgiveness and general kindness. To achieve Peace, one must let go of any form of tension; in other words, one must free oneself of negative emotions.

Hatred is a vicious circle; its consequence, revenge, is an unreasonable desire to implement needless suffering. Anger is a dangerous temporary loss of rational thinking; its consequence, violence in words or actions, is a difficultly controllable destructive force that must not be unleashed, unless the alternative is less acceptable and it is carefully controlled. Envy is an inverted form of compassion that turns another's happiness into your pain. Greed is a desire to posses what someone else needs more than you. Pride is a stubborn delusion that limits one's mental freedom and may result in anger or hatred.

Fear or anxiety is premature pain; its causes are either exaggeration of what should not be worried about, or resistance to what should be accepted. Despair or panic is a paralysis of the mind at the worst possible time; its causes are those of fear, and itself inflating those. Embarrassment is pain over the loss of something that only exists in the minds of people; its cause is the delusion of the value of pretense. Sadness or regret is pain over the unchangeable; its cause is attachment to mistakes one should learn from and accept.

Think of these emotions as diseases that can only be cured by introspection. In order to find Peace, one should let go of them.

[edit] Unity

It is my preference to see everything in existance as a whole. Everything is an equally important part of a grand Universal Unity. From the greatest of stars to a broken plastic coffee cup in a trashcan next to your desk, from a cloud of space dust lightyears away to a tooth in your mouth; all is part of it. The Unity excludes nothing.

Imagine a pile of sand. It consists of many grains of sand, and each grain is slightly different from the others. But if you look at it, you don't see grains of sand, you see a pile. You could just as well choose to see each grain individually, but you would usually choose to see the unity that is pile. Likewise, one could think of everything in existance as a division of individual elements, but I choose to see the Unity.

This view entails that everything in existance is of the same value and importance. Nothing can be superior or inferior to anything if there exists only one thing. And even without the view of Unity, importance and value are nothing more than a part of human perception.

[edit] On Ethics

If it comes to applied ethics, my philosophy accentuates utilitarianism and compassion. Conscious suffering, no matter whose, is to be avoided or minimized at all times, unless this involves greater suffering of another; conscious happiness (that is, the things that will bring it about) is to be as equally distributed as possible.

(To be added; reference to choice paragraph, influence, responsibility, further explanation)

[edit] Random Rants

As its title implies, this paragraph is about rants about all kinds of subjects, inspired by common situations that might not even have happened to me at all.

Creationists Can't Argue

Added on 17-05-2006

As we probably all know, there has been a discussion between Creationists and followers of the theory of Evolution ever since the latter was invented. I won't judge which party is right and which is wrong, but I will take some time to rant about which knows how to be reasonable and give sensible arguments in a serious debate and which doesn't.

Often, Creationists say that evolution is still just a theory, that there is no evidence for it, and that that is supposed to detract from its credibility, so the Intelligent Design theory must be right. It is this statement that annoys me.

The theory of creationism is many thousands of years old; perhaps even as old as intelligent life itself. Yet in all those milennia, no-one has ever been able, or even bothered, to find any evidence for it. People should just believe in it, it's a matter of faith, we don't need evidence. This is how religion works.

The theory of evolution, on the other hand, is only about 200 years old, during which the most skilled and devoted scientists have been working their heads off to find out wether they can safely assume it to be true or not. People have been matching animal skelettons, and found similarities implying that animals might indeed be related to each other. People have been experimenting with DNA to find out if it really works the way it's supposed to, and it does, and the results of studies like that are still used, for example, to create insulin to keep diabetics alive. People have confirmed that genetic material is indeed passed on to offspring. And various other crucial parts of the theory, a single of which would be enough to entirely disprove it, were all confirmed. And, of course, experiments to verify these findings have all been repeated many times later on to make sure that no mistakes were made, because the scientific community really can't afford to assume things that it's not, in common terms, absolutely sure of. This is how science works.

So, the way I see it, the theory of evolution has plenty of evidence. Not enough, of course, to absolutely convince the scientific community of its correctness beyond all question, but that should not even be strived for since it is the nature and the task of science to doubt everything. So when science says 'we have convincing material that implies it might be this way' it is equivalent to anyone else saying 'I'm absolutely sure it's this way'.

And even if evolution was disproven ages ago, that still doesn't say anything about Creationism. Evolution and Intelligent Design aren't complementary, it's not like disproving one means proving the other. There's still countless other possibilities. What if the essence of life was created by an intelligent entity, and after that it evolved into life as we know it on itself? Or what if life has just always existed somewhere in some form? Or what if all life used to be one complete and balanced entity that, coïncidentally, without any intelligent deity deliberately causing it to, split up into many complementary forms that fit together perfectly? Or what if life was created by a flying spagetti monster? ...no, forget about that last one.

I'm still not saying it's wrong to be religious or dogmatic. If you choose to reject logic and replace it with dogmas and circular reasoning, go ahead, that's your choice. And if you choose to remain convinced that you're right under any circumstances, and not to take any arguments against your ways serious, that's your choice as well. But if you do, be honest and admit that debating is not your business, and don't lie to yourself that you're a reasonable person.

Linguistic Purists Are Just Wrong

(To be added)

[edit] Links

Elfwood account

[edit] Miscellaneous Information (Userboxes)

This user believes that death is an acceptable part of life.	This user tries to do the right thing. If they make a mistake, please let him or her know.
A.S. This user has Asperger syndrome.	to / too / two Too many people have no idea how to use words they should have learned in grade two.
its This user understands the difference between its ("of it") and it's ("it is").	This user took the red pill, not the blue pill.
^_^ This user watches anime.	^^ This user is a moderate fan of Manga.
This user is a former member of the worldwide family of Scouts.	This user is addicted to computer and video games.
λ This user thinks Half-Life is the best game ever.	< Or one of them, anyway.
HL2 This user plays Hλlf-Life 2.	+ This user plays retro games.
This user has left the planet Earth 0 times.	n00b This person is a n00b.
This user recently discovered how to use userboxes.	pox This user is suffering from userpox. Goggles seem to prove ineffectual.
non This user is full of non sequiturs. Fix my saxophone!	1, 2, 3... This userbox is a test. Please tell this user if you don't see it.
Ceci n'est pas une boîte d'utilisateur.	* This user STRONGLY advocates the use of more cowbell.
All your base are belong to Fyrius.	This user is not and has never been Napoleon.
This user believes that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is as likely as creationism.	END This user has no more userboxes.

Please accept this editor's barnstar for your courageous purge of OR and speculation in the Xen entry -Jackel 15:49, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

(I got a barn star! WOOHOO! ^_^)