wv wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

WV,

Perhaps THE biggest mystery can be boiled down to “Why is there something rather than nothing?” Pascal, Kierkegaard and Heidegger (among a host of other great thinkers) all had different ways of posing that question and dealing with it, but the subject of “Being” is perhaps the one mystery we’ll never solve.

So I think science will eventually be able to reverse engineer the brain (and the body), and figure out how everything functions to get the results we see . . . . but we’ll never know why there is “Being” in the universe, of any kind . . . . which also includes that universe itself.

In my admittedly biased opinion, religious explanations tend to block us from getting closer to the mystery of Being. They give us nice little stories about the whys and the wherefores, so we just go, “Oh. Okay. God did it.” And we move on. It’s like there are all of these gateways out there — at least potentially — and they have the various gods and goddesses listed on them, on a sign, and that stops most people in their tracks. So they don’t bother to open the gate and go through it to see what’s on the other side. The names or some Name stops them short.

IMO, we need to get rid of the names first, so we can go through the gates. Maybe we’ll find out what “Being” really is someday. Probably not. But maybe.

————–
Yeah, i tend to agree, comrad.

But, as you know relying on human-language to even try to discuss ‘the mystery of being’ is…well…..

w
v

That does present a problem. I’ve always found it interesting that some of the most brilliant thinkers, poets, musicians, artists and so on sometimes arrive at this conclusion:

“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”

— Wittgenstein

Some may take great satisfaction in this, or think it gives them a shortcut toward a kind of non-thinking, mute reality. But I think these thinkers don’t think that way. They’re actually saying something to the effect of: “Go through this process, this journey, make it as immense and deep and profound as possible, be fearless, be courageous, don’t let society stand in your way, take it as far as possible, and try to express what the experience means, as well as can be done. That remainder, that part that can’t be expressed? It’s okay to remain silent about that.

Again, I’m biased, by I think poets, musicians and artists get the closest to this. Wittgenstein’s words influenced a great many.

nittany ram wrote:

Yeah ‘Her’ is very good. One of the few love stories I ever liked only because it explores AI and the issues it entails. ‘Ex Machina’ is another good film about AI. You think it’s going to be a love story but then it takes a turn…

I really liked Ex Machina too. Very well done.

I’ve written a Sci-Fi novel, with a plan for a trilogy, and it deals with some of those issues. Clones and robots. It needs work. But I think it has potential. Unfortunately, with each month that goes by, with new stories from shows like Orphan Black, which I love, I’m seeing more and more competition . . . . and I really want it to be original to the degree possible.

My step-father got his doctorate in Nuclear Physics. A brilliant guy, and generally pretty humble about it. He was not likely to ever hold that over anyone’s head, even among other scientists.

__

WV, thanks for the book rec.

__

PA, if you haven’t seen it yet, the movie “Her” is really well done and seriously thought-provoking on the subject of AI. Remarkable too in that it’s a love story . . . and I think it could well be our future. One of the best films I’ve seen in the last decade.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 6 months ago by Billy_T.

Sinéad Lohan was an exceptionally talented Irish singer/songwriter who seems to have disappeared. Or she just chose a different way to make a living. She created two beautiful albums in the 1990s and then basically just stopped.

This particular song is representative of her lovely voice, not her fine songwriting, being a cover of Dylan’s “To Ramona”.

Bnw,

Beyond all of that, I think we’ve reached another moment of impasse. On guns and pretty much everything else, politically. Your little post about Michelle Obama is kinda the proverbial straw that broke that old camel’s back. Our worldviews are just incommensurate, and they’re always going to be that way, so we should just agree to disagree, and you go your way and I’ll go mine.

In short, I won’t be reading or responding to your posts anymore. I hope you return the favor.

zn wrote:

ZN, is this really something you find yourself needing to say, even now? I guess I was really lucky growing up. Had two highly educated parents, with highly educated parents of their own, etc. etc. Most of the extended family was/is. Not monied — with a couple of exceptions. But very learned.

Well I am not clear what you mean by “need to say it.” The very way you put that makes me wonder if you got the actual point.

I said that as analysis of mass media news. My claim was that mass media news absolutely does not get that. I made that point because I thought it would be one most readers of this forum already knew and understood. So since we all get that race is cultural etc, isn’t it interesting that mass media news doesn’t get that.

Do we agree that mass media news doesn’t get that? That’s the point.

…

I’m thinking now my response was clumsy and poorly stated. What I meant really was “It’s a shame that has to be said this late in the game.”

Yes, I agree that our media do not seem to get that there is no such thing as “race,” that it IS a social construct.

I threw in the issue of religion at the end — with the post itself being kinda (too much?) thinking aloud — as one possible explanation.

(When I tell people, for example, that genetic science says there is no such thing as a race almost invariably they’ve never heard that before, even though the science on it goes back to the 70s. Knowing that race is a cultural/social/historical thing and not a biological thing should not be new.)

ZN, is this really something you find yourself needing to say, even now? I guess I was really lucky growing up. Had two highly educated parents, with highly educated parents of their own, etc. etc. Most of the extended family was/is. Not monied — with a couple of exceptions. But very learned.

Knowing that race is a social construct was just a given for me, though in the neighborhood of my childhood, that wasn’t the general view.

The birth lottery. All kinds of positives and negatives attach themselves to that. All kinds of wings and chains. Born inches from a home run or a thousand miles from the stadium, etc.

That said, it takes a lot of effort to insist that all the genetic evidence is invalid and that there is such a thing as “race.” Of course — and this is huge — the bible teaches a racialist origin story, and a huge percentage of Americans accept creationism.

In U.S., 46% Hold Creationist View of Human Origins

Sorry for the terrible formatting above. The poem is much better read on the site linked to.

Nittany,

Was that caption yours? Again, pretty cool language.

Cinereous mourner chicks mimic poisonous caterpillars to avoid predation when young.

I really like that sentence. For some strange reason, it makes me think of Gerald Manley Hopkins:

The Windhover

By Gerard Manley Hopkins
The Poetry Foundation: The Windhover

To Christ our LordTo Christ our Lord This epigraph dedicated the poem to Jesus while echoing the Latin phrase, Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam, the Jesuit motto meaning “To the Greater Glory of God.”

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

zn wrote:

I disagree, however, with the perspective and the truth-claim that says using “identity politics” is necessarily a rejection of . . . . something. Who makes that call? Who decides? What, exactly, is being rejected?

It just is. That’s its usage. No one says they do identity politics; rather, the term is then used to portray someone else as focusing narrowly on identity issues. It actually comes from an earlier stage of minority rights movements when activists said “is it enough to ask what it means to be black/gay/a woman?” So “identity politics” is always meant as something someone ELSE does that is by definition too narrowly focused. Or the added thing is, it’s presumably “trivial” in comparison to something which is then represented as being comparatively more significant.

When the term is broadened to encompass anyone who is concerned with issues of race, or gender, or sexuality it then is basically rejecting all concerns with race, gender, or sexuality as being insufficiently universal and blind to bigger issues. Basically to me that’s not that different from shouting “all lives matter” back at the “black lives matter” movement. I see saying that not as MORE progressive or aware in some way, I see it as regressive and insensitive and UNaware in a lot of ways.

Because I see that that way, I do not separate any of the “issues.” They are all tied together, they are all mutually connected, it;s a web….you can’t touch one thing without touching the others.

Again, that’s your perspective, and you’re making a truth claim. I don’t agree with it. I don’t agree that everyone who uses the term uses it the way you think they do.

I do, however, get pissed off at the “all lives matter” rejoinder, just as you do. “Black lives matter” has always implied the “too.” They matter too. It’s always been about the fact that black lives have never been valued as much as white lives in America, and we’re still at the place in time when too many people with the power of life and death see them this way, consciously or subconsciously. So, the rejoinder, IMO, is really asinine and ignorant.

As in, for me, I see that AND I think using “identity politics” is just fine, and I don’t reject concerns about race, gender, sexuality, etc. etc. etc. Never have. Never will. The problem you’re setting up is that you’ve made a sweeping truth claim, and you haven’t allowed for any diversity of usage or viewpoint — or context. Different people, in different situations, using terms in different ways, to different effect, for different reasons.

That happens. It’s my perspective and my truth claim that this is what happens. You disagree. That’s your perspective and you’ve made your own truth claims.

Life goes on.

I agree with WV that the planet and its atmosphere are the top of the heap of issues, and epitomize the whole Nero plays the fiddle while Rome burns thing.

As we’ve discussed before, I also agree that it’s a huge problem that the media and our politicians and our schools won’t talk about the obvious connection with corporate capitalism — though I’d just leave out the “corporate” qualifier and say capitalism all by itself, in any form. IMO, it’s a mistake to think a different kind of capitalism would work, or that the corporate part isn’t already baked in or inevitable.

But, yeah, I’d say that all tops the list.

. . . .

I disagree, however, with the perspective and the truth-claim that says using “identity politics” is necessarily a rejection of . . . . something. Who makes that call? Who decides? What, exactly, is being rejected? There are obviously different ways of using the term, and people coming from vastly different points of view — left, right and center, etc. etc. So does it make any sense to claim that anyone and everyone who uses the term is automatically rejecting — whatever it is we’re supposed to be rejecting? I don’t think so.

My own occasional use of the term stems from the lack of alternatives. If there are better ways to shorten the field from “issues of race, gender, sexuality . . . .” then I’m all ears. To me, it’s clumsy and takes up too much space to repeat that list, which can still offend people for not being inclusive enough. Saying “identity politics” is pretty neutral, IMO, and I’ve seen it used “positively” by feminists, black activists and so on, so I just don’t see it as necessarily being a rejection, or dismissive, or . . . what have you. And, again, of what? It’s yet another form of “prejudice” to make the truth claim that it is necessarily a rejection, etc. etc.

Anyway . . . I need to practice what I preached above, so fuck all of this. I saw a mermaid riding on the back of a dinosaur the other day, and it completely destroyed my concept of what is true and what is an illusion.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 6 months ago by Billy_T.

Nice discussion, WV and ZN, you two old knuckleheads. I think you need to spruce it all up, though. Throw in some fucks and talk of mermaids and shit and flip over a cart before a horse or two, and then HBO may want to sign ya.

:>)

bnw,

Please don’t click “quote” if you’re not going to quote someone.

Beyond that, Heston shows the complete and utter idiocy of anyone who would prefer death to a slight reduction in consumer choice, or a slight increase in paper work.

Death: “I choose death rather than giving up my access to guns that weren’t even legal twenty years ago!!!! Arrrrrrrgggggghhhhh! Frotttthhh, blagggghhhh!!!”

“I choose death rather than going back to the way things were in pretty much every state in the US until roughly twenty years ago, when conceal carry laws were virtually non-existent!!! Arrrrrrggghhhhh!!!!! Grrrrrrhhh, barrgggle gurrrrgggle!!!”

Since the amendment was written — and isn’t “original intent” a big deal for gun nuts? — since it was written, consumer choice for weaponry has accelerated astronomically, beyond the wildest dreams of anyone in the late 18th century. So people in 2016 now have options for weapons that did not exist one, five, ten, twenty, thirty years ago. If you couldn’t own an AR-15, for example, but you could still buy shotguns and .357 magnums and a host of other kinds of guns . . . . you’d rather die than lose the massive increase in consumer choice that wasn’t even there in the past? You’d rather die than lose something that was never, ever your “right” in the first place?”

Oh, well. If you’re intent on committing suicide . . .

• This reply was modified 8 years, 6 months ago by Billy_T.

zn wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

ZN,

But could you actually describe his policies? I try my best, but it’s extremely difficult, for the reasons listed. If you know them, please list them

Yes. We all can. “Policies” is a very general term. It doesn’t mean “specific plans.” If you don’t like the term “policies” say “general ideas and attitudes concerning ________ “.

And if you’re watching the game tonight join us in the chat room gawddammit.

Thanks for the invitation, ZN. Much appreciated.

I suspend my cable service (Directv, currently) every summer. Usually for two months or so. So I can’t watch the game. Am hoping when I call them in early September, I’ll get a good deal on the NFL ticket, which has been the norm for me for a long time. We’ll see.

I suppose I could go to a sports bar tonight and watch it, but, frankly, I’ve never been really big on exhibition games. In fact, I wish they’d do away with them. I really hate the idea of players getting hurt in games that don’t count. I hate them getting hurt, period, of course. But it seems especially perverse when the games are meaningless.

zn wrote:

A huge problem when it comes to discussing policies, is that Trump is so vague about his

We know what they are.

Policies are not direct solutions or proposals. Though sometimes you do get those things.

You can tell where candidates stand on issues because they are courting constituencies.

Doesn’t mean we know their exact gameplan on this or that.

But we know generally where they stand on driving issues, and that’s what’s meant by “policies.”

ZN,

But could you actually describe his policies? I try my best, but it’s extremely difficult, for the reasons listed. If you know them, please list them.

Again, the only thing he’s really come close to providing any details about is his tax plan. Even the deregulation side of that is vague. He just tells us the lie that regulations cost Americans trillions per year, so he’ll cut them and save trillions. No specification of which regulations he’ll cut or end, etc. etc.