RE: mapping mappo - Discussion
RE: mapping mappo
terry, modified 1 Year ago at 9/3/23 3:32 PM
Created 1 Year ago at 9/3/23 3:29 PM
mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
The imaginal world is emerging into post modern consciousness. We are becoming more generally aware that the biophysical world and our mental-symbolic world are different things. This emergence is due to the increasing dysjunction between the two.
The symbolic world is our map of reality. The better our map, the more real our projection seems to be. Poor mapping is a poor grip on reality.
Gripping reality with a map is one way to go. And if you want companions on the road, an agreed upon map of the way, like rules of the road, improves the chances of success. The locations on the map are notional, like the jhanas of buddhism or the states and stages of sufism. Descriptions are lyrical rather than precise. Even if you mechanically maximize alpha waves or whatever, alpha waves are not enlightenment, not salvation. It’s like playing solitaire on a super computer. You win, game over, play again, until you tire of this round of samsara.
This is mappo, the reduction of the dharma to mechanical practices and individual self improvement schemes detached from general social life. Buddhists no longer dress in rags and go begging for food door to door.
There is another way to grasp reality, through non dualism, but it is incommunicable. Though the source of all - call it “nature”- it can’t be “used” as we think because we are a part of it. As chief seattle said, “The earth was not made for man, man was made for the earth.”
Yet our psycho-social maps tend to leave nature out, as though it were an endless resource of “goods” for us to exploit and squander. Rome is burning and we are fiddling.
Though we see “happiness” as our goal individually and collectively the dysjunction between the biophysical world and the mental and emotional framework we use for living in it has eroded our abilities to achieve it.
Buddhism originated in a reframing of the human project. It was a reaction to the growing realization that wealth and comfort did not make for human happiness, a repudiation of materialism. It involved an acknowledgement that at least some segments of society needed to embrace a wholesome, non destructive lifestyle, free of violence and excess. One characterized by compassion for all sentient being.
The buddhism of the day predicted the dharma would decline. Ny contention here is that the climate catastrophe now occurring needs to be mapped symbolically and dealt with as reality. By any means possible. Including buddhism, including “pragmatic dharma,”
The buddha says, “wake up.” That is, map us a way to sentience surviving. Call it salvation.
(aside -
I’ve been thinking about the collapse of civilization and a return of the surviving few to a neo neolithic age.
We find ourselves not only in a climate hostile world, but a world in which all of the readily available resources - copper, tin, gold, coal, sulfur, mega fauna etc etc have been exhausted and dissipated, even fresh water and wood.The most abundant source of fresh meat other humans. And no way to cook them. We file our teeth to make them sharper. )
The symbolic world is our map of reality. The better our map, the more real our projection seems to be. Poor mapping is a poor grip on reality.
Gripping reality with a map is one way to go. And if you want companions on the road, an agreed upon map of the way, like rules of the road, improves the chances of success. The locations on the map are notional, like the jhanas of buddhism or the states and stages of sufism. Descriptions are lyrical rather than precise. Even if you mechanically maximize alpha waves or whatever, alpha waves are not enlightenment, not salvation. It’s like playing solitaire on a super computer. You win, game over, play again, until you tire of this round of samsara.
This is mappo, the reduction of the dharma to mechanical practices and individual self improvement schemes detached from general social life. Buddhists no longer dress in rags and go begging for food door to door.
There is another way to grasp reality, through non dualism, but it is incommunicable. Though the source of all - call it “nature”- it can’t be “used” as we think because we are a part of it. As chief seattle said, “The earth was not made for man, man was made for the earth.”
Yet our psycho-social maps tend to leave nature out, as though it were an endless resource of “goods” for us to exploit and squander. Rome is burning and we are fiddling.
Though we see “happiness” as our goal individually and collectively the dysjunction between the biophysical world and the mental and emotional framework we use for living in it has eroded our abilities to achieve it.
Buddhism originated in a reframing of the human project. It was a reaction to the growing realization that wealth and comfort did not make for human happiness, a repudiation of materialism. It involved an acknowledgement that at least some segments of society needed to embrace a wholesome, non destructive lifestyle, free of violence and excess. One characterized by compassion for all sentient being.
The buddhism of the day predicted the dharma would decline. Ny contention here is that the climate catastrophe now occurring needs to be mapped symbolically and dealt with as reality. By any means possible. Including buddhism, including “pragmatic dharma,”
The buddha says, “wake up.” That is, map us a way to sentience surviving. Call it salvation.
(aside -
I’ve been thinking about the collapse of civilization and a return of the surviving few to a neo neolithic age.
We find ourselves not only in a climate hostile world, but a world in which all of the readily available resources - copper, tin, gold, coal, sulfur, mega fauna etc etc have been exhausted and dissipated, even fresh water and wood.The most abundant source of fresh meat other humans. And no way to cook them. We file our teeth to make them sharper. )
Hector L, modified 1 Year ago at 9/3/23 3:58 PM
Created 1 Year ago at 9/3/23 3:58 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 141 Join Date: 5/9/20 Recent Posts
"The names of the bodhisattvas were Bodhisattva Viewing Equality, Bodhisattva Viewing Inequality, Bodhisattva Viewing Equality and Inequality, Bodhisattva Meditation Freedom King, Bodhisattva Dharma Freedom King, Bodhisattva Dharma Forms," - Chapter 1, Vimalakirti sutra
I wouldn't say Bodhisattva Dharma Forms is less than Bodhisattva Dharma Freedom King though, both are Bodhisattvas
I wouldn't say Bodhisattva Dharma Forms is less than Bodhisattva Dharma Freedom King though, both are Bodhisattvas
Pepe ·, modified 1 Year ago at 9/3/23 5:11 PM
Created 1 Year ago at 9/3/23 5:09 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 737 Join Date: 9/26/18 Recent PostsBuddhism originated in a reframing of the human project. It was a reaction to the growing realization that wealth and comfort did not make for human happiness, a repudiation of materialism.
Nope, Buddha taught the "Middle Way", between materialism and ascetism. Both "philosophies" (for the lack of a better term) were already fighting each other back then.
terry, modified 1 Year ago at 9/4/23 4:37 PM
Created 1 Year ago at 9/4/23 4:37 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent PostsPepe ·
Nope, Buddha taught the "Middle Way", between materialism and ascetism. Both "philosophies" (for the lack of a better term) were already fighting each other back then.
Buddhism originated in a reframing of the human project. It was a reaction to the growing realization that wealth and comfort did not make for human happiness, a repudiation of materialism.
Nope, Buddha taught the "Middle Way", between materialism and ascetism. Both "philosophies" (for the lack of a better term) were already fighting each other back then.
A repudiation of excess, then. Yes, the world was already a burning house and the end apparent.
terry, modified 1 Year ago at 9/4/23 6:15 PM
Created 1 Year ago at 9/4/23 6:15 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent PostsHector L
"The names of the bodhisattvas were Bodhisattva Viewing Equality, Bodhisattva Viewing Inequality, Bodhisattva Viewing Equality and Inequality, Bodhisattva Meditation Freedom King, Bodhisattva Dharma Freedom King, Bodhisattva Dharma Forms," - Chapter 1, Vimalakirti sutra
I wouldn't say Bodhisattva Dharma Forms is less than Bodhisattva Dharma Freedom King though, both are Bodhisattvas
"The names of the bodhisattvas were Bodhisattva Viewing Equality, Bodhisattva Viewing Inequality, Bodhisattva Viewing Equality and Inequality, Bodhisattva Meditation Freedom King, Bodhisattva Dharma Freedom King, Bodhisattva Dharma Forms," - Chapter 1, Vimalakirti sutra
I wouldn't say Bodhisattva Dharma Forms is less than Bodhisattva Dharma Freedom King though, both are Bodhisattvas
one potato, two potato, three potato, four
Pepe ·, modified 1 Year ago at 9/4/23 7:34 PM
Created 1 Year ago at 9/4/23 7:34 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 737 Join Date: 9/26/18 Recent Posts
Yeah, I know what you mean, Climate Change + Russia & China threating a nuclear war is a whole new level of distress, yet we are living in the best time in History. At the time of the Buddha, Lao Tse or Jesus life was short and brutal for today's standards (~45 years, high infant mortality, starvation, epidemics, warfare and violence, etc). They too thought of an impending havoc. In India there was that idea of cyclical destruction, in China the never-ending warring states, in Judea the upcoming end of the world, etc. Much of these ideas derive from the transition from a rural to an urban civilizations
terry, modified 1 Year ago at 9/4/23 10:31 PM
Created 1 Year ago at 9/4/23 10:31 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent PostsLiving in the best time in history, eh. I assume you live in "the global north." A dickensian tale of two hemispheres; the best of times, the worst of times. As in the american antebellum south, life was good for the exploiters, bad for the exploited. And really, it was not so good for the wealthy either, their twisted values causing many pathologies.
We have eliminated the negative feedbacks that limit population growth. This has enabled us to overshoot the carrying capacity of our environment, the ability of the environment to supply nutrients and assimilate waste, so rapidly that our population has grown to obviously unsustainable levels.
This is indeed the most remarkable time in history, the human empire at its greatest extent, on the brink of starving and choking on its own waste. Human population of eight billion was three billion in 1950. We've used half of the fossil fuel ever burnt in the last thirty years, and made half of the plastic; the next thirty years are set to double these numbers again. Our world economy is based on continuous growth. This is obviously unsustainable but with technology we have maintained it for a few generations, extracting ever more difficult to reach minerals, substituting as we go and keeping an exponential growth curve reflected by hockey stick graphs. When growth ends society will have collapsed. There is literally no path to sustainability for the bulk of earth's population.
So we as humans have lived entirely through this period of exceptional unprecedented unsustainable growth. Children of summer. Winter is coming.
The buddha turned his back on the comfortable convenient lies of his father the king and experienced hunger and thirst and exposure. He advocated a correct, sustainable path, advocating values that could be practiced independently of wealth and economic status.
How about green buddhism? We could plant a trillion upaya trees.
terry, modified 1 Year ago at 9/5/23 12:01 AM
Created 1 Year ago at 9/5/23 12:01 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent PostsPapa Che Dusko, modified 1 Year ago at 9/5/23 5:50 AM
Created 1 Year ago at 9/5/23 5:50 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 3048 Join Date: 3/1/20 Recent PostsRussia & China threating a nuclear war is a whole new level of distress
https://youtu.be/LT3cERVRoQo?si=u5cq05AyndQIxZJm
Pepe ·, modified 1 Year ago at 9/5/23 8:36 AM
Created 1 Year ago at 9/5/23 8:33 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 737 Join Date: 9/26/18 Recent PostsLiving in the best time in history, eh. I assume you live in "the global north."
Nope. I live in "the poor south", with a mean of 12% of monthly inflation rate, 40% of poverty, 10% of indigence, mean salaries below USD 500, pensions of USD 150, etc. My country sucks, but our poor neighbours have constantly done better and reduce poverty consistently over the last couple of decades. That also happened in India, China and some African countries as well.
How about green buddhism? We could plant a trillion upaya trees.
Yeah!! Love that!
Hector L, modified 1 Year ago at 9/5/23 11:45 AM
Created 1 Year ago at 9/5/23 11:45 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 141 Join Date: 5/9/20 Recent Posts
Seagrass is better for carbon sequestration because it the carbon is eventually buried under sediment in an anoxic regime. Trees are just temporary as when they die they either get burnt for fuel or fungi decompose then and the carbon returns to the atmosphere.
terry, modified 1 Year ago at 9/5/23 3:02 PM
Created 1 Year ago at 9/5/23 3:02 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent PostsHector L
Seagrass is better for carbon sequestration because it the carbon is eventually buried under sediment in an anoxic regime. Trees are just temporary as when they die they either get burnt for fuel or fungi decompose then and the carbon returns to the atmosphere.
Seagrass is better for carbon sequestration because it the carbon is eventually buried under sediment in an anoxic regime. Trees are just temporary as when they die they either get burnt for fuel or fungi decompose then and the carbon returns to the atmosphere.
Only feasible way to sequester carbon derived from fossil fuel is to leave it in the ground. Needless to say, we haven't been taking that option. Imagine huge pipelines putting carbon back into the ground at the rate we are taking it out and you may appreciate the scale of the problem.
Since altering the gaseous composition of the atmosphere is a done deal, it is almost inevitable that an increasingly desperate world will attempt geoengineering, such as injecting aerosols into the stratosphere. What could possibly go wrong? Best outcome it works and masks global warming, in which case we will have to keep injecting more and more as the planet tries to heat up. When the injection system inevitably fails the resulting warming will be toasty.
terry, modified 1 Year ago at 9/5/23 3:05 PM
Created 1 Year ago at 9/5/23 3:05 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent PostsPepe ·
Nope. I live in "the poor south", with a mean of 12% of monthly inflation rate, 40% of poverty, 10% of indigence, mean salaries below USD 500, pensions of USD 150, etc. My country sucks, but our poor neighbours have constantly done better and reduce poverty consistently over the last couple of decades. That also happened in India, China and some African countries as well.
Yeah!! Love that!
Living in the best time in history, eh. I assume you live in "the global north."
Nope. I live in "the poor south", with a mean of 12% of monthly inflation rate, 40% of poverty, 10% of indigence, mean salaries below USD 500, pensions of USD 150, etc. My country sucks, but our poor neighbours have constantly done better and reduce poverty consistently over the last couple of decades. That also happened in India, China and some African countries as well.
How about green buddhism? We could plant a trillion upaya trees.
Yeah!! Love that!
There are more people living in poverty now than existed in 1950.
And the trends are going down due to climate change. Poverty and hunger and displacement are increasing.
Tourism is one of the industries we need to stop. Ground all the planes.
terry, modified 1 Year ago at 9/5/23 3:36 PM
Created 1 Year ago at 9/5/23 3:36 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent PostsPapa Che Dusko
https://youtu.be/LT3cERVRoQo?si=u5cq05AyndQIxZJm
Russia & China threating a nuclear war is a whole new level of distress
https://youtu.be/LT3cERVRoQo?si=u5cq05AyndQIxZJm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7t5RrUt3nrY
terry, modified 1 Year ago at 9/5/23 4:31 PM
Created 1 Year ago at 9/5/23 4:31 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent PostsPapa Che Dusko
https://youtu.be/LT3cERVRoQo?si=u5cq05AyndQIxZJm
Russia & China threating a nuclear war is a whole new level of distress
https://youtu.be/LT3cERVRoQo?si=u5cq05AyndQIxZJm
Actually a nuclear war would probably be better for the biosphere than continuing to pump co2 into the atmosphere. Runaway gloabal warming - setting off the clathrate bomb - could take the biosphere fifty million years to recover, versus only tens or hundreds of thousands of years for nuclear war. Assuming runaway global warming doesn't turn earth into another venus, also a possibility.
terry, modified 1 Year ago at 9/11/23 1:55 AM
Created 1 Year ago at 9/11/23 1:55 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
best mapping of a near future transition which deals with climate change on many levels
(drum roll please)
kim stanley robinson's recent masterwork of science fiction, "ministry for the future"...
(drum roll please)
kim stanley robinson's recent masterwork of science fiction, "ministry for the future"...
terry, modified 1 Year ago at 9/12/23 2:49 PM
Created 1 Year ago at 9/12/23 2:49 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
One of he attractions of “pragmatic dharma” is that it doesn’t sneer at science or religion. It rides the interface between the biophysical world and the “mind.” Mainstream science consensus is valued and solicited.
So even more reason to include overshoot slash climate change slash resulting social upheaval as mappable elements in our spiritual journeys. “Interesting times” inspired the taoists and the sufis to challenge the religious institutions of their times with the mystic power of transcendent love to change ideology and facilitate spiritual (r)evolution.
For one thing the world is closer together than ever, the internet and travel and rubbing elbows with eight billion souls bring us closer together. Now the shared experience of climate change is beginning to wake us up to our collective nature as a super-organism. There is nowhere on the planet that is safe, no resorts, no latitudes, no islands of stability. We are all in the same boat.
It is becoming increasingly obvious that human world culture must change due to environmental pressure. Continued exponential growth has always been unsustainable but now it appears it must come to a stop within a few years or sooner.
Conservatives traditionally want to maintain the status quo and progressives want to change things for the better, but both approaches are irrelevant when it’s all hands on deck to bail and reduce sail. Yet the same thinking prevails. No one has a workable plan the honestly addresses the real situation. People who understand the problem best are the most deeply pessinistic. Perhaps grief counseling is all we have left. But pascal's wager encourages us to bet on whatever path might enable sentience to survive.
Waking up to this reality might happen much faster than we might think. We responded to covid deaths with massive spending and when millions die from heat waves and grid failures similar expenditures will likely be forthcoming. The people who have been thinking and talking about these things for decades will start to be listened to. The prospect of artifical intelligence may end up being our savior by enabling effective degrowth decentralized economic planning.
We need to be designing new ways of global cooperation in a post growth world. How to handle declining populations and declining harvests and decreasing use of material goods with grace and fairness. The opportunity to create more social equity is the silver lining to the whole project.
Map this!
So even more reason to include overshoot slash climate change slash resulting social upheaval as mappable elements in our spiritual journeys. “Interesting times” inspired the taoists and the sufis to challenge the religious institutions of their times with the mystic power of transcendent love to change ideology and facilitate spiritual (r)evolution.
For one thing the world is closer together than ever, the internet and travel and rubbing elbows with eight billion souls bring us closer together. Now the shared experience of climate change is beginning to wake us up to our collective nature as a super-organism. There is nowhere on the planet that is safe, no resorts, no latitudes, no islands of stability. We are all in the same boat.
It is becoming increasingly obvious that human world culture must change due to environmental pressure. Continued exponential growth has always been unsustainable but now it appears it must come to a stop within a few years or sooner.
Conservatives traditionally want to maintain the status quo and progressives want to change things for the better, but both approaches are irrelevant when it’s all hands on deck to bail and reduce sail. Yet the same thinking prevails. No one has a workable plan the honestly addresses the real situation. People who understand the problem best are the most deeply pessinistic. Perhaps grief counseling is all we have left. But pascal's wager encourages us to bet on whatever path might enable sentience to survive.
Waking up to this reality might happen much faster than we might think. We responded to covid deaths with massive spending and when millions die from heat waves and grid failures similar expenditures will likely be forthcoming. The people who have been thinking and talking about these things for decades will start to be listened to. The prospect of artifical intelligence may end up being our savior by enabling effective degrowth decentralized economic planning.
We need to be designing new ways of global cooperation in a post growth world. How to handle declining populations and declining harvests and decreasing use of material goods with grace and fairness. The opportunity to create more social equity is the silver lining to the whole project.
Map this!
terry, modified 1 Year ago at 9/15/23 2:42 AM
Created 1 Year ago at 9/15/23 2:42 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
"The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think."
~gregory bateson
~gregory bateson
terry, modified 1 Year ago at 9/15/23 4:45 AM
Created 1 Year ago at 9/15/23 4:45 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
Nate hagens, one of our new noahs, has a pod cast. I think of his sort of work as “arkology” which I might define as studying ways we may engineer a soft transition to a post fossil fuel civilization.
In this episode, which just came out a couple of days ago, he interviews stanford professor and primate researcher doctor robert sapolsky (“call me robert”) about his new not yet published book determined; a science of life without free will.
The interview is lengthy and by the end robert is pretty convincing that everything anyone does is mediated by neurotransmitters rather mechanistnically. He manages to do this without being reductionistic.
His mechanism is much like karma, just cause and effect and no magical thinking.
Nothing is free, least of all will.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhobcj2K9v4
If you watch the interview you might appreciate why I think the following quote is apropos. I thought it quite funny.
from spinoza, ethics, part one
APPENDIX:
In the foregoing I have explained the nature and properties of God. I have shown that he necessarily exists, that he is one: that he is, and acts solely by the necessity of his own nature; that he is the free cause of all things, and how he is so; that all things are in God, and so depend on him, that without him they could neither exist nor be conceived; lastly, that all things are predetermined by God, not through his free will or absolute fiat, but from the very nature of God or infinite power. I have further, where occasion afforded, taken care to remove the prejudices, which might impede the comprehension of my demonstrations. Yet there still remain misconceptions not a few, which might and may prove very grave hindrances to the understanding of the concatenation of things, as I have explained it above. I have therefore thought it worth while to bring these misconceptions before the bar of reason.
All such opinions spring from the notion commonly entertained, that all things in nature act as men themselves act, namely, with an end in view. It is accepted as certain, that God himself directs all things to a definite goal (for it is said that God made all things for man, and man that he might worship him). I will, therefore, consider this opinion, asking first, why it obtains general credence, and why all men are naturally so prone to adopt it? secondly, I will point out its falsity; and, lastly, I will show how it has given rise to prejudices about good and bad, right and wrong, praise and blame, order and confusion, beauty and ugliness, and the like. However, this is not the place to deduce these misconceptions from the nature of the human mind: it will be sufficient here, if I assume as a starting point, what ought to be universally admitted, namely, that all men are born ignorant of the causes of things, that all have the desire to seek for what is useful to them, and that they are conscious of such desire. Herefrom it follows, first, that men think themselves free inasmuch as they are conscious of their volitions and desires, and never even dream, in their ignorance, of the causes which have disposed them so to wish and desire. Secondly, that men do all things for an end, namely, for that which is useful to them, and which they seek. Thus it comes to pass that they only look for a knowledge of the final causes of events, and when these are learned, they are content, as having no cause for further doubt. If they cannot learn such causes from external sources, they are compelled to turn to considering themselves, and reflecting what end would have induced them personally to bring about the given event, and thus they necessarily judge other natures by their own. Further, as they find in themselves and outside themselves many means which assist them not a little in the search for what is useful, for instance, eyes for seeing, teeth for chewing, herbs and animals for yielding food, the sun for giving light, the sea for breeding fish, &c., they come to look on the whole of nature as a means for obtaining such conveniences. Now as they are aware, that they found these conveniences and did not make them, they think they have cause for believing, that some other being has made them for their use. As they look upon things as means, they cannot believe them to be self—created; but, judging from the means which they are accustomed to prepare for themselves, they are bound to believe in some ruler or rulers of the universe endowed with human freedom, who have arranged and adapted everything for human use. They are bound to estimate the nature of such rulers (having no information on the subject) in accordance with their own nature, and therefore they assert that the gods ordained everything for the use of man, in order to bind man to themselves and obtain from him the highest honor. Hence also it follows, that everyone thought out for himself, according to his abilities, a different way of worshipping God, so that God might love him more than his fellows, and direct the whole course of nature for the satisfaction of his blind cupidity and insatiable avarice. Thus the prejudice developed into superstition, and took deep root in the human mind; and for this reason everyone strove most zealously to understand and explain the final causes of things; but in their endeavor to show that nature does nothing in vain, i.e. nothing which is useless to man, they only seem to have demonstrated that nature, the gods, and men are all mad together. Consider, I pray you, the result: among the many helps of nature they were bound to find some hindrances, such as storms, earthquakes, diseases, &c.: so they declared that such things happen, because the gods are angry at some wrong done to them by men, or at some fault committed in their worship. Experience day by day protested and showed by infinite examples, that good and evil fortunes fall to the lot of pious and impious alike; still they would not abandon their inveterate prejudice, for it was more easy for them to class such contradictions among other unknown things of whose use they were ignorant, and thus to retain their actual and innate condition of ignorance, than to destroy the whole fabric of their reasoning and start afresh. They therefore laid down as an axiom, that God's judgments far transcend human understanding. Such a doctrine might well have sufficed to conceal the truth from the human race for all eternity, if mathematics had not furnished another standard of verity in considering solely the essence and properties of figures without regard to their final causes. There are other reasons (which I need not mention here) besides mathematics, which might have caused men's minds to be directed to these general prejudices, and have led them to the knowledge of the truth.
I have now sufficiently explained my first point. There is no need to show at length, that nature has no particular goal in view, and that final causes are mere human figments. This, I think, is already evident enough, both from the causes and foundations on which I have shown such prejudice to be based, and also from Prop. xvi., and the Corollary of Prop. xxxii., and, in fact, all those propositions in which I have shown, that everything in nature proceeds from a sort of necessity, and with the utmost perfection. However, I will add a few remarks, in order to overthrow this doctrine of a final cause utterly. That which is really a cause it considers as an effect, and vice versâ: it makes that which is by nature first to be last, and that which is highest and most perfect to be most imperfect. Passing over the questions of cause and priority as self—evident, it is plain from Props. xxi., xxii., xxiii. that the effect is most perfect which is produced immediately by God; the effect which requires for its production several intermediate causes is, in that respect, more imperfect. But if those things which were made immediately by God were made to enable him to attain his end, then the things which come after, for the sake of which the first were made, are necessarily the most excellent of all.
Further, this doctrine does away with the perfection of God: for, if God acts for an object, he necessarily desires something which he lacks. Certainly, theologians and metaphysicians draw a distinction between the object of want and the object of assimilation; still they confess that God made all things for the sake of himself, not for the sake of creation. They are unable to point to anything prior to creation, except God himself, as an object for which God should act, and are therefore driven to admit (as they clearly must), that God lacked those things for whose attainment he created means, and further that he desired them.
We must not omit to notice that the followers of this doctrine, anxious to display their talent in assigning final causes, have imported a new method of argument in proof of their theory—namely, a reduction, not to the impossible, but to ignorance; thus showing that they have no other method of exhibiting their doctrine. For example, if a stone falls from a roof on to someone's head, and kills him, they will demonstrate by their new method, that the stone fell in order to kill the man; for, if it had not by God's will fallen with that object, how could so many circumstances (and there are often many concurrent circumstances) have all happened together by chance? Perhaps you will answer that the event is due to the facts that the wind was blowing, and the man was walking that way. "But why," they will insist, "was the wind blowing, and why was the man at that very time walking that way?" If you again answer, that the wind had then sprung up because the sea had begun to be agitated the day before, the weather being previously calm, and that the man had been invited by a friend, they will again insist: "But why was the sea agitated, and why was the man invited at that time?" So they will pursue their questions from cause to cause, till at last you take refuge in the will of God—in other words, the sanctuary of ignorance. So, again, when they survey the frame of the human body, they are amazed; and being ignorant of the causes of so great a work of art, conclude that it has been fashioned, not mechanically, but by divine and supernatural skill, and has been so put together that one part shall not hurt another.
Hence anyone who seeks for the true causes of miracles, and strives to understand natural phenomena as an intelligent being, and not to gaze at them like a fool, is set down and denounced as an impious heretic by those, whom the masses adore as the interpreters of nature and the gods. Such persons know that, with the removal of ignorance, the wonder which forms their only available means for proving and preserving their authority would vanish also. But I now quit this subject, and pass on to my third point.
After men persuaded themselves, that everything which is created is created for their sake, they were bound to consider as the chief quality in everything that which is most useful to themselves, and to account those things the best of all which have the most beneficial effect on mankind. Further, they were bound to form abstract notions for the explanation of the nature of things, such as goodness, badness, order, confusion, warmth, cold, beauty, deformity, and so on; and from the belief that they are free agents arose the further notions of praise and blame, sin and merit.
I will speak of these latter hereafter, when I treat of human nature; the former I will briefly explain here.
Everything which conduces to health and the worship of God they have called good, everything which hinders these objects they have styled bad; and inasmuch as those who do not understand the nature of things do not verify phenomena in any way, but merely imagine them after a fashion, and mistake their imagination for understanding, such persons firmly believe that there is an order in things, being really ignorant both of things and their own nature. When phenomena are of such a kind, that the impression they make on our senses requires little effort of imagination, and can consequently be easily remembered, we say that they are well—ordered; if the contrary, that they are ill—ordered or confused. Further, as things which are easily imagined are more pleasing to us, men prefer order to confusion—as though there were any order in nature, except in relation to our imagination—and say that God has created all things in order; thus, without knowing it, attributing imagination to God, unless, indeed, they would have it that God foresaw human imagination, and arranged everything, so that it should be most easily imagined. If this be their theory, they would not, perhaps, be daunted by the fact that we find an infinite number of phenomena, far surpassing our imagination, and very many others which confound its weakness. But enough has been said on this subject. The other abstract notions are nothing but modes of imagining, in which the imagination is differently affected: though they are considered by the ignorant as the chief attributes of things, inasmuch as they believe that everything was created for the sake of themselves; and, according as they are affected by it, style it good or bad, healthy or rotten and corrupt. For instance, if the motion which objects we see communicate to our nerves be conducive to health, the objects causing it are styled beautiful; if a contrary motion be excited, they are styled ugly.
Things which are perceived through our sense of smell are styled fragrant or fetid; if through our taste, sweet or bitter, full—flavored or insipid; if through our touch, hard or soft, rough or smooth, &c.
Whatsoever affects our ears is said to give rise to noise, sound, or harmony. In this last case, there are men lunatic enough to believe, that even God himself takes pleasure in harmony; and philosophers are not lacking who have persuaded themselves, that the motion of the heavenly bodies gives rise to harmony—all of which instances sufficiently show that everyone judges of things according to the state of his brain, or rather mistakes for things the forms of his imagination. We need no longer wonder that there have arisen all the controversies we have witnessed, and finally skepticism: for, although human bodies in many respects agree, yet in very many others they differ; so that what seems good to one seems bad to another; what seems well ordered to one seems confused to another; what is pleasing to one displeases another, and so on. I need not further enumerate, because this is not the place to treat the subject at length, and also because the fact is sufficiently well known. It is commonly said: "So many men, so many minds; everyone is wise in his own way; brains differ as completely as palates." All of which proverbs show, that men judge of things according to their mental disposition, and rather imagine than understand: for, if they understood phenomena, they would, as mathematicians attest, be convinced, if not attracted, by what I have urged.
We have now perceived, that all the explanations commonly given of nature are mere modes of imagining, and do not indicate the true nature of anything, but only the constitution of the imagination; and, although they have names, as though they were entities, existing externally to the imagination, I call them entities imaginary rather than real; and, therefore, all arguments against us drawn from such abstractions are easily rebutted.
Many argue in this way. If all things follow from a necessity of the absolutely perfect nature of God, why are there so many imperfections in nature? such, for instance, as things corrupt to the point of putridity, loathsome deformity, confusion, evil, sin, &c. But these reasoners are, as I have said, easily confuted, for the perfection of things is to be reckoned only from their own nature and power; things are not more or less perfect, according as they delight or offend human senses, or according as they are serviceable or repugnant to mankind. To those who ask why God did not so create all men, that they should be governed only by reason, I give no answer but this: because matter was not lacking to him for the creation of every degree of perfection from highest to lowest; or, more strictly, because the laws of his nature are so vast, as to suffice for the production of everything conceivable by an infinite intelligence, as I have shown in Prop. xvi.
Such are the misconceptions I have undertaken to note; if there are any more of the same sort, everyone may easily dissipate them for himself with the aid of a little reflection.
In this episode, which just came out a couple of days ago, he interviews stanford professor and primate researcher doctor robert sapolsky (“call me robert”) about his new not yet published book determined; a science of life without free will.
The interview is lengthy and by the end robert is pretty convincing that everything anyone does is mediated by neurotransmitters rather mechanistnically. He manages to do this without being reductionistic.
His mechanism is much like karma, just cause and effect and no magical thinking.
Nothing is free, least of all will.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhobcj2K9v4
If you watch the interview you might appreciate why I think the following quote is apropos. I thought it quite funny.
from spinoza, ethics, part one
APPENDIX:
In the foregoing I have explained the nature and properties of God. I have shown that he necessarily exists, that he is one: that he is, and acts solely by the necessity of his own nature; that he is the free cause of all things, and how he is so; that all things are in God, and so depend on him, that without him they could neither exist nor be conceived; lastly, that all things are predetermined by God, not through his free will or absolute fiat, but from the very nature of God or infinite power. I have further, where occasion afforded, taken care to remove the prejudices, which might impede the comprehension of my demonstrations. Yet there still remain misconceptions not a few, which might and may prove very grave hindrances to the understanding of the concatenation of things, as I have explained it above. I have therefore thought it worth while to bring these misconceptions before the bar of reason.
All such opinions spring from the notion commonly entertained, that all things in nature act as men themselves act, namely, with an end in view. It is accepted as certain, that God himself directs all things to a definite goal (for it is said that God made all things for man, and man that he might worship him). I will, therefore, consider this opinion, asking first, why it obtains general credence, and why all men are naturally so prone to adopt it? secondly, I will point out its falsity; and, lastly, I will show how it has given rise to prejudices about good and bad, right and wrong, praise and blame, order and confusion, beauty and ugliness, and the like. However, this is not the place to deduce these misconceptions from the nature of the human mind: it will be sufficient here, if I assume as a starting point, what ought to be universally admitted, namely, that all men are born ignorant of the causes of things, that all have the desire to seek for what is useful to them, and that they are conscious of such desire. Herefrom it follows, first, that men think themselves free inasmuch as they are conscious of their volitions and desires, and never even dream, in their ignorance, of the causes which have disposed them so to wish and desire. Secondly, that men do all things for an end, namely, for that which is useful to them, and which they seek. Thus it comes to pass that they only look for a knowledge of the final causes of events, and when these are learned, they are content, as having no cause for further doubt. If they cannot learn such causes from external sources, they are compelled to turn to considering themselves, and reflecting what end would have induced them personally to bring about the given event, and thus they necessarily judge other natures by their own. Further, as they find in themselves and outside themselves many means which assist them not a little in the search for what is useful, for instance, eyes for seeing, teeth for chewing, herbs and animals for yielding food, the sun for giving light, the sea for breeding fish, &c., they come to look on the whole of nature as a means for obtaining such conveniences. Now as they are aware, that they found these conveniences and did not make them, they think they have cause for believing, that some other being has made them for their use. As they look upon things as means, they cannot believe them to be self—created; but, judging from the means which they are accustomed to prepare for themselves, they are bound to believe in some ruler or rulers of the universe endowed with human freedom, who have arranged and adapted everything for human use. They are bound to estimate the nature of such rulers (having no information on the subject) in accordance with their own nature, and therefore they assert that the gods ordained everything for the use of man, in order to bind man to themselves and obtain from him the highest honor. Hence also it follows, that everyone thought out for himself, according to his abilities, a different way of worshipping God, so that God might love him more than his fellows, and direct the whole course of nature for the satisfaction of his blind cupidity and insatiable avarice. Thus the prejudice developed into superstition, and took deep root in the human mind; and for this reason everyone strove most zealously to understand and explain the final causes of things; but in their endeavor to show that nature does nothing in vain, i.e. nothing which is useless to man, they only seem to have demonstrated that nature, the gods, and men are all mad together. Consider, I pray you, the result: among the many helps of nature they were bound to find some hindrances, such as storms, earthquakes, diseases, &c.: so they declared that such things happen, because the gods are angry at some wrong done to them by men, or at some fault committed in their worship. Experience day by day protested and showed by infinite examples, that good and evil fortunes fall to the lot of pious and impious alike; still they would not abandon their inveterate prejudice, for it was more easy for them to class such contradictions among other unknown things of whose use they were ignorant, and thus to retain their actual and innate condition of ignorance, than to destroy the whole fabric of their reasoning and start afresh. They therefore laid down as an axiom, that God's judgments far transcend human understanding. Such a doctrine might well have sufficed to conceal the truth from the human race for all eternity, if mathematics had not furnished another standard of verity in considering solely the essence and properties of figures without regard to their final causes. There are other reasons (which I need not mention here) besides mathematics, which might have caused men's minds to be directed to these general prejudices, and have led them to the knowledge of the truth.
I have now sufficiently explained my first point. There is no need to show at length, that nature has no particular goal in view, and that final causes are mere human figments. This, I think, is already evident enough, both from the causes and foundations on which I have shown such prejudice to be based, and also from Prop. xvi., and the Corollary of Prop. xxxii., and, in fact, all those propositions in which I have shown, that everything in nature proceeds from a sort of necessity, and with the utmost perfection. However, I will add a few remarks, in order to overthrow this doctrine of a final cause utterly. That which is really a cause it considers as an effect, and vice versâ: it makes that which is by nature first to be last, and that which is highest and most perfect to be most imperfect. Passing over the questions of cause and priority as self—evident, it is plain from Props. xxi., xxii., xxiii. that the effect is most perfect which is produced immediately by God; the effect which requires for its production several intermediate causes is, in that respect, more imperfect. But if those things which were made immediately by God were made to enable him to attain his end, then the things which come after, for the sake of which the first were made, are necessarily the most excellent of all.
Further, this doctrine does away with the perfection of God: for, if God acts for an object, he necessarily desires something which he lacks. Certainly, theologians and metaphysicians draw a distinction between the object of want and the object of assimilation; still they confess that God made all things for the sake of himself, not for the sake of creation. They are unable to point to anything prior to creation, except God himself, as an object for which God should act, and are therefore driven to admit (as they clearly must), that God lacked those things for whose attainment he created means, and further that he desired them.
We must not omit to notice that the followers of this doctrine, anxious to display their talent in assigning final causes, have imported a new method of argument in proof of their theory—namely, a reduction, not to the impossible, but to ignorance; thus showing that they have no other method of exhibiting their doctrine. For example, if a stone falls from a roof on to someone's head, and kills him, they will demonstrate by their new method, that the stone fell in order to kill the man; for, if it had not by God's will fallen with that object, how could so many circumstances (and there are often many concurrent circumstances) have all happened together by chance? Perhaps you will answer that the event is due to the facts that the wind was blowing, and the man was walking that way. "But why," they will insist, "was the wind blowing, and why was the man at that very time walking that way?" If you again answer, that the wind had then sprung up because the sea had begun to be agitated the day before, the weather being previously calm, and that the man had been invited by a friend, they will again insist: "But why was the sea agitated, and why was the man invited at that time?" So they will pursue their questions from cause to cause, till at last you take refuge in the will of God—in other words, the sanctuary of ignorance. So, again, when they survey the frame of the human body, they are amazed; and being ignorant of the causes of so great a work of art, conclude that it has been fashioned, not mechanically, but by divine and supernatural skill, and has been so put together that one part shall not hurt another.
Hence anyone who seeks for the true causes of miracles, and strives to understand natural phenomena as an intelligent being, and not to gaze at them like a fool, is set down and denounced as an impious heretic by those, whom the masses adore as the interpreters of nature and the gods. Such persons know that, with the removal of ignorance, the wonder which forms their only available means for proving and preserving their authority would vanish also. But I now quit this subject, and pass on to my third point.
After men persuaded themselves, that everything which is created is created for their sake, they were bound to consider as the chief quality in everything that which is most useful to themselves, and to account those things the best of all which have the most beneficial effect on mankind. Further, they were bound to form abstract notions for the explanation of the nature of things, such as goodness, badness, order, confusion, warmth, cold, beauty, deformity, and so on; and from the belief that they are free agents arose the further notions of praise and blame, sin and merit.
I will speak of these latter hereafter, when I treat of human nature; the former I will briefly explain here.
Everything which conduces to health and the worship of God they have called good, everything which hinders these objects they have styled bad; and inasmuch as those who do not understand the nature of things do not verify phenomena in any way, but merely imagine them after a fashion, and mistake their imagination for understanding, such persons firmly believe that there is an order in things, being really ignorant both of things and their own nature. When phenomena are of such a kind, that the impression they make on our senses requires little effort of imagination, and can consequently be easily remembered, we say that they are well—ordered; if the contrary, that they are ill—ordered or confused. Further, as things which are easily imagined are more pleasing to us, men prefer order to confusion—as though there were any order in nature, except in relation to our imagination—and say that God has created all things in order; thus, without knowing it, attributing imagination to God, unless, indeed, they would have it that God foresaw human imagination, and arranged everything, so that it should be most easily imagined. If this be their theory, they would not, perhaps, be daunted by the fact that we find an infinite number of phenomena, far surpassing our imagination, and very many others which confound its weakness. But enough has been said on this subject. The other abstract notions are nothing but modes of imagining, in which the imagination is differently affected: though they are considered by the ignorant as the chief attributes of things, inasmuch as they believe that everything was created for the sake of themselves; and, according as they are affected by it, style it good or bad, healthy or rotten and corrupt. For instance, if the motion which objects we see communicate to our nerves be conducive to health, the objects causing it are styled beautiful; if a contrary motion be excited, they are styled ugly.
Things which are perceived through our sense of smell are styled fragrant or fetid; if through our taste, sweet or bitter, full—flavored or insipid; if through our touch, hard or soft, rough or smooth, &c.
Whatsoever affects our ears is said to give rise to noise, sound, or harmony. In this last case, there are men lunatic enough to believe, that even God himself takes pleasure in harmony; and philosophers are not lacking who have persuaded themselves, that the motion of the heavenly bodies gives rise to harmony—all of which instances sufficiently show that everyone judges of things according to the state of his brain, or rather mistakes for things the forms of his imagination. We need no longer wonder that there have arisen all the controversies we have witnessed, and finally skepticism: for, although human bodies in many respects agree, yet in very many others they differ; so that what seems good to one seems bad to another; what seems well ordered to one seems confused to another; what is pleasing to one displeases another, and so on. I need not further enumerate, because this is not the place to treat the subject at length, and also because the fact is sufficiently well known. It is commonly said: "So many men, so many minds; everyone is wise in his own way; brains differ as completely as palates." All of which proverbs show, that men judge of things according to their mental disposition, and rather imagine than understand: for, if they understood phenomena, they would, as mathematicians attest, be convinced, if not attracted, by what I have urged.
We have now perceived, that all the explanations commonly given of nature are mere modes of imagining, and do not indicate the true nature of anything, but only the constitution of the imagination; and, although they have names, as though they were entities, existing externally to the imagination, I call them entities imaginary rather than real; and, therefore, all arguments against us drawn from such abstractions are easily rebutted.
Many argue in this way. If all things follow from a necessity of the absolutely perfect nature of God, why are there so many imperfections in nature? such, for instance, as things corrupt to the point of putridity, loathsome deformity, confusion, evil, sin, &c. But these reasoners are, as I have said, easily confuted, for the perfection of things is to be reckoned only from their own nature and power; things are not more or less perfect, according as they delight or offend human senses, or according as they are serviceable or repugnant to mankind. To those who ask why God did not so create all men, that they should be governed only by reason, I give no answer but this: because matter was not lacking to him for the creation of every degree of perfection from highest to lowest; or, more strictly, because the laws of his nature are so vast, as to suffice for the production of everything conceivable by an infinite intelligence, as I have shown in Prop. xvi.
Such are the misconceptions I have undertaken to note; if there are any more of the same sort, everyone may easily dissipate them for himself with the aid of a little reflection.
terry, modified 1 Year ago at 9/16/23 1:38 PM
Created 1 Year ago at 9/16/23 1:38 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
the elephant and the clam
One of the fundamental contradictions of buddhist metaphysics I often return to is the two ways of mapping the dynamic biophysical world, and the hermeneutics of interpreting the world between these poles.
Namely, karma and paticcasamuppada; the law of causation and the law of dependent origination. These laws reveal the mechanics of the way things work and the nature of the system in which they interact.
The narrow scientific disciplines study mechanics and ecologists, futurists and visionaries try to understand the way it all fits together. We have lots of data but the narrowness of our focus tends to bring out another law, the law of unintended consequences.
Ocean scientist peter ward talks about sam wasser, who has developed a method whereby he can study the dna of elephants from a tiny sliver of ivory. Using this technique he can determine within a few kilometers the source of the ivory. Application of this method has led to the stoppage of most of the illegal trade in elephant tusks. The elephants themselves have been rapidly evolving a tuskless elephant.
Much of the ivory had been going to china for the production of little trinkets sold all over the world. Filipinos have discovered that the inner surface of the giant clam has a substance that mimics ivory perfectly and so a big trade in giant clams has ensued. These magnificent animals live 200-300 years and are cemented into the already endangered coral reefs such that great destruction to the reef is caused by their removal. The clams are now functionally extinct throughout most of their range in southeast asia, according to ward.
One of the fundamental contradictions of buddhist metaphysics I often return to is the two ways of mapping the dynamic biophysical world, and the hermeneutics of interpreting the world between these poles.
Namely, karma and paticcasamuppada; the law of causation and the law of dependent origination. These laws reveal the mechanics of the way things work and the nature of the system in which they interact.
The narrow scientific disciplines study mechanics and ecologists, futurists and visionaries try to understand the way it all fits together. We have lots of data but the narrowness of our focus tends to bring out another law, the law of unintended consequences.
Ocean scientist peter ward talks about sam wasser, who has developed a method whereby he can study the dna of elephants from a tiny sliver of ivory. Using this technique he can determine within a few kilometers the source of the ivory. Application of this method has led to the stoppage of most of the illegal trade in elephant tusks. The elephants themselves have been rapidly evolving a tuskless elephant.
Much of the ivory had been going to china for the production of little trinkets sold all over the world. Filipinos have discovered that the inner surface of the giant clam has a substance that mimics ivory perfectly and so a big trade in giant clams has ensued. These magnificent animals live 200-300 years and are cemented into the already endangered coral reefs such that great destruction to the reef is caused by their removal. The clams are now functionally extinct throughout most of their range in southeast asia, according to ward.
terry, modified 1 Year ago at 9/20/23 1:55 AM
Created 1 Year ago at 9/20/23 1:55 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
"I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is."
~the buddha (greta thunberg)
~the buddha (greta thunberg)
terry, modified 1 Year ago at 9/21/23 5:34 PM
Created 1 Year ago at 9/21/23 5:34 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
I emailed robert some comments and the quote from spinoza. My thinking was that his argument is basically spinozistic and philosophical rather than scientific.
He replied the following:
quote
Thanks for this -- Spinoza is great, one of my heroes, at least since I found out that he got excommunicated (or whatever the Jewish equivalent is) for asking some skeptical questions about God...
unquote
He replied the following:
quote
Thanks for this -- Spinoza is great, one of my heroes, at least since I found out that he got excommunicated (or whatever the Jewish equivalent is) for asking some skeptical questions about God...
unquote
Chris M, modified 1 Year ago at 9/22/23 8:20 AM
Created 1 Year ago at 9/22/23 8:17 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 5405 Join Date: 1/26/13 Recent PostsThis is mappo, the reduction of the dharma to mechanical practices and individual self improvement schemes detached from general social life. Buddhists no longer dress in rags and go begging for food door to door.
Nice.
There's a pot of gold at the end of the mechanical practices rainbow if we allow for it. But to get that you have to get out beyond the mechanical part and deep into the mysterious, chaotic, and wonderfully unmappable part.
terry, modified 1 Year ago at 9/23/23 4:46 PM
Created 1 Year ago at 9/23/23 4:46 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent PostsChris M
Nice.
There's a pot of gold at the end of the mechanical practices rainbow if we allow for it. But to get that you have to get out beyond the mechanical part and deep into the mysterious, chaotic, and wonderfully unmappable part.
This is mappo, the reduction of the dharma to mechanical practices and individual self improvement schemes detached from general social life. Buddhists no longer dress in rags and go begging for food door to door.
Nice.
There's a pot of gold at the end of the mechanical practices rainbow if we allow for it. But to get that you have to get out beyond the mechanical part and deep into the mysterious, chaotic, and wonderfully unmappable part.
The mysterious, chaotic, wonderful, terrifying and as yet unmapped future.
Blazing trails on trackless ocean.
I wonder if people taste like chicken? Probably pork. The other other white meat.
Chris M, modified 1 Year ago at 9/24/23 1:03 PM
Created 1 Year ago at 9/24/23 1:03 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 5405 Join Date: 1/26/13 Recent Posts
In some literature, I believe human flesh is called "long pork." We could ask the Donner Party what the taste is like but they're all dead.
terry, modified 1 Year ago at 9/24/23 2:24 PM
Created 1 Year ago at 9/24/23 2:24 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent PostsChris M
In some literature, I believe human flesh is called "long pork." We could ask the Donner Party what the taste is like but they're all dead.
In some literature, I believe human flesh is called "long pork." We could ask the Donner Party what the taste is like but they're all dead.
By the time we get to long pig we'll be quite familiar with dog, cat and rat.
There was a book about a soccer team whose plane was lost in the andes and who resorted to human flesh, the dead bodies presrved in snow. They went into graphic detail about the tastier parts and howto prepare them, and of course they ate their special friends last.
terry, modified 11 Months ago at 11/5/23 2:19 AM
Created 11 Months ago at 11/5/23 2:19 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
from
THIS CIVILISATION IS FINISHED
Conversations on the end of Empire—and what lies
beyond
Rupert Read and Samuel Alexander
SA: How do you conceive of your role
as a ‘teacher’ in a civilisation that is in decline?
RR: In answer, let me go back for a second to much earlier in the
educational process. We are beings born in a state of extreme
vulnerability and unformedness. When we are really young, there are
some truths (such as mortality) that we need to be led into only
slowly: to confront an infant mind with them immediately might break
that mind, or break the spirit, break the heart. It’s not right to
translate one’s spirit of honesty and truthfulness—a spirit that is
foundational for everything I aspire to do and be—into a dogma of
absolute frankness always about everything to everyone at all times.
But the terrible mistake that our civilisation has made, I believe, is to
turn the truth about our dying civilisation into an excuse for lying
systematically to our children. We lie to our children every time we
pretend that they can expect an ordinary career of their choice in an
endlessly growing economy. We lie to them every time we present
them with an image of a ‘typical’ farm full of happy outdoor pigs,
cows, and hens. We lie to them every time we tell them we love
them while giving them a new piece of plastic crap before turning our
attention swiftly back to our mobile phones. We lie to them, and
ourselves, if we think or declare that we love them and yet the
actions we take, rather than being directed with determination toward
the aim of seeking to transform this civilisation for the better, actually
hasten its likely collapse.
We lie to them because much of the time we lie to ourselves, of
course. But also because we are pierced by the thought that their
innocence shouldn’t be swept away instantly before it has had any
time to give them some feeling of safety within which they can
become sanely ‘attached’ and sanely individuated. And, as I started
by saying, there is a grain of rightness and truth in that approach.
But I think that we have got the balance badly wrong. There is no
excuse for lying systematically, and with each year older a child gets,
there is ever less of an excuse for not being truthful. By the time
children have reached 18 or so, and maybe gone to university, there
is absolutely no excuse.
It is abominable—although understandable, given peer-pressure and
institutional pressures—that most academics are concealing from
their students the dire realities and probabilities and possibilities that
now hang over them. We ought to be frankly teaching our students
at every opportunity about the extremity of the ecological crisis,
about the out-datedness of their economics curriculum (and in fact,
arguably, of most curricula), about how unmoored our species has
become from reality. We ought to be teaching them, too, things like
how to grow their own food, rather than pretending that they are all
going to have ‘wonderful’ digital jobs and the like.
THIS CIVILISATION IS FINISHED
Conversations on the end of Empire—and what lies
beyond
Rupert Read and Samuel Alexander
SA: How do you conceive of your role
as a ‘teacher’ in a civilisation that is in decline?
RR: In answer, let me go back for a second to much earlier in the
educational process. We are beings born in a state of extreme
vulnerability and unformedness. When we are really young, there are
some truths (such as mortality) that we need to be led into only
slowly: to confront an infant mind with them immediately might break
that mind, or break the spirit, break the heart. It’s not right to
translate one’s spirit of honesty and truthfulness—a spirit that is
foundational for everything I aspire to do and be—into a dogma of
absolute frankness always about everything to everyone at all times.
But the terrible mistake that our civilisation has made, I believe, is to
turn the truth about our dying civilisation into an excuse for lying
systematically to our children. We lie to our children every time we
pretend that they can expect an ordinary career of their choice in an
endlessly growing economy. We lie to them every time we present
them with an image of a ‘typical’ farm full of happy outdoor pigs,
cows, and hens. We lie to them every time we tell them we love
them while giving them a new piece of plastic crap before turning our
attention swiftly back to our mobile phones. We lie to them, and
ourselves, if we think or declare that we love them and yet the
actions we take, rather than being directed with determination toward
the aim of seeking to transform this civilisation for the better, actually
hasten its likely collapse.
We lie to them because much of the time we lie to ourselves, of
course. But also because we are pierced by the thought that their
innocence shouldn’t be swept away instantly before it has had any
time to give them some feeling of safety within which they can
become sanely ‘attached’ and sanely individuated. And, as I started
by saying, there is a grain of rightness and truth in that approach.
But I think that we have got the balance badly wrong. There is no
excuse for lying systematically, and with each year older a child gets,
there is ever less of an excuse for not being truthful. By the time
children have reached 18 or so, and maybe gone to university, there
is absolutely no excuse.
It is abominable—although understandable, given peer-pressure and
institutional pressures—that most academics are concealing from
their students the dire realities and probabilities and possibilities that
now hang over them. We ought to be frankly teaching our students
at every opportunity about the extremity of the ecological crisis,
about the out-datedness of their economics curriculum (and in fact,
arguably, of most curricula), about how unmoored our species has
become from reality. We ought to be teaching them, too, things like
how to grow their own food, rather than pretending that they are all
going to have ‘wonderful’ digital jobs and the like.
Geoffrey Gatekeeper of the Gateless Gate, modified 11 Months ago at 11/5/23 7:05 PM
Created 11 Months ago at 11/5/23 7:02 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 428 Join Date: 10/30/23 Recent Posts
Hey Terry!
If you're interested in the collapse of civilization, look into the Bronze Age collage. I find it intriguing from a historical point of view, and it has a lot of parallels to what's happening today. But to provide a bit of a counterpoint - we focus on a lot of microphenomena, how the breath changes from moment to moment and stuff like that, but the idea of impermanence holds for "big things" too - like societies, life, nature, etc. I had the good chance to take a paleontology class in college, and I remember learning about the 5 massive extinction events, where basically almost all life got extinguished. The one that always struck me was the "great oxygenation event", where basically all life at that point didn't need oxygen, but produced tons of it, and so they essentially poisoned themselves, and while it killed all of them it prepared an atmosphere that would bring in what we think of as life these days. I remember our TA for the class said something as a response to climate change along the lines of "well humans might be fucked, but life on earth will survive". I bring this up just to mention that our lives, and humanity in general, will be like the appearance of a breath - it will appear, abide, and cease. Maybe soon, maybe not. Rome fell and so shall we, but may we have a rein as long as the dinosaurs!
So you should view this fleeting world --
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,
A flash of lightening in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.
If you're interested in the collapse of civilization, look into the Bronze Age collage. I find it intriguing from a historical point of view, and it has a lot of parallels to what's happening today. But to provide a bit of a counterpoint - we focus on a lot of microphenomena, how the breath changes from moment to moment and stuff like that, but the idea of impermanence holds for "big things" too - like societies, life, nature, etc. I had the good chance to take a paleontology class in college, and I remember learning about the 5 massive extinction events, where basically almost all life got extinguished. The one that always struck me was the "great oxygenation event", where basically all life at that point didn't need oxygen, but produced tons of it, and so they essentially poisoned themselves, and while it killed all of them it prepared an atmosphere that would bring in what we think of as life these days. I remember our TA for the class said something as a response to climate change along the lines of "well humans might be fucked, but life on earth will survive". I bring this up just to mention that our lives, and humanity in general, will be like the appearance of a breath - it will appear, abide, and cease. Maybe soon, maybe not. Rome fell and so shall we, but may we have a rein as long as the dinosaurs!
So you should view this fleeting world --
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,
A flash of lightening in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.
terry, modified 11 Months ago at 11/5/23 8:45 PM
Created 11 Months ago at 11/5/23 8:45 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent PostsGeoffrey B
Hey Terry!
If you're interested in the collapse of civilization, look into the Bronze Age collage. I find it intriguing from a historical point of view, and it has a lot of parallels to what's happening today. But to provide a bit of a counterpoint - we focus on a lot of microphenomena, how the breath changes from moment to moment and stuff like that, but the idea of impermanence holds for "big things" too - like societies, life, nature, etc. I had the good chance to take a paleontology class in college, and I remember learning about the 5 massive extinction events, where basically almost all life got extinguished. The one that always struck me was the "great oxygenation event", where basically all life at that point didn't need oxygen, but produced tons of it, and so they essentially poisoned themselves, and while it killed all of them it prepared an atmosphere that would bring in what we think of as life these days. I remember our TA for the class said something as a response to climate change along the lines of "well humans might be fucked, but life on earth will survive". I bring this up just to mention that our lives, and humanity in general, will be like the appearance of a breath - it will appear, abide, and cease. Maybe soon, maybe not. Rome fell and so shall we, but may we have a rein as long as the dinosaurs!
So you should view this fleeting world --
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,
A flash of lightening in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.
Hey Terry!
If you're interested in the collapse of civilization, look into the Bronze Age collage. I find it intriguing from a historical point of view, and it has a lot of parallels to what's happening today. But to provide a bit of a counterpoint - we focus on a lot of microphenomena, how the breath changes from moment to moment and stuff like that, but the idea of impermanence holds for "big things" too - like societies, life, nature, etc. I had the good chance to take a paleontology class in college, and I remember learning about the 5 massive extinction events, where basically almost all life got extinguished. The one that always struck me was the "great oxygenation event", where basically all life at that point didn't need oxygen, but produced tons of it, and so they essentially poisoned themselves, and while it killed all of them it prepared an atmosphere that would bring in what we think of as life these days. I remember our TA for the class said something as a response to climate change along the lines of "well humans might be fucked, but life on earth will survive". I bring this up just to mention that our lives, and humanity in general, will be like the appearance of a breath - it will appear, abide, and cease. Maybe soon, maybe not. Rome fell and so shall we, but may we have a rein as long as the dinosaurs!
So you should view this fleeting world --
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,
A flash of lightening in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.
I have studied the bronze age collapse intently. Global supply chains collapsed, just couldn't get tin and copper to show up just in time. Once trade was disrupted, food distribution failed generally and hungry people did what they always do, steal from their neighbors.
One may face this recurring future with a certain sang froid, if not schadenfreude, except for the likelihood that it will occur quite soon, abruptly and with little warning. Babies now may not reach double digits. Societal collapse will result in a great deal of human suffering, not to mention the innocent animals caught up in the slaughter.
How soon this will happen is not strictly relevant. It has been pointed out that if you are headed for a wall at 100 mph it hardly matters if you are ten feet away or two feet away. We're wile e coyote gone over the cliff but we haven't dropped yet.
If you back up this thread some I have already agreed with you that the death of our species is unimportant in the grand scheme of things, even the destruction of the planet will happen eventually. But, seriously dude, this is a rather spectacular failure and we have front row seats. The vilest of contradictions are being performed before our eyes. The star of david the new swastika, gaza the new warsaw ghetto. The american flag a symbol of fascism. Police and borders militarized. The wall between india and bangladesh is truly horrifying and inhuman. Breadbasket ukraine has more landmines than anywhere in history. The ipcc reports are being proven to have been wildly optimistic. Plutocracy, oligopoly and gerontocracy are not providing leadership.
Equanimity is not denial. Compassion is proactive. And with geologic changes we're pretty far behind the curve. According to james hansen's latest peer reviewed paper, ten degrees centigrade of gloabal warming is already baked in the pipeline. I'm thinking this is likely to lead to an end permian level extinction event, in which 90% of all species were wiped out, and many of them were down to a handful of individuals. Life survived but it very well might not survive us.
Look at venus. A runaway greenhouse gas event and the planet is toast. Look at mars which also had watery oceans and was similarly in the goldilocks zone. It would not surprise me to learn that venus at least had evolved "intelligent" life who so altered their atmosphere's gaseous composition as to trigger irreversible permanent catastrophic climate change.
The dinosaurs had time to evolve and develop a web of life that sustained itself hundreds of millions of years. They're reign didn't involve destroying their environment irreparably and virtually instantly. Our "great carbonization event" is happening in a completely unprecedented eyeblink of geologic time. Our sixth great extinction has given species no time to adapt and evolve in response to our predation.
There are many facing this reality who think that extinction level events are ok and inevitable in the long run, so why worry. No species has hit the limits of growth gracefully and most crash hard when they run out of nutrients, having destroyed or damaged the resources on which they had depended. All logical and understandable. But not only is the collapse going to be horrendous for the entire planetary environment, we are complicit in the inevitability of the destruction.
The least we can do is object, and say, not in our name. Better, we can try to live sustainably and develop ways of coping with the changes.
hansen's pipeline paper:
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/Documents/PipelinePaper.2023.05.19.pdf
THE TENT
(rumi, trans barks)
Outside, the freezing desert night.
This other night inside grows warm, kindling.
Let the landscape be covered with thorny crust.
We have a soft garden in here.
The continents blasted,
cities and little towns, everything
become a scorched, blackened ball.
The news we hear is full of grief for that future,
but the real news inside here
is there’s no news at all.
Geoffrey Gatekeeper of the Gateless Gate, modified 11 Months ago at 11/6/23 1:03 AM
Created 11 Months ago at 11/6/23 1:01 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 428 Join Date: 10/30/23 Recent Posts
The only thing new about war, famine, disease, extinction, etc is our eyes to see it. The gears of climate change have been turning since the Industrial Revolution and those gears will turn after we both die. Welcome to samsara, sorry it doesn't meet your expectations.
"'I am subject to aging, have not gone beyond aging.' This is the first fact that one should reflect on often, whether one is a woman or a man, lay or ordained.
"'I am subject to illness, have not gone beyond illness.' ...
"'I am subject to death, have not gone beyond death.' ...
"'I will grow different, separate from all that is dear and appealing to me.' ...
"'I am the owner of my actions, heir to my actions, born of my actions, related through my actions, and have my actions as my arbitrator. Whatever I do, for good or for evil, to that will I fall heir.' ...
The Upajjhatthana Sutta.
I think it's important to reflect on the last two points.
"'I am subject to aging, have not gone beyond aging.' This is the first fact that one should reflect on often, whether one is a woman or a man, lay or ordained.
"'I am subject to illness, have not gone beyond illness.' ...
"'I am subject to death, have not gone beyond death.' ...
"'I will grow different, separate from all that is dear and appealing to me.' ...
"'I am the owner of my actions, heir to my actions, born of my actions, related through my actions, and have my actions as my arbitrator. Whatever I do, for good or for evil, to that will I fall heir.' ...
The Upajjhatthana Sutta.
I think it's important to reflect on the last two points.
terry, modified 11 Months ago at 11/7/23 4:24 PM
Created 11 Months ago at 11/7/23 4:24 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent PostsGeoffrey B
The only thing new about war, famine, disease, extinction, etc is our eyes to see it. The gears of climate change have been turning since the Industrial Revolution and those gears will turn after we both die. Welcome to samsara, sorry it doesn't meet your expectations.
The only thing new about war, famine, disease, extinction, etc is our eyes to see it. The gears of climate change have been turning since the Industrial Revolution and those gears will turn after we both die. Welcome to samsara, sorry it doesn't meet your expectations.
You are missing the point.
The arrow is in your body and you need a physician.
Welcome to mappo.
terry, modified 11 Months ago at 11/7/23 4:25 PM
Created 11 Months ago at 11/7/23 4:25 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Poststerry, modified 10 Months ago at 11/11/23 2:39 PM
Created 10 Months ago at 11/11/23 2:39 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
The Second Coming
William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
terry, modified 10 Months ago at 11/21/23 8:12 AM
Created 10 Months ago at 11/21/23 8:12 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
from shunryu suzuki, branching streams flow in the darkness:
To accept things-as-it-is looks very difficult, but it is very easy. If you don’t find it easy, you should think about why it is difficult. “Maybe,” you may say, “it is because of the shallow, selfish understanding I have of myself.” And then you may ask, “Why do I have a selfish understanding of things?”
But a selfish understanding of things is also necessary. Because we are selfish, we work hard. Without a selfish understanding, we cannot work. We always need some candy, and a selfish understanding is a kind of candy. It is not something to be rejected, but something that helps you. You should be grateful for your selfish understanding, which creates many questions. They are just questions and they don’t mean so much. You can enjoy your questions and answers; you can play games with them; you needn’t be so serious about it. That is the understanding of the Middle Way.
We can understand the Middle Way as ri, emptiness, and ji, somethingness. Both are necessary. Because we are human beings and our destiny is to live for possibly eighty or ninety years, we must have a selfish way of life. Because we have a selfish way of life, we will have difficulties that we should accept. When we accept difficulties, that itself is the Middle Way.
. . .
Without rejecting your selfish way of life, you must accept it—but don’t stick to it! Just enjoy your human life as long as you live. That is the Middle Way, the understanding of ri and ji. When there is ri, there is ji; when there is ji, there is ri. To understand difficulty in this way is to enjoy your life without rejecting problems or suffering.To find the oneness of ri and ji, the oneness of joy and suffering, the oneness of the joy of enlightenment within difficulty, is our practice. This is called the Middle Way. Do you understand? Where there is suffering, there is the joy of suffering, or nirvana. Even in nirvana, you cannot get out of suffering. We say nirvana is the complete extinction of desires, but what that means is to have this complete understanding and to live according to it. That is zazen. You are sitting upright. You are not leaning over to the side of nirvana or leaning over to the side of su¤ering. You are right here.
Everyone can sit up and practice zazen.
To accept things-as-it-is looks very difficult, but it is very easy. If you don’t find it easy, you should think about why it is difficult. “Maybe,” you may say, “it is because of the shallow, selfish understanding I have of myself.” And then you may ask, “Why do I have a selfish understanding of things?”
But a selfish understanding of things is also necessary. Because we are selfish, we work hard. Without a selfish understanding, we cannot work. We always need some candy, and a selfish understanding is a kind of candy. It is not something to be rejected, but something that helps you. You should be grateful for your selfish understanding, which creates many questions. They are just questions and they don’t mean so much. You can enjoy your questions and answers; you can play games with them; you needn’t be so serious about it. That is the understanding of the Middle Way.
We can understand the Middle Way as ri, emptiness, and ji, somethingness. Both are necessary. Because we are human beings and our destiny is to live for possibly eighty or ninety years, we must have a selfish way of life. Because we have a selfish way of life, we will have difficulties that we should accept. When we accept difficulties, that itself is the Middle Way.
. . .
Without rejecting your selfish way of life, you must accept it—but don’t stick to it! Just enjoy your human life as long as you live. That is the Middle Way, the understanding of ri and ji. When there is ri, there is ji; when there is ji, there is ri. To understand difficulty in this way is to enjoy your life without rejecting problems or suffering.To find the oneness of ri and ji, the oneness of joy and suffering, the oneness of the joy of enlightenment within difficulty, is our practice. This is called the Middle Way. Do you understand? Where there is suffering, there is the joy of suffering, or nirvana. Even in nirvana, you cannot get out of suffering. We say nirvana is the complete extinction of desires, but what that means is to have this complete understanding and to live according to it. That is zazen. You are sitting upright. You are not leaning over to the side of nirvana or leaning over to the side of su¤ering. You are right here.
Everyone can sit up and practice zazen.
terry, modified 10 Months ago at 11/28/23 1:27 PM
Created 10 Months ago at 11/28/23 1:27 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
this poem was written by a 20 year old palestinian american, a brilliant junior at brown university in mathematics and archeology, and a graduate of the friends school in ramallah (quaker)... along with two friends who are also brilliant college students and fellow friends school grads was shot in the spine in burlington vermont for wearing a kaffiya and speaking arabic in celebration of a holiday with relatives...
he wrote this poem while at the friends school in sixth grade...
this boy was centered
HOPE DWELLS IN MY HEART
by hisham awartani
Hope dwells in my heart
It shines like a light in darkness
This light cannot be smothered
It cannot be drowned out by tears and the screams of the wounded
It only grows in strength
This light can outshine hate
This light can outshine injustice
It outshines segregation and apartheid
As of Greek legend, Pandora opened a box
And when she did that, all the evil escaped
Luckily, Pandora closed the jar before hope could escape
And as long as hope stayed in that jar
Hope would never escape
So I ask you one thing, learn from that story
Learn never to give up hope
Learn to let hope give power
In the darkest of times
And let the light shine
he wrote this poem while at the friends school in sixth grade...
this boy was centered
HOPE DWELLS IN MY HEART
by hisham awartani
Hope dwells in my heart
It shines like a light in darkness
This light cannot be smothered
It cannot be drowned out by tears and the screams of the wounded
It only grows in strength
This light can outshine hate
This light can outshine injustice
It outshines segregation and apartheid
As of Greek legend, Pandora opened a box
And when she did that, all the evil escaped
Luckily, Pandora closed the jar before hope could escape
And as long as hope stayed in that jar
Hope would never escape
So I ask you one thing, learn from that story
Learn never to give up hope
Learn to let hope give power
In the darkest of times
And let the light shine
terry, modified 10 Months ago at 12/2/23 1:35 PM
Created 10 Months ago at 12/2/23 1:35 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
stars, I have seen them fall
(a e housman)
Stars, I have seen them fall,
But when they drop and die
No star is lost at all
From all the star-sown sky.
The toil of all that be
Helps not the primal fault;
It rains into the sea,
And still the sea is salt.
(a e housman)
Stars, I have seen them fall,
But when they drop and die
No star is lost at all
From all the star-sown sky.
The toil of all that be
Helps not the primal fault;
It rains into the sea,
And still the sea is salt.
terry, modified 10 Months ago at 12/3/23 11:28 AM
Created 10 Months ago at 12/3/23 11:28 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
The present is embodied in Hexagram 12 - P'I (Stagnation): There is a lack of understanding between the different classes of men, and its indication is unfavorable to the firm and correct course of the superior man. We see in it greatness gone and the lesser come upon us.
There are no changing lines, and hence the situation is expected to remain the same in the immediate future.
There are no changing lines, and hence the situation is expected to remain the same in the immediate future.
terry, modified 10 Months ago at 12/6/23 10:06 AM
Created 10 Months ago at 12/6/23 10:06 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Poststerry
The present is embodied in Hexagram 12 - P'I (Stagnation): There is a lack of understanding between the different classes of men, and its indication is unfavorable to the firm and correct course of the superior man. We see in it greatness gone and the lesser come upon us.
There are no changing lines, and hence the situation is expected to remain the same in the immediate future.
The present is embodied in Hexagram 12 - P'I (Stagnation): There is a lack of understanding between the different classes of men, and its indication is unfavorable to the firm and correct course of the superior man. We see in it greatness gone and the lesser come upon us.
There are no changing lines, and hence the situation is expected to remain the same in the immediate future.
“The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.”
― William Blake
terry, modified 10 Months ago at 12/7/23 4:05 PM
Created 10 Months ago at 12/7/23 4:05 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
“So, let’s say you’re a peacock and you have your grand tail, which likely evolved because it shows health and wellbeing, hence fitness. But the peahen just cares that you’ve got the biggest tail. Or… you’ve got your caveman in the Stone Age brings a mammoth in to show he’s a big hunter, you’re with me? And hunting’s the game, the actual important activity that’s being judged. Except Og next door just bonks Thog on the head and steals the mammoth, and that’s the metagame. Og’s a lousy hunter because he spends his time and effort not on hunting, but on the secondary activity that’s supposed to show how good a hunter you are. And so he wins out over Thog, gets the girl, becomes chief. And your worker who ‘kisses ass’ is seen as management material not because they give their all to the company, but because they spend that effort they would otherwise give to the company on looking like they give it all to the company. They spend it on all the little social games instead, and because effort spent on the metagame is focused entirely about the appearance of virtue, it overshadows those who are actually performing the primary task, it overshadows actual virtue. And this is how human hierarchical structures end up working. This is why the people who end up in authority are generally not those focused on whatever the purpose of the community is, but those who are focused on achieving positions of authority. This is why you have career politicians, why administrators end up pulling ten times the salary of a surgeon or an academic under their administration, why performing well in an exam or a test is not actually the same as being good at the thing the exam is supposed to be testing. Because the metagame outweighs the game.”
Excerpt From
Bear Head
Adrian Tchaikovsky
Excerpt From
Bear Head
Adrian Tchaikovsky
terry, modified 10 Months ago at 12/8/23 1:50 PM
Created 10 Months ago at 12/8/23 1:50 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
If I must die
(refaat alareer)
If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze—
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself—
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up
above
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love
If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale.
(refaat alareer)
If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze—
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself—
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up
above
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love
If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale.
terry, modified 9 Months ago at 12/23/23 3:48 PM
Created 9 Months ago at 12/23/23 3:48 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
from The Faith of a Heretic by walter kaufmann (1963)
…narrow specialization must be discouraged, and students have to be prevented from attaching themselves closely to a single teacher, in the manner still traditional at German universities, in spite of Mephisto's forthright mockery in Goethe's Faust:
Here, too, it would be best you heard
One only and staked all upon your master's word.
Yes, stick to words at any rate;
There never was a surer gate
Into the temple, Certainty.
It would, of course, be silly for a teacher to lean over backward to make sure that no information leaks out to his students. But he might do well to ask himself what could be got as well, if not much better, by consulting books, and what is better learned through personal encounter with a teacher.
The classroom situation lends itself much better than most books to stimulating and maintaining real interest in a variety of different views. Most people tend to restrict their reading to congenial views and like to be confirmed in what they believe anyway. Exposure to different teachers, encountered in the flesh, and to other students, preferably from different backgrounds, can compel the student to consider many different views, taking them seriously. This should wean him from bigotry and blind naivete. He should also learn that no man has authority, except provisionally: all opinions are subject to critical examination, though some may prevail even after acid tests.
Is such pervasive mistrust of authorities arrogant? On the
contrary: through the painful discovery that even very great men have been guilty of egregious errors, we learn that the chances are that we ourselves, even when very confident that we are right, may overestimate our case. Constant contact with minds greater than our own is humbling; constant reminders of their shortcomings, doubly so. Moreover, it is difficult to recognize one's own mistakes. They are much more easily recognized when one encounters them in someone else's prose. Dissatisfied with oneself, one becomes a seeker. Difficulty becomes a challenge and delight; critical thinking, a way of life.
…narrow specialization must be discouraged, and students have to be prevented from attaching themselves closely to a single teacher, in the manner still traditional at German universities, in spite of Mephisto's forthright mockery in Goethe's Faust:
Here, too, it would be best you heard
One only and staked all upon your master's word.
Yes, stick to words at any rate;
There never was a surer gate
Into the temple, Certainty.
It would, of course, be silly for a teacher to lean over backward to make sure that no information leaks out to his students. But he might do well to ask himself what could be got as well, if not much better, by consulting books, and what is better learned through personal encounter with a teacher.
The classroom situation lends itself much better than most books to stimulating and maintaining real interest in a variety of different views. Most people tend to restrict their reading to congenial views and like to be confirmed in what they believe anyway. Exposure to different teachers, encountered in the flesh, and to other students, preferably from different backgrounds, can compel the student to consider many different views, taking them seriously. This should wean him from bigotry and blind naivete. He should also learn that no man has authority, except provisionally: all opinions are subject to critical examination, though some may prevail even after acid tests.
Is such pervasive mistrust of authorities arrogant? On the
contrary: through the painful discovery that even very great men have been guilty of egregious errors, we learn that the chances are that we ourselves, even when very confident that we are right, may overestimate our case. Constant contact with minds greater than our own is humbling; constant reminders of their shortcomings, doubly so. Moreover, it is difficult to recognize one's own mistakes. They are much more easily recognized when one encounters them in someone else's prose. Dissatisfied with oneself, one becomes a seeker. Difficulty becomes a challenge and delight; critical thinking, a way of life.
terry, modified 9 Months ago at 12/26/23 1:18 PM
Created 9 Months ago at 12/26/23 1:18 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
from the introduction by john wild to totality and infinity by emmanuel levinas…
The questioning glance of the other is seeking for a meaningful response. Of course, I may give only a casual word, and go on my own way with indifference, passing the other by. But if communication and community is to be achieved, a real response, a responsible answer must be given. This means that I must be ready to put my world into words, and to offer it to the other. There can be no free interchange without some thing to give. Responsible communication depends on an initial act of generosity, a giving of my world to him with all its dubious assumptions and arbitrary features. They are then exposed to the questions of the other, and an escape from egotism becomes possible.
It has been and is still widely held that this can be achieved only by a joint sacrifice of self to a neutral, englobing system. But Levinas brings forth very strong evidence to show that this is not the case. By speaking to the other I enter into a relation with him. But this speaking does not bind me down or limit me, because I remain at a distance from what is said. Hence real conversation with an other cannot be exhaustively planned. I am never sure just what he will say, and there is always room for reinterpretation and spontaneity on both sides. My autonomy remains intact. In fact, in so far as I have any, it is stimulated to further intensity by searching questions from a point of view that is not merely opposite and therefore correlative to mine, but genuinely other. I can always say what I wish, and even begin once again de novo. The same is true of the other. He does not merely present me with lifeless signs into which I am free to read meanings of my own. His expressions bear his meanings, and he is himself present to bring them out and defend them. There is no difference between the active expression and what is expressed. The two coincide. The other is not an object that must be interpreted and illumined by my alien light. He shines forth with his own light, and speaks for himself.
Levinas, of course, is not denying that a great part of our speaking and thinking is systematic and bound by logic of some kind. What he is interested in showing is that prior to these systems, which are required to meet many needs, and presupposed by them is the existing individual and his ethical choice to welcome the stranger and to share his world by speaking to him. In other words, we do not become social by first being systematic. We become systematic and orderly in our thinking by first freely making a choice for generosity and communication, i.e., for the social. 'What we call thinking and speaking is very often only a playing with our own words and concepts or a succession of egocentric monologues. But according to Levinas, speaking becomes serious only when we pay attention to the other and take account of him and the strange world he inhabits. It is only by responding to him that I become aware of the arbitrary views and attitudes into which my uncriticized freedom always leads me, and become responsible, that is, able to respond. It is only then that I see the need of justifying my egocentric attitudes, and of doing justice to the other in my thought and in my action.
The questioning glance of the other is seeking for a meaningful response. Of course, I may give only a casual word, and go on my own way with indifference, passing the other by. But if communication and community is to be achieved, a real response, a responsible answer must be given. This means that I must be ready to put my world into words, and to offer it to the other. There can be no free interchange without some thing to give. Responsible communication depends on an initial act of generosity, a giving of my world to him with all its dubious assumptions and arbitrary features. They are then exposed to the questions of the other, and an escape from egotism becomes possible.
It has been and is still widely held that this can be achieved only by a joint sacrifice of self to a neutral, englobing system. But Levinas brings forth very strong evidence to show that this is not the case. By speaking to the other I enter into a relation with him. But this speaking does not bind me down or limit me, because I remain at a distance from what is said. Hence real conversation with an other cannot be exhaustively planned. I am never sure just what he will say, and there is always room for reinterpretation and spontaneity on both sides. My autonomy remains intact. In fact, in so far as I have any, it is stimulated to further intensity by searching questions from a point of view that is not merely opposite and therefore correlative to mine, but genuinely other. I can always say what I wish, and even begin once again de novo. The same is true of the other. He does not merely present me with lifeless signs into which I am free to read meanings of my own. His expressions bear his meanings, and he is himself present to bring them out and defend them. There is no difference between the active expression and what is expressed. The two coincide. The other is not an object that must be interpreted and illumined by my alien light. He shines forth with his own light, and speaks for himself.
Levinas, of course, is not denying that a great part of our speaking and thinking is systematic and bound by logic of some kind. What he is interested in showing is that prior to these systems, which are required to meet many needs, and presupposed by them is the existing individual and his ethical choice to welcome the stranger and to share his world by speaking to him. In other words, we do not become social by first being systematic. We become systematic and orderly in our thinking by first freely making a choice for generosity and communication, i.e., for the social. 'What we call thinking and speaking is very often only a playing with our own words and concepts or a succession of egocentric monologues. But according to Levinas, speaking becomes serious only when we pay attention to the other and take account of him and the strange world he inhabits. It is only by responding to him that I become aware of the arbitrary views and attitudes into which my uncriticized freedom always leads me, and become responsible, that is, able to respond. It is only then that I see the need of justifying my egocentric attitudes, and of doing justice to the other in my thought and in my action.
Papa Che Dusko, modified 9 Months ago at 1/3/24 4:35 PM
Created 9 Months ago at 1/3/24 4:35 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 3048 Join Date: 3/1/20 Recent Posts
by Peter Gabriel 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urEbRC3PSY4
So much unfinished business
All sticky with desire
Raking through the empty shells
Of all the rockets we fired
Set the navigation
For the Earth all warm and wet
And as the longing drops away
The compass is reset
Oh, there's so much to aim for
You can shoot at the sun
But all of it just comes and goes
There's only so much can be done
Time slips in the mirror
As an old man, I was born
But I've grown to be a baby
With a halo and a horn
Burn up like a lightning bolt
All gone within a flash
You look around to find a home
Where the asteroid will crash
Oh, there's so much to live for
So much left to give
This edition is limited
There's only so much can be done
The body stiffens, tires and aches
In its wrinkled, blotchy skin
With each decade, more camouflage
For the wild eyed child within
Now close your eyes for a moment
Look down and look above
All the warmth inside of you
Comes from those you love
Oh, there's so much to live for
So much left to give
This edition is limited
There's only so much can be done
So much to aim for
Shooting up at the sun
When it all comes and goes
There's only so much can be done
So much can be done
Only so much can be done
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urEbRC3PSY4
So much unfinished business
All sticky with desire
Raking through the empty shells
Of all the rockets we fired
Set the navigation
For the Earth all warm and wet
And as the longing drops away
The compass is reset
Oh, there's so much to aim for
You can shoot at the sun
But all of it just comes and goes
There's only so much can be done
Time slips in the mirror
As an old man, I was born
But I've grown to be a baby
With a halo and a horn
Burn up like a lightning bolt
All gone within a flash
You look around to find a home
Where the asteroid will crash
Oh, there's so much to live for
So much left to give
This edition is limited
There's only so much can be done
The body stiffens, tires and aches
In its wrinkled, blotchy skin
With each decade, more camouflage
For the wild eyed child within
Now close your eyes for a moment
Look down and look above
All the warmth inside of you
Comes from those you love
Oh, there's so much to live for
So much left to give
This edition is limited
There's only so much can be done
So much to aim for
Shooting up at the sun
When it all comes and goes
There's only so much can be done
So much can be done
Only so much can be done
terry, modified 9 Months ago at 1/5/24 6:32 PM
Created 9 Months ago at 1/5/24 6:32 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Poststerry, modified 8 Months ago at 1/9/24 1:09 PM
Created 8 Months ago at 1/9/24 1:09 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
from:
Martin Buber’s Dialogical Communication: Life as an Existential Dialogue
March 2020Filosofija Sociologija 31(1)
DOI:10.6001/fil-soc.v31i1.4178
Authors:
Vaida Asakaviciute
Vilnius Gediminas Technical University
Vytis Valatka
Vilnius Gediminas Technical University
THE LEVELS OF BUBER’S DIALOGIC COMMUNICATION: DIALOGUE VERSUS MONOLOGUE
Seeking to highlight the spiritual dimension of the dialogic relation and inner ontological expression, in his work ‘Dialogue’, Buber discusses three different types of dialogues, i.e. a genuine dialogue, a technical dialogue and a monologue. It can be stated that these three types together reveal certain different forms of communication. ‘And even though a dialogue is often perceived as a synonym of communication, depending on the perspective of approaching it, a dialogue may disobey the usual order of communication’ (Gutauskas 2010: 13). According to Ronald C. Arnett et al. (2008), Buber’s dialogue is an ‘enlarged communicative mentality’. Buber approached communication from the perspective of human relations. This perspective particularly binds communication, human life and allows revealing the foundations of interpersonal communication (Duck, McMahan 2012; Arnett et al. 2008; Anderson, Cissna 2008). It can be stated that Buber’s philosophy of dialogue ‘becomes, an existential praxis that involves all the concrete aspects of a person’s life, being at the same time embodied in the relationships that everyone lives in their own community life’ (Tumminelli 2016: 133).
The first, i.e. the genuine dialogue, described by Buber, can be referred to as the supreme level of interpersonal communication. Discussing this dialogue, the philosopher distinguishes its most relevant qualities: immediacy, mutuality, sincerity, equality and spiritual closeness of souls. The genuine dialogue does not require words and can mean just two people being in silence. Buber also mentions the dialogue silence. Silence occupies a significant place in the existential theories of Heidegger and Sartre. The silence provides with an opportunity to have a different glimpse at the world and to accept it. Yegor Bralgin (2017) notices that silence means the indication of a dialogue for Buber. This evidences that in the existential dialogue it is not the very moment of speaking that matters. It is more the meeting and internal spiritual listening to others that make up the core of it. All this discloses the contour of Buber’s dialogic communication, which is closely linked with life.
The second type of dialogue – the technical dialogue – arises only from the urgent need to achieve objective understanding striving for mutual benefit. In Buber’s texts this kind of dialogue is also determined as ‘soulless dialogue’. It is grounded on mind, certain external rules and targets defined goals. This technical level of dialogue can also be regarded as certain business communication, the efficiency of which can be measured applying the established criteria and achieved results. It can be stated that the technical dialogue builds up partnership rather than friendship. Partnership is a concept of business rather than life. Well-designed strategies of communication and negotiation are characteristic of business situations (Markova et al. 2020; Kačerauskas 2019).
The third type includes the monologue disguised as a dialogue. A certain paradox can be envisaged here – although a monologue engages another individual, mutual communication does not occur in this situation. This happens because, according to Buber, a monologue does not derive from the necessity to announce anything, or from the need to communicate with somebody. A monologue occurs only because of a person’s desire to confirm himself. ‘Everyone talks to himself’ in the monologue (Buber 2001: 71). Thus, a monologue can be regarded as an anti-dialogue.
Martin Buber’s Dialogical Communication: Life as an Existential Dialogue
March 2020Filosofija Sociologija 31(1)
DOI:10.6001/fil-soc.v31i1.4178
Authors:
Vaida Asakaviciute
Vilnius Gediminas Technical University
Vytis Valatka
Vilnius Gediminas Technical University
THE LEVELS OF BUBER’S DIALOGIC COMMUNICATION: DIALOGUE VERSUS MONOLOGUE
Seeking to highlight the spiritual dimension of the dialogic relation and inner ontological expression, in his work ‘Dialogue’, Buber discusses three different types of dialogues, i.e. a genuine dialogue, a technical dialogue and a monologue. It can be stated that these three types together reveal certain different forms of communication. ‘And even though a dialogue is often perceived as a synonym of communication, depending on the perspective of approaching it, a dialogue may disobey the usual order of communication’ (Gutauskas 2010: 13). According to Ronald C. Arnett et al. (2008), Buber’s dialogue is an ‘enlarged communicative mentality’. Buber approached communication from the perspective of human relations. This perspective particularly binds communication, human life and allows revealing the foundations of interpersonal communication (Duck, McMahan 2012; Arnett et al. 2008; Anderson, Cissna 2008). It can be stated that Buber’s philosophy of dialogue ‘becomes, an existential praxis that involves all the concrete aspects of a person’s life, being at the same time embodied in the relationships that everyone lives in their own community life’ (Tumminelli 2016: 133).
The first, i.e. the genuine dialogue, described by Buber, can be referred to as the supreme level of interpersonal communication. Discussing this dialogue, the philosopher distinguishes its most relevant qualities: immediacy, mutuality, sincerity, equality and spiritual closeness of souls. The genuine dialogue does not require words and can mean just two people being in silence. Buber also mentions the dialogue silence. Silence occupies a significant place in the existential theories of Heidegger and Sartre. The silence provides with an opportunity to have a different glimpse at the world and to accept it. Yegor Bralgin (2017) notices that silence means the indication of a dialogue for Buber. This evidences that in the existential dialogue it is not the very moment of speaking that matters. It is more the meeting and internal spiritual listening to others that make up the core of it. All this discloses the contour of Buber’s dialogic communication, which is closely linked with life.
The second type of dialogue – the technical dialogue – arises only from the urgent need to achieve objective understanding striving for mutual benefit. In Buber’s texts this kind of dialogue is also determined as ‘soulless dialogue’. It is grounded on mind, certain external rules and targets defined goals. This technical level of dialogue can also be regarded as certain business communication, the efficiency of which can be measured applying the established criteria and achieved results. It can be stated that the technical dialogue builds up partnership rather than friendship. Partnership is a concept of business rather than life. Well-designed strategies of communication and negotiation are characteristic of business situations (Markova et al. 2020; Kačerauskas 2019).
The third type includes the monologue disguised as a dialogue. A certain paradox can be envisaged here – although a monologue engages another individual, mutual communication does not occur in this situation. This happens because, according to Buber, a monologue does not derive from the necessity to announce anything, or from the need to communicate with somebody. A monologue occurs only because of a person’s desire to confirm himself. ‘Everyone talks to himself’ in the monologue (Buber 2001: 71). Thus, a monologue can be regarded as an anti-dialogue.
terry, modified 8 Months ago at 1/18/24 8:24 AM
Created 8 Months ago at 1/18/24 8:24 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
poem by Jessica Wildfire:
This world always had to end. It was never going to last more than a generation. It couldn't. All the facts made that very clear from the start. The rich and the corrupt simply chose to ignore that. They lied.
That's not the worst part.
It's not the collapse.
It's not the death of our hopes and dreams. It's the fact that we're not allowed to grieve it and move on. Imagine trying to grieve the loss of a friend or a parent when half of everyone you know won't even admit they're dead. Imagine you're stuck in a real-life version of Weekend at Bernie's.
That's what we're doing.
It's the norms that force us to engage in acts of cultural necrophilia. It's having to pretend for our bosses, our coworkers, our friends, and our relatives. It's watching everyone we know screw a corpse.
Recently, I was catching up with a friend who lives in a big city. She's one of those people who's been trying to act normal. Toward the end of our conversation, she finally broke down. She admitted things weren't the same. People act different. They look different. They sound different.
I think it's because we all know, even if we won't admit it.
The world isn't ending.
It has ended.
poem by Jessica Wildfire:
This world always had to end. It was never going to last more than a generation. It couldn't. All the facts made that very clear from the start. The rich and the corrupt simply chose to ignore that. They lied.
That's not the worst part.
It's not the collapse.
It's not the death of our hopes and dreams. It's the fact that we're not allowed to grieve it and move on. Imagine trying to grieve the loss of a friend or a parent when half of everyone you know won't even admit they're dead. Imagine you're stuck in a real-life version of Weekend at Bernie's.
That's what we're doing.
It's the norms that force us to engage in acts of cultural necrophilia. It's having to pretend for our bosses, our coworkers, our friends, and our relatives. It's watching everyone we know screw a corpse.
Recently, I was catching up with a friend who lives in a big city. She's one of those people who's been trying to act normal. Toward the end of our conversation, she finally broke down. She admitted things weren't the same. People act different. They look different. They sound different.
I think it's because we all know, even if we won't admit it.
The world isn't ending.
It has ended.
Papa Che Dusko, modified 8 Months ago at 1/19/24 1:34 PM
Created 8 Months ago at 1/19/24 1:34 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 3048 Join Date: 3/1/20 Recent Poststerry, modified 7 Months ago at 3/6/24 3:10 AM
Created 7 Months ago at 3/6/24 3:10 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
from branching streams flow in the darkness, shunryu suzuki
Student: Roshi, what is the difference between understanding things or activities from both sides and not understanding them at all?
Suzuki Roshi: Oh—there’s no need to talk about not understanding at all [laughs]. If you have a chance to listen to a lecture or read a book, you will understand something.
Truth is truth. There are not two truths, only one. When you understand truth only with your mind, you may feel that is the truth. But compared to your actual activity or feeling or life, the truth that you understand with your mind is not the actual truth. Because our actual life is not as easy as our thinking, it is easy to be convinced that some idea we have is the perfect truth. Yet for us it is not true because that kind of thinking does not accord with our actual life.
So there are two ways of understanding the truth. One way is intellectual truth. “We understand,” we say, but that understanding is just an intellectual understanding. Whether we understand it or not, truth is truth—whether Buddha appeared in this world or not, truth is truth. In the second way, something may be true for a buddha or an enlightened person, but for us it is not true. We cannot accept the fundamental truth as it is, so for us it does not seem true. That is the truth we work with in our practice. From the viewpoint of our practice, truth is not always true.
Student: Roshi, what is the difference between understanding things or activities from both sides and not understanding them at all?
Suzuki Roshi: Oh—there’s no need to talk about not understanding at all [laughs]. If you have a chance to listen to a lecture or read a book, you will understand something.
Truth is truth. There are not two truths, only one. When you understand truth only with your mind, you may feel that is the truth. But compared to your actual activity or feeling or life, the truth that you understand with your mind is not the actual truth. Because our actual life is not as easy as our thinking, it is easy to be convinced that some idea we have is the perfect truth. Yet for us it is not true because that kind of thinking does not accord with our actual life.
So there are two ways of understanding the truth. One way is intellectual truth. “We understand,” we say, but that understanding is just an intellectual understanding. Whether we understand it or not, truth is truth—whether Buddha appeared in this world or not, truth is truth. In the second way, something may be true for a buddha or an enlightened person, but for us it is not true. We cannot accept the fundamental truth as it is, so for us it does not seem true. That is the truth we work with in our practice. From the viewpoint of our practice, truth is not always true.
Papa Che Dusko, modified 7 Months ago at 3/6/24 4:57 PM
Created 7 Months ago at 3/6/24 4:57 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 3048 Join Date: 3/1/20 Recent Posts
I can not see a way to see if any of this is real or unreal, hence if it's true or not true.
I can say much about it but really, I can not be certain.
What is "fundamentally true" ?
You say "for an enlightened person" it is true? What is true? That I'm utterly uncertain and have no clue what comes next? That THIS is morphing into shapes already gone not even sure if they ever existed? And who is to say "yes that really existed"? The memory? Can one trust dead knowledge? I would not bet on that horse!
I can say much about it but really, I can not be certain.
What is "fundamentally true" ?
You say "for an enlightened person" it is true? What is true? That I'm utterly uncertain and have no clue what comes next? That THIS is morphing into shapes already gone not even sure if they ever existed? And who is to say "yes that really existed"? The memory? Can one trust dead knowledge? I would not bet on that horse!
terry, modified 6 Months ago at 3/11/24 8:44 PM
Created 6 Months ago at 3/11/24 8:44 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
I can not see a way to see if any of this is real or unreal, hence if it's true or not true.
————
Much like descartes, who couldn’t tell if he was existing as a man or merely a brain in a vat dreaming. He took radical doubt as his standpoint.
———————
I can say much about it but really, I can not be certain.
————————
You think, thus, you are. Cogito ergo sum. Certainment.
Descartes found certainty in the ontological argument of all places. What this means is that, because we can conceive of the inconceivable, because infinity is conceivable as such but infinitely beyond our grasp, there is being which is beyond our totality of existence. So to speak. The source of being, the mother of being.
Alterity, the infinite other. Real but not “us.” Ever void of anything like us. The source of us. Nameless. Call it “the way.” However big our universe is, infinity is incomparably greater.
————————
What is "fundamentally true" ?
———————
Oooh, hold that thought!
I have an answer, and it goes, “I don’t know!”
Sounds like a copout I know, but it is the truth.
What roshi is talking about is the self evident truth that everything expresses all the time. Humans are by and large bullshitting hypocrites but their actions speak for themselves. They say “I am this” and “I am that” and you will be punished if you don’t pretend to believe it, like in the emperor’s new clothes, or trump’s party. Or medicine, or law enforcement. Social media. Spiritual forums.
Our spiritual practice is aspirational. We practice enlightenment, as best we can. We empty our consciousness of the superficial and mundane and pursue the pure consciousness of unfettered mind.
Perhaps we succeed occasionally and manage to forget our bodies and minds for some moments but as soon as we remember ourselves those moments are forgotten, their emptiness idealized as fullness.
Bra, what is “fundamentally true” can not be thought, let alone explained, yet it can be known by “the enlightened person.”
What “can be known”? Can’t be explained. The explanation fundamental to western culture is that of plotinus. The original emanation is known as “the one.” From the one comes the intellect, which includes everything that can be known. From the intellect comes the soul, the knower and the basis for all individual experience.
The goal of the meditator is to climb this ladder out of the sublunary sphere into the higher spheres, become one with the one, which is what we truly are.
———————
You say "for an enlightened person" it is true? What is true? That I'm utterly uncertain and have no clue what comes next? That THIS is morphing into shapes already gone not even sure if they ever existed? And who is to say "yes that really existed"? The memory? Can one trust dead knowledge? I would not bet on that horse! emoticon
—————————
The enlightened person, the buddha, comes into focus because our assumption that the individual ego is who we are is fundamentally wrong. The ego is a grammatical convenience, a fiction. We always feel guilty about it, knowing we should have the interests of all of sentient being at heart and not the interest of an individual. This is the source of all our lies and hypocrisy.
In the absence of denial, the truth is self evident.
The roshi is aware that especially aspirants are trapped in words. We are what we are and don’t need to aspire to being human, we just need to be ourselves, be authentic. But we can’t do that because we believe we need to be better than we are, and we imagine we can become better through effort. Nononnonononnonnnnooooooo!!!!!! This is like trying to solve climate change through more technology.
We want to evolve. This is not something that can be done at speed. It is not individual evolution that is significant, but all of evolution.
It is not our greater competence at repeating words and ideas that makes us enlightened, but our actual being. The more wordlessly that being expresses enlightenment, the more enlightened it is.
What is authentic being, true being? The truth? This! self evident facticity of being. Unfiltered, unjudged, spontaneous, innocent, free and full of the natural courage of the pure unidentified wholly alive aware being one with all and in awe and wonder of the more than all.
Look to nature, what is left of it. Natural predators take the weak, the old, the sick and strengthen the prey as a species, good for all. Humans take the biggest and strongest, the one with the largest trophy horns or head, and destroy ecosystems in evolutionary instants.
Selfishness and greed are the problem, individually and collectively. It is far easier to pretend than to change, and if the only metric is how people perceive us, then why do all the hard work when you can fake it? We so easily convince ourselves, because we are biologically predisposed to seek approval and use that as a prop for confidence. Credibility induces confidence and a hypocrite is born. The more desperate people are to believe the easier they are to fool; believers are by nature foolish, or children.
Sit in meditation. Your heart beats, your lungs inflate and deflate. Mind empty, you have no doubts. Just breath. Perceptions. Presence. All real, bra. No doubts. Words are a trap for meaning. Without meaning, words are meaningless.
————
Much like descartes, who couldn’t tell if he was existing as a man or merely a brain in a vat dreaming. He took radical doubt as his standpoint.
———————
I can say much about it but really, I can not be certain.
————————
You think, thus, you are. Cogito ergo sum. Certainment.
Descartes found certainty in the ontological argument of all places. What this means is that, because we can conceive of the inconceivable, because infinity is conceivable as such but infinitely beyond our grasp, there is being which is beyond our totality of existence. So to speak. The source of being, the mother of being.
Alterity, the infinite other. Real but not “us.” Ever void of anything like us. The source of us. Nameless. Call it “the way.” However big our universe is, infinity is incomparably greater.
————————
What is "fundamentally true" ?
———————
Oooh, hold that thought!
I have an answer, and it goes, “I don’t know!”
Sounds like a copout I know, but it is the truth.
What roshi is talking about is the self evident truth that everything expresses all the time. Humans are by and large bullshitting hypocrites but their actions speak for themselves. They say “I am this” and “I am that” and you will be punished if you don’t pretend to believe it, like in the emperor’s new clothes, or trump’s party. Or medicine, or law enforcement. Social media. Spiritual forums.
Our spiritual practice is aspirational. We practice enlightenment, as best we can. We empty our consciousness of the superficial and mundane and pursue the pure consciousness of unfettered mind.
Perhaps we succeed occasionally and manage to forget our bodies and minds for some moments but as soon as we remember ourselves those moments are forgotten, their emptiness idealized as fullness.
Bra, what is “fundamentally true” can not be thought, let alone explained, yet it can be known by “the enlightened person.”
What “can be known”? Can’t be explained. The explanation fundamental to western culture is that of plotinus. The original emanation is known as “the one.” From the one comes the intellect, which includes everything that can be known. From the intellect comes the soul, the knower and the basis for all individual experience.
The goal of the meditator is to climb this ladder out of the sublunary sphere into the higher spheres, become one with the one, which is what we truly are.
———————
You say "for an enlightened person" it is true? What is true? That I'm utterly uncertain and have no clue what comes next? That THIS is morphing into shapes already gone not even sure if they ever existed? And who is to say "yes that really existed"? The memory? Can one trust dead knowledge? I would not bet on that horse! emoticon
—————————
The enlightened person, the buddha, comes into focus because our assumption that the individual ego is who we are is fundamentally wrong. The ego is a grammatical convenience, a fiction. We always feel guilty about it, knowing we should have the interests of all of sentient being at heart and not the interest of an individual. This is the source of all our lies and hypocrisy.
In the absence of denial, the truth is self evident.
The roshi is aware that especially aspirants are trapped in words. We are what we are and don’t need to aspire to being human, we just need to be ourselves, be authentic. But we can’t do that because we believe we need to be better than we are, and we imagine we can become better through effort. Nononnonononnonnnnooooooo!!!!!! This is like trying to solve climate change through more technology.
We want to evolve. This is not something that can be done at speed. It is not individual evolution that is significant, but all of evolution.
It is not our greater competence at repeating words and ideas that makes us enlightened, but our actual being. The more wordlessly that being expresses enlightenment, the more enlightened it is.
What is authentic being, true being? The truth? This! self evident facticity of being. Unfiltered, unjudged, spontaneous, innocent, free and full of the natural courage of the pure unidentified wholly alive aware being one with all and in awe and wonder of the more than all.
Look to nature, what is left of it. Natural predators take the weak, the old, the sick and strengthen the prey as a species, good for all. Humans take the biggest and strongest, the one with the largest trophy horns or head, and destroy ecosystems in evolutionary instants.
Selfishness and greed are the problem, individually and collectively. It is far easier to pretend than to change, and if the only metric is how people perceive us, then why do all the hard work when you can fake it? We so easily convince ourselves, because we are biologically predisposed to seek approval and use that as a prop for confidence. Credibility induces confidence and a hypocrite is born. The more desperate people are to believe the easier they are to fool; believers are by nature foolish, or children.
Sit in meditation. Your heart beats, your lungs inflate and deflate. Mind empty, you have no doubts. Just breath. Perceptions. Presence. All real, bra. No doubts. Words are a trap for meaning. Without meaning, words are meaningless.
terry, modified 6 Months ago at 3/12/24 3:22 AM
Created 6 Months ago at 3/12/24 3:22 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
from alterity and transcendence by emmanuel levinas…
In the intuition of truth, knowledge is described as a fulfilling, as the satisfying of an aspiration toward the object. A grasping of being equivalent to the constitution of that being: the transcendental reduction, in suspending all independence in being other than that of consciousness itself, allows us to recover that being suspended as noema or noesis and leads us —or is supposed to lead us —to the full consciousness of self affirming itself as absolute being, confirming itself as an I who identifies himself through all the differences, ‘Master of himself, just as he is master of the universe,’ and capable of shedding light in all the shadowy corners in which that mastery of the I would be contested. If the constituting I runs up against a sphere in which he finds himself bodily intertwined with what he constituted, he is there in the world as if in his skin, in accordance with the intimacy of the incarnation that no longer has the exteriority of the objective world.
But a reduced consciousness —which, in reflection on itself rejoins and masters, like objects in the world, its own acts of perception and knowledge, and thus confirms self-consciousness and absolute being - also remains, as if supplementarily, non-intentional consciousness of itself, without any voluntary aim; non-intentional consciousness acting as knowledge, unbeknownst to itself, of the active I that represents the world and objects to itself. It accompanies all the intentional processes of the consciousness of the I that, in that consciousness ‘acts’ and ‘wants’ and has intentions. A consciousness of consciousness, ‘indirect’ and implicit, without any initiative proceeding from an I, without aim. A consciousness that is passive, like the time that passes and ages me without me. An immediate consciousness of self, non-intentional, to be distinguished from reflection, from inner perception to which the non-intentional would be apt to become the inner object, or which reflection would be tempted to replace in order to render explicit its latent messages.
The intentional consciousness of reflection, taking the transcendental I, its states and mental acts, as its object, can also thematize and seize or explicate all its of non-intentional lived experience, qualified as implicit. It is invited to do so by philosophy in its fundamental project, which consists in bringing to light the inevitable transcendental naivete of a consciousness forgetful of its horizons, of its implicit elements and the time it lasts.
Hence one is prompted —too quickly no doubt — to consider in philosophy all that immediate consciousness solely as non-explicit knowledge, or as a still confused representation to be brought to full light. This would be the obscure context of the thematized world that reflection, intentional consciousness, will convert to clear and distinct data, like those that present the perceived world itself or absolute reduced consciousness.
Still, we have the right to ask whether the non-intentional, which is lived in the margin of the intentional, retains and delivers up its true meaning when subjected to the scrutiny of reflective consciousness. The critique traditionally directed against introspection has always suspected a modification that ‘spontaneous’ consciousness would undergo beneath the scrutinizing, thematizing, objectifying and indiscreet eye of reflection - a kind of violation and lack of recognition of a certain secret. An ever refuted, ever renewed critique.
I ask: What goes on in that non-reflective consciousness that is taken to be only pre-reflective, and that, implicit, accompanies intentional consciousness, which in reflection aims intentionally at the thinking self, as if the thinking I appeared in the world and belonged there? What can that supposed confusion, that implication, mean positively, so to speak?
Does the ‘knowledge’ of pre-reflective self-consciousness know how to talk, properly speaking? A confused consciousness, an implicit consciousness preceding all intention —or duree having gotten over all intention - it is not an act but pure passivity. Not only by virtue of its being-without-having-chosen-to-be, or by virtue of its fall into a tangle of possibilities already realized before all voluntary taking up, as in Heidegger’s Geworfenheit [thrownness]. A ‘consciousness’ that rather than signifying a knowledge of self is a self-effacement or discretion of presence. Pure duree of time that the phenomenological analysis describes, nonetheless, in reflection, as structured intentionally according to an interplay of retentions and protentions that, in the duree of time itself, remain at least inexplicit; a duree removed from all will of the I, absolutely outside the activity of the I, and that, as aging, is probably the actual carrying out of the passive synthesis on the basis of the passivity of the lapse whose irreversibility no act of memory, reconstituting the past, can reverse. The temporality of time escaping a limine [from the threshold] by virtue of its lapse, all activity of representation. Does not the implication of the implicit signify otherwise, here, than as does knowledge that has been taken away, otherwise than a way of envisioning the presence or non-presence of the future and the past?
Duree as pure duree, as non-intervention, as being-without-insistence, as being-on-tiptoe, as being without daring to be: instance of the instant without the insistence of the I, and already a lapse, that ‘leaves while entering’! A bad conscience, that implication of the non-intentional: without intentions, without aims, without the protective mask of the individual contemplating himself in the mirror of the world, reassured and striking a pose. Without name, situation or titles. A presence that dreads presence, that dreads the insistence of the identical I, stripped of all attributes. In his non-intentionality, on the hither side of all willing, before any fault, in its non-intentional identification, the identity backs away before its affirmation, is worried before what the return to self of identification may have in the way of insistence. Bad conscience or timidity; without culpability, but accused; and responsible for its very presence. The reserve of the non-invested, the non-justified, the ‘stranger on the earth’ according to the expression of the psalmist, of the stateless person or the ‘homeless’ who dares not enter. The interiority of the mental —perhaps that is what it is originally: that lack of boldness to affirm oneself in being and in ones skin. Not being-in-the-world, but being-in-question. In reference to which, in memory of which, the I that already posits itself and affirms itself - or firms itself up —in being, remains sufficiently ambiguous — or sufficiently enigmatic —to recognize itself as being, according to Pascal’s formulation, hateful in the very manifestation of its emphatic identity as an ipseity, in the ‘saying I.’ The superb priority of A is A, the principle of intelligibility, that sovereignty, that freedom in the human I, is also, if one may express it so, the occurrence of humility. A putting into question of the affirmation and firming up of being, that is echoed in the celebrated —and easily rhetorical - quest for the ‘meaning of life,’ as if the absolute I that has already taken on meaning on the basis of the psychic or social vital forces,, or of its transcendental sovereignty, went back to its bad conscience.
Pre-reflective, non-intentional consciousness cannot become conscious of that passivity; as if, in it, already there was the distinction between the reflection of a subject positing itself in the ‘indeclinable nominative,’ assured of its perfect right to be and ‘dominating’ the timidity of the non-intentional, like a childhood of the mind to be gotten over, like an access of weakness in an impassible psyche. The non-intentional is passivity from the start, the accusative is its ‘first case,’ so to speak. A bad conscience that is not the finiteness of existing signified in anguish. My death, always premature, may check the being that qua being perseveres in its being, but in anguish, this scandal does not shake the good conscience of being, nor the morals based on the inalienable right of the conatus, which is also the right and the good conscience of freedom. On the other hand, in the passivity of the non-intentional —in the very mode- of its ‘spontaneity’ and before all formulation of metaphysical ideas on this subject —the very justice of being posited in being is put in question; being, that is affirmed with intentional thought, knowledge and the grasping of the now. Here we have being as bad conscience, in that putting in question; being-in-question, but also put before the question. Having to answer. The birth of language in responsibility. Having to speak, having to say I, being in the first person. Being me, precisely; but from then on, in the affirmation of its being me, having to answer for its right to be. Pascal’s ‘the I is hateful’ must be thought through to this point.
To have to answer for ones right to be, not in relation to the abstraction of some anonymous law, some legal entity, but in fear for the other. My being- in-the-world or my ‘place in the sun,’ my home - have they not been the usurpation of places belonging to others already oppressed by me or starved, expelled to a Third World: rejecting, excluding, exiling, despoiling, killing. ‘My place in the sun,’ said Pascal, ‘the beginning and the archetype of the usurpation of the entire world.’ Fear for all that my existence — despite its intentional and conscious innocence - can accomplish in the way of violence and murder. Fear coming from behind my ‘self-consciousness’ and whatever returns there may be of the pure perseverance in being toward good conscience. Fear of occupying in the Da of my Dasein someone else’s place; the inability to have a place, a profound utopia. Fear that comes to me from the face of the other.
In the intuition of truth, knowledge is described as a fulfilling, as the satisfying of an aspiration toward the object. A grasping of being equivalent to the constitution of that being: the transcendental reduction, in suspending all independence in being other than that of consciousness itself, allows us to recover that being suspended as noema or noesis and leads us —or is supposed to lead us —to the full consciousness of self affirming itself as absolute being, confirming itself as an I who identifies himself through all the differences, ‘Master of himself, just as he is master of the universe,’ and capable of shedding light in all the shadowy corners in which that mastery of the I would be contested. If the constituting I runs up against a sphere in which he finds himself bodily intertwined with what he constituted, he is there in the world as if in his skin, in accordance with the intimacy of the incarnation that no longer has the exteriority of the objective world.
But a reduced consciousness —which, in reflection on itself rejoins and masters, like objects in the world, its own acts of perception and knowledge, and thus confirms self-consciousness and absolute being - also remains, as if supplementarily, non-intentional consciousness of itself, without any voluntary aim; non-intentional consciousness acting as knowledge, unbeknownst to itself, of the active I that represents the world and objects to itself. It accompanies all the intentional processes of the consciousness of the I that, in that consciousness ‘acts’ and ‘wants’ and has intentions. A consciousness of consciousness, ‘indirect’ and implicit, without any initiative proceeding from an I, without aim. A consciousness that is passive, like the time that passes and ages me without me. An immediate consciousness of self, non-intentional, to be distinguished from reflection, from inner perception to which the non-intentional would be apt to become the inner object, or which reflection would be tempted to replace in order to render explicit its latent messages.
The intentional consciousness of reflection, taking the transcendental I, its states and mental acts, as its object, can also thematize and seize or explicate all its of non-intentional lived experience, qualified as implicit. It is invited to do so by philosophy in its fundamental project, which consists in bringing to light the inevitable transcendental naivete of a consciousness forgetful of its horizons, of its implicit elements and the time it lasts.
Hence one is prompted —too quickly no doubt — to consider in philosophy all that immediate consciousness solely as non-explicit knowledge, or as a still confused representation to be brought to full light. This would be the obscure context of the thematized world that reflection, intentional consciousness, will convert to clear and distinct data, like those that present the perceived world itself or absolute reduced consciousness.
Still, we have the right to ask whether the non-intentional, which is lived in the margin of the intentional, retains and delivers up its true meaning when subjected to the scrutiny of reflective consciousness. The critique traditionally directed against introspection has always suspected a modification that ‘spontaneous’ consciousness would undergo beneath the scrutinizing, thematizing, objectifying and indiscreet eye of reflection - a kind of violation and lack of recognition of a certain secret. An ever refuted, ever renewed critique.
I ask: What goes on in that non-reflective consciousness that is taken to be only pre-reflective, and that, implicit, accompanies intentional consciousness, which in reflection aims intentionally at the thinking self, as if the thinking I appeared in the world and belonged there? What can that supposed confusion, that implication, mean positively, so to speak?
Does the ‘knowledge’ of pre-reflective self-consciousness know how to talk, properly speaking? A confused consciousness, an implicit consciousness preceding all intention —or duree having gotten over all intention - it is not an act but pure passivity. Not only by virtue of its being-without-having-chosen-to-be, or by virtue of its fall into a tangle of possibilities already realized before all voluntary taking up, as in Heidegger’s Geworfenheit [thrownness]. A ‘consciousness’ that rather than signifying a knowledge of self is a self-effacement or discretion of presence. Pure duree of time that the phenomenological analysis describes, nonetheless, in reflection, as structured intentionally according to an interplay of retentions and protentions that, in the duree of time itself, remain at least inexplicit; a duree removed from all will of the I, absolutely outside the activity of the I, and that, as aging, is probably the actual carrying out of the passive synthesis on the basis of the passivity of the lapse whose irreversibility no act of memory, reconstituting the past, can reverse. The temporality of time escaping a limine [from the threshold] by virtue of its lapse, all activity of representation. Does not the implication of the implicit signify otherwise, here, than as does knowledge that has been taken away, otherwise than a way of envisioning the presence or non-presence of the future and the past?
Duree as pure duree, as non-intervention, as being-without-insistence, as being-on-tiptoe, as being without daring to be: instance of the instant without the insistence of the I, and already a lapse, that ‘leaves while entering’! A bad conscience, that implication of the non-intentional: without intentions, without aims, without the protective mask of the individual contemplating himself in the mirror of the world, reassured and striking a pose. Without name, situation or titles. A presence that dreads presence, that dreads the insistence of the identical I, stripped of all attributes. In his non-intentionality, on the hither side of all willing, before any fault, in its non-intentional identification, the identity backs away before its affirmation, is worried before what the return to self of identification may have in the way of insistence. Bad conscience or timidity; without culpability, but accused; and responsible for its very presence. The reserve of the non-invested, the non-justified, the ‘stranger on the earth’ according to the expression of the psalmist, of the stateless person or the ‘homeless’ who dares not enter. The interiority of the mental —perhaps that is what it is originally: that lack of boldness to affirm oneself in being and in ones skin. Not being-in-the-world, but being-in-question. In reference to which, in memory of which, the I that already posits itself and affirms itself - or firms itself up —in being, remains sufficiently ambiguous — or sufficiently enigmatic —to recognize itself as being, according to Pascal’s formulation, hateful in the very manifestation of its emphatic identity as an ipseity, in the ‘saying I.’ The superb priority of A is A, the principle of intelligibility, that sovereignty, that freedom in the human I, is also, if one may express it so, the occurrence of humility. A putting into question of the affirmation and firming up of being, that is echoed in the celebrated —and easily rhetorical - quest for the ‘meaning of life,’ as if the absolute I that has already taken on meaning on the basis of the psychic or social vital forces,, or of its transcendental sovereignty, went back to its bad conscience.
Pre-reflective, non-intentional consciousness cannot become conscious of that passivity; as if, in it, already there was the distinction between the reflection of a subject positing itself in the ‘indeclinable nominative,’ assured of its perfect right to be and ‘dominating’ the timidity of the non-intentional, like a childhood of the mind to be gotten over, like an access of weakness in an impassible psyche. The non-intentional is passivity from the start, the accusative is its ‘first case,’ so to speak. A bad conscience that is not the finiteness of existing signified in anguish. My death, always premature, may check the being that qua being perseveres in its being, but in anguish, this scandal does not shake the good conscience of being, nor the morals based on the inalienable right of the conatus, which is also the right and the good conscience of freedom. On the other hand, in the passivity of the non-intentional —in the very mode- of its ‘spontaneity’ and before all formulation of metaphysical ideas on this subject —the very justice of being posited in being is put in question; being, that is affirmed with intentional thought, knowledge and the grasping of the now. Here we have being as bad conscience, in that putting in question; being-in-question, but also put before the question. Having to answer. The birth of language in responsibility. Having to speak, having to say I, being in the first person. Being me, precisely; but from then on, in the affirmation of its being me, having to answer for its right to be. Pascal’s ‘the I is hateful’ must be thought through to this point.
To have to answer for ones right to be, not in relation to the abstraction of some anonymous law, some legal entity, but in fear for the other. My being- in-the-world or my ‘place in the sun,’ my home - have they not been the usurpation of places belonging to others already oppressed by me or starved, expelled to a Third World: rejecting, excluding, exiling, despoiling, killing. ‘My place in the sun,’ said Pascal, ‘the beginning and the archetype of the usurpation of the entire world.’ Fear for all that my existence — despite its intentional and conscious innocence - can accomplish in the way of violence and murder. Fear coming from behind my ‘self-consciousness’ and whatever returns there may be of the pure perseverance in being toward good conscience. Fear of occupying in the Da of my Dasein someone else’s place; the inability to have a place, a profound utopia. Fear that comes to me from the face of the other.
terry, modified 6 Months ago at 3/14/24 3:30 PM
Created 6 Months ago at 3/14/24 3:30 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
"No One Is To Blame"
(howard jones)
You can look at the menu but you just can't eat
You can feel the cushions but you can't have a seat
You can dip your foot in the pool but you can't have a swim
You can feel the punishment but you can't commit the sin
And you want her, and she wants you
We want everyone
And you want her, and she wants you
No one, no one, no one ever is to blame
You can build a mansion but you just can't live in
You're the fastest runner but you're not allowed to win
Some break the rules and live to count the cost
The insecurity is the thing that won't get lost
And you want her, and she wants you
We want everyone
And you want her, and she wants you
No one, no one, no one ever is to blame
You can see the summit but you can't reach it
It's the last piece of the puzzle but you just can't make it fit
Doctor says you're cured but you still feel the pain
Aspirations in the clouds but your hopes go down the drain
And you want her, and she wants you
We want everyone
And you want her, and she wants you
No one, no one, no one ever is to blame
No one ever is to blame
No one ever is to blame
(howard jones)
You can look at the menu but you just can't eat
You can feel the cushions but you can't have a seat
You can dip your foot in the pool but you can't have a swim
You can feel the punishment but you can't commit the sin
And you want her, and she wants you
We want everyone
And you want her, and she wants you
No one, no one, no one ever is to blame
You can build a mansion but you just can't live in
You're the fastest runner but you're not allowed to win
Some break the rules and live to count the cost
The insecurity is the thing that won't get lost
And you want her, and she wants you
We want everyone
And you want her, and she wants you
No one, no one, no one ever is to blame
You can see the summit but you can't reach it
It's the last piece of the puzzle but you just can't make it fit
Doctor says you're cured but you still feel the pain
Aspirations in the clouds but your hopes go down the drain
And you want her, and she wants you
We want everyone
And you want her, and she wants you
No one, no one, no one ever is to blame
No one ever is to blame
No one ever is to blame
terry, modified 6 Months ago at 3/14/24 3:58 PM
Created 6 Months ago at 3/14/24 3:58 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Poststerry, modified 6 Months ago at 4/4/24 3:47 PM
Created 6 Months ago at 4/4/24 3:47 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
“You, Yogi,” snapped Bucky. “Go in there and hit. I realize that you’re in a slump, but you aren’t thinking enough at the plate. Think before you pick out a ball. Make sure it’s good before you swing. Think!”
The Yankee manager gave his hero a brisk pat on the back and sent him into the fray. Yogi struck out most inelegantly and stamped angrily back to the bench, muttering away to himself in a corner of the dug-out. After a while the curious Bucky wandered down and listened to him.
Yogi was repeating over and over, “How can a guy hit and think at the same time?”
The Yankee manager gave his hero a brisk pat on the back and sent him into the fray. Yogi struck out most inelegantly and stamped angrily back to the bench, muttering away to himself in a corner of the dug-out. After a while the curious Bucky wandered down and listened to him.
Yogi was repeating over and over, “How can a guy hit and think at the same time?”
terry, modified 5 Months ago at 4/12/24 1:00 PM
Created 5 Months ago at 4/12/24 1:00 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
from the ethics of ambiguity by simone de beauvoir
As for us, whatever the case may be, we believe in freedom. Is it true that this belief must lead us to despair? Must we grant this curious paradox: that from the moment a man recognizes himself as free, he is prohibited from wishing for anything?
On the contrary, it appears to us that by turning toward this freedom we are going to discover a principle of action whose range will be universal. The characteristic feature of all ethics is to consider human life as a game that can be won or lost and to teach man the means of winning. Now, we have seen that the original scheme of man is ambiguous: he wants to be, and to the extent that he coincides with this wish, he fails. All the plans in which this will to be is actualized are condemned; and the ends circumscribed by these plans remain mirages. Human transcendence is vainly engulfed in those miscarried attempts. But man also wills himself to be a disclosure of being, and if he coincides with this wish, he wins, for the fact is that the world becomes present by his presence in it. But the disclosure implies a perpetual tension to keep being at a certain distance, to tear one self from the world, and to assert oneself as a freedom. To wish for the disclosure of the world and to assert oneself as freedom are one and the same movement. Freedom is the source from which all significations and all values spring. It is the original condition of all justification of existence. The man who seeks to justify his life must want freedom itself absolutely and above everything else. At the same time that it requires the realization of concrete ends, of particular projects, it requires itself universally. It is not a ready-made value which offers itself from the outside to my abstract adherence, but it appears (not on the plane of facility, but on the moral plane) as a cause of itself. It is necessarily summoned up by the values which it sets up and through which it sets itself up. It can not establish a denial of itself, for in denying itself, it would deny the possibility of any foundation. To will oneself moral and to will oneself free are one and the same decision.
As for us, whatever the case may be, we believe in freedom. Is it true that this belief must lead us to despair? Must we grant this curious paradox: that from the moment a man recognizes himself as free, he is prohibited from wishing for anything?
On the contrary, it appears to us that by turning toward this freedom we are going to discover a principle of action whose range will be universal. The characteristic feature of all ethics is to consider human life as a game that can be won or lost and to teach man the means of winning. Now, we have seen that the original scheme of man is ambiguous: he wants to be, and to the extent that he coincides with this wish, he fails. All the plans in which this will to be is actualized are condemned; and the ends circumscribed by these plans remain mirages. Human transcendence is vainly engulfed in those miscarried attempts. But man also wills himself to be a disclosure of being, and if he coincides with this wish, he wins, for the fact is that the world becomes present by his presence in it. But the disclosure implies a perpetual tension to keep being at a certain distance, to tear one self from the world, and to assert oneself as a freedom. To wish for the disclosure of the world and to assert oneself as freedom are one and the same movement. Freedom is the source from which all significations and all values spring. It is the original condition of all justification of existence. The man who seeks to justify his life must want freedom itself absolutely and above everything else. At the same time that it requires the realization of concrete ends, of particular projects, it requires itself universally. It is not a ready-made value which offers itself from the outside to my abstract adherence, but it appears (not on the plane of facility, but on the moral plane) as a cause of itself. It is necessarily summoned up by the values which it sets up and through which it sets itself up. It can not establish a denial of itself, for in denying itself, it would deny the possibility of any foundation. To will oneself moral and to will oneself free are one and the same decision.
terry, modified 5 Months ago at 4/12/24 1:45 PM
Created 5 Months ago at 4/12/24 1:45 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Poststerry, modified 5 Months ago at 4/22/24 2:13 AM
Created 5 Months ago at 4/22/24 2:13 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
From
Sky Above, Great Wind: The Life and Poetry of Zen Master Ryokan
Ryokan
DISCOURSE
Customs become diluted year after year.
Both the noble and the common decline.
The human mind grows fragile with time;
the ancestral way becomes fainter day by day.
Teachers can’t see past the name of their school;
students enable their teachers’ narrow-mindedness.
They are glued to each other,
unwilling to change.
If the purpose of the dharma were to establish schools,
sages would have done so long ago.
Now that people have declared their schools,
whom on earth should I join?
Everyone, shut your mouth
and listen!
A discourse should have a beginning.
Let me begin with the one on Vulture Peak.
The Buddha is the deva of devas.
Who can criticize him?
Five hundred years after the Buddha passed away,
people gathered two or three volumes of his teaching.
Bodhisattva Nagarjuna came to the world
and wrote a treatise explaining emptiness.
He said he was simply called to do so.
Who is right and who is wrong?
The Baime Monastery was first founded
after the buddha dharma moved eastward.
Our master Bodhidharma came from afar.
It was then that all teachings found their source.
Zen flourished in Great Tang.
Never had it been so magnificent.
Guiding the assembly and correcting the crowd,
each teacher was a lion in dharma.
Although sudden and gradual teachings emerged,
there were not yet Southern and Northern Schools.
In the later dynasty of Song,
the white jewel began to be marred.
The Five Schools exposed their spearheads;
the Eight Schools competed with one another.
Their influences spread far and wide,
impossible to stop.
Then came our Eihei Dogen,
a true pioneer in the ancestral domain.
He carried Taibo’s seal of approval.
His voice resounded like thunder throughout this country.
Vigorous was his work of spreading dharma,
so vigorous that it overshadowed
other dragons and elephants.
Even hermits did not miss being illuminated.
He also guided those living on remote islands.
He eliminated what should be eliminated,
offered what should be offered.
Since the master left this land of Shinto deities,
how many years have passed?
Thornbushes grow around high halls,
fragrant flowers wither in the weeds.
Vulgar songs fill the days.
Who will expound the luminous teaching?
Ah, I, a humble one,
have encountered this era.
When a great house is about to crumble,
a stick cannot keep it from falling.
Unable to sleep on a clear night,
I toss in bed, chanting this poem.
Sky Above, Great Wind: The Life and Poetry of Zen Master Ryokan
Ryokan
DISCOURSE
Customs become diluted year after year.
Both the noble and the common decline.
The human mind grows fragile with time;
the ancestral way becomes fainter day by day.
Teachers can’t see past the name of their school;
students enable their teachers’ narrow-mindedness.
They are glued to each other,
unwilling to change.
If the purpose of the dharma were to establish schools,
sages would have done so long ago.
Now that people have declared their schools,
whom on earth should I join?
Everyone, shut your mouth
and listen!
A discourse should have a beginning.
Let me begin with the one on Vulture Peak.
The Buddha is the deva of devas.
Who can criticize him?
Five hundred years after the Buddha passed away,
people gathered two or three volumes of his teaching.
Bodhisattva Nagarjuna came to the world
and wrote a treatise explaining emptiness.
He said he was simply called to do so.
Who is right and who is wrong?
The Baime Monastery was first founded
after the buddha dharma moved eastward.
Our master Bodhidharma came from afar.
It was then that all teachings found their source.
Zen flourished in Great Tang.
Never had it been so magnificent.
Guiding the assembly and correcting the crowd,
each teacher was a lion in dharma.
Although sudden and gradual teachings emerged,
there were not yet Southern and Northern Schools.
In the later dynasty of Song,
the white jewel began to be marred.
The Five Schools exposed their spearheads;
the Eight Schools competed with one another.
Their influences spread far and wide,
impossible to stop.
Then came our Eihei Dogen,
a true pioneer in the ancestral domain.
He carried Taibo’s seal of approval.
His voice resounded like thunder throughout this country.
Vigorous was his work of spreading dharma,
so vigorous that it overshadowed
other dragons and elephants.
Even hermits did not miss being illuminated.
He also guided those living on remote islands.
He eliminated what should be eliminated,
offered what should be offered.
Since the master left this land of Shinto deities,
how many years have passed?
Thornbushes grow around high halls,
fragrant flowers wither in the weeds.
Vulgar songs fill the days.
Who will expound the luminous teaching?
Ah, I, a humble one,
have encountered this era.
When a great house is about to crumble,
a stick cannot keep it from falling.
Unable to sleep on a clear night,
I toss in bed, chanting this poem.
terry, modified 5 Months ago at 4/22/24 3:13 AM
Created 5 Months ago at 4/22/24 3:13 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
Questions and Answers by Deshimaru Roshi
Question
Can you say that tigers or cats, animals in general, live true Zen?
Answer
Yes, animals live true Zen. And because animals are that way, humans must represent a further development from them. Pigeons are extremely simple, very peaceable, not at all complicated. Sometimes you should follow the animals' way of life, but you must also make use of your human fore-brain. Westerners like to be on one side or the other; either they are all for religion or they detest it - always the same old story of oppositions. What we must do is harmonize religion with communism, American assets with the Arab spirit. If you are always in conflict and battle you can never find true peace. So there needs to be a theory in between. Nobody has found it yet. Only Zen can do it. That is the principle of the five propositions of Buddhism: there are thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, but not only them. There are also the harmonization of the whole and the embracing and transcending of all contradictions.
Question
Can you say that tigers or cats, animals in general, live true Zen?
Answer
Yes, animals live true Zen. And because animals are that way, humans must represent a further development from them. Pigeons are extremely simple, very peaceable, not at all complicated. Sometimes you should follow the animals' way of life, but you must also make use of your human fore-brain. Westerners like to be on one side or the other; either they are all for religion or they detest it - always the same old story of oppositions. What we must do is harmonize religion with communism, American assets with the Arab spirit. If you are always in conflict and battle you can never find true peace. So there needs to be a theory in between. Nobody has found it yet. Only Zen can do it. That is the principle of the five propositions of Buddhism: there are thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, but not only them. There are also the harmonization of the whole and the embracing and transcending of all contradictions.
terry, modified 5 Months ago at 4/26/24 4:32 AM
Created 5 Months ago at 4/26/24 4:32 AM
RE: mapping mappo
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The Tyger
BY WILLIAM BLAKE
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat.
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp.
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
BY WILLIAM BLAKE
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat.
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp.
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
terry, modified 5 Months ago at 4/26/24 4:49 AM
Created 5 Months ago at 4/26/24 4:49 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
Excerpt From
Ahead of All Parting
Rainer Maria Rilke
[Ignorant before the heavens of my life]
Ignorant before the heavens of my life,
I stand and gaze in wonder. Oh the vastness
of the stars. Their rising and descent. How still.
As if I didn’t exist. Do I have any
share in this? Have I somehow dispensed with
their pure effect? Does my blood’s ebb and flow
change with their changes? Let me put aside
every desire, every relationship
except this one, so that my heart grows used to
its farthest spaces. Better that it live
fully aware, in the terror of its stars, than
as if protected, soothed by what is near.
Ahead of All Parting
Rainer Maria Rilke
[Ignorant before the heavens of my life]
Ignorant before the heavens of my life,
I stand and gaze in wonder. Oh the vastness
of the stars. Their rising and descent. How still.
As if I didn’t exist. Do I have any
share in this? Have I somehow dispensed with
their pure effect? Does my blood’s ebb and flow
change with their changes? Let me put aside
every desire, every relationship
except this one, so that my heart grows used to
its farthest spaces. Better that it live
fully aware, in the terror of its stars, than
as if protected, soothed by what is near.
terry, modified 5 Months ago at 4/26/24 4:59 AM
Created 5 Months ago at 4/26/24 4:59 AM
RE: mapping mappo
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I'm Nobody! Who are you?
by Emily Dickinson
I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you - Nobody - too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise - you know!
How dreary - to be - Somebody!
How public - like a Frog -
To tell one's name - the livelong June -
To an admiring Bog!
by Emily Dickinson
I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you - Nobody - too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise - you know!
How dreary - to be - Somebody!
How public - like a Frog -
To tell one's name - the livelong June -
To an admiring Bog!
terry, modified 5 Months ago at 4/26/24 5:05 AM
Created 5 Months ago at 4/26/24 5:05 AM
RE: mapping mappo
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[goes out comes back]
BY KOBAYASHI ISSA
TRANSLATED BY ROBERT HASS
Goes out,
comes back—
the love life of a cat.
BY KOBAYASHI ISSA
TRANSLATED BY ROBERT HASS
Goes out,
comes back—
the love life of a cat.
terry, modified 5 Months ago at 4/26/24 5:34 AM
Created 5 Months ago at 4/26/24 5:34 AM
RE: mapping mappo
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It suits the generous man to give money,
but truly the generosity of the lover
is to surrender his soul.
If you give bread for God’s sake,
you will be given bread in return;
if you give your life for God’s sake,
you will be given life in return.
Excerpt From
Rumi
Camille Adams Helminski
but truly the generosity of the lover
is to surrender his soul.
If you give bread for God’s sake,
you will be given bread in return;
if you give your life for God’s sake,
you will be given life in return.
Excerpt From
Rumi
Camille Adams Helminski
terry, modified 5 Months ago at 4/28/24 5:13 PM
Created 5 Months ago at 4/28/24 5:13 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Poststerry, modified 5 Months ago at 4/29/24 4:43 AM
Created 5 Months ago at 4/29/24 4:43 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Postsbrian patrick, modified 5 Months ago at 4/29/24 4:14 PM
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RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 71 Join Date: 10/31/23 Recent Posts
The Stream
Don’t let meditation be the practice, let it hold down the giant just long enoughto piss him off and expose himself to you—make him offer up the secrets he’s been hidingin his pockets, under his hat, behind his beard.
There’s a world he doesn’t know he knowsunder those things. A stream he’skeeping you from dipping your toes inand washing away the dust you’ve collectedalong the desert road, stretching to eternity.
The river doesn’t care if you’re rightor if you’re wrong; darkness and lightare two sides of the same coin, tossed intothe wind that doesn’t care either,but wishes to play a while longer.
Don’t let meditation be the practice, let it hold down the giant just long enoughto piss him off and expose himself to you—make him offer up the secrets he’s been hidingin his pockets, under his hat, behind his beard.
There’s a world he doesn’t know he knowsunder those things. A stream he’skeeping you from dipping your toes inand washing away the dust you’ve collectedalong the desert road, stretching to eternity.
The river doesn’t care if you’re rightor if you’re wrong; darkness and lightare two sides of the same coin, tossed intothe wind that doesn’t care either,but wishes to play a while longer.
terry, modified 5 Months ago at 4/29/24 11:48 PM
Created 5 Months ago at 4/29/24 11:48 PM
RE: mapping mappo
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"Who Is the Beast?"
Author: Keith Baker
Plot Summary: A tiger makes its way through the jungle, as all the other animals are scared of “the beast.” The tiger sees its reflection in the water, and asks, “Am I the beast, could the beast be me?” The tiger then retraces its steps through the jungle, realizing that it shares similar characteristics with all of the other jungle animals who were scared of it. At the end, the tiger reflects, “Who is the beast? Now I see. We all are beasts--you and me.”
Author: Keith Baker
Plot Summary: A tiger makes its way through the jungle, as all the other animals are scared of “the beast.” The tiger sees its reflection in the water, and asks, “Am I the beast, could the beast be me?” The tiger then retraces its steps through the jungle, realizing that it shares similar characteristics with all of the other jungle animals who were scared of it. At the end, the tiger reflects, “Who is the beast? Now I see. We all are beasts--you and me.”
terry, modified 5 Months ago at 4/29/24 11:57 PM
Created 5 Months ago at 4/29/24 11:56 PM
RE: mapping mappo
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from the republic, plato
It is as if a man were acquiring the knowledge of the humors and desires of a great strong beast which he had in his keeping, [493b] how it is to be approached and touched, and when and by what things it is made most savage or gentle, yes, and the several sounds it is wont to utter on the occasion of each, and again what sounds uttered by another make it tame or fierce, and after mastering this knowledge by living with the creature and by lapse of time should call it wisdom, and should construct thereof a system and art and turn to the teaching of it, knowing nothing in reality about which of these opinions and desires is honorable or base, good or evil, just or unjust, [493c] but should apply all these terms to the judgements of the great beast, calling the things that pleased it good, and the things that vexed it bad, having no other account to render of them, but should call what is necessary just and honorable, never having observed how great is the real difference between the necessary and the good, and being incapable of explaining it to another. Do you not think, by heaven, that such a one would be a strange educator?” “I do,” he said. “Do you suppose that there is any difference between such a one and the man who thinks [493d] that it is wisdom to have learned to know the moods and the pleasures of the motley multitude in their assembly, whether about painting or music or, for that matter, politics? For if a man associates with these and offers and exhibits to them his poetry or any other product of his craft or any political. service, and grants the mob authority over himself more than is unavoidable, the proverbial necessity of Diomedes will compel him to give the public what it likes, but that what it likes is really good and honorable, have you ever heard an attempted proof of this that is not simply ridiculous?” [493e]
It is as if a man were acquiring the knowledge of the humors and desires of a great strong beast which he had in his keeping, [493b] how it is to be approached and touched, and when and by what things it is made most savage or gentle, yes, and the several sounds it is wont to utter on the occasion of each, and again what sounds uttered by another make it tame or fierce, and after mastering this knowledge by living with the creature and by lapse of time should call it wisdom, and should construct thereof a system and art and turn to the teaching of it, knowing nothing in reality about which of these opinions and desires is honorable or base, good or evil, just or unjust, [493c] but should apply all these terms to the judgements of the great beast, calling the things that pleased it good, and the things that vexed it bad, having no other account to render of them, but should call what is necessary just and honorable, never having observed how great is the real difference between the necessary and the good, and being incapable of explaining it to another. Do you not think, by heaven, that such a one would be a strange educator?” “I do,” he said. “Do you suppose that there is any difference between such a one and the man who thinks [493d] that it is wisdom to have learned to know the moods and the pleasures of the motley multitude in their assembly, whether about painting or music or, for that matter, politics? For if a man associates with these and offers and exhibits to them his poetry or any other product of his craft or any political. service, and grants the mob authority over himself more than is unavoidable, the proverbial necessity of Diomedes will compel him to give the public what it likes, but that what it likes is really good and honorable, have you ever heard an attempted proof of this that is not simply ridiculous?” [493e]
terry, modified 5 Months ago at 4/30/24 12:17 AM
Created 5 Months ago at 4/30/24 12:17 AM
RE: mapping mappo
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from the mathnawi, rumi, trans whinfield
STORY XI. The Lion who Hunted with the Wolf and the Fox.
A lion took a wolf and a fox with him on a hunting excursion, and succeeded in catching a wild ox, an ibex, and a hare. He then directed the wolf to divide the prey. The wolf proposed to award the ox to the lion, the ibex to himself, and the hare to the fox. The lion was enraged with the wolf because he had presumed to talk of “I” and “Thou,” and “My share” and “Thy share” when it all belonged of right to the lion, and he slew the wolf with one blow of his paw. Then, turning to the fox, he ordered him to make the division. The fox, rendered wary by the fate of the wolf, replied that the whole should be the portion of the lion. The lion, pleased with his self-abnegation, gave it all up to him, saying, “Thou art no longer a fox, but myself.”
STORY XI. The Lion who Hunted with the Wolf and the Fox.
A lion took a wolf and a fox with him on a hunting excursion, and succeeded in catching a wild ox, an ibex, and a hare. He then directed the wolf to divide the prey. The wolf proposed to award the ox to the lion, the ibex to himself, and the hare to the fox. The lion was enraged with the wolf because he had presumed to talk of “I” and “Thou,” and “My share” and “Thy share” when it all belonged of right to the lion, and he slew the wolf with one blow of his paw. Then, turning to the fox, he ordered him to make the division. The fox, rendered wary by the fate of the wolf, replied that the whole should be the portion of the lion. The lion, pleased with his self-abnegation, gave it all up to him, saying, “Thou art no longer a fox, but myself.”
kettu, modified 5 Months ago at 4/30/24 1:19 AM
Created 5 Months ago at 4/30/24 1:19 AM
RE: mapping mappo
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What an insult to the fox! To be a lion! Bah! But to avoid being slaughtered he must surely pretend gratitude, to smile nicely and continue as if something wonderful happened. The poor fox seems to end up doing the inner work for everyone and in every case. God have mercy on him!
terry, modified 5 Months ago at 4/30/24 4:21 AM
Created 5 Months ago at 4/30/24 4:19 AM
RE: mapping mappo
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from song of the bird, anthony demello
THE DISABLED FOX
A fable of the Arab mystic Sa'di:
A man walking through tht forest saw a fox that had lost its legs and wondered how it lived. Then he saw a tiger come in with game in its mouth. The tiger had its fill and left the rest of the meat for the fox.
The next day God fed the fox by means of the same tiger. The man began to wonder at God's greatness and said to himself, "I too shall just rest in a corner with full trust in the Lord and he will provide me with all I need."
He did this for many days but nothing happened, and he was almost at death's door when he heard a voice say, "0 you who are in the path of error, open your eyes to the truth! Follow the example of the tiger and stop imitating the disabled fox."
On the street I saw a naked child, hungry and shivering in the cold. I became angry and said to God, "Why do you permit this? Why don't you do something?"
For a while God said nothing. That night he replied, quite suddenly, "I certainly did something. I made you."
THE DISABLED FOX
A fable of the Arab mystic Sa'di:
A man walking through tht forest saw a fox that had lost its legs and wondered how it lived. Then he saw a tiger come in with game in its mouth. The tiger had its fill and left the rest of the meat for the fox.
The next day God fed the fox by means of the same tiger. The man began to wonder at God's greatness and said to himself, "I too shall just rest in a corner with full trust in the Lord and he will provide me with all I need."
He did this for many days but nothing happened, and he was almost at death's door when he heard a voice say, "0 you who are in the path of error, open your eyes to the truth! Follow the example of the tiger and stop imitating the disabled fox."
On the street I saw a naked child, hungry and shivering in the cold. I became angry and said to God, "Why do you permit this? Why don't you do something?"
For a while God said nothing. That night he replied, quite suddenly, "I certainly did something. I made you."
Pawel K, modified 5 Months ago at 4/30/24 4:47 AM
Created 5 Months ago at 4/30/24 4:47 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 1172 Join Date: 2/22/20 Recent Posts
Fox went to wolves and told what happened and wolves at first were enraged. But then one said "Actually, I never tasted lion meat. Its probably terrible thouh... but justice is justice!". Other wolves started houling with enthusiasm.
After certain events took place which are probably too graphic for nice public forums like DhO wolves started pouring gasoline on lion and lion while being perplexed asked: But why do you do this to me?
Then fox came slowly from the back holding a torch in his hand and said: Hakuna Matata Motherf...
And that kids is how legend of Firefox was born
After certain events took place which are probably too graphic for nice public forums like DhO wolves started pouring gasoline on lion and lion while being perplexed asked: But why do you do this to me?
Then fox came slowly from the back holding a torch in his hand and said: Hakuna Matata Motherf...
And that kids is how legend of Firefox was born
terry, modified 5 Months ago at 4/30/24 2:11 PM
Created 5 Months ago at 4/30/24 2:11 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Postskettu
What an insult to the fox! To be a lion! Bah! But to avoid being slaughtered he must surely pretend gratitude, to smile nicely and continue as if something wonderful happened. The poor fox seems to end up doing the inner work for everyone and in every case. God have mercy on him!
What an insult to the fox! To be a lion! Bah! But to avoid being slaughtered he must surely pretend gratitude, to smile nicely and continue as if something wonderful happened. The poor fox seems to end up doing the inner work for everyone and in every case. God have mercy on him!
How might an aspirant interpret such stories as these?
The lion represents nature, red in tooth and claw, the king of the jungle, the power of animal appetite and force of will. And it represents the power of humans in the world as the de facto top predator in all circumstances.
The wolf represents the human tendency to try to cooperate with the environment to take what it wants and needs for itself in the economy of nature, fairly and equitably, that is sustainably. No one is more of a conservationist than the predator whose prey is running out.
The fox is the evolved human who learns from experience caution and respect for nature.
terry, modified 5 Months ago at 4/30/24 2:36 PM
Created 5 Months ago at 4/30/24 2:36 PM
RE: mapping mappo
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you still have to think it through
baby steps, now...
the young fox proverbially cautious...
but a lion nature within
self realized through affinity
the brash wolf rash, swollen with appetite
the fox lets the wolf bear the punishment
the lion needs no agreement
of the two canids, one lives and one dies
baby steps, now...
the young fox proverbially cautious...
but a lion nature within
self realized through affinity
the brash wolf rash, swollen with appetite
the fox lets the wolf bear the punishment
the lion needs no agreement
of the two canids, one lives and one dies
kettu, modified 5 Months ago at 4/30/24 2:37 PM
Created 5 Months ago at 4/30/24 2:37 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 59 Join Date: 10/31/17 Recent Posts
When they were hunters, Finns used to ask for prey from the guardian spirit of the specie they were wishing to track down and kill. I wonder how these spirits read the symbolic fabels, jokes and bursts told by us, and how they are going to make themselves remembered.
kettu, modified 5 Months ago at 4/30/24 2:54 PM
Created 5 Months ago at 4/30/24 2:54 PM
RE: mapping mappo
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at night
fox trespasses your garden
delicious mangos
shit on the grass
another night
it listens to the song
post-tamed voice
that calls the foxness through its fur, calls it to be shared: i am you, you are me, here the voice is created as it is heard, the fox is created as the call that heard
fox trespasses your garden
delicious mangos
shit on the grass
another night
it listens to the song
post-tamed voice
that calls the foxness through its fur, calls it to be shared: i am you, you are me, here the voice is created as it is heard, the fox is created as the call that heard
terry, modified 5 Months ago at 4/30/24 4:33 PM
Created 5 Months ago at 4/30/24 4:33 PM
RE: mapping mappo
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from the gospel according to thomas
(7) Jesus said, "Blessed is the lion which becomes man when consumed by man; and
cursed is the man whom the lion consumes, and the lion becomes man."
(7) Jesus said, "Blessed is the lion which becomes man when consumed by man; and
cursed is the man whom the lion consumes, and the lion becomes man."
terry, modified 5 Months ago at 4/30/24 4:49 PM
Created 5 Months ago at 4/30/24 4:49 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Postskettu
When they were hunters, Finns used to ask for prey from the guardian spirit of the specie they were wishing to track down and kill. I wonder how these spirits read the symbolic fabels, jokes and bursts told by us, and how they are going to make themselves remembered.
When they were hunters, Finns used to ask for prey from the guardian spirit of the specie they were wishing to track down and kill. I wonder how these spirits read the symbolic fabels, jokes and bursts told by us, and how they are going to make themselves remembered.
The mighty finn takes on whales and polar bears, while the arctic fox contents itself with lemmings and voles.
"The Mighty Quinn (Quinn The Eskimo)"
(bob dylan)
Everybody's building the big ships and boats
Some are building monuments, others jotting down notes
Everybody's in despair, every girl and boy
But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here everybody's gonna jump for joy
Oh come all without, come all within
You'll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn
Come all without, come all within
You'll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn
Oh you know I like to do just like the rest, you know I like my sugar sweet
But guarding fumes and making haste, you know it ain't my cup of meat
Everybody's out the trees, feeding pigeons all under the limb
But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here the pigeons gonna run to him
Oh come all without, come all within
You'll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn
Come all without, come all within
You'll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn
A cat's meow and a cow's moo to you know I, I could recite them all
Just tell me where it hurts you, honey, and I'll tell you who to call
Nobody can get asleep, you know there's someone on everybody's toes
When Quinn the Eskimo gets here everybody's gonna wanna doze
Oh come all without, come all within
You'll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn
Come all without, come all within
You'll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn
terry, modified 5 Months ago at 4/30/24 5:22 PM
Created 5 Months ago at 4/30/24 5:22 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Poststerry, modified 5 Months ago at 4/30/24 5:40 PM
Created 5 Months ago at 4/30/24 5:40 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Postskettu, modified 5 Months ago at 4/30/24 8:04 PM
Created 5 Months ago at 4/30/24 8:04 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 59 Join Date: 10/31/17 Recent Posts
terry:”The mighty finn takes on whales and polar bears”
Oh, ”mighty”, were they? There never were any whales or polar bears around. We only read and write, teach and learn, our imagination.
Oh, ”mighty”, were they? There never were any whales or polar bears around. We only read and write, teach and learn, our imagination.
terry, modified 5 Months ago at 5/1/24 12:13 AM
Created 5 Months ago at 5/1/24 12:12 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Postskettu
terry:”The mighty finn takes on whales and polar bears”
Oh, ”mighty”, were they? There never were any whales or polar bears around. We only read and write, teach and learn, our imagination.
terry:”The mighty finn takes on whales and polar bears”
Oh, ”mighty”, were they? There never were any whales or polar bears around. We only read and write, teach and learn, our imagination.
I can see whales from my dining room window
imagine that
terry, modified 5 Months ago at 5/1/24 12:25 AM
Created 5 Months ago at 5/1/24 12:25 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Postskettu
We only read and write, teach and learn, our imagination.
We only read and write, teach and learn, our imagination.
this is the frst sentence in this thread:
The imaginal world is emerging into post modern consciousness. We are becoming more generally aware that the biophysical world and our mental-symbolic world are different things. This emergence is due to the increasing dysjunction between the two.
Papa Che Dusko, modified 5 Months ago at 5/1/24 3:42 AM
Created 5 Months ago at 5/1/24 3:42 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 3048 Join Date: 3/1/20 Recent Posts
Uh oh I love this new format of posting by you Terry! More of such! Much easier to read through for those like me!
Lemme ponder that image now! First coffee though!
Lemme ponder that image now! First coffee though!
terry, modified 5 Months ago at 5/1/24 6:56 AM
Created 5 Months ago at 5/1/24 6:56 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent PostsPapa Che Dusko, modified 5 Months ago at 5/1/24 7:11 AM
Created 5 Months ago at 5/1/24 7:11 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 3048 Join Date: 3/1/20 Recent Postskettu, modified 5 Months ago at 5/1/24 8:04 AM
Created 5 Months ago at 5/1/24 8:04 AM
RE: mapping mappo
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”imagine that” - needless to say, because imagination happens when the description is shared.
”Mental-symbolic” — ”biophysical” :
It’s good that the friction of your basic hypothesis/premise is felt in the discussion. Ultimately there are more or less limitless connections and shared flows between the two.
”Mental-symbolic” — ”biophysical” :
It’s good that the friction of your basic hypothesis/premise is felt in the discussion. Ultimately there are more or less limitless connections and shared flows between the two.
Papa Che Dusko, modified 5 Months ago at 5/1/24 4:31 PM
Created 5 Months ago at 5/1/24 4:31 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 3048 Join Date: 3/1/20 Recent Poststerry
this is the frst sentence in this thread:
The imaginal world is emerging into post modern consciousness. We are becoming more generally aware that the biophysical world and our mental-symbolic world are different things. This emergence is due to the increasing dysjunction between the two.
kettu
We only read and write, teach and learn, our imagination.
We only read and write, teach and learn, our imagination.
this is the frst sentence in this thread:
The imaginal world is emerging into post modern consciousness. We are becoming more generally aware that the biophysical world and our mental-symbolic world are different things. This emergence is due to the increasing dysjunction between the two.
Isn't it all but a mental-symbolic (fabricated) world? If so then how can I verify there is some other and different biophysical world?
terry, modified 5 Months ago at 5/3/24 12:48 AM
Created 5 Months ago at 5/3/24 12:48 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Postskettu:
”imagine that” - needless to say, because imagination happens when the description is shared. ”Mental-symbolic” — ”biophysical” : It’s good that the friction of your basic hypothesis/premise is felt in the discussion. Ultimately there are more or less limitless connections and shared flows between the two.
Our mental symbolic "map" of reality has always featured other animals symbolizing modes of interaction with the environment. Chinese astrology, even the hours were named for animals.
Polar bears are famously "charismatic."
Tlingkit indians in british columbia believed that pieces of driftwood had spirits and would often turn them over so that the shady parts could enjoy some sunshine as well.
terry, modified 5 Months ago at 5/3/24 1:16 AM
Created 5 Months ago at 5/3/24 1:16 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent PostsPapa Che Dusko
Isn't it all but a mental-symbolic (fabricated) world? If so then how can I verify there is some other and different biophysical world?
terry
this is the frst sentence in this thread:
The imaginal world is emerging into post modern consciousness. We are becoming more generally aware that the biophysical world and our mental-symbolic world are different things. This emergence is due to the increasing dysjunction between the two.
kettu
We only read and write, teach and learn, our imagination.
We only read and write, teach and learn, our imagination.
this is the frst sentence in this thread:
The imaginal world is emerging into post modern consciousness. We are becoming more generally aware that the biophysical world and our mental-symbolic world are different things. This emergence is due to the increasing dysjunction between the two.
Isn't it all but a mental-symbolic (fabricated) world? If so then how can I verify there is some other and different biophysical world?
The phenomenal world, that is, the world of appearances, can be and usually is distinguished from the biophysical world.
Is it me, or is it hot in here? We "verify" all the time. We guess, and we test. Is the left over rice still good? Looks ok, but it smells funny.
When I was mowing the lawn today kala was barking at the lawn mower and trying to bite the tires. Protecting me no doubt. Helping me control the beast.
Humans evolved as a part of nature, with relationships to other animals very different from those of the symbolic world we live in now. The little mermaid and pepa pig have their own charisma. Barbie and oppenheimer - agents of the matrix - do not.
The topic is about the mapping of this psychosocial symbolic world and personing it with charismatic symbolic characters of special significance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRnr3MiGWmo
terry, modified 5 Months ago at 5/3/24 1:35 AM
Created 5 Months ago at 5/3/24 1:35 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Poststerry, modified 5 Months ago at 5/3/24 1:56 AM
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RE: mapping mappo
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from the internet encyclopedia of philosophy, article on aesop
c. Intelligence/Foolishness
Gibbs 434. The Man and the Golden Eggs
Perry 87 (Syntipas 27)
A man had a hen that laid a golden egg for him each and every day. The man was not satisfied with this daily profit, and instead he foolishly grasped for more. Expecting to find a treasure inside, the man slaughtered the hen. When he found that the hen did not have a treasure inside her after all, he remarked to himself, “While chasing after hopes of a treasure, I lost the profit I held in my hands!”
Here we have the stereotypical example of foolishness: someone who has a good situation but does not properly appreciate it and, in trying to get still more, loses what they have. Throughout the fables, foolish decisions are punished, often by death. Intelligence, on the contrary, gets a good reputation in the fables. Those who are smart, or at least clever, can turn situations to their advantage—as, for example, in Gibbs 104/Perry 124, “The Fox and the Raven,” in which the fox is able to steal dinner from the raven by the crafty use of flattery. They can also sometimes use their intelligence to find ways to protect themselves from those who have superior power and strength, as in Gibbs 18/Perry 142.
c. Intelligence/Foolishness
Gibbs 434. The Man and the Golden Eggs
Perry 87 (Syntipas 27)
A man had a hen that laid a golden egg for him each and every day. The man was not satisfied with this daily profit, and instead he foolishly grasped for more. Expecting to find a treasure inside, the man slaughtered the hen. When he found that the hen did not have a treasure inside her after all, he remarked to himself, “While chasing after hopes of a treasure, I lost the profit I held in my hands!”
Here we have the stereotypical example of foolishness: someone who has a good situation but does not properly appreciate it and, in trying to get still more, loses what they have. Throughout the fables, foolish decisions are punished, often by death. Intelligence, on the contrary, gets a good reputation in the fables. Those who are smart, or at least clever, can turn situations to their advantage—as, for example, in Gibbs 104/Perry 124, “The Fox and the Raven,” in which the fox is able to steal dinner from the raven by the crafty use of flattery. They can also sometimes use their intelligence to find ways to protect themselves from those who have superior power and strength, as in Gibbs 18/Perry 142.
terry, modified 5 Months ago at 5/3/24 2:07 AM
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RE: mapping mappo
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The Fox and the Grapes is one of Aesop's Fables, numbered 15 in the Perry Index. The narration is concise and subsequent retellings have often been equally so. The story concerns a fox that tries to eat grapes from a vine but cannot reach them. Rather than admit defeat, he states they are undesirable.
terry, modified 5 Months ago at 5/3/24 2:19 AM
Created 5 Months ago at 5/3/24 2:19 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Poststerry, modified 5 Months ago at 5/3/24 3:36 PM
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RE: mapping mappo
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RE: mapping mappo
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from democracy now dot org
Israel has killed at least 26 people in Gaza over the past day. An airstrike on a home in Rafah killed at least six Palestinians, four of them children. This is Sana Z’oroub, the children’s aunt.
Sana Z’oroub: “Three missiles hit the innocent children. A mother and two girls were sleeping in her lap. They were sleeping in her lap, the two girls. Do you know what it means to be sleeping in their mother’s lap? They are in pieces. They were in grade one and grade six, Bisan and Basmala. Bisan and Basmala were sleeping in their mother’s lap. They are in pieces. They slept in their mother’s lap, and now they are in pieces. How did the Israelis benefit from this? What did they benefit from killing the innocent children?”
Israel has killed at least 26 people in Gaza over the past day. An airstrike on a home in Rafah killed at least six Palestinians, four of them children. This is Sana Z’oroub, the children’s aunt.
Sana Z’oroub: “Three missiles hit the innocent children. A mother and two girls were sleeping in her lap. They were sleeping in her lap, the two girls. Do you know what it means to be sleeping in their mother’s lap? They are in pieces. They were in grade one and grade six, Bisan and Basmala. Bisan and Basmala were sleeping in their mother’s lap. They are in pieces. They slept in their mother’s lap, and now they are in pieces. How did the Israelis benefit from this? What did they benefit from killing the innocent children?”
terry, modified 5 Months ago at 5/5/24 4:34 PM
Created 5 Months ago at 5/5/24 4:34 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Poststerry
from democracy now dot org
Israel has killed at least 26 people in Gaza over the past day. An airstrike on a home in Rafah killed at least six Palestinians, four of them children. This is Sana Z’oroub, the children’s aunt.
Sana Z’oroub: “Three missiles hit the innocent children. A mother and two girls were sleeping in her lap. They were sleeping in her lap, the two girls. Do you know what it means to be sleeping in their mother’s lap? They are in pieces. They were in grade one and grade six, Bisan and Basmala. Bisan and Basmala were sleeping in their mother’s lap. They are in pieces. They slept in their mother’s lap, and now they are in pieces. How did the Israelis benefit from this? What did they benefit from killing the innocent children?”
from democracy now dot org
Israel has killed at least 26 people in Gaza over the past day. An airstrike on a home in Rafah killed at least six Palestinians, four of them children. This is Sana Z’oroub, the children’s aunt.
Sana Z’oroub: “Three missiles hit the innocent children. A mother and two girls were sleeping in her lap. They were sleeping in her lap, the two girls. Do you know what it means to be sleeping in their mother’s lap? They are in pieces. They were in grade one and grade six, Bisan and Basmala. Bisan and Basmala were sleeping in their mother’s lap. They are in pieces. They slept in their mother’s lap, and now they are in pieces. How did the Israelis benefit from this? What did they benefit from killing the innocent children?”
three missiles hit the children
sometimes children's bodies are found shot in the head twice by israeli snipers...
how blatant does it have to get
killing aid workers, first providers, journalists, poets, peacemakers
women and children
I'm having a hard time with this particular mass of suffering
I could not feel outraged but I can't justify it
Olivier S, modified 5 Months ago at 5/5/24 5:23 PM
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RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 979 Join Date: 4/27/19 Recent Poststerry, modified 5 Months ago at 5/6/24 1:27 AM
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RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent PostsOlivier S
It's from the beginning of Nietzsche's Thus spoke zarathustra...
It's from the beginning of Nietzsche's Thus spoke zarathustra...
actually, what is on my mind is ressentiment, from the genealogy of morals
When cuttlefish mate the burden of raising the young falls more heavily on females, so this species responds to the inequality by regularlly changing sex, while keeping the same mate. Now and then one tries to cheat and stay male but after one or two instances of that the relationship terminates. It is observed that organisms often form mutually benefitting inter- and intra-species relations but while altruism is rare, unexpected and not rejected, cheating is common, expected and results in swift consequences.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OizjBWAGPTc
terry, modified 5 Months ago at 5/6/24 11:57 PM
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RE: mapping mappo
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Nietzsche is concerned with morality not in some abstract, metaphysical sense, but as the practical way customs operate in human society. This involves the power relations between classes of society, and individuals.
Nietzsche inherits “will” from schopenhauer, the categorical imperative (golden rule) from kant and the master slave dynamic from hegel. He rejects the universality of the will and the subjectivity of the moral actor but elaborates the hegelian master slave dialectic as the bipolarity of the will to power.
The master uses power to compel the slave to do his will. The slave uses resistance to the master’s will as leverage to attain their own will. This conflict of wills is the basis for all human power relations in all relationships.
In nietzsche’s view, the prime motivating force binding societies together is not love as many assume, but revenge. Or hate and aggression, if you will.
People weren’t always as smart as they are today, Nietzsche argues. We evolved to forget insults and close calls and pains and irritations and our tendency is to be ready to go at any moment. We have evolved socially as the animal who is able to make and keep promises, and this ability to keep our words has been what has enabled civilization. But it didn’t come easy, people are crude, ignorant, stupid. Making them remember promises and obligations required a good deal of violence and pain, it had to be beaten into them. Rituals involving painful ordeals, tattooing and scarification were and are commonplace. Penalties and punishments were always designed to make an impression that one would not forget. Nietzsche also points out people’s persistent love of cruelty, how most entertainments in the ancient days featured exhibitions of cruelty, eg people were still being boiled in oil up to the 16th century. Executions were scheduled alongside weddings to provide entertainment.
The ability to make promises was of course immediately used to make debtors of people. Promises were made and dire oaths were sworn with pledges of one’s life and property on the line. An eye for an eye, a pound of flesh for a sum of money. Justice was administered, inflicted, and with great relish. How is a pound of flesh any compensation for money, nietzsche asks? Human cruelty. I will feel compensated if the person who owes me a debt and cannot pay is made to feel pain as a punishment.
Ressentiment was a commonly used term in the 19th century for the feelings of large groups of people that they are being victimized by elites who were more favorably positioned in society to enjoy the good things of life. A general dissatisfaction that could lead to revolutions; nietzsche mentions the feeling before the french revolution. And bonaparte is the hegelian ideal, the superman that emerges from chaos and can set things on the right path, the noble and good path of the charismatic life affirmer.
Ressentiment leads to pogroms and riots, outbreaks of mob violence and organized political violence. Protests. Social tipping points. Civil wars and polarization. Tyrannies and revolutions.
What I am getting out of this is a sense of my own feelings of deep resentment of a two party system giving us choice only of a hate monger or a warmonger. What do I care if billionaires finally get taxed their share if the money just goes to blow up children? Nor do I see ukrainians as expendable, or sudanese. I would gladly sacrifice some of my wealth for universal health care, child care, education, humanitarian aid, immigration assistance, etc but why save money for bombing hospitals and universities?
My heart is with these protesting students who are turning the tide on all fronts. Haven’t been proud in a while, am now of these kids.
Nietzsche inherits “will” from schopenhauer, the categorical imperative (golden rule) from kant and the master slave dynamic from hegel. He rejects the universality of the will and the subjectivity of the moral actor but elaborates the hegelian master slave dialectic as the bipolarity of the will to power.
The master uses power to compel the slave to do his will. The slave uses resistance to the master’s will as leverage to attain their own will. This conflict of wills is the basis for all human power relations in all relationships.
In nietzsche’s view, the prime motivating force binding societies together is not love as many assume, but revenge. Or hate and aggression, if you will.
People weren’t always as smart as they are today, Nietzsche argues. We evolved to forget insults and close calls and pains and irritations and our tendency is to be ready to go at any moment. We have evolved socially as the animal who is able to make and keep promises, and this ability to keep our words has been what has enabled civilization. But it didn’t come easy, people are crude, ignorant, stupid. Making them remember promises and obligations required a good deal of violence and pain, it had to be beaten into them. Rituals involving painful ordeals, tattooing and scarification were and are commonplace. Penalties and punishments were always designed to make an impression that one would not forget. Nietzsche also points out people’s persistent love of cruelty, how most entertainments in the ancient days featured exhibitions of cruelty, eg people were still being boiled in oil up to the 16th century. Executions were scheduled alongside weddings to provide entertainment.
The ability to make promises was of course immediately used to make debtors of people. Promises were made and dire oaths were sworn with pledges of one’s life and property on the line. An eye for an eye, a pound of flesh for a sum of money. Justice was administered, inflicted, and with great relish. How is a pound of flesh any compensation for money, nietzsche asks? Human cruelty. I will feel compensated if the person who owes me a debt and cannot pay is made to feel pain as a punishment.
Ressentiment was a commonly used term in the 19th century for the feelings of large groups of people that they are being victimized by elites who were more favorably positioned in society to enjoy the good things of life. A general dissatisfaction that could lead to revolutions; nietzsche mentions the feeling before the french revolution. And bonaparte is the hegelian ideal, the superman that emerges from chaos and can set things on the right path, the noble and good path of the charismatic life affirmer.
Ressentiment leads to pogroms and riots, outbreaks of mob violence and organized political violence. Protests. Social tipping points. Civil wars and polarization. Tyrannies and revolutions.
What I am getting out of this is a sense of my own feelings of deep resentment of a two party system giving us choice only of a hate monger or a warmonger. What do I care if billionaires finally get taxed their share if the money just goes to blow up children? Nor do I see ukrainians as expendable, or sudanese. I would gladly sacrifice some of my wealth for universal health care, child care, education, humanitarian aid, immigration assistance, etc but why save money for bombing hospitals and universities?
My heart is with these protesting students who are turning the tide on all fronts. Haven’t been proud in a while, am now of these kids.
terry, modified 5 Months ago at 5/6/24 8:20 PM
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RE: mapping mappo
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from the genealogy of morals,nietzsche, trans johnston
13
—But let’s come back: the problem with the other origin of the “good,” of the good man, as the person of ressentiment has imagined it for himself, demands its own conclusion.—That the lambs are upset about the great predatory birds is not a strange thing, and the fact that they snatch away small lambs provides no reason for holding anything against these large birds of prey. And if the lambs say among themselves, “These predatory birds are evil, and whoever is least like a predatory bird, especially anyone who is like its opposite, a lamb—shouldn’t that animal be good?” there is nothing to find fault with in this setting up of an ideal, except for the fact that the birds of prey might look down on them with a little mockery and perhaps say to themselves, “We are not at all annoyed with these good lambs. We even love them. Nothing is tastier than a tender lamb.” To demand from strength that it does not express itself as strength, that it does not consist of a will to overpower, a will to throw down, a will to rule, a thirst for enemies and opposition and triumph, is just as unreasonable as to demand from weakness that it express itself as strength. A quantum of force is simply such a quantum of drive, will, action—rather, it is nothing but this very driving, willing, acting itself—and it cannot appear as anything else except through the seduction of language (and the fundamental errors of reason petrified in it), which understands and misunderstands all action as conditioned by something which causes actions, by a “Subject.” For, in just the same way as people separate lightning from its flash and take the latter as an action, as the effect of a subject, which is called lightning, so popular morality separates strength from the manifestations of strength, as if behind the strong person there were an indifferent substrate, which is free to express strength or not. But there is no such substrate; there is no “being” behind the doing, acting, becoming. “The doer” is merely made up and added into the action—the act is everything. People basically duplicate the action: when they see a lightning flash, that is an action of an action: they set up the same event first as the cause and then yet again as its effect. Natural scientists are no better when they say “Force moves, force causes,” and so on—our entire scientific knowledge, for all its coolness, its freedom from feelings, still remains exposed to the seductions of language and has not gotten rid of the changelings foisted on it, the “Subjects” (the atom, for example, is such a changeling, like the Kantian “thing-in-itself”): it’s no wonder that the repressed, secretly smouldering feelings of rage and hate use this belief for themselves and basically even maintain a faith in nothing more fervently than in the idea that the strong are free to be weak and that predatory birds are free to be lambs:—in so doing, they arrogate to themselves the right to blame the birds of prey for being birds of prey. When the oppressed, the downtrodden, the conquered say to each other, with the vengeful cunning of the powerless, “Let us be different from evil people, namely, good! And that man is good who does not overpower, who hurts no one, who does not attack, who does not retaliate, who hands revenge over to God, who keeps himself hidden, as we do, the man who avoids all evil and demands little from life in general, like us, the patient, humble, and upright”—what that amounts to, coolly expressed and without bias, is essentially nothing more than “We weak people are merely weak. It’s good if we do nothing; we are not strong enough for that”—but this bitter state, this shrewdness of the lowest ranks, which even insects possess (when in great danger they stand as if they were dead in order not to do “too much”), has, thanks to that counterfeiting and self-deception of powerlessness, dressed itself in the splendour of a self-denying, still, patient virtue, just as if the weakness of the weak man himself—that means his essence, his actions, his entire single, inevitable, and irredeemable reality—is a voluntary achievement, something willed, chosen, an act, something of merit. This kind of man has to believe in the disinterested, freely choosing “subject” out of his instinct for self-preservation, self-approval, in which every falsehood is habitually sanctified. Hence, the subject (or, to use a more popular style, the soul) has up to now perhaps been the best principle for belief on earth, because, for the majority of the dying, the weak, and the downtrodden of all sorts, it makes possible that sublime self-deception which establishes weakness itself as freedom and their being like this or that as something meritorious.
13
—But let’s come back: the problem with the other origin of the “good,” of the good man, as the person of ressentiment has imagined it for himself, demands its own conclusion.—That the lambs are upset about the great predatory birds is not a strange thing, and the fact that they snatch away small lambs provides no reason for holding anything against these large birds of prey. And if the lambs say among themselves, “These predatory birds are evil, and whoever is least like a predatory bird, especially anyone who is like its opposite, a lamb—shouldn’t that animal be good?” there is nothing to find fault with in this setting up of an ideal, except for the fact that the birds of prey might look down on them with a little mockery and perhaps say to themselves, “We are not at all annoyed with these good lambs. We even love them. Nothing is tastier than a tender lamb.” To demand from strength that it does not express itself as strength, that it does not consist of a will to overpower, a will to throw down, a will to rule, a thirst for enemies and opposition and triumph, is just as unreasonable as to demand from weakness that it express itself as strength. A quantum of force is simply such a quantum of drive, will, action—rather, it is nothing but this very driving, willing, acting itself—and it cannot appear as anything else except through the seduction of language (and the fundamental errors of reason petrified in it), which understands and misunderstands all action as conditioned by something which causes actions, by a “Subject.” For, in just the same way as people separate lightning from its flash and take the latter as an action, as the effect of a subject, which is called lightning, so popular morality separates strength from the manifestations of strength, as if behind the strong person there were an indifferent substrate, which is free to express strength or not. But there is no such substrate; there is no “being” behind the doing, acting, becoming. “The doer” is merely made up and added into the action—the act is everything. People basically duplicate the action: when they see a lightning flash, that is an action of an action: they set up the same event first as the cause and then yet again as its effect. Natural scientists are no better when they say “Force moves, force causes,” and so on—our entire scientific knowledge, for all its coolness, its freedom from feelings, still remains exposed to the seductions of language and has not gotten rid of the changelings foisted on it, the “Subjects” (the atom, for example, is such a changeling, like the Kantian “thing-in-itself”): it’s no wonder that the repressed, secretly smouldering feelings of rage and hate use this belief for themselves and basically even maintain a faith in nothing more fervently than in the idea that the strong are free to be weak and that predatory birds are free to be lambs:—in so doing, they arrogate to themselves the right to blame the birds of prey for being birds of prey. When the oppressed, the downtrodden, the conquered say to each other, with the vengeful cunning of the powerless, “Let us be different from evil people, namely, good! And that man is good who does not overpower, who hurts no one, who does not attack, who does not retaliate, who hands revenge over to God, who keeps himself hidden, as we do, the man who avoids all evil and demands little from life in general, like us, the patient, humble, and upright”—what that amounts to, coolly expressed and without bias, is essentially nothing more than “We weak people are merely weak. It’s good if we do nothing; we are not strong enough for that”—but this bitter state, this shrewdness of the lowest ranks, which even insects possess (when in great danger they stand as if they were dead in order not to do “too much”), has, thanks to that counterfeiting and self-deception of powerlessness, dressed itself in the splendour of a self-denying, still, patient virtue, just as if the weakness of the weak man himself—that means his essence, his actions, his entire single, inevitable, and irredeemable reality—is a voluntary achievement, something willed, chosen, an act, something of merit. This kind of man has to believe in the disinterested, freely choosing “subject” out of his instinct for self-preservation, self-approval, in which every falsehood is habitually sanctified. Hence, the subject (or, to use a more popular style, the soul) has up to now perhaps been the best principle for belief on earth, because, for the majority of the dying, the weak, and the downtrodden of all sorts, it makes possible that sublime self-deception which establishes weakness itself as freedom and their being like this or that as something meritorious.
Papa Che Dusko, modified 5 Months ago at 5/6/24 8:43 PM
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RE: mapping mappo
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Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent PostsPapa Che Dusko
O Bella ciao, Bella ciao, Bella ciao, ciao, ciao
O Bella ciao, Bella ciao, Bella ciao, ciao, ciao
La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, ya no puede caminar
terry, modified 5 Months ago at 5/7/24 12:55 AM
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RE: mapping mappo
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La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, ya no puede caminar
Papa Che Dusko
O Bella ciao, Bella ciao, Bella ciao, ciao, ciao
O Bella ciao, Bella ciao, Bella ciao, ciao, ciao
La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, ya no puede caminar
https://www.gocomics.com/lacucaracha/2024/05/05
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RE: mapping mappo
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the genealogy of morals, nietzsche,
Everyone who at some time or another has built a “new heaven,” found the power to do that first in his own hell. . . . Let’s condense all these facts into short formulas: the philosophical spirit always had to begin by disguising itself, wrapping itself in a cocoon of the previously established forms of the contemplative man, as priest, magician, prophet, generally as a religious man, in order to make any kind of life at all possible. The ascetic ideal for a long time served the philosopher as a form in which he could appear, as a condition for his existence—he had to play the role, in order to be able to be a philosopher. And he had to believe in what he was doing, in order to play that role. The characteristically detached stance of philosophers, something which denies the world, is hostile to life, has no faith in the senses, and is free of sensuality, which was maintained right up to the most recent times and thus became valued almost as the essence of the philosophical posture—that is, above all, a consequence of the critical conditions under which, in general, philosophy arose and survived. In fact, for the longest time on earth philosophy would not have been at all possible without an ascetic cover and costume, without an ascetic misunderstanding of the self. To put the matter explicitly and vividly: up to the most recent times the ascetic priest has provided the repellent and dark caterpillar form which was the only one in which philosophy could live and creep around. . . . Has that really changed? Is the colourful and dangerous winged creature, that “spirit” which this caterpillar hid within itself, at last really been released and allowed out into the light, thanks to a sunnier, warmer, brighter world? Nowadays do we have sufficient pride, daring, bravery, self-certainty, spiritual will, desire to assume responsibility, and freedom of the will so that from now on “the philosopher” is truly possible on earth? . . .
Everyone who at some time or another has built a “new heaven,” found the power to do that first in his own hell. . . . Let’s condense all these facts into short formulas: the philosophical spirit always had to begin by disguising itself, wrapping itself in a cocoon of the previously established forms of the contemplative man, as priest, magician, prophet, generally as a religious man, in order to make any kind of life at all possible. The ascetic ideal for a long time served the philosopher as a form in which he could appear, as a condition for his existence—he had to play the role, in order to be able to be a philosopher. And he had to believe in what he was doing, in order to play that role. The characteristically detached stance of philosophers, something which denies the world, is hostile to life, has no faith in the senses, and is free of sensuality, which was maintained right up to the most recent times and thus became valued almost as the essence of the philosophical posture—that is, above all, a consequence of the critical conditions under which, in general, philosophy arose and survived. In fact, for the longest time on earth philosophy would not have been at all possible without an ascetic cover and costume, without an ascetic misunderstanding of the self. To put the matter explicitly and vividly: up to the most recent times the ascetic priest has provided the repellent and dark caterpillar form which was the only one in which philosophy could live and creep around. . . . Has that really changed? Is the colourful and dangerous winged creature, that “spirit” which this caterpillar hid within itself, at last really been released and allowed out into the light, thanks to a sunnier, warmer, brighter world? Nowadays do we have sufficient pride, daring, bravery, self-certainty, spiritual will, desire to assume responsibility, and freedom of the will so that from now on “the philosopher” is truly possible on earth? . . .
terry, modified 4 Months ago at 5/12/24 12:36 AM
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RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Poststerry, modified 4 Months ago at 5/12/24 9:16 PM
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RE: mapping mappo
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from after the future, franco berardi
During the age of modernity, a very delicate balance was created between the infosphere and reason. The political will could act rationally because this balance gave historical actors the possibility of comprehending a relatively narrow range of information and therefore of making decisions based on it. But the acceleration of semiotic emissions and the thickening of the infosphere has produced, in the long run, an effect of overload and, therefore, of anxiety and panic. At the same time, Europe has grown so old. It’s a demographic problem, first of all, but it’s not only demographic. Europe is a country of old people groping desperately at their lives, not out of love, but for property. A country of old people needing young nurses from the Philippines, Moldavia, and Morocco; old idiots tormented by despising the agility of those young people, people who have suffered so much at our hands that they don’t fear any more suffering, and don’t care about the punishment of European law. Senile dementia (loss of memory, irrational fear of the unknown) is spreading in every generational stratum of European society, mentally frail and socially tired. Young voters who vote for rightist nationalist parties are no less obtuse than the frightened elderly, just as unable to think or find a way out their conformism.
How will it end? It’s easy to predict. Old Europeans are well armed and they will kill. Pogrom, mass violence, inter-ethnic civil war. This the future of Europe. We should find a way to translate in nonreligious terms the Christian concept of “resignation.” What is to be done when nothing can be done, when too much hate has accumulated in the collective karma? How can we continue being happy and free when we understand that a war machine is hidden in every niche? This is the question that I am addressing to myself, to my friends, and to my generation—the generation born after the last war fought by young people, before senility took hold of us, making a pacific wisdom possible, or pushing us toward the abyss of aggressive dementia.
During the age of modernity, a very delicate balance was created between the infosphere and reason. The political will could act rationally because this balance gave historical actors the possibility of comprehending a relatively narrow range of information and therefore of making decisions based on it. But the acceleration of semiotic emissions and the thickening of the infosphere has produced, in the long run, an effect of overload and, therefore, of anxiety and panic. At the same time, Europe has grown so old. It’s a demographic problem, first of all, but it’s not only demographic. Europe is a country of old people groping desperately at their lives, not out of love, but for property. A country of old people needing young nurses from the Philippines, Moldavia, and Morocco; old idiots tormented by despising the agility of those young people, people who have suffered so much at our hands that they don’t fear any more suffering, and don’t care about the punishment of European law. Senile dementia (loss of memory, irrational fear of the unknown) is spreading in every generational stratum of European society, mentally frail and socially tired. Young voters who vote for rightist nationalist parties are no less obtuse than the frightened elderly, just as unable to think or find a way out their conformism.
How will it end? It’s easy to predict. Old Europeans are well armed and they will kill. Pogrom, mass violence, inter-ethnic civil war. This the future of Europe. We should find a way to translate in nonreligious terms the Christian concept of “resignation.” What is to be done when nothing can be done, when too much hate has accumulated in the collective karma? How can we continue being happy and free when we understand that a war machine is hidden in every niche? This is the question that I am addressing to myself, to my friends, and to my generation—the generation born after the last war fought by young people, before senility took hold of us, making a pacific wisdom possible, or pushing us toward the abyss of aggressive dementia.
terry, modified 4 Months ago at 5/13/24 10:31 AM
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RE: mapping mappo
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from nietzsche and philosophy by gilles deleuze
(ressentiment = "it's your fault" and "bad conscience" = "it's my fault")
Nietzsche's philosophy depends, in general, on the principle that
ressentiment, bad conscience etc. are not psychological determina-
tions. Nietzsche calls the enterprise of denying life and depreciating
existence nihilism. He analyses the principal forms of nihilism, ressen-
timent, bad conscience, ascetic ideal; the whole of nihilism and its
forms he calls the spirit of revenge. But, the different forms of
nihilism are not at all reducible to psychological determinations,
historical events or ideological currents, not even to metaphysical
structures. The spirit of revenge is undoubtedly expressed
biologically, psychologically, historically and metaphysically; the spirit of revenge is a type, it is not separable from a typology, the key stone of Nietzschean philosophy. But the problem is: what is the nature of this typology? Far from being a psychological trait the spirit of revenge is the principle on which our whole psychology depends. Ressentiment is not part of psychology but the whole of our psychology, without knowing it, is a part of ressentiment. In the same way, when Nietzsche shows that Christianity is full of ressentiment and bad conscience he does not make nihilism a historical event, it is rather the element of history as such, the motor of universal history, the famous "historical meaning" or "meaning of history" which at one time found its most adequate manifestation in Christianity. And when Nietzsche undertakes the critique of nihilism he makes nihilism the presupposition of all metaphysics rather than the expression of par- ticular metaphysics: there is no metaphysics which does not judge and depreciate life in the name of a supra-sensible world. We cannot even say that nihilism and its forms are categories of thought, for the categories of thought, of reasonable thought - identity, causality, finality - themselves presuppose an interpretation of force which is that of ressentiment. For all these reasons Nietzsche can say: "The instinct of revenge has gained such a hold on humanity over the centuries that the whole of metaphysics, psychology, history and above all morality bear its imprint. As soon as man began thinking he
introduced the bacillus of revenge into things" (VP III 458). We must understand this as meaning that the instinct of revenge is the force which constitutes the essence of what we call psychology, history, metaphysics and morality. The spirit of revenge is the genealogical
element of our thought, the transcendental principle of our way of thinking. Nietzsche's struggle against nihilism and the spirit of revenge will therefore mean the reversal of metaphysics, the end of history as history of man and the transformation of the sciences. And we do not really know what a man denuded of ressentiment would be like. A man who would not accuse or depreciate existence - would he still be a man, would he think like a man? Would he not already be
something other than a man, almost the Overman? To have ressentiment or not to have ressentiment - there is no greater difference, beyond psychology, beyond history, beyond metaphysics. It is the true difference or transcendental typology - the genealogical and hierarchical difference.
(ressentiment = "it's your fault" and "bad conscience" = "it's my fault")
Nietzsche's philosophy depends, in general, on the principle that
ressentiment, bad conscience etc. are not psychological determina-
tions. Nietzsche calls the enterprise of denying life and depreciating
existence nihilism. He analyses the principal forms of nihilism, ressen-
timent, bad conscience, ascetic ideal; the whole of nihilism and its
forms he calls the spirit of revenge. But, the different forms of
nihilism are not at all reducible to psychological determinations,
historical events or ideological currents, not even to metaphysical
structures. The spirit of revenge is undoubtedly expressed
biologically, psychologically, historically and metaphysically; the spirit of revenge is a type, it is not separable from a typology, the key stone of Nietzschean philosophy. But the problem is: what is the nature of this typology? Far from being a psychological trait the spirit of revenge is the principle on which our whole psychology depends. Ressentiment is not part of psychology but the whole of our psychology, without knowing it, is a part of ressentiment. In the same way, when Nietzsche shows that Christianity is full of ressentiment and bad conscience he does not make nihilism a historical event, it is rather the element of history as such, the motor of universal history, the famous "historical meaning" or "meaning of history" which at one time found its most adequate manifestation in Christianity. And when Nietzsche undertakes the critique of nihilism he makes nihilism the presupposition of all metaphysics rather than the expression of par- ticular metaphysics: there is no metaphysics which does not judge and depreciate life in the name of a supra-sensible world. We cannot even say that nihilism and its forms are categories of thought, for the categories of thought, of reasonable thought - identity, causality, finality - themselves presuppose an interpretation of force which is that of ressentiment. For all these reasons Nietzsche can say: "The instinct of revenge has gained such a hold on humanity over the centuries that the whole of metaphysics, psychology, history and above all morality bear its imprint. As soon as man began thinking he
introduced the bacillus of revenge into things" (VP III 458). We must understand this as meaning that the instinct of revenge is the force which constitutes the essence of what we call psychology, history, metaphysics and morality. The spirit of revenge is the genealogical
element of our thought, the transcendental principle of our way of thinking. Nietzsche's struggle against nihilism and the spirit of revenge will therefore mean the reversal of metaphysics, the end of history as history of man and the transformation of the sciences. And we do not really know what a man denuded of ressentiment would be like. A man who would not accuse or depreciate existence - would he still be a man, would he think like a man? Would he not already be
something other than a man, almost the Overman? To have ressentiment or not to have ressentiment - there is no greater difference, beyond psychology, beyond history, beyond metaphysics. It is the true difference or transcendental typology - the genealogical and hierarchical difference.
terry, modified 4 Months ago at 5/13/24 4:26 PM
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RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
10. What A Day That Was
(the talking heads)
Oh well, I'm dressed up so nice
And I'm doing my best
And I'm starting over
I'm starting over in another place
Lemme tell you a story
A big chief with a golden crown
He's got rings on his fingers
And then he walks up, up to the throne
He's making shapes with his hands
And don't you dare sit back
And don't you dare sit down
And don't you dare speak up
And on the first day we had everything we could stand
Who could've asked for more?
And on a second day there was nothing else left to do
Oh what a day that was
Well there are fifty thousand beggars
Roaming in the streets
And they have lost all their possessions
And they have nothing left to eat
Down come a bolt of lightning
Start an electrical storm
And starts a chain reaction
"Go pull a fire alarm", I said that
I'm dreaming of a city
It was my own invention
I put the wheels in motion
A time for big decisions
And on the first day we had everything we could stand
Oh and then we let it fall
And on a second day there was nothing else left at all
Oh what a day that was
What a day that was
And that's the way it goes
There's a million ways to get things done
There's a million ways to make things work out
Oh well, I'm going right through
And the light came down
And they're rounding them up
From all over town
They're moving forward and backwards
Moving backwards and front
And they're enjoying themselves
Moving in every direction
And if you feel like you're in a whirlpool
You feel like going home
You feel like talking to someone
Who know the difference between right and wrong
And on the first day we had everything we could stand
Oh and then we let it fall
And on a second day there was nothing else left at all
Oh what a day that was
We're going boom, boom, boom and that's the way we live
And in a great big room and that's the way we live
We're going boom, boom, boom and that's the way we live
And in a great big room and that's the way we live
We're going boom, boom, boom and that's the way we live
And in a great big room and that's the way we live
(the talking heads)
Oh well, I'm dressed up so nice
And I'm doing my best
And I'm starting over
I'm starting over in another place
Lemme tell you a story
A big chief with a golden crown
He's got rings on his fingers
And then he walks up, up to the throne
He's making shapes with his hands
And don't you dare sit back
And don't you dare sit down
And don't you dare speak up
And on the first day we had everything we could stand
Who could've asked for more?
And on a second day there was nothing else left to do
Oh what a day that was
Well there are fifty thousand beggars
Roaming in the streets
And they have lost all their possessions
And they have nothing left to eat
Down come a bolt of lightning
Start an electrical storm
And starts a chain reaction
"Go pull a fire alarm", I said that
I'm dreaming of a city
It was my own invention
I put the wheels in motion
A time for big decisions
And on the first day we had everything we could stand
Oh and then we let it fall
And on a second day there was nothing else left at all
Oh what a day that was
What a day that was
And that's the way it goes
There's a million ways to get things done
There's a million ways to make things work out
Oh well, I'm going right through
And the light came down
And they're rounding them up
From all over town
They're moving forward and backwards
Moving backwards and front
And they're enjoying themselves
Moving in every direction
And if you feel like you're in a whirlpool
You feel like going home
You feel like talking to someone
Who know the difference between right and wrong
And on the first day we had everything we could stand
Oh and then we let it fall
And on a second day there was nothing else left at all
Oh what a day that was
We're going boom, boom, boom and that's the way we live
And in a great big room and that's the way we live
We're going boom, boom, boom and that's the way we live
And in a great big room and that's the way we live
We're going boom, boom, boom and that's the way we live
And in a great big room and that's the way we live
Chris M, modified 4 Months ago at 5/15/24 7:29 AM
Created 4 Months ago at 5/15/24 7:29 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 5405 Join Date: 1/26/13 Recent PostsIn the beginning, Dharma is like à beautiful framed painting, then it's like a framed window with colored glass, then like a tinted mirror, then like a clear mirror, then like an empty mirror frame then like an empty window frame with no glass, then it disappears leaving everything just as it is, all as one and the same and totally different.
- Unknown
terry, modified 4 Months ago at 5/17/24 6:50 PM
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RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent PostsChris M
- Unknown
all as one and the same and totally different.
- Unknown
now you see it, now you don't...
pick a card, any card...
terry, modified 4 Months ago at 5/21/24 6:12 PM
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RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Poststerry, modified 4 Months ago at 5/30/24 1:52 AM
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RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent PostsChris M, modified 4 Months ago at 5/30/24 1:12 PM
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RE: mapping mappo
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terry - I have a serious question:
Do humans ever arrive at the singularity and thus be saved, or will the singularity represent a faster fall? I see two camps on this: 1) those who are fully invested in technology and believe it is our savior and 2) those who believe technology can't possibly save us - that we are doomed by our very nature. To the second group it would seem technology is the cause of our doom. To the first group, it is the thing that has brought us prosperity.
Mappo.
Do humans ever arrive at the singularity and thus be saved, or will the singularity represent a faster fall? I see two camps on this: 1) those who are fully invested in technology and believe it is our savior and 2) those who believe technology can't possibly save us - that we are doomed by our very nature. To the second group it would seem technology is the cause of our doom. To the first group, it is the thing that has brought us prosperity.
Mappo.
terry, modified 4 Months ago at 5/30/24 2:50 PM
Created 4 Months ago at 5/30/24 2:50 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent PostsChris M
terry - I have a serious question:
Do humans ever arrive at the singularity and thus be saved, or will the singularity represent a faster fall? I see two camps on this: 1) those who are fully invested in technology and believe it is our savior and 2) those who believe technology can't possibly save us - that we are doomed by our very nature. To the second group it would seem technology is the cause of our doom. To the first group, it is the thing that has brought us prosperity.
Mappo.
terry - I have a serious question:
Do humans ever arrive at the singularity and thus be saved, or will the singularity represent a faster fall? I see two camps on this: 1) those who are fully invested in technology and believe it is our savior and 2) those who believe technology can't possibly save us - that we are doomed by our very nature. To the second group it would seem technology is the cause of our doom. To the first group, it is the thing that has brought us prosperity.
Mappo.
We have met the singularity and it is us. Here Comes Everybody.
Brother, there are a large contingent of humans now who are grappling with precisely that question. The interview vanessa was talking about with daniel schmachtenberger-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_P8PLHvZygo
deals with precisely this question, among many other things.
He calls the two camps, "naive techno-optimism" and "naive techno-pessimism."
Following vanessa's work, we global northerners and our global capitalist system have optimized the human nervous system for dopamine addiction. This gives us that familiar drug high climax feeling and subsequent passivity. Other cultures, especially indigenous and sustainable cultures have optimized oxytocin, the cuddly socializing ingroup outgroup hormone and serotonin which is the true positive energy neurotransmitter and, importantly, acetylcholine for epiphanies. Vanessa indicates we need to develop a gut connection to the plants we use to sustain us, a visceral throughway. We are poisoning ourselves at every level.
Essentially as all biological organisms do we process nutrients into fertilizer. All food, perception, information comes in one end of the tubular sentient being and comes out the other. It is clear that as an organism devoted to maximum growth we have hit our limits of sustainability, indeed, surpassed them. Collapse of a system based on endless growth is imminent. Vanessa indicates that the collapse of civilization will not come about by material insufficiency, but as a collapse of the psychological infrastructure, the inability of social narrative to make enough sense for people to carry on as if normal.
Naivete is addressed by daniel in terms of broad and narrow boundary thinking, and this is where he segues into ai. Human thinking is measured by metrics which generally boil down to effective outcomes. An example is the un food program. The metrics involve how many meals fed to how many people, how many are left hungry, etc. These are narrow aims, when a more broadly intelligent food program would consider over use of fertilizers and pesticides, soil degradation, water use, etc.
Now we have ai to amplify human goal-directed intelligence, the road to hell being paved with good intentions we are already dealing with unforeseen consequences. Like any powerful technology our lives are changing dramatically, and as biological beings evolution has not equipped us for using such power responsibly. Or maybe it has, vanessa hopes so and works towards such an end. Plants such as ayahuasca can help but there needs to be a basic change to the neurotransmitter profile to appreciate what the plants want to help you know. Vanessa points out it is a foggy road we walk together and we need to trust the invisible realm knowable by direct intuition. If you seek mastery, security, surety, stability and peace, then don't read her book. You have to have the water up to your ass to begin to swim.
Technology used in service to narrow goals has led us to the precipice. Technology used to mitigate, elevate, restore and create broad boundary intelligent approaches to the ongoing collapse of global capitalism is the source of broad boundary techno-optimism. For us non-naive techno-pessimists, there is hospicing modernity and palliative care. What does the sane person do when over 90% of the population is seriously mentally ill? Brother, can you spare a smile?
Scatter golden leaves and tell the children it is candy, anything to get them out of the burning house. The house, my friend, will indeed burn down. Don't be naive about that. But son't give up, either. The least we can do is encourage broad boundary thinking.
terry, modified 4 Months ago at 5/30/24 4:27 PM
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RE: mapping mappo
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River Runs Red
(midnight oil)
1990
So you cut all the tall trees down
You poisoned the sky and the sea
You've taken what's good from the ground
But you left precious little for me
You remember the flood and the fall
We remember the light on the hill
There should be enough for us all
But the dollar is driving us still
River runs red
Black rain falls
Dust in my hand
River runs red
Black rain falls
On my bleeding land
So we came and conquered and found
Riches of commons and kings
Who strangled and wrestled the ground
But they never put back anything
Now I'm trapped like a dog in a cage
Wherever the truth is pursued
It must be the curse of the age
What's taken is never renewed
River runs red...
(midnight oil)
1990
So you cut all the tall trees down
You poisoned the sky and the sea
You've taken what's good from the ground
But you left precious little for me
You remember the flood and the fall
We remember the light on the hill
There should be enough for us all
But the dollar is driving us still
River runs red
Black rain falls
Dust in my hand
River runs red
Black rain falls
On my bleeding land
So we came and conquered and found
Riches of commons and kings
Who strangled and wrestled the ground
But they never put back anything
Now I'm trapped like a dog in a cage
Wherever the truth is pursued
It must be the curse of the age
What's taken is never renewed
River runs red...
terry, modified 4 Months ago at 6/1/24 10:59 PM
Created 4 Months ago at 6/1/24 10:59 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
eliezer yudkowsky!
great stuff...
watch the cartoon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9Figerh89g
then read the book
https://www.readthesequences.com/
great stuff...
watch the cartoon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9Figerh89g
then read the book
https://www.readthesequences.com/
Chris M, modified 4 Months ago at 6/2/24 7:32 AM
Created 4 Months ago at 6/2/24 7:32 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 5405 Join Date: 1/26/13 Recent Poststerry, modified 4 Months ago at 6/2/24 1:18 PM
Created 4 Months ago at 6/2/24 1:18 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent PostsChris M
Two Edged Sword
We Don't Know What We Don't Know
A Failure of Imagination
Two Edged Sword
We Don't Know What We Don't Know
A Failure of Imagination
"An empty map does not mean an empty territory."
terry, modified 4 Months ago at 6/2/24 1:25 PM
Created 4 Months ago at 6/2/24 1:25 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent PostsChris M
Two Edged Sword
We Don't Know What We Don't Know
A Failure of Imagination
Two Edged Sword
We Don't Know What We Don't Know
A Failure of Imagination
perhaps you would like to elaborate on these themes?
terry, modified 4 Months ago at 6/2/24 1:31 PM
Created 4 Months ago at 6/2/24 1:31 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Poststerry
eliezer yudkowsky!
great stuff...
watch the cartoon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9Figerh89g
then read the book
https://www.readthesequences.com/
eliezer yudkowsky!
great stuff...
watch the cartoon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9Figerh89g
then read the book
https://www.readthesequences.com/
we're all gonna die with eliezer yudkowsky
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA1sNLL6yg4&t=0s
(worth it for the opening disclamer alone)
Chris M, modified 4 Months ago at 6/2/24 3:54 PM
Created 4 Months ago at 6/2/24 3:54 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 5405 Join Date: 1/26/13 Recent Postsperhaps you would like to elaborate on these themes?
No elaboration is necessary, IMHO, terry. They're echoes of the themes in the video you posted a link to.
terry, modified 4 Months ago at 6/3/24 8:23 PM
Created 4 Months ago at 6/3/24 8:23 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent PostsChris M
No elaboration is necessary, IMHO, terry. They're echoes of the themes in the video you posted a link to.
perhaps you would like to elaborate on these themes?
No elaboration is necessary, IMHO, terry. They're echoes of the themes in the video you posted a link to.
We don't know what we don't know, but it is perhaps a afailure of the imagination for us not to discuss the two edged sword.
terry, modified 3 Months ago at 6/18/24 1:53 PM
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RE: mapping mappo
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It Don't Come Easy
Ringo Starr
It don't come easy
You know it don't come easy
It don't come easy
You know it don't come easy
Got to pay your dues if you wanna sing the blues
And you know it don't come easy
You don't have to shout or leap about
You can even play them easy
Forget about the past and all your sorrows
The future won't last, it will soon be your tomorrow
I don't ask for much, I only want trust
And you know it don't come easy
And this love of mine keeps growin' all the time
And you know it just ain't easy
Open up your heart, let's come together
Use a little love and we will make it work out better
Got to pay your dues if you wanna sing the blues
And you know it don't come easy
You don't have to shout or leap about
You can even play them easy
Please, remember peace is how we make it
Here within your reach if you're big enough to take it
I don't ask for much, I only want trust
And you know it don't come easy
And this love of mine keeps growin' all the time
And you know it don't come easy
Written by: Richard Starkey
Ringo Starr
It don't come easy
You know it don't come easy
It don't come easy
You know it don't come easy
Got to pay your dues if you wanna sing the blues
And you know it don't come easy
You don't have to shout or leap about
You can even play them easy
Forget about the past and all your sorrows
The future won't last, it will soon be your tomorrow
I don't ask for much, I only want trust
And you know it don't come easy
And this love of mine keeps growin' all the time
And you know it just ain't easy
Open up your heart, let's come together
Use a little love and we will make it work out better
Got to pay your dues if you wanna sing the blues
And you know it don't come easy
You don't have to shout or leap about
You can even play them easy
Please, remember peace is how we make it
Here within your reach if you're big enough to take it
I don't ask for much, I only want trust
And you know it don't come easy
And this love of mine keeps growin' all the time
And you know it don't come easy
Written by: Richard Starkey
terry, modified 3 Months ago at 6/18/24 2:01 PM
Created 3 Months ago at 6/18/24 2:01 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Poststerry, modified 3 Months ago at 6/18/24 9:01 PM
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RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
“It is only from the light which streams constantly from heaven that a tree can derive the energy to strike its roots deep into the soil. The tree is in fact rooted in the sky.”
— Simone Weil
— Simone Weil
Papa Che Dusko, modified 3 Months ago at 6/18/24 9:02 PM
Created 3 Months ago at 6/18/24 9:02 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 3048 Join Date: 3/1/20 Recent PostsPapa Che Dusko, modified 3 Months ago at 6/18/24 9:25 PM
Created 3 Months ago at 6/18/24 9:04 PM
RE: mapping mappo
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Uh oh love her voice and that guitar tone!
Here is right back at you babe!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrtzFfQ3W34
Here is right back at you babe!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrtzFfQ3W34
Papa Che Dusko, modified 3 Months ago at 6/18/24 9:31 PM
Created 3 Months ago at 6/18/24 9:31 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 3048 Join Date: 3/1/20 Recent Poststerry, modified 3 Months ago at 6/19/24 3:28 AM
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RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent PostsPapa Che Dusko
Uncertain
Uncertain
I thought the quote rather thich nhat hanhish. We're all sun powered by one mechanism or another.
Pratītyasamutpāda.
Papa Che Dusko, modified 3 Months ago at 6/19/24 12:45 PM
Created 3 Months ago at 6/19/24 12:45 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 3048 Join Date: 3/1/20 Recent Poststerry, modified 3 Months ago at 6/20/24 3:02 PM
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RE: mapping mappo
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RE: mapping mappo
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Matthew 25:35-40
King James Version
35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?
39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
King James Version
35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?
39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
terry, modified 3 Months ago at 6/20/24 3:34 PM
Created 3 Months ago at 6/20/24 3:34 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
from the gospel of thomas
(8) And he said, "The man is like a wise fisherman who cast his net into the sea and drew
it up from the sea full of small fish. Among them the wise fisherman found a fine large
fish. He threw all the small fish back into the sea and chose the large fish without
difficulty. Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear."
(8) And he said, "The man is like a wise fisherman who cast his net into the sea and drew
it up from the sea full of small fish. Among them the wise fisherman found a fine large
fish. He threw all the small fish back into the sea and chose the large fish without
difficulty. Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear."
terry, modified 3 Months ago at 6/20/24 3:43 PM
Created 3 Months ago at 6/20/24 3:43 PM
RE: mapping mappo
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from the rubaiyat of omar khayyam
LXIX.
Indeed, the Idols I have loved so long
Have done my Credit in Men's Eye much wrong:
Have drown'd my Honour in a shallow Cup,
And sold my Reputation for a Song.
LXX.
Indeed, indeed, Repentance oft before
I swore—but was I sober when I swore?
And then and then came Spring, and Rose-in-hand
My thread-bare Penitence a-pieces tore.
LXXI.
And much as Wine has play'd the Infidel,
And robb'd me of my Robe of Honour—well,
I often wonder what the Vintners buy
One half so precious as the Goods they sell.
LXIX.
Indeed, the Idols I have loved so long
Have done my Credit in Men's Eye much wrong:
Have drown'd my Honour in a shallow Cup,
And sold my Reputation for a Song.
LXX.
Indeed, indeed, Repentance oft before
I swore—but was I sober when I swore?
And then and then came Spring, and Rose-in-hand
My thread-bare Penitence a-pieces tore.
LXXI.
And much as Wine has play'd the Infidel,
And robb'd me of my Robe of Honour—well,
I often wonder what the Vintners buy
One half so precious as the Goods they sell.
terry, modified 3 Months ago at 6/21/24 1:30 AM
Created 3 Months ago at 6/21/24 1:30 AM
RE: mapping mappo
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RE: mapping mappo
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Created 3 Months ago at 6/22/24 8:26 PM
RE: mapping mappo
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hearing your song for the first time fifty years later...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKyQBqat5sc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rb4-SiqsYL4
I had to edit this to get the two different links to work, so hopefully you got the interview first and then the song...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKyQBqat5sc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rb4-SiqsYL4
I had to edit this to get the two different links to work, so hopefully you got the interview first and then the song...
terry, modified 3 Months ago at 6/23/24 12:55 AM
Created 3 Months ago at 6/23/24 12:55 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent PostsPapa Che Dusko
Uh oh love her voice and that guitar tone!
Here is right back at you babe!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrtzFfQ3W34
Uh oh love her voice and that guitar tone!
Here is right back at you babe!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrtzFfQ3W34
beth hart can sing the blues
having paid some dues
(and talk about guitar tone!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEHwO_UEp7A
but no one does it better than this...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZt1xKtPbUQ
terry, modified 3 Months ago at 6/23/24 3:17 AM
Created 3 Months ago at 6/23/24 3:17 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
The map of mappo is necessarily in four dimensions, marking ongoing decline. These declines may be viewed as necessary to organic development.
The flower reaches a peak of beauty in color, form and odor, and then decays, disintegrates. A fruit forms, at first dull and sour, reaching a peak of beauty in color, form, odor and taste. Even capacity for being nourishment. And then the fruit decays. A seed forms...
The flower is when an elite reaches a peak of mental development, and begins to leaven the mass. The fruit is when the masses rise up in revolutionary accord.
tao te ching trans feng
Thirty-eight
A truly good man is not aware of his goodness,
And is therefore good.
A foolish man tries to be good,
And is therefore not good.
A truly good man does nothing,
Yet leaves nothing undone.
A foolish man is always doing,
Yet much remains to be done.
When a truly kind man does something, he leaves nothing undone.
When a just man does something, he leaves a great deal to be done.
When a disciplinarian does something and no one responds,
He rolls up his sleeves in an attempt to enforce order.
Therefore when Tao is lost, there is goodness.
When goodness is lost, there is kindness.
When kindness is lost, there is justice.
When justice is lost, there ritual.
Now ritual is the husk of faith and loyalty, the beginning of confusion.
Knowledge of the future is only a flowery trapping of Tao.
It is the beginning of folly.
Therefore the truly great man dwells on what is real and not what is on the surface,
On the fruit and not the flower.
Therefore accept the one and reject the other.
ttc trans yutang
38. Degeneration
The man of superior character is not (conscious of his) character.
Hence he has character.
The man of inferior character (is intent on) not losing character.
Hence he is devoid of character.
The man of superior character never acts,
Nor ever (does so) with an ulterior motive.
The man of inferior character acts,
And (does so) with an ulterior motive.
The man of superior kindness acts,
But (does so) without an ulterior motive.
The man of superior justice acts,
And (does so) with an ulterior motive.
(But when) the man of superior li acts and finds no response,
He rolls up his sleeves to force it on others.
Therefore:
After Tao is lost, then (arises the doctrine of) humanity.
After humanity is lost, then (arises the doctrine of) justice.
After justice is lost, then (arises the doctrine of) li.
Now li is the thinning out of loyalty and honesty of heart.
And the beginning of chaos.
The prophets are the flowering of Tao
And the origin of folly.
Therefore the noble man dwells in the heavy (base),
And not in the thinning (end).
He dwells in the fruit,
And not in the flowering (expression).
Therefore he rejects the one and accepts the other.
li is "the confucian doctrine of social order and control, characterized by rituals, courtesy and good manners"
The flower reaches a peak of beauty in color, form and odor, and then decays, disintegrates. A fruit forms, at first dull and sour, reaching a peak of beauty in color, form, odor and taste. Even capacity for being nourishment. And then the fruit decays. A seed forms...
The flower is when an elite reaches a peak of mental development, and begins to leaven the mass. The fruit is when the masses rise up in revolutionary accord.
tao te ching trans feng
Thirty-eight
A truly good man is not aware of his goodness,
And is therefore good.
A foolish man tries to be good,
And is therefore not good.
A truly good man does nothing,
Yet leaves nothing undone.
A foolish man is always doing,
Yet much remains to be done.
When a truly kind man does something, he leaves nothing undone.
When a just man does something, he leaves a great deal to be done.
When a disciplinarian does something and no one responds,
He rolls up his sleeves in an attempt to enforce order.
Therefore when Tao is lost, there is goodness.
When goodness is lost, there is kindness.
When kindness is lost, there is justice.
When justice is lost, there ritual.
Now ritual is the husk of faith and loyalty, the beginning of confusion.
Knowledge of the future is only a flowery trapping of Tao.
It is the beginning of folly.
Therefore the truly great man dwells on what is real and not what is on the surface,
On the fruit and not the flower.
Therefore accept the one and reject the other.
ttc trans yutang
38. Degeneration
The man of superior character is not (conscious of his) character.
Hence he has character.
The man of inferior character (is intent on) not losing character.
Hence he is devoid of character.
The man of superior character never acts,
Nor ever (does so) with an ulterior motive.
The man of inferior character acts,
And (does so) with an ulterior motive.
The man of superior kindness acts,
But (does so) without an ulterior motive.
The man of superior justice acts,
And (does so) with an ulterior motive.
(But when) the man of superior li acts and finds no response,
He rolls up his sleeves to force it on others.
Therefore:
After Tao is lost, then (arises the doctrine of) humanity.
After humanity is lost, then (arises the doctrine of) justice.
After justice is lost, then (arises the doctrine of) li.
Now li is the thinning out of loyalty and honesty of heart.
And the beginning of chaos.
The prophets are the flowering of Tao
And the origin of folly.
Therefore the noble man dwells in the heavy (base),
And not in the thinning (end).
He dwells in the fruit,
And not in the flowering (expression).
Therefore he rejects the one and accepts the other.
li is "the confucian doctrine of social order and control, characterized by rituals, courtesy and good manners"
terry, modified 3 Months ago at 6/23/24 4:07 AM
Created 3 Months ago at 6/23/24 4:07 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
FOR EVERYMAN
(jackson browne)
Everybody I talk to is ready to leave with the light of the morning
They've seen the end coming down long enough to believe that they've heard their last warning
Standing alone, each has his own ticket in his hand
And as the evening descends, I sit thinking 'bout everyman
Seems like I've always been looking for some other place to get it together
Where, with a few of my friends, I could give up the race and maybe find something better
But all my fine dreams, well thought-out schemes to gain the motherland
Have all eventually come down to waiting for everyman
Waiting here for everyman
Make it on your own if you think you can
If you see somewhere to go, I understand
Waiting here for everyman
Don't ask me if he'll show
Baby, I don't know
Make it on your own if you think you can
Somewhere later on, you'll have to take a stand
Then you're gonna need a hand
Everybody's just waiting to hear from the one who can give them the answers
And lead them back to that place in the warmth of the sun where sweet childhood still dances
Who'll come along and hold out that strong but gentle father's hand?
Long ago, I heard someone say something 'bout everyman
Waiting here for everyman
Make it on your own, make it if you think you can
If you see somewhere to go, I understand
I'm not tryin' to tell you that I've seen the plan
Turn and walk away if you think I am
But don't think too badly of one who's left holding sand
He's just another dreamer, dreamin' 'bout everyman
Written by: Jackson Browne
A Dream Within a Dream
BY EDGAR ALLAN POE
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow —
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand —
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep — while I weep!
O God! Can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
(jackson browne)
Everybody I talk to is ready to leave with the light of the morning
They've seen the end coming down long enough to believe that they've heard their last warning
Standing alone, each has his own ticket in his hand
And as the evening descends, I sit thinking 'bout everyman
Seems like I've always been looking for some other place to get it together
Where, with a few of my friends, I could give up the race and maybe find something better
But all my fine dreams, well thought-out schemes to gain the motherland
Have all eventually come down to waiting for everyman
Waiting here for everyman
Make it on your own if you think you can
If you see somewhere to go, I understand
Waiting here for everyman
Don't ask me if he'll show
Baby, I don't know
Make it on your own if you think you can
Somewhere later on, you'll have to take a stand
Then you're gonna need a hand
Everybody's just waiting to hear from the one who can give them the answers
And lead them back to that place in the warmth of the sun where sweet childhood still dances
Who'll come along and hold out that strong but gentle father's hand?
Long ago, I heard someone say something 'bout everyman
Waiting here for everyman
Make it on your own, make it if you think you can
If you see somewhere to go, I understand
I'm not tryin' to tell you that I've seen the plan
Turn and walk away if you think I am
But don't think too badly of one who's left holding sand
He's just another dreamer, dreamin' 'bout everyman
Written by: Jackson Browne
A Dream Within a Dream
BY EDGAR ALLAN POE
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow —
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand —
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep — while I weep!
O God! Can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
Papa Che Dusko, modified 3 Months ago at 6/23/24 6:49 AM
Created 3 Months ago at 6/23/24 6:49 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 3048 Join Date: 3/1/20 Recent Poststerry, modified 3 Months ago at 6/24/24 4:29 PM
Created 3 Months ago at 6/24/24 4:29 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent PostsPapa Che Dusko
Don't know = impossible to verify
Don't know = impossible to verify
"Don' know" is the spirit of inquiry, the very substance of verification. To acknowledge that we don't know what we encounter opens us up to learning about it. Objects reveal themselves to one who doesn't know and knows it. Those who think they know live in delusion and ignorance. Not because what they know is wrong, but because it is old and worn, familiar shorthand which has lost its original meaning. What we take for granted blinds us to what is happening, to who we are now. Mcluhan called this state of mind "rear-view mirrorism," wherein we see everything happening to us through the lens of past events. By attempting to only proceed when we know what is going on as though it had already happened and was as fixed as the past, everything fated and determined and thus predictable, we only live in a projected dream world.
What you think you know ceases to exist for you, becomes a part of the world which has become background, context. The value of "noting" is to freshly encounter our reality with presence. Being present, we note at least that fact (cogito, ergo sum). Background becomes foreground, we perceive gestalts.
Everything you perceive is projected in consciousness as a balance between opposites. This is the basis of saussure's understanding of language. The world is understood through language.
Thoughts are secreted by the brain like saliva and aid mastication and digestion of perception, converting it into the world we live in and perceive in. This linguistic world is our common reality. It is quite independent of the natural world, which is why we are so fucked up. We try to use language to control nature, but nature abhors a boss. Humanity is like the preying mantis which shakes its fist at the oxcart as it rolls over her. Nature is exerting her power in response to our arrogance. Untamed.
Ramakrishna's old tale of two men in a mango orchard applies. One entered the orchard and studied the mangos, counted them, verified that they were mangoes, while the other sat under a tree eating them. Mangoes impossible to verify but readily eaten.
from
Key Theories of Ferdinand de Saussure
BY NASRULLAH MAMBROL on MARCH 12, 2018 •
Saussure says: ‘in language [langue] there are only differences. Even more important a difference generally implies positive terms between which the difference is set up; but in language, there are only differences without positive terms’ (Saussure 1976: 166 and 1993: 118). The point is not only that value, or significance, is established through the relation between one term and another in the language system – so that, in the example used by Saussure, ‘t’ can be written in a variety of ways and still be understood – but that the very terms of the system itself are the product of difference: there are no positive terms prior to the system. This implies that a language exists as a kind of totality, or it does not exist at all. Saussure uses the image of the chess game to illustrate the differential nature of language. For in chess, not only is the present configuration of pieces on the board all that matters to the newcomer to the game (no further insight would be gained from knowing how the pieces came to be arranged in this way), but any number of items could be substituted for the pieces on the board (a button for a king, etc.) because what constitutes the game’s viability is the differential relationship between the pieces, and not their intrinsic value. To see language as being like a chess game, where the position of the pieces at a given moment is what counts, is to see it from a synchronic perspective. To give the historical approach precedence – as the nineteenth century did – is, by contrast, to view language from a diachronic perspective. In the Course, Saussure privileges the synchronic over the diachronic aspect because it provides a clearer picture of the factors present in any state of language.
terry, modified 3 Months ago at 6/24/24 8:49 PM
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RE: mapping mappo
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from the phenomenology of spirit, gwf hegel
I N TR O D U C T I O N
73· It is a natural assumption that in philosophy, before we start to deal with its proper subject-matter, viz. the actual cognition of what truly is, one must first of all come to an understanding about cognition, which is regarded either as the instrument to get hold of the Absolute, or as the medium through which one discovers it. A certain uneasiness seems justified, partly because there are different types of cognition, and one of them might be more appropriate than another for the attainment of this goal, so that we could make a bad choice of means; and partly because cognition is a faculty of a definite kind and scope, and thus, without a more precise definition of its nature and limits, we might grasp clouds of error instead of the heaven of truth. This feeling of uneasiness is surely bound to be transformed into the conviction that the whole project of securing for consciousness through cognition what exists in itself is absurd, and that there is a boundary between cognition and the Absolute that completely separates them. For, if cognition is the instrument for getting hold of absolute being, it is obvious that the use of an instrument on a thing certainly does not let it be what it is for itself, but rather sets out to reshape and alter it. If, on the other hand, cognition is not an instrument of our activity but a more or less passive medium through which the light of truth reaches us, then again we do not receive the truth as it is in itself, but only as it exists through and in this medium. Either way we employ a means which immediately brings about the opposite of its own end; or rather, what is really absurd is that we should make use of a means at all.
It would seem, to be sure, that this evil could be remedied through an acquaintance with the way in which the instrument works; for this would enable us to eliminate from the representation of the Absolute which we have gained through it whatever is due to the instrument, and thus get the truth in its purity. But this 'improvement' would in fact only bring us back to where we were before. If we remove from a reshaped thing what the instrument has done to it, then the thing-here
the Absolute-becomes for us exactly what it was before this [accordingly] superfluous effort. On the other hand, if the Absolute is supposed merely to be brought nearer to us through this instrument, without anything in it being altered, like a bird caught by a lime-twig, it would surely laugh our little ruse to scorn, if it were not with us, in and for itself, all along, and of its own volition. For a ruse is just what cognition would be in such a case, since it would, with its manifold exertions, be giving itself the air of doing something quite different from creating a merely immediate and therefore effortless relationship. Or, if by testing cognition, which we conceive of as a medium, we get to know the law of its refraction, it is again useless to subtract this from the end result. For it is not the refraction
of the ray, but the ray itself whereby truth reaches us, that is cognition; and if this were removed, all that would be indicated would be a pure direction or a blank space.
74· Meanwhile, if the fear of falling into error sets up a mistrust of Science, which in the absence of such scruples gets on with the work itself, and actually cognizes something, it is hard to see why we should not turn round and mistrust this very mistrust. Should we not be concerned as to whether this fear of error is not just the error itself? Indeed, this fear takes some thing-a great deal in fact-for granted as truth, supporting its scruples and inferences on what is itself in need of prior scrutiny to see if it is true. To be specific, it takes for granted certain ideas about cognition as an instrument and as a medium, and assumes that there is a difference between ourselves and this cognition. Above all, it presupposes that the Absolute stands on one side and cognition on the other, independent and separated from it, and yet is something real; or in other words, it presupposes that cognition which, since it is excluded from the Absolute, is surely outside of the truth as well, is nevertheless true, an assumption whereby what calls itself fear of error reveals itself rather as fear of the truth.
I N TR O D U C T I O N
73· It is a natural assumption that in philosophy, before we start to deal with its proper subject-matter, viz. the actual cognition of what truly is, one must first of all come to an understanding about cognition, which is regarded either as the instrument to get hold of the Absolute, or as the medium through which one discovers it. A certain uneasiness seems justified, partly because there are different types of cognition, and one of them might be more appropriate than another for the attainment of this goal, so that we could make a bad choice of means; and partly because cognition is a faculty of a definite kind and scope, and thus, without a more precise definition of its nature and limits, we might grasp clouds of error instead of the heaven of truth. This feeling of uneasiness is surely bound to be transformed into the conviction that the whole project of securing for consciousness through cognition what exists in itself is absurd, and that there is a boundary between cognition and the Absolute that completely separates them. For, if cognition is the instrument for getting hold of absolute being, it is obvious that the use of an instrument on a thing certainly does not let it be what it is for itself, but rather sets out to reshape and alter it. If, on the other hand, cognition is not an instrument of our activity but a more or less passive medium through which the light of truth reaches us, then again we do not receive the truth as it is in itself, but only as it exists through and in this medium. Either way we employ a means which immediately brings about the opposite of its own end; or rather, what is really absurd is that we should make use of a means at all.
It would seem, to be sure, that this evil could be remedied through an acquaintance with the way in which the instrument works; for this would enable us to eliminate from the representation of the Absolute which we have gained through it whatever is due to the instrument, and thus get the truth in its purity. But this 'improvement' would in fact only bring us back to where we were before. If we remove from a reshaped thing what the instrument has done to it, then the thing-here
the Absolute-becomes for us exactly what it was before this [accordingly] superfluous effort. On the other hand, if the Absolute is supposed merely to be brought nearer to us through this instrument, without anything in it being altered, like a bird caught by a lime-twig, it would surely laugh our little ruse to scorn, if it were not with us, in and for itself, all along, and of its own volition. For a ruse is just what cognition would be in such a case, since it would, with its manifold exertions, be giving itself the air of doing something quite different from creating a merely immediate and therefore effortless relationship. Or, if by testing cognition, which we conceive of as a medium, we get to know the law of its refraction, it is again useless to subtract this from the end result. For it is not the refraction
of the ray, but the ray itself whereby truth reaches us, that is cognition; and if this were removed, all that would be indicated would be a pure direction or a blank space.
74· Meanwhile, if the fear of falling into error sets up a mistrust of Science, which in the absence of such scruples gets on with the work itself, and actually cognizes something, it is hard to see why we should not turn round and mistrust this very mistrust. Should we not be concerned as to whether this fear of error is not just the error itself? Indeed, this fear takes some thing-a great deal in fact-for granted as truth, supporting its scruples and inferences on what is itself in need of prior scrutiny to see if it is true. To be specific, it takes for granted certain ideas about cognition as an instrument and as a medium, and assumes that there is a difference between ourselves and this cognition. Above all, it presupposes that the Absolute stands on one side and cognition on the other, independent and separated from it, and yet is something real; or in other words, it presupposes that cognition which, since it is excluded from the Absolute, is surely outside of the truth as well, is nevertheless true, an assumption whereby what calls itself fear of error reveals itself rather as fear of the truth.
Papa Che Dusko, modified 3 Months ago at 6/24/24 9:23 PM
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RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 3048 Join Date: 3/1/20 Recent PostsPapa Che Dusko, modified 3 Months ago at 6/24/24 9:25 PM
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RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 3048 Join Date: 3/1/20 Recent Poststerry, modified 3 Months ago at 6/25/24 5:23 PM
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RE: mapping mappo
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Please say not you've got a 2nd one! You need to buy another Uke!
I haven't gotten a second dog yet, but I intend to. And that's a good idea, I think I will name him "uke."
I haven't gotten a second dog yet, but I intend to. And that's a good idea, I think I will name him "uke."
Papa Che Dusko, modified 3 Months ago at 6/25/24 9:16 PM
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RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 3048 Join Date: 3/1/20 Recent PostsNot two, not one, modified 3 Months ago at 6/26/24 12:55 PM
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RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 1047 Join Date: 7/13/17 Recent Poststerry
from the phenomenology of spirit, gwf hegel
I N TR O D U C T I O N
73· It is a natural assumption that in philosophy, before we start to deal with its proper subject-matter, viz. the actual cognition of what truly is, one must first of all come to an understanding about cognition, which is regarded either as the instrument to get hold of the Absolute, or as the medium through which one discovers it. A certain uneasiness seems justified, partly because there are different types of cognition, and one of them might be more appropriate than another for the attainment of this goal, so that we could make a bad choice of means; and partly because cognition is a faculty of a definite kind and scope, and thus, without a more precise definition of its nature and limits, we might grasp clouds of error instead of the heaven of truth. This feeling of uneasiness is surely bound to be transformed into the conviction that the whole project of securing for consciousness through cognition what exists in itself is absurd, and that there is a boundary between cognition and the Absolute that completely separates them. For, if cognition is the instrument for getting hold of absolute being, it is obvious that the use of an instrument on a thing certainly does not let it be what it is for itself, but rather sets out to reshape and alter it. If, on the other hand, cognition is not an instrument of our activity but a more or less passive medium through which the light of truth reaches us, then again we do not receive the truth as it is in itself, but only as it exists through and in this medium. Either way we employ a means which immediately brings about the opposite of its own end; or rather, what is really absurd is that we should make use of a means at all.
It would seem, to be sure, that this evil could be remedied through an acquaintance with the way in which the instrument works; for this would enable us to eliminate from the representation of the Absolute which we have gained through it whatever is due to the instrument, and thus get the truth in its purity. But this 'improvement' would in fact only bring us back to where we were before. If we remove from a reshaped thing what the instrument has done to it, then the thing-here
the Absolute-becomes for us exactly what it was before this [accordingly] superfluous effort. On the other hand, if the Absolute is supposed merely to be brought nearer to us through this instrument, without anything in it being altered, like a bird caught by a lime-twig, it would surely laugh our little ruse to scorn, if it were not with us, in and for itself, all along, and of its own volition. For a ruse is just what cognition would be in such a case, since it would, with its manifold exertions, be giving itself the air of doing something quite different from creating a merely immediate and therefore effortless relationship. Or, if by testing cognition, which we conceive of as a medium, we get to know the law of its refraction, it is again useless to subtract this from the end result. For it is not the refraction
of the ray, but the ray itself whereby truth reaches us, that is cognition; and if this were removed, all that would be indicated would be a pure direction or a blank space.
74· Meanwhile, if the fear of falling into error sets up a mistrust of Science, which in the absence of such scruples gets on with the work itself, and actually cognizes something, it is hard to see why we should not turn round and mistrust this very mistrust. Should we not be concerned as to whether this fear of error is not just the error itself? Indeed, this fear takes some thing-a great deal in fact-for granted as truth, supporting its scruples and inferences on what is itself in need of prior scrutiny to see if it is true. To be specific, it takes for granted certain ideas about cognition as an instrument and as a medium, and assumes that there is a difference between ourselves and this cognition. Above all, it presupposes that the Absolute stands on one side and cognition on the other, independent and separated from it, and yet is something real; or in other words, it presupposes that cognition which, since it is excluded from the Absolute, is surely outside of the truth as well, is nevertheless true, an assumption whereby what calls itself fear of error reveals itself rather as fear of the truth.
from the phenomenology of spirit, gwf hegel
I N TR O D U C T I O N
73· It is a natural assumption that in philosophy, before we start to deal with its proper subject-matter, viz. the actual cognition of what truly is, one must first of all come to an understanding about cognition, which is regarded either as the instrument to get hold of the Absolute, or as the medium through which one discovers it. A certain uneasiness seems justified, partly because there are different types of cognition, and one of them might be more appropriate than another for the attainment of this goal, so that we could make a bad choice of means; and partly because cognition is a faculty of a definite kind and scope, and thus, without a more precise definition of its nature and limits, we might grasp clouds of error instead of the heaven of truth. This feeling of uneasiness is surely bound to be transformed into the conviction that the whole project of securing for consciousness through cognition what exists in itself is absurd, and that there is a boundary between cognition and the Absolute that completely separates them. For, if cognition is the instrument for getting hold of absolute being, it is obvious that the use of an instrument on a thing certainly does not let it be what it is for itself, but rather sets out to reshape and alter it. If, on the other hand, cognition is not an instrument of our activity but a more or less passive medium through which the light of truth reaches us, then again we do not receive the truth as it is in itself, but only as it exists through and in this medium. Either way we employ a means which immediately brings about the opposite of its own end; or rather, what is really absurd is that we should make use of a means at all.
It would seem, to be sure, that this evil could be remedied through an acquaintance with the way in which the instrument works; for this would enable us to eliminate from the representation of the Absolute which we have gained through it whatever is due to the instrument, and thus get the truth in its purity. But this 'improvement' would in fact only bring us back to where we were before. If we remove from a reshaped thing what the instrument has done to it, then the thing-here
the Absolute-becomes for us exactly what it was before this [accordingly] superfluous effort. On the other hand, if the Absolute is supposed merely to be brought nearer to us through this instrument, without anything in it being altered, like a bird caught by a lime-twig, it would surely laugh our little ruse to scorn, if it were not with us, in and for itself, all along, and of its own volition. For a ruse is just what cognition would be in such a case, since it would, with its manifold exertions, be giving itself the air of doing something quite different from creating a merely immediate and therefore effortless relationship. Or, if by testing cognition, which we conceive of as a medium, we get to know the law of its refraction, it is again useless to subtract this from the end result. For it is not the refraction
of the ray, but the ray itself whereby truth reaches us, that is cognition; and if this were removed, all that would be indicated would be a pure direction or a blank space.
74· Meanwhile, if the fear of falling into error sets up a mistrust of Science, which in the absence of such scruples gets on with the work itself, and actually cognizes something, it is hard to see why we should not turn round and mistrust this very mistrust. Should we not be concerned as to whether this fear of error is not just the error itself? Indeed, this fear takes some thing-a great deal in fact-for granted as truth, supporting its scruples and inferences on what is itself in need of prior scrutiny to see if it is true. To be specific, it takes for granted certain ideas about cognition as an instrument and as a medium, and assumes that there is a difference between ourselves and this cognition. Above all, it presupposes that the Absolute stands on one side and cognition on the other, independent and separated from it, and yet is something real; or in other words, it presupposes that cognition which, since it is excluded from the Absolute, is surely outside of the truth as well, is nevertheless true, an assumption whereby what calls itself fear of error reveals itself rather as fear of the truth.
actually terry that is really good
but the path is worthwhile even if it leads nowhere - in fact that is the point really, to realise the nowhere instead of the somewhere
of course I'm sure everything you write is very good, but I was just driving by so I shot at what I could see
terry, modified 3 Months ago at 6/27/24 3:36 PM
Created 3 Months ago at 6/27/24 3:36 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent PostsNot two, not one
actually terry that is really good
but the path is worthwhile even if it leads nowhere - in fact that is the point really, to realise the nowhere instead of the somewhere
of course I'm sure everything you write is very good, but I was just driving by so I shot at what I could see
terry
from the phenomenology of spirit, gwf hegel
I N TR O D U C T I O N
73· It is a natural assumption that in philosophy, before we start to deal with its proper subject-matter, viz. the actual cognition of what truly is, one must first of all come to an understanding about cognition, which is regarded either as the instrument to get hold of the Absolute, or as the medium through which one discovers it. A certain uneasiness seems justified, partly because there are different types of cognition, and one of them might be more appropriate than another for the attainment of this goal, so that we could make a bad choice of means; and partly because cognition is a faculty of a definite kind and scope, and thus, without a more precise definition of its nature and limits, we might grasp clouds of error instead of the heaven of truth. This feeling of uneasiness is surely bound to be transformed into the conviction that the whole project of securing for consciousness through cognition what exists in itself is absurd, and that there is a boundary between cognition and the Absolute that completely separates them. For, if cognition is the instrument for getting hold of absolute being, it is obvious that the use of an instrument on a thing certainly does not let it be what it is for itself, but rather sets out to reshape and alter it. If, on the other hand, cognition is not an instrument of our activity but a more or less passive medium through which the light of truth reaches us, then again we do not receive the truth as it is in itself, but only as it exists through and in this medium. Either way we employ a means which immediately brings about the opposite of its own end; or rather, what is really absurd is that we should make use of a means at all.
It would seem, to be sure, that this evil could be remedied through an acquaintance with the way in which the instrument works; for this would enable us to eliminate from the representation of the Absolute which we have gained through it whatever is due to the instrument, and thus get the truth in its purity. But this 'improvement' would in fact only bring us back to where we were before. If we remove from a reshaped thing what the instrument has done to it, then the thing-here
the Absolute-becomes for us exactly what it was before this [accordingly] superfluous effort. On the other hand, if the Absolute is supposed merely to be brought nearer to us through this instrument, without anything in it being altered, like a bird caught by a lime-twig, it would surely laugh our little ruse to scorn, if it were not with us, in and for itself, all along, and of its own volition. For a ruse is just what cognition would be in such a case, since it would, with its manifold exertions, be giving itself the air of doing something quite different from creating a merely immediate and therefore effortless relationship. Or, if by testing cognition, which we conceive of as a medium, we get to know the law of its refraction, it is again useless to subtract this from the end result. For it is not the refraction
of the ray, but the ray itself whereby truth reaches us, that is cognition; and if this were removed, all that would be indicated would be a pure direction or a blank space.
74· Meanwhile, if the fear of falling into error sets up a mistrust of Science, which in the absence of such scruples gets on with the work itself, and actually cognizes something, it is hard to see why we should not turn round and mistrust this very mistrust. Should we not be concerned as to whether this fear of error is not just the error itself? Indeed, this fear takes some thing-a great deal in fact-for granted as truth, supporting its scruples and inferences on what is itself in need of prior scrutiny to see if it is true. To be specific, it takes for granted certain ideas about cognition as an instrument and as a medium, and assumes that there is a difference between ourselves and this cognition. Above all, it presupposes that the Absolute stands on one side and cognition on the other, independent and separated from it, and yet is something real; or in other words, it presupposes that cognition which, since it is excluded from the Absolute, is surely outside of the truth as well, is nevertheless true, an assumption whereby what calls itself fear of error reveals itself rather as fear of the truth.
from the phenomenology of spirit, gwf hegel
I N TR O D U C T I O N
73· It is a natural assumption that in philosophy, before we start to deal with its proper subject-matter, viz. the actual cognition of what truly is, one must first of all come to an understanding about cognition, which is regarded either as the instrument to get hold of the Absolute, or as the medium through which one discovers it. A certain uneasiness seems justified, partly because there are different types of cognition, and one of them might be more appropriate than another for the attainment of this goal, so that we could make a bad choice of means; and partly because cognition is a faculty of a definite kind and scope, and thus, without a more precise definition of its nature and limits, we might grasp clouds of error instead of the heaven of truth. This feeling of uneasiness is surely bound to be transformed into the conviction that the whole project of securing for consciousness through cognition what exists in itself is absurd, and that there is a boundary between cognition and the Absolute that completely separates them. For, if cognition is the instrument for getting hold of absolute being, it is obvious that the use of an instrument on a thing certainly does not let it be what it is for itself, but rather sets out to reshape and alter it. If, on the other hand, cognition is not an instrument of our activity but a more or less passive medium through which the light of truth reaches us, then again we do not receive the truth as it is in itself, but only as it exists through and in this medium. Either way we employ a means which immediately brings about the opposite of its own end; or rather, what is really absurd is that we should make use of a means at all.
It would seem, to be sure, that this evil could be remedied through an acquaintance with the way in which the instrument works; for this would enable us to eliminate from the representation of the Absolute which we have gained through it whatever is due to the instrument, and thus get the truth in its purity. But this 'improvement' would in fact only bring us back to where we were before. If we remove from a reshaped thing what the instrument has done to it, then the thing-here
the Absolute-becomes for us exactly what it was before this [accordingly] superfluous effort. On the other hand, if the Absolute is supposed merely to be brought nearer to us through this instrument, without anything in it being altered, like a bird caught by a lime-twig, it would surely laugh our little ruse to scorn, if it were not with us, in and for itself, all along, and of its own volition. For a ruse is just what cognition would be in such a case, since it would, with its manifold exertions, be giving itself the air of doing something quite different from creating a merely immediate and therefore effortless relationship. Or, if by testing cognition, which we conceive of as a medium, we get to know the law of its refraction, it is again useless to subtract this from the end result. For it is not the refraction
of the ray, but the ray itself whereby truth reaches us, that is cognition; and if this were removed, all that would be indicated would be a pure direction or a blank space.
74· Meanwhile, if the fear of falling into error sets up a mistrust of Science, which in the absence of such scruples gets on with the work itself, and actually cognizes something, it is hard to see why we should not turn round and mistrust this very mistrust. Should we not be concerned as to whether this fear of error is not just the error itself? Indeed, this fear takes some thing-a great deal in fact-for granted as truth, supporting its scruples and inferences on what is itself in need of prior scrutiny to see if it is true. To be specific, it takes for granted certain ideas about cognition as an instrument and as a medium, and assumes that there is a difference between ourselves and this cognition. Above all, it presupposes that the Absolute stands on one side and cognition on the other, independent and separated from it, and yet is something real; or in other words, it presupposes that cognition which, since it is excluded from the Absolute, is surely outside of the truth as well, is nevertheless true, an assumption whereby what calls itself fear of error reveals itself rather as fear of the truth.
actually terry that is really good
but the path is worthwhile even if it leads nowhere - in fact that is the point really, to realise the nowhere instead of the somewhere
of course I'm sure everything you write is very good, but I was just driving by so I shot at what I could see
It pleases me, my friend, to be able to quote works of real depth and have them understood by real folks. Philosophers, like mathematicians, tend to think they understand what they only take for granted, having once (sort of) understood it.
The phenomenology of spirit has depth because it submerges the ego in the Notion, the totality, as just another thing. A reaction, an antithesis, to descartes and kant, who saw ego as a priori, original.
Hegel uses positive and negative as technical, precise terms. What is positive has been posited, that is, actively projected ex nihilo. More importantly, what is negative and negates is the self, the individual cognition. As negative it doesn't really exist, which explains parmenides insistence on the nonexistence of the negative and the affirmation of being as all, unmoved and unmoving.
The individual cognizing of any thing is an act of negation. All individuation is selective, "intentional" and "reduction" in husserl's phenomenology. Consciousness is always intentional and always negative, the source of negativity being the self., which is pure negatvity. An example is putting black marks on paper, or white chalk on a blackboard. Without the ignored background, the act of negation, the marks are senseless.
Hegel is not merely explaining this to leave his footprints. He is constantly reminding us of the real world we are attempting to understand the cognizing of. He saw the french revolution (all political revolutions) as the frut of the flowering of the mind in the axial age. At first one human is free, the king, the emperor, the pharaoh is deified and lives in heaven forever. Then an elite. Then the masses achieve the potential for liberation. (At first only pharaoh could live forever, eventually everyone wanted eternal life too, mummify me!) He saw constitutional monarchy as the end of politics, of history. The perfection of the human mind personified as the bureaucratic seate which ensured the welfare of all and equality under the law and universal prosperity. One world, under god, with liberty and justice for all. Potentially.
But the terror followed the revolution, the fruit decayed. Hegel was admittedly an idealist. The ideals remain as seed.
I heartily recommend gregory sadler's"half hour hegel" series in which he goes through the entire phenomenology of spirit pargraph by paragraph, a process well justified by the work's depth. There are 379 videos in the series. Early on he takes a few digs at "mindfulness teachers" who don't understand cognition in hegelian terms.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4gvlOxpKKIgR4OyOt31isknkVH2Kweq2
you said
the point really, to realise the nowhere instead of the somewhere
the point of meditation...
and then to integrate the counterpoint that somewhere is nowhere...
form is emptiness
hegel's goal is to "sublate" the anitheses and come to a state in which the ego and the world are experienced as integral, as one pearl... no distance, no distinction between self and other positied or negated...
phenomenologically we experience one emergent thing (arising, persisting, passing away) after another, all are spontaneous and none is under any control...no where is any self nature...
from the rubaiyat of o k
XLVI.
For in and out, above, about, below,
'Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-show,
Play'd in a Box whose Candle is the Sun,
Round which we Phantom Figures come and go.
XLVIX.
'Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days
Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:
Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.
Papa Che Dusko, modified 3 Months ago at 6/29/24 7:45 PM
Created 3 Months ago at 6/29/24 7:44 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 3048 Join Date: 3/1/20 Recent Posts
"A Dream Within a Dream BY EDGAR ALLAN POE ...
... But a dream within a dream?"
I think Edgar and I were born on the same day, the January 19th! Apparently, the jan 19th is described as "the day of dreams and visions" ... if one believes in such things!
... But a dream within a dream?"
I think Edgar and I were born on the same day, the January 19th! Apparently, the jan 19th is described as "the day of dreams and visions" ... if one believes in such things!
terry, modified 3 Months ago at 6/30/24 12:35 PM
Created 3 Months ago at 6/30/24 12:35 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
resilience
a comment made on the eye of the storm podcast featuring yanis varoufakis and gabor mate
@KirillySpace
1 month ago
I experienced a sudden fall from grace, out of 15 months of samadhi, on account of a long covid brain inflammation episode. That was kind of terrifying, in that the thinking mind suddenly switched on. It went from open, clear, vastness to overload - with every waking moment filled with racing, chaotic, incomplete shards of thoughts. I instantly decided to pay the mind no mind and thought that when I was better I would settle down, quieten down and go back into samadhi. But as time moved on and I started to recover from long covid, possibly 9 months later, I didn't want to return to nothingness as Israel had started dropping bombs on the Palestinians and I was now in deep horror, grief cycling and found that the only spirituality that made sense was in
bearing witness to the genocide and using all my facilties to write ️ to politicians, media outlets, work the social media channels and volunteer. I had zero inclination to sit with non duality teachers who I knew would not be speaking directly to what is happening in Gaza. Though I have been enjoying two politico-spiriritual ravers, that being Chris Hedges (brilliant writer, journalist and Presbyterian minister) and the wonderful Cornell West (soulful bother, academic and Presidential candidate). And of course, if Noam Chomsky raves on long enough, he always drops into his deep and compassionate heart, that loves all beings. Hes defo a priest figure. I love compassionate activism and activists, like Gabor (and his awesome sons) and Yanis. That being said the journey inyo and out of samadhi has resulted in the apotheosis of all the C- PTSD I'd been embodying since childhood. woo hoo. And Im experiencing anger, the clearest Ive ever known it and oddly enough my immune system doesnt seem to be impacted by the incessant grief cycling. Which is amazing as I live with a number of immune disorders. Anger, Rage, Numbess, Wailing etc.. is 100% felt, expressed and honoured without any resistance, nor residue. I think they call it resilience.
a comment made on the eye of the storm podcast featuring yanis varoufakis and gabor mate
@KirillySpace
1 month ago
I experienced a sudden fall from grace, out of 15 months of samadhi, on account of a long covid brain inflammation episode. That was kind of terrifying, in that the thinking mind suddenly switched on. It went from open, clear, vastness to overload - with every waking moment filled with racing, chaotic, incomplete shards of thoughts. I instantly decided to pay the mind no mind and thought that when I was better I would settle down, quieten down and go back into samadhi. But as time moved on and I started to recover from long covid, possibly 9 months later, I didn't want to return to nothingness as Israel had started dropping bombs on the Palestinians and I was now in deep horror, grief cycling and found that the only spirituality that made sense was in
bearing witness to the genocide and using all my facilties to write ️ to politicians, media outlets, work the social media channels and volunteer. I had zero inclination to sit with non duality teachers who I knew would not be speaking directly to what is happening in Gaza. Though I have been enjoying two politico-spiriritual ravers, that being Chris Hedges (brilliant writer, journalist and Presbyterian minister) and the wonderful Cornell West (soulful bother, academic and Presidential candidate). And of course, if Noam Chomsky raves on long enough, he always drops into his deep and compassionate heart, that loves all beings. Hes defo a priest figure. I love compassionate activism and activists, like Gabor (and his awesome sons) and Yanis. That being said the journey inyo and out of samadhi has resulted in the apotheosis of all the C- PTSD I'd been embodying since childhood. woo hoo. And Im experiencing anger, the clearest Ive ever known it and oddly enough my immune system doesnt seem to be impacted by the incessant grief cycling. Which is amazing as I live with a number of immune disorders. Anger, Rage, Numbess, Wailing etc.. is 100% felt, expressed and honoured without any resistance, nor residue. I think they call it resilience.
terry, modified 3 Months ago at 6/30/24 12:51 PM
Created 3 Months ago at 6/30/24 12:51 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent PostsPapa Che Dusko
"A Dream Within a Dream BY EDGAR ALLAN POE ...
... But a dream within a dream?"
I think Edgar and I were born on the same day, the January 19th! Apparently, the jan 19th is described as "the day of dreams and visions" ... if one believes in such things!
"A Dream Within a Dream BY EDGAR ALLAN POE ...
... But a dream within a dream?"
I think Edgar and I were born on the same day, the January 19th! Apparently, the jan 19th is described as "the day of dreams and visions" ... if one believes in such things!
Our (cultural) world, of which language is a map, is a dream, a fantasy, a projection of mental contents. Within this dream we have egos dreaming they have individual lives, goals, achievements, friends, wealth. One plays a part in the big dream, but one doesn't have to be fooled into taking it seriously or allow oneself to be manipulated. A part implies a whole which plays. Neither part nor whole actually exists. They are mental pegs, familiar notions which evaporate when examined.
terry, modified 3 Months ago at 6/30/24 1:46 PM
Created 3 Months ago at 6/30/24 1:46 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent PostsPapa Che Dusko
"A Dream Within a Dream BY EDGAR ALLAN POE ...
... But a dream within a dream?"
I think Edgar and I were born on the same day, the January 19th! Apparently, the jan 19th is described as "the day of dreams and visions" ... if one believes in such things!
"A Dream Within a Dream BY EDGAR ALLAN POE ...
... But a dream within a dream?"
I think Edgar and I were born on the same day, the January 19th! Apparently, the jan 19th is described as "the day of dreams and visions" ... if one believes in such things!
The poem is about lost hope, bra. The poet is dealing with despair, seeking solace in inquiry and an emotional outpouring of the blues. Like jackson browne.
The salient line is, "can I not save One from the pitiless wave?"
The answer, "Wake up."
Papa Che Dusko, modified 3 Months ago at 7/1/24 10:10 AM
Created 3 Months ago at 7/1/24 10:10 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 3048 Join Date: 3/1/20 Recent PostsPapa Che Dusko, modified 3 Months ago at 7/1/24 10:11 AM
Created 3 Months ago at 7/1/24 10:11 AM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 3048 Join Date: 3/1/20 Recent PostsPapa Che Dusko, modified 3 Months ago at 7/1/24 5:16 PM
Created 3 Months ago at 7/1/24 5:16 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 3048 Join Date: 3/1/20 Recent Posts
Have you seen this one by the Eye of the Storm with Varoufakis and the UK Corbyn?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Mau5S7CXdQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Mau5S7CXdQ
terry, modified 3 Months ago at 7/4/24 6:14 PM
Created 3 Months ago at 7/4/24 6:14 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent PostsPapa Che Dusko
I see we follow the same people on social media! You into The Greyzone?
I see we follow the same people on social media! You into The Greyzone?
from time to time...
terry, modified 3 Months ago at 7/4/24 6:20 PM
Created 3 Months ago at 7/4/24 6:20 PM
RE: mapping mappo
Posts: 2667 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent PostsPapa Che Dusko
Have you seen this one by the Eye of the Storm with Varoufakis and the UK Corbyn?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Mau5S7CXdQ
Have you seen this one by the Eye of the Storm with Varoufakis and the UK Corbyn?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Mau5S7CXdQ
yes...
varoufakis doesn't understand the damgers of ai or the truth that simply changing the ownership of the means of production will not change the system itself...
same with corbyn