Esther Vilar's "Women's Vices"

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
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Kelly Jones
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Re: Esther Vilar's "Women's Vices"

Post by Kelly Jones »

I have already mentioned that the ad hominem is relevant where the argumenter's character is the argument.

But in this circumstance, it is not relevant.

You are accusing others of dishonesty, because, presumably, you have perceived them to be presenting lies.

What are they lying about? Their character? But who here makes their own character the basis of their arguments? No one. Most of the people you spend your time attacking, on this message board, realise that using one's personal character as the basis of truth is a broken-down postmodern incoherency, which is why we don't do it.

So why are you still focussing so often on character assassination? Why do you refuse to examine the ideas presented?


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Re: Esther Vilar's "Women's Vices"

Post by Dennis Mahar »

Kelly,
You are accusing others of dishonesty, because, presumably, you have perceived them to be presenting lies
.

Not exactly.


It looks like Alex is representing the Schopenaeur side of things in a debate he had with Neitschke.

Those 2 agreed religion was dead as an explainer which had Neitschke declare God is Dead.
Schopenaeur then decided 'it's pointless'...no position had value...life had no redeeming feature.

This accords with Alex's thesis of platforms/performers.
that the platform and performance are essentially 'like doing a line of cocaine'....'getting off on a trip'...bullshitting.

Schop and Alex may need to visit their own stand as also a platform/performance.

Nietschke went another way and declared we can take our eyes off heaven and make the earth our meaning..

This got him to ubermensch as a possibility for human being-in-action.
Rather than sit in Nihilism and hold that template up against any attempt...being-in-action then as a scoffing, tormenting, mocking presence...
Nietschke said let's get out of that mud and make some wings in effect.
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Re: Esther Vilar's "Women's Vices"

Post by Kelly Jones »

Well, I'm not sure if that's Alex's position actually. If it is, scoffing is a platform itself. If such a scoffer believes everything is meaningless, and there's no point in discussing anything, he wouldn't rightly engage in debate, would he?

It's not possible to distrust everything, because one still refuses to distrust that distrust.


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Re: Esther Vilar's "Women's Vices"

Post by Dennis Mahar »

Well, I'm not sure if that's Alex's position actually
I think it is from reading his platform/performer explanation several times.
If it is, scoffing is a platform itself.
It's a 'who you are being' that is carried with the platform.
An understanding has a mood with it.
If such a scoffer believes everything is meaningless, and there's no point in discussing anything, he wouldn't rightly engage in debate, would he?
It seems to be that we are driven to broadcast our understanding and our mood.
It's not possible to distrust everything, because one still refuses to distrust that distrust.
Alex trusts his position.

I like Alex and his speaking in the forum 'as opposing' that gets us access to further clarification...
Long live Alex!
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Re: Esther Vilar's "Women's Vices"

Post by Kelly Jones »

Do you think Alex is unworried by the view there is no ultimate meaning to life? Or do you think he finds the idea of meaninglessness repulsive and negative?

I would say the latter, given his recent rantings against my views, and others here on the forum, where he went on a long spiel calling me maggoty and death-ridden, and expressing a "death doctrine".

Is that really just a mood? I think not.


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Re: Esther Vilar's "Women's Vices"

Post by jupiviv »

Alex Jacob wrote:This particular 'conversation' is taking place in a specific context; a thread with a specific theme, and one that is endlessly hashed here on this forum. Now, what you may decide to do---but only if you feel so inclined---is to take a few steps back, and examine what I just wrote, and see it as a commentary that might not be as immediately transparent as you assume. In other words, perhaps it points to something that requires more than just a simple, rather vain, retort? Is it possible it may require a little introspective thinking? A review, if only mentally, of attitudes and ideas that are presented on this forum on this theme? Or, shall you turn it into a word-construct that you attack with a group of rhetorical/analytical tools (perhaps Kells will assist you in this) and when you have located some flaw, or have invented some flaw, that you can drag around until you feel or imagine you have gained some leverage, shall you succeed in dismissing it, without hearing or grasping what was said? If you do so, you will demonstrate how accomplished you are at the proven game of intellectual dishonesty, a game that is (often) the very essence of the GF.

I made an observation that you are accusing me of dishonesty without providing any actual reasoning for doing so. And you responded here by accusing me, once again, of dishonesty. And once again, you've provided no evidence for this accusation. Are my thoughts so worthless and deplorable that you don't even feel the need to address them directly?
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Re: Esther Vilar's "Women's Vices"

Post by Dennis Mahar »

Kelly,
I would say the latter, given his recent rantings against my views, and others here on the forum, where he went on a long spiel calling me maggoty and death-ridden, and expressing a "death doctrine".
That kind of expression is constituted in mood (scoff, torment, mock). It's typical of nihilism as an understanding. It could be postulated that the better the understanding of a being, the better the mood and that gets a better languaging in the being.
It's not typical of Mastery that one loses their 'rag'.


Alex has used logic to get to nihilism as it requires that.

He hasn't as David correctly points out, time and again, that the logic hasn't been pushed far enough.
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Re: Esther Vilar's "Women's Vices"

Post by Dennis Mahar »

I know about nihilism because I've been there.
My mind is like a vast canyon of animated and unanimated archetypes that just sit there waiting to be attached to.
Pam calls them metaphors or projections and seeks to withdraw them.

I could be the Jesus possibility of Love Thy Neighbour as an attachment and get down to the pentecostal Church waving my hands in the air singing hallelujah.
I could be the possibility of drunk and womaniser.
I've had the carpenter activated and built a house.
I've had the husband activated and built a marraige.

I've grown weary of attachment.
Wisdom would be getting off a position or not clinging too tightly.
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Re: Esther Vilar's "Women's Vices"

Post by Alex Jacob »

Kelly wrote: "I would say the latter, given his recent rantings against my views, and others here on the forum, where he went on a long spiel calling me maggoty and death-ridden, and expressing a "death doctrine".

If you look at the post a little more closely, you will see that I described essentially 'idea structures' as producing a sort of 'death-mentality'.

Here is what I wrote:
  • To refer to this scripture in this way---as an 'anti-value' or 'opposed value'---is meaningless and it is also flatly wrong (again as I see it). Spiritual traditions do not necessarily stand in opposition to each other, men do. One must be willing to take a look at the underpinning of 'deep resentment' that informs Q-R-S as well as Kelly. Something seethes here. After all, what gives 'acid' its bite, hmmmm? No one of them shows this level of self-knowledge, as far as I have seen, and oddly enough this makes the 'acid' only that much more...caustic. One finds that lovely, unchanging, fossilized causticity in our precious, snarling Prince...who will undoubtedly go to his grave in the thrall of this 'mood'. I suggest this is not really 'spiritual growth' or even 'human growth'...or 'Buddhist growth'!...but something more akin to a romantic poets love of his process of dying. I am reminded sometimes of Christian desert acetics going off to starve themselves for the Glory of God. One, wounded and infested with maggots, picks up some of the milky-white writhing creatures who've fallen out of his half-dead body. He carefully (lovingly!) picks them up and places them back into his side: 'Eat what God has given you to eat!'
These are 'associative statements' and, in fact, the closer 'association' was to Prince. But you are there too, of course.

Also note the parenthtical: "These observations, obviously, are utterly intolerable and, of course, will never be considered. Actually, the 'acid' requires them: it needs to stew in its acidity, validate its acidity, and increase acidity with 'opposition'.

Jupi writes: "I made an observation that you are accusing me of dishonesty without providing any actual reasoning for doing so. And you responded here by accusing me, once again, of dishonesty. And once again, you've provided no evidence for this accusation. Are my thoughts so worthless and deplorable that you don't even feel the need to address them directly?"

Too time consuming, little brother! I am more efficient with my demands, and more demanding also: you are going to have to do your own work. You are going to have to work it out for yourself. Take it, or leave it, the choice is completely yours.

Your ideas may indeed be 'deplorable' (in a comical way), but all that really interests me is 'the person'. (As I have been repeating to no avail).
Ni ange, ni bête
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Re: Esther Vilar's "Women's Vices"

Post by Dennis Mahar »

That's just more scoff, torment, taunt, mock Alex.
You're a speaker in a forum Sir.
It's not a spinfest.
It's not an ordinary, everyday social convention site that discusses what they ate today.
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Re: Esther Vilar's "Women's Vices"

Post by jupiviv »

Alex Jacob wrote:
jupiviv wrote:I made an observation that you are accusing me of dishonesty without providing any actual reasoning for doing so. And you responded here by accusing me, once again, of dishonesty. And once again, you've provided no evidence for this accusation. Are my thoughts so worthless and deplorable that you don't even feel the need to address them directly?

Too time consuming, little brother! I am more efficient with my demands, and more demanding also: you are going to have to do your own work. You are going to have to work it out for yourself. Take it, or leave it, the choice is completely yours.

So you have the time to write big posts needlessly articulating how I'm being dishonest, but not enough to explain why you made the accusation of dishonesty in the first place?
Your ideas may indeed be 'deplorable' (in a comical way), but all that really interests me is 'the person'. (As I have been repeating to no avail).

If you're interested in 'the person', just go somewhere where there are, you know, persons. Or do you live in a place where there are no people and the only way you can contact people is through an online philosophy discussion forum? I mean, even if you're so repulsive that no person ever gets near you, you can still get on facebook or myspace and make friends. Why waste time writing needlessly long posts on a philosophy forum?
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Re: Esther Vilar's "Women's Vices"

Post by Dennis Mahar »

Kelly,
Do you think Alex is unworried by the view there is no ultimate meaning to life? Or do you think he finds the idea of meaninglessness repulsive and negative?
I would agree with you it's the latter.

In the questions of being and thinking about thinking.

There's this space of unknowing for man regarding his existence.
There's no answer for man coming out of this space except for 'deafening silence' and 'stillness' or 'nothing'...

This constitutes the mood 'dread' for man and he has to get it under control to feel comfortable and familiar in the World.

So, man makes a move...thinking is making a move...Philosophy is making moves...a move is a power and control action coming out of man's will to power..to get stuff under control.

That move is the invention of a God with a personality and a plan.

Suddenly, the space that was empty is now filled with stories that fix dread and deliver comfort.

Man is not interested in Reality.
Man is interested in constructing a Reality that is useful to it.

Empty and Meaningless means:

In Reality the space where the God stories sit remains empty.
The stories in the space are meaningless.

It's empty and meaningless.
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Re: Esther Vilar's "Women's Vices"

Post by Alex Jacob »

Kelly asked: "Or do you think he finds the idea of meaninglessness repulsive and negative?"

[I respond to Dennis' recent musings]: You have just described a rather stark reduction, Dennis. In each statement, there is a choice. In your own way you are doing the thing you see 'inventing man' doing (as neurosis, as reaction).

My own view, at least at this time, is different. I think the 'world' and the kosmos that is out there in front of us, is a 'meaningless' world. You know, the world of nature as a brutal place; things exist, other things eat them. That pretty much describes it. It is just a system where biological organisms feed off each other in symbiosis. Or, water etches away ancient sediments, thoughtlessless, carelessly, meaninglessly. It could be one kind of change or any other kind of change. It doesn't matter. There is no 'meaning' there.

It is in a man's consciousness where meaning is discovered. He comes into it. He joins with it. It is true that if you look at this 'consciousness' as just a random biological event or state, and if you see all creation (the kosmos) as just chaos and meaningless events, you will see this 'consciousness' as just an extension of the 'base meaningless' of Life.

But, this does not mean that it is so or that there are not other alternatives. In this sense your own 'platform' is the real nihilism: the end of the road of meaning, a helpless surrender to meaninglessness. Carried to its ends I think it would be devastating. I don't think there is any actual philosophy that could ever espouse a genuine meaninglessness, and I don't think there has even been such a philosophy, except perhaps in Modernity? So, and this is something I ask (never expecting an answer). This neo-Buddhism, is it just a sham for a Late Modernistic 'desperation'? Because Buddhism is filled to the brim with simply different sets of defined meaning, discovered meaning: meaning lived.

Truthfully, 'many of you' seem to me simply very confused people. Your knowledge---what fuction is it serving? And your definitions? Those you insist on, those you install within yourselves?

But, though you are confused, you are adamant! You will preach your doctrines with nothing less than a shrill, hardstruck surety! You know there is no meaning and you will damn sure make sure everyone else knows what you know!

A: How you feeling?
B: Meaningless.
A: Me too.
B: I noticed C was talking about some sort of meaning the other day...
A: No!
B: Yes!
A: What did you tell him?
B: I carefully explained, with diagrams and charts and proofs and reasoning that THERE IS NO MEANING!
A: And what did he say?
B: He had no choice but to agree...

What I see---and who knows perhaps I am wrong?---is desperate people grasping at straws; building certain perspectives out of some 'local ruins', and huddling together for some facsimile of human warmth while civilization turns around them like a nauseating, meaningless circus. It might be different if you weren't First Worlders and if your lives were circumscribed by actual Tragedy.

Usually, the Grand Idea 'you' have had installed in your head, and which you tend and prune and fertilize and defend so carefully, is like a tin chapel to preach a twopenny creed, just a limited selection of dreary, partial notions out of which you furiously attempt to build a monument, of meaningfulness.
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Re: Esther Vilar's "Women's Vices"

Post by Dennis Mahar »

I'm not interested in this stage of the inquiry about whose move is the correct move Alex or the fact that I am the latest in the QRS and QRS Fan Club who you scoff, torment, mock which is your Project.

In thinking about thinking I want to say thinking is making a move.

Effectively what I've said on the question of Being (existence).

Is that a move was made to explain existence and that another move was made to withdraw that projection on existence..
which leaves us back with existence unexplained.
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Re: Esther Vilar's "Women's Vices"

Post by Bobo »

A:

I think the separation between person and truth can be observed in David's saying that one become enlightened despite of culture, while on GF one is enlightened because of culture as QRS are pretty time and local phenomenon.

Also I think this can be used as an illustration of the deep resentment you talk about:
http://vimeo.com/1790734

The question was what did you want to be?
Answer JESUS raymond!
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Re: Esther Vilar's "Women's Vices"

Post by Dennis Mahar »

Alex,
Don't you think it's a little extraordinary that QRS has made a space available that grants you the possibility of telling QRS it is deluded?
What kind of understanding and detachment is there that has the capacity to weather such a storm?
Would the QRS capacity or Context that shows out in the way it shows out fit 'deluded'?
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Re: Esther Vilar's "Women's Vices"

Post by Alex Jacob »

'Delusion' is often in the eye of the beholder, isn't it? I may state that I think that aspects of the QRS teachings are 'deluded' but I can only suppose they don't at all think that way, or if they are influenced by things I say it is processed in some internal moments. You are not aware of it because you haven't been around here so long, but in all manner of different ways I have spelled out what part of the QRS trip I admire. I wouldn't be here if I thought it was an utterly lost cause.

Here is another thing: when people have fixed mental systems, that sort that have been installed in their psycho-spiritual system, it would appear that any idea contrary to what they insist is valid or real has no effect. Not so. Ideas are like seeds. If they are introduced in the right way they bypass all the machinery of the mind. At a later date, sometimes much later, they become relevant.

In our Modernity especially, it is a safe rule of thumb: never believe exclusively what comes out of a man's mouth...but pay attention for something that emanates from the heart. What is in the heart does not really need words.

It's the unseen levers that move things in this world.

People operate with the information they have at their disposal, and even with a partially full basket they charge off into the world and expend their energy applying it, testing it, winning with it, losing with it. There usually comes a time of sober self-accounting---sometimes it comes softly and gently and sometimes it comes like a ton of bricks---but it does come. Usually, that is the point in time where wisdom begins. Also that is the time when conversation begins. It is very easy to see what is youthful enthusiasm and impetuosity and to distinguish it from more sober perspectives.

Would you like an assessment of your fine self? ;-)

Too, every protagonist requires and antagonist.
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Re: Esther Vilar's "Women's Vices"

Post by Dennis Mahar »

Would you like an assessment of your fine self? ;-)
I am not that which the conceptualising mind can reach and neither are you.
We can get around posting labels and attach to those labels as a project but that's all it would be.
It's this very conceptualising mind that requires examination...
to have it careering about like a runaway horse...what for?
to bring it to hand in the grokking of it's nature...how's that for a project?
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Re: Esther Vilar's "Women's Vices"

Post by Alex Jacob »

...to have it careering about like a runaway horse...what for?
Indeed, for what?
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Re: Esther Vilar's "Women's Vices"

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Alex Jacob wrote:...just a system where biological organisms feed off each other in symbiosis. Or, water etches away ancient sediments, thoughtlessless, carelessly, meaninglessly. It could be one kind of change or any other kind of change. It doesn't matter. There is no 'meaning' there.
The problem with your statement is that you try to apply meaning, a contextual and conceptual affair, to objects and interactions which have been defined mechanisticaly, stark, conjectured, conjured or contracted. Of course there's no meaning there, but also there's no "no meaning" there. One cannot talk about what the smell of the number 1000 is either. It's called category error.
It is in a man's consciousness where meaning is discovered. He comes into it. He joins with it. It is true that if you look at this 'consciousness' as just a random biological event or state, and if you see all creation (the kosmos) as just chaos and meaningless events, you will see this 'consciousness' as just an extension of the 'base meaningless' of Life.
The meaning comes with the joins themselves? And perhaps our sense of reality and the 'world' as well. Meaning-reality-world are tighly connected, and arise with the connecting. There's only connection?
.In this sense your own 'platform' is the real nihilism: the end of the road of meaning, a helpless surrender to meaninglessness.
What would you call the platform that tries to understand only its own "platforming"?
I don't think there is any actual philosophy that could ever espouse a genuine meaninglessness, and I don't think there has even been such a philosophy
Philosophy has named it detachment, non-attachment, disinterest activity, emptyness, purity, the absolute, the one and many other names. But at the core lies just admission of what's already the case, what's already happening, including assigning value and meaning to things, states and events. It doesn't stop anything of it, why would it? Examining the issue of attachment doesn't come without danger of course. It's like examining live wires.
Truthfully, 'many of you' seem to me simply very confused people. Your knowledge---what fuction is it serving?
None! But since knowledge of the absolute underlies all other knowledge, it does generate wisdom in any area where it's applied. But the results are all relative and really not important from the perspective that is non-attached. Not really verifiable either by anyone trying to assess.
You know there is no meaning
Did anyone say that, I mean, really say that? I think you were the one claiming that "there's no meaning there" in relation to some physicality.
What I see---and who knows perhaps I am wrong?---is desperate people grasping at straws; building certain perspectives out of some 'local ruins', and huddling together for some facsimile of human warmth while civilization turns around them like a nauseating, meaningless circus. It might be different if you weren't First Worlders and if your lives were circumscribed by actual Tragedy.

Usually, the Grand Idea 'you' have had installed in your head, and which you tend and prune and fertilize and defend so carefully, is like a tin chapel to preach a twopenny creed, just a limited selection of dreary, partial notions out of which you furiously attempt to build a monument, of meaningfulness.
Well said, but it seems to describe something else than you intended it for. One could easily apply it universally, at least to modern people, perhaps beyond.
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Re: Esther Vilar's "Women's Vices"

Post by Kelly Jones »

Alex Jacob wrote:In our Modernity especially, it is a safe rule of thumb: never believe exclusively what comes out of a man's mouth...but pay attention for something that emanates from the heart. What is in the heart does not really need words.
What comes out of a person's mouth comes from their heart, if you know how to read it. To me, your words come from a fearful heart, one that has lost faith in its own cause. A heart that submitted to the masses, taking a little sip from the font of wisdom to avoid feeling like a complete failure, and to save face, but one that has learned to take conventionality and conformity for its staple diet.

It is very easy to see what is youthful enthusiasm and impetuosity and to distinguish it from more sober perspectives.
What you call sobriety is actually fear of venturing. You lack the youthful impetuosity, that dares to take risks. Instead, you act like a wet blanket, suffocating every strong masculine directive because you don't think it gets anywhere. Your very style lacks power, because you suppress anything active and creative, and instead you emit little indignant huffs, the defensiveness of the bitterly aged, and depressive moans.


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Re: Esther Vilar's "Women's Vices"

Post by Blair »

And kelly you are an extraordinarily cruel young woman who needs a good smack. You disgust me.

prince - speaking his mind.
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Re: Esther Vilar's "Women's Vices"

Post by Dennis Mahar »

If one is on a Boddhisattva project.
One must realise enlightenment arises subject to conditions.
Ignorance is an effect that arose out of causes.
Enlightenment is an effect that arises out of causes.

Mastery is mastery of conditions.
Mastery would then be quietly and skilfully setting up conditions in such and such a way that enlightenment shows up in the spontaneous way it seems to happen if it's going to happen or at least giving it it's best shot at happening.

Knowledge has 2 facets.
Knowing about
and
Know-how.

You can know about enlightenment and engage in describing it endlessly.
Much like a restaurant menu describes a meal in a word picture but it's not actually experiencing the eating of a meal.

Know-how is skilful means.
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Re: Esther Vilar's "Women's Vices"

Post by Kelly Jones »

prince wrote:And kelly you are an extraordinarily cruel young woman who needs a good smack. You disgust me.

prince - speaking his mind.
I wouldn't mind your hypocrisy if you were aware of it.


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Re: Esther Vilar's "Women's Vices"

Post by Alex Jacob »

Hello Diebert,

You wrote: "Did anyone say that, I mean, really say that? I think you were the one claiming that "there's no meaning there" in relation to some physicality"

I only meant to create a distinction to help with 'the problem'. It is a generally accepted idea that 'out there' in nature, or in the cosmos, there is no 'purpose' only unfolding events. All the attemps to ascribe 'meaning' to a grand cosmological unfolding in human terms always seem to come up short when viewed through the scientific paradigm: cold, hard fact. Since most of what I previously wrote was in response to Dennis---he who dogs my steps---and since I see him as 'coming from' this perspective of Nature (and man in nature) with a Buddhist overlay, I was attempting to engage him on that level. Scientism destroys the essentially 'religious' weltanschauung and destroys connection to Life in those terms. One of the means by which it does this , or maybe one of the outcomes, is the destruction of the meanings that arose in religious contexts? 'Philosophy' is a weak substitute for what might be called 'deeper levels of connection' and I suppose I mean in a 'mystical' sense: a sense of connection to life and life's processes at a deep level, a level of 'trust'.

So yes, I would say that it is indeed 'said'. The doctrine of 'meaninglessness' is a prevalent one, a pervasive one. Now, how Quinn and Solway and Rowden explain 'meaning' has never been clear to me. But these blokes also are spinning off in their individual directions. David is, pretty obviously, working out a mysticism with his own terms, some of them pretty far out. I don't know where Solway stands.

But, in general terms, this 'meaninglessness' is used by various people, who I think are not really thinking things through, or use limited terms, as a means to give expression to essential nihilism: the operative, deep-seated and 'painful' nihilism.

When I said 'he joins with it', I mean that in a sort of mystic or theological sense: consciousness develops in us, being at one stage rudimentary and primitive. As we 'come into it' (I believe) we 'join' with the consciousness of other conscious beings, perhaps those who have achieved vast levels of consciousness unimagined by us. We enter into a distinct and special 'world' that is not tied to the physical and biological world, which is 'meaningless' insofar as it is just processes operating in mathematical relationships (to put it that way).

Diebert wrote: "What would you call the platform that tries to understand only its own "platforming"?

Well, that would of course depend on the context, the analytical tools available, the predicates of the analyst, and his objectives. If one were operating from a very limited set of predicates, with a limited or limiting agenda, I would assume the results might be inadequate, unsatisfactory. There is the possibility of an analysis that is like 'acid' or a gnawing away at oneself: like a fox who gnaws off his own paw to escape a hunter's trap. The cost is pretty high. I use the terms 'radical' and 'desperate' to indicate potentially 'destructive' means.

You express, I think, something similar when you say:
  • Examining the issue of attachment doesn't come without danger of course. It's like examining live wires.

I have a very clear and direct way to define this 'platforming', but it is not in terms that have much value 'around here'. To me, what is generally termed 'philosophy' is utterly inadequate as a tool to undertake such analysis-interrogation.
AJ wrote: What I see---and who knows perhaps I am wrong?---is desperate people grasping at straws; building certain perspectives out of some 'local ruins', and huddling together for some facsimile of human warmth while civilization turns around them like a nauseating, meaningless circus. It might be different if you weren't First Worlders and if your lives were circumscribed by actual Tragedy.

Usually, the Grand Idea 'you' have had installed in your head, and which you tend and prune and fertilize and defend so carefully, is like a tin chapel to preach a twopenny creed, just a limited selection of dreary, partial notions out of which you furiously attempt to build a monument, of meaningfulness.
Diebert wrote: Well said, but it seems to describe something else than you intended it for. One could easily apply it universally, at least to modern people, perhaps beyond.

My critiques, when once they were directed locally, are now more directed 'universally'. The problem is the problem of our modernity. We are completely unable to get ahold of what it means to have life, to be alive. We are in a kind of 'living death' with no way to resurrect that is full and meaningful. So, we smolder...we achingly smolder never quite bursting into flame but never quite dying.

(The line a tin chapel to preach a twopenny creed was stolen from GK Chesterton and made to fit this context, and of course I appreciate you directing me to him.)
Ni ange, ni bête
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