The (lack of the) Mysterious

[zhao]

and OF COURSE others have said it much much better than me!!!

i have noted this earlier in the thread! that what I'm saying is nothing new!!

seems like you just want to be negative to be negative, like the others in your

League of Joyless Lemon Suckers.

those are good links though, 2 i didn't know about before. so thanks.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

yes, & even there you can't keep yourself from having a go at today's "supposedly enlightened" world. like the war in Congo was/is not awful on it's own terms but b/c it blows our civilized Western western minds. seriously bro, what the F ever.

it upsets people's investment in the idea of progress: that this level of brutal carnage is happening in today's supposedly enlightened world (largely perpetrated by children nonetheless) goes against all the ideas of the progressive decrease of violence in human history. a notion completely ludicrous in my estimation: that of the movement from a barbaric past toward a peaceful and "civilized" future.

seems like you just want to be negative to be negative, like the others in your

nah I just don't suffer fools who persist in their foolishness. the difference btwn you & those dudes is that they put serious time & effort into what they do, instead of moaning about how much they'd like to go on mystical journeys from the keyboards of their laptops.

 

[zhao]

seriously Padraig,

you are not stupid, and politically we pretty much completely agree.

but what ever your problem is, what ever issues in your life is ramming that big stick up your ass, i hope you get over it soon.

 

[zhao]

nah I just don't suffer fools who persist in their foolishness. the difference btwn you & those dudes is that they put serious time & effort into what they do, instead of moaning about how much they'd like to go on mystical journeys from the keyboards of their laptops.

see what kind of stupid shit that stick up there is making you say?

hahaha... i am a GRAPHIC DESIGNER and a DJ dude! I am not an author or an ethnographer or a cultural anthropologist!

you don't have a problem with this thread, you have a problem with that big stick up your ass dude!

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

right, well, if we're just down to schoolyard insults then that's that.

best of luck with your journeys. (sincerely, I mean)

(& just tbc I doubt that "politically we pretty much agree". on some things I'd guess but other things not. which is fine, of course)

 

[zhao]

thanks man!

 

[martin]

It's weird how you never see flying carpets anymore.

 

[nomadthethird]

I completely agree that we behave ethically because empathy for others is hard-wired in us, but in the absence of the guidance of instinctive fellow-feeling one would want compelling reasons to step into the breach. And these reasons can be made more compelling than they would otherwise be if founded on useful untruths: eg. immutable, eternal human 'rights,' God wishes it so etc.

Exhibit A: The Inquisition.

Humans as a species have been believing in gods for thousands of years, and it doesn't seem to be making the world a very ethical place.

Human rights are a very different concept from God, there are ways to derive human rights that aren't via natural law ("god-given").

What "God"/gods ends up being is an Ego-Proxy in the Sky/forest/whatever, used as an excuse for one group to dominate another, where God is ultimately a Law-Giver whose dictates are employed as a means of social control (which usually has an unduly negative effect on women and minorities in this society).

Many psychologists have done experiments about what happens to ethics in communities where people are raised without concepts like "God" and human rights, and people behave almost identically if not better than they do in cultures like ours. This lead to an interesting theory about mechanisms of social control: people who believe that in the absence of these strict absolute control mechanisms all hell would break loose are saying more about their own prurient lusts and imaginations than they are "humanity's".

 

[nomadthethird]

Well look, if, by way of the scientific process, free will is shown to be an illusion, we not only would be better off believing in free will for the purposes of social order (in order to justify the justice system as it currently stands), we would also still not be able not to believe in our own personal free will - there would be a fundamental disconnect between what we know to be the case and our own subjective experiences (as even current adherents of the no-free-will-theory still act as if they and everyone else has at least a modicum of free will). This is one way in which an unravelling of the mysterious might lead to alienation.

So, generally speaking, there are limits to the extent to which we can act on the conclusions of science and rational enquiry and argument. Another example: say that, by virtue of science establishing that the universe is infinite and through the process of logical argument, it was taken to be true that our personal actions cannot be said to be ethically good or bad (infinitarian ethics), there is no doubt that we would decide to trump the scientific, rational process and ignore these conclusions (a kind of political correctness, if you will) as the behaviour then expected of us would go against the inherent grain of our nature - we would not be able to bring ourselves to act as if we actually believed it to be true (more alienation). This already happens: we attenuate or ignore the truth claims of science if we decide that they are generally unhelpful or if we cannot bring ourselves to act on them, and this is not necessarily a bad thing to do!

This is a weird argument.

Science has already obliterated the notion of "free will." It's long gone.

But that doesn't mean people don't need to act and make important, difficult choices everyday. What most people are talking about when they talk about "free will" is this necessity, the need to make tough choices and be able to act meaningfully in the world. No need to dress it up in Jeebusite nonsense, although, if you really want to, go ahead.

Folk psychology isn't going anywhere, if that's what you're worried about. At least, it's not going away fast enough for my liking.

 

[Room with a view]

Many psychologists have done experiments about what happens to ethics in communities where people are raised without concepts like "God" and human rights and people behave almost identically if not better than they do in cultures like ours....

who'd they experiment on and which culture were they from ?

Science has already obliterated the notion of "free will." It's long gone.

huh...where'd it go ? i musta slept in that day. got a link please ?

Humans as a species have been believing in gods for thousands of years, and it doesn't seem to be making the world a very ethical place.

nothing is as it seems and is that compared to the time when humans didn't believe. you know this how ?

 

[Mr. Tea]

It's weird how you never see flying carpets anymore.

Nah seriously mate, you just need to go to Morocco like I did one time and hang out with these dudes in the desert and go without sleep and food for a few days while smoking your bodyweight in hash and you will TOTALLY see flying carpets.

It's experiences like that that really shock you out of your smug complacent Western empiricist/rationalist worldview which is tragically devoid of mystery and wonder and magical soft furnishings.

it's like you miss the whole point of magical realism. all you see is the magic & you forget the realism half of it.

Excellent line right there.

 

[DannyL]

yeah i understand what you're saying... and you're right it's a bit solipsistic. but... sometimes there is simply no other way... shrug.

I dunno.... I think you can find plenty of mystery, wonder, magic(k) here if you want it. If we have to go to another culture to access "It" - whatever "it" is it's pretty useless surely in terms of our everyday lives? I think it is right under our noses most of the time or in our dreams every night, we just chose not to notice it. - thats the point of most meditational practices, to just start PAYING ATTENTION. Also cf. my post up thread about Iain Sinclair et al.

 

[vimothy]

Mystery is to this thread what the hot-rock is to the flying carpet.

 

[baboon2004]

I dunno.... I think you can find plenty of mystery, wonder, magic(k) here if you want it. If we have to go to another culture to access "It" - whatever "it" is it's pretty useless surely in terms of our everyday lives? I think it is right under our noses most of the time or in our dreams every night, we just chose not to notice it. - thats the point of most meditational practices, to just start PAYING ATTENTION.

think this is entirely spot on. it's about interpretation/modes of seeing things, after all. I'm assuming you're taking 'meditational practices' ina broad sense here.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I think Dan is articulating very well something I was getting at in my first few posts in this thread - namely, that mystery is where you find it.

 

[DannyL]

think this is entirely spot on. it's about interpretation/modes of seeing things, after all. I'm assuming you're taking 'meditational practices' ina broad sense here.

You can certainly take the statement broadly, I think.

I was thinking specifcally about certain types of practices - variants on sitting meditation mostly - 'cos if you get this, it starts to seep into your everyday life and you just start to notice and pay attention to stuff in a way that for me I hadn't previously. I had this in the back of my mind but don't want to start waxing lyrically about the wonder of life else Martin will damn me for a hippy next time he sees me.

Also, not meaning to apply any exclusivity here - "I've had this and you haven't " etc.

 

[baboon2004]

You can certainly take the statement broadly, I think.

I was thinking specifcally about certain types of practices - variants on sitting meditation mostly - 'cos if you get this, it starts to seep into your everyday life and you just start to notice and pay attention to stuff in a way that for me I hadn't previously. I had this in the back of my mind but don't want to start waxing lyrically about the wonder of life else Martin will damn me for a hippy next time he sees me.

That's fair enough - it's whatever works personally for you. I find that writing 'morning pages' works to clear my mind of psychological debris and help me concentrate better on things that would otherwise be obfuscated. Different method, perhaps a similar outcome.

To me, the key thing is taking the whole idea of the Mysterious out of a geographical (or any other arbitrary) straitjacket. Binary formulations are erroneous.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

you know what would be extremely magical to me? Chicago roads that weren't chock full of man-sized potholes. then I wouldn't nearly kill myself just about every day trying to avoid them. is there like a shamanistic 1-800 # I can contact for this? (I did see a 1-800-MYRABBI van the other day)

also on the magic to-do checklist; public schools that aren't insanely overcrowded (on a related note, if we could something about teenagers getting killed at a frightening clip), less corrupt local govt, lower cost of higher education, nuclear non-proliferation, PLUR, gold stars, ponies for everyone...

and magic crystals, of course.

oh, and dance parties. (I really cannot stop watching that video)

alright that's it I'm out. I have to go study Biology.

 

[Mr. Tea]

If the government just handed out free dream catchers to everyone I'm sure everything would be just peachy in no time.

 

[CHAOTROPIC]

It's weird how you never see flying carpets anymore.

I'm funding an expedition to Allied Carpets next year to investigate sightings.