grizzleb
Well-known member
There he goes again!
The (lack of the) Mysterious
- Thread starter zhao
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- animism vs. cybernetics black athena broad cumbucket dubstep for the love of god stop guru josh hunting & gathering magical mystery tours meta-rational non-rational phantom flan flinger protracted flame wars psychic self defense situationism spirits spurious loaded questions superstition sweaty anal sex tasty hunter gatherers techgnosis the hooded claw zhao has an opinion!
Room with a view
Banned
room with a view said:
oh right...cos american psychologists are the last word in everything...pffft!!! designing an 'experiment' to substantiate their own 'theory' which amounts to little more than a considered opinion hardly constitutes proof.
and hmmm...just cos i cant control my genes means i dont have free will...OK if you say so LMFAO!!!
lastly, was there ever a time until recently when humans never believed in god/s and was the world a more ethical place even if there were a time ?...i think not but once again prove it.
i'm picking you wont cos you cant but by all means use the ol feed the troll excuse. i mean is there anything remotely mysterious or magical about you at all or due to your lack of free will are you totally predictable ?
swears
preppy-kei
Yeah, check it out:
http://americanhumanist.org/hnn/archives/index.php?id=219&article=7
Mo' faith mo' problems.
Room with a view
Banned
cheers swears, now that is interesting...
...but thats not to say that japanese for example dont believe in higher powers that conform to the notion of the western God or that they arent striving towards the same ideal as the christ consciousness. they just dont place as much importance on cultivating relationships with higher powers but more with others. in that tradition i'm somewhat of a deist myself.
...but thats not to say that japanese for example dont believe in higher powers that conform to the notion of the western God or that they arent striving towards the same ideal as the christ consciousness. they just dont place as much importance on cultivating relationships with higher powers but more with others. in that tradition i'm somewhat of a deist myself.
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Yes, this is the sort of thing I've seen lots of.
Also, contra the heterosexist family values brigade, research has indicated that 1) gay relationships are more egalitarian, involve less fighting over money and division of labor, and are generally more stable than straight ones, and 2) that of any combination of parents (single mom, married straight parents, gay dads, lesbian moms), it's the lesbian couple that will raise children who are psychologically the healthiest and most successful, highest self-esteem, etc.
Nomad.
please explain:
why you see no problem with, and "actually agree with" me saying "ancient Celtic mysticism has a lot to teach us",
while when i say "there are cultural riches in Indian and Indonesian ancient mysticism lost to modern society" is "exoticism", "orientalism", "cultural tourism", and "racism".
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Dude, ancient Celtic mysticism is probably relevant as fuck when you're some iron-age warrior hero stomping about prehistoric Ireland fighting epic battles against the Fir Bolg. But, and here's the clincher, this is not how most people live nowadays. You can try and pretend that it is, but at the end of the day you're just some sad Glasto crusty twat with a tiny dog on a bit of string, who read too much Tolkien and took too much acid while he was a teenager.
Now don't get me wrong, I mean I love Tolkien and ancient myths as much as anyone, but how much does it "have to teach us", really? Like the guy in the cubicle next to you has been cracking onto the fair maiden you've had your eye on, so you challenge him to a mano-a-mano in the staff car park, broadswords at twenty paces?
Yes I am just being a cunt for the sake of it now, it's fuckknowsoclock and I'm a bit wangered but it's time you were called to account for this shameless New Age rubbish you've been peddling since forever.
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nice one Tea. for here is a very good example of the kind of popular conceit of the modern age that i am talking about.
simply in terms of the scale of history, consider after the fall of Rome, the depths to which entire Europe plunged: knowledge from building infrastructure to medicine were all completely lost. now Europe has emerged from the Dark ages for what, 300? 400 years at the most? and you are ready to discount the knowledge of ancient empires which lasted for thousands, tens of thousands of years?
i was anticipating Renaissance Fair jokes, but is that only in America? anyhow we have "Glasto Crusty" insults instead.
oh the self satisfaction and smugness of the short sighted and ignorant... it's like an old friend that i encounter over and over again.
well maybe not "friend" but anyhow it's everywhere and something which should never be underestimated. will address later in more detail. now must prepare for gig tonight.
oh the self satisfaction and smugness of the short sighted and ignorant... it's like an old friend that i encounter over and over again.
will address later in more detail. .
bro, when did you become the Green Arrow?
scottdisco
rip this joint please
in fairness to Tea, he is all about the science, so i am sure he could tell me far more about how - say - artisanal members attached to the Roman military kept churning out iron (for their hob-nailed boots and so on) from their mobile work-stations in the legionary camps as the Roman forces swept across pre-Anglo Saxon Britain, continually on the move, than i could tell him.
i don't think it's about losing sight of the broad sweep of historical development in cultural, medicinal, technological, political fields (etc) just because you don't acknowledge it at every turn.
i don't think it's about losing sight of the broad sweep of historical development in cultural, medicinal, technological, political fields (etc) just because you don't acknowledge it at every turn.
nice one Tea. for here is a very good example of the kind of popular conceit of the modern age that i am talking about.
simply in terms of the scale of history, consider after the fall of Rome, the depths to which entire Europe plunged: knowledge from building infrastructure to medicine were all completely lost. now Europe has emerged from the Dark ages for what, 300? 400 years at the most? and you are ready to discount the knowledge of ancient empires which lasted for thousands, tens of thousands of years?
i was anticipating Renaissance Fair jokes, but is that only in America? anyhow we have "Glasto Crusty" insults instead.
oh the self satisfaction and smugness of the short sighted and ignorant... it's like an old friend that i encounter over and over again.
will address later in more detail. now must prepare for gig tonight.
Re: the basis of Mr Tea's insults - I recognise he's being randomly insulting, but the Glasto/crystals crack made me think - in that if we were to go looking for Celtic Wisdom for whatever reason, we wouldn't have an "authentic"* encounter with these cultures and their knowledge - what we'd run into first encounter would be a commodified representation of it- The Celtic Magic Workbook or some other such horror. Perhaps if we got further in, we'd end up going on weekend workshop designed to titillate our narcissism. It's this kind of commodification that I think Nomad and others are kicking off at when you mention India - the idea of "spiritual tourism.
However, I do think there is something to be gained from looking at other cultures, both historical and contemporary - surely we're always looking for new maps and ideas to make ourselves and our society over? - but have to go out now.
*whatever that means
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Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Yeah, I was clearly being a dick for the sake of it, no question about that. But I have started a new thread to address some of these issues halfway seriously - I'd be delighted if zhao or anyone else would care to respond. I'll be back tomorrow evening probably. PLUR and all that.*
*"May the Shannon run red with the blood of your foes!"
*"May the Shannon run red with the blood of your foes!"
"My genuine Celticness shines - / oops! just struck me blind! / I'm such a spiritual guy..." - Cathal Coughlan.
There is a scientific attitude (a fairly minimal but grounding set of ontological and epistemological commitments), a scientific method (the way one frames and conducts experiments, and organises and interprets evidence in line with those commitments), and a scientific worldview (the picture of the world and its contents that is built up by putting together the more stable aspects of the outcome of scientific investigation).
The worldview is always somewhat of a fiction, because it's a temporary stabilisation of knowledge that the scientific method itself continually destabilises. Occasionally someone comes along like Joan Roughgarden and says, "actually, there's a lot of unexamined ideology involved in glueing together this part of the gestalt - let's try to unpick it and see if it can be put back together differently, and maybe we can devise some experiments to test the bits that are just kind of assumed and see if they really hold up", and exciting controversies ensue. This kind of challenge requires a degree of imagination - the scientist needs to be able to apprehend her own worldview as a fiction, and susceptible to a kind of methodical debunking for which, as scientist, she is fortunately well-equipped.
Sometimes the attack on "scientism" is an attack on the scientific attitude (what can we know?), sometimes it is an attack on the scientific method (how do we come to know?), and sometimes it is an attack on the scientific worldview (what do we think we know now?). But I think it's misplaced in all these cases: firstly because it tends to ignore the subtlety and dynamism of the interactions between scientific attitude, method and worldview, and secondly because the argument is seldom really about knowledge anyway: the kinds of intuitions and perceptions people associate with a "spiritual" worldview are not generally the sort of things anyone could know by any means whatsoever.
Not every worldview is a picture of a current state of knowledge. The scientific worldview is rather special in that respect (I don't think the worldview of animists represents their knowledge of the world exclusively or even particularly faithfully - it orients them practically and existentially within their world, but that's a subtly different question). If one wants to argue for the "validity" of other worldviews (for example, the view that one lives in a moral universe, in which the wrongs done by human beings to each other cry to the heavens for justice), one needs to be clear about what makes a worldview "valid" in the first place - its usefulness to the people who hold it? Its moral and aesthetic attractiveness?
There is a scientific attitude (a fairly minimal but grounding set of ontological and epistemological commitments), a scientific method (the way one frames and conducts experiments, and organises and interprets evidence in line with those commitments), and a scientific worldview (the picture of the world and its contents that is built up by putting together the more stable aspects of the outcome of scientific investigation).
The worldview is always somewhat of a fiction, because it's a temporary stabilisation of knowledge that the scientific method itself continually destabilises. Occasionally someone comes along like Joan Roughgarden and says, "actually, there's a lot of unexamined ideology involved in glueing together this part of the gestalt - let's try to unpick it and see if it can be put back together differently, and maybe we can devise some experiments to test the bits that are just kind of assumed and see if they really hold up", and exciting controversies ensue. This kind of challenge requires a degree of imagination - the scientist needs to be able to apprehend her own worldview as a fiction, and susceptible to a kind of methodical debunking for which, as scientist, she is fortunately well-equipped.
Sometimes the attack on "scientism" is an attack on the scientific attitude (what can we know?), sometimes it is an attack on the scientific method (how do we come to know?), and sometimes it is an attack on the scientific worldview (what do we think we know now?). But I think it's misplaced in all these cases: firstly because it tends to ignore the subtlety and dynamism of the interactions between scientific attitude, method and worldview, and secondly because the argument is seldom really about knowledge anyway: the kinds of intuitions and perceptions people associate with a "spiritual" worldview are not generally the sort of things anyone could know by any means whatsoever.
Not every worldview is a picture of a current state of knowledge. The scientific worldview is rather special in that respect (I don't think the worldview of animists represents their knowledge of the world exclusively or even particularly faithfully - it orients them practically and existentially within their world, but that's a subtly different question). If one wants to argue for the "validity" of other worldviews (for example, the view that one lives in a moral universe, in which the wrongs done by human beings to each other cry to the heavens for justice), one needs to be clear about what makes a worldview "valid" in the first place - its usefulness to the people who hold it? Its moral and aesthetic attractiveness?
I feel like I don't really understand it at all, but this interview seemed pertinent to the ongoing row/debate:
http://dreamflesh.com/interviews/patrick-harpur/
http://dreamflesh.com/interviews/patrick-harpur/
mistersloane
heavy heavy monster sound
Um, not sure about Celtic mysticism with regard to this, but Norse mythology - from my reading, anyway, though others vehemently disagree - Norse mythology taught me to be very, very wary of blokes with one eye.
Like Gordon Brown.
Or Nick Griffin.
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
For every Roughgarden there's a John Money.
That's the only legitimate argument "against" science and it's not a very good one, since that guy's long since had his entire career and legacy shot all to hell and ruined Johns Hopkins' ability to even allow gender reassignment surgery to be performed on premises without a tremendous intellectual and moral liability to the scientific and trans communities.
So there's a built in incentive not to be a bad scientist who makes stupid judgment calls. Whereas, if you're a priest, you can keep molesting kids and the Vatican will just pay for a good lawyer or send you to another parish, then another parish, then another parish.
(By the way, Roughgarden is probably wrong about the things sexual selection doesn't explain. First, nobody follows Darwin on this specifically anymore, so you're shadow boxing if you try to knock down Darwinian sexual selection-- you could do that with a feather. The contemporary version is based on some pretty obvious observations, and the premise that sexual selection is all about diversity. Cloning/mitosis is convenient but there's very little diversity from generation to generation in asexually reproducing prokaryotes. The trade off with sexual reproduction, even though it has huge costs, is that each generation creates a ton more genetic possibilities and has much more of a viable opportunity to evolve, and often more quickly, than most asexually reproducing organisms can. There are all sorts of biochemical explanations for gays/alternative orientation/transsexuals, too, I hate to break the news...not that I'm sure I believe them all, but they exist...some are persuasive enough...)
That's the only legitimate argument "against" science and it's not a very good one, since that guy's long since had his entire career and legacy shot all to hell and ruined Johns Hopkins' ability to even allow gender reassignment surgery to be performed on premises without a tremendous intellectual and moral liability to the scientific and trans communities.
So there's a built in incentive not to be a bad scientist who makes stupid judgment calls. Whereas, if you're a priest, you can keep molesting kids and the Vatican will just pay for a good lawyer or send you to another parish, then another parish, then another parish.
(By the way, Roughgarden is probably wrong about the things sexual selection doesn't explain. First, nobody follows Darwin on this specifically anymore, so you're shadow boxing if you try to knock down Darwinian sexual selection-- you could do that with a feather. The contemporary version is based on some pretty obvious observations, and the premise that sexual selection is all about diversity. Cloning/mitosis is convenient but there's very little diversity from generation to generation in asexually reproducing prokaryotes. The trade off with sexual reproduction, even though it has huge costs, is that each generation creates a ton more genetic possibilities and has much more of a viable opportunity to evolve, and often more quickly, than most asexually reproducing organisms can. There are all sorts of biochemical explanations for gays/alternative orientation/transsexuals, too, I hate to break the news...not that I'm sure I believe them all, but they exist...some are persuasive enough...)
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Nomad.
please explain:
why you see no problem with, and "actually agree with" me saying "ancient Celtic mysticism has a lot to teach us",
but when i say "there are cultural riches in Indian and Indonesian ancient mysticism lost to modern society", it is "exoticism", "orientalism", "cultural tourism", and "racism".
class.
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Zhao.
please explain:
why the difference between the two isn't obvious.
It's one thing to say, yeah, learn about cultures, it's another to say older cultures are infinitely preferable to newer ones because they were more "mysterious" whatever that's supposed to mean.