Thursday, May 6, 2010
Some thoughts....
Guilt: the emotion that occurs when one violates an intrinsic moral standard
Shame: the emotion that occurs when one violates an extrinsic moral standard (most commonly a social standard)
My questions are: did cave men feel guilt? if so, did they have a moral sense of right and wrong? How would they have learned this moral compass? Did they learn it? could it be that humans have a physiologicly programed moral code that can be peverted by culture? Could the universialty of many religions major tenants "though shalt not kill", etc. reflect these biological inclination?
bonus question: If someone has ambition, does that nessisarily mean that they are not spiritualy satisfied with their current place in life?
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Nathan Bison
- a summary of Tim Flannery anthropologist.
--Nathan i can see why you hold little ear to authors such as Michael Pollan--on the perception that they attempt to take large ideas and gather as much info into purporting them in what appears to be a Dan Brownesque motif.
But again Dan Brown happened to be an author who projected himself into fame by creating literature that reflected the studious eye and elbow-grease that authors and journalists such as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were. Such journalists collect and follow a path of ideas and information: piecing them together. If it were not for their synthesis, such events as in the arrest of Virgilio González would never have been understood in the relation to its larger context: the blatant disregard of democracy within our country by our president of the time.
There would be no Environmental Movement if it were not for the writing of Rachel Carson: who at here time was strongly criticized--DuPont compiled an extensive report on the book's press coverage and estimated impact on public opinion. Velsicol threatened legal action against Houghton Mifflin as well as The New Yorker and Audubon Magazine unless the planned Silent Spring features were canceled. Chemical industry representatives and lobbyists also lodged a range of non-specific complaints, some anonymously. Chemical companies and associated organizations produced a number of their own brochures and articles promoting and defending pesticide use. However, Carson's and the publishers' lawyers were confident in the vetting process Silent Spring had undergone. The magazine and book publications proceeded as planned, as did the large Book-of-the-Month printing (which included a pamphlet endorsing the book by William O. Douglas).
will finish
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Saturday, February 20, 2010
· The whole of existence is the Kosmos, a term used to describe the sum of its parts: matter or cosmos (physiosphere), life or the biosphere (bios), and mind or the noosphere (psyche or nous). Therefore, kosmos does not only describe the physical universe. You can also include the theosphere (theos, the divine domain).
· Autopoesis, the creation of life out of life, is a profound emergent, something “astonishingly novel.”
· The universe is composed of units called holons, a term borrowed from Arthur Koestler, units that are simultaneously part of something larger and made up of smaller units (holons). This is the first tenet out of twenty that Wilber laid out in Sex, Ecology, Spirituality.
· If we look at what all holons have in common, we will begin to see what all stages of evolution have in common and therefore all of the Kosmos.
· There is a natural tendency towards agency and communion in all holons; this is tenet two. All holons are, of course, independent of each other, but also a part of a larger holon. This relationship is hierarchical, but not in a patriarchal or domineering sense. A molecule does not exert dominance over its atoms, nor the other way around. Pathological hierarchies occur when a holon loses its place or tries to exert control over other holons; these holons must be put in their place or risk dissolution. The alternative term proposed is holarchies/holarchy, which better describes the communal and cooperative nature of holonic hierarchies
· Holons also demonstrate vertical drive, either towards dissolution or ascendency. Ascendency is an emergent event that creates new holons. The idea of evolution as natural selection misses the point, as this only describes the process of “nature” selecting traits that have already emerged; it is not the process itself.
· Tenet three states only that holons emerge. The reductionist drive fails when we recognize that you cannot reduce mind to life, and life to mind; the deconstruction is discontiguous.
· Chance cannot be the mechanism for evolution. Scientists calculated that the time it would take to produce even a single enzyme is greater than the proposed age of the universe, 12 billion years. Therefore, the drive towards transcendence is present in all of the Kosmos.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
hmmm...what do you think?
The world is meaningless, there is no God, there are no morals, you do not have a “soul.”
The universe is not moving inexorably towards any higher purpose.
All meaning is man-made, so make your own, and make it well.
Do not treat life as a way to pass the time until you die.
Do not try to find yourself, you must make yourself.
Choose what you want to find meaningful, then live, create, love, hate, cry, destroy, fight and die for it. Do not let your life and your values and your actions slip easily into any mold.
Leave yourself plenty of room to proclaim loudly, without fear or shame, ,"This is who I make myself, this is who the fuck I am!".
Remember that nothing you do has any significance beyond what it means only to you.
Whatever you do, do it for its own sake.
When, and if, the universe looks on with indifference, laugh and shout back, "Fuck You!".
Remember that to fight meaninglessness is futile, but fight anyway, in spite of and because of its futility.
The world may be empty of meaning, but it is a blank canvas on which to paint meanings of your own. Live deliberately. You are free.
You were not born in debt to some messiah that has somehow gifted you with this existence.
You, your life, your heart, your dreams, your fears, all are just as valid and important as any one who has ever lived.
Anyone who has the audacity to tell you otherwise should be avoided as if he were a flame.
Dream big, Love big, feel big....BE BIG!
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Friday, January 8, 2010
Empericicsm
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Friday, December 18, 2009
What do you guys say??
If there was an infinite chain of causes of the universe then there would be no universe now.
But there is a universe now.
Therefore there must be a first cause of the universe.
The Argument from Design:
| Most organisms in the world act for a purpose. |
| Most organisms are not aware of acting for a purpose. |
| There must be a superior being directing their purpose. |
The Ontological Argument:
| The concept of a supreme being is of a being with all perfections. |
| Existence is a perfection. |
| The supreme being must exist. |
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Sunday, December 13, 2009
What is Art?
I think we can safely agree that reality, or our experience of it, is fundamentally characterized by chaos and pattern. Each day is a new day, each moment is an entirely new moment, but also falls under the cyclical pattern we call time. Every circumstance is in reality an entirely unprecedented event (though our powers of inference tell us differently), but these events are governed by natural laws. The same thing happens differently over and over and over. This is true for probably almost anything: seasons, days, hours, waves, car manufacturing, the lives of suns, orbits, walking, sex, conversations... This same thing repeating itself in different ways is a fundamental part of our entire experience of reality. It is not that chaos and pattern take turns at governing the universe, but that they are actually inseparable-- their simultaneity is a basic characteristic of reality. The experience of this simultaneity is the experience of Quality, in Pirsig's terms, or in Oriental terms it is the experience of 'nothingness,' or in plain terms it is the experience of the present. And don't get stuck on the term simultaneity, because it implies only half of the truth: the other half is that Pattern and Chaos don't exist at all. 'Both' is still a dualistic answer to the question 'Which?.'
So the question was raised : What is art, and how do we know if it's good or not- or, to use Pirsig's language, how do we know if it has Quality? So here's my theory, briefly: Art's intent is to replicate the artists perception of reality, or balance in the work--whether it be music or drawing or making a collage--pattern and chaos. It does not follow from this that the better the art, in a painting for example, the more realistic. Realism may lean too much toward pattern. And in music: the pattern is in the beat, the chorus, and whatever other musical recurrences there are within the song, and the chaos is in the verse and melody. So the more balanced a piece of art is, the more Quality it has. The variation in artistic taste from person to person is accounted for in our different experiences of reality, and the different way we infer pattern (which is at the base of the whole subconcious logic thing). Each person experience pattern and especially chaos differently. Variation in artistic taste between cultures is even more apparent: much or our perception of reality is socially conditioned. The pattern/chaos duality is one of many. Transcendence of any of them brings us towards, or is an experience of, Dynamic Quality or 'Presence.' I've argued that the the Quality of art is singularly dependent on the pattern/chaos duality. But maybe it's not. Still need to think about that one.
Other questions that have come to mind as I've written:
1. Does the p/c duality hold equal status with other dualities, or is it more fundamental than that, are other dualities subsets or variant descriptions of it in the same way it is a subset--one description--of Dynamic Quality?
2. Determinism has always made a lot of sense to me though on principal I tend to dismiss it as unimportant and a dangerous philosophical black whole of overblown semantics and meaningless rhetoric and logic loops. That said, isn't chaos really impossible to prove? It's arrogant and more than a little stupid to assume we're capable of perceiving any pattern that exists. This is one of the mistakes of science (sorry Matt had to pull that out, ok, the Scientific Method). For example, here is a pattern
akjakjak
here is another less obvious pattern
hdsafjkldsjfjkal;sjf dl;kasfj oi;eaj;lkdf ife;ajdkf jkfdjf;aiwejf jkfdl;ahdsafjkldsjfjkal;sjf dl;kasfj oi;eaj;lkdf ife;ajdkf jkfdjf;aiwejf jkfdl;ahdsafjkldsjfjkal;sjf dl;kasfj oi;eaj;lkdf ife;ajdkf jkfdjf;aiwejf jkfdl;a
That one repeated three times too and is just as predictable as the first, but because of the limited capacity of our intellects appears more chaotic. Now here's some chaos:
asdfkjkl;adsjfdakjfdkjafewioajfkldsjlksjagioajwklngklfsjfdkjfdiwlkjaoigfrwejagkskjgs;adlirjfewiaofjlig;jlia;gfsdkalgjklsajfiujhgir;airjagk;sdfgijds;klfjkdsljfkdlsajflasdkjfdilsjflaidsjfdksajfilekjaijdsfksdjg kljgkljsdgijraigjliaerjgkfjgkljsf;alkfdjklgaskdfjgjg;irja;kfdjg kjgijalia glk
Maybe we're in the middle of it marveling at all the never-before-seen shapes and colours but really none of us have lived long enough or will live long enough (or don't have enough data capacity in our heads) to know that it's it's just one repetition among infinite repetitions. How do we know the chaos above isn't just a fragment of a much longer string that is repeated over and over just like the rest. Maybe chaos is just our name for patterns we're too small to grasp. I don't even know if this is relevant; in fact it's probably irrelevant for the same reasons I usually dismiss determinism: our experience of reality is what is pertinent (especially discussing Dynamic Quality), not our theories about it. What's the difference, for us, between chaos and patterns that we are too small to grasp? Or do some theories point to realities of our experience we've been numbed to- do they actually arise out of some subconscious knowing? That is potentially a really important question and the answer probably lies within the intention and consciousness with which we go about theorizing.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
.a massive hard irony.
Monday, December 7, 2009
philosophy jokes
How do you get a philosophy major off your doorstep?
Pay for the pizza.
[student being handed his philosophy BA] 'Would you like any fries with that?'
Friday, December 4, 2009
Monday, November 30, 2009
Thought on Evoultion
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Friday, November 27, 2009
Selfish vs. Selfless
anyways-- i just found a excerpt in a text book of mine that is relevant to the cultural shift of selfless to selfish:
"Our own men and our sons have joined the ranks of the stranger. They have joined his religion and they help to uphold his government.
If we should try to drive out the white men in Umuofia we should find it easy. There are only two of them. But what of our own people who are following their way and have been given power? They would go to Umuru and bring the soldiers... [The white man] says our customs are bad; and our own brothers who have taken up his religion also say that our customs are bad. How do you think we can fight when our own brothers have turned against us? The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart. " (Things Fall Apart)
...referred to as Westernization and are evident in attitudinal changes that shift towards greater secularism, individualism, and materialism.
i think i'm on the brink of being able to really put all of this together in a cohesive context--selfish versus selfless--humans versus mother earth--capitalism and democracy--cvilizations versus communities--sustainability versus exploitation--violence versus nonviolence--developed versus non-developed-- when i get back to college i'm excited to use all the bucher paper i have access to--thanks to hall council and being the "advertising coordinator"--and put together a huge mind map web thing of it all--nathan i need your help!!
it would be great if we could establish themes/subjects/topics and be able to click on them --thus opening them and leaving our ideas there...instead of this whole blog thing.
Michael i was curious to hear what you and your friends at whitman have been talking about -- you should be posting some of it here please!!!
ohhh and for refrence
Prisoner's Dilemma
Tradegy of the Commons
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
another great film that should be consumed
you can find the entire movie at Netflix as one of its watch instantly videos!!!
Monday, November 23, 2009
Are we obligated to herald the more or less inevitable societal collapse/peak-oil/industrial collapse/global warming? If it truly is inevitable (debateable by some but its pretty fucking definate. What little changes that are being made are too small and there is not enough time for it to build momentum) then wouldn't we want to happen as soon as possible on our terms? The rich (the culprits) will probably not suffer if the collapse were gradual. There money would buy them food, water, a tasteful retitrement. While the poor, the majority, the proles are fucked for decisions that they had little to with.
The real question is do you follow the law or do what is right.
Monday, November 16, 2009
-COULD EVERYONE HELP-
-so please help!
...in the end it would be a great resource
SOME ONE FIND THIS MOVIE
A wonderful Movie everyone should watch from the producer of the Corporation!!!
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Thoughts on Self
Friday, November 13, 2009
Old Face Book Chats
just saying
i'm really curious how the penis has become the working man's drawing--how it has completely proliferated the visual world--the drawing it self seems to have reached a point that transcends all age groups-- has the penis reached its apogee or will it further flourish in new directions-- i swear the stick man is loosing its cool, the shaft may be taking over as the routine drawing un-"artistic" kids are comfortable with--is this a signifier that collectively our artistic abilities have been highted--our ability to depict detailed drawings of only a small portion of the human body--i can't wait for the vag drawings
hoenstly
the iconic sign for this century could easily be the penis
honestly
what does this say about our culture
hoenstly
the winged nose penis flying into derek's forehead vagina is pretty cool
pictured provide by
delta--without derek's consent
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Monday, November 9, 2009
Mission Statement
Philosofucked will serve as a forum for the exchange of ideas. The goal of the forum differs from the mission of the blog, The West Sound Bros, as its purpose has not to do with the temporal lives of our friends but instead focuses on the mental growth of those same individuals.
This should not be a forum for egoizing. Contributors should not face persecution for unpopular or differing ideas, opinions. Differences in opinion should be examined and synthesised, not degraded or picked apart in a malicious manner.
Let Philosfucked be the harbringer of mental stimulation and pure focus.
"Philosophy studies the fundamental nature of existence, of man, and of man's relationship to existence. In the realm of cognition, the special sciences are the trees, but philosophy is the soil which makes the forest possible." - Ayn Rand
The Hawker Cries, Tis Time, Tis Time!
To start us off;
A theme addressed frequently in Lila is a protest against the objectivism in academic fields, specifically anthropology. How can you study a culture from an unbiased perspective when you are a product of your own culture? How could that study be anything other then a comparision between two cultures?
The problem of objectivity isn't specific to anthropology. How can you learn anything other then from the lense of your own perspective? Not just learning as in academics, but the way all of your experiences are processed.
So what I am really asking; is all of our experience completely original because of how anything we do is interpreted by our whole lives? And if this is true, can anyway relate communicate anything to anyone on a pure level?