Unbearable Ambition

What about a debate or discussion type show in which the topics and participants are carefully selected so that certain philosophical issues of your interest/design must arise?

A moderator, maybe you yourself, could inject specific facts or questions to tease out the problems on which you want your channel to focus.

I am stuck, or even ‘Fixed’ on the supernova analogy, no disrespect to either Arc, or You, & forgive the pun?Even if it raises to that level.

However, supernovae are spent and enrormous substances, to the best of my recollection, and recently co-incidentally (or not) another cosmological albeit ambigous analogy was made between a gallactic center and a vagina.
In another post i tried to argue that any system of anologies can be set up between two or more things,ideas, and there is no harm done in that.?!

However the scales are astoundingly different, even if the things in question may be qualitatively similar.
Things may look similar, and even behave as if they worked under similar principles, but then what need is to differentiate cosmology from ontology? Is this within the imaginary scope of God’s plan for the cosmos to create a reasonable assessment of it’s self? Would the Cosmos not exist was it not for some intelligent form of reason to recognize it? Maybe Einstein did not dispense with this in his 2nd relativity, or maybe everything in fact is not really relative, -relate-able even? How so ?

His answer may have been well You can set any two things side by side, but does it make sense to do so?
(If the premise hinges on defining self in terms of it’s self, then those definitions would need to make sense,otherwise t remains on the level of the absolutely reduced Cosmos into the realm of the metaphysic of physical events)

This is why the self, the cosmos, or even your self my self, can not be reduced by the way thing appear or behave. The have an intrinsic being, and this is why i personally hive the highest for the alchemical definitions of the Being of the middle ages.
And to whom and what primarily can we thank for these descriptions? Avicenna, Averroes, the Persian mystics, whom nowedays we would classify as those ‘Muslims’

That’s another thought I had…to craft the Ayn Rand type philosophical narrative in t.v. format. That would require the most groundwork, effort, and luck for full realization, though.
By the way, I think those are all great shows, except Deadwood which I’ve never seen. I am getting back into Homeland since the new season is currently on air. I was a little put off by the last season (season 3) which I found too convoluted and unrealistic to accomplish whatever it was trying to accomplish, but I think the current one has started out strong. Carrie is such an awesome character. The only other two shows I’m currently anticipating are Game of Thrones and Vikings, of which I think the latter might be my favorite.

All televised productions and films in the USA and Britain are highly censored for preferred subtle psychological influence.

I’m not personally interested in Rand in this way, I do not like her narratives that much. All I care for concerning her writing is her notion of value. There are a good number of historical events that merit a series like Game of Thrones, though.

Yes, Carrie a great character, and I agree with you about this new season; the last one did feel a bit empty, and this was caused by it consisting of so many convoluted layers of not really worked out plotlines. Brody’s situation in Caracas was unsatisfying, you never knew what you were looking at. People were expecting the show to fizzle out without Brody, but it picked up in quality.

Haven’t watched Vikings. I stopped watching GOT after season 2, some of the sadism was a bit too indulgent for me. But it is unquestionably extremely well made.

My friends ambition, among his ambitions anyway, was to be launched in a capsule after his death, or upon it, and plummeted into Jupiter.

He died eagerly, but without taking the required measures, such as earning a billion or what such missions cost nowadays to finance this decadent funeral. He was buried without a stone.

But now he does have a stone, with his sigil on it. At least thats something. But not much.

Timothy Leary went out on an LSD trip that must have been very unbearable.

This is one of the more interesting threads on here. I’m glad you revived it. It seems like, from your reviving comment, you have experienced disillusionment since you first created this thread?

To me, this thread sparks in my mind one of the key issues of philosophy. It seems that the question of what constitutes the good life is alive in the ambition to acheive it, and perhaps that ambition is a part of the conception as well.

Has it been decided once and for all which comes first, the material conditions that act causally, or the ideological conditions that cause us to act materially? Is the answer a matter of opinion, or does an object truth lie at the bottom? To what degree are our ideas are a result of the material makeup of our brain and brain chemistry?

This, it seems to me, is part of what you’re dealing with here:

So are these things, these “findings” of the “scientific clergy” things to be worked through or merely insulted (“nauseating as maggots”)?

Science cannot be done away with by scorn alone the way religion could, because it is built on a much stronger foundation. If the goal is really to overcome science, it cannot be done with the same methods that were used to overcome religion in the time of Bacon and Descartes. There is truth in science where there was only poetry and noble lies in religion. Telling people to do away with reliance on the senses because it is ignoble is futile.

Do you know the concept of technocracy? Through Nietzsche, we come to understand power quite clearly, and not in any narrow sense. What possesses power will dominate what is weak. I think Nietzsche wanted to accomplish a revesal through ideological denegration, but so long as modes of concrete power rest in someone’s hands they will not be done away with by words alone. Even the church combatted heresy with physical coercion. Scientific dominance has ushered in a new state in existence.

Environmentalism, for example, may try to accomplish some surpression of science by raising concrete issues (‘our survival is at stake’) — but then science may come along and say, “Here are the tools to remedy that.”

This is why Nietzsche had hope for a religious revival, but the skepticism of our age runs deep, and means of communication (which are scientific-technological products) are in the hands of those who value the power which science brings. In fact, the ideology of power is probably the worst remedy against science that could be conceived because science is the pure means to power and power creation. We might say that the scrawny man holding the bazooka is less noble than the brave savage, but if we are going to have a “valuation of the earth”, if the brave savage is wiped from its face then his nobility is altogether forgotten and is no possession of the earth.


So as not to keep going on, I want to move in from another (in)direction.

Mystery. Mystery gives a sense of intrigue to life, keeps it from being boring, makes room for possibility. But though we may have an aesthetic for mystery on TV, most do not want it in reality because the reality of mystery is uncertainty and danger. Humans strive for safety and certainty, it is instinctual. We use technology as means to obtain and secure our safety, and as we recreate the environment of safety the mystery disappears. All becomes labelled, familiar, correct behaviors designated — rational, “effective”!


There is a monopoly on pleasure. Yes, a base motive of humanity, part of the scientific outlook on man. We create values which put limits on our pleasures, we create laws which restrict our access to them, or else its packaged and exchanged for a price. Pleasure, I think, is the only thing more powerful than safety. It is just that the road to the fulfillment of our pleasures puts our safety at risk in such a way as to bring pleasure’s opposite, whether in reality or because we are told so — beware the pleasures of the flesh.


Two more hints:

Philosophy reunite with poetry — the pleasure of words, ideas and communication (and incommunicable “experience”)

Philosophy has always made use of the Thrasymachuses (now, the peddlers of pleasure?)


Also to be aware of “Applied Behavior Analysis” — operant conditioning…

That’s a thought! It’s not too much different from thinking of death as plummeting through an eternal void of nothing, except at least there is a destination. In a weird way I kind of like it.
And what’s more, if he actually had amassed a billion’s worth in fortunes at the end, he would not pass it to any children or relatives, or use it as social or political legacy, but he would burn it by paying for his own futile send off.
That’s really funny.

Did you know if he believed in any from of afterlife?

The scientific cointinuum had to change philosophy, i do not see any conflict here between science and philosophy, nor the notion that philosophy has become the handmaiden of science. Sure, science has changed the rudder by which we navigate, and god himself has appearently, so far has gone along with this. Now it is in man’s hands, wither he wants to go with this, toard happines and enlightenment, or, the opposite. Philosophy was science, once, and it still is in the social sphere, where critics allege, that it’s a weak point, wherea societal issues can not use science in it’s broades applications. They are wrong, because philosophy can not disengage , nor can science from philosophy of which, once it was indiscernible. This is only an illusion, such as Adam biting into gthe apple, as if he really knew the difference between eternal salvation and the pleasure of the retrogade origin. He did not realize his difference, (from animals) but noe he is starting to, and his realization will take him to his true identity. He has no ambition, except to be grue to the goal set for him in the reason for his exisgtence. And what is that? To overcome his morphic doubt, and to be able to reflect his sense of the aesthetic perfection, which will forever be sustained, in the moment of his highest pleasure, which contains his will.(to power)

TV has not even been invented yet. Saying we have television and production of real or valuable content is like saying Edison invented cold fusion.

I would try to gravitate toward the leading edge of development in this sense, the sense of the future, and say fuck it to every “pragmatic concern” or moralism steeped in any modern rationale, philosophical or otherwise.

The future world of TV, real content, real value, will bend to your will alone. But first we must learn to be gardeners and farmers, we must see the harvest in the tiny seed we are momentarily content to set in excrement-laced dirt.

I seriously think you are going to contribute to a revolution in TV and film content and production. I have no doubt, I feel the tectonics of the future reverberating at my feet right now just seeing it. Just think about it, this has never happened before; think about VO, all that has been accomplished, laid down, laid bare and lays there waiting to be impregnated; you, and film. Holy shit, man. I mean fuck but this is really it.

Yes. Absolutely.

Well said, and now, perhaps we couldn’t say so 3 years ago, but now we really know what the enemy is. And it trembles in terror at our coming.

I agree with this. I don’t think that science has come into conflict with philosophy, I think that science has come into conflict with life— not necessarily all life, there is much that is served by science. But the life that is conflicted by science will do all it can to oppose it, that is the way of life. Philosophy is the handmaiden of life, so it becomes convenient to put it in those terms (science over philosophy), even if not quite accurate. In reality there is a hidden agenda in putting the issue in those terms.

I’m not quite sure what you mean here by the goal being to overcome morphic doubt, for that reason I hesitant to make a response. But at the risk of being on the wrong path, I might say that doubt isn’t necessarily a bad thing or something to be overcome completely. It is in uncertainty that possibility is opened up— when everything is familiar and laid out before you there is only one (rational) path to follow, and we would follow it mechanically and lose what makes us dynamic as living organisms.

This is the reason I see a conflict between science and life. I don’t think it is all life. It is possible that some might overcome that and their possibility would be in the realm of what idealism and creativity priorly never could be, and the old “human” way of life in doubt, uncertainty and mystery of the universe will seem primitive. Such has happened before in lesser degrees (“civilization” vs “savage”…)

Out of curiosity, do you think, for example, Michaelangelo was more in touch with the highest power than, say, Heironymus Bosch?

Science merely verifies the possibility that a particular philosophy MIGHT be right. It’s primary function is to prove that a hypothesis could not be right through demonstration of observable contradiction in proposal. It cannot verify truth. It can only verify falsity.

I agree with you. I am not sure if you were responding to me, but in a post above I did say there is truth in science. I do think though that through scientific experimentation and other methods knowledge does get discovered that has concrete effects (like creating new technology), and that was in particular what I was referring to when I said there was truth, true or concrete effects, and in the context I was reffering (science vs. religion) the concrete effects are what have allure because they provide immanent pleasure or other desired goods.

True. Materialism is the easier thing to play with and decide to believe because there are “concrete” results. The lure is that people are so very tempted into believing that their theory was right merely because the result comes out as they predicted. That is actually false reasoning, but very common and exercised greatly in Science, especially in Quantum Physics and Relativity.

Yep, and the big boys like playing with easy odds, which is what makes the issue of science different from the past “quarrel” between philosophy and religion a la Bacon and Descartes.

I just had deja vu about both this discussion and the other one with Artimas occurring at once, strange. Did this happen before?

Excellent post AP. You raise all the issues that are related to the lethargy I have encountered.

Absolutely. And here, James will agree. The will to improve oneself, to become more self-harmonious, is the self-harmony. This is reflected in the will to power.
But my issue has been epistemological: what is power, what is harmony, in terms of the human being? “Domination” and “reservation” have go a long way to sketch the generalities, but neither reflects directly on the psyche. My choice of the word valuing is a remedy to that. It has proven to be, and I am as far from disillusionment as I cold possibly be; in fact my ambition has not waned but has been accompanied by a certain fear; the power of the concept is, now that am somewhat changed, separate of the psychological plasma that produced it, a force that operates on its own accord, and no longer needs me as an engine and thus no longer gives me the fire of that engine. At least this was the case until some days ago. I seem to have reclaimed my fire.

The answer is a matter of approach, that is all. I was never under the impression that there is an answer to the chicken and egg question. It is an incentive to ask a different question; the only sensible questions are questions that have answers. Questions must appeal to knowledge.

It is clear that the chicken and the egg evolved as one principle. It is clear that conditions and the things that make us call other things ‘their conditions’ are inextricable. I find that Heidegger was the first to approach causality with this in mind; emerging, disclosing is his answer. Not of things but of relations. The relations acquire sediment which become ‘things’ - processes so constant that we van attribute nouns to them and relate them to one another as constants.

The thing in itself is thereby fully negated, but the question is: should this purist epistemology impact the ways of defining objects? What would be the merit?
Your answer is correct: “environmentalism”. The ‘ism’ of ‘Dasein’, which is the human being as ‘emergence’, to hold a Heideggerian mirror to ‘affectance’.

Surely what emerges emegres out of affectance, but affectance emerges out of emergence equally.
But using the concept value, it is possible to bypass tsuch terms and arrive at an acutely real definition of any situation. That, I think, is what scientific approach to ontology must accomplish.

I clearly spoke of the clerical “belief in base derivations”, not of clerical “findings”. That would be a contradiction, clergy interprets the truth and waters it down for the profane, it never finds anything, it would not dare even to look. It knows its power emanates only from the ‘gods’ - the theoretical scientists, the men who disclose synthetic a priori conditions, who shape the human species by adding significant powers of grasping. Such scientific thinkers are most rare and most precious.

Science has not taken over the role of religion, but of God - by the institution of scientific clergy.
What is this means is that the great concepts that science has produced in the first half of the last century, have now been claimed by a body of men that has no idea how to work these concept in any sensible direction. This is the sorry state of scientific progress - there has been no progress - there have been no scientists. Well, few of them and only humble ones, humbled by the fact that they have no answer for the fundamental problem now to be addressed, but build on different, older layers of physics; most of it captured under the term chemistry, if we take that term broadly. Theoretical physics had not advanced. Neither string theory or the Higgs hypothesis are no advances; they are both veiled confessions of a lack of power to actually control by science; they are introductions of a speculative approach to science. In this, the clergy is most happy. They are like the eunuchs in a late Roman court, more than like maggots; they excel at form, ritual, protocol. To what end? To insulate the ruler from criticism, but most of all, may the ruler inadvertently fall, to keep their jobs, to make their jobs necessary. The apparatus has become more necessary than the truth; science has become bureaucratic.

All that has been developed is a system of implementation of the powers that science has made available. To this end science has come to a virtually full stop; Technology and the pleasures it allowed for has for a century distracted man from the fact that science itself has not progressed beyond Heisenberg, Bohr, Einstein, Lorenz.
the reason for this is probably that the reality encountered commands a different epistemology. This has always been the purpose of my own work.

Even the church? But indeed, the message is not itself the means to bring it across. The “eunuchs” I speak of were the first to capitalize on this.

Suppressing is not going to work and it is certainly not desirable; Rather, the advance of science is required to deal with the wasteful industries we are presently unleashing.

Very true.

I compiled some writings on this, here:
humanarchy.net/forum/viewtop … =355#p1873

Again, in full agreement here. Here I found the necessity and possibility for an ontology based on the reality of encountering than on the reality of the processed encounter. Hence, the concept of self-valuing; to an extent the truths needs to be obscured to a being for it to be able to be; a being requires certain conditions and the absence of others - and all truths are conditions. This is an unconditional truth, a permanent condition. This realization brings about a voice that speaks a new truth: tread lightly. This is not a fact, but an esthetics; here we arrive at truth in a higher order, the order where pure mathematics has its place, among much other human excellence.

We must include the mysterious, the unnamed, the unnamable, the ‘spirit’, the inscrutable identity of experience in our definitions. Wherever we seek to eliminate them, we are eliminating ourselves.
Newton did not dream of claiming the mystery resolved;much less did Einstein. Their words are not ambiguous in this respect. Their main drive was an immense awe, the sense of wonder that defines every scientist, and to which the cleric is perfectly alien. Only one without wonder can invent something like the church. On the other hand, only someone with a great sense of wonder can design a cathedral. My point Technology can rise to great heights even in a scientific backland, for the simple reason that science, once produced, is applicable by anyone, anywhere if there is enough power involved.

Indeed.
We preserve our life for something, i.e. for pleasure, if we can truly stretch that term to mean happiness.
If life becomes too displeasurable, a creature will seek to end it.

In this sense Epicurus remains the quintessential philosopher.

Yes- the antithesis of philosophical comprehension; the mark of a scientific paradigm ruled by technicians.

The clergy do not direct the way power is wielded; they only profit from its conquest, confuse its limits and decorate its authority, so as for its rule to be extended in the name of what they decorate, and which becomes a phenomenon distinctly different from the penetrating insight and the following bold hypotheses of the scientist. So science is valued in terms of two of its uses; technological power and religious status. To what extent the clergy and the technicians cooperate I can’t say and have no interested in; all I am interested in is a scientific progress, a breakthrough, a thinking that rather than shirking back from it, accepts and makes use of the findings of, from a perspective demanding immediate satisfaction of full explication, irreconcilable certainties at the extremities of quantifiable observation. This use is primarily an opportunity to reform ‘truth-tables’ - perhaps it is calculus itself that needs to be refined, or put to greater use, be integrated in a more substantial pattern-mapping logos.

Are you familiar with Max Weber’s hypothesis of the iron cage, if so what do you think of it?

Don’t you think that the progress of science in any direction will continue to increase technological power? There will always by those seeking unlimited power and if they allocate funds to their particular projects of interest, and the development of the means of control will increase. I might be mistaken on this, but didn’t Einstein’s work play some role in the creation of the atom bomb?

It seems you are closer to Obe in the esteem you hold for science, and I won’t press my opinion too forcefully because I am certainly in the minority and I do see concrete benefits of science, I am just unsure if the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.

What do you see to be the goal or purpose of science?

What kind of breakthrough do you imagine? What purpose would such a breakthrough hold?

Have you heard of the concept of the singularity? What is your feeling about it?

You seem the have skimmed over good parts of my post, so I’ll keep it short and simple. I do tend to write densely, late at night.

I do not believe in singularity, I think the concept is nonsensical sci-fi, based entirely on a ridiculous prediction that science advances ‘of itself’ as a predictable curve of ‘homogenous progress’. It literally has nothing to do with what science is, only what the clergy thinks it is.

I think I have made it quite clear that I have immense respect for science, more than I can see anyone showing in these modern days. But if you do not understand what I mean by the difference between clergy and scientist, and between scientist and technician, then I can see how you have missed this point.

The iron cage is a poetic name for ‘society’ and ‘economy’. As more people gather and technological power increases, people are squeezed like fruit for ‘functionality’. Yes, obviously this is real.

As to the breakthrough, it has already happened. So far no easy to read papers on it exist. Talk is probably the medium where it’s made most accessible. I’m discussing it or some of its aspects and applications here.

I did read your entire comment, I just did not feel up to making a comment about for example:

because I didn’t feel I had anything worthwhile to add that you would not have thought was obvious.

It is similar with the discussion about “the chicken and the egg”. I try not to comment when I don’t have anything fruitful to add.

Since I don’t personally know about the science behind the singularity, I can’t argue with you, but mainly I was looking for your opinion on it in any case. I have seen videos about brain implants allowing individuals to manipulate robotic arms, and videos displaying the work of Jose Delgado which seem pretty unbelievable and I believe was accomplished back during the 60s, but perhaps the science behind the singularity is vastly different.

I am sure I don’t understand what you mean by the difference between scientific clergy and scientists. Would you like to explain it?

On another connected note, don’t you think that advancements in science could be picked up and used to further the goals of technicians?

Does value ontology protect against coercive practices of technicians? Whose values? I am not familiar with value ontology.