iambiguous wrote:Franz Kafka
Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.
This might be said of paradigm shifts originating from any number of human endeavors.
iambiguous wrote:Franz Kafka
My peers, lately, have found companionship through means of intoxication - it makes them sociable. I, however, cannot force myself to use drugs to cheat on my loneliness - it is all that I have - and when the drugs and alcohol dissipate, will be all that my peers have as well.
That's one way to look at at. Fortunately, there are other ways too.
Moreno wrote:iambiguous wrote:Franz Kafka
My peers, lately, have found companionship through means of intoxication - it makes them sociable. I, however, cannot force myself to use drugs to cheat on my loneliness - it is all that I have - and when the drugs and alcohol dissipate, will be all that my peers have as well.
That's one way to look at at. Fortunately, there are other ways too.
I tend to agree with Kafka here. My quibble would be that many things can act as drugs and its likely that Kafka partook in some of these 'drugs'. Some drugs even prevent socialness. Probably most do.
I think it is pretty rare anyone manages to escapte a horrible fate with drugs. But I agree there is something off in the way narcotics are scapegoated and demonized. It's a distraction from noticing the real pernicious drugs at work. Though none of this helps Kafka, Kafkas out there now, the Kafka in us. Yes, people try to use drugs as social short cuts and really, through this, likely avoid actually dealing with their real situations. But his 'real' situation' was probably the contruct of non-pharmaceutical drugs and not something he could 'cheat'.iambiguous wrote:Regarding "controlled substances", I tend more towards the perspective of Tom the priest from Drugstore Cowboy:
"Narcotics have been systematically scapegoated and demonized. The idea that someone can use drugs to escape a horrible fate is anathema to these idiots."
[/quote]yeah.But there are a lot of different ways to encompass a "terrible fate". Still, it infuriates me I don't have access to the dope that would ameliorate mine.
iambiguous wrote:All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.
Samuel Beckett
How many arguments have a beginning, a middle and an end? But then don't really say much at all about the beginning, the middle and the end of the lives we live? But no matter. They're still well-built.
Moreno wrote:iambiguous wrote:All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.
Samuel Beckett
How many arguments have a beginning, a middle and an end? But then don't really say much at all about the beginning, the middle and the end of the lives we live? But no matter. They're still well-built.
I would say all arguments - except perhaps some of the obssessive stuff by Wittgenstein and Russell - only have middles. Beginnings are assumed. Ends can't be reached except by immortals and not by them either.
d63 wrote:You know, Ambig? Sometimes I can't understand a damn thing you're saying.
Yes, I suppose I am more interested in edification. Though a system might edify me, it can't really reach me since I am not highly organized.d63 wrote:First of all, I think we’re all on the same page here. What differences there are appear to be primarily situated around matters of methods and the degree we want to go to. It comes down to Rorty’s distinction between the systematic and the edifying philosopher. And our allegiance seems to be decidedly within the edifying one.
I don't want to find an end, though I would love it if some things ended. It's not that I can't enjoy and put to use some direct, certain statement 'this is the way things are', I would hope however that there are challenges, if not ongoing torture, after that portion of things is mastered. For example merging, permanently, with oneness - nirvana and the like - sounds not very interesting to me. Likewise some very pure, good Heaven experience, ooh and aahing at God's amazingness FOR ETERNITY. I mean, I would choose that over being burned in boiling oil for all time, but I think after several billion years they might end up being very close to same experience.This has been clear to me as far as Ambig’s concerned, and has been pretty much confirmed with Moreno by his decided focus on the middle –or what I like to call process. I could not agree more with Moreno (yeah, you, man!) in that there is every reason to put a focus on process above an end in that those who seek and delude themselves into finding such an end are all too prone to bringing folly into the world –if not through their selves, then through those who act on that solid foundation to impose their own agenda on us all.
I think the 60s exploration was fine, in general. They were still not getting at the core. And they thought changes personal and political could happen so fast. I don't think they realized how far down the problems go and what they were really looking at in the opposition.First of all, I expected it to be a little smugger than it was based on an interview in which Searle described Derrida as a philosopher for those who knew nothing about philosophy. However, the impression I got from the two times I heard him on PhilosophyTalk was a little more humble. And what I got from the book carried on that impression. Furthermore, I enjoyed his decision to be clear about what he was saying and would actually like to incorporate his style of simply building an argument as compared to my own of poetic meandering like that of Zizek.
Moreover, I actually agreed with some of his more classicist points in that we have to agree there is a reality beyond our representations of it, that there are, in fact, facts, and that us edifying philosophers have gone for a kind of ontological overkill. Let us look at the latter point: back in the 60’s, a lot people decided to do things that were not normally accepted (drugs, free sex, etc.): hence the cultural relativity that became popular at the time. But that wasn’t enough. We had to establish a foundation for it in the realm of the metaphysical/ontological by acting as if all reality was relative. This ultimately ended up in the absurdity of Richard Bach’s (who just died in the last couple of days) Illusions.
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