The Philosophers

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Honorable mentioning of Lennert Hillege

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Of all superstitious philosophers, Descartes was the most lucid.

[promethean75]

Because the prose in the meditations is very, very slow and careful.

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As a man goes up a darkened staircase.

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Anyone know some Baudrillard?
The Simulacrum.

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The simulacrum is incredible. It is almost true that we are nothing besides text - we are at heart infinitely more active than text but all that is not pure heart is text.

So our states of mind, emotion, physical body, all that is for a good deal text.

Meaning, content which is altered by thought and by contact with other content.

The simulacrum (Im not confusing Lacan and Baudrillard, they're just both post-deconstructionalist) is a matter of superior text. Meaning, I suppose, more skillfully arranged and more to a point, than most human beings.
So you have a thrust of a main storyline in which commands are embedded, in the stream of which the texts of individual persons whirl around in constant self-discovery.

Who is driving this boat?
The notion of a driver is text, though.
What is "the driving of the boat"?
Or some such.

I mean, thats a real question though.

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Also I have to make this shitty confession.
I had a couple of Tesla shares, and then I was planning to go to Montreal this winter and I sold them on that account. The price has quadrupled since then.
That shit is bad feels.

Bad bad feels which is the main obstacle to becoming a trader. How can you get motivated after such a stupid thing? I never even went to Montreal.
Just, fuck. Its like, yeah. Just fuck. FUCK.

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Thats such a vacuum. Wealth that with less effort than I made wold have been mine. Make one bad trade like that and you can see how people jump from buildings from bad trading shit.
The power of value. we are puppets on its strings. Dangling.

Oh thats what my song Chapter of Eve is about! Now I get it.

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Where the fuck is Capable.

He really didn't like my loyalty to Trump or my inability to express precisely what I thought was going on. Still I cant express that, its too fucking complex even what I do know, and I know exactly how much I don't know, namely a lot.

Its gotten to the point where I think Joe Rogan is right when he says

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obviously these hihats need work but for the rest I tried for hours to put a melody line to it but grarageband doesn't suffice here.
Live saxophone would be good.

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Wow, average view duration 4 times the length of the video. Nice.

Weird how stats on youtube show up different in the creator studio than in the public face by the way. Ive had videos at 150 views which showed 7 views in public.

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Responding to some oneliners from fellow philosophers;

Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him.

What about travel, experience, love, defeat, loss, victory, etc, etc?

What worries you, masters you.

It occupies you. Only a very shallow person is instantly mastered by what occupies him.

Government has no other end, but the preservation of property.

I presume you mean property as including ones own body; habeas corpus.

All wealth is the product of labor.

I suppose plunder counts as labour then.

No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience.

Have I experienced that "A" = "A"? Or have I merely experienced the results of applying this formula?

Fortitude is the guard and support of the other virtues.

Granted.

All mankind... being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.

When was mankind ever so, that you have experienced this, so that you know this?

I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.

Granted.

The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.

Hohum - unfortunately, after laughing hard at the banality of this phrase, I find I actually agree with it to an extent - to the extent that you mean a fence against the worlds unwholesome elements. You need to know these to defend against them.

Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself.

Again, how are you able to know this from experience?
Not that I disagree with it, it is a noble ideal and I fight for it daily.

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Curiosity is the lust of the mind.

Well said.

Hell is truth seen too late

Very well said.

“Scientia potentia est.
Knowledge is power.”

Well said. Knowledge in the right hands is power.

For such is the nature of man, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; Yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves: For they see their own wit at hand, and other mens at a distance.

I wonder if this may be an English trait.
Ive met quite some people who were strongly aware of their own lack of wisdom during long periods of life - myself included.

The condition of man . . . is a condition of war of everyone against everyone

That is what the natives looked down on in the colonists; a real man fights for his tribe first, loves himself last -"I never saw a Comanche with the long stare" - Colonel McCullough
We Europeans need to learn to fight with each other again - Christianity (imperialism) had robbed us of this.

“Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry... no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

A world without ancestral loyalties is indeed pure chaos.

Leisure is the mother of Philosophy

Well said.

The source of every crime, is some defect of the understanding; or some error in reasoning; or some sudden force of the passions. Defect in the understanding is ignorance; in reasoning, erroneous opinion.

Well the defect and the passion are hardly the same quality, I would say, so to phrase them together like this is nonsensical.
You should have said: some crimes are results of defect of the understanding, some crimes are results of sudden force of the passions.
The two have nothing to do with each other and they need to be judged very differently as well.
Even though many crimes are results of both these conditions playing together.

Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.

You mean weapons, not virtues.
The cardinal virtue is to have strong values, to value strongly. No ware is ever won without this virtue. It translates, among other things, to the tool of persistence.

So that in the nature of man,
we find three principal causes of quarrel:

First, Competition;
Secondly, Dissidence;
Thirdly, Glory.

The first, maketh men invade for Gain;
the second, for Safety;
and the third, for Reputation.

The first use Violence, to make themselves Masters of other men's persons, wives, children and cattle;
the second, to defend them;
the third, for trifles, as a word, a smile, a different opinion, and any other sign of undervalue, either direct in their Persons, or by reflexion in their Kindred, their Friends, their Nation, their Profession, or their Name.”

Nonsense, chap.
One may divide life in all kinds of numbers of categories.
But Aristotle has died.

Homo homini lupus

Insult to wolves (in the way it is meant; in truth, a noble man is as a wolf to other wolves)

Words are the counters of wise men, and the money of fools.

Interesting. Wow, well said.

The first and fundamental law of Nature, which is, to seek peace and follow it.

A tree seeks peace? It seeks light, mostly, and craves water.
to be at peace? Then, growth is cognate with peace.

For it can never be that war shall preserve life, and peace destroy it.

Very very wrong.

Covenants, without the sword, are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all.

But swords without the covenant are even more dangerous.

When all the world is overcharged with inhabitants, then the last remedy of all is war, which provideth for every man, by victory or death.

I plead the fifth

For to accuse requires less eloquence, such is man's nature, than to excuse; and condemnation, than absolution, more resembles justice.

Yes it requires no eloquence at all, one can simply point a finger, and grunt.

If men are naturally in a state of war, why do they always carry arms and why do they have keys to lock their doors?

Was his an attempt at irony?

it is one thing to desire, another to be in capacity fit for what we desire.

Well said.

God put me on this Earth to accomplish a certain number of things. Right now I'm so far behind that I'll never die".

God must not have known what he was doing then.

A man's conscience and his judgment are the same thing, and, as the judgment, so also the conscience may be erroneous

Usually men are more schizoid than that, even though this should be a no brainer.

What is the heart but a spring, and the nerves but so many strings, and the joints but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body?

Very badly said and thought.

The universe, the whole mass of things that are, is corporeal, that is to say, body, and hath the dimensions of magnitude, length, breadth and depth. Every part of the universe is ‘body’ and that which is not ‘body’ is no part of the universe, and because the universe is all, that which is no part of it is nothing, and consequently nowhere.

Mass is indeed corporeal. The rest is questionable.

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Two kinds of people in the world - those who wish to be seen and those who wish to be hidden.

The distinction is not related directly to introverted / extroverted - extraversion is often the best way of hiding - attack is the best defence -whereas those who wish to be seen for what they are are often too vulnerable to constantly risk being seen for what they are not.

Those who avoid being seen are in general self-loathers, and thus, idealists. One who loathes him or herself is forced to locate consciousness in what is not, but better than is; utopia (either eutopia, the good place, or outopia, no-place); here, phantasmic remedies to reality are invented such as Marx's heroically selfless and administratively perfectly efficient masses; Imaginary friends to accompany imaginary selves.

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The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues.

You scoundrel, and not tell us what your great vices are!

It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.

A good mind uses itself well.

The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.

So here we are. Is it true though? I suppose it is, even adventure stories are really edifices of mind upon mind.

Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.

A young colleague of yours said it as follows: make things as simple as necessary but not simpler....

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.

And let this "once" be imprinted on your heart forever.

Each problem that I solved became a rule, which served afterwards to solve other problems.

As such.

In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn, than to contemplate.

Learn only whats necessary to further contemplation? Such as, to make or acquire good food, sleep well, come to know the world.

Everything is self-evident.

Except that fact.

Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.

It would be very unfair otherwise.

Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.

Speak for yourself bud. Not even I have absolute power over my thoughts.

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This is a nice house.

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Knowledge is power

From you I buy that.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

Hm, yes.

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

So the ultimate readiness is an exact fullness.
tai chi - grand controller

Cure the disease and kill the patient.

Kek

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.

Ha. Yeah. But - imaginative power is also what one is; or so goes Blake and then Schopenhauer -
so it is not mere compensation, also a means to become what he is not yet.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.

Thus is Socrates overcome.

The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.

Hmm.
Granted, there had not been very interesting paintings in your time, and photography and film had yet to be invented -
I would say that a picture can express beauty quite well sometimes.
Not reproduce living beauty, which is a complicated concept.
"Tipharet", the jews call it.
Hey, jew looks more nice without the capital j.
like muslim looks nicer uncapitalized.

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.

Da erf dough...?

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.

The titan Kronos was considered to have been the authority in what the Greeks remembered as the Golden Age.

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.

I hope we make you proud, skip.

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[MagsJ]

Anyone know some Baudrillard?
The Simulacrum.

I do recall coming across him and it, many many years ago.. probably in some humanities class or other.

Baudrillard believed that society has become so saturated with these simulacra and our lives so saturated with the constructs of society that all meaning was being rendered meaningless by being infinitely mutable; he called this phenomenon the "precession of simulacra".

I agree, on there being too many societal constructs, just as there are too many labels.. which brings about the manifestation of the Mime artist.. in my mind, of a being rendered mute due to the world defining who and what he is for the Mime. Something I have felt to be the case for me.. in recent years, in not having a voice of my own, but instead replaced with a manufactured one that speaks for me.

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Yeah, well said actually. Mimes, puppets, clowns, all kinds of sad circus performers. Most of my old friends now let the state media speak for them and are quivering in fear when I expect them to think for themselves. Ive actually seen one shaking when asked to make a few logical steps, which would bring him close to some discernment of reality. But then this friend was already hating on me over a decade ago for paying him compliments on is artistic work of the past - he could not believe I was seriously respecting him, I had to be ironic because - who was he to be respected? Completely warped. Used to be a brilliant, warmhearted dude if a little on the fearful side.

Instead of reasoning they allow themselves to be dangled on strings through their "lives"....

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