tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post6723921294675152172..comments2024-03-28T12:10:26.197-07:00Comments on One Cʘsmos: The Descent of Man: Human, Post-Human, and SubhumanGagdad Bobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14249005793605006679noreply@blogger.comBlogger29125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-34886217767200050692010-01-20T07:10:54.557-08:002010-01-20T07:10:54.557-08:00a better link<a href="http://www.redstate.com/erick/2010/01/19/obamas-unicorn-of-hope-and-change-died-under-the-weight-of-ted-kennedys-ego" rel="nofollow">a better link</a>NoMohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01100042056270224683noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-85914149555085880492010-01-20T06:43:07.386-08:002010-01-20T06:43:07.386-08:00coonifed said:
"I suppose what I’m tryin’ to...coonifed said:<br /><br />"I suppose what I’m tryin’ to do, what my “subjective” element is trying to do, is to elevate and distinguish an art that relates to and translates downward trough symbolism and even language (the word) the resolve of fallen nature back into virginal primordial nature,..."<br /><br />May I suggest everything by Hank Williams Sr.son of a preacher mannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-64090697182776377702010-01-19T21:18:01.411-08:002010-01-19T21:18:01.411-08:00Never thought I'd be saying this, but "th...Never thought I'd be saying this, but <a href="http://www.redstate.com" rel="nofollow">"thanks Teddy!"</a>.<br /><br />That's a twist.NoMohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01100042056270224683noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-51457317873910002282010-01-19T19:34:09.372-08:002010-01-19T19:34:09.372-08:00Best argument for materialism and determinism ever...Best argument for materialism and determinism ever:<br /><br />I heard <a href="http://blogodidact.blogspot.com/2010/01/tea-pots-on-boil-woo-hoo.html" rel="nofollow">Howard "Yeargghhh!!!" Dean</a> to Rachel Maddow when she asked him if Coakley was at falt for losing 'their seat'<br /><br />Dean says “A lot of this isn’t anybodies fault…uh… well, <b>except maybe George Bush’s…</b>”Van Harveyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08470413719262297062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-11958223462989866062010-01-19T19:22:36.325-08:002010-01-19T19:22:36.325-08:00>> go ahead and unveil yourself without rese...>> go ahead and unveil yourself without reserve<br /><br />Yeah, or maybe you could talk Dupree into exposing himself to us. (Just give us fair warning beforehand, m'kay?)Warrenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13623170987747998335noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-69657987548880408412010-01-19T19:20:18.127-08:002010-01-19T19:20:18.127-08:00NB,
>> Despite the piles of PhDs
"Des...NB,<br /><br />>> Despite the piles of PhDs<br /><br />"Despite"? Don't you mean "because of"?<br /><br />And the fact of Aninny taking issue with you should greatly bolster your confidence in your statements.Warrenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13623170987747998335noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-28379294301052277052010-01-19T19:15:38.100-08:002010-01-19T19:15:38.100-08:00When one compares the end result of other living e...When one compares the end result of other living entities with the innumerable purposefull marvels and wonders of their material composition, it does appear as far as purpose goes, that the whole is lesser than the sum of it's parts. As far as purpose is concerned with man, he can say - I am therefore I think.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-18688635243213873172010-01-19T18:16:21.302-08:002010-01-19T18:16:21.302-08:00"And it seems to me that the Artist and the v..."And it seems to me that the Artist and the viewer may not necessarily see the same scene either... much of what is revealed is subjective"<br /><br />True that. I've gotten into a couple of "arguments" lately about whether or not lil Wayne or Allen Ginsberg qualify as poets. You probably know what I say about the issue, but my "opinions" still don't keep some from thinking that they are "able to distinguish fine art when [they] see it;” And there drops another facebook "friend," not that I need anyone else at the moment anyway.<br /><br />But just as the trinity relates to ontology as such and all the rest to the realms of cosmology, i.e., all other numbers, or etc, etc, and all that, I suppose what I’m tryin’ to do, what my “subjective” element is trying to do, is to elevate and distinguish an art that relates to and translates downward trough symbolism and even language (the word) the resolve of fallen nature back into virginal primordial nature, which I suppose is itself a sort of art of God, or something analogous to it.<br /><br />Art of God vs. profane art…Just tryin’ to work it out.coonifiednoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-51640708424857145712010-01-19T18:08:35.925-08:002010-01-19T18:08:35.925-08:00"Hearing you shall hear and not understand, a..."Hearing you shall hear and not understand, and seeing you shall see and perceive; ...Lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal them." -- Matthew 13:14,15 -- Jesus quoting Isaiah 6:9,10<br /><br />That used to be a much more troubling verse to me than it is now.mushroomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07651027035577798096noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-27382293541270923662010-01-19T17:29:25.101-08:002010-01-19T17:29:25.101-08:00"What is the worse that could happen?"
..."What is the worse that could happen?"<br /><br />The worst? More readers like you.Gagdad Bobhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14249005793605006679noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-48697055436698447172010-01-19T17:01:22.861-08:002010-01-19T17:01:22.861-08:00Back OnT:
Chesterton's biography makes the ca...Back OnT:<br /><br />Chesterton's biography makes the case that St. Francis himself made, if you will, "...the Renaissance and the modern world possible." Poet, troubador, soldier, saint.<br /><br />Ortega y Gasset speaks of the unassailable feeling man has of being lost, disoriented, and that the day-to-day "orientation" he does feel he possesess is simply an inventory of materiality and a repertory of received "convictions."<br /><br />His conclusion is that being "lost" is true condition and the gateway to transcendence and the immanence of consciousness--a soul.<br />(Some Lessons on Metaphysics; Norton, 1969)<br /><br />The great thing is that the "Lessons" are his transcribed lecture notes from a class he gave at Salamanca in 1932. Too bad there's no video!tao9noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-29897742701824850072010-01-19T17:00:42.974-08:002010-01-19T17:00:42.974-08:00Bob, you ask a lot of questions, make alot of conj...Bob, you ask a lot of questions, make alot of conjecture as if these things were in any doubt.<br /><br />However, you already know the answers. There is nothing actually in contention here.<br /><br />You are posing "thorny" questions to your readers, but I daresay you are not confused at all. You know who you are and what you are doing.<br />You know "the score" quite well.<br /><br />Am I right?<br /><br />And there is a reason for that. You could do us all a favor by not playing "coy." Give it to us straight.<br /><br />If you had no other audience but yourself, would you maunder on about the foibles of the existentialists in the grassy meadows of your mind?<br /><br />I think not.<br /><br />Write to us as you partake of Knowledge in your deeper sections, the ones you reserve for yourself.<br /><br />That may more helpful guidance to your "flock" than the re-tread intellectual "controversies" you are setting out for sale here.<br /><br />Your instinct is to teach, and to keep it somewhat conventional, but I say, go ahead and unveil yourself without reserve.<br /><br />Does the world need another professor? Not likely.<br /><br />Does it need another seer?<br /><br />Aye,that it could.<br /><br />What is the worse that could happen?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-90027208977156011852010-01-19T16:37:18.024-08:002010-01-19T16:37:18.024-08:00NB: have you considered the possibility that all t...NB: have you considered the possibility that all those PhDs might be right and you simply don't understand what they are talking about? I know, difficult to imagine. I also can't really figure out why you would find the cited article so offensive. Everything humans do has a biological basis, what's so horrible about trying to tease those out?<br /><br />Reciprocal altruism is primarily a phenomenon of animal behavior, and like all such phenomenon is found in humans in radically altered forms, if at all. Its reality as a natural phenomenon is entirely independent of whether it is "really" altruism by your definition or anyone else's. Technical terms often often mean something different from the vernacular words they derive from. <br /><br />http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism-biological/#5<br /><i>In evolutionary biology, an organism is said to behave altruistically when its behaviour benefits other organisms, at a cost to itself. The costs and benefits are measured in terms of reproductive fitness, or expected number of offspring. So by behaving altruistically, an organism reduces the number of offspring it is likely to produce itself, but boosts the number that other organisms are likely to produce. This biological notion of altruism is not identical to the everyday concept. In everyday parlance, an action would only be called ‘altruistic’ if it was done with the conscious intention of helping another. But in the biological sense there is no such requirement. Indeed, some of the most interesting examples of biological altruism are found among creatures that are (presumably) not capable of conscious thought at all, e.g. insects. </i>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-32794130945668239812010-01-19T16:25:08.905-08:002010-01-19T16:25:08.905-08:00Way OT & late to the party (haven't posted...Way OT & late to the party (haven't posted here since 2008):<br /><br />Bob or anyone seen "The Book of Eli" ?<br /><br />It is good.<br /><br />Regardstao9noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-32998370878680221402010-01-19T14:28:56.052-08:002010-01-19T14:28:56.052-08:00The fulsome stench of raw scientism permeates
(wh...The fulsome stench of <a href="http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/greatergood/2010/january/Keltner.php" rel="nofollow">raw scientism</a> permeates <br />(where else?) Berkeley nowadays. What is it with such people? How is it that they seem so unable to think clearly about anything at all?<br /><br />They are prone to blatant absurcular reasoning: for example, the fashionable idea of adaptive behavior in humans called "reciprocal altruism". Despite the piles of PhDs and this benighted elite seems oblivious that if something is reciprocal then it is not altruism <i>by definition</i>, and <i>vice versa</i>.<br /><br />Yet this codswallop is the height of sophistication on the academic cocktail party circuit (or so my academic pals tell me).<br /><br />*sigh*Stephen Macdonaldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13474300559219020772noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-87970193370206899632010-01-19T13:16:15.052-08:002010-01-19T13:16:15.052-08:00I think that Art, in the schematic sense, is a sel...I think that Art, in the schematic sense, is a selective representation of the Artist's values. Explicitly, or implicitly, the Artist reveals their soul, and through our response to it, we reveal ours.<br /><br />And it seems to me that the Artist and the viewer may not necessarily see the same scene either... much of what is revealed is subjective, and what the Artist chooses to portray in their art, and the style they transmit it through, affects how clear or unclear any 'message' they have may be, but then I think that's secondary to the Art's revelation.<br /><br />The more objective the contents of the art, the more clear the composition, the more crisp the stylization, the more likely it is that the Artist and the viewer (consumer?) will be able to reap a similar revelation from it... but that assumes a lot of commonalities between them to begin with, as well as whether the theme of the Art (and the soul that is being revealed) is a high or low one.<br /><br />Here's a <a href="http://www.artrenewal.org/" rel="nofollow">fine place to browse</a> through several different styles of master artists, as well as interesting essays on them.Van Harveyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08470413719262297062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-17216957936882752862010-01-19T11:29:39.152-08:002010-01-19T11:29:39.152-08:00See here for visual examples. Especially today'...See <a href="http://robinstarfish.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow">here</a> for visual examples. Especially today's.juliehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15975754287030568726noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-13235755645352086312010-01-19T11:24:10.313-08:002010-01-19T11:24:10.313-08:00I'm with Mushroom re. Art - it is discovery, o...I'm with Mushroom re. Art - it is discovery, or at its best it is revelation. Either way, it discloses a truth. Even, at times, an unpleasant truth.<br /><br />Perhaps the key is that it does not glorify the negative, but rather shows things <i>as they are</i>, which may have very little to do with how they appear to the blinded eye. For instance, that awful image of Obama Bob had up a couple weeks back: it actually was painful to look at. It reflected a revealed truth, as the artist saw it, which was decidedly horrid. A representation of the lower vertical, so to speak. Though I'd guess that in the eyes of those adjusted to the darkness, they see something of the higher vertical in it, and might call it beautiful.<br /><br />I'd add that sometimes abstract art is revelation, as well - but only when it internalizes certain universal truths/ structures about what makes an image Art. Just as there's a fine balance between freeform jazz and random chaotic noise.juliehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15975754287030568726noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-91435304261605247462010-01-19T10:36:45.254-08:002010-01-19T10:36:45.254-08:00Yeah Avatar is the absolute distillation of neo-pa...Yeah Avatar is the absolute distillation of neo-pagan, anti-American utopian leftist fantasies. Awesome technology though, which no other country on earth could have produced.Stephen Macdonaldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13474300559219020772noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-64462194116180613322010-01-19T10:32:08.413-08:002010-01-19T10:32:08.413-08:00Avatar is the most horrible movie I've seen in...Avatar is the most horrible movie I've seen in a while, btw. Horrible. But the kids love it!coonifiednoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-10747235797636141072010-01-19T10:28:45.400-08:002010-01-19T10:28:45.400-08:00About art...do you guys believe that art is primar...About art...do you guys believe that art is primarily the disclosure of essences, as in creating a representation that approximates the good, beautiful and true? Or can anything useful--as in information-- that emerges out of the unconscious, like images or symbols that reflect primordial worlds in the Jungian sense, also be considered art in a way?<br /><br />While in the first case, inspiration is the primary condition of the arts existence, the latter seems to be only informative in the sense of patterning out and making objective the negative part that is usually hidden from the normative type. Both obviously involve a revealing and permeation from the outside of some sort, but a difference remains in that one preoccupies itself with the supremely good object, and the other with the negative object.<br /><br />Like you said, though. People often numb themselves to the greatest indicator of "of a life lived wrong"--pain...and pleasure. If a picture exposes this pain, is it a lessor art for being depressed? Is it bound to mere utility, of being a map to study, or a picture to remember how vain things can be if we don't turn the right direction. W. Blake, for e.g., was certainly not only focused on the mythological good. There is also the bad: demons, soul of a flea (personification of natural forces), and poems like the chimney sweeper and others.<br /><br /><br />Alot of art now days, and maybe in the past (I don't know), seems to be that of a degraded aestheticism, or the elevation of misdirected emotion over the proper direction of the psyche. People just don't know that there's a difference between a misdirected emotion exteriorized, and one that is properly channeled towards permanent things, i.e, Principles, etc, etc.<br /><br />It's important for the reason that ones definition of art, the definition that a person is most heavily invested in, paints a pretty accurate picture of what that person might look if the same artistic force translates and ripples over into other categories like morality or science.<br /><br /><br />Just some thoughts.coonifiednoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-60903160828625415312010-01-19T10:23:28.691-08:002010-01-19T10:23:28.691-08:00"Rather, Petrarch regarded humans as primaril..."Rather, Petrarch regarded humans as primarily willing beings, which immediately goes to the question of freedom. Although reason can never account for man's freedom, if his freedom operates outside reason, then it is no longer free. Rather, it is merely "absence of constraint," which is neither here nor there."<br /><br />Exactly right. In the absence of <i>correct</i> restraint there is no Freedom, only incompletion, error and chaos, as is obedience to incorrect constraint. There can of course be no freedom without free will, and unless the person is <i>willing</i> (and acting) in a correct manner, nothing will be created but error and illusion. <br /><br />aninnymouse said "...only free to discover what is already there..."<br /><br />You're free to make up whatever you want, but freedom is not free to make error equal to accuracy... if you make, and persist, in error, you are free to imagine you've made something worthwhile, and to evade acknowledging that things aren't adding up, but those who've correct their errors and seen correctly, will correctly see your creation as mere chaos.<br /><br />Acting 'freely' without attaining correctness, isn't Freedom, it's just pointless activity twitching across the canvass.<br /><br />For our <i>willing</i> to have a possibility of real meaning, it first of all must have the possibility of being in error, but also there must exist an actual correctness, Truth, which it seeks after, and which forms the shape of those constraints.<br /><br />Capital "R" Reason is the process of combining knowledge, calculation and imagination towards the resolution of a goal. That goal, to be worthwhile, has got to be directed towards (from?) the ideal One, of which the individual is a Many, of.<br /><br />Many... an incomplete representation of the One? Hmmm....<br /><br />An example of a notion... there's an 'optical illusion' picture out there somewhere, which shows in place of what would be a cone, it's lower half drawn in solid lines rising half way up from the base, changing to dashed lines extending further up, and then disappearing just before the apex, which is marked with a single dot for it's point. The inner I, when it looks at this 'sees' the missing lines; you see the cone, even though a portion of the lines are discontinuous or missing.<br /><br />In this illustration, Knowledge, is the memory of (presumed) correct integrations previously made, their inter-relations, our actions and experiences shading the lines in more and more, forming solid lines extending from the base and up through the sides, they supply shape and give guidance and lead the inner I to see upwards through the dashed or imagined lines which expectantly follow from them, and draw our vision to see what is not yet there, but must exist, extending towards the final point.<br /><br />If we've drawn the solid lines of memory incorrectly, our Knowledge will be out of angle and the shape will not hold. We are constantly seeking after the correct angle and shape for those lines, and the hope of correctness, of perfection, keeps the imperfect infused with spirit in anticipation of correctly drawing and completing the shape. <br /><br />Coffee.Van Harveyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08470413719262297062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-47576620337603511522010-01-19T10:21:52.872-08:002010-01-19T10:21:52.872-08:00I tend to think of art as discovery, too.I tend to think of art as discovery, too.mushroomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07651027035577798096noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-75247123564493795852010-01-19T10:14:07.901-08:002010-01-19T10:14:07.901-08:00I might add that we are "lured" by a hyp...I might add that we are "lured" by a hyperdimensional archetype that is inexhaustible in its potential, so it's hardly as if there is some "static" thing that one is to become. Rather, to a large extent, moving toward it is being it -- or, its being infuses our willing, thinking, and creating.Peteynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-46651161193703698562010-01-19T10:11:42.874-08:002010-01-19T10:11:42.874-08:00Really, its just a matter of reinstating formal an...Really, its just a matter of reinstating formal and final causation, without which nothing makes sense anyway.Peteynoreply@blogger.com