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Post by jondexter on Jan 14, 2017 5:36:43 GMT -5
By the way, do we seriously have a word filter that changes c u l t into kvlt? That's hilarious and amazing. What about Varg vikernes into Mr Crispy Cornflakes?
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Post by jondexter on Jan 14, 2017 5:44:37 GMT -5
Who is to answer for this juvenile delinquency?🤜👈
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Post by glamhoth on Jan 14, 2017 7:57:46 GMT -5
This is turning into something quite detailed and time consuming. I will try to be brief. Technology creates the means for itself to last, meaning natural resources could (probably will) eventually not matter as artificial resources are developed can be used. Considering we still have thousands of years of energy resources and are learning to create artificial ones, and just harness more types of energy in general, I don't see how it won't last long enough to reach singularity. There's also space travel if you want to get even further out, and not only for materials (energy source) but for colonization; if not colonizing another planet, at least creating artificial ones. We're still only at the beginning of the exponential skyrocket in tech advancement. But honestly, the timeline of when a collapse would happen is vitally important, but it's also important to define the type collapse. Political collapse is easy and much more likely to happen sooner. Speed of environmental collapse has to outweigh the speed of technological remedy. Where might we be as a species 100 years from now? Are we really going to be living in tribal villages? Biosingularity (and maybe evolutionary psychology if things get really different) is an important factor, but one that's diffikvlt to forecast since the technology rate of growth is so exponentially fast. You're right, the timeline of when a collapse will happen is indeed of vital importance. If it takes too long, it might be too late. That's why we should do whatever we can to ensure it happens sooner than later. Political/economical collapses in the past didn't have the impact they should have today. Anything at the borders of the current global empire (Greece or whatever) isn't a big deal. But the time for the US and the EU will come, and it will change the picture considerably. It will certainly have a huge impact on the rhythm of "techno-capital acceleration", and hopefully prevent most of the scientific abominations they're pursuing to ever become a reality. The current values and perspective on life of our "Western" societies are still grounded in the philosophy of the Enlightenment: the dogma of pure reason, the belief that ever since mankind was set free from all "superstition" that obstructed its development, it has been set on its way towards redemption. The project of an ethical transcendental rationalism fell flat, however. Now we have to count on technological redemption, even though it's already quite clear that recent technological advancements, going back at least to the early 20th century, did more harm than good to mankind. People are less healthy; cancer has become an epidemic and it will get worse with all the carcinogenic GMO monstrosity; the drug industry isn't interested in keeping people healthy, they want everyone sick and on drugs so they can keep making money. We never produced so much wealth, and yet the gap between a tiny elite of the ridiculously wealthy and the mass of people living hand-to-mouth was never so wide; in the end it's all to the benefit of a few. We're very conscious now that the resources that at the dawn of the industrial revolution seemed endless are bound to be exhausted, we're far from having viable solutions for when it happens, and yet we keep "accelerating", seeking more profit, more wealth for the wealthy. I could go on and on. The current model is a disaster in every aspect, economically, socially, environmentally, spiritually and you name it. What is the "West"? At this point, the West would be secular liberal societies set up against the East, dogmatic religious societies. Secular liberalism, however, derives directly from the Christian seed. It emerges with the Enlightenment, which rejected the dogmatic content but conserved the linear perspective. That the linear perspective entered Europe via judeo-christianity is clear. The Greeks, even when they started writing history instead of reciting myths, they assumed the circularity of life. The exemplarity of history presupposed by Thucydides, for instance, which was the whole reason for him to even write his history of the Peloponesian War, depends entirely on the premise of circularity. You can call it egoism if you want, but there's still a huge difference. You can't completely escape the ego, but the primordial human spirituality we call paganism kept, for the longest time, human egotistical hubris in check. It's only when this spirituality fades that positive egoism gives place to negative egoism. Altruism, magnanimity, honour, justice, temperance, moderation, prudence, purity, self-control and all human virtues give place to greed, avarice, lust, hedonism, backstabbing etc. When Plato and later the Stoic philosophers taught about happiness, about what the individual, already fully awake to the ego, should pursue in his best interest, they suggested the virtues against the vices. Virtues bring man closer to the gods. Human virtues, assembled in an idea of good, were understood by Plato as god itself. I'm not sure what you mean for "inbreeding", but if it means maintaining a homogeneous population, "racial purity" if you like, it makes sense. It's easier to trust someone who is like you, who has similar impulses and an similar innate sense of justice. It's also easier to be altruistic if you are giving to people who are your equals, who stand for the same values and principles, who are like a reflection in the mirror. For an ideal community to exist, a spiritual foundation is needed, but also a genetic foundation. People with too diverse genes can reason alike, but when it comes to intuition and innate impulses conflict is unavoidable. And shared intuition is indispensable, pure reason can only produce nihilism and negative egoism.
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Post by andrewwerdna on Jan 14, 2017 9:07:04 GMT -5
I think people are too entrenched with conceptions and perspectives that serve their egos -- it's all about their art, their music, their projects, themselves. In an age in which every individual is an artist, this has a devastating effect upon art. I gave up having a musical project because I could no longer stand being part of that. Art was better when it was anonymous, like archaic poetry, a collective creation, the manifestation of a supra-individual spirit and not of an individual ego. Individual egos can channel supra-individual forces and produce great works of art, but what are the chances of something like that happening at this point, with all the ego-masturbation? and even if it happens, there are so many projects and bands, nobody would understand or care, so what's the point? I don't know man, this seems to immediately contradict itself. In saying that people in general are too egotistical to work alongside (in terms of working within a genre), and that for yourself to contribute wouldn't generate enough of an impact to be worthwhile, suggests that you might actually be too egotistical to participate. Making "mere entertainment" and never even releasing it is more worthwhile than twiddling your thumbs while waiting for the apocalypse. People have been waiting for the apocalypse for all of recorded history. That said, I'm a very apocalyptic person. I always think in "worst case scenario." I'm highly disturbed by climate change, particularly the idea of runaway climate change, like it hits a certain point of warming that triggers further warming events in a positive feedback loop until Earth turns into Venus. Maybe we're already at the point of no return. And if you count that with the dice of atomic annihilation constantly being rolled, it seems we are now trying to outrun extinction. If we collapse(from peak oil or something else) and don't go extinct, well that'd be just fine in my book. No sense in trying to fight that. But I don't think we'll be going back, we'd just be experiencing a new dark age and building again later in a similar way as the middle ages. This would be nice, but unfortunately the stakes are too severe to count on not already being permanently fucked imo. If we collapse and we're past the tipping point of runaway climate change, we might face extinction. If nukes go off (it's only a matter of time), we might face extinction. Extinction is too severe an outcome to take chances on. So I think our only hope is a forward escape of some sort. My personal vision of the best case scenario is that we happen to develop AI before the collapse. If we don't collapse, I think it's only a matter of time before we develop AI. The main question is whether it's possible, whether technology can have a soul in the way the we do. I say yes because I think mind (rather than matter) is the essential fabric of existence, so machines already have the magical soul quality, they just don't have a thought pattern that mimics our own sufficiently to become "sentient." Once AI becomes real the possibility of mind-uploading and a new aesthetic Eden emerges (of course then there are existential nightmare scenarios far more severe than mere extinction). In my opinion it's thinking like, "in case the afterlife does not exist, let's create it," being the grand vision of human civilization. Anyways, whether the AI kills or not I'd consider it to be a successful venture. So where does dungeon synth fit into all of this? Whether we're facing a new dark age, endless stagnation, technological singularity, or utter extinction, ds seems like a solid aesthetic anticipation. In any case, it will not be a guiding torch back to our state of nature. I think technological singularity is the only chance at returning to something like our biological state of nature. There's no point in history I'd consider to be state of nature. You say people were less egotistical in early civilization? What about the Epic of Gilgamesh?
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Post by glamhoth on Jan 14, 2017 14:08:50 GMT -5
I don't know man, this seems to immediately contradict itself. In saying that people in general are too egotistical to work alongside (in terms of working within a genre), and that for yourself to contribute wouldn't generate enough of an impact to be worthwhile, suggests that you might actually be too egotistical to participate. Making "mere entertainment" and never even releasing it is more worthwhile than twiddling your thumbs while waiting for the apocalypse. People have been waiting for the apocalypse for all of recorded history. I don't care about impact just for the sake of impact. I would like to see the right ideas having an impact, not necessarily as manifestations of my ego, I don't care for recognition, attention or whatever. The problem is, the liberal ideology of our age doesn't admit that there is such thing as a "right" idea. Everything is subjective, all reality is defined by egos trying to impose themselves over other egos, and so the idea that art or any other activity might stand for something that lies beyond the ego is always discarded a priori. People don't necessarily want to masturbate their egos when they create art, but when they can't break with this relativism and affirm ideas as something other than manifestations of their ego, they feel powerless and they seek to escape. And that's why all the introverted emo shoegaze crap is so popular right now, it's passive despair in response to nihilistic relativism. I was the same 10-15 years ago, when I was a "musician". Except I was quite angry and dissatisfied, so it was not something too passive or shoegaze-y, but still... It wasn't enough for me, though, it added nothing to nothing, it was just more of the same, so I gave up and went look for something else, something more meaningful. This is where we have to let go of the ego. For us, personally, wouldn't it be better to find a decent job, make good money and enjoy all the material goods we still have at our disposal, and hope for the collapse not to come during our lifetimes? Most people do exactly that. To want to face the collapse, knowing all the pain it will bring, most likely a violent death for each one of us, or alternatively an ugly strife for survival in the worst possible conditions, possibly consuming generations... why would anyone want to experience something like that? To answer the question, let me go back to Tolkien and escapism. If you're a prisoner together with other people, and you have two choices, 1) either rot in prison until you die miserably or 2) join a rebellion (like Spartacus' perhaps?) and try to escape, break free, even if that means you and most of your fellow rebel inmates will die while facing the prison guards, the archers in the watchtower and so on, what would you choose? Is death a worth price for freedom? Isn't extinction better than eternal servitude? than an empty and meaningless life? The problem is, no one can bring the collapse alone, and most prisoners aren't interested in rebelling. If enough people would join Mr. Crispy Cornflakes Vikernes in moving to the countryside and living without running water, it would speed things up, most likely. But we can't expect that to happen. What to do, then? I don't know. To sit and wait while stealing basic resources from coming generations doesn't seem right. I think a simple life is something desirable in itself, so I pursue that. It's diffikvlt to live without any structure or income, however, so most of us are still stuck with the system for a good number of years yet. But there's a lot to be done in the meanwhile, among other things to educate ourselves and others. Is it possible to enlighten others? is it a worthy effort? can music play a role in it? I'm not sure. That's why I'm here, to try to figure it out. I don't think any of these technological revolutions will ever become a reality. Economy is already decelerating, it will only get worse from here, and science is driven by money and profit. Either way, I think it's a mistake to give up reality as we know it and as it has been known since the dawn of time for some futuristic technological fantasy. And even if a technological revolution takes place, with AI or whatever, it's not going to do us any good. To use your own words, it will be, most likely, an existential nightmare far more severe than extinction. But even that could be positive, perhaps, if it forced people out of their comfort zones. Most people would submit, but a few would resist and rise against it. Maybe we would have a dystopian reality like Huxley's Brave New World, with people living inside the nightmare and "savages" who refused to submit or were left out for whatever reason on the outside. The future of the species would depend on the outsiders, if they could make theirs the "strength of the hills" once again, as Tolkien putted it A new post-apocalyptic dark age lasting for centuries wouldn't necessarily be a return to a "state of nature", but it will be an opportunity for something like that to be pursued. And that's really why we should educate ourselves and others. It's important that people acquire consciousness of alternative perspectives, that they learn about nature, about a circular worldview, about the importance of the myths and how they can guide us, how they can provide the keys to existence, so when we start again from scratch we can avoid making the same mistakes again...
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Post by jondexter on Jan 15, 2017 5:37:04 GMT -5
I think things in the bigger picture are spot on so to speak. The universe is fundamentally perfect - we can try to fathom or fictionalise it - but it is what it is and we are just the 'offshoot microcosms ' (although likewise in essence (and nature)). We are here to experience our own destinies in an orgasmotronic way plain and simple. The past is within our sub conscious and nature is rampant still, entwined within technology and the far distant future. Trees and plants are our true psiconics as artificial intelligence is just humans pretending to be robots. Each of us if far more capable than we can possibly realise due to our higher selves sitting ever so slightly in front of us on the wheel rearranging circumstances in order to shock,enthral and enrapture us. In the end what is right could never have really been wrong and we could never start again from scratch when we never even began in the first place?
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Post by glamhoth on Jan 15, 2017 7:30:17 GMT -5
I think things in the bigger picture are spot on so to speak. The universe is fundamentally perfect - we can try to fathom or fictionalise it - but it is what it is and we are just the 'offshoot microcosms ' (although likewise in essence (and nature)). According to Plato, the microcosmos within the individual human soul mirrored the all-encompassing outer cosmos. That's why his emphasis was on conformation to the norm, trve human virtue had to be in accordance with cosmic virtue. In order to establish human virtue he went to study astronomy, math, physics. The stars are virtuous, they are lawful, they behave according to nature, to the cosmos. The same with numbers. They exist in a reality in flux, as established by Heraclitus, but they obey a higher law, something eternal, righteous, unchanging, as Parmanides' trve being. This is paganism, the same intuition, the same cyclical perspective, the same impulse of inserting oneself into the higher cosmic order, raising up to the realm of the divine, touching the eternal. It just replaces the myth and poetry (which in the age of Plato had already lost too much of its power due to fast social, economical and technical changes) with a more straight-forward logical language. "Start from scratch" would be more in terms of unburdening ourselves from all the unnecessary and utterly harmful burden we picked up along the way, especially in the last few centuries. The weight is bringing us down and we're drowning; a new beginning, in this sense, would be a reemergence, grasping for air, returning to the circle, to what life is really all about...
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Post by andrewwerdna on Jan 15, 2017 9:31:40 GMT -5
That sounds pretty dogmatic to me. Why are you so sure that your ideas are the right ideas? Have you never been proven wrong before?
I'm very confused by your vision of best-case long-term future. How exactly do you define "state of nature?" In my mind that means when we were basically animals, the vast majority of our existence as a species. Once we left the animal kingdom and became civilized, that's when we left our state of nature. How exactly can we go back? How can we unlearn what we know? It seems absurd to me, history will keep building toward an unknown goal, and I think we should treat this as possibly the last stand against the negative effects of a permanent and unsustainable drive of our species. AI seems the most hopeful solution to me. Perhaps we'll be able to fix the problems of energy, environment, and nukes ourselves, but the best shot we have to returning to our state of nature is with technological help.
I really like Terence Mckenna's take on this topic:
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Post by glamhoth on Jan 15, 2017 11:51:43 GMT -5
That sounds pretty dogmatic to me. Why are you so sure that your ideas are the right ideas? Have you never been proven wrong before? There's absolutely nothing dogmatic about it. It involves no belief, no blindly acceptance of anything, no arbitrarity. Those ideas are accessible to the mind, through reason and intuition... The concept that every outright affirmation has to be based on dogma is the exact problem I was talking about. It's like humans are split in two groups, one with people who derive their truths from desert religion books, and other with those who live in complete relativism and don't affirm anything, they just accept what is given and bow to whatever power is established. Let me clarify it. I don't think returning to a "state of nature" as becoming monkeys. That's not even possible. A "state of nature" is living within nature and not against it. Living within the cycles, not taking more than you need and absolutely not taking more than nature can offer. Like animals, we must find balance in nature, but we don't have to become animals for that. And we don't have to unlearn anything -- if we do we're bound to make the same mistakes again, so we better learn our lessons. That's why I don't like the damned linear perspective your modern minds can't let go of. There's no goal in history, there's no judgement day, there's no kingdom of heaven at the end of the line. Thinking back or ahead in a linear manner is meaningless. Only when we return to the circle we will be able to retrieve a "state of nature". It will be something that's at once ahead and behind us. It doesn't matter the direction as long as there is balance, and once the balance is reestablish, it's the beginning, the origin, the arché. In your jewish linear view the beginning is the first dot of the line, in our pagan view there's no such thing as a single beginning, every moment is a beginning and also an end, all life happens in cycles. This AI nonsense is dogmatic, it's the same as the coming of the messiah or judgement day. The idea that a single event or a succession of events somewhere ahead in the line will redeem mankind and magically fix everything is jewish thinking. It entered our reality through christianity, bible nonsense, it was transformed in the Enlightenment, when god was replaced by pure reason, and after that illusion collapsed as well it lives on in these scientific-technological fantasies that are completely bogus. It's just escapism, and not in a good sense. Just a lame excuse for people not to face their realities and take responsibility for it. [/quote]
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Post by andrewwerdna on Jan 15, 2017 20:58:16 GMT -5
That sounds pretty dogmatic to me. Why are you so sure that your ideas are the right ideas? Have you never been proven wrong before? There's absolutely nothing dogmatic about it. It involves no belief, no blindly acceptance of anything, no arbitrarity. Those ideas are accessible to the mind, through reason and intuition... Reason and intuition lead people to many contradicting viewpoints. To say there is a single "right idea" requires blind acceptance of the arbitrary, treating truth as something static and eternal in the same way that Christianity does. Reason and intuition are a process, not a doctrine. Sounds like a linear perspective to me. We do have to unlearn things for this to be feasible. Even if it's not true state of nature, how do you uphold this with any degree of permanence? How do you keep man from pursuing technological progress? How do you keep man from pursuing industry? How do you keep man from pursuing wealth? How do you break the cycle of imperialism? Pagan empires rise and fall too. Is a committee of philosophers somehow going to convince all of mankind to give up any notion of progress? And even if we do manage to create such an Elven utopia, it cannot last forever, and nukes aren't going anywhere. How do we unlearn the existence of nukes? How do we avoid atomic extinction for millennia? I don't believe there is a single beginning or end. Reality is a dream, one fades and the next one begins, and we're here as if we've always been. I happen to care about this dream world, and I'm interested in where it's going because I'd rather not have it turn into too much of a nightmare or end entirely, though I certainly don't believe the end of this dream means the end of all dreams, and likewise I don't think the beginning of this dream was the beginning of all dreams. I might not remember any dreams before this dream, but dreams are easily forgotten. Present experience takes precedence over memory. "These scientific-technological fantasies are completely bogus." What? Look at how we're having this conversation. Computers are scientific-technological fantasies made manifest. If you described the computer and internet to someone 200 years ago it would sound just as far-fetched as strong AI. And I never said it would magically fix everything (it might destroy everything, or even just be humdrum), and perhaps strong AI is impossible, maybe there is some sort of meat soul that can never be reproduced in silicon or any other way. I don't believe I necessarily have the "right ideas," because I don't accept dogma. This is merely what my reason and intuition have led me to believe is the best/only possibility of a solution to the existential crises we currently face.
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Post by jondexter on Jan 16, 2017 6:55:34 GMT -5
The beginning can never go back far enough, there is always a before even before the first beginning there was not nothing, because nothing cannot exist in order for it to be nothing? And the end can never end because of infinity - things must just keep going... How can they end and become nothing when there is no such thing as nothing? If it exists it has to be something? Nothing is not, it cannot be, it is impossible at best .Hence linear time is forever and goes on and on in both directions, so there was no beginning and there can be no end. Circles also go on and on in both directions and thus mirror the infinite nature of time. A dot may become a line but was it already a circle? World without end!
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Post by glamhoth on Jan 16, 2017 10:36:08 GMT -5
To say there is a single "right idea" requires blind acceptance of the arbitrary No, it doesn't. That's completely illogical. 1+1=2 is the "right idea", how is it "blind acceptance of the arbitrary"? Christianity does that, but so does paganism and so does philosophy and science. The difference is that Christianity establishes the truth upon dogma, submission to a stupid book. With paganism-philosophy-science the truth is established through observation, reasoning and intuition. Modern science, however, is too one-sided. We can't go straight back to a primordial "mode of being" in which the eternal truths can be directly intuited from mythic symbols, we need some mediation, some logic-rational exegesis for our minds to reacquire familiarity with those forgotten realms of existence. So a pagan-philosophical perspective close to early Greek philosophy should be the best way to start (re)unveiling those truths. If you learn how to program in java, do you have to unlearn it to be able to program in c? If you speak French, do you have to unlearn it to be able to speak English? It makes no sense. The "feasibility" doesn't depend on unlearning anything, it depends merely on an attunement in heideggerian sense, a return to a more authentic mode of being. Once we achieve that it is gonna be a trve state of nature. Again, the linear logic according to which you can never return to the origin is the very problem. Once you are able to see reality from a circular perspective, why the hell would you want to pursue technological progress or industry when you already know that it can only lead outside the circle? Spartans lived centuries without any personal wealth and they didn't need laws preventing them from acquiring it, they simply had no use for such thing. And the Spartans are a fairly recent phenomenon, they were here like a second ago if you count all the time humans have been around. And throughout this immensely long time people weren't worried about pursuing wealth or industry, they were worried about pursuing honour and virtue. This changed only a blink of an eye ago. Imperialism in Europe started in the Hellenistic Age, with the Macedonian Empire and then the Roman Empire. It was already an age of decline. Philosophy emerges right before Phillip of Macedon took over Greece, as an attempt at curbing the decline. But it was already too late. Philosophy's impact was limited to the intellectual/spiritual realm as it moved away from politics. Pagan empires fell, yes, but they were no longer really pagan, not in archaic sense. Some philosophers were still very pagans, but Roman imperialists were decadent types. Launch them all, there's no hope for the human herd, it's just dead weight, a burden the planet shouldn't be carrying. If someone survives the fallout at least there's a chance something less ugly and disturbing might arise. Or simply disarm them, bury them deep, send them floating into space. If reality is a dream, and you care for the dream, how come you don't care for reality? I think this life is a chance for us to seek elevation. Dreams, as in symbolic language, fantasy, have the power to elevate us. Most people, however, choose to separate dream and reality, even though they are clearly connected. I guess the problem is that they are not interested in elevation, they see life as nothing but pointless immanence, and that's why there's no interest in connecting the dots, that's why there's only apathy and contempt for life. Those theories are just that, theories, suppositions. All too abstract. trve life lies outside the realm of technology. Technological advancement is dehumanization, only someone who is anti-life would see anything positive in it. Technological singularity solves nothing, it's just nihilist heaven. Suicide is as good a solution to the existential crises we currently face. There are other ways, other possibilities, you just have to stop fixating on the path ahead. The answers lie in the past, they have been available all along, we just lost touch and forgot about them for a few centuries. That means nothing. Technology and domestication changed us, the masses might be lost for good and they will have to go. But as a species we're far from hopeless, the best among us are still intellectually and physically capable of rising up to the challenge and leading the way towards "elven utopia", to use your words...
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Post by glamhoth on Jan 16, 2017 13:30:03 GMT -5
The beginning can never go back far enough, there is always a before even before the first beginning there was not nothing, because nothing cannot exist in order for it to be nothing? And the end can never end because of infinity - things must just keep going... How can they end and become nothing when there is no such thing as nothing? If it exists it has to be something? Nothing is not, it cannot be, it is impossible at best .Hence linear time is forever and goes on and on in both directions, so there was no beginning and there can be no end. Circles also go on and on in both directions and thus mirror the infinite nature of time. A dot may become a line but was it already a circle? World without end!
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Post by Fevegr on Jan 17, 2017 7:30:17 GMT -5
When I said I disagree that Tolkien has nothing to do with reality, I did not mean that his work is allegorical – it is definitely not. As I see it, the main point of discordance in our early discussion was not if Tolkien was an escapist, but what we understand as “reality”.
One of the meanings of the word “reality” in English is: the state of things as they are, rather than as they are imagined to be (Cambridge Dictionary). In this sense, “real” things are usually understood as those belonging to the physical and concrete world, materially and historically conditioned, and that are opposed to the imagined things, which belong to the immaterial and a-historical realm and are deemed as “un-real”. That’s a way of viewing reality that is sanctioned in a determined tradition, either we agree with it or not. I disagree, by the way.
But some etymological dictionaries of the English language attest this early meaning of the word: 1540s, "quality of being real," from French réalité and directly Medieval Latin realitatem (nominative realitas), from Late Latin realis (Online Etymology Dictionary). That’s an interesting definition, for it is quite broad and does not try to define the term “real” or “reality” in opposition to anything.
The noun “reality” comes from the adjective “real”. The same etymological dictionary gives this definition for “real”: early 14c., "actually existing, trve;" mid-15c., "relating to things" (especially property), from Old French reel "real, actual," from Late Latin realis "actual," in Medieval Latin "belonging to the thing itself," from Latin res "matter, thing," of uncertain origin.
We could go on and give a thought to the noun res, “thing”, which is a very important word, but not for now. Now it is possible to say that “real” is what exists, what is trve. Then, a possible definition to the noun “reality” is: the realm of what actually exists and is trve. It is still not completely clear to me how the Primary World interacts with the Secondary World according to Tolkien, but I think that, in the present context, this excerpt from the very “On Fairy Stories” is quite meaningful:
Mircea Eliade was also cited by someone above. Some of his ideas are very interesting indeed. For example, for Eliade “having imagination” means enjoying of a spontaneous influx of images, which aren’t, however, fruits of arbitrary invention, for imagination imitates exemplary models (images and symbols) and reproduces them, updates them and repeats them infinitely. He points that “having imagination” means to see the world in its totality, for the images have the power of showing everything that remains refractory to the concept, and that lacking imagination is to be cut from the deep reality of life (I am more or less quoting an excerpt of the Preface of his “Images and Symbols”). In this sense, fantasy/imagination is closely bound to the symbols, images and myths of the archaic, pagan man.
Considering this, that’s my point: the production of fantasy/imagination is as real as anything in material world and should not be taken as something that does not belong to reality. Taking reality as the concrete and physical world only is to maim reality itself.
And how do I see Escapism and Art in this context? Intuitively we understand that the “concrete reality” (the material, historical world of today) is degenerated; then we urge to escape to a “fantastical reality”, which we intuitively perceive as something healthier. That is actually good. But if we take reality as the “concrete reality” only and refuse to re-signify this concrete reality with the power of symbols and imagination, then we will still have a decadent, maimed reality. Art can be an important key to this “re-signification” of the concrete world. It can release images that evoke the nostalgia of the mythic past, as Eliade says (he is talking about music, more precisely). Art can take man back to the reality of myth and symbols or to the world of fantasy – which is ultimately analog to the former – and hopefully man can come back from that world with the power and knowledge to re-signify the concrete reality itself, until he doesn’t need to escape anymore, for the reality would not be maimed, but whole.
I think that’s what needed to be clarified in my earlier and rather confused exposition. I will read all the messages I missed and give them a thought or two, then I will come back.
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Post by andrewwerdna on Jan 18, 2017 7:58:17 GMT -5
No, it doesn't. That's completely illogical. 1+1=2 is the "right idea", how is it "blind acceptance of the arbitrary"? A priori truths are still arbitrary in my book because they're inherently relative and contextual. 1 means nothing except in relation to other numbers. Just like something such as honor means nothing except in relation to other forms of it. I don't think forms can exist without memory of other forms to compare it to, and so to speculate about an ideal form beyond the experienced ones is to miss the fact that every form is an ideal version of itself. If 1=2, then 1+1=4, 2+2=1. You might say that's just semantics, but that's the point, a priori truths are fully-embedded in our psychological vocabulary. Vocabulary is relatively new in the grand picture, as I'm sure you know. You might even say that it is a form of technology. I've never studied Heidegger, but I'm skeptical this could ever work on such a level that we don't fall back into the spiral of history. Right, but I think you said yourself the problem with this, they came and went in no time flat. I'm not doubting that this could work for a few centuries, but a few centuries are nothing. My concern is that if we're going to cyclically destroy the planet like this, it's only a matter of time before we go extinct. This might be our best shot, and possibly out last shot, to break out of that cycle. Maybe you don't think AI is possible. Why is that? Why isn't it at least worth a shot before we fall back into the shadows? We might as well try while we got these godlike technological powers. If "let the nukes fall" isn't contempt for life I don't know what is. Ok, so why are you using it?
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