| Author | Message | ||
     Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 81.155.23.31 |
I wholeheartedly recommend this TV programme to Horrorists from yesterday on BBC2. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00vmxzx/Renaissance_Revolution_Hieronymus_ Bosch_The_Garden_of_Earthly_Delights/ It is the best and most extended examination of this great painting by Bosch I have ever seen. I have lived with this painting since my youth and continue to see something new in it every time I look at it. This programme is a sort of real-time rite-of-passage review. It is unmissable. | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 85.222.86.21 |
Damn it. I tried it Des, but the words: This is not available in your area, flashed across the screen. I could really do with this, as it would keep the cold at bay. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.17.252.126 |
I'm with you 100%, Des. I too have been in love with that painting since first coming across highlighted portions of it in books as a child. The amount of fine detail and sheer intricacy of the work, the nightmarishly incomprehensible subject matter, those weird prancing monstrosities, and the palpable sense of suffering and despair were like a magnet for my young brain... fascinating and repelling me at the same time. To this day I can't come across a reproduction of it without having to stop and absorb every detail. I think that's why my artistic taste in general is dominated by the weird and the intricate. It's no coincidence that I am drawn to the work of Hogarth, Doré, Goya & Dali - as well as the finer detailed comicbook art of Crumb, Gibbons, Talbot, etc - as opposed to those who use broad impressionistic strokes. I think I'm constantly trying to recapture that first sensation of awe I felt witb Bosch. Must get to see this. Thanks for the heads up. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 82.38.75.85 |
Thanks for this, Des. Curiously, I, too, was drawn to this painting as a child - thanks to a part of it being on the cover of my elder sister's LP of Berlioz's La Symphonie Fantastique. I'm sure it also helped develop my love of horror/weird fiction, as did those artists you listed, Stevie - Dore, Hogarth and Dali, especially. It seems more than a coincidence that those of us who are into weird/horror fiction are also drawn to the same kind of art. | ||
| Skip (Wolfnoma) Username: Wolfnoma Registered: 07-2010 Posted From: 72.218.208.106 |
I would love to see this. Hmm, C'mon BBC America! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.29.252.215 |
Talking of weird and disturbing art... I've just discovered the paintings of James Ensor (1860-1949), thanks to Clive Barker, as they appear in 'Imajica' and were clearly a huge influence on Clive's own artwork. What can I say? Check out his paintings on Google Images and try to avoid feeling an icy shiver run down your spine. These are luminous colour expressionist masterpieces of stark madness plucked from our wildest nightmares, like Munch on acid, imho. The kind of deceptively simple at first glance but cumulatively hellish art you don't want to spend too much time studying but can't help but be fascinated by and drawn back to. I haven't been this impressed and unsettled by a "new" painter in years. This guy was decades ahead of his time. Sensational stuff! | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
You're right, Stevie, that's some disturbing art there. At a quick glance, some of his work looks like a child's scribbled crayon drawings - but then you look closer and the faces are quite terrifying. Great stuff! I'd never heard of him before, I must admit. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Here's a bit more about him: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/arts/design/26ensor.html Sounds a fascinating character and just the kind of outsider artist I'm always drawn to. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.59.249 |
Ensor's erstwhile home is not far from my own humble abode. Curiously I'm not all that fond of the man's art - I much prefer Léon Spilliaert. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I find it truly nightmarish, Hubert. Not in a put on way, as some of the surrealists succumbed to, but as a genuine glimpse into the psychosis of a warped mind. There is anguished genius in this man's paintings. To think of him living above that novelty shop surrounded by carnival masks and going slowly mad, eaten up with self loathing and bitterness at his critics and the world in general. I love it!  | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 49.227.82.196 |
I chose Bosch as the subject for a project at school. The art teacher wasn't impressed. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.16.5 |
Why on earth not, Ally? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I lapped up the art of Bosch & Gustave Doré, thanks to Dante [my fav poet], as a child, Ally. So much so that my Mum was once told, at a parents-teachers meeting, that my art teacher was seriously concerned at my drawing nothing but intricate tableaux of little stick men torturing each other horribly, and that I would never amount to anything! Isn't that right, Sean.  I went on to get A-Level Art, so up yours, Mr McDonagh, may ye rest in peace... | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 49.227.163.96 |
Yes. All the other girls chose 'safe' artists. After many years of not fitting in, and I used to worry about that, I rather celebrate it now. Didn't I read somewhere this week about shy children (I was painfully so) ...... http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/02/09/new-diagnostic-mental-health-manual-may- label-shy-children-grieving-relatives-as-ill/ “Many people who are shy, bereaved, eccentric, or have unconventional romantic lives will suddenly find themselves labelled as mentally ill,” said Peter Kinderman, head of Liverpool University’s Institute of Psychology at a briefing in London about widespread concerns over the manual. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 49.227.163.96 |
I also have been thinking about just how introverted I am, recently. 'Myth #1 – Introverts don’t like to talk. This is not true. Introverts just don’t talk unless they have something to say. They hate small talk. Get an introvert talking about something they are interested in, and they won’t shut up for days.' Yes and no. 'Myth #2 – Introverts are shy. Shyness has nothing to do with being an Introvert. Introverts are not necessarily afraid of people. What they need is a reason to interact. They don’t interact for the sake of interacting. If you want to talk to an Introvert, just start talking. Don’t worry about being polite.' Yes. 'Myth #3 – Introverts are rude. Introverts often don’t see a reason for beating around the bush with social pleasantries. They want everyone to just be real and honest. Unfortunately, this is not acceptable in most settings, so Introverts can feel a lot of pressure to fit in, which they find exhausting.' Yes. 'Myth #4 – Introverts don’t like people. On the contrary, Introverts intensely value the few friends they have. They can count their close friends on one hand. If you are lucky enough for an introvert to consider you a friend, you probably have a loyal ally for life. Once you have earned their respect as being a person of substance, you’re in.' Yes. 'Myth #5 – Introverts don’t like to go out in public. Nonsense. Introverts just don’t like to go out in public FOR AS LONG. They also like to avoid the complications that are involved in public activities. They take in data and experiences very quickly, and as a result, don’t need to be there for long to “get it.” They’re ready to go home, recharge, and process it all. In fact, recharging is absolutely crucial for Introverts.' Yes. 'Myth #6 – Introverts always want to be alone. Introverts are perfectly comfortable with their own thoughts. They think a lot. They daydream. They like to have problems to work on, puzzles to solve. But they can also get incredibly lonely if they don’t have anyone to share their discoveries with. They crave an authentic and sincere connection with ONE PERSON at a time.' Yes. 'Myth #7 – Introverts are weird. Introverts are often individualists. They don’t follow the crowd. They’d prefer to be valued for their novel ways of living. They think for themselves and because of that, they often challenge the norm. They don’t make most decisions based on what is popular or trendy.' Yes. 'Myth #8 – Introverts are aloof nerds. Introverts are people who primarily look inward, paying close attention to their thoughts and emotions. It’s not that they are incapable of paying attention to what is going on around them, it’s just that their inner world is much more stimulating and rewarding to them.' I'd have to think about that more. 'Myth #9 – Introverts don’t know how to relax and have fun. Introverts typically relax at home or in nature, not in busy public places. Introverts are not thrill seekers and adrenaline junkies. If there is too much talking and noise going on, they shut down. Their brains are too sensitive to the neurotransmitter called Dopamine. Introverts and Extroverts have different dominant neuro-pathways. Just look it up.' Yes and no. 'Myth #10 – Introverts can fix themselves and become Extroverts. A world without Introverts would be a world with few scientists, musicians, artists, poets, filmmakers, doctors, mathematicians, writers, and philosophers. That being said, there are still plenty of techniques an Extrovert can learn in order to interact with Introverts. (Yes, I reversed these two terms on purpose to show you how biased our society is.) Introverts cannot “fix themselves” and deserve respect for their natural temperament and contributions to the human race. In fact, one study (Silverman, 1986) showed that the percentage of Introverts increases with IQ.' Wouldn't want to be 'fixed.' Source. http://www.carlkingdom.com/10-myths-about-introverts | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.59.249 |
Many people who are shy, bereaved, eccentric, or have unconventional romantic lives will suddenly find themselves labelled as mentally ill That's true enough. I used to be a shy, bookish oddball character, even if I was popular and had quite a few friends. As I got older I learned how to act in a more extraverted way (and became very good at it), because it makes life simpler. A survival tactic. But when I went for my teaching degree eight years ago I was stuck for a long time with a lot of people with whom I had nothing in common. It's not as if I was afraid - I despised them. Consequently I was told in no uncertain terms that I had to interact more. One woman went so far as to tell me she had a son who was autistic and that I reminded her of him. Which is not to say that autistic people are mentally ill - but you get my gist. Apparently I clam up easily when I'm surrounded by people I don't like . | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.142.192.96 |
Hubert - ditto. My wife even thinks I am on the autistic spectrum. Sadly, it's the worst end, the end where you pass for normal but are screaming inside. She was telling me the other day that she heard of an autistic woman who had travelled the world and had a big degree but couldn't function domestically, had a house in a complete mess, and wasn't able to talk with people easily. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Thanks for that, Ally. You sound like my kind of gal. 1. Yes - in a crowd I clam up, one-to-one I'm a motormouth, as Weber will attest. 2. Yes - story of my life this one, though I can be painfully shy in certain situations and have a paralysing phobia of public speaking. 3. Yes - ditto, forever giving offence where none was intended. 4. Yes - me to a tee! 5. No - I'm never happier than when in a noisy pub, at a rock concert or watching Leeds Utd at Elland Road. 6. Yes and no - spot on apart from the last sentence, I'm fine in small groups of like-minded individuals and even tend to dominate them without intending to. 7. Most definitely Yes!! 8. No - I love delving inside the minds of others (especially pretty women) and I'm rather good at it, the Tarot cards help. 9. No - I'm prone to spontaneous adventures, crave excitement and dangerous situations, and it's a miracle I survived my childhood or lived this long to be honest! 10. Yes - I have an IQ of 146 and quite like the person I am, apart from the unintentional "rudeness" in social situations, but I've learned to live with that and people who get to know me realise it's just me being me. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.229 |
I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.1.171 |
The list of purported characteristics of introverts – which I appreciate you were quoting sceptically, Ally – makes them sound like a disturbed minority. Surely there is a spectrum, with half of society relatively introverted and half relatively extroverted? But then the introvert/extrovert distinction was one of Jung's ideas, and he was a prize tosser. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.1.171 |
If there is such a social category as introverts, they are neither unusual nor special. I doubt it, however. Everyone is more outgoing in the context of people they trust or an activity they feel at home with, or alcohol, or being online. The most outgoing people are closet loners, and the most shut-in people are hiding an urge to snog the world. As Whitman said, "I am infinite, I contain multitudes." | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
What has to be remembered as well is that the Autistic spectrum starts with what we commonly percieve as autistic (rain man type thing to be cliched about it) and finishes with ADHD moving through "normal" on the way so we're all on the spectrum somewhere. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
No offence, Joel, but that's the single silliest statement you've ever come out with on here. Jung was one of the most original thinkers and enlightened minds of the modern historical period. His theories constituted an evolutionary leap forward in human thinking that we are still grappling to come to terms with. He was perhaps the first of a new breed of philosophers who successfully married the scientific approach with the mystic impulse - from which he extrapolated profound universal truths. Jung was also, far from being a "tosser", a great man fired by undying compassion for his fellow flawed human beings. Also, there definitely is an introvert/extrovert sliding range of personality types that forms a quantifiable distinction - just as there is black, white and a perfect grey. I would consider myself very much to the introvert wavelength of that spectrum and recognise most of the associated traits above in myself. I'm forever being called shy or rude, though rarely a creep or a weirdo, when, in fact, I am none of these - so I guess that makes me an introvert. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.58.16 |
I am also a fan of Jung's work. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
Why is everyone so desperate to be labelled? It scares the fuck out of me. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
It's called being self-aware, Zed. Can you imagine a world full of Alan Partridges!  | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
No, it's called being desperate to associate yourself with a group. I can imagine a world full of Alan Partridges. It's here, on the RCMB, in virtual form. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
A ha!!! | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.177.115.204 |
I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo. You are, but you're so fucking special too! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
 | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.19.180 |
I'm an introvert but have learned to put on a show to compensate. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
I'm introverted but I love going on stage in front of an audience. Possibly because when I'm on stage I have a script to work from and know exactly what's going to happen and what to say in response. Normal life tends not to behave like that. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.29.124.77 |
Mick: I'm an introvert and used to put on a show to compensate, but now can't even manage that. I prefer quiet locations and mannered banter. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 147.252.230.148 |
I'm with Jung, too. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.59.249 |
Jung's theory about the collective unconscious still fascinates me. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.10.33 |
In a desperate backlash against Freud, Jung tried to encode the Christian tradition in secular language to make it 'science'. Freud was a philosophical revolutionary, Jung was a philosophical conservative. He took the religious notion of the soul and the afterlife and tried to recast them in pseudo-scientific terms in order to ensure that psychology continued to uphold the traditional worldview. We owe the whole New Age bullshit ocean to Jung's influence. The primary problem with Jung is that he absolutely believed that being aesthetically pleasing made something true. People are attracted to Jung's theories because those theories describe the world as they would like to imagine it is. He was like a gaming dungeonmaster designing an ideal world with its own more poetic laws – but he then claimed this was an objective account of reality. It isn't. It's religion by another name. It's a wish-fulfillment fantasy about life. I was obsessed with Jung in my teens, when I was desperate to avoid reality. Then I realised his work was escapism disguised as science, and that just wasn't what I needed any more. I don't find Jung's ideas unpleasant or repulsive in any way. I find them poetic and beautiful. But that does not make them either true or useful. There is no way that we can get from our world to Jung's world, because the mystical powers and processes he so eloquently described do not exist, have never existed and never will exist. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.29.124.77 |
Hear, hear. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.58.16 |
I don't find Jung's ideas unpleasant or repulsive in any way. I find them poetic and beautiful. But that does not make them either true or useful. ============== That could be a description of the fiction art, that some find useful, others not. All life as perceived by each of us in our own ways and so-called science are born from interpretation or, as some may call it, religion. Jung was/is just one of the great poets of that religion or perception, whether he *intended* it to masquerade as prestigious (in some eyes) science or not - or whether we intend to interpret it as such, or not. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.58.16 |
The title of this thread, meanwhile, seems inadvertently to be a good title for how this topic has developed. Gardens as individual formalisations of the otherwise wild and encroaching and untameable landscape of nature. Science as a weak and fragile garden of the mind within the wild and encroaching and untameable imagination (or collective unconscious?). | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
For year's, I thought Jung's theories were fiction. It seems to me that they work better that way. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 89.19.91.40 |
Joel, as some others have said, I think you're comparing apples and oranges. Jung was a good artist. Freud was a poor scientist. That's not an attack on Freud - mediocre science is probably more difficult to do than good art. Freud was almost single-handedly trying to invent a new science, so it seems ungracious to attack him for failing in such a lofty goal. Jung's conservatism (or counter-revolutionary tendency) was his strength - he was trying to modernise the spiritual and emotional infrastructure that humans need. If he used pseudo-scientific language, that was probably a reaction to Freud's pseudo-scientific language. Freud's theories needed to be dusted with Jung's sugar. Otherwise, Freud would be rather like Richard Dawkins, kicking away the wooden legs of religion and without putting alternative supports in place first, and remaining mystified as to why people don't want to live in his three-degrees-above-absolute-zero Universe. We can only begin to say that Freud was "better" than Jung if start from the premise that science is a superset of art, which in truth, it probably is. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.170.88.225 |
Attacking Jung is a bit like saying fiction or art has never helped anyone, that it's as good as useless. Look at the changes Dickens made, and i find his work very mysterious and spiritual (and no, he's nothing like Eastenders, folks). The world only feels right when I'm appreciating art or fiction. Can't we just like or get the things we like or get? | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 89.19.91.40 |
Freud's ideas are so integrated into our collective unconscious (what a phrase to use in this context!) that we forget how radical they are, how revolutionary, how much praise he deserves for dragging us towards the light against our will. When called a genius, Orson Welles said there were probably only three geniuses in the 20th century: Freud, Einstein and someone nobody has ever heard of living in rural China. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.170.88.225 |
People are at their best when they speak with a pen, I think. I think I am. (and I don't mean on the net) | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
Jung recognised the mathematical certainty that all consciousness is infinite i.e. apart from and untouched by the illusory "reality" of time and space that forms a prison for the individual consciousness. Jung's collective unconscious is the instinctive manifestation in the indiviudal of the connection that we all share with the collective consciousness (or One super-consciousness) that comprises true reality but that our physical bodies and material sensibilities, trapped on this plane of sensory and intellectual limitations, forever fight against as illogical or impossible - when in truth the very fact of our existence proves that eternity and the transcendence of death and individuality is the only logical and possible explanation for this great universe we inhabit (as opposed to the disproved reality of nothingness or the impossible reality of the measurable). Freud was a tunnel-vision materialist of the highest calibre and, worse, a literalist devoid of imagination or any deeper insight when it came to interpreting the abstract symbolism of the unconscious. He was the very personification of scientific rigidity, arrogantly imposing his own worldview on all those he treated, whereas Jung accepted that to fathom the workings of the human mind, and truly help, one would need to look beyond the words and imaginings of the individual to the super-consciousness that it would deny. It forever frustrates me when otherwise intelligent people continue to confuse the dogmatic strait-jacketing of organised religion with the open-minded quest for truth that is honest spirituality. We are not the be all and end all, there are realities beyond the capabilities of human beings to understand and we only make ourselves look as dunder-headed as Freud or Dawkins when we try to deny this absolute truth. Open-minded scientists, like Jung or Heisenberg, who would dare to include the unimaginable in their equations, are the true pioneers as we enter this new age of human thought. The old religion is in its death throes, science would take its place and it is up to the enlightened few to continue to fight the good fight against the rampant materialism that enslaves the human spirit... | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 89.19.91.40 |
"Jung recognised the mathematical certainty that all consciousness is infinite i.e. apart from and untouched by the illusory "reality" of time and space that forms a prison for the individual consciousness. Jung's collective unconscious is the instinctive manifestation in the indiviudal of the connection that we all share with the collective consciousness (or One super-consciousness) that comprises true reality but that our physical bodies and material sensibilities, trapped on this plane of sensory and intellectual limitations, forever fight against as illogical or impossible - when in truth the very fact of our existence proves that eternity and the transcendence of death and individuality is the only logical and possible explanation for this great universe we inhabit (as opposed to the disproved reality of nothingness or the impossible reality of the measurable)." Stevie, can anyone prove any of this? If not, then we shouldn't use phrases like "mathematical certainty" and we shouldn't refer to Jung as a scientist. Jung and Freud were drawn to each other for a reason. I believe they both have valuable things to give: compassion and vigor, respectively. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
I like Proto's approach here. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
We're talking about it which is all the proof of the infinite that we need. Our existence makes it a mathematical certainty. Jung took this basic truth and based all of his reasoning upon it. Freud & Jung were drawn to each other by their desire to understand as much as by any desire to help. Freud laid the groundwork of psychoanalysis but wasn't intellectually able to proceed to the next level. Jung realised that there were deeper truths hidden behind the surface meaning of dream symbolism and individual psychoses and was drawn to explore further while Freud rested on his laurels. I believe Jung's was by far the greater contribution to human understanding of the nature of reality. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.34.18 |
"We're talking about it which is all the proof of the infinite that we need. Our existence makes it a mathematical certainty." How's that? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.29.124.77 |
Heidegger could out-drink both Freud and Jung. They were both lightweights. Heidegger drank Stella Artois, too. Fucking bloke. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.29.124.77 |
>>>We're talking about it which is all the proof of the infinite that we need. Our existence makes it a mathematical certainty. Jung took this basic truth and based all of his reasoning upon it. How very Descartes. When an article of faith becomes a psychological necessity, beware the consequences. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.34.18 |
Heidegger sounds like a beer. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
Okay, let's put it another way. The fact that we're talking about bananas is all the proof of the infinite we need... and once that irrefutable proof of infinity has been accepted then everything that an infinite universe negates has been proved an impossibility i.e. a state of nothingness or a measurable universe (for infinity contains infinite infinities). The mistake scientific materialism makes in its approach to explaining the universe is the old one of not being able to see the wood for the trees. That's why we have philosophy, and indeed spirituality, to put science in its place. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.29.124.77 |
"Also, Captain Darling, make a note of the word 'gobbledegook'. I like it. I want to use it more in conversation." -- Blackadder Goes Forth, 1989 | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.34.18 |
Science is about understanding all phenomena in the Universe, including philosophy and spirituality and the minds that use them. Its place is at the head of the table. Where it not, I doubt that Freud and even Jung would have used its language and in some cases emulated its methods. At the moment it's largely about matter and energy and their inter-relationship but that will change. But I'm probably misrepresenting what you're saying here. I agree that Jung was trying to include things in science that he felt were important - essential - to being a live human being. But those things are not science. Yet. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.21.155 |
I see science as a useful discipline for making discoveries and advancing human knowledge but when it turns to dogma and tries to dictate what is reasonable to believe to the rest of us that's when it becomes as much of a handicap to humanity as the religion the likes of Richard Dawkins, and the rest of the militant tendency, would have it replace. Spirituality asks the questions that have not yet been answered, philosophy posits the theories that may answer them and science tries to prove them within the bounds of what is humanly proveable. All three disciplines need to work in mutually respectful tandem with each other for us to have any chance of reaching the limits of our possible knowledge. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.29.124.77 |
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeYsTmIzjkw&ob=av3e | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.129.56.43 |
Heidegger heidegger was a boozy beggar | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.180.123.7 |
Emmanuel Kant was a real pissant. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.180.123.7 |
Immanuel, Immanuel! D'oh! | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.129.56.43 |
And Renee Descartes was a drunken Fart "I drink therefore I am" | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Spirituality asks the questions that have not yet been answered No, science does that. Then it tries to answer them. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.129.56.43 |
Science is good at answering the "How" questions (but still not as reliable as it purports to be as different scientists will tell you different Hows on many subjects) but not so good on the "Why". IMHO. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.129.56.43 |
Spirituality and religion try to answer the Why as well - with an equal amount of confusion in the answers unfortunately. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.29.124.77 |
Yes, as in: Weber - why? To this science has no answer, and even God scratches His head. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.21.155 |
Alright, how about this; spirituality is the discipline of human thought that deals with the intangible or that which is unproveable by material methods while science necessarily limits itself to the tangible universe and our interactions with it. Philosophy spans the middle ground between the intangible and the physical by positing possibilities that encompass both planes of existence, as proved by the irrefutability of an infinite universe. The existence of this endless multiverse dictates all possibilities as equally valid and leaves the human world of science and materialism floating in a bubble of all that is ultimately knowable on this plane we inhabit, outside of which the spiritual world of the imaginable but unproveable and all that lies beyond it, which we can't even begin to grasp, still extends into the infinitude of the real and the unattainable, ad infinitum... | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.129.56.43 |
John Stuart Mill of his own free will, on half a pint of shandy was particularly ill. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.118.65 |
"...as proved by the irrefutability of an infinite universe." Ouch. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
I love all this talk of "proof"...it's hilarious. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
Refute away... cos this I gotta see. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.180.123.7 |
Plato, they say, could stick it away; half a crate of whisky every day. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
This thread now seems to be following two parallel universes.  | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.180.123.7 |
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle... | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
These deeps are too thick to wade through completely (and the jokes are just bad). Let me posit this for Stevie in the "proof" realm: Why something and not nothing? Who was it who famously queried this? Regardless of "facts," we all must agree, there is SOMETHING; either via the "hand" of a Something-Creator, or via Nothing. If the Creator, then who created the Creator? Back to "something and not nothing." If no Creator, then Something can spring from Nothing. You can't have it any other way. Something, springing from Nothing, outside "time" (the invention of the Something-dwellers), is to me the very definition of infinite; Something springing from Nothing can't quite be described as happening "once." One can only logically conclude that Something springs from Nothing eternally, or infinitely. "Again," is crude, but cannot be denied - "once but not again," would be absurd. ludicrous; at the very least, at least as untenable as the most outrageous religious argument. ... er... am I making any sense here, Stevie?... | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.85.235 |
Craig, there are so many holes in what you're saying, so many assumptions, that I literally don't know where (or whether) to begin. "...as proved by the irrefutability of an infinite universe." "Refute away... cos this I gotta see." The burden of proof isn't on me, Stevie. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.129.56.43 |
Hobbs was fond of his dram | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.129.56.43 |
And Craig doesn't recognise the lyrics to one of the greatest songs ever written | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Begin, Proto, begin anywhere. Or we must only conclude, you really don't know where to end.... | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
What's the song, Weber? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
There are no assumptions in the fact that a switch can either be in the off position or the on position or that the binary system consists of only 1 or 0 shuffled infinitely. One of them being proved to be true, 1 or 0, on or off, disproves the existence of the other in that moment and the fact that the Universe exists at all proves irrefutably that the 1 state is that that holds sway in reality, while the 0 state is the only truly imaginary thing that cannot exist except as a concept i.e. Niflheim. We exist as subsets of Elysion and can imagine the beings of other subsets apart from one... that of Muspel, which represents the unimaginable and unattainable but nonetheless real states of being that humanity can never detect, nevermind postulate i.e. Lovecraft's "the beyond". There was no Creator. There was no beginning. There can never be an end to existence or a measurable Universe. All that is exists in the one infinite moment of 1-ness. Has the light switched on yet? | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.180.123.7 |
David Hume could out-consume Schopenhauer and Hegel... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
Hmmm... having just listened to the Sanzini Brothers perform their famous sodomy trick none of this seems to matter very much anymore. Let's hear it for Little Carl! | ||
| Darren O. Godfrey (Darren_o_godfrey) Username: Darren_o_godfrey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 207.200.116.133 |
Bruce's Philosophers Song...? | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
Nope! It's me who's slipped into a parallel universe. I can't understand a word I'm reading anymore. "Pass us that bottle, Santa" (Ian Anderson, nineteen-seventy-something-or-other) | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.7.97 |
Stevie, I'm afraid to me that third paragraph reads like a Dungeons & Dragons manual and the fourth is a collection of unsupported assertions. If you want to make cogent statements about the fundamental nature of the Universe, it needs to be coherent. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
Watch this space... right now I'm too drunk and busy getting down to Mr Zappa. Fuck! 'Concentration Moon' has just started... ciao! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
"Status back, baby!" | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
"Enough of this comedy crap. If we'd played the blues I could have been a star, now!" | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.150.141.134 |
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgKUHtcZEXc&feature=related For our ignorant cousin from across the pond Whoops that's the original sketch from the TV show. Here's the song to accompany it - as performed at their Hollywood bowl concert http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq8Uz57AeCU&feature=related | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Ah. Thanks for that. Proto: What is an example of "cogent statements about the fundamental nature of the Universe"? I would like to know here, so that I can then know the proper arena in which I can make arguments, assertions, refutations, etc. (I hope that doesn't come off as sarcastic, because it's not meant to be; it's meant quite literally, as a statement of clarification. I so hate the internet during these moments in conversations: plain queries or bald statements can be misinterpreted as hiding emotional prejudices or subtle attitudes, which face-to-face conversations would instantly remove. The downside of the digital revolution, when it tries to accommodate a mode of communication that's evolved for thousands of years through direct contact....) | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 147.252.230.148 |
Craig, "cogent statements about the fundamental nature of the Universe" Very few of these can be made. My point is to emphasise that we are almost defined by our ignorance so statements asserting that anything is infinite without proof seem nonsensical to me. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Existence is its own proof of infinity. That is the single most self-evident fact we can state about the nature of the Universe/Multiverse. It logically follows from this that there is no possible point at which "things" can no longer be reduced or increased in size. There is no smallest fundamental particle and no boundary to immeasurable space. There is a point at which that which exists can no longer be detected by human means and there are whole worlds of the undetectable surrounding and encompassing our Universe. An infinite Universe dictates this to be so. It is these states of existence, that Science can never penetrate, but that the conscious Universe is naturally aware of that spirituality endeavours to embrace and that philosophy attempts to make sense of. It is through Jung's collective unconscious that we get tantalising glimpses of our shared knowledge of the humanly unknowable - as constituent parts of the collective consciousness that is the Universe. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I think I'm part-way to Stevie's thinking, and partway to (what I presume to be?) Proto's.... No, there is "no boundary to immeasurable space," because semantically you've rendered that impossible, Stevie. But I would almost agree with the first statement, that "existence is its own proof of infinity," because it almost seems impossible to state categorically that existence isn't. The rest of that paragraph of yours... those do seem to me to be more faith-based assertions than anything else, however.... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Not so much articles of faith as logical deductions once one has accepted the existence of an infinite universe. You just take that basic truth and extrapolate the rest from it... if infinity exists, as I believe existence proves, then everything within infinity is also infinite. Numbers, size, space, time, dimensions, energy, matter, life, evolution, consciousness, everything. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Already we have problems. "Infinity" can't necessarily "exist," because infinity is a process: that which "goes on" for an eternity, can't stop going on, and exist perse - infinity is always: X (the finite)+1. When does infinity begin? Do begin and end have no meaning here? This is an old concept still applied to God: no beginning, no ending. But God is also beginning and ending: Alpha & Omega. God is existence and non-existence at once. And all that proves... um... where am I going with this?... | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 147.252.230.148 |
"Existence is its own proof of infinity." Why? (I got stuck here.) | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
I got stuck there, too. Existence ends - we die. How's that proof of infinity? I take it as proof of the finite nature of life. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.58.16 |
I agree with Zed there. The only true infinity is that of fiction. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
WE die, our body rots and feeds the plants and carnivores around us. The atoms that were once us become part of a million plants and animals which spread and die and become other plants and animals. The atoms that were once us suddenly exist across a vast canvas. The atoms that make us up will never cease to exist in one form or another. Working backwards we are made up from atoms of a billion plants and animals and metals and stardust. Or maybe I'm talking bollocks. I'm getting bored stuck here at work. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
add the word Ourselves before the word are in my second paragrah above. Oh and change Are to Were while you're at it. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.150.141.134 |
Going back to the introvert theme at the start of this discussion...  | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
... Existence ends - we die. How's that proof of infinity? I take it as proof of the finite nature of life. But then... isn't that subjective? One cannot know if the die-er's existence has ended: perhaps the dead one has entered heaven, or become the consciousness of a flea, or 1 trillion years have gone by and resurrection has occurred, or the dead's spirit is floating around - in all, and in the flash of an instant, existence has not ended: it's merely changed. The best you can say is: from our perspective, here on Earth, infinity doesn't exist. Life as you know it Zed, is finite. But no one's arguing with you on that, not even Stevie... and suddenly you become foolish if you claim to know what you can't possibly know... because positing a multiverse of possibilities following our P.O.V. of life on planet Earth, is as logically even as claiming none at all.... The counter-argument as I see it: consciousness seems fully dependent upon this flesh-and-blood thing called the human being; and unless consciousness can be shown to be capable of existing sans the accoutrements of say brain-tissue, it's more or less illogical to claim it can survive the whole machine's breaking down. Life might return in some infinitely far resurgence of the whole thing all over again (Nietzsche's view), but it's not the kind of "eternal life" at all that Stevie seems to mean, and that does indeed depend upon a lot of wishful thinking.... | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
All of this is tediously old ground, really. A bunch of dusty dead Greek fucks are bored and yawning in their graves right now.... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
I believe the life and sense of individuality that Zed speaks of as ending, as it does indeed appear to do, from our limited perspective, is in fact an illusion and that we are all merely constituent parts of a larger all-knowing consciousness that inhabits and makes up the infinite Universe/Multiverse. As such, when we appear to die, we are in fact subsumed back into the whole and made aware of our true nature - but, crucially, the consciousness that we thought we were continues to exist, memories, dreams, and all, and I believe, if we so wish, we can gain access to these, and relive the illusion all over again, as we see fit... as well as all the other illusory points of view that make up what has been called "Legion". | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.5.159 |
Sorry to say that the last couple of days' postings do absolutely nothing to shake my conviction that Jung's poetic fantasies have no serious basis in human reality. Jung must be right because consciousness is infinite, and consciousness must be infinite because we can say it is? That's just folding the New Age twaddle that Jung inspired back around its source like some elaborate pastry, glazed and dusted with sugar but never baked. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
May the Farce be with you. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Oh ye of little faith... see what I did there. Take a look at yourselves and ask if you really think YOU are the ultimate that INFINITE existence can possibly have to offer. If your particular assembly of atoms is the BE all and END all. I'm going to dub this particular bubble that we human beings define ourselves within as the Atomosphere. This Atomosphere is but one particle, endlessly repeated, in an infinitude of different spheres of existence. Mathematicians have proved the existence of infinite infinities within infinity and this bald fact automatically disproves the very concept of the finite - as ultimate reality. They feel comfortable with the statement that energy can neither be created nor destroyed but I would philosophically go one further and say that nothing that exists was ever created nor will it ever be destroyed. Science is barricading us in from that which is patently obvious, imho. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Des was right when he said that, ultimately, fiction is the only true infinity. But we are all fiction, necessarily so... else the Zero State of concrete all-knowingness, the frozen moment, would be all that exists i.e. what Gene Wolfe dubs 'Niflheim'. All fiction and all dream reality is aware of this eternal truth and throughout the endless history of individual consciousness has tried to define it by stories. Look to the Bible or the Koran, not as dogma but as stories, and see the symbolic truth staring you in the face. And may God save us from literalists. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.58.16 |
There is a lot of good stuff to chew over on this thread. Jung is pro- and anti-Jung within himself in many ways, the shadow and the real thing, but not necessarily 'respectively'. I echo: "And may God save us from literalists". And may God save us from Himself. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.131.110.134 |
I remember the time i tried telling folk I'd used a ouija board and it had 'worked'; my closest friends just looked at me like i'd gone nuts. Whatever we want to believe is very personal to us and I'm convinced it does us no good to try and convince others of it. Weird experiences or feelings we have are 'our' things, just for 'us'. To bring them out into the light for others to see is risky if they're precious to you. I've learned to bite my tongue, and if I don't manage to, then bite my tongue about putting people straight. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.131.110.134 |
Weber - writing, for me, is easier than talking. I write because I think but can't pass on to people what it is I'm thinking very clearly. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.227.57 |
"Sorry to say that the last couple of days' postings do absolutely nothing to shake my conviction that Jung's poetic fantasies have no serious basis in human reality." I'm afraid Stevie's writings haven't done much for my understanding of Jung either. Sorry Stevie. Joel, you're ignoring the proposal of many here that you're criticising Jung for being something he never was - a scientist rather than an artist. here, which have done nothing to change my opinion. What about | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.227.57 |
Oops, that last sentence fragment shouldn't be there. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Did Jung present his theories as fiction or as abstract art? No. He claimed they were objective accounts of reality. To see Jung as purely an imaginative artist is fine, but that denies the core claims that he and his followers would make about the truth-status of his theories. This world and the people in it are not the best that there could possibly be, Stevie – but we don't start making changes by fooling ourselves that those changes have somehow already happened on a higher 'spiritual' plane. Changing society and changing human life is hard work, it won't happen through some act of mystical contemplation. Human consciousness is not infinite: it is limited by poor communication, the limited ideas of those in power, and the obvious role of the human brain. Individual consciousness cannot survive brain damage or psychoactive drugs, and is severely bent out of shape by psychological trauma, so how could it survive death? And when the collective human consciousness is so crippled by ideological chains and bad communication as to be far, far less than the sum of its parts, how can that be infinite either? Yes, I can imagine heaven. And eternal life. And the resurrection of the dead. And the Easter Bunny. And the archetypes, the archangels and the Ark of the Covenant. The fact that I can imagine them DOES NOT MEAN THEY ARE REAL. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Joel, I never said human consciousness was infinite. There is a limited amount of knowledge that human beings are able to assimilate - let's call it the Atomosphere. But consciousness is something entirely different from human intelligence and existence is something utterly other than the human experience. Long live the Easter Bunny... but not on our plane of existence. You're a good man. You feel the pain of your fellow human beings to an extent that does you nothing but credit and that infuses your fiction with a beauty and insight that is the envy of lesser writers. But you're still only writing from the human perspective and there is an infinitude out there that this does not encompass. As a genre author I see you as a materialist [human reality] who wishes to be a fantasist [inclusive reality] but has too much invested in this life and the experiences it has thrown at you to be able to look BEYOND. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.58.16 |
You're ignoring the potential of the Intentional Fallacy, Joel, re Jung. He was, for me, a writer-artist manqué - as great as any I can think of. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.197.0 |
"Did Jung present his theories as fiction or as abstract art? No." Well, I think he was wrong about his own work. Which puts him in with Van Gogh, Einstein, Newton, Hutson. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.29.166 |
"But you're still only writing from the human perspective and there is an infinitude out there that this does not encompass." Leaving my scrawny writing out of the picture, I'm not sure what purpose would be served by trying to encompass the perspectives of astronomy or nuclear physics in fiction. There's an infinitude of dead space, punctuated by bodies of flaming gas or inert rock, out there. The stories of those inanimate bodies and their gravitational interactions may deserve to be told, but I'm not eager to read them. As for an infinitude of spiritual beings unfolding and interweaving on a higher plane – is it really 'ignoring' that dimension to say it's simply not there? How can you discover and explore what isn't there? | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.150.141.134 |
I read somewhere that 90% of every atom is empty space. Therefore 90% of everything, including us, is nothing... There's a thought for the day. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.180.123.7 |
It's actually more like 99.9999999% Weber! Even more scary. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.9.232.89 |
Your jokes bear ample testimony to that statistic, Weber. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 213.205.196.50 |
Black Static | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.215.191 |
Scroll right to find the electron. http://keithcom.com/atoms/scale.php We are ghosts. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
99.9999999% of every atom appears to be blank empty space. In fact the very concept of nothingness is patently illogical and I would postulate that the Universe is of a super density, full to capacity, of all that the human senses can and cannot detect. We exist on one plane made up of energy and matter, all that we can interact with physically, but, being part of the infinite collective consciousness that comprises the Universe (all things being infinite, including consciousness), we are unwittingly in touch with all reality in our dreams and our imaginings - Jung's collective unconscious. When we die on this plane I imagine our consciousness will be subsumed back into the whole and gain full awareness of its true nature. What happens after that is anyone's guess and, I would challenge, is the job of writers to think up possibilities and present them in their fiction (rather than worrying about the perambulations of asteroids, Joel). It is our unconscious glimpses of all-encompassing reality that art, fiction, spirituality and philosophy contend with and that science was shut off from... until Jung and Heisenberg flung the doors of perception wide open. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.157.23.99 |
I started watching Battlestar Galactica again last night. In it the blonde cylon wasn't bothered about her present body being destroyed because she knew she'd get her 'mind' beamed to a new one later. If ROBOTS can do it.... ;) I don't like these discussions. Or rather the tone of them. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
It's all just a bit of metaphysical banter, Tony. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.157.23.99 |
I'm sure it is. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.29.88 |
Stevie, I've no problem with anything you're saying, just the assertion that it has any basis in reality. The Uncertaincy Principle has been a magnet for all sorts of nonsense which fails to accept that just because science doesn't know everything (yet) that doesn't mean it doesn't know anything. As long as you don't claim what you're saying is in any way scientific, that's fine. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.29.88 |
"I started watching Battlestar Galactica again last night. In it the blonde cylon wasn't bothered about her present body being destroyed because she knew she'd get her 'mind' beamed to a new one later." I, for one, was very bothered by her body being destroyed. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Not scientific, Proto, merely logical. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.46.23 |
One of us has gone mad. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.46.23 |
I wrote a short short once with no characters. It was just mostly about the Earth ageing. Arthur C Clarke wrote a short short called CRUSADE, about an intelligent lump of ice floating between the stars. Writing without characters can be done, but admittedly you're trading in the human emotion of awe and it could be argued that the reader is the character. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
There's some guy recently who used the clever analogy that our brains are like radio receivers, and our minds the "broadcasts"; therefore, you could sort of explain brain damage vis-a-vis intelligence/consciousness, etc. The analogy includes: just because a radio isn't working (or even there at all!), doesn't mean nothing's being transmitted to it, from somewhere.... The problem with analogies is just that: they're analogies. 99% (more?) of all religious/spirigual-based argumentation is based on clever, but totally interchangeable, analogies. And so.... | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.58.16 |
Black Static. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
Are you doing subliminal advertising for TTA Press, Des? | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.14.249 |
BLACK STATIC | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.14.249 |
PROTO = GOOD | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
I could've sworn that last one said "Proto = God"! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
NOOO!!!!.... Anything but that!!  | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.29.87 |
There are some fine stories without human characters – Donald Wandrei's 'The Red Brain' springs to mind – but there aren't many, at least among those with human authors. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
Ray Bradbury - There will come soft rains. Only living thing in it is the dog that crawls into the house and dies a paragraph later. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.102.68.223 |
None of Jackie Collins' books has human characters. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.1.187 |
Now, now. They have about thirty characters. If you count punctuation. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 147.252.230.148 |
Have you read any? I haven't. Someone told me that the best book he ever read was a piece of tat by Harold Robbins - he couldn't put it down. My most unputdownable book was GHOUL which had a hologram of a skull on the cover. I bought it mostly for the hologram. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
If you look at the Chinese translations of her books I bet they have hundreds of characters |