OK, the theme is fair game now. Asking for help from strangers can itself be one of the games people play, which is not to say that I think it should ...
Cool mention. I tend to blend the adult/parent/child paradigm with 'the medium is the message.' I mean the idea that often this adult/child/parent rol...
This sounds right. There is also the possibility of a dangerous alignment of the superego and the inner child (of authenticity and criminality.) There...
Yeah, I've looked into the Frankfurt School, though only briefly into that book. I most recently dipped into Adorno's The Jargon of Authenticity. I li...
When I think of modern humanism, I think especially of thinkers in the wake of Hegel (Strauss, Marx, Feuerbach). Christianity was made worldly and 'ra...
Indeed. I've studied him. He's one of the greats, and he's a great personality to contemplate. I just think that instead of will we have a plurality o...
Oh, you meant in the real world. Well, I'm starting to embrace the internet as the 'real' intellectual world. I was recently at a lame party. It got a...
Yes, exactly. From my perspective, this vision of yourself of lacking a meta-narrative is indeed the kind of thing that I mean by meta-narrative. For ...
I still maintain that we have that right here. Out of curiosity, I've checked out forums of outside intellectual traditions. In my experience they ten...
Yeah, I agree. And maybe read some non-fiction. Being fascinated works for me. One just forgets that one has problems when lost in the contemplation o...
I agree. I mosty agree here, too. But there is a space in the market for the mystical path. My girlfriend keeps on eye on what the millenials are doin...
As I see it, drudgery is drudgery. Was it good to dig in the dirt, even in one's own dirt when that was possible? I doubt it. It sounds boring, probab...
I like just about everything you've written on this issue, but I think this line leave something out. What about the raging self-love that can lead to...
Don't we have that right here and now? Or do you really mean a community of anti-natalists? And isn't something like that out there? I understand the ...
I agree with what you say about community, but would you not agree that the style of mostly capitalist communities emphasizes an obsession with self? ...
For me, that itself is the narrative. It's one I relate to. Every nice little autobiographical tale feels wrong or false. I see that that is implied i...
I can very much relate. I see the danger of boxing people. But for me a certain amount of boxing is inescapable. I agree that there is something like ...
I personally relate to this 'nobodiness,' which I associate with the sense of wearing one's life as a mask ('personality is an illusion'). The 'proble...
Right. Yes, this seems to be in the mix. In Blood Meridian this would be 'the taste for mindless violence.' And this may connect to what may make a gl...
The thrill in meanness definitely rings true. I've seen extremely well-read and intelligent posters on forums like these throw off the mask in the mid...
Right, and my point would be that this disenchantment is perhaps the primary fruit of contemplation. And that's why I find college-brochures so sickly...
One ideology tries to pull another ideology's pants down in public, usually in terms of some virtue that their intended audience takes for granted. I'...
I haven't read Lord Jim, but I take it that you're talking about our tendency to flee our pasts in order to reinvent ourselves for a new audience. Yea...
Sure. I love the Western philosophical tradition. I love it for being a snarling, arrogant, questioning tradition. And I even love Kant. He smashed th...
Yeah, I ended up deleting some of what I originally wrote. Nietzsche wrote somewhere about women making all the seriousness of men look like folly. I'...
I guess. But Kant is a dinosaur. That's not to say that people in general have assimilated all they could from such dinosaurs, but I think it's worth ...
Sure, that's a reasonable job for philosophy, but I don't see anything fresh there. The only difference that I can personally see in your view from a ...
Well we can define 'cynic' however you want in this context. But for me the cynic is not someone who thinks the world needs to be saved. The cynic for...
I love the guy too, though I'm just really getting around to him. I recognize immediately, though, the kind of intellectual I like. This dude is prese...
Sure, those are reasonable goals. They are so reasonable that I can't imagine them being controversial. Can they be achieved ? If so, how? To some deg...
What I have in mind is something very simple. Take this forum, for example. Of course we are all individuals, but I find hard not to see general types...
Indeed. If I had to pick a center, that would be it. And this is an old issue: http://www.iep.utm.edu/thrasymachus/. One possible narrative is that Th...
Sure. I agree that the worldviews/identities I sketched above depend on or embody that thesis. Of course I wasn't putting forward that thesis myself. ...
I have to agree with praxis here, T Clark. In your response you seem to divide humanity into those with the skill of seeing people and those without. ...
It's a charming list, but does your childhood phone number really give us a better understanding of you? I remember my childhood phone-number, too. It...
Your position is reasonable, but I'm not convinced that chiseling the tool metaphor down to the map metaphor is the way to go. Of course I do see that...
I love the reply, but you ain't foolin' me with that rhetorical strategy. :smile: I think you've painted very well the kinds of things that aren't cen...
I agree. I don't believe in this God you mention, but I did at one time and wrestled with this kind of question. For me it would just never add up. So...
But what is free will? There's an ordinary sense of it that we all understand. So and so did this or that no one 'put a gun to his head.' We use it in...
Of course I'm just playfully trying to communicate what the concept means for me. As far as I can tell, identities come largely in narrative form. We ...
I can relate. I also like what I understand of your view. Reality is (among other things) something that makes sense of itself. It is self-exploring, ...
I read through some of your old posts to try to find an example. You mention the 'vertical dimension' in a way that suggests that it's a kind of key p...
I think I know what csalisbury was getting at. It's a thought that I've had myself, so I'll try to reply to this in my own way. Any philosophical theo...
I strongly agree with this. Right. For analysis, I agree. But it seems that the role of serious analyst still has a poetic foundation. Why be an analy...
Totally. Yes, these are good examples. This is the kind of thing I have in mind. I guess things get really interesting when one starts to pride one's ...
I agree. Groups seem to tend to form around a few basic virtues and vices (hoorays and boos.) Philospohers are fascinating because at least some of th...
But isn't this absence of an overarching account a kind of overarching account? All of the many narratives seem to be squeezed together into one grand...
Great example. 'I am the non-attached.' 'I am the one who sees through all illusions.' These (as you imply) are leading roles themselves. Maybe that's...
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