Noble Dust

I agree completely. Spirituality will always be bigger. Loving my neighbor is a spiritual responsibility; what my government says about that responsib...

I agree with the severity of that claim, but I'm not sure that's it's an actual premeditated act of metaphysical violence like your language suggests....

So to tie my ramblings back to what you're saying, it seems like the individualism of the ego that you describe is the outcome, the empty shell, of th...

Right, but some of the basic moral foundations of that ethos remain, especially (and ironically) on the progressive left. And humanism's narrative of ...

Yup, same argument I've tried to make on this forum. The problem with this fundamentalist humanist religion is there's no inner spiritual life; their ...

Yes indeed; and I'm a failed millennial for not "keeping up on my shows" like society tells me I should >:O although, within the context of your argum...

Thank you. But this is such a random, abstract analogy. Are you talking about actual God preventing his actual children from actually being raped? Or ...

I guess if your argument is that the music was so heavily dictated by the king, or the church, or whatever, then I can see the point. But this doesn't...

Well, right away, there seems to be some confusion; I mean "art" as a canopy for any medium, including sculpture, poetry, etc. It seems you mean the s...

Ah, not my cup of tea either. I'll research more before ordering a copy. It seems that good aesthetic theory is hard to come by, though. Everything is...

Haha. I like Jung a lot (I'll even go so far as to say I think the Myers Brigg personality test gets a bad rap - it's based on his ideas), but I don't...

It's Theodor W. Adorno - On the Fetish-Character In Music and the Regression Of Listening

Haha, maybe. I need to find the name of the author who wrote that essay on fetishization in art that I mentioned in another thread.

I'm not familiar with them, so thanks for the info. I'm still learning a lot about these topics and have a tendency to rattle off a lot of thoughts in...

Some of the past's best works were mainstream at the time, so I don't think that's the dichotomy. Bach or Beethoven were successful in their time. The...

I guess in simple terms, when a person can retain their imagination through to adulthood, I would say they have a childlike quality to their personali...

Maybe childlike, not childish.

I would say "classical" is more than just common parlance for that music; the contemporary classical community will still use the word "classical", to...

So what does getting stabbed with scissors represent in your analogy? Intense emotional pain, death, or what? All analogies break down eventually. In ...

Figure I'll make some comments on the OP since this thread has already been resurrected. Are you familiar with Berdyaev? If not, I think you would fin...

Of course theists want God to exist and atheists don't want God to exist. It's because that given position is so deeply intertwined with the fabric of...

(Y)

Exactly; I think you miss the point of Berdyaev's mysticism here. It is all about human beings.

Interesting, yeah, I've talked with one other friend in real life who has had the same experience; and for her, it was the same reaction: "you do the ...

Interesting. I get it when waking up. Usually I just become aware that I'm (sort of?) awake, but can't move. I've developed this thing where I mentall...

Anyone else have sleep paralysis?? :-O

Definitely not. My post was sarcastic, perhaps you misread?

Ah, the moral code! So evanescent, in our experience. The problem with this whole philosophy distraction is the lack of a pragmatic ethics. O philosop...

Ah yes, the occurrence of this concept on your particular computer screen was the only, original, physical occurrence! How silly of me

If you tell me something is important, is that subjective or objective?

What I'm saying is that something being important seems to suggest an "ought".

Why is it important if there are no facts about oughts?

(Y)

But if meaning is unchangeable or static, how can freedom exist? Again, to me these dichotomies between subjective and objective meaning are unnecessa...

What I was trying to point out is that there seems to be an ethical element to assigning meaning. The meanings we assign to our lives don't exist in a...

So why, presumably, would "killing people" not be a good meaning to give to life? The problem for me with the idea that meaning is only something we a...

They exist in consciousness, which is generated by both the spiritual and physical aspects of reality. Actually, in my view, spirituality, physicality...

Because concepts aren't objects in the physical world.

Truth is a concept derived from experience. There's no need to attempt to locate it in physical space. For instance: Is a concept derived from experie...

Thanks!

That's why I pointed out the discrepancy in your original reply. :-} Whatever. Anyway, I can tentatively get with the idea of a fundamental motive bei...

None of that was clear until you elaborated your idea further, but fair enough.

No, in the bit about the Emperor, you're saying that his motivations "are almost nonsense to people who aren't the person in question". But you just s...

These two ideas, that 1) our own motive is knowable to us, while 2) it's source is not knowable, seem arbitrary to me.

So what exactly is the point you're driving at? You're slowly revising your position. You originally said: Which isn't the same as saying

So you're saying the foundational motive is unknowable? If so, I mostly agree with that, but it doesn't mean we can't learn about the other motives la...

I definitely disagree here; understanding why his motives are what they are would just be discovering the further motives underneath those motives. We...

Can't you just ask the guy? >:O Really though, I partially agree, at least in that the motives of another are not always knowable or clear, but I thin...

Why not?

But surely by learning about their reasons, you can make sense of it for yourself? The reasons you just laid out sound perfectly reasonable, why do th...