GENIUS FORUMS

I just had weird thought when I was thinking of Kantian philosophy (hey, don't mess with Kant!)

Instead of the usual 4-D model, has anyone ever thought of time and space as dualistic opposites, where time is the masculine principle (it causes action/change in everything) and space is the feminine principle (passively receiving everything with no force of its own)?

Can't you just go with active and passive? Do we even have to tack gender onto time and space? It's been done before with "Father Time" but geeze, do we really have to put gender on esoteric concepts? They seem to belong to different realms to me.

The meaning of masculine/feminine is so much richer, though.

How is it much richer? Can you justify calling time "masculine" rather than just "active" and space as "feminine" rather than just "passive" ?

Sure. Time is like a big penis: it points in one direction, towards the feminine. Space is like a big vagina: time enters it and incubates everything within.

But seriously, take any concept associated with masculinity and take another concept that is associated with femininity and compare them. See how many ways they are opposite to each other. Then take one of those concepts and take it's opposite and compare. It's a very stimulating way of thinking.

I'll go through an example. We'll take the feminine concept of beauty and the newly discovered masculine concept of time and see in how many ways they are opposite each other:

1. The younger something is and less subjected to time, the more beautiful it is. Time corrodes the beauty of objects because objects get older and decay.

2. Enjoying beauty puts us in a timeless state where we completely forget about time and all its worries. Thinking of the concerns of time makes it impossible to enjoy beauty.

3. People's tastes in what's beautiful change over time. Fashions go in and out of style. This is more or less the same as #1.

4. People who are concerned with beauty aren't concerned with making a name for themselves (immortality), and vice versa.

Okay, that's enough. Now we'll flip the masculine principle around and look at the feminine concept of beauty alongside the feminine concept of space:

1. All visual beauty is of course a spacial experience, including sexual beauty, art, theater, dance, etc.

2. Music, poetry and literature don't require space, so those are exceptions.

3. There's the beauty of kindness, which requires both space and time for people to interact.

I don't know, beauty is kind of a vague concept. But I guess that's fitting since vagueness is feminine. Two masculine concepts would be easier to compare, but I kind of wanted to give space a whirl.

Sex and Character by Otto Weininger is a good resource for this type of dualistic analysis.

Kant, too. In fact, Kant is probably the first philosopher who tried to create a system based on dualisms. He had a profound influence on Weininger and pretty much all philosophers up until that time.

I really think you're reaching here. It's reminding me of another thread on another board where I stated that if we allowed for a bad enough simile or metaphor, I could compare anything to an egg. I won. To me, you look like you are doing the same thing with masculinity and femininity. If we allow a bad enough comparison, anything can be assigned a gender - but sometimes a pen is just a writing instrument, not a phallic symbol.

Matt Gregory wrote: I'll go through an example. We'll take the feminine concept of beauty and the newly discovered masculine concept of time and see in how many ways they are opposite each other: ...

It seems like a worthwhile exercise to me. Not long ago I was exploring in the Art thread a similar idea about graphical imagery. Many paintings and especially photographs capture a moment of perception and freezes time. Although it doesn't freeze the constantly moving mind so one perceives the image each view still differently than before, subtle but profoundly different upon examination.

So could it be said that truth is beauty or beauty is (like)(a) truth?

John Keats wrote:Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know.

The moment one speaks truth it becomes frozen too, the words do not change anymore and time is not active in it, only in the minds pondering the words.

Elizabeth Isabelle wrote:Can't you just go with active and passive? Do we even have to tack gender onto time and space? It's been done before with "Father Time" but geeze, do we really have to put gender on esoteric concepts? They seem to belong to different realms to me.

There are many languages that use masculine and feminine articles designating their nouns.

If it gets your goat that much, perhaps you should take your business elsewhere. Masculinity, and likewise femininity, are rich designations that are within the purview of this forum. In the very subtitle above, you'll take notice that 'Masculinity' figures prominently.

These terms are extremely useful no matter how esoteric or abstract a concept may be, these terms allow access through their deep connection to the human psyche. These may belong to different realms to you, but I suspect if that be the case, it is so because you feel offended, thinking either that the attributes here associated with the masculine and the feminine have no grounds in their bodily counterparts and have no business when concepts such as space or time are in play.

Man is a microcosm, he encompasses the universe and understands the latter only insofar as he understands himself. You suggest the use of the terms 'active' or 'passive' because you think it a disservice to link the exploration of the concept time or space with the feminine or the masculine. It is you who do a disservice by dismissing the universality of nature, of the essence of humankind which pervades and perfumes the rest of the Totality as surely as all is cut from the same cloth, the same inherent nature. Somehow you think woman will be degraded by furthering the exploration of spacial and temporal phenomena utilizing the varying principles of the human psyche which are in themselves just another branch on the universal tree of life. If you acknowledge that the feminine is interchangeable with the passive, you neglect the richness that the former is imbued with, while the latter lacks the same depth of character.

Matt Gregory wrote:I just had weird thought when I was thinking of Kantian philosophy (hey, don't mess with Kant!)

Instead of the usual 4-D model, has anyone ever thought of time and space as dualistic opposites, where time is the masculine principle (it causes action/change in everything) and space is the feminine principle (passively receiving everything with no force of its own)?

In Paul Brunton's "Hidden Philosophy Beyond Yoga," he suggests we should mentalize space and spacialize mind. I think the application of the terms 'masculine' and 'feminine' help to make this link to the mind.

I would define time as either the measurement of change against a constant, or as the sum of causation. Space is the arena in which time operates, itself being unaffected by time. It cannot be quantified, nor can it be qualified in anyway. It is as utterly pervasive as time.

Bryan McGilly wrote:Space is the arena in which time operates, itself being unaffected by time. It cannot be quantified, nor can it be qualified in anyway. It is as utterly pervasive as time.

So are you saying space is a boy or a girl? I still say this is ridiculous - and it isn't about insulting women (actually there is some humor there considering the zeal with which man wants to explore space). Assigning gender to genderless things is generally an unnecessary false construct. There are enough necessary false constructs, and sometimes assigning gender makes for an easier explination (the male end of an extention cord and the female end of an extension cord), but to put in terminology you might better understand, I think it is feminine-minded of you to add all this extra stuff where it doesn't need to be.
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Assigning gender to genderless things is generally an unnecessary false construct.

Generally, but not in this case. I seriously think that the masculine is the principle of time manifested in humans and the feminine is the principle of space manifested in them. Even if there were no separate sexes, masculinity and femininity would still be manifested, because they can't be mixed, just as space and time can't be mixed in any way.

Think of how the masculine mind is purposeful, directional, it has a center that it shares with all other humans. This is time: time moves always in the same direction, the present is something we all share.

Look at my masculine explanation of my avatar in the Avatars thread: I simply state what's in the picture. It's barely considered information, yet everyone understands it perfectly and thereby creates a connection to everyone who looks at the picture.

Now think of the feminine mind: arbitrary, without direction, isolated from everything. This is space: the axes of space are totally arbitrary, you can point them any which way; everything has its own location which can't be shared with anything else.

Look at Elizabeth's feminine explanation of her avatar: like all women, she stresses the value of perspectives and looking at things in an arbitrary manner, even looking at them in multiple ways. Even the very explanation is something probably nobody will understand but her. Women are totally lost in space.

I think this is the most insightful way of looking at the sexes I've ever come across.

It's also interesting to note the parallel between trying to teach someone about truth and trying to teach someone about time using only spacial analogies. There's a certain pain involved in thinking about time beyond the abstract, though, and that's what makes us inclined to avoid it.

Something is virtuous to the degree that it conquers and overcomes time, and sinful to the degree that it drifts in and submits to the arbitrariness of space.

Sounds like Matt is thinking trans-dualistically for a change. Seeing relationships between poles of different types, via a loosening or generalisation of definitions.

Even if there were no separate sexes, masculinity and femininity would still be manifested, because they can't be mixed, just as space and time can't be mixed in any way.

They always both form part of a whole, so they are mixed in that fashion. Space and time are the same - they are psuedo-mixed because they are all effects stemming from the one process. They are not intrinsically connected to each other, because they are not in any way separate in the first palce, and are all formed from the exact same process that causes all effects in the same instant - our minds just separate them for conceptual purposes.
Things=time=space=movement=causes=space=time=things=movement=space etc.

(Geez, l'm soundly like a non-dualist, yuk. I'm not, non-dualism of the totality is an effect, all the above effects or forms are caused by causal duality).

With regard masculine/feminine - don't value one over the other except in relation to a growth in wisdom and reasoning.

Masculine/feminine do mix, and when they do balances occur from which growth can come. Masculinity is that which desires to grow out firstly from foundations, then existing structures. If spurts of masculinty are not balanced with a feminine settling down, then no exercise of masculinity would be to any avail. It would shoot blanks. I think we underestimate how masculine women are, because we fail to associate that women's masculinity uses different tools.

Put shit on them for false "wisdom" and sloppy reasoning, as much as possible, they need the experience, but not just because they are in the more feminine group.

Look at Elizabeth's feminine explanation of her avatar: like all women, she stresses the value of perspectives and looking at things in an arbitrary manner, even looking at them in multiple ways.

Isn't this what you've just done with space/time and masculine/feminine.[/i]

The difference is in looking at things in multiple arbitrary ways in order to remove oneself from being stuck in an arbitrary view and arrive at the one certain view of truth, as opposed to looking at things from multiple arbitrary views for the sake of preserving sheer arbitrariness.

Matt,

Your avatar explination was the most feminine - the only reason you chose your avatar was basically "Because it's pretty." Eegads. Mine had reason and purpose. What gender is this forum assigning reason and purpose, and what gender does it assign "because it's pretty" again?

Oh, yeah, but if a biological female has reason and purpose, it's "feminine" anyway because all biological females are as David described in "Woman", and if a biological male does something "just because it's pretty" it is suddenly masculine and good because all biological males are automatically better than biological females? Put away your "males are inherently better than females" because the masculinity and femininity this forum refers to has nothing to do with the outer body except in generalizations. Besides - one of the generalizations is that most biological males are women. One example is that you chose your avatar just because you found it pretty.

It is more masculine because putting as much effort as you put into something as trivial as an avatar is the very paragon of femininity and indicates how arbitrary and purposeless your life is.

It's masculine to choose a purpose in life and wisely manage your time in pursuit of that purpose as opposed to wasting time on many little trivialities that accomplish nothing.

Matt Gregory wrote:It is more masculine because putting as much effort as you put into something as trivial as an avatar is the very paragon of femininity and indicates how arbitrary and purposeless your life is.

What do you mean? I snapped a picture, uploaded it, when looking for an avatar I saw it and all that interpretation came to me in a flash (that's just how my mind works - no undue effort to it) - so I learned how to make it avatar size and put it in. What did you do differently? Ah, yes - you put in less thinking. I'm a thinker Matt - you just mindlessly went "ooh, pretty" after browsing around (how long did you browse? And isn't browsing a lot more passive than taking a picture yourself?) and picking out something someone else provided for you.

Matt Gregory wrote:It's masculine to choose a purpose in life and wisely manage your time in pursuit of that purpose as opposed to wasting time on many little trivialities that accomplish nothing.

What did you accomplish with your "it's pretty" avatar?

You just decided you had a right to be right just because you are male, and you decided to take a pot-shot at me, just chose something, and decided to start it with "like all women, Elizabeth..." - yet you chose something where ironicially, you had the most feminine response of all. If I were under a male or genderless name and had never revealed that I was female, having a thoughtful purpose to my avatar would have been considered "masculine." I've pointed this out, James pointed this out, and you are just too immature to even admit you were wrong.

Explaining what my avatar is also has a purpose of exemplifying thinking (BTW, this board is for thinking) - so it was hardly purposless - as opposed to your "I like clouds with sun shining through." You're the one with the triviality and purposlessness on your avatar, yet you accuse me of purposlessness, triviality, and wasting time just because I am a female. This is another example of someone resting on the fact that he has a penis to supposedly make him automatically better than any female, and backing up his claims with the likes of Otto Weininger. You and Tim should go form your own club.

Matt Gregory wrote:and indicates how arbitrary and purposeless your life is.

What is the purpose of your life, Matt?