GENIUS FORUMS

AlyOshA wrote:I believe that intellectualizing yourself towards enlightenment is EXTREMELY difficult and has only occurred successfully maybe a few times in human history - certainly not on this forum. For example Kelly Jones says:

If David's voice was hesitant or nervous, I think it was probably a result of not wanting to make any mistakes. That tends to make people sound uneasy and ineloquent.

I disagree. The hesitation in his voice is caused by the seeds of uncertainty.

I don't see how you can possibly know what causes hesitation. Be honest. No one can know for certain what is going on in someone else's consciousness. He may have hesitated to give some time to reflect on another idea, before speaking. He may have hesitated, because he considered a direct answer inappropriate. He may have hesitated to appreciate in silence a moment of dramatic irony (of which there are many in the Hour of Judgment, and Reasoning Show). He may have hesitated to allow another person to speak. He may have hesitated because what he had to say was beyond his listener's ability to understand, but he didn't wish to lie. He may have hesitated because he could feel a sneeze coming. It could have been any number of things.

Ironically, you say that uncertainty goes deep, and yet you seem extremely certain of yourself about your views.

Uncertainty goes deep, down to the outer core of human consciousness.

More certainty on your part?

Again, the *philosophical* quest doesn't use the scientific method. Uncertainties apply to the latter. If you disagree, present an actual argument.

human experience is bound by causality, space, and time.

More certainty there, eh?

There is no empirical evidence of infinity or zero, but without those concepts virtually all of the natural sciences, especially mathematics and physics, as well as philosophy and religion, would collapse and no longer make sense.

More certainty!

:-)

Kelly: There are many scientists that refer to basic attitudinal differences between males and females in the way they behave. For instance, psychologists put forward profiles, or psychological types, when looking at certain dysfunctional behaviours. If they notice a correlation between profiles and sex, then this can drive forward more accurate research. For instance, Simon Baron-Cohen (a cousin of the comic actor Sascha Baron-Cohen), who directs research on autism at Cambridge, has described five major psychological theories of autism and Aspergers Syndrome, and in four of those, there is a correlation to sex. As follows: monotropism (inability to multitask well), mindblindness, "Systematizing" vs "Empathising", and magnocellular theory. But even in healthy, functional persons, there are also sex differences in psychological types.

AlyOshA: You implied that I didn't acknowledge a distinction between male and female psychology but I never said anything remotely similar to that so I don't understand the relevance of what you wrote.

Well, feminine psychology is psychological traits characteristic of females. You wrote: "Feminine Psychology is about the vaguest description I've ever heard - in other words it's useless - FAIL."

Kelly: If you would like some more information on some basic psychological differences between the sexes, think about the evolution of the sexes, and how sex roles would influence a person's attitudes and drives.

AlyOshA: No I would not like more information on that particular topic, but thank you for offering. Why did you bring this up in the first place? I thought you discredited the scientific method so how is this relevant to what we are discussing?

No, I didn't discredit the scientific method. I said it was the wrong method in arriving at an understanding of Ultimate Reality.

It's an appropriate method when examining empirical data, of which domain male and female psychology (or masculine and feminine psychology) are part.

Remember that I was clarifying the difference between one of Lao Tsu's poetic symbols for the source, and the feminine psychology that is totally useless when it comes to the path to Enlightenment.

Firstly, human consciousness is as great a mystery as the nature of the universe. Consequently, Psychology as a science is an absolute joke.

Are you going to say that all sciences boil down to jokes because they cannot be definitive, even though they never try to be?

To encompass the entire breath of female psychology down to it's essence and motivation, by pointing out a few highly generalized distinctions to male psychology is half-assed laziness.

"Half-assed laziness" is a lazy and highly generalised distinction. It's a worthless response.

Science always tries to boil down contrasting elements to general principles. Otherwise, it would have a mush of hazy chaos to work with - and get nowhere.

On the topic of Psychology, why do you think Albert Einstein said this:

Dostoevsky gives me more than any scientist, more than Gauss.

In my opinion it was Dostoevsky's profound insight into human psychology, philosophy, and the nature of the soul that inspired that statement.

That's all I have time for now. Peace.

I also like Dostoevsky. But Einstein wasn't enlightened, you know.


..

Alex: "I am leary of 'poisons for the heart'. (But read everything and anything myself)."

Alyosha: I couldn't agree more :)

"I am becoming comfortable with my hatred of God. (But I distract myself too much to care.) "

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Hi Alyosha,

Long time, no see.

AlyOshA wrote:Well there is a glaring flaw often displayed here and everywhere. I am even guilty of it from time to time. When listening to some episodes of the reasoning show it appears more clearly. I respect David Quinn and Kevin Solway (and others who write on this forum) for trying to climb the mountain of delusion-free axioms, but you would think that they might be a bit more humbled on that arduous journey of theirs. This is an unfortunate characteristic rampant especially among Americans and Europeans. They did reach some profound truths along the way, but they often get too confident about their footing on the rock, not knowing that it is weakly supported, they stomp around on that cliff edge touting that they are on solid foundation. So it’s fun to watch the rocks crumble under their feet from time to time and slip back down that mountain they are attempting to climb. But to claim that they have already reached the very peak of that mountain is downright ridiculous!

As you or may not recall, I don't claim to be a perfect Buddha (i.e. reside on the mountain top permanently). But I do climb up there every day and am intimately familiar with it.

That you might find this ridiculous is neither here nor there.

And any man on this forum or otherwise who somehow thinks he is beyond the great genius of say a Dostoevsky or a JS Bach is just pathetic – that person might find it more useful to commit suicide than plague the earth with their filthy ignorance – hahahaha! Sorry I amuse myself sometimes. But honestly I will gladly put that person in their place if they clearly spit out something proactive instead of relying on shameless criticisms.

It depends on what you want out of life. If you want self-indulgent displays of teenage angst and gnashing of teeth clumsily concealed behind a facade of black humour, then Dosteovsky is your man. If you want an expert in intricate and attractive pattern-making, then Bach is as good a choice as any. But if you want that great wisdom which lies at the heart of all things, then you have to look elsewhere.

If there is no content in the ultimate logical understanding of reality then why are you all endlessly debating it and talking about it?

Ha!

The geese are flying overhead.

Well I'm not sure it would be worth my efforts to start in on this again as I wrote at lengths with him in the past primarily regarding my disagreements with his dismissal of the usefulness of femininity in the Tao, contradicting the very philosopher he used to champion - Kierkegaard.

By femininity, do you mean the incoherent, semi-conscious flow which comprises the minds of nearly all women? Or do you mean the infinite flexibility of a mind consciously in tune with truth?

But actually when I wrote this today I was referring to the reasoning show. I think he is a brilliant man and I truly admire him for the path that he has chosen, as a whole I agree with his axioms, but I can assure you, logically or otherwise, he is not enlightened (or fully self-realized/liberated, whatever word you choose to encapsulate such a vague idea). To word it more simply (always a handicap) I do not believe that he has realized and/or utilized the infinite/zero to the same degree that other great geniuses of mankind have. When talking to a great physicist or a Tibetan Buddhist, he assumes himself as a philosophical authority but never acknowledges the immense amount of mystery and the unknown existing in those fields of study (hence the hesitation and vagueness in his voice). Am I wrong? If so, clearly define enlightenment and tell me how he fits in that category. Also, if you could, please show me an example where he claims to NOT know some things about the immense mysteries left uncovered to human thought.

The only mystery I recognize is the one that goes to the heart of all things, which is reality itself. But it is a special kind of mystery, one that doesn't exclude understanding. Moreover, it is an all-or-nothing type of thing. In other words, it isn't something which is confined to the unknown realm, beyond the realm of "known facts", as scientists like to imagine. Rather, it is a mystery which encompasses utterly everything without exception, a mystery in which everything is understood and nothing is understood. A person either immerses himself in this mystery and thereby understands it fully, or he doesn't know it at all.

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Nice to see you David.

A clarification is important. In the sense I wrote above, being leary of 'poisons for the heart' is a little different than you assume. There are a few levels to it to be sure but I mentioned a cultural movement or trend in Colombia (Nadaismo, etc. 'Nothingism') that as an idea-strain acts like a 'poison for the heart'. It strangulates people, it reduces them, it limits the expression of themselves as human beings, and of course wrecks havoc on the emotional life. Possibly (as I have understood it) that is the core: the mind with its---in this case pessimistic and nihilistic---ideas 'lords it over' the 'body' and the body suffers. Colombia is a very strange place with a strange and rather dark history all its own, and I was mainly wanting to point out a way that idea-structures---perhaps intellectual, and perhaps driven by a part of the ego---can have a marked effect on 'the social body'. It leads to all sorts of pathologies.

It is true, as I have been expressing for quite some time, that I suspect that the ideas you and Kevin have---permit me to say---cobbled together from various sources (you taking this material in a more 'mystic' direction compared to the others: who else after all speaks of an 'Unseen Void'?) are unique to yourselves, and characteristic of yourselves. The long and the short of it is that you have significantly, if not 'invented', then 'interpreted' a description of a spiritual path which is unique to yourselves, though it may have some universal features common to Buddhism (the primary influence as far as I can tell). At the same time, there are notable strains of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Weininger and others which I would have to say is both a little strange but quite original.

Turning back to the cultural circumstance that has some relevance to me (Colombia), Nietzsche as a philosophical strain has exerted a very strange and even bizarre influence on the intellect of many thinkers, writers and philosophers. Nietzsche and the Marquis de Sade have a unique place in the 'rebellious' activities of many Colombians who seem always attracted to rebellious discourses and ones that deal on 'essential' questions. My impression is they instinctively gravitate toward texts and ideas that reveal and explain the 'circuitry' in the understructures of self. More often than not they are interested in gaining that knowledge in order to gain more terrestrial power, and in this specific sense (to use a dramatic word) they seem to me 'satanic'. So, it had been for me a very strange and yet very interesting and very rewarding (I learned a great deal) experience to *see* and understand these things. The way I see it---naturally it will not make a great deal of sense to you---is that they are 'forced' to abandon the connection to what CAN BE a genuine and very elevated spirituality that Catholicism CAN offer because, with their Nietzschean (etc.) lenses their minds are convinced that the essential core (of the Christian source) is 'a fiction', something that could only fool one of the 'herd'. So, they get *very smart* and *see through* these *fictions* and they jettison the whole thing: the whole cultural tradition that has informed all that they ARE. It leads to a strange nihilistic state of affairs.

So, the people here, from quite different cultural circumstances it must be said---different but not altogether different---wind up in a similar impass. It comes about through what I will call 'partial education' and this is a phenomenon of the post-war years: a new multitude of kids who receive a very limited education for a very short period of time but who yet *assume* that what they have received IS education when in fact it is not. Its not much more than a little windiness that blows through the mind. It can lead to a sort of 'revolution' in the upstairs department but in the same sense that I am talking about is more like a 'foreign installation' that has landed in the mind-department and commands the whole structure, or seems to. I think that we have to face the fact that this is one aspect of what 'modernity' means: foreign installations in the head but 'the body' (all the historical parts of consciousness) are left significantly untouched---unaltered.

In terms of numerous denizens on this forum one would necessarily have to face the fact that (in my view) they are literally 'like children' (most of the TBs are very, very young, not only in years but in maturity level) whose egos have become intoxicated with certain kinds of 'knowledge' and certain pretentious ways of 'playing' with their mind and with methods of intellectualization. They just want to play games---stupid little word games mostly. Generally speaking, it is utterly transparent and one sees directly into the structure of *who they are* that is left untransformed---uninterested and non-interested in anything like 'transformation' however that is interpreted (and it is contentious).

(The idea or the fact of the 'male intellect and the 'female' body is one that facinates me.)

So, when I speak of being leary of Poisons for the Heart, I am *talking to* that very dual 'person' who frequents GF, that divided heart as it were, that divided being. I have learned, and accepted, that I am dealing both with a conscious entity who can be reasoned with and an unconscious entity who, for all intents and purposes, is like a rebellious, head-strong brat. The *male intellect*, that is to say the mature individual, cannot deal with the female-child-body divided person---except perhaps in ironical terms.

Your doctrines 'fail' it seems to me because they originate not in a core place where *consciousness* resides (or is born?) but in superimposed intellectual doctrines that have a very harsh effect on those 'women' who come under the influence of them, in the same way that a woman responds to a man's 'wooing'. Some men here are 'women' who keep falling in love with the wrong type of guy. Most of your followers are 'women' and you and Kevin are father-figures. It is often said that I use *smoke and mirrors* and that I don't deal in *substance*, which I think is untrue, but as I say very often I think a great part in the tinsel that people grab onto around here corresponds to *smoke and mirrors* of another sort, and it tends to muck up the individual, to distort the individual. It leads not to spiritual growth (whatever that is, and it is debatable) but to a very strange post-modern morass.

The time that I have spent here has been---is---very valuable to be able to *see* clearly what I have described (imperfectly and not thoroughly), and it has been immensely valuable in the growth of my own understanding.

The question of Ultimate Reality, 'God', the nature of existence, 'meaning', Truth---all of that---is separate from 90% of what goes on in this place.
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PS: Humorously---perhaps a little lyrically and cynically---I have devised a schema for classifying the girl-boys who dominate GF. It is based on Boccaccio's Decameron.

Genus: GF

Species of 'Men' (there are seven): Pampinea (the flourishing one), Fiammetta (small flame), Filomena (faithful in love), Emilia (rival), Lauretta (wise, crowned with laurels), Neifile (cloudy), and Elissa (God is my vow).

(Diebert, for example, is largely a 'Lauretta'---glorious, stately and triumphant---and Jupiviv (to the best of my knowledge) is an 'Elissa'---pious, perfect and pristine. Ryan and Nick are 'Fiammettas'---for the force of their 'commitment'. Robert a 'Filomena'---as one who stands faithfully by, demure and chaste; ever serviceful to the Ideal. (etc.)

Of Women who have become 'Men' (there are three): Panfilo (completely in love), Filostrato (overcome by love), and Dioneo (lustful)

(Kelly has 'Panfilo' characteristics---for her utter dedication to her 'Papas'; Sue Hindenmarsh the inner traits of a 'Filostrato'---knocked back and 'stunned' by the brilliance of male intellect and man's-ways; whereas Leyla, with all that Turkish fire is quite obviously a 'Dioneo'---over-heated, desirous, wild. (You get the picture).

Alex Jacob wrote:So, they get *very smart* and *see through* these *fictions* and they jettison the whole thing

Hark the herald archangel of normality sins - a hundred fold worse than his subject...

Being it Nietzsche who outlined the death of a God who informed the whole cultural tradition, "western metaphysics" and announced the coming nihilistic state of affairs ("What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned", "unchained the earth from its sun") or:

• The meaning of our cheerfulness. The greatest recent event—that "God is dead," that the belief in the Christian God has become unbelievable—is already beginning to cast its first shadows over Europe. For the few at least, whose eyes—the suspicion in whose eyes is strong and subtle enough for this spectacle, some suns seem to have set and some ancient and profound trust has been turned into doubt; to them our old world must appear daily more like evening, more mistrustful, stranger, "older." But in the main one may say: the event itself is far too great, too distant, too remote from the multitude's capacity for comprehension even for the tidings of it to be thought of as having arrived as yet. Much less may one suppose that many people know as yet what this event really means—and how much must collapse now that this faith has been undermined because it was built upon this faith, propped up by it, grown into it; for example, the whole of our European morality. This long plenitude and sequence of breakdown, destruction, ruin, and cataclysm that is now impending—who could guess enough of it today to be compelled to play the teacher and advance proclaimer of this monstrous logic of terror, the prophet of a gloom and an eclipse of the sun whose like has probably never yet occurred on earth?
  
  Even we born guessers of riddles who are, as it were, waiting on the mountains, posted between today and tomorrow, stretched in the contradictions between today and tomorrow, we firstlings and premature births of the coming century, to whom the shadows that must soon envelop Europe really should have appeared by now—why is it that even we look forward to the approaching gloom without any real sense of involvement and above all without any worry or fear for ourselves?
  
  - from "la gaya scienza" 343

Any suggestion that it's somehow Nietzsche as "a philosophical strain has exerted a very strange and even bizarre influence" would have lead to the very nihilism Nietzsche was first and foremost exploring as phenomenon and direction of how things were already going, is quite bizarre. As it happens, you are taking a tiny bit of Nietzsche's own analysis on nihilism and try to turn it into a criticism on his work and followers, and their influences. If you want to make the case that all the analysis will, at most, only hasten the process of decay - be my guest! And mind your words.

Give up advocating normality, Alex, reinventing, endless reforming and rehashing a decaying corpse holds no attraction to thinkers, including your Columbian rebels.

AlyOsha wrote:And any man on this forum or otherwise who somehow thinks he is beyond the great genius of say a Dostoevsky or a JS Bach is just pathetic – that person might find it more useful to commit suicide than plague the earth with their filthy ignorance – hahahaha! Sorry I amuse myself sometimes. But honestly I will gladly put that person in their place if they clearly spit out something proactive instead of relying on shameless criticisms.

That really depends on what you call "genius". I definitely do not have the intensified talent for particular subjects that those men had, but then I don't have anywhere near the same level of talent as my computer, for rendering the complex graphics of Call of Duty 5. I also don't have the talent of a rock, for being a rock. However, I have a far greater share of genius than those men had, genius being defined as understanding what things are. Even though I haven't made the effort to speak as eloquently or compose music as efficiently as them, I can understand how it is done, i.e, the essential thought behind their work.

I wrote a more eloquent reply last night, but I was doing too many things simultaneously on my computer and I accidentally deleted it :(
(Despite the fact that eloquence is merely an aesthetic, and despite the fact that aesthetics are merely on the surface of things, I value aesthetics on the basis that they are an outward expression of the all-encompassing, all-pervading essence of everything.)

Ironically, you say that uncertainty goes deep, and yet you seem extremely certain of yourself about your views.

As the saying goes - opinions are like assholes, everybody's got one. I acknowledge that I have an asshole and even act like one now and again (but only in lighthearted folly). In all sincerity, I think words are very limiting and ultimately cannot lead one to the content/essence of things directly - they only indicate a subjective mental conception of things. An aspect of the Tao but not the essence or absolute. For a better understanding, please refer to Wittgenstein's Tractus Logico-Philosophicus. He expressed it much better than I can. Also note how many times I wrote "I believe...".

Hi Alyosha,

Long time, no see.

I am very glad to see that your reasoning show developed successfully.

As you or may not recall, I don't claim to be a perfect Buddha (i.e. reside on the mountain top permanently). But I do climb up there every day and am intimately familiar with it.

Will you please explain to me what your mountaintop is and what it is like up there (being that you go there everyday)? In order to save you time and effort, you can explain it as if I was already familiar with the terrain (as a fellow "climber"). My motivation is not to debate you on this, so I will not waste time dissecting the semantics of concepts I am already familiar with.

It depends on what you want out of life. If you want self-indulgent displays of teenage angst and gnashing of teeth clumsily concealed behind a facade of black humour, then Dosteovsky is your man.

I am not sure that we are discussing the same author. Again, this is not a pissing contest, but exactly what have you read by Dostoevsky?

If you want an expert in intricate and attractive pattern-making, then Bach is as good a choice as any. But if you want that great wisdom which lies at the heart of all things, then you have to look elsewhere.

"Intricate and attractive pattern-making" could also be used to describe: The grand interplay of energy, matter, dark matter, and the zero-point field orchestrated by the universe. The complex and diverse weavings of the Tao. The oceanic spider web of cause and effect. Mother Kali's dance across the battlefield of Maya. Not so easily dismissive as you make it sound. These two quotes are a more apt description of music (if you can see past the writer's indulgence in witticism):

Music is an unconscious exercise in metaphysics in which the mind does not even know it is philosophizing... since music is the only language with the contradictory attributes of being at once intelligible and untranslatable, the musical creator is a being comparable to the Gods, and music itself the supreme mystery of the sciences of man – Schopenhauer

I wonder whether music might not be the unique example of what might have been - if the invention of language had not intervened - the means of communication between souls. – Proust

Ha!

The geese are flying overhead.

I too squawk with the geese, until I grow weary and engage in a more pro-active approach.

By femininity, do you mean the incoherent, semi-conscious flow which comprises the minds of nearly all women?

You could have just as easily said the incoherent, semi-conscious flow which comprises the minds of nearly all men. I live in Los Angeles and can find you millions of examples of this. If it is as equally prevalent in men as it is women (I argue that it is), then it cannot be described as feminine consciousness.

Or do you mean the infinite flexibility of a mind consciously in tune with truth?

Yes, this is closer to what I mean, but can you tell me what "truth" is and how you are more "in tune" with it than other seekers?

The only mystery I recognize is the one that goes to the heart of all things, which is reality itself. But it is a special kind of mystery, one that doesn't exclude understanding. Moreover, it is an all-or-nothing type of thing. In other words, it isn't something which is confined to the unknown realm, beyond the realm of "known facts", as scientists like to imagine. Rather, it is a mystery which encompasses utterly everything without exception, a mystery in which everything is understood and nothing is understood. A person either immerses himself in this mystery and thereby understands it fully, or he doesn't know it at all.

This was nicely put and I agree with most everything. But the sentiment is rather poetic, you must admit, and I find it strange that you can so easily dismiss the brilliance of Bach then go on to wax poetically like this.

I am not (yet) going to deny that you haven't immersed yourself in the "mystery which encompasses utterly everything without exception" and therefor fully understand (by not understanding it), but you could have just as easily re-written this passage:

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.

So my question is, do you feel it possible to immerse yourself in this mystery and fully understand it through experience? Or is this only an an intellectual exercise distilled by philosophical discrimination and distinction? If the latter statement is true, tell me how you obtained it, what it is like, and also why this approach is more valuable than others (if you believe it to be so)?

genius being defined as understanding what things are. Even though I haven't made the effort to speak as eloquently or compose music as efficiently as them, I can understand how it is done, i.e, the essential thought behind their work.

And why exactly do you believe that you have a better understanding of "what things are" than JS Bach or Dostoevsky? I have not seen an inkling of evidence to support this claim. Whereas the entire body of work comprised by the previously mentioned geniuses has a wealth of evidence to support that they do in fact know what things are to a greater capacity than most men who've occupied human history.

leary of 'poisons for the heart'

Mr. Talking Ass, may I ask your opinions of the following two examples of 'poisons to the heart'. (or if anyone else cares to comment on these quotes.)

The slow arrow of beauty. - The noblest kind of beauty is not that which suddenly transports us, which makes a violent and intoxicating assault upon us (such beauty can easily excite disgust), but that which slowly infiltrates us, which we bear away with us almost without noticing and encounter again in dreams, but which finally, after having for long lain modestly in our heart, takes total possession of us, filling our eyes with tears and our heart with longing. - What is it we long for at the sight of beauty? To be beautiful ourself: we imagine we would be very happy if we were beautiful. - But that is an error.


Parable of the Poisoned Arrow:

The Buddha was sitting in the park when his disciple Malunkyaputta approached him. Malunkyaputta had recently retired from the world and he was concerned that so many things remained unexplained by the Buddha. Was the world eternal or not eternal? Was the soul different from the body? Did the enlightened exist after death or not? He thought, 'If the Buddha does not explain these things to me, I will give up this training and return to worldly life'.

He put these questions to the Buddha who replied, "Now did I ever say to you that if you led a religious life you would understand these things? It is as if a man had been wounded by an arrow thickly smeared with poison, and his friends, companions relatives were to get a surgeon to heal him, and he were to say, 'I will not have this arrow pulled out until I know who wounded me, of what caste he is, what his name is, whether he is tall, short or of medium height, what colour his skin is, where he comes from, what kind of bow I was wounded with, what it was made of, whether the arrow was feathered with a vulture's wing or a heron's or a hawk's…..' Surely the man would die before he knew all this."

"Whether the view is held that the world is eternal or not, Malunkyaputta, there is still re-birth, old age, death, grief, suffering, sorrow and despair - and these can be destroyed in this life! I have not explained these other things because they are not useful, they are not conducive to tranquillity and Nirvana. What I have explained is suffering, the cause of suffering, the destruction of suffering and the path that leads to the destruction of suffering. This is useful, leading to non-attachment, the absence of passion, perfect knowledge."

Well, let us start with a quote from GK Chesterton on Nietzsche since he came up recently:

• 'I do not even think that a cosmopolitan contempt for patriotism is merely a matter of opinion, any more than I think that a Nietzscheite contempt for compassion is merely a matter of opinion. I think they are both heresies so horrible that their treatment must not be so much mental as moral, when it is not simply medical. Men are not always dead of a disease and men are not always damned by a delusion; but so far as they are touched by it they are destroyed by it.'
  
  ---May 31, 1919, Illustrated London News

And another from Bertand Russell which sheds an interesting *possible* light on some of the QRS attitudes which are so dearly cherished, and so clearly unexamined:

• 'It is obvious that in his day-dreams he is a warrior, not a professor; all of the men he admires were military. His opinion of women, like every man's, is an objectification of his own emotion towards them, which is obviously one of fear. "Forget not thy whip"-- but nine women out of ten would get the whip away from him, and he knew it, so he kept away from women, and soothed his wounded vanity with unkind remarks. [...] [H]e is so full of fear and hatred that spontaneous love of mankind seems to him impossible. He has never conceived of the man who, with all the fearlessness and stubborn pride of the superman, nevertheless does not inflict pain because he has no wish to do so. Does any one suppose that Lincoln acted as he did from fear of hell? Yet to Nietzsche, Lincoln is abject, Napoleon magnificent. [...] I dislike Nietzsche because he likes the contemplation of pain, because he erects conceit into duty, because the men whom he most admires are conquerors, whose glory is cleverness in causing men to die. But I think the ultimate argument against his philosophy, as against any unpleasant but internally self-conscious ethic, lies not in an appeal to facts, but in an appeal to the emotions. Nietzsche despises universal love; I feel it the motive power to all that I desire as regards the world. His followers have had their innings, but we may hope that it is coming rapidly to an end.'
  
  ---Russell, History of Western Philosophy

I have often been very curious to read CG Jung's lectures on Zarathustra that is said to be 'an invaluable demonstration of the unconscious at work, [and] one that illuminated both Nietzsche's psychology and spirituality and that of the modern world in general'. In those lectures 'the mature Jung spoke informally to members of his inner circle about a thinker whose works had not only overwhelmed him with the depth of their understanding of human nature but also provided the philosophical sources of many of his own psychological and metapsychological ideas. Above all, he demonstrated how the remarkable book Thus Spake Zarathustra illustrates both Nietzsche's genius and his neurotic and prepsychotic tendencies.'

Diebert wrote: "Any suggestion that it's somehow Nietzsche as 'a philosophical strain has exerted a very strange and even bizarre influence' would have lead to the very nihilism Nietzsche was first and foremost exploring as phenomenon and direction of how things were already going, is quite bizarre. As it happens, you are taking a tiny bit of Nietzsche's own analysis on nihilism and try to turn it into a criticism on his work and followers, and their influences. If you want to make the case that all the analysis will, at most, only hasten the process of decay - be my guest! And mind your words."

Though what you say is true, in a way, it is also true that Nietzsche took up the issue of this nihilism and made very many pithy and influencial comments that clearly resonated in the minds and spirits of a very broad assortment of people who have all had a strong influence on the present. My friend Jair (a student of philosophy) always referred to Nietzsche in his own life and in the life of his (youth) culture as 'dinamita', and the term is apt. Jung said that it required a very mature individual to read and process Nietzsche without being blown out of the water, or in the sense of this conversation, 'poisoned'.

The way that certain ideas taken up by certain people with certain predispositions, and the way that those ideas act in them like a 'poison for the heart' is what I was talking about. I am merely explaining why it is (as distinct from David's very tendentious *interpretation*) that I am 'leary of poisons for the heart'.

There is more to say on this interesting and important topic but I don't have the time right now. I'll have to try tomorrow.

AlyOsha wrote:And why exactly do you believe that you have a better understanding of "what things are" than JS Bach or Dostoevsky? I have not seen an inkling of evidence to support this claim. Whereas the entire body of work comprised by the previously mentioned geniuses has a wealth of evidence to support that they do in fact know what things are to a greater capacity than most men who've occupied human history.

The evidence I have is an understanding of reality. All the particular things within reality also make themselves clear when you achieve this understanding.

Dostoevsky possessed a great literary talent - which is to say that he could write about the troubles and emotions of people very well, which leads to people liking him, since most readers like authors who "reflect" their emotions in a clearer manner, thus making them feel satisfied that their emotions are good, noble and justified. However, the essential thought contained in his works is not anything exceptional. He had some good insights into psychology, but they are bloated out of proportion. A better example of genius in literature is Oscar Wilde.

As for Bach - I don't know what you are talking about. He could put some emotions into music, but that is all he could do. He hadn't any knowledge outside that that I know of. A far better example of a musical genius would be Beethoven, or maybe even Mozart.

Trust Alex to quote such a horrendously mediocre "philosopher" as Russell in an attempt at critique of someone like Nietzsche.

How utterly deplorable, yet how utterly predictable.

I think this is a pretty important juncture in my criticism of the QRS 'House Philosophy'. I personally think that like many second and third-rate intellects 'you' slavishly imbibe a romantic lyricist like Nietzsche, you get stoned on the fumes of his furious fulminations, and come under the influence of his Wagnerian chants with which you seek to harmonize your own, and the effect of this is to displace yourselves from solidity within your own selves, to remove from yourselves the literal ground under your feet so that you shatter all connection with the social world, the emotional world, the world of your own incarnation. The angle I am working now is that---though this criticism is levelled against me---it is *you* who are firmly ensconsed within the post-modern problem, a kind of trap from which you cannot escape, and that you have invented a kind of romantic cartoon-world where you strut and preen yourselves and *dream yourselves* into beings that you are not. But, a great part of this 'false edifice' is constructed on egotistic imaginings, posturings, 'image management', word-games and other reactive, romantic strategies, and so can never be really lived by any one of you. All of the QRS, despite the image presented, are actively involved with necessary terrestrial projects: Kevin with his travels, Dan with his girlfriend, and Dave with his wife and child (when he is not of course 'on the mountian top' doing up there whatever the sages do). What we see in this is that the 'image management' that is presented to the world, which is avidly taken up by young boys and a few cross-dressing transvestites (it is very important to understand why this term is used: the boys of GF are a particular sort of young men who are a 'post-modern calamity'; who are fundamentally disconnected from themselves and, I think, terrified by that disconnection, yet needing to justify this core alientation and separation through reciting intellectual mantras of various sorts).

There are many different philosophers and thinkers who offered critiques of Nietzsche, this one by Santayana makes some very good points, and ones relevant to the QRS use of Nietzschean doctrines.

I can't even be bothered reading that post, Alex. You are grossly enamored of words, and such men have nothing of value to say, ironically. One only has to read Russell's treatment of Spinoza in his supposed history of western philosophy (which I will concede isn't all that bad as a general - but shallow - overview) to know that Russell is a lightweight philosopher.

But oh, pardon me - one has to be a philosopher to know what a lightweight looks like! Get back to me when and if you decide to be such a thing, as opposed to being a mere rhetorician.

Ass, indeed.

Alyosha, your quote: "The slow arrow of beauty. - The noblest kind of beauty is not that which suddenly transports us, which makes a violent and intoxicating assault upon us (such beauty can easily excite disgust), but that which slowly infiltrates us, which we bear away with us almost without noticing and encounter again in dreams, but which finally, after having for long lain modestly in our heart, takes total possession of us, filling our eyes with tears and our heart with longing. - What is it we long for at the sight of beauty? To be beautiful ourself: we imagine we would be very happy if we were beautiful. - But that is an error."

There are a few difficulties in responding to this in the context of this forum with its quite unusual *interpretation* of Buddhist ideas, practices and teleology, not the least of which it veers into another whole area of possible criticism. I think that Eastern ideas and practices---like Buddhism---have been taken up in the West for a group of different reasons, some of them 'good' and some of them negative. Everything seems to depend on the centeredness of the individual and his clarity about his own existence. But---and we all know this---part of our 'modern condition' is that we ARE displaced from our own selves and uncertain about our own existence, so we long for and need a way to integrate ourselves and to achieve 'ontological security'. Our seeking is often a manifestation of the condition that is ailing us and especially in 'youth' is often 'afflicted' and lopsided. In short, my impression so far is that the QRS take on Buddhism, by and large, is not healthy. It is a distorted take and (I predict) will lead toward neurosis and even to psychosis when it is practiced with zeal by kids who don't have a strong center in their own selves. It is not the philosophy per se but the use of the philosophy that I suggest needs to be examined.

Buddha: "Whether the view is held that the world is eternal or not, Malunkyaputta, there is still re-birth, old age, death, grief, suffering, sorrow and despair - and these can be destroyed in this life! I have not explained these other things because they are not useful, they are not conducive to tranquillity and Nirvana. What I have explained is suffering, the cause of suffering, the destruction of suffering and the path that leads to the destruction of suffering. This is useful, leading to non-attachment, the absence of passion, perfect knowledge."

Every man has to make his own way into---and through---the largest questions that confront us. Buddhism, in the hands of Westerners, has often seemed to me a way to avoid 'our' particular 'dharma', and it often seems to me a shallow practice with a shallow grasp of 'reality'. So while the issue (a 'poisoned arrow') is real in my view, I fear that avid Western practitioners miss the central point, which might be inexpressable, and do what Westerners have been doing for a long time: contorting themselves as they adapt to a 'foreign dharma' and avoid the inner meaning of their own: their own position within their incarnation.

Dan, I am not defending Russell. Last night I found a couple of quotes that seemed to me relevant at least to a degree. The point is that there exists a critical position of Nietzsche, and it is considerable.

Parts of this critique may have---in my opinion they do have---bearing on the QRS doctrines and the people attracted to them.

If the issue is real value, real understanding, I suggest that you yourself and yourselves may be missing the mark. So it becomes a question of how 'philosophy' is conducted, what values are privelaged, etc. All that I have been talking about for the last 3 years centers around that. I don't expect to infuence you.

Talking Ass wrote:Nice to see you David.

A clarification is important. In the sense I wrote above, being leary of 'poisons for the heart' is a little different than you assume.

I don't think so, somehow. But I grant that your mind is too diffracted and distracted to be conscious of the hatred.

It is true, as I have been expressing for quite some time, that I suspect that the ideas you and Kevin have---permit me to say---cobbled together from various sources (you taking this material in a more 'mystic' direction compared to the others: who else after all speaks of an 'Unseen Void'?) are unique to yourselves, and characteristic of yourselves. The long and the short of it is that you have significantly, if not 'invented', then 'interpreted' a description of a spiritual path which is unique to yourselves, though it may have some universal features common to Buddhism (the primary influence as far as I can tell). At the same time, there are notable strains of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Weininger and others which I would have to say is both a little strange but quite original.

This is as good an example as any. Not having any understanding of the root, and doing everything possible to prevent such understanding from ever arising, you spend your time trying to piece a few branches together into some kind of coherent pattern, all the while pretending to yourself that this kind of effort is taking you to the heart of matters. You don't realize how foolish you look.

Every aspect of what you wrote above is both wrong and irrelevant. But there is no use in my explaining why, because you will never understand it.

-

AlyOshA wrote:

David Quinn wrote:As you or may not recall, I don't claim to be a perfect Buddha (i.e. reside on the mountain top permanently). But I do climb up there every day and am intimately familiar with it.

Will you please explain to me what your mountaintop is and what it is like up there (being that you go there everyday)? In order to save you time and effort, you can explain it as if I was already familiar with the terrain (as a fellow "climber"). My motivation is not to debate you on this, so I will not waste time dissecting the semantics of concepts I am already familiar with.

Complete and utter freedom, all opposition gone, all cares gone, all life and death gone, delight in the formlessness of Nature and the spontaneity of everything, immersion in the lack of trace of anything and the impossibility of leaving nirvana, liberation from the need to see or do anything or to even understand anything ....

My back's a bit stiff at the moment.

AlyOshA wrote:

It depends on what you want out of life. If you want self-indulgent displays of teenage angst and gnashing of teeth clumsily concealed behind a facade of black humour, then Dosteovsky is your man.

I am not sure that we are discussing the same author. Again, this is not a pissing contest, but exactly what have you read by Dostoevsky?

It's been awhile, but from memory, Notes from the Underground, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and a number of short stories. He is an amusing writer, but as I say, I find the suffering and angst underlying it all rather overbearing and adolescent. In essence, he was a spiritually lazy person with little or no interest in truth.

AlyOshA wrote:

If you want an expert in intricate and attractive pattern-making, then Bach is as good a choice as any. But if you want that great wisdom which lies at the heart of all things, then you have to look elsewhere.

"Intricate and attractive pattern-making" could also be used to describe: The grand interplay of energy, matter, dark matter, and the zero-point field orchestrated by the universe. The complex and diverse weavings of the Tao. The oceanic spider web of cause and effect. Mother Kali's dance across the battlefield of Maya. Not so easily dismissive as you make it sound.

Well yes, if a person is awake anough to get a sense of the dance of causality or the flow of the Tao from his music, then that's terrific. But then again, you would think that such a person would also be able to obtain similar inklings from many other sources - indeed, from utterly anything that happens. So Bach's music quickly becomes superfluous.

I grant you that for most people Bach's music occupies a realm above them. Most people are coarse-minded, overly-emotional and spend their impoverished lives bunkered down inside a few prison-like attachments. For them Bach's music is an enriching experience, a way for them to catch a sniff of the sweet air emanating from beyond the walls of their small, narrow worlds.

AlyOshA wrote:These two quotes are a more apt description of music (if you can see past the writer's indulgence in witticism):

Music is an unconscious exercise in metaphysics in which the mind does not even know it is philosophizing... since music is the only language with the contradictory attributes of being at once intelligible and untranslatable, the musical creator is a being comparable to the Gods, and music itself the supreme mystery of the sciences of man – Schopenhauer

I wonder whether music might not be the unique example of what might have been - if the invention of language had not intervened - the means of communication between souls. – Proust

They are both overstating the case. What music can do is transport the mind out of its usual concerns and worries and allow it to experience the world more freshly (which is often mistaken to be a spiritual experience). True, it does take the average person's mind a step closer to enlightenment, but it is a very small step nonetheless. The actual process that leads to enlightenment - an attainment which allows the mind to experience the world with complete freshness in every moment - goes far beyond the realm of music (and art), such that one quickly leaves the Bachs and Beethovens behind. But I agree that music can help awaken people out of their slumber a little bit and possibly inspire in them the desire to develop more spiritually.

AlyOshA wrote:

By femininity, do you mean the incoherent, semi-conscious flow which comprises the minds of nearly all women?

You could have just as easily said the incoherent, semi-conscious flow which comprises the minds of nearly all men. I live in Los Angeles and can find you millions of examples of this. If it is as equally prevalent in men as it is women (I argue that it is), then it cannot be described as feminine consciousness.

Feminine unconsciousness differs from masculine unconsciousness in many different ways. But it's a big topic and I'm not sure that I want to go into it right now.

AlyOshA wrote:

Or do you mean the infinite flexibility of a mind consciously in tune with truth?

Yes, this is closer to what I mean, but can you tell me what "truth" is and how you are more "in tune" with it than other seekers?

Truth is the fullness of all things which don't really exist. That I am in tune with it should be evident in my writing.

AlyOshA wrote:

The only mystery I recognize is the one that goes to the heart of all things, which is reality itself. But it is a special kind of mystery, one that doesn't exclude understanding. Moreover, it is an all-or-nothing type of thing. In other words, it isn't something which is confined to the unknown realm, beyond the realm of "known facts", as scientists like to imagine. Rather, it is a mystery which encompasses utterly everything without exception, a mystery in which everything is understood and nothing is understood. A person either immerses himself in this mystery and thereby understands it fully, or he doesn't know it at all.

This was nicely put and I agree with most everything. But the sentiment is rather poetic, you must admit, and I find it strange that you can so easily dismiss the brilliance of Bach then go on to wax poetically like this.

The key difference is the content. One goes straight to the heart of the matter and directs the mind to the core truth of life; the other floats around at the edges in an ambiguous manner.

AlyOshA wrote:I am not (yet) going to deny that you haven't immersed yourself in the "mystery which encompasses utterly everything without exception" and therefor fully understand (by not understanding it), but you could have just as easily re-written this passage:

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.

So my question is, do you feel it possible to immerse yourself in this mystery and fully understand it through experience? Or is this only an an intellectual exercise distilled by philosophical discrimination and distinction?

Both. There can't really be one without the other. You can't begin to immerse yourself in the experience of nirvana without first identifying what it is, and what it is not.

-

AlyOshA wrote:In all sincerity, I think words are very limiting and ultimately cannot lead one to the content/essence of things directly - they only indicate a subjective mental conception of things. An aspect of the Tao but not the essence or absolute.

If one understands the Tao, then words are no mystery. Words can't help but manifest the essence, because they are the Tao itself. Sounds are identical in this respect, since they lack discrete forms because they are the Tao.

The mystery of the Tao is not like this. The Tao has no form of its own, and cannot be turned into something discrete, it will always be hidden and "secreted away". Lao Tsu didn't mean a mystery that is solved once one gains information or understanding. He meant a mystery that is a secret, forever.

AlyOshA to David wrote:I find it strange that you can so easily dismiss the brilliance of Bach then go on to wax poetically like this.

Music only seems mysterious and powerful because we're socialised to detect subtle differences in voiced sound, largely to pick up mating signals. Our music is the development of animal emotions. The more brilliant the male bird's song, the more he booms and resonates, the more overwhelmed his female audience.

The human master-musician hooks the audience with a skillful combination of two things: sheer technical virtuosity and the ability to detect the kinds of emotions the audience wants to feel. The mating call is as much as it ever was, the core element of music. It doesn't matter that the composer is Bach, inspiring "higher" emotions like awe, power, respect, enthusiasm, childlike innocence, idealism, and sheer joi de vivre. It's still the same psychological hook. It's the ego, desiring the "Best Hook", the absolute revealed.

To give you an example. I've been studying the technique of Albrecht Mayer, arguably the best oboist in the world, to understand why his playing is so powerful psychologically. It's because he's a female impersonator. He's a kind of instrumental castrato, in that he has the same singing style and range of a soprano (but slightly higher), but with far more power. He uses the "vox umana" of the oboe, and literally sings through the instrument in technique and by opening-up the resonating spaces in the body. He's basically an advanced human budgie.

The mystery of the Tao has nothing to do with this psychological pull.

Music might pull one spiritually higher, by stimulating the ego's desire for the Best Hook, but it can't pull one very high. As soon as one understands the Tao, the psychological hooking inherent in music starts to jar quite uncomfortably. It actually becomes laughable, and one wonders how one was ever enthralled by it.


...

David writes: "This is as good an example as any. Not having any understanding of the root, and doing everything possible to prevent such understanding from ever arising, you spend your time trying to piece a few branches together into some kind of coherent pattern, all the while pretending to yourself that this kind of effort is taking you to the heart of matters. You don't realize how foolish you look."

...and...

"Complete and utter freedom, all opposition gone, all cares gone, all life and death gone, delight in the formlessness of Nature and the spontaneity of everything, immersion in the lack of trace of anything and the impossibility of leaving nirvana, liberation from the need to see or do anything or to even understand anything .... "

I do I do I do understand! The descriptions you offer of your most valued experience are almost identical to hundreds and hundreds of yogis and Buddhists who have written on the subject. You are moving forcefully in that direction and your focus and desired experience is exactly what you describe. You are like a Buddhist mystic. I too have, in moments, felt those things (though my own unique 'lens'). I have also had experiences that (I swear this is true) have left me with the sense that *everything is taken care of*...*there is nothing I really have to fundamentally worry about*---and I don't have to strive. I know enough, I think at a fundamental level, about a certain equality between life and death, and death is not something I fear, but I will not conceal that the dying process or the aging process is disturbing.

You make what I think is a pretty dramatic mistake: you take what I write very personally, as if I am critiquing you and all you have worked for, all you value. I always am speaking more generally, and I always say things like 'the way these doctrines are used'. I think that YOU need to understand a little better what I am writing about, and why.

Your path sounds essentially like a *checking out*, a taking leave of. It could be described as ultimately self-centered. I don't doubt that, from the sound of it, it must be or could be or should be nice to exist in such a state. Life offers different people the opportunities to live-out what are their values. It is not that I can't value what is your experience, because as I say I have felt and do feel, at some basic level, similar things.

In my way of seeing things, our inner knowledge can/should/must lead to greater engagement. You seem fundamentally influenced by a 'nirvana' ideal, which is 'the ending of the road', whereas I am influenced by the Judeo-Christian path or ideal which places more emphasis on action. And I also think that one of the highest ideals and attainments of man is something as simple as kindness.

Talking Ass wrote:

David Quinn wrote:....you spend your time trying to piece a few branches together into some kind of coherent pattern, all the while pretending to yourself that this kind of effort is taking you to the heart of matters.

I do I do I do understand! The descriptions you offer of your most valued experience are almost identical to hundreds and hundreds of yogis and Buddhists who have written on the subject.

The individual relies on his own authority.


...

David Quinn wrote:Feminine unconsciousness differs from masculine unconsciousness in many different ways.

How so? You say it's a big topic, but can you give a few examples of feminine unconsciousness differing from masculine unconsciousness?

And about music: I've observed that there are basically two kinds of music, like the two basic kinds of emotions - happy and sad. Happy music tends to go from lower notes to higher notes, and sad or "serious" music tends to go from higher to lower notes. In fact, I find this to be universally the case. I don't exactly know what the reason for this might be. May it be that higher notes indicate the presence of more energy, life, etc.?

Anyways, what music/rhythm essentially is, is the noticing of a pattern in sounds, which makes us feel that everything is beautiful and in order, since we imagine that sound pattern to be part of reality. This is why people close their eyes when listening to music, or move their own bodies in tune with the music/rhythm.

Talking Ass wrote:My friend Jair (a student of philosophy) always referred to Nietzsche in his own life and in the life of his (youth) culture as 'dinamita', and the term is apt. Jung said that it required a very mature individual to read and process Nietzsche without being blown out of the water, or in the sense of this conversation, 'poisoned'.

This is a common experience and also to me he was like that in my youth, to my good natured Christian mind. But Jung just repeated Nietzsche himself as he voiced that requirement many times. All wisdom requires maturity though, no matter its source. And if any author warned for the abuses and misunderstanding of his work, amazingly self-reflecting and prophetic really, it was Nietzsche. Why even bother quoting Jung?

The way that certain ideas taken up by certain people with certain predispositions, and the way that those ideas act in them like a 'poison for the heart' is what I was talking about. I am merely explaining why it is (as distinct from David's very tendentious *interpretation*) that I am 'leary of poisons for the heart'.

The whole point is to be leery (not leary, like the LSD guy) of the poison. It doesn't need explaining as it should appear to be repulsive and life-threatening, since it's called "poison" for good reason. Explaining how bad it is for the "social body" or ones "emotional life", or Catholicism, or worship of Bach, would be a kind of "duh" moment.

Anyway, this whole thing wasn't about promoting or defending Nietzsche. I'm sure one can find many things wrong and even a modest thinker should be able to. My post was about pointing out contradiction, inconsistency, willful uninformedness in your argument, like your claim that some "Nietzschean lense" convinced people's minds that the Christian theology is just a fiction and should be cast out, while Nietzsche actually pointed out the enormous importance of that fiction as well as the enormity of its decline. And sure, like all powerful ideas it can wreak havoc in the weaker mind of a reader, creating whole cults and subcultures around a body of work. But at least all the smoke can lead some people to the fire, if it's there at all and if one is tuned to the specifics of style and ego involved.

jupiviv wrote:And about music: I've observed that there are basically two kinds of music, like the two basic kinds of emotions - happy and sad. Happy music tends to go from lower notes to higher notes, and sad or "serious" music tends to go from higher to lower notes. In fact, I find this to be universally the case. I don't exactly know what the reason for this might be. May it be that higher notes indicate the presence of more energy, life, etc.?

One could also say major key/chord=happy, minor=sad or fast=happy, slow=sad.

While this observation about two kinds of music - instead noting all types of evocative, expressive music and not just "happy" and "sad" - might be considered a bit broadly stated, I do know what you mean. For example, one would not expect to hear "Pop Goes the Weasel" at a funeral.

Kelly wrote:Music might pull one spiritually higher, by stimulating the ego's desire for the Best Hook, but it can't pull one very high. As soon as one understands the Tao, the psychological hooking inherent in music starts to jar quite uncomfortably. It actually becomes laughable, and one wonders how one was ever enthralled by it.

This is true with anything that has enthralled one, not just music. With practice, though, one can allow oneself to be "hooked" by the laughable things just to enjoy the ride. One only becomes jarred when forced aboard, such as when blasted by Dr. Dre from a passing car full of urban youth.

Kelly writes: "As soon as one understands the Tao, the psychological hooking inherent in music starts to jar quite uncomfortably. It actually becomes laughable, and one wonders how one was ever enthralled by it."

But you know, Kelly, it is really easy to set oneself up in the cat bird seat and make sweeping pronouncements about 'value' and 'elevation', but to be unqualified to do so, or to be 'thinking' and analysing from an 'afflicted' position. I think the core of my critique of the QRS position is that, as I see and understand things, there is a great deal of blustering about all these things of supreme value, declarations about wisdom and ultimate-this and ultimate-that; a bum's rush of the sources from where springs the best of human values and the greatest refinements, but at the end of the day Rowden, Quinn, Solway, Jones, van Rhijn and many of the other TBs seem personally and collectively NOT to have much of a foothold in these things, and they seem to mistake a fetishized 'value' for real value. Take David who describes the best of his attainment, what his heart longs for, but it can quite easily be seen as just a way of getting high and enjoying being high. It is POSSIBLE to suggest that 'real human work' might lie somewhwere else. So, from one perspective (mine) you have a group of people making fabulous claims about themselves, their level of maturity and understanding, and who literally sit in judgment of the whole world, which might be acceptable in itself, but who as a group are equivalent to garbage-pickers and state leeches and psychiatric cases and yet type that the greatest of the great minds of the West are, in essence, merely fools! Who gets to make these pronouncements? Some Australian peasants better suited to kick shit? Or, some aggressive pansies jacked up by their reading of Nietzsche yet living in their parent's basement? Does it ever occur to you to see the absurdity of this? Does it ever occur to you to see how un-wise this is?

cousinbasil wrote:

jupiviv wrote:And about music: I've observed that there are basically two kinds of music, like the two basic kinds of emotions - happy and sad. Happy music tends to go from lower notes to higher notes, and sad or "serious" music tends to go from higher to lower notes. In fact, I find this to be universally the case. I don't exactly know what the reason for this might be. May it be that higher notes indicate the presence of more energy, life, etc.?

One could also say major key/chord=happy, minor=sad or fast=happy, slow=sad.

While this observation about two kinds of music - instead noting all types of evocative, expressive music and not just "happy" and "sad" - might be considered a bit broadly stated, I do know what you mean. For example, one would not expect to hear "Pop Goes the Weasel" at a funeral.

Fast or high scale music tends to be an indicator of the intensity of the emotion, in my experience, and not so much the "happiness" or "sadness". For example, compare the 3rd movement of Bach's 3rd Brandenberg concerto with Beethoven's "Ode to joy" motif.