h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You sussed me out. I'm working on the Cheney gang. All day long in the hot blazing rising son, I'ma working on dat Cheney gang.

~jwf~

And no I am not a negro.
But I likes a good cigar.
And I bin to N'Orleans.
Not lately mind you, but I bin.

>>if the majority of people on the planet actually experience spirit then why not accept that?


A very large number of people (not a majority, I realize) have experienced alien abduction. The fact that they have had this experience suggests a great deal about the human brain, tells us a great deal about the phenomenon of alien abduction experience, but tells us nothing about whether creatures from other planets are lifting thousands of people out of bed each night, floating them about our cities, and conducting interestingly sexual experiments on them.

Is Truth put to a vote?

>> ...some become biathletes...<<

What's that, some sorta two-fisted, double-talking gay swingers club?


~jwf~

>> Is Truth put to a vote? <<

In this case yes. So long as the majority of people never have this experience or open their minds to it, then those who do believe it is real (nutters), or people (like me) who 'know' why it seems that way and why they (the nutters) act the way they do, will continue to suffer ridicule and scorn for simply refusing to accept a majority opinion as common sense and therefore, ipso facto, True.

Oh I shudder to think... I just had this 'orrible thought that one day the tyranny of democracy might conspire with the dictators of rationality and create a technocracy, with probes of its own that come in the night.


~jwf~

sorry, kea, I was just looking back and I had missed one of your posts (#474)

Yes, you have no idea about my relationship with my dead people. I don't have much idea about the Maori's relationship. So I don't reject their experience.

The dead are with us.



You said: 'I would hazard a guess that you are quite capable of learning other languages and experiencing other ways of understanding reality, but your world view prevents you from doing that or being aware of it (not sure which)'

you would guess that my world view prevents me from experiencing other ways of understanding reality. I said that was sort of like the rainbow comment, i.e., my world view prevents me from experiencing the rainbow as anything but the product of the refractive index of water. You said you never said that. You're right. You didn't say that my world view prevents me from experiencing the rainbow -- you said my world view prevents me from experiencing a whole lot more than just rainbows.

I have spoken about semantics. I am not interested in hairsplitting wordplay. I am interested in meaning. What we have before us is text. Language. The only way we have to transfer meaning is through words. If the words are incapable of expressing the meaning, no meaning is transfered, and we have no way of knowing whether there was ever any meaning present in the first place.



actually, I find rainbows kind of dull, most of the time.


Now, sundogs are fascinating! Especially when you get both the horizontal and the vertical ones!


Estipah-skikikini-kots is far, far better than any old rainbow.

'people (like me) who 'know' why it seems that way and why they (the nutters) act the way they do'


ah, so we *are* on the same team.



sort of.

>> same team <<
Yeah, rainbows are highly over-rated.
Except perhaps in animated candy and cereal commercials.

I kinda liked the western-hemispheric aboriginal rainbow flag though. It was designed high in the Andes, has more than 13 different horizonal colour stripes.

At least I liked it until it got co-opted by the LGBT agenda. They left out a couple of colours. Probably figgered they were only perceptible to totally heterosexual women and high priests anyway.

I hear than pan-sexuals and trans-genders are now demanding to be added to the acronym for the Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgendered (LGBT) agenda. Well I say, taking their example of leaving colours out of the rainbow, leave 'em out of it because The LGBTPSTG is starting to sound like 1930s trade union or a 1980s rock group, thus rendering itself about as relevant and less popular.


~jwf~

>>
But I fear we may disagree on the path and means for finding that shared understanding. What do theists do with atheists who experience spirit (and even God)? What is the road to a shared understanding?
<<

I don't know, given that I'm not an atheist or a theist. I don't have a problem with atheists having spiritual experiences, seems normal to me.

I do apologise for having lumped you, and Ed, variously in with others who argues certain positions. That's why I thought a more personal conversation might be more enlightening. But I see you have declined again to go there. Not that I'm saying you should. I have reservations about talking personally here But the conversation is still fairly abstract if we don't get down to the nitty gritty.

>>
Yes, you have no idea about my relationship with my dead people. I don't have much idea about the Maori's relationship. So I don't reject their experience.

The dead are with us.
<<

See, that seems a conversation full of such potential.


*

>>
You said: 'I would hazard a guess that you are quite capable of learning other languages and experiencing other ways of understanding reality, but your world view prevents you from doing that or being aware of it (not sure which)'

you would guess that my world view prevents me from experiencing other ways of understanding reality. I said that was sort of like the rainbow comment, i.e., my world view prevents me from experiencing the rainbow as anything but the product of the refractive index of water. You said you never said that. You're right. You didn't say that my world view prevents me from experiencing the rainbow -- you said my world view prevents me from experiencing a whole lot more than just rainbows.
<<

Yes, I can see that my post was a bit zealous in its reach. What I was wanting to suggest is that the Thing I have been talking about for several hundred posts is invisible to you (you do keep saying you don't know what I am talking about) because of your belief in the ultimate rationality of the worlds we live in. I wasn't meaning that I know all the realities beyond the rational and that you know none

And I stand corrected, almost. You seem to be almost implying that you maybe have understandings beyond the rational, but you are being very imprecise about it.


<<
I have spoken about semantics. I am not interested in hairsplitting wordplay. I am interested in meaning. What we have before us is text. Language. The only way we have to transfer meaning is through words. If the words are incapable of expressing the meaning, no meaning is transfered, and we have no way of knowing whether there was ever any meaning present in the first place.
<<

Yes, but this conversation is very abstract. I keep asking for concrete clarifications and not getting them.

Also when I give concrete examples (as I was asked to do earlier in the thread) they keep getting ignored. We're talking about the structure of the arguments about dead people, instead of talking about relationship with dead people. Or I suggest that we talk about chi in a real way, i.e. we talk about how it is experienced as much as how it is thought of, but no-one has gone there. Instead Ed just throws out a few negations (superficial ones IMO) that don't take us anywhere useful.

Given we are focussed on materialism so much it's strange that what we are discussing is so insubstantial.

My personal relationship with the dead is what it is. But it is reinforced by my reading of Old English Poetry, Gilgamesh, and Hofstadter finally nails it in the rational way. Is it not interesting that the Epic of Gilgamesh when speaking about the immortality of a Sumerian King and Douglas Hofstadter, the epitome of both the rationalist and the poet, when speaking of his beloved wife suddenly taken from him are speaking the same language?

I have no desire to deny people their experiences. But I must say, based on my own personal experience as well as on a vast fund of experimental studies, that while a personal experience is a real phenomenon, the object of that real experience is not necessarily real.

I disagree with Dawkins about theology not being about anything. It is most definitely about something. But that something which theology is about is not necessarily God.

'You seem to be almost implying that you maybe have understandings beyond the rational, but you are being very imprecise about it.'

okay, here's precise:

there are no understandings beyond the rational. There are experiences that are other than rational, but experience is not 'understanding'. Understanding is communicable. Experience is not necessarily so.


and so, in the end . . .


Yes, I've had my spiritual experiences but, until they are 'reduced' to the rational, until the semantic issues are resolved through reason, until a common *material* ground can be found, those experiences are incommunicable and useless to anyone but me, and therefore, (in my opinion) useless to me as well.

The reason the conversation about this stuff is insubstantial is because one side is asking for an actual communication of information and the other (you in this particular case, kea) are saying (a bit perversely) 'but personal experience communicates information to the individual that can not be communicated by any means other than personal experience'.

Well, that just shuts down conversation.

I'm not particularly interested in talking about my personal 'spiritual' experiences because, frankly, they are effectively empty of meaning in any useful sense.

And, again, whether we be Maori, Swiss, or garden slug, I am convinced, because I've never experienced anything to suggest anything other, that at a fundamental level, this universe is nothing other than matter and energy and a smattering of physical laws.

The rest is window dressing. Wondrous window dressing indeed, which makes it very much worthwhile.

Squiggles:
>>Everybody knows that godless commies like Marx and other atheists who see no value in anything except material objects and cold objective reasoning are insensible to aesthetic considerations. I believe the phrase 'pearls before swine' is apt.



Ah. I see what you've done here. You've gone and done and conflated Materialism with materialism.

Right...wind the tape back. I don't mean materialism as in the pursuit of material goods. I mean Materialism - the concept that there's no other kind of stuff in the universe besides the physical. Poetry, Music, intepretive dance and the like...all wonderful stuff, but material phenomena nonetheless.



Excellent radiothing about Materialism.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime_20080424.shtml

*Highly* recommended.

</aside

Very interesting backlog of posts to read.

In terms of the experiential, I'd say the best language for me to be able to make sense of it, and share a cultural connection with others about it, has been through Art; both making it myself and enjoying that made by others.

On another thread, a while ago, I mentioned the novels of the English writer E.M. Forster. Much of his writing deals with the theme of the conflict between a sense of a deep connection with nature and that of the repressed 'civilised' aspects of imperialist Britain. He can be read on different levels, but that is the way that most interests me. Although he can seem slightly irrelevant now because we are post imperialist and the old class system is declining, I think the themes are relevant to what you are saying kea.

And of course here we have a whole tradition of poets from Shakespeare to the Romantic poets who deal with our relationship to Nature, in an experiential way. The Russian, filmaker, Tarkovsky's, Mirror is much about the deep spiritual attachment to the great forests of Mother Russia. The final scene of the film, which dfeals a lot with memory, maybe relates to what you were saying about Maori, kea. The heroine is 'remembering' her future. The whole film is a poem, and one that many people say is completely unfathonable. But its always made perfect sense to me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHBh-VBEUC8&feature=related

I love that right at the end the shot recedes inexorably back into the endless darkness of the Russian Forest. Yes, death, but with the call of owls as it dies away into silence.

Why do people feel compelled to make Art? And I'm not just talking about the famous big names, but anybody? I'd suggest it's because of the subjective experiential and a wish to share that with others in a common language. And its a language that is able to deal with the contradiction and conflict, that some of us feel.

***

I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine:

(Shakespeare - Midsummer's night dream)

kea:

I seem to have generated more heat than I intended.

All I was meaning in my comments about the white incomers to NZ is that (of course) their behaviour and thoughts were shaped by their material circumstances - as are those of the Maori - present or past. That's fairly obvious.

What I was *not* saying is that cultures should (or even can) be homogenous. I promise I'm no imperialist - cultural or otherwise: you've mistaken me there. But when I say that new cultures (let's keep it plural - that should make it clearer), what I mean is that we can't think of Culture as something aethereal and immaterial: it's a living response to our material circumstances. Thus the important differences between cultures aren't about the way their peoples' brains are wired, but the material aspects and the power reltionships beteen them. Everything else is...interesting window dressing.


?

>window dressing.<

Interesting use of language. Essentially a fairly pejorative phrase.

The way language is used to express things does go to the heart of it.

On Maori children being behind them: Other cultures do that also. The past, after all, is invisible - the future you can see right in front of you. The Chinese, on the other hand, see the future as up and the past as below. (Which is interesting: a matter of writing styles? Our project planning charts run left-right).

*But* -and here's the interesting thing - the experimental evidence from cognitive psychologists shows that different ways of describing physical relationships can easily be learned,fromone culture to another. They've showed this with time, ways of describing directions and colours.

As anhaga put it - it's all semantics.

So do I experience Chi? Well...yes and no. I experience the physical world, which I describe in the physical terms I'm familiar with. I agree, a Chinese Chi-centred person might describe themselves as experiencing Chi. Possibly if I were living in the last century I'd have experienced Phlostigen or aether. If I were a Pentecostalist, Tai Chi might cause me to feel the Holy Spirit descend upon me.

Is it culturally imperialistic to suggest that some of these modes of thinking are a better fit to what's going on in the real world than others?

Actually...I don't experience the experience of doing Tai Chi in terms of physical forces. I experience it as stretchy muscles and concentrating on which way I'm meant to be facing next.

>>Interesting use of language. Essentially a fairly pejorative phrase.

Yes - but playfully so. Putting the grand accomplishments of humans in their place and reducing Shakespeare, the Pyramids, Bach and the like to a Debenhams display.

Honestly how childish do you want to be?

The more likely and true reason for the early Christian church wanting women to cover up was more due to adverting temptation issues than to control women. Women were generally alreayd under a reasonable amount of control in that society anyway.
Yes the chruch reasoning may have changed as the centuries past but then so do a lot of other things.
Now just as a side note do not confure the Church teachings with Christian teachings as (and it may not be obvious to uneducated people) these do and quite often vary quite a bit unfortunately.

Now as for the topic question's the part about Star Trek was not that it was bast on fact, it was a question of how would the producers and writers etc know this is how people will dress and veiw modesty in the future - and the answer to that is they have NO CLUE whatsoever. All they are working on is the best and often the cheapest way to get around costume designs, and often in regards to the human characters is it more based on a central knowledge of what customs are like today and projecting that with a few changes into the future depending on the person involved. - With a different set of people you'd potentially get a different set of looks and ideas about it all.

As for the whole issue of clothing, well the evolution of clothing will have come around due to a number of reasons depending on culture etc. As for the who 'magic apple' comment, well who knows what's true but the whole thing behind that story is more of a symbolism than it was probably an actual apple. The symbolism probably arrived as the easiest way to explain a concept to a group of people who thought that they we're pretty smart, but clearly were deluding themselves and others (sorry dig at the author of the 'magic apple' comment)!

Sorry bit behind the times on this convo. You can ignore the comments if you want.

Don't worry matt, it happens all the time

And don't worry Ed, it wasn't too heated I thought the idea of me being a bit more hardnosed was lovely. Perhaps you don't know about kea beaks though:

F107909?thread=1305231




Back later...

Good good. I suspect we're (largely) agreeing vioelently - we're both On The Side Of The Angels - and I'm presently trying to formulate a thesis-antitheis-synthesis thing. But I do have to knock this immaterialism out of you.

Both Edward and anhaga used the term 'window dressing'.

>Wondrous window dressing indeed, which makes it very much worthwhile.< anhaga

>Everything else is...interesting window dressing.< Edward

Edward claims he's being playful...to be expected given his normal 'out on a jolly' m.o.. anhaga adds the adjective 'wondrous'.

Mmmm.

Boys will be boys