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Post by epictetus on Feb 4, 2018 12:04:45 GMT 10
Last Monday I had lunch with an 83 year-old Lao man whom I've known for 49 years. Educated in France for nine years and with a PhD in Biochemistry from the Sorbonne, this man has never in my presence indicated a belief in magic, spells or any of the trappings of animism and shamanism common to his homeland. He has always been an exemplar of rationalism to my knowledge. At lunch, however, in what context I can't remember, he spoke about his life as a young student home on holidays from Paris in the 50s and 60s when he used to stay with his parents in an isolated village, Sanakhan, now a town on the Mekong River. In those days one could only reach the town by boat and then walk in along a track, as there was no access road. Although a remote village, Sanakhan was significant enough to have a government appointed doctor (paramedic, really) who was my friend's father. Of course, the doctor and the village shaman were friends and to some extent complemented each other's healing practice. The doctor's son, to the villagers something like a visiting angel being educated in a manner beyond their comprehension and in that fabulous faraway place, France, on one occasion was asked to accompany the shaman on an exorcism ritual to rid a possessed person of a malevolent spirit known throughout Laos and Northern Thailand as a Phi Pob (see the article below for more on Phi Pob possession). My friend ascended the steps to the patient's house and, immediately on arrival became "hysterical" (his words), filled with extraordinary energy and a high level of anxiety. The Phi Pob had entered him! I don't remember what happened next, but it took some hours for the Phi Pob to leave, by which time my friend was exhausted. There was no warning and, fortunately, no after-effects (he was a very robust young man). I was surprised to hear such a story from this man; in fact he then recounted another experience though much less dramatic. However, I've seen and heard of so many difficult-to-explain incidents in Laos that it's hard to dismiss them every time. For example, I've seen the ritual possession (not by Phi Pob) of elderly people who dance and leap to traditional music with unbelievable vigour. It's quite a sight. And, of course, I've heard stories of people, already laid out in preparation for cremation returning from the dead in the presence of dozens of mourners. One of these I know. So, what's going on? In our scientific worldview, dead people don't come back as spirits; there is no domain of demons, sprites, fairies and protective household spirits, but they still seem to exist in traditional societies. One can be skeptical when one hears the occasional story breathlessly related, but when they keep coming, are told by people of normal or high intelligence and education (like my elderly friend), and one sometimes witnesses strange happenings, the skepticism starts to weaken. In our European culture we hear of, e.g. Fatima, Lourdes and now Medjugorje. The first two obviously were manifested in a traditional Catholic milieu, and I suspect Medjugorje, a small town of 2000+ people, in Bosnia but near the Croatian border, is also a fairly traditional milieu. Spirits, demonic and otherwise, don't seem to like industrial and technological development. One doesn't hear much of them in the cities (though Indian and Chinese spirit-mediums and exorcists still have a presence in Bangkok, for example). I have a tentative belief that there is a dimension of operative beings that can and do act sometimes upon the three dimensional world of our known human and animal existence. They are inhabitants of neither heaven nor hell, and appear to reflect the culture and beliefs of those to whom they make their presence known. They are more than mere projections, however, and have a real presence of their own. They are parasitic though, and once the conditions for their flourishing disappear they disappear, too. Their existence depends on our existence and in a form that they can negotiate. What will happen to them when the world is just one big shopping mall? More on Phi Pob, a Marxian materialist view, I think, at this site: www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2103274/demonic-possession-laos-it-real-or-pretext |
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Post by cster on Feb 6, 2018 5:34:10 GMT 10
Seems a reasonable plan of attack, These villagers elected to govern over the village are chosen because they display the emeritus level headedness needed by the village.
Planning to keep consistent plain equal village life running without a gaol would require expulsion. That was the call for castles was it not? Perhaps repair villages work. They may work better than our gaols do.
No mention of what happens to the expelled villagers home and property. Do family keep it or is it redistributed to the village?
Once repaired does the villager get all his possessions returned to him?
The possession by a spirit would on one hand appear little more than the possession of stupidity or euphoria is in the youth of today. Or mob mentality for that matter. It would seem they can come to their senses after all.
If we can believe in spirit then we might then have to change where Heaven is, Hell also. For it would seem to lie with us not distant as portrayed in the heavens above quotes in the bible.
If all spirits don't leave the planet but remain here, then perhaps what all the villagers are spooked by can be explained.
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Post by tute on Feb 6, 2018 6:10:06 GMT 10
I think one has to stay focussed to believe in anything. As do the natives in Epics narrative. After all, bone pointing and voodoo is another example of Spirit.
We of the west sometimes find it difficult to grasp another cultures faith and reliance's... but then we do not live their culture.
Heaven and Hell are figments of our imaginations in a Western culture. Some will laugh and deny even that, but it cannot be denied as a personal reality ... or in a group situation for that matter...it just requires perspective.
I look around me and see a lot of folk living in hell. That being the hell they created for themselves. Then again there are those that find their Heaven... and can live it.
To each his own. I recently came across a topic on Australian Aboriginal 'Dadirri' (meditation) still active and being practiced by those that can understand themselves.
I cannot find anything too unusual in Epics post and Cster, your last sentence could hold fact.... but it may need further elaboration.
The apple never falling far from the tree is one old adage that is undeniable... and points to ....a continuation.
When I laugh I hear my fathers laugh.... does that mean he is still here? |
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Post by Sediba on Feb 21, 2018 8:39:59 GMT 10
I have a tentative belief that there is a dimension of operative beings that can and do act sometimes upon the three dimensional world of our known human and animal existence. They are inhabitants of neither heaven nor hell, and appear to reflect the culture and beliefs of those to whom they make their presence known. They are more than mere projections, however, and have a real presence of their own. They are parasitic though, and once the conditions for their flourishing disappear they disappear, too. Their existence depends on our existence and in a form that they can negotiate. What will happen to them when the world is just one big shopping mall? Interview with Primo Levi.
(Though his death was classed as suicide by the Coroner, I don't think it was, I think it was accidental) (How the idea of a 'Spirit' was used by Fascists) Born in Turin in 1919 of middle-class parents whose ancestors fled the Spanish Inquisition, Primo Levi was subjected in the thirties first to Italian racial laws that threatened his academic studies, and then to German racial edicts that threatened his life. Because of a sympathetic professor who agreed to be his dissertation advisor, he finished his studies at the University of Turin, where he was granted the Ph.D. in chemistry that eventually saved him. Early in 1943, Levi left Turin with a group of ten friends and fled to the mountains with the intention of joining Giustizia e Liberta, the Italian resistance movement. These plans were aborted when Levi was arrested in the December of that year by the Fascists, to whom he admitted being a Jew. By February of 1944, he was imprisoned in Auschwitz. There, working in a chemical laboratory but expecting death at any moment, he knew he was living what he called “the fundamental experience” of his life. After the war’s end, he returned to Turin where he resumed his profession of chemist. In 1948, the year after his first book, Survival in Auschwitz, was published (if hardly noticed), he was made manager of a laboratory in a paint factory, the position he held until he retired in 1977. In 1975 he published The Periodic Table, in which, among other things, he acknowledged his debt to his scientific profession. Widely recognized by this time as one of Italy’s most important writers, he continued to produce poetry, memoirs, fiction, and essays. Levi committed suicide in 1987—hurling himself over the railing of the marble staircase outside his fourth-floor apartment. It was the same apartment in which he was born in 1919, where he and his wife raised their children, and where this interview took place in July of 1985. When we met, Levi led me into his study, where we sat on a leather couch and drank coffee served by the Levi’s maid. A computer sat on the desk, and Levi mentioned how useful it was to him in composing his fiction. Like Levi himself, the room, whose windows looked out on the Corso Re Umberto, was extremely neat and well ordered. In his person as in his writing, Primo Levi was a master of the understated. Speaking gently but animatedly and with the wry sense of humor that became increasingly evident in his later work, he ranged over topics as diverse as Tzvetan Todorov’s theory of language, Italy’s socioeconomic structure, and the need to have all scientists study ethics in the university as part of their training. Patient, soft-spoken, diffident, Primo Levi was nevertheless capable of intense passion. Relating the fundamental concerns of life to science, particularly its concision and precision, Primo Levi was able to perfect his art. The Periodic Table, a history of his family as well as of his time, is also a history of his own evolution from a scientist to a writer, which he relates metaphorically in the story of the carbon atom. In “Carbon,” the last chapter of the book, Levi presents one of his major themes: the representation of matter as the universal thread that not only connects one life to another, not only to all life itself, but also to the very matter from which life is derived. Thus, that infinitesimal trace of matter, that particle of carbon, takes on symbolic significance of cosmological proportions. The year before he jumped to his death Levi published The Drowned and the Saved, in which he spoke of the pain he suffered from having been a prisoner at Auschwitz, the shame that continued to torment him, the revulsion he still felt not only towards those who participated in the brutality but also towards those who could have but did not speak out against it. He believed, as he mentioned during our meeting, that all people have a responsibility to each other as well as to other living things, not only because of our moral and ethical tradition, but also because, whether ape or apple, we are all made up of the same material. INTERVIEWER Could you say something about your education? PRIMO LEVI I had a classical education. Training in writing was serious. Oddly enough, I wasn’t fond of the Italian literature program. I was fond of chemistry, so I refused the humanistic teaching of literature, but as matters go it entered me through the skin without my knowing. I engaged in a sort of polemic against my teachers because they insisted on proper construction of the phrases and so on. I was very cross with them because to me it was a waste of time when what I was looking for was a comprehension of the universal meanings—of the stars, the moon, microbes, animals, plants, chemistry and so on. All the rest—history, philosophy and so on—was simply a barrier to be crossed so I could get my diploma and enter the university. INTERVIEWER Your books suggest a deep as well as a very broad reading—American, Italian, German literature. LEVI Yes, my father was fond of reading. And so, although he was not very rich, he was generous in giving me books. It was different then. Today, it’s easier to find foreign books everywhere—translated or not. You just go to a bookshop, and everything is there. At that time, it was not easy because the Fascists were very keen about distinguishing: this book, yes, this book, no. They allowed, for instance, translated English or American books if they were critical of English or American society. The books of D. H. Lawrence about life in the coal mines were not only published in Italy but distributed widely because they were so critical of the condition of miners in England. The implication was that Italian miners’ lives were not like this. Lawrence mistook fascism for a romantic adventure, one reason more for translating him. Yes. The Fascist censors were intelligent, in their way. Admitting something and excluding something else. Like Hemingway, for instance. Hemingway had been a quasi-pseudo-communist in Spain. His books in translation came into Italy only after the war. My father let me read Freud, for instance, at twelve. INTERVIEWER Really! LEVI Illegally. Freud was not admitted. But my father managed to have a translation of The Introduction to Psychoanalysis. I didn’t understand it. INTERVIEWER What about other American writers? Mark Twain? Walt Whitman? LEVI Mark Twain was politically neutral. Who else? John Dos Passos—translated. Sholem Asch—translated. Well, Italy was not completely cut off from abroad. Melville was translated by Pavese. Moby-Dick was a discovery; it had no political implications. I read it at twenty. I was not a boy anymore, but I was fascinated by him. Cesare Pavese was one of the great translators though hardly orthodox. He distorted it, fit it into the Italian language. He wasn’t a seaman—Pavese—he hated the sea. So, he had to prepare himself. I knew him. I met him twice before he committed suicide. In 1950, at full literary success, he killed himself in a room in the Hotel Bologna—for mysterious reasons, but then every suicide is mysterious. He had sex difficulties, apparently, without really being impotent. A sort of sexual timidity. Moreover, he was a very complicated man. He was never satisfied with his work as a writer. Political difficulties too—because he was a follower of communism during the war, but hadn’t the courage to go in to the resistance. And so after the war, he had a sort of guilt complex for not having fought the Germans. These are some reasons for his suicide. But I don’t think I have exhausted them. INTERVIEWER In The Periodic Table, you talk of the difference between the spirit and matter, suggesting that only through matter can we understand the universe and its components. LEVI The Fascist philosophy insisted a lot upon spirit. The slogan was: it is the spirit that masters matter. For instance, the Italian Army was badly equipped but if its spirits dominated matter, so we could win a war even without the equipment. The idea was that if you had the spirit, you’d be able to win. It was foolish, but it dominated the mood of the school. In the language taught us in philosophy hours, the word spirit had a very ambiguous meaning. Most of my comrades accepted it. I was cross with this insisting upon spirit. What is spirit? Spirit isn’t soul. I was not a believer; I am not a believer. Spirit is something you can’t touch. At that time it seemed to me an official lie insisting upon something you can’t experience with your eyes, your ears, with your fingers. INTERVIEWER There’s a danger in the spirit . . . that it can control reason. LEVI Mind you, spirit is instinct not reason. In fact, reason was discouraged because it was the tool of criticism. In their language, spirit was something very indefinite. A good citizen has to be tuned . . . You know Orwell? Do you remember the afterword of 1984 about Newspeak? It was copied from totalitarianism. The fact was many things in Fascist Italy didn’t work at all. But teaching did. They were careful about having anti-Fascist teachers discarded, thrown away, or punishing them, and having enthusiastic teachers instead of them. So Fascist ideas painlessly penetrated, one of them this preeminence of spirit and not matter—the very reason I chose to be a chemist, to have something under my fingers that could be verified as true or false. INTERVIEWER The spirit can never be proven except by those who believe. LEVI Yes. The same problems discussed by Plato are still discussed. There is no end to the discussion about what it means to be, to exist, if the soul is immortal or not. To the contrary, with the natural sciences any idea can be proved or disproved. Thus it was a relief for me to shift from indefinite discussions to something concrete, to what can be tested in the laboratory, in the test tube. You see it, you feel it. |
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Post by epictetus on Feb 21, 2018 20:50:11 GMT 10
I have a tentative belief that there is a dimension of operative beings that can and do act sometimes upon the three dimensional world of our known human and animal existence. They are inhabitants of neither heaven nor hell, and appear to reflect the culture and beliefs of those to whom they make their presence known. They are more than mere projections, however, and have a real presence of their own. They are parasitic though, and once the conditions for their flourishing disappear they disappear, too. Their existence depends on our existence and in a form that they can negotiate. What will happen to them when the world is just one big shopping mall?
LEVI The Fascist philosophy insisted a lot upon spirit. The slogan was: it is the spirit that masters matter. For instance, the Italian Army was badly equipped but if its spirits dominated matter, so we could win a war even without the equipment. The idea was that if you had the spirit, you’d be able to win. It was foolish, but it dominated the mood of the school. In the language taught us in philosophy hours, the word spirit had a very ambiguous meaning. Most of my comrades accepted it. I was cross with this insisting upon spirit. What is spirit? Spirit isn’t soul. I was not a believer; I am not a believer. Spirit is something you can’t touch. At that time it seemed to me an official lie insisting upon something you can’t experience with your eyes, your ears, with your fingers. INTERVIEWER There’s a danger in the spirit . . . that it can control reason. LEVI Mind you, spirit is instinct not reason. In fact, reason was discouraged because it was the tool of criticism. In their language, spirit was something very indefinite. A good citizen has to be tuned . . . You know Orwell? Do you remember the afterword of 1984 about Newspeak? It was copied from totalitarianism. The fact was many things in Fascist Italy didn’t work at all. But teaching did. They were careful about having anti-Fascist teachers discarded, thrown away, or punishing them, and having enthusiastic teachers instead of them. So Fascist ideas painlessly penetrated, one of them this preeminence of spirit and not matter—the very reason I chose to be a chemist, to have something under my fingers that could be verified as true or false. INTERVIEWER The spirit can never be proven except by those who believe. Not sure what the relevance is of all this to the hypothesis that parasitic, dependent paranormal entities may exist and perform tricks that are extraordinary, but are culturally bound and have a limited and local impact. |
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Post by cster on Feb 22, 2018 6:11:23 GMT 10
Sed last paragraph before the interviewer asks the first question.
The year before he jumped to his death Levi published The Drowned and the Saved, in which he spoke of the pain he suffered from having been a prisoner at Auschwitz, the shame that continued to torment him, the revulsion he still felt not only towards those who participated in the brutality but also towards those who could have but did not speak out against it. He believed, as he mentioned during our meeting, that all people have a responsibility to each other as well as to other living things, not only because of our moral and ethical tradition, but also because, whether ape or apple, we are all made up of the same material.
This would be the principal where mob mentality takes over, he wishes everyone stand up to them. And in that case become a victim of the mob.
And here where he states.
The Periodic Table, a history of his family as well as of his time, is also a history of his own evolution from a scientist to a writer, which he relates metaphorically in the story of the carbon atom. In “Carbon,” the last chapter of the book, Levi presents one of his major themes: the representation of matter as the universal thread that not only connects one life to another, not only to all life itself, but also to the very matter from which life is derived. Thus, that infinitesimal trace of matter, that particle of carbon, takes on symbolic significance of cosmological proportions.
The infinitesimal trace of matter, controlled by the universes consciousness.
There in lay the possibilities As is said Instinct is spirit. Instinct connects us with spirit.
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Post by Sediba on Feb 22, 2018 9:19:30 GMT 10
Not sure what the relevance is of all this to the hypothesis that parasitic, dependent paranormal entities may exist and perform tricks that are extraordinary, but are culturally bound and have a limited and local impact. It means that if you fill the gaps in your understanding by hypothesis and convince yourself that your understanding is complete, then you are vulnerable to manipulation by others who have a more complete understanding. Don Camillo's little world. |
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Post by Sediba on Feb 22, 2018 9:33:09 GMT 10
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Post by cster on Feb 22, 2018 17:14:52 GMT 10
It does, so I'll go read it
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Post by epictetus on Feb 22, 2018 21:04:49 GMT 10
Not sure what the relevance is of all this to the hypothesis that parasitic, dependent paranormal entities may exist and perform tricks that are extraordinary, but are culturally bound and have a limited and local impact. It means that if you fill the gaps in your understanding by hypothesis and convince yourself that your understanding is complete, then you are vulnerable to manipulation by others who have a more complete understanding. Don Camillo's little world. Fair enough. If you are convinced that your hypotheses are more than hypotheses then like all the other little authoritarians and totalitarians that are running around among us you'll think you've got the answers and others had better adopt them, too. At some point early in the piece you may have been manipulated and then, later, you start manipulating others, or, where possible, just ordering them about. I wonder about real totalitarians like Stalin and Hitler, though. I don't remember Stalin, for example, being manipulated into adopting Marxism and revolutionary behaviour. It was more like sheer cussedness and criminality in his case. He was an intelligent and charismatic figure with an essentially criminal mind. So, the problem is not whether one hypothesises that there are paranormal beings of the kind that appear before young children, for example, or fairies at the bottom of the garden, but whether one believes these hypotheses to the point that authoritarian and, eventually, really harmful behaviour occurs. In Islam, this is called "commanding right and forbidding wrong", or less dogmatically "enjoining right and forbidding wrong". Salafist Jihadis take this to extremes based on excessive belief in the foundational scriptures and traditions of their faith. |
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Post by epictetus on Feb 22, 2018 21:37:18 GMT 10
At the risk of resurrecting the "Spirituality" thread, I was interested in the final comments of Antonio Damasio in this TED Talk on "The quest to understand consciousness". (15.10 to the end) www.ted.com/talks/antonio_damasio_the_quest_to_understand_consciousness#t-901452I wonder what he means when he says "And I strongly disagree with the idea that consciousness should be considered as the great product of the cerebral cortex. Only the wealth of our minds is, not the very fact that we have a self that we can refer to our own existence, and that we have any sense of person". (My italics) He distinguishes between the "wealth of our minds", i.e. their ability to function in such a complex and productive way, and "consciousness", which he'd earlier defined as awareness and self-awareness, the "self" being the product of a joint operation of the body and the brain. However, he'd also located consciousness in the mind which is "in" the brain in concert with the body. Is this circular? It's close to bed time so my "mind" or brain may not be running on all four cylinders, but that "consciousness" equals "mind" which equals "brain + body" to me doesn't really define "consciousness" as a discrete phenomenon. Perhaps the term "super-consciousness" needs to be brought in to play. "Super-consciousness" is the consciousness that the individual's brain draws on to create "self-awareness" and, hence, "mind" (they create each other, like Vishnu and Brahma in the Hindu stories). Staying with Hindu/Vedic concepts, "super-consciousness" is Brahman, and our individual self-aware brain-minds are Atman. The alternative is emergentism, the hypothesis that consciousness of any kind has emerged from material evolution, and that what we might think of "consciousness", especially "higher consciousness", is just an epiphenomenon. To believe more than that is delusion. I acknowledge my intellectual limits: I don't know what's going on, so no longer have skin in the game; therefore I'm not committed and won't be insisting that anyone agree with me. |
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Post by Sediba on Feb 23, 2018 1:35:22 GMT 10
If you are convinced that your hypotheses are more than hypotheses then like all the other little authoritarians and totalitarians that are running around among us you'll think you've got the answers and others had better adopt them, too. I don't have hypothesis. I have facts. Facts derived using the scientific method. They are not my facts, but the facts tested and proven by physicists the world over. A fact, whether congenial or not to your beliefs, is not Authoritarian nor Totalitarian. Nor does it favour any one view, it is simply the truth. It's not a matter of adopting it, it's a necessity if it's a fact. There are no such things as spirits ... That's a fact. The onus is on you to disprove it, not on me to prove it. He who asserts MUST prove. I have a tentative belief that there is a dimension of operative beings that can and do act sometimes upon the three dimensional world of our known human and animal existence. They are inhabitants of neither heaven nor hell, and appear to reflect the culture and beliefs of those to whom they make their presence known. They are more than mere projections, however, and have a real presence of their own. They are parasitic though, and once the conditions for their flourishing disappear they disappear, too. Their existence depends on our existence and in a form that they can negotiate. What will happen to them when the world is just one big shopping mall? Most of your reply is rubbish, I'm very sorry to say Dear Epic. Consciousness cannot be proven and you're already super-consciousness in your reply. |
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Post by tute on Feb 23, 2018 5:42:08 GMT 10
Can one seriously believe the following hypothesis is fact....?
Sediba says....
'I don't have hypothesis. I have facts. Facts derived using the scientific method. They are not my facts, but the facts tested and proven by physicists the world over.
A fact, whether congenial or not to your beliefs, is not Authoritarian nor Totalitarian. Nor does it favour any one view, it is simply the truth. It's not a matter of adopting it, it's a necessity if it's a fact.
There are no such things as spirits ... That's a fact. The onus is on you to disprove it, not on me to prove it.
He who asserts MUST prove'
.............................................................
Well now... and here is where I will readily agree on physicists hypothesis. Planck and his like type crew of fellow physicists will tell you we are not here and that everything that we see and acknowledge is also not here.... and I am spiritual enough to know that we totally fit that bill. I certainly have no argument with that hypothetical fact....?.
But I have been on this forum long enough to confidently ask... 'just exactly what minute part of a Physicist's hypothesis do you belong to Sediba when you can say, I don't believe in....... '
Whether Planck is fully aware of his consciousness or not I would not know. But I would believe that the clinical psychologist 'Jordon Petersen' would be able to paint a picture for him.
And finally.... how can one say they do not believe in Spirit when they do not know what Spirit is.
I will say it again... and its an old old saying 'He who knows does not tell and he who tells does not know'
If you want to know the equally old answer ....You can only ask yourself!...
But between thee an me... personally I do not have to prove anything... because I have no need to prove. Only those with questionable needs are trapped by such demands
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Post by Sediba on Feb 23, 2018 9:33:37 GMT 10
.... how can one say they do not believe in Spirit when they do not know what Spirit is.I will say it again. It's easy to say I don't believe in spirits, because I, and no one else, has ever seen one. If you wish to be the first ever to 'prove' there are spirits and not 'hypothesize' there are spirits, then just produce one here. Show me one. It's that simple. .. and its an old old saying 'He who knows does not tell and he who tells does not know' Think about that. Think about it logically. If no one had told you 2 + 2 = 4, you wouldn't know it would you. There would be no computers, no internet, not even stone tools would there, if people did not share knowledge. It's a platitude and it means diddly-squat. And the reason you prefer platitudes is because you lack the stamina to study math. So you fill the gaps in your knowledge with platitudes and present them as tho they're facts. Because platitudes are nothing more than feel-good compensations for losers. But hey, I'm not gunna tell you that, because I know, and because I know I don't tell. Dear Tute stay calm. 😇 |
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Post by epictetus on Feb 23, 2018 9:43:49 GMT 10
If you are convinced that your hypotheses are more than hypotheses then like all the other little authoritarians and totalitarians that are running around among us you'll think you've got the answers and others had better adopt them, too. I don't have hypothesis. I have facts. Facts derived using the scientific method. They are not my facts, but the facts tested and proven by physicists the world over. A fact, whether congenial or not to your beliefs, is not Authoritarian nor Totalitarian. Nor does it favour any one view, it is simply the truth. It's not a matter of adopting it, it's a necessity if it's a fact. There are no such things as spirits ... That's a fact. The onus is on you to disprove it, not on me to prove it. He who asserts MUST prove. I have a tentative belief that there is a dimension of operative beings that can and do act sometimes upon the three dimensional world of our known human and animal existence. They are inhabitants of neither heaven nor hell, and appear to reflect the culture and beliefs of those to whom they make their presence known. They are more than mere projections, however, and have a real presence of their own. They are parasitic though, and once the conditions for their flourishing disappear they disappear, too. Their existence depends on our existence and in a form that they can negotiate. What will happen to them when the world is just one big shopping mall? Most of your reply is rubbish, I'm very sorry to say Dear Epic. Consciousness cannot be proven and you're already super-consciousness in your reply. LOL. Most of my reply may well be rubbish. Most things people have believed throughout history to be "facts" have also been rubbish, but yes, the scientific method is precious, an asset to be protected, and its conclusions, given the limits of the human mind, have become increasingly convincing. It's honest and a form of integrity to limit one's proposition about the world to that which can be tentatively verified but nonetheless falsifiable, but we're still left with mystery, including the mystery of existence. Don't be too harsh, Greg. Hypothesising about the ultimately unknowable is an outcome of natural curiosity, and if it doesn't impose on others then what harm does it do? Being Mr Gradgrind also has its limits. Wittgenstein believed in the value of thinking and talking about "nonsense". It stretches the mind to reach the limits of knowledge. Playing with ideas is not a form of disrespect for what is known and knowable, but people seem to think it so. |
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Post by tute on Feb 23, 2018 10:34:03 GMT 10
Yep Greg, though I quite like Math, even though it can never be complete.
But don't get too crotchety about the continuing mystery, all the math in creation wont divulge the ultimate truth... or hasn't done so far.
But Mr Admin, on a more serious note and whilst we are on the subject of math, how about getting off the physicist bend and get a bit physical. Triple the size of the shout section to 600 characters. Keep it so as guests can shout (it was a good move) but also make it so guests can edit. (text only)
Plus, who gives a rats ass about an IP address, even if someone wants to swear like a trooper. There could be the odd poster that wants to vent their spleen with out all the paraphernalia of logging on.... after all it doesn't remove the IP address... does it. By logging on all you leave is convincing records. Who gets mileage out of that?
A morning greet or bleat without the hassles! |
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Post by Sediba on Feb 23, 2018 11:00:16 GMT 10
I don't know that I can increase the text limit in the shoutbox. I will look but I think it's fixed by proboards.
Otherwise there would be no need for posts.
I can probably open the forum, or one or two, to guests.
But I would need every regular on here to agree to that first. Members are members for good reasons.
The Admin Monkey is a Servant, not a Ruler. That's how I see it.
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Post by tute on Feb 23, 2018 11:51:05 GMT 10
Nah... the forum would suffice with little adaption but then it would be open to inclusions etc... it would become a jumble for all sorts of JPG type jargon, as well as posts that would equal Ben Hur .
There are three of us from the old school that are regulars on your Summerwine site ... and its a great venue for a quick chat or a take down, but the limitations are ... no edit facility for casuals and the 250 odd character limit can be as frustrating as that inability to edit as a guest.
To function easily... is the key...
But if an increase cannot be done character wise in the existing shout box then it would defeat the purpose.... IMO
Yeah.... a king without a crown aye! You are a top man Sed... I would not have put my name up for it.
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Post by Sediba on Feb 23, 2018 12:27:22 GMT 10
There is a forum for Admins on Proboards. And there are Super-Admins there, I will ask to have the text limit increased.
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at least something to watch for the day of drizzle. 