Bold Standard
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Posts posted by Bold Standard
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Because--in some sense--it's still there. It's not as though a moment passed is a moment dead. It's always there, floating around, stamped in existence. Does it not all together seem more tragic if a person, allotted his own personal slice of space-time, spent it in misery, agony, self-inflicted pain, needless pain? Does it not all together seem more exalted if a person's joy with each accomplishment and improvement is never dead but simply--in some sense--in another place, but immortal within that place?
It's not more tragic or more exalted for that individual. Self inflicted misery is a tragedy period. The Eternal Return does nothing to increase the actual misery experienced by that person, though. It might be more significant in some esoteric or pedantic sense (and then, only assuming that it's a viable concept), but not within the context of an actual human experience.
It almost seems to me like the appeal for the Eternal Return is for those who have relegated experience to being prope nihil*. Why does it have to happen over and over again for all of eternity to be significant? Can't it be significant, if it only happens once? It's still real, even if it's a completely unique phenomenon, in all of the farthest reaches of space and time. It's still significant, no matter what.
*[edit: That's Augustine's term for the realm of experience (the material realm); it means "almost nothing." edit2: As opposed to his idea of God (which he developed largely from Plato and Plotinus), who represented the universal, eternal, spiritual realm.]
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Hmm.. Sounds kind of like Sam Rosenthal meets Hillary Duff.. I think "The Errant Humble" is the best one. : )
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Well, Maybe if you used words that can be found in my dictionary (not like "slouchy"), we wouldn't have a problem
Sorry about that. : ) Your English usage has been so good that I forget it's not your primary language. Here's what they say about "slouchy" at www.dictionary.com:
slouch (slouch) Pronunciation Key Audio pronunciation of "slouchy" [P]
slouch (slouch)v. slouched, slouch·ing, slouch·es
v. intr.
1. To sit, stand, or walk with an awkward, drooping, excessively relaxed posture.
2. To droop or hang carelessly, as a hat.
v. tr.
To cause to droop; stoop.
n.
1. An awkward, drooping, excessively relaxed posture or gait.
2. Slang. An awkward, lazy, or inept person: good at chess and no slouch at bridge, either.
[Origin unknown.]
slouch'er n.
slouch'i·ly adv.
slouch'i·ness n.
slouch'y adj.
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Now, I don't know, maybe you think confident people should walk and sit like soldiers in formal ceremonies, but when I take a nice relaxing stroll in the sun, I usually enjoy dragging my legs and fooling around than walk like a board is stuck in my pants.
Well, with soldiers it's probably the case that there is a certain tension in their posture. But, if you've ever known a ballerina.. They are able to have perfect posture and still look relaxed and elegant. I'm always impressed, to be near a ballerina when she's out in public, and to see the way people react to her. Even if they don't know her profession, they're almost invariably intimidated by her, almost as though they are thinking, "Who does she think she is to stand so straight and tall?" As though it implies a kind of haughtiness. And maybe it does-- the haughtiness of self-confidence and pride in what one does and who one is.
But all that's not to say there's anything wrong with slouching sometimes. Just that it doesn't project a stylized ideal of confidence for me. A confident person can be comfortable-- but projecting comfort and projecting confidence are two different things, artistically speaking; and I would think it's possible to project both at the same time, but I'm not sure that's been achieved in that particular drawing. (But what do I know; I'm no art critic, I'm just saying since you asked for opinions)..
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I disagree about contemptuous expression. It is examining and curious.
I can accept that interpretation. I said contemptuous or curious, because I wasn't sure which it is supposed to be (I don't have the best quality monitor, so it might be that I can't see all the finer details that would clarify).
Slouchy is a reference to her posture, not her clothes. To slouch means simply to stand or sit hunched over, rather than straight and tall. In my experience, confident people tend to stand at their full heights, almost like a flower reaching for the sun. It seems the less confidence a person has, the more he slouches-- your girl isn't slouching very much, but she's not standing as straight as a ballerina or a soldier or someone with really good posture, so I think that just takes away from her confidence a little.As for being "slouchy" - I consider these to be just comfortable clothes (especially on hot days). More than that, short clothes show more of the body (naturally) which may be beautiful.Christina RicciSomewhere I read an interview with her, once, in which she praised The Fountainhead as her favorite book. She's an interesting actress; she's got a unique look. I'd rate her.. lower than Garbo, Gish, and Monroe, but higher than most of the ladies that have been presented so far (pretty much all of whom are at least above average in beauty).
[edited to fix grammar. ]
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Her exaggerated, complete confidence, and her directness do make her appear unfeminine.
I think she would appear more confident if you had her face tilted upward. She looks kind of slouchy, and I've found confident people don't usually slouch. With her head cocked downward like that, she looks more contemptuous or possibly curious than she does confident or direct. Her face is kind of blank. Direct people are usually more expressive-- a smile, a laugh, a frown, a grimace-- something to let you know exactly what's going on in their head. That's what makes them direct; they're not afraid to express what they're really thinking. But I can't tell if she's thinking anything or not. She looks more like she's posing.
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Awesome. : ) Thanks for the link!
The Fountainhead (1949) will have a new featurette "The Making of The Fountainhead". -
I would be very surprised if Hawking rejected the notion out of hand, unless he had some direct evidence against it that I am unaware of.
I didn't say he rejected the notion out of hand. I said he was dismissive of it, but that might have been an overstatement. It's been several years since I've read that..
This is definitely an argument in the right spirit. But are you sure it would not bother you to know that, in committing a wrong act, it will be emblazoned in a "time-slice" of you for the rest of eternity? Your point has a certain force behind it, but I cannot help but think, "I had better do the right thing so that, for so long as I experience this life, I feel as happy as possible."Why would it bother me, if I never remembered it? Why would it make any difference to me at all? Maybe the reason you think "I had better do the right thing so that, for so long as I experience this life, I feel as happy as possible," because this life is real, and your actions in this life have consequences in this life; not because everything repeats itself for all of eternity.
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In fact, now that I think of it-- I bet Nietzsche probably had the "you only have one chance to get this right," theory in mind when he came up with this. It seems like it would be like him, to do a variation on this-- what if you don't have one chance.. what if you have infinite chances, but (there seems to be the implication that) this one is free, and you'll be always determined to choose the same way for the rest of eternity. Almost like taking the Christian stance that you're both free and not free. But you still come up with the same conclusion-- your life is important, and your decisions matter.
I don't have any evidence to think that was on Nietzsche's mind, but it just seems like his style, to me. : )
[edit: I haven't read The Gay Science yet, btw. Only Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil and some essays. But he does address this eternal return idea a little in some things I've read.]
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Uh, I think that aleph_0 made it pretty clear that at least he didn't take the Eternal Rerun literally.It is debatable whether the eternal return is a metaphysical reality--and it is debatable whether Nietzsche argues that it is, though it seems likely.
Metaphysical reality = literal.
I'm not an expert on the field or anything, but I read about quantum physics for fun a lot, and I've never seen anyone credible take this theory seriously. From what I remember, even Stephen Hawking in A Brief History of Time is dismissive of it, although he does explain the theory-- and usually he's pretty "open minded" about far-out sounding cosmological hypotheses.
But, as far as I understand, this idea (in metaphysical terms) is an extension of the expanding/contracting universe theory, which seems to me to have some pretty fatal flaws in itself. I think it also assumes the Big Bang, which I'm skeptical of as well.
As far as the moral implications are concerned, I don't see why this would make any difference to a person's decisions. I would think that you could make just as strong an impression with, "You've only got one chance to get this right," as you would with the (imo, totally arbitrary) assertion that they're doomed/blessed to have an infinite repetition of chances that are determined, and in which they probably won't remember ever having experienced these things before. But, if it motivates you-- that's great. I doubt Nietzsche was trying to achieve much more than that.
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lol, I'm game.. Do we have to sing acapella? : )
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A little weird, Mr. Standard, but I think I like it.
: ) I feel similarly.. I'm not quite good enough yet to make the music that I think is ideal, but at least good enough not to make music that sounds like everything (or anything) else.
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I put one of my songs up on Myspace at www.myspace.com/epistemelody. It's called "Otto." Kinda rough-- I did it on my friend's multitrack in a couple of hours. Everything is written and performed by me..
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However, if we define "consciousness" to be some functionality without a physical existence then I would simply say that such a thing (nothing but a consciousness exists) cannot exist.
Consciousness is that (whatever it is) which perceives existence. The brain is a physical object; that's different. Philosophical idealists, for example, Hegel, thought that only consciousness is real and that all physical material is simply an illusion. But they were assuming that a consciousness, with no object besides itself, not even a brain to be conscious of, is possible. That's what I'm saying is a contradiction in terms.
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(Btw, Astroworld is a funny name.)
Yeah, it's cause of NASA being in Houston, too. So we have the Astros baseball team, and we had the Astrodome ball park until it was replaced by Minute Maid Park a few years ago. So, it was a funny but not terribly original name. : )
Well, the libertarian economist Leonard Read once wrote an interesting little article called I, Pencil, about the astonishing amount of effort and values being traded in order to produce a single pencil. [Edit: I went back and read this again after posting this, since I haven't read it in years. There are only a couple of slightly libertarianish touches that are a little annoying but easy to overlook-- I still think it's a good article.]
If you multiply that times the scale of a whole amusement park-- I think you'd be impressed to see what a contribution that amusement park makes to the economy. I mean, think of the engineers that have to design those things.. The massive amounts of lumber and steel and raw materials used to construct them. That's the role the park plays as a consumer (just for starters). But as a producer, recreation shouldn't be underestimated as a value. Many families plan whole vacations around going to some specific theme park. I know I have lots of good memories from going to amusement parks as a kid. Keeping in mind that the goal of life is eudaimonia, not mere "survival," it might be more clear that something like a cake factory or an amusement park could be essential to life-- essential to flourishing and the enjoyment of life.
Another thing that might help you gain perspective on this is to watch a good documentary on Walt Disney. I don't know which ones in particular are good, but they show them sometimes on those Biography or History type channels. He was a really amazing person with really astounding visions. He gave a lot of insights into why something like building Disney Land was important-- and why it would be worth the unfathomable amount of money and effort he and his supporters invested in it.
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And to go with the guitar theme (that's my cat Moby trying to play):
Interesting way to finger a G major..
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I think if you say "Fire bad" in English, you needem grammar drills. Or at least, if you go writing like that.
Hehe, that's a reference to a Phil Hartman bit from Saturday Night Live.. It was either Frankenstein or Caveman Lawyer.. Don't remember, but it was funny.
"FIRE.. BAAD!!!" lol -
eh?
what do you mean by that "which specific dreams..."? Not to be rude or anything, but are you suggesting that sex without a relationship is good (or am I misinterpreting, or was it a joke)?No, I didn't intend that to be a sexual innuendo. (LOL) I hadn't thought of it that way. But what I meant is-- I have different dreams, and different versions of my ideal person. There is a person who would be ideal for me now, who might be completely different from the person I might want to spend the rest of my life with. And there's the person who has all the qualities that I've thought about and come to value, versus the person with all new qualities that fascinate me but that I've never considered actually existing in one person at one time. And the person who has a lot of things that I'd like to learn about, and who I'd like to have an intimate relationship with, but that I don't even know if I'd be compatible with in any kind of serious relationship. And lots of variations between these.
As for "not ready"... it raises an interesting question. Suppose you do get to know this woman, and you discover that "wow, she really is my ideal woman", will you then tell her "I'll call you in a couple of years, when I'm ready for this" and not talk to her until then?Well, if I already know her, that's a little different than a perfect stranger. It's a lot harder to be pessimistic if you actually know the person is ideal.
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Yes, it does. Your objection is a good attempt but ultimately misguided. If we were in the era of naive set theory, you would have crushed the claim, but in the same way that defining two in terms of sets does not include the number two, describing the set-theoretic grammar in terms of subject and predicate is only a result of the fact that I'm communicating to you in English--a language that happens to use the subject-predicate distinction, but need not if it spoke in terms of sets.
Well, I haven't studied set theory, or linguistics. So you two might want to carry on without me. But I don't understand-- if you are saying "Pe where P(x) means x is in Paris and e = the Eifel Tower," aren't the parentheses and equal signs and actual verbs in that sentence merely symbols that stand for the predicate? Is the question whether you need merely the words that a predicate stands for; or whether the concepts that predicates stand for exist in objective reality, or if they're merely an illusory byproduct of our linguistic conventions?
Are you trying to say that there's a philosophically significant difference between saying "Joe is walking down the street," and the mathematical equivalent of "Joe is in the set of people who are walking down the street"?
I think I'm maybe missing the point! Are you trying to say that actions can exist apart from entities acting?
David, so the predicate is everything besides the subject? Object, too? What about adjectives? If I say, "Fire BAD," is "BAD" the predicate?
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"Lost in translation" and "Leaving los vegas" are great examples of naturalism.
Ohh, I agree with this. And "Lost in Translation" is pretty good naturalism. "Leaving las Vegas" was actually written by a journalist, so that's a special advantage in the direction of naturalism. : )
Warning: Fountainhead SPOILERS ahead.
He is not omnicient and doesn't really discover the nature of the forces opposing him until late in the book.I must have missed the part in the book where he becomes omnicient.
But it's funny, I don't think there's ever a part where he really "gets" Toohey. His whole relationship with the villians is just in learning how to avoid them. I think that's such a great device. The villains devote their lives to figuring out what makes the heroes tick so they can play this elaborate chess game, but for Roark they're just an afterthought-- and he wins.Roark never seemed one dimensional for me-- by the end of the first chapter, for some reason I took to him, and felt I could identify with him more than anyone else I'd ever met or read about. Something about his approach and his personality clicked with me. He's "my kind of guy," and I really believe in him, and people like him. His way of dealing with pain, and love, and desire, and obstacles, are extremely complex-- and the integration of philosophical principles with events, dialog, and reactions to Roark on the part of Ayn Rand as an author are mind bogglingly complicated and amazing. He works on many different levels. Not shallow at all-- not evil, but(?) not shallow...
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Take two sets, the set of things in Paris (P) and the set of things that are the Eifel Tower (E)--this is my friend's example and argument, by the way. We can then write that the intersection of these two sets is non-empty, or in simpler English, that there is at least one thing that is both in Paris and is the Eifel Tower. Then we can write that the intersection of P and E B=/B 1, again in simpler English, that there is only one thing that is in Paris and things that are the Eifel Tower. And furthermore, we can write that the intersection of the compliment of things in Paris and things that are the Eifel Tower is null, in English, the Eifel Tower is in Paris and nowhere else. These together make up a definition of the statement Pe where P(x) means x is in Paris and e B=/B the Eifel Tower.
...Bolds mine. [edit: I couldn't get the equal signs to bold..]
What this shows is that we need not use the subject-predicate distinction in communication.Does it?
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In Shakespeare, I'm familiar with "Julius Caesar", "Macbeth" and "Othello". I need to re-read what Ayn Rand said about Shakespeare, because -- in those three plays -- I cannot see what elements are naturalistic. I know that commentators say that the protagonists in each have a so-called "fatal flaw", but --as a casual viewer -- I don't read fatalism and inevitability in those plays. Would I, if I studied them closely? Or is the naturalism in some other aspect? or, in some other plays?
I think one of the aspects of naturalism is that, beyond being determined, the actions of the characters are usually kind of pointless. They're not motivated by the struggle to obtain goals, usually-- they're just motivated by some inexplicable trait that they possess.
Why was Othello so jealous? That's just how he was. Here's one that always gets people (me anyway): Why were all of Shakespeare's villains so ruthlessly, viciously evil? There's never any reasons given. No premises or mistaken beliefs that are explained that led them to act that way. They were just naturalistic descriptions of how evil people behave.
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[edit: Warning, sort of an Atlas Shrugged SPOILER in this, I guess.]
I would actually say that "cardboard" characters describes romantic fiction better than naturalistic. For instance, look at characters like John Galt or Howard Roark. The fact that they are written as to emphasize one element alone makes them "cardboardish" after a fashion as they are so transparent and uncomplicated.I totally disagree with this. Howard Roark is more "real" to me than any other character that I've ever read in fiction. I can see every facial expression he makes. I can feel every emotion he feels. I don't believe that he was transparent or uncomplicated... uncomplicated?? Come on! How much more complicated can you get? By uncomplicated, do you mean merely consistent? If so, I'm not sure why someone would equate the two.. I don't get the connection. John Galt is a good character too, but he's absent for half of the book, so IMO he's not really developed as well as Roark, Toohey, or Dagny.
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Does any of these movies have a strong naturalistic element?
1 Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
2 The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
3 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
4 War of the Worlds
5 King Kong
6 Wedding Crashers
7 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
8 Batman Begins
9 Madagascar
10 Mr. & Mrs. Smith
Ah, well, since I don't like most new movies, I don't see a lot of them. Out of all of the one's listed here, I've only seen King Kong, Wedding Crashers, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Batman Begins.
Out of these four, I would rate Wedding Crashers and Batman Begins as the most romantic. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was what I'd classify as badly re-written Umpa Loompa songs that were much better in the original version.
King Kong is naturalism. The woman is apparently drawn to the beast by an irresistible animal instinct she has. Everything reasonable in the movie suggests that she should go for the HUMAN BEING who loves her. But she can't do it until destiny and greed bring the Kong to his grizzly death. I don't know if I'd call it especially well done, but it was naturalism for sure.
I think Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy, is worth reading (even though it's kind of long). It's a really well written example of naturalism. The message is pretty obnoxious though! Still, I think it's an important insight into the mentality of people who have the belief that Tolstoy had, that social conformity is a critically important goal for a moral person (more than happiness).
My music available on Myspace.
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I don't blame you-- my Aretha Franklin repertoire is pretty intimidating, I'm sure. ; D
(Just kidding, I've never tried to sing any Aretha Franklin songs.. not that I shouldn't..)