Showing posts with label metaphysics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label metaphysics. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Mysticism: The way brains sniff glue?

Struck me that trance and mystic mental states in general are a kind of high one learns to enjoy from an ordinarily noxious cognitive dissonance--such as between "the everything" and "the one." That can't be healthy. On the other hand, it does seem like what William James had in mind when he called prayer the "sovereign cure for worry" (allegedly, I can't find the reference). Through prayer we can envision circumventing the ineluctable, see how good may come of bad and construe what things mean as what they don't.
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By the way, let me second my occasional phronesisaical colleague helmut's grave recommendation of this article on the political influence of a publicly little known group of extreme-conservative, mystically-minded Christians.

Saturday, December 01, 2007

Forgive me Stevie, Sly, Mr. Brown, Gap Band members....

Don't ask me to explain it, but my thing now is eight minutes, 37 years ago in New York.


Friday, April 28, 2006

Doubt 9-11

That's my current position, and I recommend it for everybody. We're already disbelieving everything that comes from the various mouths of this administration, we've already extrapolated this distrust back to the WMD case they made for the Iraq war, and on and on they go as if they could care less whether even half the country believes a word they're saying. It's time we extend the discredit back to where it really hurts: Doubt 9-11!

After all, what better way to express our confidence in the current leadership? And as the philosopher said: Free your mind, and your ass will follow.

Note: Doubting that the 9-11 deaths and destruction happened as per the official four-plane hijacking story is not necessarily to doubt the threat of terrorism, which we were told much about under Clinton, and which I personally believe would have to be extreme and well substantiated indeed for national leaders to feel justified in either allowing or plotting civilian deaths to generate support for extreme counter-terrorism measures (not to mention feeling sufficiently motivated to risk the repercussions of later discovery). Nor is it necessarily to imagine enormous amounts of subterfuge. In fact, the more subterfuge that needs supposing, the less likely it becomes in my book. For me, a key factor is how many people, and who, would need to be lying. I find doubt possible at the moment, because it seems to me now that very few people had access to direct evidence that was not equivocal with respect to many explanations, and seemingly none of these people were news reporters.

e.g. Question: Does anybody personally know anybody who died on a hijacked 9-11 plane? Has the FAA released the flight manifests, which name everybody who was aboard? I'm assuming the answer is no. Oh, huh, well there's this. If those (or if the names on a more authoritative list) are real people whose loved ones lost contact with them on 9-11 or shortly before and haven't contacted them since, then never mind. But who knows if there are? Are the manifests in here somewhere? Seems not.

Saturday, February 11, 2006

On personal integrity

It seems odd to me that we value, or that we're supposed to value, "personal integrity." Usually it's invoked defensively. John McCain calls Dick Cheney a "man of integrity" to say Cheney is a good guy, and not the ruthless and corrupt guy characterized by accusers. Why should McCain think "integrity" conveys all that? Because like all politicians, Dick Cheney plays a good guy on TV--and if Dick Cheney is a man of integrity, then by analogy to physical integrity, his parts extending off camera are good too. The sober, amicable "Meet the Press" Cheney is the White House Cheney, the Cheney in Iraq, the Cheney at dinner, the Cheney in bed with Mrs. Cheney. "Nothing new outside your field of view" is what integrity is about.

"Integrity" implies trustworthiness, because it implies consistency and as a result predictability. Employers talk up such qualities with assembly lines in mind. But with life and death and war and diplomacy in minds it seems weird. It seems like we wish our leaders, as people of integrity, not to compartmentalize, not to discriminate between intimate and public, casual and formal, not even to have moods. Isn't this a childish wish? Isn't this a little like wanting never to see mommy or daddy angry or sad or aloof? Well I say to hell with integrity! I'm with Whitman on this one.

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

My thoughts on that which animates us and departs upon death

Networks of neurons in your head circulate impulses, and when these stop you're dead. (Ditto for dogs, cats, rats, fish what have you.)