What is "now"

[Thorns Have Roses]

^He's talking about NOW. Not limiting himself to simply defining it like lots of the last bits of argument in the thread, but taking the key aspect of your above definition and using it to arrive at a position of how we should treat NOW.

Ya'know, taking dry facts and applying them towards practical ends...but if you can't read exactly what he's saying I can't help you. That requires gnosis, not just book reading and formal logic.

 

[panic in paradise]

^its much the same as one person having speech impediment, and talking to an immature individual who would rather try and feel better about their self by mocking the person talking, instead of listening.

'they are better pleased the less they know their ways'

the ego limits "now" by not accepting what it cannot, or would rather not acknowledge as existent. because doing so would disrupt the acquired sense of power that can only come by feeling in control.

~
they are innocent, for they know not what they do.

 

[rangrz]

No, it's not like a person with a speech impediment.

It's like a physical scientist talking to a tripped out mongoloid and getting fed up.

Applying facts to practical ends? My explanation of "now" is the basis behind GPS. That's pretty practical, a lot more so then rambling nonsense.

 

[DeathDomokun]

This thread had reached a reasonable conclusion, why did you guys come in and dumb it out?

 

[P A]

but if you can't read exactly what he's saying I can't help you. That requires gnosis, not just book reading and formal logic.

If reading someone's post requires 'gnosis,' perhaps the poster should rethink what their purpose is on a forum that's populated predominately by people who don't even know what that word means.

How many people have you met in your daily life that possess 'gnosis?' And how does this attitude not constitute its own kind of elitism, by which only the nebulously 'initiated' have the unique privilege of deciphering the arcane jabber on display for everyone (even us low, spiritually neolithic primitives) to see?

 

[DeathDomokun]

Something has to be coherent to be understood. If there is nothing being conveyed, no amount of 'gnosis' will allow you to derive any reasonable understanding of it. Not to mention how pretentious and arrogant one must be to claim something like that, but the notion that PiP's posts are- it's just preposterous.

 

[Thorns Have Roses]

Applying facts to practical ends? My explanation of "now" is the basis behind GPS. That's pretty practical, a lot more so than rambling nonsense.

For how many of the 7 billion people on this planet is understanding how a GPS works practical? A tiny fraction of a percent. For how many more is advice on how to approach life? Quite a few.

For a man who wants to build a house, a hammer is of more use than a microscope.

constitute its own kind of elitism

I don't see it that way...I mean, if you and rangrz wanted to talk about the ins and outs of the Navier-Stokes equations, it would be inaccessible to me without a great deal of time and effort...likewise here.

For a sailor who can't swim, all knowledge of the ocean is only useful insofar as it relates to his ship and its operation. So he has his books, and scanning equipment, and hires out a crew, and operates quite splendidly. The sea is something to be quantified and navigated from within the self-contained world of the ship.

But can he understand the experience of a traditional free diver searching for shellfish or other food? To him the ocean is a thing of direct experience, and knowledge is only useful insofar as he is apply it to experience. For the sea is an omnipresent airless death, a dark forest of sharks and currents, and danger. It must be dealt with through instinct and reflex, and done alone with the crudest of instruments.

Can you say that one approach is inherently more worthwhile than the other?

Something has to be coherent to be understood

A map is incomprehensible to a blind man....or to a man who wearing a blindfold.

it's just preposterous.

I've never liked koans myself, but that doesn't mean zen monks can't use and enjoy them.

 

[panic in paradise]

No, it's not like a person with a speech impediment.

It's like a physical scientist talking to a tripped out mongoloid and getting fed up.

Applying facts to practical ends? My explanation of "now" is the basis behind GPS. That's pretty practical, a lot more so then rambling nonsense.

"My explanation of "now" is the basis behind GPS": this makes perfect sense to me, and says a lot about civilizations history, considering how far we have come from using simple triangulation methods or smoke signals.

it is good that you have your own opinion of "now", or otherwise it could not exist for anyone.

"beauty arises from anything

because everything is beautiful

dont let it be otherwise"

at this moment, there is all sorts of ugly in this thread, but beauty can come from it in the next moment, we dont all need to agree, but how we cant accept each others differences is astounding, and that dictates each of our own "now", and hinders any chance for progress.

Something has to be coherent to be understood. If there is nothing being conveyed, no amount of 'gnosis' will allow you to derive any reasonable understanding of it. Not to mention how pretentious and arrogant one must be to claim something like that, but the notion that PiP's posts are- it's just preposterous.

oh come on, maybe nothing being conveyed to you, and a few other people.

what does this-now-here have to do with me anyway?!?

 

[!!4iV4HF9R34g]

Never, I love you lolol.

 

[rangrz]

@PiP I actually agree with you (somewhat rare occurance) on the post about beauty per se. I just can't for the life of me, connect that statement to being an explanation of what time is/how it works. Hence I replied 'dafuq'.

 

[freehugs]

Now does not exist. We live in the past.

This is the farthest thing from the truth.

 

[panic in paradise]

@rangrz hahaaahaha


i usually always agree with you, on many things, believe it or not, seems almost everything besides the god stuff. and i dont believe you must believe in god to be blessed, because none of us know what to believe, not knowing what it is anyway.

i was curious later actually, the 'dafuq' seemed too open ended...

 

[P A]

I don't see it that way...I mean, if you and rangrz wanted to talk about the ins and outs of the Navier-Stokes equations, it would be inaccessible to me without a great deal of time and effort...likewise here.

Okay, that's a good point, and one well taken. But here's the thing: If ever, in your heart of hearts, you decided that you were, no matter what obstacles may impede you, going to set out to discover exactly what it was that rangrz and I were yammering on about, you certainly could - at least in principle. That is, if I were so inclined, I could outline all the necessary steps that you, NKB, could (in principle) take such that you could eventually comprehend most or all of our discussion. Don't you see the difference? There is no corollary wrt to all this vague soliloquizing. Nobody seems to be capable of clearly articulating to me how, in principle, I could ever undertake to perceive the difference between say, some of the stuff I quoted from PiP above, and simple gibberish.

Also, and conversely, much of the material in which PK, PiP, and (I presume) you are principally interested can be, has been, and eminently is capable of being discussed without cluttering our boards with tangential multi-stanza sonnets, borderline unintelligible non-sequitur one-liners, and obscure quotes in lieu of easily decipherable English sentences.

 

[P A]

For a sailor who can't swim, all knowledge of the ocean is only useful insofar as it relates to his ship and its operation

I was under the impression that most sailors could perform the double duty of swimming and navigating with admirable proficiency. Why sail the seas if you can't even carry your own weight a few meters back to shore?

For how many more is advice on how to approach life? Quite a few.

I emphatically disagree, and, moreover, I think that you overshot and missed rangrz's point. The kinds of critical, abstract, logical thought processes necessary to comprehend such things as the GP System are self-evidently useful in many or most practical problems that an average human life presents. By extension, this seems to indicate that, as a general rule, such processes of thought could be quite helpful when it comes to understanding more abstruse phenomena, even supposedly 'metaphysical' ones. At the very least, the approach rangrz advocates (logical empiricism and the scientific method) is likely to shed an important kind of light on such questions; which kind of light, to my knowledge, cannot be reliably reproduced by any other epistemological framework or philosophical method. Now, I am not suggesting that these methods are the only ones that ought to be deployed in these sorts of discussions - far from it. But they shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, nor juxtaposed in some hackneyed 'either-or' fashion with more 'lyrical' or 'spiritual' approaches to metaphysical philosophy.

As to the question of whether the mental skills necessary to understand the intricacies of GPS technology are more or less valuable than the advice of an imam or a priest...well, that deserves a thread of its own. Just know that I think your little parable cuts both ways, and that the issue you raised re. practicality is hardly a settled one in my book.

A map is incomprehensible to a blind man....or to a man who wearing a blindfold.

But (cf. my post above), if, in principle, the blindfold were to be removed, a well-drawn map would be just as comprehensible to the previously blindfolded man as it would be to anyone with clear vision. As for the blind, well, scientists and engineers have actually made maps especially for them. These tactile simulacra work just about as well as any conventional map would for the optically unchallenged. I know I didn't stick to the essential tack of your extended metaphor, but, as I've indicated, I think it fails on multiple levels.

 

[panic in paradise]

I was under the impression that most sailors could perform the double duty of swimming and navigating with admirable proficiency. Why sail the seas if you can't even carry your own weight a few meters back to shore?

this is almost becoming comical, what Never Knows Best posted, is a metaphor. i fail to believe that you cant understand this, and are rather trying to antagonize posters and muddle this thread. with all the useless back and forth between you myself and others deleted, this is a very insightful, respectable, possibly personally touching thread.

imagine the day spent in deep thought for the first time, rather then using drugs. that is the potential here in this sub-forum, for those who never considered doing anything like getting high on life, and discovering their own intellectual quotient instead of denying it.

 

[alasdairm]

now is all you have. are you making the most of it?

alasdair

 

[P A]

this is almost becoming comical, what Never Knows Best posted, is a metaphor. i fail to believe that you cant understand this

I was extending the metaphor to make a point. That you didn't understand that says far more about you than it does about me.

 

[panic in paradise]

now is all you have. are you making the most of it?

alasdair

this, that is simple leverage.

 

[Thorns Have Roses]

Nobody seems to be capable of clearly articulating to me how, in principle, I could ever undertake to perceive the difference between say, some of the stuff I quoted from PiP above, and simple gibberish.

Spiritual practices, of course.

But you might learn to interpret things too well.

Also, and conversely, much of the material in which PK, PiP, and (I presume) you are principally interested can be, has been, and eminently is capable of being discussed without cluttering our boards with tangential multi-stanza sonnets, borderline unintelligible non-sequitur one-liners, and obscure quotes in lieu of easily decipherable English sentences.

I disagree. A lot of the stuff is tangential by nature since it rejects the premise of original discussion, or the lines of thought of previous posters, and redirects it towards a more spiritual conclusion. It tends to be that the more work and words you put into getting across your point, the more content is lost and becomes muddled. It's also aesthetically undesirable...I would have liked to have simply responded with the one sentence about the hammer.

Like Confucius put it, "If a student is not eager, I won't teach him; if he is not struggling with the truth, I won't reveal it to him. If I lift up one corner and he can't come back with the other three, I won't do it again."

I think that you overshot and missed rangrz's point

No, I get his point, I was just trying to explain to him where we were coming from.

ust know that I think your little parable cuts both ways

Yes! That was part of the point of it.

The importance of perspective, approaching things empirically is one of the greatest tools we have, and I do not mean to reject it. However, I think certain persons are apt to take it too far and use it as a tool to tackle all problems, and lose their humanity in all the 0s and 1s.

Sometimes a thorough explanation of a phenomenon is not what is needed, but a more anthropocentric approach. This is why, to varying degrees, a lot of us will indulge in practices of Traditional Chinese or Ayurvedic medicine, chakra systems in yoga, etc. While the system may not be literally true from a scientific standpoint, they do describe existent phenomena, and their approaches for dealing with them holistically help us live a more healthy and wholesome life a hell of a lot better than the disjointed, reductionist approach of psychiatry, fitness, and philosophy currently popular in the West.

 

[P A]

Spiritual practices of course.

That is not an explanation. It is a four-word sentence that has as many meanings as there are words in the English language, which considerably dilutes its specificity and, thereby, its helpfulness, at least in my book.

It's also aesthetically undesirable...I would have liked to have simply responded with the one sentence about the hammer, that was the meat of my post and the best I could phrase things.

Huh? I wasn't talking about you, man. It's PiP with whom I take particular issue.

Like Confucius put it, "If a student is not eager, I won't teach him; if he is not struggling with the truth, I won't reveal it to him. If I lift up one corner and he can't come back with the other three, I won't do it again."

Again with the quotes.

The importance of perspective, approaching things empirically is one of the greatest tools we have, and I do not mean to reject it. However, I think certain persons are apt to take it too far and use it as a tool to tackle all problems, and lose their humanity in all the 0s and 1s.

I don't necessarily object to this notion, which is something that I've taken great pains to make clear. You 'spiritual' folks do seem to love your vaguely applicable quotes, so here's one for you, friend:

"Do not, above all, confound me with what I am not!"
-Friedrich Nietzsche

Sometimes a thorough explanation of a phenomenon is not what is needed, but a more anthropocentric approach.

Okay, I agree with that much, so long as we confine the universe of discourse to literature, philosophy, etc. But here is where I take issue:

This is why, to varying degrees, a lot of us will indulge in practices of Traditional Chinese or Ayurvedic medicine, chakra systems in yoga, etc. While the system may not be literally true from a scientific standpoint, they do describe existent phenomena, and their approaches for dealing with them holistically help us live a more healthy and wholesome life a hell of a lot better than the disjointed, reductionist approach of psychiatry, fitness, and philosophy currently popular in the West.

You cannot possibly prove this. Such opinions arguably do far more harm than good by turning people away from obtaining proper, evidence-based care. Recall that this is a harm-reduction website at its core.

If someone was overdosing on an opioid, would you prescribe Bacopa and say five prayers, or would you administer intravenous naloxone? Think about the implications of what you're suggesting here.

I reaaaaaally hate analytic philosophy, and whatever else is popular in academia.

Maybe you should be a little more open-minded, mannnn.

"Let yourself be open and life will be easier. A spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water undrinkable. A spoon of salt in a lake is almost unnoticed."
-Buddha

[see how annoying that is?]

I have a friend more formally trained in these things, and when he lent me books I couldn't get through more than a few pages as the authors take paragraphs to convey a sentence worth of information, and are treating their endeavors like a hard science when they're really just engaging in lengthy works of pretentious intellectual masturbation.

Which books? Which authors? Continental philosophy, especially the French variety, is far more widely satirized for its blatant pomposity, sophistry, and deliberate obscurantism than any analytic work I've ever read or come across. I mean, come on - you're taking on Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Richard Rorty, et al.? These guys were renowned for their brilliance and their eloquence alike, especially Russell, who is arguably the most 'important' of the three. Most analytic work these days is focused on formal logic and the analysis of language. The rest is all tied up in cognitive science and whatnot, at least to my knowledge. Who could you possibly have been reading, I wonder...?