All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values. -Friedrich Nietzsche[/quote0
How does one create value, and how then should it be ordered, according to the discoveries that science has made in the last 200 years?
Materialism has proven to fall short of true value; it is not enough merely to exist, and to consume. Humanity seeks meaning, and the material offers nothing in terms of meaning that is not transitory.
Absolute value in math assigns no positive or negative value to a number. It is the number itself, which is an abstract, a metaphor, it is not the thing itself.
Two oranges are understood as two intuitively; it is only when we attempt to communicate that value to another that the concept becomes a representation of truth.
Because, say we wanted to communicate a gift of half the sum of total oranges to someone? We must find something that both parties understand as the value of the whole, and the value of the gift.
So, what is the value of knowledge, or conversely, of faith, if it has nothing meaningful that we can communicate to another? Here we begin to assign common ground, and come to an agreement as to the value of two oranges, or more precisely the value of half these oranges as a gift?
And is the giving itself more valuable than the gift?
Now we begin to determine a hierarchy of values; tangible value vs. intangible value.
Pedrosa: What's up? Why do you want to know about our case? Fanning: Any unusual activity tonight? Pedrosa: Like what? Fanning: That relates to a series of murders in Wilshire Central or West Hollywood? Pedrosa: All quiet on the western front. Various people are asleep. Various people are awake. They come and go in cars, pickups, taxis. Other than that, we watch the air move.
If it costs the airlines money and business you will soon see these machines go the way of Mr. Garrison's "It" in South Park. The government doesn't like the Airlines going bankrupt. Then they have to bail them out.
People often confuse their wants with needs, and it gets them into trouble. Its really not their fault. In this age of entitlement and manufactured consent, people are trained by the world around them to be this way. And this world has, in effect, failed them. Not everybody NEEDS to own their own home, for instance.
But all is not lost. Everything is a choice. There are always more options in any circumstance nameable than appear to be available. That's the truth of an untrue world (a macroscopic world that only chooses to be real at the quantum level. It's the cat's fault, not mine.)
The narrowing of perceived options that a person, or a country, or a world has in dealing with its circumstances is how people gain power over other people. No matter how you sugar-coat it, letting another dictate your options to you is a choice.
The important message I have today is, it doesn't matter what you believe, because belief is finite, its what you can imagine. Imagination is the key to expanding options in whatever circumstance you find yourself in.
I'll leave you with these words by the Ever-Wise Moody Blues:
In the Beginning...
First Man: I think... I think I am. Therefore I am! I think...
Establishment: Of course you are, my bright little star... I've miles and miles of files Pretty files of your forefather's fruit And now to suit our great computer You're magnetic ink!
First Man: I'm more than that I know I am... At least, I think I must be
Inner Man: There you go, man Keep as cool as you can Face piles of trials with smiles It riles them to believe That you perceive The web they weave... And keep on thinking free
Lovely To See You Justin Hayward
Wonderful day for passing my way Knock on my door, even the score With your eyes
Lovely to see you again, my friend Walk along with me to the next bend
Dark cloud of fear is blowing away Now that you're here, you're going to stay 'Cause it's...
Lovely to see you again my friend Walk along with me to the next bend
Tell us what you've seen In faraway forgotten lands Where empires have turned back to sand
Wonderful day for passing my way Knock and my door and even the score With your eyes
Lovely to see you again my friend Walk along with me to the next bend
So I should assume the burden of doing the research for you, instead of merely posting my opinions? How dare you lecture me about my post? Post whatever links you want, and I will post what I wish as well.
You just proved my point about hubris. Stepping on another in order to prove to yourself your better? I stand corrected. Its not turtles all the way down. It's a**hole.
Political correctness is just a new form of censorship in my opinion. First it will be the N word, and then it will be anyone who criticizes the government. Changing the first amendment is a dangerous, slippery slope. Either it applies to everything and everyone, or its not worth the paper its printed on. Which it isn't. The American Government isn't big on honoring treaties. Just ask any Indian. And yes I called them Indians. I was an Indian, one of the last, before they made us change the mascot for my high school. Dammit.
The strange thing about fractals is their relationship to holograms; non-local distributed information across a medium, such as a photographic plate. The holographic paradigm therefore dictates a larger framework to things that our perceptions only perceive as echoes of what is actually real. As we, ourselves, are merely echoes of something both larger and smaller, in an unbroken mobius chain of non-local self-referential illusion pretending we inhabit an environment that is anything but a larger extension of that hubris.
So could my 30 year old cousin. It's any man's (or woman's) game after King Chicago has his day in the sun. 2012 is going to be a free-for-all. Hell, my party might even get in a shot.
Now I remember where I've seen her before, only her name was Wilma.
I may not be able to do her or Obama's job, but one thing I can do is count past 6000. No YEC will ever get my vote. Anyone who refutes the math involved in Radiometric dating is living in a dreamworld, one they can leave me, and my vote, out of.
“Hey, Val! Stranger in the corn!” “Um. Hi.” He said, his pounding heart thickening his voice. “I'm Johnny.” “You're toast if you so much as twitch, mister.” The mangy-looking boy said, bring his spear a little closer. Johnny tried his best not to twitch. A girl about 17 came out of the mill at a run toward them, her long wheat colored hair flying free in the wind. She was dusted with a light coating of flour. Seemed the mill was a working mill, and Johnny had caught her out. She came closer, and Johnny started to get nervous. She wore an expression of suspicion and fear, and that meant things could go real bad real quick if Johnny couldn't talk that spear away from his belly. The feral child holding it looked like he wanted to just skewer him and be done with it. He edged to within about sixteen centimeters of Johnny's skin, and he tensed up, shoving his hands even higher. “What do you want?” The question came as she got about twelve paces from him. All of a sudden he realized she had some sort of agricultural tool in her hand, a wicked half-curve of a blade, what was it called? A sickle. “I'm just passing through...I mean you no harm.” He glanced at the scruffy little boy near poking him through the liver. “Could you, um, calm your little friend here down? I'll walk back the way I came and take my chances with the gnarls. They seem the safer bet.” “Back off a bit, Willy, before he pees his trousers.” The girl snorted out a sort-of-laugh. “You ain't hardly more than a boy yourself, Johnny. Afraid of a few gnarls on your trail, are you?” “We don't need any more strays, Val.” Willy backed off, but was far from mollified. “Got barely enough to feed us as it is.” Val's flour-whitened face grimaced, making her look like a wan ghost. She didn't need William reminding her of their plight, not in front of the stranger. “Willy, let me take care of this.” She said, exasperated, and he relented. “Go gather everyone at the main house.” He was far too aggressive lately, she thought as he retreated, still scowling at Johnny. He wanted to hunt, bring some meat in, he said. She thought it was too dangerous. Jackos were one thing, but there were far worse things out in the wide world. Better thorns and thistles than prey to man or beast. “I thought you might like to trade, Miss Val, was it?” Johnny brought her focus back to the present. “I have some fine rare spices from one of the bunkers, still vacuum sealed.” And he indicated the pack on his back. “Yeah? You're from one of the bunkers eh?” Val sneered. “ What did you do to get kicked out, Johnny? Besides steal, that is.” “That's funny.” Johnny said, chuckling, “You judging me based on being from a bunker.” “What's so funny about that?” Val said, confused. “The world has gone to hell, and you think its any better underground?” “I don't know.” She said. “Is it?”
Food: Potatoes Book: My Pocket Nietzsche Video: The Notebook Music: Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, London Philharmonic 1982.
I would choose the one I'm already with. Being on a desert island wouldn't be much worse than our current state of being adrift together in a sea of morons.
Everybody wants closure, symmetry, and neat little bushes and a lawn all nicely trimmed. Sadly, life is not a nicely controlled little yard, its a jungle, and things just end for no reason sometimes, like the jagged ends of a broken pencil. And these ends can keep hurting us, long after the break, if we keep pushing ourselves up against it trying to assimilate it.
Humans always want reasons. Sometimes there aren't any.
Rev.6:15: And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains...
The sun was harsh, and it was mean, and Johnny didn't like the sun. Truth be told, he didn't like much of anything about the surface, other than the fact that he could do what he wanted. Never enough water to start out with, and what little to be had was for drinking. That meant for some right ripe company, if you cared to be around other people. He didn't. If he liked being that close to people he'd still be underground with his parents, well-fed, washed, and comfortable. The third generation of the elite since the “change” had forced them, literally, underground and well, they were all. frankly, boring as hell. He hated his family. First chance he got, he ran away from the underground. That was why he was trudging through the wastes, on his way to nowhere specific. He was starving, thirsty, and worst of all, hunted, by humans and, now, by wild animals. The gnarls had found his trail and he would be nothing but food if they caught up with him. He could hear them howling in the distance. Just like coyotes in the films he used to watch with his family, only meaner, bigger. Deadly. He checked his canteen, and groaned. The damn thing was nearly empty. looking around at the cracked landscape. There, in the distance, he could see a line of trees that were half-way healthy, and an old windmill that churned slowly in the stiff breeze. He could see a small plume of smoke, so someone had to be there. He set off that way, shouldering his meager pack of supplies. Maybe they had some weapons to trade. He needed another sharp knife besides his machete. He had some spices stolen from the commissary to trade still, plenty of oregano. That seemed popular... “Hold it right there, mister.” Piped a young voice as he came through a sad-looking cornfield, and he turned to see young boy with a spear pointed straight at his liver through the stunted stalks of maize, a short lunge from making him an ex-Johnny. Johnny slowly raised both hands above his head.
Val sat in the deep dark, unmoving. The wind soughed through the stunted grain around her, but only her eyes tracked the course of the breeze through the miserable field. She waited, barely breathing. The slingshot in her hands, the pile of smooth, round stones beside her, waited as well. True darkness was upon the Earth now, the wild energy of daylight stored in the air had finally stopped crackling through the upper reaches of the sky, and all was black and silent. Aurora, old Jake had called it. With or without a moon, night was only truly dark after Aurora had spent her magic. She could smell the flinty odor on the breeze from the east. It was a smell of the day coming. Dry and hot, as usual; the sun burning the land, no rain for weeks, and what little of that was acrid and almost as deadly as the sun the sun in its sudden, torrential violence. "Feast or famine," old Jake would say, "too much or not enough. 'Tis always the way of things." Old Jake was gone now. Back to the dust. She was alone with the orphans now. Protecting, and trying to nurture, this cursed land. For What? To have as the fruits of her labor only the thorns and thistles of a world thrashing in its death-throes? That's what. She recoiled at herself inside. It wasn't like her to feel bitter like this. Lonely. That's what she was. Alone now, caring for a group of starving children. Just like old Jake had done before her. Starting with her. For what, she asked? But it was rhetorical. She knew the answer. For Jake; for what he'd done. For what he'd taught her. What other reason did she need? Truth be told, it was the waiting that was getting to her. The Jackos weren't scared of the scarecrows Jake had made and taught her to make. They were too smart to be fooled, even by the clever "Animaltronics" Jake had salvaged. So, here she was, a hunter, whether she wanted to be or not. She couldn't afford to lose any more of their meager crops to the Jackos' late-night raids. A pair of long, grey ears suddenly crested the ocean of grain about twenty yards out, and Val stopped even breathing, her fist tightening on the rock in the cup of her slingshot. The motion sensors flagged the intruder, and the metal scarecrows scattered throughout the field all sprang into mechanical motion, the "robots", as Jake had called them, stirring to a feeble semblance of life. Good enough to scare crows most of the time, but the Jackos were another story. The activity of the old robots gave her enough cover to slink into a crouch. She pulled the slingshot taut, her eye behind the stone and on her target, and waited for it to move closer. The Jacko poked its head out of the grass, long ears alert and stubby nose sniffing, its nearly blind pink eyes staring at Val without seeing her. Bzzt. The stone hit the Jacko right between the eyes, and it leaped at least two meters straight up like its feet were springs, but it flopped down in a boneless puddle afterward, dead. The field was suddenly a flurry of motion and sound, and then, silence. Val waited, still quiet, but no further targets appeared. She walked over to the dead rodent and looked down at the carcass. Tomorrow's stew would have some meat.
We only think there's a need for a reason or prime cause in our relationship to reality because of Newtonian physics, and his bloody foolish determinism.
Quantum physics sorta throws the baby out with the bathwater because it changes all the rules. There's no need of a chicken nor an egg, and that's just too bad, anyway, because Schrodinger's cat ate them both.
“I prefer rationalism to atheism. The question of God and other objects-of-faith are outside reason and play no part in rationalism, thus you don't have to waste your time in either attacking or defending.” - Isaac Asimov
"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." Stephen Henry Roberts (1901-71)Just wondering if aetheism is just a way of not committing to anything...or is it a genuine sect of people?
There are Thousands of words, And they all Crowd my head, And what sits In my mind Is just there To be said, Somewhere In the forest Of consenents And vowels A dark wolf Of bias, Sits and he howls. Walls, high Stone walls Of words Left unspoken Or their Meaning given A cheap, Facile token Of their Appreciation,
Misunderstanding is The poets vocation Where words Come to die, or At least Take a vacation. True words There never were There is no lie, There is no true, To understand, And not to do. These words, Not so, unreal, They do but, Meaningless, time steal.
1. When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her.-David Bissonette
2. After marriage, husband and wife become two sides of a coin; they just can't face each other, but still they stay together.
Sacha Guitry
3. By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.-Socrates
4. Woman inspires us to great things, and prevents us from achieving them.-Anonymous
5. The great question... which I have not been able to answer... is, "What does a woman want?"-Dumas
6. I had some words with my wife, and she had some paragraphs with me.-Sigmund Freud
7. 'Some people ask the secret of our long marriage. We take time to go to a restaurant two times a week. A little candlelight, dinner, soft music and dancing. She goes Tuesdays, I go Fridays.'-Anonymous
8. 'There's a way of transferring funds that is even faster than electronic banking. It's called marriage.'-Sam Kinneson
9. 'I've had bad luck with both my wives. The first one left me, and the second one...didn't.'
James Holt McGavra
10. Two secrets to keep your marriage brimming 1. Whenever you're wrong, admit it, 2. Whenever you're right, shut up.
Patrick Murra
11. The most effective way to remember your wife's birthday is to forget it once.... -Nash
12. You know what I did before I married? Anything I wanted to. -Anonymous
13. My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met.-Henny Youngman
14. A good wife always forgives her husband when she's wrong.-Rodney Dangerfield
15. A man inserted an 'ad' in the classifieds: 'Wife wanted'. Next day he received a hundred letters. They all said the same thing: 'You can have mine.'-Anonymous
16. First Guy (proudly): 'My wife's an angel!' Second Guy: 'You're lucky, mine's still alive.'-Anonymous
Disclaimer: The contents of this message do not reflect the opinions of the poster. All content is the responsibility of the person quoted; don't shoot the messenger, and don't bother shooting the quoted. Their wives' have beaten you to it.
Galactic_bodhi Forum Posts (9,196)
A Pragmatic Faith
All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values.-Friedrich Nietzsche[/quote0
How does one create value, and how then should it be ordered, according to the discoveries that science has made in the last 200 years?
Materialism has proven to fall short of true value; it is not enough merely to exist, and to consume. Humanity seeks meaning, and the material offers nothing in terms of meaning that is not transitory.
Absolute value in math assigns no positive or negative value to a number. It is the number itself, which is an abstract, a metaphor, it is not the thing itself.
Two oranges are understood as two intuitively; it is only when we attempt to communicate that value to another that the concept becomes a representation of truth.
Because, say we wanted to communicate a gift of half the sum of total oranges to someone? We must find something that both parties understand as the value of the whole, and the value of the gift.
So, what is the value of knowledge, or conversely, of faith, if it has nothing meaningful that we can communicate to another? Here we begin to assign common ground, and come to an agreement as to the value of two oranges, or more precisely the value of half these oranges as a gift?
And is the giving itself more valuable than the gift?
Now we begin to determine a hierarchy of values; tangible value vs. intangible value.