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I am Intrigued

Started by Hangero, December 05, 2006, 10:35:03 PM

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AFK

To SC's prior point:
Sure, if we jolted them, and then continued to jolt them it would be counterproductive.

To be fair, there have been plans to go into different directions.  There was even an idea for "Lollercaust" which would incorporate some humor.  

The way things are, some people need to be jolted out of their complacency.  Why else would they leave it?  There not going to leave it for a laugh.  
Cynicism is a blank check for failure.

LMNO

Yeah, we also were planning on a "mystic" edition.

Feel free to contribute to either of those, as well.

LHX

Quote from: SillyCybin on December 06, 2006, 06:23:48 PM
Quote from: Rev. What's-His-Name? on December 06, 2006, 06:18:32 PM
I disagree, with SC.  Mostly because I've had people I know, here in the real world, read it and of all the various comments I heard, none of them had to do with it being too heavy.  Scary maybe, but truthful. 

Fear is a shit way to motivate people. For a start they're prolly gonna adopt that "oh ffs I can see whats happening but there's nothing I can do about it" mindset. So how to break that down? Prolly not by making them even more scared.

people snap when under enough pressure

when the situation is bad enough, any change is a good change

it would better to see people break down than see them contribute to a bad situation
neat hell

P3nT4gR4m

Quote from: LMNO on December 06, 2006, 06:28:35 PM
Yeah, we also were planning on a "mystic" edition.

Feel free to contribute to either of those, as well.

Wrote this one years ago, needs work but I was quite pleased with the upshot.

An Essay on the Attainment of Understanding of the Universal Truth

   Why do you read these words friend? Do you seek the truth? Understanding, enlightenment? Is there a part of you that yearns to know? Ask yourself this question and keep asking until you are sure that the answer is yes. Know this; The answer is always yes. It's the cornerstone of the human condition. It's the nearest thing to a reason we have for being here; this quest for enlightenment, this voyage of discovery. It matters little, whether you see yourself as the most mundane creature of instinct or the scholar, artist or philosopher, child or adult. The question invariably serves as the pilot of your flame, the very essence of your self. And take comfort in this fact, a fact as irrefuttable as any other; one day you will find the grail which you seek. One day you will end your journey arriving at the gates of the truth. It's just a question of time and you have all the time in the world. Even, perhaps, a little more.
   But of the truth itself? Alas therein lies the rub. For just as you are bound by fate to, one day, uncover this mysterious and elusive pearl of wisdom the reverse of this very same coin. Tails..
   The ultimate truth, the cosmic principle is one which cannot be grasped by the feeble mind of man, no matter how learned or intellectually athletic you may consider yourself to be, you are not equipped to understand the universal fact. Have I lost you. Does this proposition seem paradoxical, even a little absurd? Good for this is my first lesson, the lesson of paradox. Seek out paradox as the philatelist seeks out stamps, or as the librarian seeks out books. Hoard them as the miser hoards his gold. To what end?
   A paradox serves as a candle fueled by mind, burning away the detrius of rational thought and logic, make no mistake, it is the mind that forms the obstacle. Thought is the real enemy here. Meditate upon the words of the great Bhuddist master Ma-tsu (709-788AD):
the Monk Liang of Hsi-shan was lecturing on the sutras one day whereupon Ma-tsu asked of him: "What sutra do you lecture on Liang of Hsi-shan?"
"The mind sutra," replied Liang
"And by what means do you lecture?" the master asked
"With mind" replied the monk
"The mind is like an actor," Ma-tsu said, "the meaning like a jester, the six senses like an acquaintance ; how can the mind lecture on a sutra?"
"If mind cannot lecture, can't no-mind?" Liang enquired
"Yes," was the reply, "no mind can lecture all right."
   The concept of no-mind is just one of a myriad of excellent paradox which the philosophy of Zen has given us and I would recommend to any seeker after truth that they read as many Zen "Koans" as they can get their hands on. For only when these candles of paradox are lit in quantity sufficient that their brilliance pales the midday sun itself, will the understanding come within a whiskers breadth of your grasp. Make no mistake the truth is not an intellectual understanding and hence the intellect will only ever serve to impede appreciation.
   Not convinced? Still clinging on to the old axiom that the human mind is capable of anything? Forget it sunshine. Yes, okay, I'm prepared to concede that the mind may be capable of anything but even the mighty human brain falls flat on it's lobes when it tries to get to grips with nothing. Still don't believe me? Okay try this little exercise; Imagine nothing, visualise absolute, total zilch. Take your time, there's no rush, really concentrate now, absolutely nothing whatsoever. Got it? Simple you say, nothing to it (pardon the pun). Okay bright eyes, answer me this; what did it look like? Most people say black. Some say white. So what does that tell you? It tell's me you didn't imagine nothing, Black and white are something!
   So where does that leave us? If nothing really is impossible to comprehend then how can we possibly understand a concept which has it's roots in that same nothingness? It's like I told you already; you can't. But don't despair just yet. It's not all doom and gloom, in fact doom and gloom are two very tangible entities which have no place in this realm of nothingness. Quite the contrary, once you accept that nothing is the key it can be quite fun, in a non-existant sort of way. But the method of uncovering this mysterious key? Well that's going to require the application of a little lateral thinking.
   Okay so we're looking for nothing with equipment that is only capable of finding something. What do we do. This is the sneaky bit so pay close attention. Imagine a detective searching for a murderer who has escaped into the mountains. He is presented with the reverse of our problem. He is looking for something or, in this case, someone, but the only clues he has to go on are the manifestations of two, very significant, absences.
   Absence number one: The vagabond himself. The razor sharp mind of the detective can instantly establish that the murderer is not here. A good start. This should save him years, possibly even decades, of sitting around thinking he's captured the criminal and puzzling over why it's proving so difficult to arrest him.
   Absence number two: a large number of boot-shaped quantities of no-snow, extending in two parallel lines, about a metre apart, for a mile and a half, up to the door of a secluded log cabin half way up the slope. And... Bingo! Now I'm sure you will agree that our hero would be wasting his time following the snow, but if he turns his attention to the trail of manifestations of lack of snow he has his man.
   Could it be that we can use a similar approach, enabling us to track down nothing, by following a trail of lack-of-nothings or, as they are commonly known; Things? You're damn right we can! Try to look at things, not as manifestations of themselves but as uniform absences of nothing. Just as the footprint in the snow is not a thing in itself, rather it is conspicuous as an abscence or a hole in the snow around it. And yet it exists, even to the extent that we have given it a name. Everything can be viewed from these two opposing perspectives. Take a black dot in the centre of a white circle. It could be a representation of something, surrounded by nothing, but equally so it may be a representation of nothing surrounded by something. Each perspective gives gives an equally valid, albeit contradictory, impression.
   So it is with the phenomenon which modern physics describes as antimatter. The scientific establishment is more or less agreed that it exists, but the scientists are having a bit of a tough time proving it. One reason for this difficulty may be because it doesn't actually exist. Rather it is a state which comprises the antithesis of existance. This raises a very serious question; does existance itself actually exist or is it merely the state in which non-existance is able to manifest. On which side of the looking glass do we stand?
   To answer this question let us return to the original conundrum; How do we find the unmanifest from our manifest perspective? We must be prepared to accept that the only reason an object is able to exist is as a result of it's lack of non-existance, it's really just a footprint in nothingness. Just as we cannot have light without darkness or cold without hot, so it is with manifest und unmanifest. It is this juxtaposition of states or degrees of existance that gives rise to the framework of the universe as we know it. Recently physics has been arriving the same conclusion with it's hypothesis of quanta and probability wave. Isn't it funny that the paths of science and esoteric metaphysics seem to be converging? It certainly strikes me as more than a little ironic, considering the vast gulf that has existed in the past.
   To trully understand anything we must be prepared to analyse it from both perspectives, balancing the existential reality of the phenomena with an analysis of the non-existential manifestation. Most of the time this rule is not applied and that is why it is so hard to gain the understanding which we seek. This is all perfectly understandable given that we find ourselves, apparently, existing in the material world, but because this is our plane of existance we are generally unable to see the wood for the trees, as it were. We are looking at the cosmic sphere from inside and this makes it difficult to appreciate it from outside. Think of how the earth looks from space, its a beautiful shiny, sparkly ol' ball of blue and green and brown, but from down here it looks flat to the extent where it was generally believed to be flat, right up until the point where Columbus completely failed in his suicidal attempt to sail off the edge.
   To further complicate the issue I think I'd better point out that hitherto we have been looking at the situation in terms of three dimensional, geometric analysis. It might have escaped your notice but sooner or later we are going to have to take account of time, as well as space, and that's where it really starts to get good, or bad, depending on how you feel about it. To understand time it helps if you've read "Moonchild" by Aleister Crowley. Now I know some of you might not be altogether comfortable with this proposition, given that he really was a wicked old bugger, so I'll save you having to compromise your principles by analysing the relevent passage here.
   In the book one of the characters, in explaining the limitations of human comprehension to another, gives a wonderful example based on the idea of a race of two dimensional creatures. Imagine, if you will, the problems which would be faced by a creature which only existed in two dimesions- X and Y, when presented with a three dimensional object. It helps if you think about this creature's universe in terms of the surface of a pond. Now if you were to present this creature with, say, a cube, introducing the cube through the surface of the water. You should begin to understand how the 2D creature would see it, not as a cube, for that is a three dimensional object, but as a geometric plane which changed size and shape the further it was submerged. If the cube were put in flat, the creature would perceive it as a square, or a diamond shape, but if it were pointed corner-first it would perceive first a point, then a triangle which would grow in size, until it reached the middle then dimish toward a point.
   Now we can conclude from this example that the  impression gained by our 2D friend would be innacurate. So what if space has more than three dimesions, wouldn't we be similary afflicted? It's my own personal theory that the "Dimension" of time is nothing more than our way of compensating for this 4th dimensional deficiency. Now if I am right then that means we are going to be unable to understand real space and time, never mind the unmanifest counterpart. Is'nt that a bummer?
   So how many dimesions are there? Five? Six? Twenty? One Hundred and thirteen? A Million?  Personally I like the idea that time and space consist of an infinite number of dimensions, but I understand that this might not be to everyones taste so, for sake of argument let's split the difference and call it ten. The bottom line is that it isn't really important how many there are as long as you can accept that there are more than four.
   With this in mind, let us turn our attention to the implications raised when time is taken, not as a measure of distance, as it generally seems to present itself, but as a way of compensating for our perceptual inability to see beyond our three dimensional perspective. Like the Z-factor employed in two dimensional representaions of spacial geometry. One paradigm we can, if we chose to, extrapoloate from this premise, is that, based on the infinite universe model, favoured  nowadays, time does not exist and what we are experiencing is a delineated interpretation of something, which we might as well call infinity, because we are unable to see it in it's completeness.
   My washing machine is on it's last, erm.. whatever you call those, funny, little, adjustable things at the bottom of washing machines. Feet I think. The impeller is busted and the pump don't pump. It's Sunday, washday, and I'm sitting there, spending some quality time with my old, cubic companion. I'm draining the sump, via a short, black, rubber drainage pipe, with a long, plastic bung in the end, into a red bucket, which my former flatmate had presented to me, when we met back at the house, from one of our  prospective, weekend binges.
   "It's a bucket of fire!", I was told, "Look it even says so on the side!". I, reluctantly, looked at the side of the bucket, where the legend, "FIRE", was, indeed, emblazoned into the plastic in large, outine-block capitals. It turned out that he and his fellow drunken redprobates had pinched it from a gas station during an orgy of inebriated stupidity. "So your weekend was much the same as mine." I observed.
   So here I am, kneeling on the floor, contemplating the universe and generally managing to feel like something out of a book called "Zen and the art of Hotpoint maintenance". And I'm staring into this bucket, smoking a jpint and thinking about how really pretty the swirly patterns, caused by the flow from the sump-pipe eddying the little islands of tiny bubbles, are. If I move my head out of the light, it twinkles on the cloudy water, and flashes from miniscule, frothy, spirals.
   "Light", I think to myself, "has an additive quality." The closer to full-white it becomes, the more the other colours and shades are blotted out, till, with enough light, whiteness is all that you see. If anyone is into 3D rendering, you will understand how, even with a really black scene, if you fill it up with really bright lighting, it eventually reaches a point where your image file, which you have waited two hours for, is just a blank, white, flooded bitmap.
   I think to myself, ".mm, Even if I were to take just the half hour which I've been watching this little lightshow, and set a camera up to take a shot, with a 30 minute exposure, all I would get would be a white picture, with a "Quality Assurance - you -messed -this -one -up -not -us-", type sticker, from the developer labs.
   Perhappenings, time is nothing more than our "Z-factor", a way of our senses, representing, to us, the boundless light of infinity. It follows, then, that the manifestation of infinity is instantaneous. And this starts to raise issues of existentialism. Since a T=0 value, when applied to the old equation S=D/T : T=D/S produces a result of 0 for any value, including infinity, given to the S&D constants. Hence, mathematics points to a solution of X=infinity : X=0. This would seem to tie in with the negative veils described in the Otz Chiim. And it certainly helps when dealing with that age old conundrum, concerning just exactly where the big bang took place. I think I'm going to start referring to it as the big flash, and it didn't take place, exactly, it took time!!

   "We look backward too much and we look forward too much; thus we miss the only eternity of which we can be absolutely sure - the eternal present, for it is always now." - William Phelps


I'm up to my arse in Brexit Numpties, but I want more.  Target-rich environments are the new sexy.
Not actually a meat product.
Ass-Kicking & Foot-Stomping Ancient Master of SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK
Awful and Bent Behemothic Results of Last Night's Painful Squat.
High Altitude Haggis-Filled Sex Bucket From Beyond Time and Space.
Internet Monkey Person of Filthy and Immoral Pygmy-Porn Wart Contagion
Octomom Auxillary Heat Exchanger Repairman
walking the fine line line between genius and batshit fucking crazy

"computation is a pattern in the spacetime arrangement of particles, and it's not the particles but the pattern that really matters! Matter doesn't matter." -- Max Tegmark

LMNO

Whoa.  Long.


I think I have to read it later.

P3nT4gR4m

Quote from: LHX on December 06, 2006, 06:28:46 PM
Quote from: SillyCybin on December 06, 2006, 06:23:48 PM
Quote from: Rev. What's-His-Name? on December 06, 2006, 06:18:32 PM
I disagree, with SC.  Mostly because I've had people I know, here in the real world, read it and of all the various comments I heard, none of them had to do with it being too heavy.  Scary maybe, but truthful. 

Fear is a shit way to motivate people. For a start they're prolly gonna adopt that "oh ffs I can see whats happening but there's nothing I can do about it" mindset. So how to break that down? Prolly not by making them even more scared.

people snap when under enough pressure

when the situation is bad enough, any change is a good change

it would better to see people break down than see them contribute to a bad situation

Debatable but I'm sure you'd agree it's better to see people get totally positive about action than break down?

I'm up to my arse in Brexit Numpties, but I want more.  Target-rich environments are the new sexy.
Not actually a meat product.
Ass-Kicking & Foot-Stomping Ancient Master of SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK
Awful and Bent Behemothic Results of Last Night's Painful Squat.
High Altitude Haggis-Filled Sex Bucket From Beyond Time and Space.
Internet Monkey Person of Filthy and Immoral Pygmy-Porn Wart Contagion
Octomom Auxillary Heat Exchanger Repairman
walking the fine line line between genius and batshit fucking crazy

"computation is a pattern in the spacetime arrangement of particles, and it's not the particles but the pattern that really matters! Matter doesn't matter." -- Max Tegmark

AFK

Quote from: SillyCybin on December 06, 2006, 06:41:02 PM
Quote from: LHX on December 06, 2006, 06:28:46 PM
Quote from: SillyCybin on December 06, 2006, 06:23:48 PM
Quote from: Rev. What's-His-Name? on December 06, 2006, 06:18:32 PM
I disagree, with SC.  Mostly because I've had people I know, here in the real world, read it and of all the various comments I heard, none of them had to do with it being too heavy.  Scary maybe, but truthful. 

Fear is a shit way to motivate people. For a start they're prolly gonna adopt that "oh ffs I can see whats happening but there's nothing I can do about it" mindset. So how to break that down? Prolly not by making them even more scared.

people snap when under enough pressure

when the situation is bad enough, any change is a good change

it would better to see people break down than see them contribute to a bad situation

Debatable but I'm sure you'd agree it's better to see people get totally positive about action than break down?

If it is an option yes. 
Cynicism is a blank check for failure.

Jenne

I think both approaches work for different sets of people.

Those like myself who had to realize that my, what does LMNO call it?  "white sheep" life was bullshit, had to have a "come to Jesus" moment that already scared them out of their usual frame of mind in order to accept something like this.

Then there are those that have always  lived the effects of that kind of shake-up all their lives, and they need something more enticing like "the comedy of life" and other humorous/ironic aspects of human existence to bring them in and hook them.

LMNO

Wait, I called it what?


I may have, but I can't remember.

Remind me?

Jenne

"White sheep"...that's what you referred to your own life as.  When at EB&G we were discussing penultimate moments IRL.

AFK

Quote from: Jenne on December 06, 2006, 06:52:03 PM
I think both approaches work for different sets of people.

Those like myself who had to realize that my, what does LMNO call it?  "white sheep" life was bullshit, had to have a "come to Jesus" moment that already scared them out of their usual frame of mind in order to accept something like this.

Then there are those that have always  lived the effects of that kind of shake-up all their lives, and they need something more enticing like "the comedy of life" and other humorous/ironic aspects of human existence to bring them in and hook them.

This is true.  The Jolt Approach does run some risks of alienating those who may have some potential of seeing what we are saying.  And there is some benefit in humor for some as well.  

For my part, I enjoyed the humor of the PD when it was given to me by a friend.  However, the parts that were more immediate to me were the more "to the point" parts like "The Golden Secret."  

The ones who don't get the line about "If you think the Principia is a ha ha, read it again" I think are the ones who may need the jolt because they are missing the point entirely.  
Cynicism is a blank check for failure.

LMNO

Ah, yes.  I think I recall.

P3nT4gR4m

Quote from: Rev. What's-His-Name? on December 06, 2006, 07:00:36 PM

This is true.  The Jolt Approach does run some risks of alienating those who may have some potential of seeing what we are saying.  And there is some benefit in humor for some as well. 


Conceed that there are 2 types of people and not just people like me. From my POV if I hadn't read PD and came across the BIP I'd have read it for entertainment value and never logged on. When I found this place I spent a whole day at work reading LMNO PI and pissing myself laughing at HIMEOBS slogans. Thats why I made an account but yeah, you're right some people prolly need a hard slap in the face. Maybe with some serious militant/occult diatribes, interspersed with complete bollix from the likes of me, we'll have a winning formula.

BTW - just wanted to make clear that I'm not dissing the BIP in any way. Whoever wrote that can come round my house and fuck my sister anyday. Was more the negative emphasis I disagree with.

I'm up to my arse in Brexit Numpties, but I want more.  Target-rich environments are the new sexy.
Not actually a meat product.
Ass-Kicking & Foot-Stomping Ancient Master of SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK
Awful and Bent Behemothic Results of Last Night's Painful Squat.
High Altitude Haggis-Filled Sex Bucket From Beyond Time and Space.
Internet Monkey Person of Filthy and Immoral Pygmy-Porn Wart Contagion
Octomom Auxillary Heat Exchanger Repairman
walking the fine line line between genius and batshit fucking crazy

"computation is a pattern in the spacetime arrangement of particles, and it's not the particles but the pattern that really matters! Matter doesn't matter." -- Max Tegmark

LMNO

1. What does your sister look like?

2.  ANAL?

P3nT4gR4m

Quote from: LMNO on December 06, 2006, 07:21:40 PM
1. What does your sister look like?

2.  ANAL?

1. A female version of me, stubble and all.

2. Yeah but she doesn't squeeze tight enuff for my taste.

3. She's a fkin witch with a strapon tho ;)

I'm up to my arse in Brexit Numpties, but I want more.  Target-rich environments are the new sexy.
Not actually a meat product.
Ass-Kicking & Foot-Stomping Ancient Master of SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK
Awful and Bent Behemothic Results of Last Night's Painful Squat.
High Altitude Haggis-Filled Sex Bucket From Beyond Time and Space.
Internet Monkey Person of Filthy and Immoral Pygmy-Porn Wart Contagion
Octomom Auxillary Heat Exchanger Repairman
walking the fine line line between genius and batshit fucking crazy

"computation is a pattern in the spacetime arrangement of particles, and it's not the particles but the pattern that really matters! Matter doesn't matter." -- Max Tegmark