Thought: the BIP is inherently a post-technology idea.
The concept that there is stuff outside our means of perception can only be verified if there is a way to prove there is stuff out outside our perception.
Sure, there has always been gurus who have said it, but you have to trust them first. And you know where that leads*.
So it's only after developing technology that lets us perceive things our physical body can't, that the BIP can be thought about with any sort of "truth".
Granted, a telescope, or a parabolic microphone can give us clues, but that's still things we can see or hear normally, just not close by.
So our current understanding of Discordia, or BIP, or whatever the hell you call it, couldn't possibly have existed 1000 years ago, because some might have talked about sights you can't see, or sounds you can't hear, but there was no way of proving it.
Just a thought.
*Doom, or idiocy. Usually both.
Quote from: LMNO on November 15, 2007, 07:08:43 PM
Thought: the BIP is inherently a post-technology idea.
The concept that there is stuff outside our means of perception can only be verified if there is a way to prove there is stuff out outside our perception.
Sure, if you're talking about the BIP in terms of perception. But the metaphor is also about things like opinions. Escape your current opinions and conclusions and you'll have to replace them with new ones.
QuoteSo it's only after developing technology that lets us perceive things our physical body can't, that the BIP can be thought about with any sort of "truth".
I think we've already discussed the trap of talking about the BIP as a metaphor for physical reality. Because although there are tons of things in my immediate physical reality I am not aware of (like the temperature of my shoes, some crap in my peripheral vision, infra-red light), most of them aren't that important.
QuoteSo our current understanding of Discordia, or BIP, or whatever the hell you call it, couldn't possibly have existed 1000 years ago, because some might have talked about sights you can't see, or sounds you can't hear, but there was no way of proving it.
Mm, I don't think you need any technology to wonder about whether trees make noise when they fall and no one's around to hear it. I think the Black Iron Prison metaphor could still be made, but it would sound different.
LMNO, is it that technology gives us more to wonder about?
If people worried about things like "proof" in the scientific sense sure... but 1000 years ago, most people were sure that lots of stuff existed beyond their comprehension. The actively believed in spirits, magic, angels etc. Beyond that they accepted the concepts of enlightenment, which might simply be a different metaphor for the BiP phenomena... maybe.
Quote from: LMNO on November 15, 2007, 07:08:43 PM
So our current understanding of Discordia, or BIP, or whatever the hell you call it, couldn't possibly have existed 1000 years ago, because some might have talked about sights you can't see, or sounds you can't hear, but there was no way of proving it.
Have you read any translations of the Tao Te Ching? I feel a bit lame quoting it, but:
The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.
The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.
Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.
Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.That seems like a pretty big clue to me. It sounds like "the map is not the territory" from around fifteen centuries ago.
HA! Xooxe, thats AWESOME. I never thought of that passage that way before, excellent interpretation!
:fnord:
Hehe, look at what I just found. It's short essay on Tao and it covers my interpretation and also muses briefly on LMNO's topic of technological insight.
Sample:
QuoteThe ancients judged of the world without mechanical aids. What they would have concluded had they had at their command all the modern mechanism for surveying the universe, passes our imagination! But, as the Taoist saw it, he judged that the invisible was greater than the visible: that spirit, from every point of view, was more excellent than matter. Lao Tan felt that behind all,—not only the visible world, but also behind the invisible world, there is a Supreme Power to which he gave the conventional name of Tao, or, as it may be translated the Cosmic Spirit. But this is only a conventional term: we cannot comprehend it and therefore it is impossible to give it an adequate name. Its quality, its power and its magnitude is so vast and deep that no human language,—language belonging to the material universe alone—can describe it. And, of course, were any term comprehensive enough to connote it, in all its mysterious greatness, it would, at once, lose its chief characteristic of the Infinite. Once a thing is defined, it becomes limited. So the conventional name of Great Tao is only an indicative name,—indicative of immensity and quality and the way. But whilst no name can adequately define it, yet it is possible for the mind to have a good conception of it, through description of its works and by analogues of what it is like.
I also disagree its post technological, unless we are using a very strict interpretation of technology. While technology makes it more obvious, we have to remember the philosophers of the past were mathematicians, physicists, biologists and engineers, as much as they were thinkers. Now, hunter-gatherer society, where technology is basically a better portable hut or spear, now the divide between that an agrarian culture could be made to stand up to scrutiny, I think.
I don't think it was impossible before, maybe just more unlikely.
Technology gives us ready access to many more opinions and the like. We can explore a train of thought with less reservations if more than one person has recommended it.
I suspect, with technology and the rise in communication that goes with it, that enlightened people will become more commonplace.
The BIP metaphor in previous ages would have looked a lot different, maybe it wouldn't have even been what it is now at all. When I think of the BIP in the context of the larger human history, I don't think it is related necessarily to technological advancement but to philosophical history. In my view it isn't a modern/post-modern philosophy because of technology but because of the Enlightenment.
The BIP addresses the concerns of the individual in the face of almost certain assimilation into the Machine. Before the Enlightenment, such assimilation was almost a given anyway, albeit in a different way. The Enlightenment was the first philosophical movement that noticed the Individual as a competent self-sustaining being; it is because of the Enlightenment that we have the capacity now to be disturbed by the dissolution of our individual identities and liberties.
Had no movement like the Enlightenment ever surfaced, it's likely that the BIP would itself either not exist at all or be the Enlightenment. As it is, it is one of what I suspect are numerous modern philosophical schools bemoaning the way Western society is discarding Enlightenment ideals.