Look, Spook understood what I had written well enough to understand the important point of my posts, without having to nitpick some of the more mysterious sentences I rapidly wrote in a stream of consciousness. I would be happy to expand some of my ideas by which some of my vaguer statements can be made clear, but so long as you continue to interpret them in the context of unrelated ideas that you picked up by reading the works of philosophers and ignoring the larger picture of the conversation, but still getting bothered by their ambiguity to the point of suggesting that I should read a bunch of stuffy academic philosophy so that I can make more sense to you, well you can just go pound sand, because I reserve my time and effort in unpacking my own poetic abbreviations for people who are more skilled at not tripping over their own pretentious dick when conversing with others, just because they can't help but bring their own ideas about philosophy into every conversation, to the point where they inhibit their own comprehension.

I would assume it's important to every thinking man or woman who hasn't rationalized himself into a box that let's him feel smug about judging the world from afar instead of putting his or her brain cells to work in devising plans and honing talents that have a small shot at making a big difference.

Remember the last hour of Star Wars: A New Hope? You have a good brain, Reid, so aren't you morally obligated to use it? Unfavorable odds are no excuse.

It was late, I was behind on sleep, I wrote some crap I should have deleted but instead clicked post. You're right to be upset. I'm not going to add more to the conversation.

I can see how each of our different personas is leading to a conflict.

Reid plays the philosopher, Spook and I are the artists, and Jon`C, obi_kwiet, and zloc_vergo are the scientists. Eversor seems to be all three, or at least the first two.

A lot of what I write is unclear, on purpose. What's important to me is that I can reliably expand it into something clear when I have to, because I intuitively know what I mean, and a sympathetic reader can well enough get my main points.

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Richard Feynman (emph. added):

A scientist is content to understand a system. I am not a scientist. I am an engineer.

Heh. I did mean it as a compliment, but that's a really good point. Especially since I mentioned artist as a separate category....

No ****:





You're just repeating your argument without responding to anything I said. No: it's central to what I just argued that Oedipus' resistance isn't admirable. It's an act of impiety. You haven't pushed the argument further or actually addressed any of what I said.



You haven't taken any of my points. No: what I said directly contradicted your key contentions. That is: Oedipus' resistance is not admirable. It's impious.

Impiety is not the be all end all of a character's virtue.

They're on to you, Reid.

I suppose so. Eversor in particular doesn't like me at all.

That's not true; it's not personal. I'm typically happy to come back and try to engage with you again. But Jones nailed it above. You have a way of missing the gist of arguments and responding to peripheral points, acting as if you're presenting a counter-argument, when really you're just lighting another fire for your interlocutor to put out. To use another cliché, arguing with you can be as repetitive and tedious as a game of whack-a-mole.

And I mean... that argument about impiety was so casually and thoughtlessly tossed off it might as well have been an eye roll.

You also have a habit of quoting someone's response to one of your arguments, and replying to the quotation by repeating the argument of yours they're responding to without clarifying or adding anything. That's like the online forum equivalent of trying to win a debate by saying your point louder than the other person.

no worries





And suppressing this and barreling head first with business as usual is the source of many of our social hangups, I would say. When I said I am unmedicated earlier, I did refer to chemicals but more specifically to the hopium that drives so much insecurity in our society. It frees me significantly.





To quote George Mallory, because it's there.

It's quite possibly the greatest challenge I can find to fill that need to be active on a frontier. Or that's what some would say about me, I don't really think about it that way.

But more importantly, because it is coming for all of us. Maybe it's because I got to see the ass end of the way that everything is working in Iraq, Israel etc. and can easily apply the state of affairs there onto my current surroundings. Maybe it's because I grew up in a millenarian cult and I just couldn't let go of the apocalypse stuff. But it's probably for the same reason Werner Herzog watches Wrestlemania. The poet must not avert his eyes. I don't think anyone should, especially since if there were a chance left to become a resilient species we need a group mobilization that would dwarf WWII. But everyone copes with their own death (and in the macrocosm, the death of everything) in a different way, and sometimes that includes denial so I try not to evangelize too much, and other than on the internet, I only bring this stuff up when asked.

Though while I spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff, I spend a lot of time just doing stuff, ala Jonesies Feynman quote above.

The nitpicking I did do was mostly to determine if we are on the same page about nature/reality having a purpose (it seems we generally are) because that would change the whole argument specifically. Most of the other things you posted were textural to me and could be interpreted 9 different ways and not really refigure the whole discussion.

I wasn't referring to you Spook when I brought up nitpicking!

Oh I know but I did haggle over that one word but just because it was important to get your bearing.

Oh how I loathe myself for being alive for so long but utterly failing the entire time to ever invent this important word.

I'm not always trying to debate you, Eversor. I'm probably bad at making myself understood, because when I said:



I actually wasn't trying to say you're wrong, or to argue with you, I was just trying to add some commentary. I should have specified that it was just an aside.



Well, you complained about me ignoring the gist of arguments and responding to peripheral points, but your entire tirade about Sophocles was exactly that. You ignored my point and just attacked a side detail. And to be clear, I don't think my point was really understood. Yes, what I said exactly was not true. Let me be clear about what I mean regarding Oedipus. Oedipus is not a flawless character. But he has many admirable qualities, he was king from a lower class, the play describes him as being admired like a god, and he would have been acted by a good-looking, strong person. The point of the prophecy is more or less the universal truth that bad things happen to good people. Maybe you could go the Aristotelian route and claim he had the tragic flaw, impiety and hubris, sure, but I was also arguing the Nietzschean point, which is that this sort of rationalization of tragedy denies what tragedies really are. Because in the real world, sometimes good people get cancer, innocent people suffer and bad people get rich. There is no moral world order and I do not like the tragic flaw interpretation for this reason. Nietzsche also argues that these rationalizations of tragedy came later, and there's some historical evidence of this.

Going back to Oedipus, I think overall his good qualities outweigh his flaws. As well, with regards to the prophecy, it was prophesied long before his birth the play begins, so no matter what Oedipus ever tried to do it was inevitable he did it. So the only choice he actually had was what he tried to do in response to the prophecy. Which you're right, he committed an act of impiety in response. But really, the play makes it clear he was fantastic as a king, so overall this hardly outweighs his good virtues. As well, all that happens in the play is he finds out the truth, he doesn't cause the prophecy to happen by investigating.

The Nietzschean point I was arguing here, from the Birth of Tragedy, was "is there a strength of pessimism". Oedipus the King is not a happy play. Nobody wants to be in his position. Yet overall he was a pretty good person. Oedipus is strong, and decisive throughout the whole play. So, I don't know. I guess you can read the tragic flaw stuff into the play, but I don't think it's a necessary feature.

As well, you're welcome to have simple discussions with me, and not try to piledrive your point at me. I'm not nearly as interested in debate as you.

Yeah I'm pretty upset with my own self for not coming up with it without prompting.

what does all this have to do with the inauguration BTW

Inauguration day was just a `lil event akin to that one time the gatekeeper hooked up with the keymaster, in order to usher us into a new era in which American Civilization epistemically disembowels itself. So that 69 pages of speaking in tongues was long since preordained, by forces far greater than we can hope to comprehend.

Also, your face is bleeding. Sad!

I think we have different understandings about what is meant by "debate". Because I don't want a big blown up antagonistic argument full of ad hominem attacks. (Acknowledging, as we did 10 or 20 pages ago in this thread, that sometimes it happens anyway and it's not the end of the world.) I've participated in these discussions in order to have the opportunity to articulate to myself what I think in a way that I otherwise wouldn't, and to be forced to be challenged and forced to rethink my assumptions and to learn. That is, I'm interested in a productive conversation. I'd be surprised if you didn't want something similar.



Oh please. I went back to the play and quoted passages from it to back up my arguments. That accusation is absurd.



To be honest: yes, that probably would've made a difference.



I highly doubt that that's how Sophocles thought, or that that's an assumption about the world that is present in his plays. (In fact, I wouldn't just doubt it. I'd argue against it.) It's hard to square that assertion with "there is nothing here that is not Zeus", for example. Zeus is the god of justice. If he orders all things in the cosmos to their conclusion, and that process is called "justice", that would certainly seem like there is a moral order, and that thing you cite as the basis that for your preferred interpretation is false.



What do you mean here? What do you mean "the point of the prophecy"? Do you mean by that that it's the "meaning" of the prophecy? Or something else? I don't see how it makes sense that that is what the prophecy means, because the prophecy is something very literal: Oedipus will kill his father and marry his mother. And that very literal course of events happens. How are we supposed to infer that the prophecy contains this more general message that relates to all of us, when it obviously has very specific details that apply very narrowly to Oedipus?



Ok, so you think Oedipus is a strong beautiful man. You think that's important because there's no reason specific why something horrible should befall this man and not any other. The thing that makes tragedy so horrible is its randomness and unpredictability -- that is can befall anyone, even someone respected, admired and decent. Is that what your getting at? You can probably guess already that I'm going to disagree with you. That notion directly contradicts what we've already said about Zeus: Sophocles didn't believe in that kind of contingency.

I mean, I agree with one thing: there is certainly more dramatic tension if the person whom tragedy befalls is a well off person. It simply isn't dramatically interesting or as emotionally powerful if someone who is already lowly suffers a misfortune. And... Oh yeah. Aristotle says that too.



Again, I'd point to the motif of sight, which runs throughout the play. It's quite clear: Oedipus displays cleverness. He is able to solve the riddle of the sphinx, after all. But he lacks wisdom. He never looks to himself. When he gouges out his eyes, its out of recognition that he had been "blind" all along, failing to look at himself. When he gouges out his eyes, it is because he's aware that he had always been blind.

Now I'm not really saying anything new. And I could keep going on repeating everything I said before, or I could go back to the text to flesh out my interpretation even more. But why should I do that now, Mr. Piledriver? You just dismissed it as "unnecessary" and a "tirade". You hardly said a thing about the content.

Yep I think that the fact we're talking about Ancient Greek culture right now is a result of the fact that we have to reevaluate the entire history of humanity in light of the radical disruption in history effected by DJT.

They wanted to know why I hate having friends and voted for Gary Johnson

...regarding (WORDS).

Now, I like to think that Reid and I have buried the hatchet, so to speak, since our earlier exchange, so please bear with me when I ask this as an honest question:

Isn't this response by Reid a perfect microcosm for what European philosophers did for millennia? That is to say: being motivated to respond to a reading of their own words that they see as misunderstood, accuse the other side of seeing only peripheral and surface details of their ideas, but then proceed to do exactly the same thing themselves?

I.e., alternately talking past / accusing one another for doing the very same, for thousands of years.

But, maybe it's all worth it, as an endurance contest, as a way of justifying all the time you spent training yourself on WORDS, in a glorious and public display of erudition.

But please don't interpret my post as a genuine opportunity to clarify my misunderstanding, because (surprise!) I didn't read your WORDS. (So am I officially a philosopher now?)

Current Mood: naughty

That mood thing at the end made me feel ill.

Welcome to 2007!

[h=2]"Baaaaa,"[/h]says Frank.





Frank is our mascot. He's a goat and he likes to eat pants.

The internet existed in 2007?

Dear Bill,

My friend and I were chatting on a message board about philosophicalistically minded stuff. Can you show me a website geared toward emotional teenagers, so that I can more clearly express my feelings and avoid fighting with my friends? Fighting with my friends makes me very sad.

Sincerely,
Jim

Current Mood: pensive

The high school flashbacks are overwhelming. I'm going to go throw up.

I've been listening to the OK Computer remaster so I've been dealing with some high school flashbacks too.

Does this mean you'd be upset with me if I continued to post like this?

Current Mood: sympathetic

Speaking of the past, I just wanted to let you know that I am a huge fan of this style of this artful intertwingling of overlapping frames of reference directly into the body of your posts, by tastefully peppering it with yummy hyperlinks.

Current Mood: happy

If you keep posting like this I am going to come to your house in drag (mortician addams cosplay) and do ****ed up **** to you.

But yes I dearly love that type of ****. It's because I read House of Leaves when I was in Iraq.

In that case I will once again seal away my access to this lost universe of high school style LJ-posting.

At any rate, you and I never needed mood indicators to avoid epicly misundetstandibg each other's posts.

2007 more like 1997 what the hell are you on about

Facebook was even a thing in 2007

how disappointing

and no we are both of the same flock. we can sense the others valence, even if its ambivalence and makes the sensing worthless