Perspective and Reality

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vegetariantaxidermy
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Re: Perspective and Reality

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

Greta wrote: Fri Aug 04, 2017 11:29 pm
vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Fri Aug 04, 2017 5:04 am
Greta wrote: Tue Aug 01, 2017 6:44 am I've found that I am a very different person from decade to decade so I now relate to a lot of insane crap that other people go in with that I used to embrace.

Our young and disturbed "friend" here, Nick, is a great example. Twenty-five years ago I would have probably sided with him against me of today in our "debates". I ran hard on my emotions as he does, also with a hair trigger temper and deep sense of romanticism about reality with distaste for the "clinical" powers that be.

I also fervently believed in God as a child and I know what it's like to feel that that is the sacred truth that must be awed and respected. I later was very keen on Buddhism, and still like aspects of it. I routinely believed that alternative medicine was not largely quackery. I believed some conspiracy theories. I wanted so badly for there to be bad guys to blame for everything.

Today, what I see in the world is basically the usual dynamics of nature applying to humanity. The re-formation of the Earth's surface by "humanity" is problematic for us as affected individuals, but for mine the whole situation with humans and the Earth reeks to high heaven of a standard natural process. This drama of intelligent beings humans dominating a world and emerging into something new has probably happened, and been refined, many times beforehand in the universe. Like all development - gestation, metamorphosis, maturing and ageing - you have periods where there is rapid development into an emergent form after a long period of relative stability.
In other words you are a fickle and shallow flibbertigibbet with no integrity.
The forum would be a much better and sensible place without you.
That's subjective. But PE and Harbal would miss me terribly. :cry:
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Greta
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Re: Perspective and Reality

Post by Greta »

Nick_A wrote: Fri Aug 04, 2017 7:25 pm The ancient idea of "As above, so below" is an excellent example of the difference between the secular mind and the universal mind. Consider the Emerald Tablet as an expression of the universal mind. It is nonsense for the secular perspective ...
Trouble is, I am one of your main dartboard secularists and "as above, so below" is one of my favourite philosophical concepts and I have spoken about it numerous times. The notion refers to the fractal nature of reality, with repeating dynamics on different levels.

If anyone wants a powow on the fractal nature of reality then I'm in.
fooloso4
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Re: Perspective and Reality

Post by fooloso4 »

Lacewing:
Hey Nick, you're way off topic. Maybe you should go back and read the opening post. Not every thread needs to be your tiresome platform for your psychotic projections. Everyone else's comments here are okay because they are interesting. But yours are not, so I think you need to get back on topic or start your own thread.
I agree. I should have known better than to play a part in allowing him to hijack yet another thread. He has one skill and is very good at it - provoking others into responding to him. What would happen if no one did?
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Lacewing
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Re: Perspective and Reality

Post by Lacewing »

fooloso4 wrote: Sat Aug 05, 2017 6:08 am
Lacewing wrote:
Hey Nick, you're way off topic. Maybe you should go back and read the opening post. Not every thread needs to be your tiresome platform for your psychotic projections. Everyone else's comments here are okay because they are interesting. But yours are not, so I think you need to get back on topic or start your own thread.
I agree. I should have known better than to play a part in allowing him to hijack yet another thread. He has one skill and is very good at it - provoking others into responding to him. What would happen if no one did?
Well, I enjoy reading your posts. I skip over Nick's and read yours and others that are in response to him. I've often wondered why we get drawn into going 'round and 'round with people who are clearly thick in their delusions, as clearly they are completely invested in seeing/acknowledging nothing more. To avoid answering direct questions, they avoid or convolute or re-direct... so there is no broader truth to be reached. I think the attraction for those who engage with them might be the exercise of coming up with more clever ways to point to broader truth. Our questions and points evolve in better ways it seems, and through that, some people ARE actually evolving, I think. At times I notice changes in those who seem to be so rigid... as they try to pretend that more progressive ideas were always part of their view. That's okay... whatever it takes to see more... even if they have to pretend.

I, too, have wondered what would happen if no one responded to such provoking claims. They are often so outlandish that I've suspected such people must be pulling everyone's leg... keeping the discussion stirred up. But, alas, it appears that such people really are what they seem.

It's all so fascinating, isn't it?
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Re: Perspective and Reality

Post by Nick_A »

Lacewing wrote: Sat Aug 05, 2017 4:51 am
Nick_A wrote: Sat Aug 05, 2017 3:30 am Duh, blah, blah, blah
Hey Nick, you're way off topic. Maybe you should go back and read the opening post. Not every thread needs to be your tiresome platform for your psychotic projections. Everyone else's comments here are okay because they are interesting. But yours are not, so I think you need to get back on topic or start your own thread.
The OP:
Can you imagine -- even if only slightly or briefly -- experiencing and seeing from another perspective that might differ significantly from your current reality and from who/what you think you are? Can you imagine having other qualities, limitations, fears, characteristics? Can you imagine being a terrorist, and seeing the world from that state of mind? Can you imagine being sure of a god, or thinking such ideas are fanciful and made-up by humans? Can you imagine being hyper-driven by your own thoughts or ego, or not taking them so seriously?

Are you able to step out of who you think you are, and imagine being altogether different -- or do you imagine yourself as being the only way you can be? Is what you currently perceive, all there is?

I can imagine being and experiencing all of these things, and that brings up questions for me about who/what we think we are (and are capable of), and how we’ve chosen and created as we have amidst all possibilities in whatever scenario we’re born into. If we’re simply choosing and creating as we go -- if nothing and no one must be a certain way -- if any of us could be almost anything -- how and why do reasonable, thinking people become so locked-in on their focused view to such a degree that they can’t see/understand/appreciate anything beyond that limited perspective?
This is the whole point and it is an unfortunate one that has been demonstrated on this thread. You cannot do what you suggest and the secularists around you here are in the same position. Where it is easier for me as a universalist to put myself in the position of a secularist fixated on one level of reality, you could never put yourself into the position of a universalist. The secular ego must defend against what diminishes it. You are blocked from even an intellectual awareness of what levels of reality means so you struggle even against the thought of it. It is emotional denial which is the worst kind.
fooloso4
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Re: Perspective and Reality

Post by fooloso4 »

Lacewing:
At times I notice changes in those who seem to be so rigid... as they try to pretend that more progressive ideas were always part of their view.
Yes, I have noticed that as well.

There is a philosophical theme that goes largely unnoticed. It is a fundamental feature of Plato’s dialogues but often ignored, namely, character or temperament. The focus on universal truths had dominated the philosophical landscape, but there are still those like Nietzsche and Wittgenstein who still emphasize the personal dimension. In an attempt to return to topic, a short quote from Wittgenstein:
Working in philosophy -- like work in architecture in many respects -- is really more a working on oneself. On one's interpretation. On one's way of seeing things. (And what one expects of them.) (Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, 16)
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Lacewing
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Re: Perspective and Reality

Post by Lacewing »

fooloso4 wrote: Sat Aug 05, 2017 1:14 pm ...a short quote from Wittgenstein:
Working in philosophy -- like work in architecture in many respects -- is really more a working on oneself. On one's interpretation. On one's way of seeing things. (And what one expects of them.) (Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, 16)
Yes. Being able to put oneself in the position of seeing from another perspective, does not mean judging what that perspective is about. Nick is simply continuing to bolster himself and his own perspective by claiming to know what another perspective is all about. Whereas, if Nick were to truly see from another perspective, he would be seeing from the value, strength, and logic of it. When one can see from other perspectives, I think it helps remind one that one's own perspective is but one of countless, like a universe of stars with none reigning supreme.
Nick_A
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Re: Perspective and Reality

Post by Nick_A »

Lacewing wrote: Sat Aug 05, 2017 2:58 pm
fooloso4 wrote: Sat Aug 05, 2017 1:14 pm ...a short quote from Wittgenstein:
Working in philosophy -- like work in architecture in many respects -- is really more a working on oneself. On one's interpretation. On one's way of seeing things. (And what one expects of them.) (Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, 16)
Yes. Being able to put oneself in the position of seeing from another perspective, does not mean judging what that perspective is about. Nick is simply continuing to bolster himself and his own perspective by claiming to know what another perspective is all about. Whereas, if Nick were to truly see from another perspective, he would be seeing from the value, strength, and logic of it. When one can see from other perspectives, I think it helps remind one that one's own perspective is but one of countless, like a universe of stars with none reigning supreme.
It isn’t a matter of judging right and wrong but of understanding the significance and potential of perspective for the love of wisdom or the goal of philosophy. Universalism is one thing and secularism is another.

Consider an eight toned musical scale for example. Does the note mi have an objective existence or can its individuality only be defined in terms of the octave and its position between re and fa?. Secularism is like the note mi that has forgotten it is part of an octave which gives it its meaning and purpose. By itself it is meaningless.. Secularists will define a human perspective in relation to what goes on in this world. Universalists are open to a human perspective that takes into account the meaning and purpose of the octave it is a part of. You want to discuss perspectives in the world and I am introducing the human perspective not confined to the world but connects levels of reality. They are not mutually exclusive. They are just different qualities of meaning.

Of course it is good to become able to put oneself into the position of another but the quality of the perspective that does it creates its value and as a secularist you have no idea what creates this value.
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Lacewing
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Re: Perspective and Reality

Post by Lacewing »

Nick_A wrote: Sat Aug 05, 2017 4:33 pm as a secularist you have no idea what creates this value.
Your attachment to labels and your definitions of them keeps you blind to all else.
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Harbal
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Re: Perspective and Reality

Post by Harbal »

Nick_A wrote: Sat Aug 05, 2017 4:33 pm You want to discuss perspectives in the world and I am introducing the human perspective not confined to the world but connects levels of reality.
You are introducing absolutely nothing, everything you say is pure abstraction and is not related to anything. If anyone challenges you you just attach a fictitious story to them and condemn them as if it were the truth. To say you are screwed up doesn't even scratch the surface.
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Re: Perspective and Reality

Post by Nick_A »

Lacewing wrote: Sat Aug 05, 2017 4:45 pm
Nick_A wrote: Sat Aug 05, 2017 4:33 pm as a secularist you have no idea what creates this value.
Your attachment to labels and your definitions of them keeps you blind to all else.
It would be impossible to ever discuss Pythagoras' concept of the music of the spheres getting one off of the ground. The demand would be to know what it has to do with gender rights and social justice. Greta would claim iron age superstition and F4 would be insulted as an expression of habit

http://www.sensorystudies.org/picture-g ... res_image/
n the 17th century, Johannes Kepler picked up the idea, setting about to prove it in his Harmonices Mundi. Now working from a heliocentric, Copernican model of the universe, Kepler used Platonic geometry to determine the distances between planets and to further refine the harmonics of the universe, resulting in his “Third Law” determining the elliptical – not circular – motion of planets. Arthur Koestler quotes Kepler’s writing, showing that his theories came closer, mathematically, to proving planetary concord, despite the music’s literal inaudibility. Nevertheless, Kepler maintained their metaphorical and metaphysical sounding:

The heavenly motions are nothing but a continuous song for several voices (perceived by the intellect, not by the ear); a music which… progresses towards certain pre-designed, quasi six-voiced clausuras, and thereby sets landmarks in the immeasurable flow of time. (245)

Douglas Kahn’s insistence on the pervasiveness of allegory finds resonance in a contemporary cosmological view. Within particle physics, since the 1970s, string theory has been an actively researched model for understanding the universe. Rather than visualizing the smallest particles of matter as miniscule points, string theory posits that quarks and electrons may be visualized as sub-microscopic “strings” that vibrate, much like on a musical instrument. The tone at which a string vibrates determines its physical form. At present, they remain invisible and are thought to exist in other manifold as-yet-invisible dimensions. Many theoretical physicists, including Stephen Hawking believe that string theory could be a “theory of everything,” a fundamental way of describing the makeup of the universe. Auditory culture is thereby extended to the smallest particles and the largest galaxies. Pythagoras was known for saying, “There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres,” thus also linking the visual and the aural.
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Re: Perspective and Reality

Post by Lacewing »

Nick_A wrote: Sat Aug 05, 2017 5:34 pm
Lacewing wrote: Sat Aug 05, 2017 4:45 pm
Nick_A wrote: Sat Aug 05, 2017 4:33 pm as a secularist you have no idea what creates this value.
Your attachment to labels and your definitions of them keeps you blind to all else.
It would be impossible to ever discuss Pythagoras' concept of the music of the spheres getting one off of the ground. The demand would be to know what it has to do with gender rights and social justice. Greta would claim iron age superstition and F4 would be insulted as an expression of habit...
But your definitions of others are not more accurate than what they are telling you about themselves. You keep talking over people... putting them into little boxes to suit your purposes... and that is not truth, Nick. That is your fabrication, and it makes it pretty much pointless to talk to you. Everything and everyone are NOT defined by your limited understanding and perspective. Why must you re-define other people despite what they are telling you? Do you think you live in a world of people who know nothing of themselves? What kind of hell that would be for you... as the only one who can see with any clarity... and the delusional extremes you would have to go to in justifying and maintaining that.
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Re: Perspective and Reality

Post by fooloso4 »

Here is another one from Wittgenstein that I like:
What a Copernicus or Darwin really achieved was not the discovery of a true theory but of a fertile new point of view. (CV 18)
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Re: Perspective and Reality

Post by Nick_A »

Lacewing wrote: Sat Aug 05, 2017 5:56 pm
Nick_A wrote: Sat Aug 05, 2017 5:34 pm
Lacewing wrote: Sat Aug 05, 2017 4:45 pm
Your attachment to labels and your definitions of them keeps you blind to all else.
It would be impossible to ever discuss Pythagoras' concept of the music of the spheres getting one off of the ground. The demand would be to know what it has to do with gender rights and social justice. Greta would claim iron age superstition and F4 would be insulted as an expression of habit...
But your definitions of others are not more accurate than what they are telling you about themselves. You keep talking over people... putting them into little boxes to suit your purposes... and that is not truth, Nick. That is your fabrication, and it makes it pretty much pointless to talk to you. Everything and everyone are NOT defined by your limited understanding and perspective. Why must you re-define other people despite what they are telling you? Do you think you live in a world of people who know nothing of themselves? What kind of hell that would be for you... as the only one who can see with any clarity... and the delusional extremes you would have to go to in justifying and maintaining that.
The hypothesis of my perspective is that I and the great majority of humanity reside in Plato’s cave. We live primarily by habit and imagination. The secular perspective is restricted to defending the cave perspective reacting as one level of reality. The universal perspective asserts a conscious universe with human “being" as a part of it which both involves further into creation and consciously evolves closer to the source.

I haven’t condemned anyone. Your question implies there is no reality on which our perspective can be based so we just create our own reality and compare notes. While this may be true of cave life it is not true for a universal perspective which for Plato begins with the forms and for plotinus begins with Nous.

The Simones of the world who have a universal perspective are no longer hip. Their need to experience objective truth is abandoned in favor of the imagination technology produces. This is fine for cave life but not for those who seek freedom from psychological cave restrictions. I introduce the other side and the inner need for eros. It is ridiculed. I offer the comparison of the secular and universal perspective in relation to reality. If you want to believe there is no human perspective as an expression of reality than what is produced in the cave, it is fine with me. I just support those who have come to experience that the terms perspective and reality when they are expressions of cave life are nothing but fantasy.

There are twelve essential human types and each has sub divisions. Jesus’ twelve apostles were representatives of these types. They have essentially twelve different perspectives. Each could develop and move closer to the collective soul of Man in which each type has a necessary part. For secularism these essential differences are an end. For universalism they are a beginning. This is an insult to the beast and we have experienced the ramifications of this insult on this thread.

So who is putting who into little boxes? I would say it is the secularists condemning what they don’t understand but what they call Christianity.
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Re: Perspective and Reality

Post by Lacewing »

Nick_A wrote: Sat Aug 05, 2017 10:55 pm ...
Do you think you know others better than they know themselves, and is that why you talk over them when they are telling you that you are wrong in your descriptions of them?
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