Hello!

Tell us a little about yourself.

Moderators: AMod, iMod

ihoardpoetry
Posts: 16
Joined: Wed Feb 14, 2018 12:15 am

Hello!

Post by ihoardpoetry »

Hi there!

I'm new to this forum, so I just thought I'd take this opportunity to introduce myself as I'd like to perhaps become active on here.

I'm Izzy and I'm currently studying BA Philosophy at the University of Birmingham; I'm in my second year. I've been subscribed to PhilosophyNow for around a year now, and honestly philosophy is generally a new field for me. Religious Studies piqued my interest a little bit during A-Levels, so I decided to apply for the university course, and I'm honestly so glad I did.

As for my interests within the field, I am looking forward to my chosen modules next year, on: feminist philosophy, sex and ethics, aesthetics, mental health, political disagreement and language. Aesthetics and feminism, although other social issues too, are possibly my two most favourite interests thus far.

In my spare time, I enjoy writing poetry (as the name may suggest!) and manage my own poetry blog here, though I have to warn my posting of content is infrequent and inconsistent.

Additionally, I'm a vegetarian (converted from being a vegan due to mental health issues regarding eating disorders) and am thus always interested in any contemporary or traditional thought regarding animal ethics. I read Singer's Animal Liberation (arguably something which kickstarted my interest in philosophy) and for the large part was dissatisfied with it: perhaps this is because as a vegan (at the time) I was already convinced and therefore his work didn't feel compelling enough, but there just something about the work which I felt was unsatisfying.

Me and some others on my course are also attempting to set up an in-house philosophy journal with the department's permission and aid, so I'm always willing to discuss any suggestions for this, or if anyone has any stories or experience regarding philosophy journals I would love to listen to this too!

Totally aside from academia, I freaking love Nintendo and Animal Crossing is honestly, truly my go-to whenever my brain is melting from attempting to read too much philosophy at 3 a.m.

So, nice to meet you guys!
User avatar
-1-
Posts: 2888
Joined: Thu Sep 07, 2017 1:08 am

Re: Hello!

Post by -1- »

Hello, And Welcome, IHeardPoetry! I mean, IHerdPoetry. I mean, DieHardPoetry. I mean, sorry, my keyboard is playing tricks with me, IHoardPoetry.

Is your university located in Birmingham Alabama, Birmingham, England, Birmingham, South African Republic, or Birmingham, South West Territories, Australia? Or perhaps in Ontario, Alberta, New Brunswick, or Prince Edward Island provinces in Canada? Or Birmingham in one of the many other states of the union, different from Alabama?

There are altogether 49 communities in the world named "Birmingham". Some are not cities, so they don't count, and some don't have a university.
User avatar
-1-
Posts: 2888
Joined: Thu Sep 07, 2017 1:08 am

Re: Hello!

Post by -1- »

Hi, continuing your welcoming, you will notice, IHordpoetry, that here we are divided into two bitterly antagonistic, die-hard fighting groups of atheists and religionists. The atheists are more-or-less united under the flagship of science, reason, healthy common sense and good looks, while the religionists are more diverse, with Ouzo Prophet Bobevanson, and experiencer-of-god Attofishpie, to reason-denier iron-hat misogynist Nick_A, to mathematics self-reflecting philosopher JohnDoe7 (have I got you in the right group, JohnDoe7), as well as having a third, smaller independent group of ethical moralists, or moralizing ethicists, the back bone of which comprises Philosophy Explorer, Belinda, and Prof. We also have a "Depak Chopra" affinity group.

If I miscategorized any one of the foregoing, then my apologies, and i stand corrected should anyone send in a correction to this thread.

The atheist faction includes me, uwot, I think echoesofhorizon as well, if I am not mistaken, and some others as well.

There are some poets as well in our midst, they write poetry, and they publish it in the poetry thread.

well, welcome, IHoardPoetry, and I hope you shalt enjoy this site!!
ihoardpoetry
Posts: 16
Joined: Wed Feb 14, 2018 12:15 am

Re: Hello!

Post by ihoardpoetry »

-1- wrote: Fri Feb 16, 2018 4:49 am Hi, continuing your welcoming, you will notice, IHordpoetry, that here we are divided into two bitterly antagonistic, die-hard fighting groups of atheists and religionists. The atheists are more-or-less united under the flagship of science, reason, healthy common sense and good looks, while the religionists are more diverse, with Ouzo Prophet Bobevanson, and experiencer-of-god Attofishpie, to reason-denier iron-hat misogynist Nick_A, to mathematics self-reflecting philosopher JohnDoe7 (have I got you in the right group, JohnDoe7), as well as having a third, smaller independent group of ethical moralists, or moralizing ethicists, the back bone of which comprises Philosophy Explorer, Belinda, and Prof. We also have a "Depak Chopra" affinity group.

If I miscategorized any one of the foregoing, then my apologies, and i stand corrected should anyone send in a correction to this thread.

The atheist faction includes me, uwot, I think echoesofhorizon as well, if I am not mistaken, and some others as well.

There are some poets as well in our midst, they write poetry, and they publish it in the poetry thread.

well, welcome, IHoardPoetry, and I hope you shalt enjoy this site!!
Hi, in response to your previous post I'm from Birmingham in the U.K./England! So I'm at the University of Birmingham there, but there is quite a few other universities in Bham, too, if I'm correct.

I've not yet delved deep enough into the forum to notice any factions, though I'll keep that in mind. I'll keep notes of these names, and perhaps keep my eye out for them as I explore this forum.

My ignorance consumes me, as I have no idea what Depak Chopra even means - is it a person, place, school? Honestly, I'm clueless.

Ah yes, I noticed that there was a poetry section, I definitely think I'll be posting my work there, though mine is much more fitting for spoken word than visual poetry, I think.

Nonetheless, thank you very much for your welcome, and I too home I shall enjoy the site!

User avatar
-1-
Posts: 2888
Joined: Thu Sep 07, 2017 1:08 am

Re: Hello!

Post by -1- »

I respect a person who can readily admit they don't know a particular fact and don't make any bones about it.

Depak Chopra is a wordsmith who creates flowery, deep-sounding, but extremely shallow and trite sayings. On the tradition of Hinduism or Buddhism, I am not sure. He creates aphorisms that sound like this:

"One day a man came to me and said," (while the picture shows deer peacefully grazing on a clearing, and the sound of a creek is heard) "he had been betrayed. So I asked him: why did you believe me in the first place?"

Or: a little wooden hut, with bees buzzing about it, and wildflowers of the field swaying in the wind. A male voice, with a becoming, warm tone, says, "A man came to me once, and asked me: What is love. So I spun him around, twisted his arm, and pinned him against a wall, and guess who is asking the questions now."

Actually, he is not funny at all. He is very flowery, that's for sure. The above quotes were spoofs I saw on "Saturday Night Live" back in the seventies, poking fun at people like Depak.
Dalek Prime
Posts: 4922
Joined: Tue Apr 14, 2015 4:48 am
Location: Living in a tree with Polly.

Re: Hello!

Post by Dalek Prime »

Don't listen to Peter Singer! He's full of shit.
User avatar
vegetariantaxidermy
Posts: 13983
Joined: Thu Aug 09, 2012 6:45 am
Location: Narniabiznus

Re: Hello!

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

-1- wrote: Tue Feb 20, 2018 5:50 am I respect a person who can readily admit they don't know a particular fact and don't make any bones about it.

Depak Chopra is a wordsmith who creates flowery, deep-sounding, but extremely shallow and trite sayings. On the tradition of Hinduism or Buddhism, I am not sure. He creates aphorisms that sound like this:

"One day a man came to me and said," (while the picture shows deer peacefully grazing on a clearing, and the sound of a creek is heard) "he had been betrayed. So I asked him: why did you believe me in the first place?"

Or: a little wooden hut, with bees buzzing about it, and wildflowers of the field swaying in the wind. A male voice, with a becoming, warm tone, says, "A man came to me once, and asked me: What is love. So I spun him around, twisted his arm, and pinned him against a wall, and guess who is asking the questions now."

Actually, he is not funny at all. He is very flowery, that's for sure. The above quotes were spoofs I saw on "Saturday Night Live" back in the seventies, poking fun at people like Depak.
Damn. You ruined my fun with the last sentence. I thought they were actual quotes :lol:

His real quotes are bad enough anyway.

''If you are not totally surprised & bewildered by your existence & humbled into reverence & gratitude,your humanity is incomplete.''

"Life gives you plenty of time to do whatever you want to do if you stay in the present moment.'''
ihoardpoetry
Posts: 16
Joined: Wed Feb 14, 2018 12:15 am

Re: Hello!

Post by ihoardpoetry »

Dalek Prime wrote: Tue Feb 20, 2018 8:12 pm
Don't listen to Peter Singer! He's full of shit.


Yeah, interestingly I found his work dissatisfying, but I'm not sure to what extent that was because I had already made the lifestyle choice to become vegetarian, and thus found his work unconvincing, and not as radical as I thought it could be. Additionally, we had to study a paper of his for one of my modules - if I'm correct, it was the paper on poverty and charity - I think it's called Famine, Affluence and Morality? I'll double check when I next access my work files. Even reading a paper of his on something that I'd not really investigated prior (as opposed to vegetarianism, which I had considered prior) I really had a distaste for his writing style. I found it incredibly bland. Then again, that might be the poet in me.

-1- wrote: Tue Feb 20, 2018 5:50 am
I respect a person who can readily admit they don't know a particular fact and don't make any bones about it.

Depak Chopra is a wordsmith who creates flowery, deep-sounding, but extremely shallow and trite sayings. On the tradition of Hinduism or Buddhism, I am not sure. He creates aphorisms that sound like this:

"One day a man came to me and said," (while the picture shows deer peacefully grazing on a clearing, and the sound of a creek is heard) "he had been betrayed. So I asked him: why did you believe me in the first place?"

Or: a little wooden hut, with bees buzzing about it, and wildflowers of the field swaying in the wind. A male voice, with a becoming, warm tone, says, "A man came to me once, and asked me: What is love. So I spun him around, twisted his arm, and pinned him against a wall, and guess who is asking the questions now."

Actually, he is not funny at all. He is very flowery, that's for sure. The above quotes were spoofs I saw on "Saturday Night Live" back in the seventies, poking fun at people like Depak.


Well, I mean, we don't all know everything and I'd rather not pretend I do. Besides, the only way others can educate me is if I admit which things I do not know! I don't understand those with an attitude of feeling like they need to pretend to know anything - there's nothing more stifling in a conversation than feeling like someone isn't learning or getting anything from a conversation. Discussion is all about learning, opening up perspectives and such, imo.

Ah, I know the kind of quotes you mean. I actually run an Instagram aesthetic blog (I have a deep appreciation for the colour yellow, and it definitely shows on my blog) and there's so much stuff like that on Instagram. Shallow, pseudo-profound quotes parading as poetry, or poetic prose. Something that seems so Earth-shattering, but is often just wordplay, or something similar. An interesting example my lecturer used was the infamous "love is just a word", and how it falls foul of the use/mention distinction in language. The quote "love is just a word" conflates the two in attempting to use the word when its grammar really fits the mention: of course 'love' is just a word, but it refers to a phenomenon that is generally recognisable. Alas, I've waffled (such is a weakness of mine).
User avatar
-1-
Posts: 2888
Joined: Thu Sep 07, 2017 1:08 am

Re: Hello!

Post by -1- »

vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Tue Feb 20, 2018 8:43 pm


"Life gives you plenty of time to do whatever you want to do if you stay in the present moment.'''
I'd like to challenge him on live TV to step OUTSIDE of the present moment. Then we can only hope he won't be able to step back in.
User avatar
vegetariantaxidermy
Posts: 13983
Joined: Thu Aug 09, 2012 6:45 am
Location: Narniabiznus

Re: Hello!

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

-1- wrote: Wed Feb 21, 2018 1:37 am
vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Tue Feb 20, 2018 8:43 pm


"Life gives you plenty of time to do whatever you want to do if you stay in the present moment.'''
I'd like to challenge him on live TV to step OUTSIDE of the present moment. Then we can only hope he won't be able to step back in.
I think he must have seen Groundhog Day.
User avatar
-1-
Posts: 2888
Joined: Thu Sep 07, 2017 1:08 am

Re: Hello!

Post by -1- »

ihoardpoetry wrote: Tue Feb 20, 2018 9:51 pm Ah, I know the kind of quotes you mean. I actually run an Instagram aesthetic blog (I have a deep appreciation for the colour yellow, and it definitely shows on my blog) and there's so much stuff like that on Instagram. Shallow, pseudo-profound quotes parading as poetry, or poetic prose. Something that seems so Earth-shattering, but is often just wordplay, or something similar. An interesting example my lecturer used was the infamous "love is just a word", and how it falls foul of the use/mention distinction in language. The quote "love is just a word" conflates the two in attempting to use the word when its grammar really fits the mention: of course 'love' is just a word, but it refers to a phenomenon that is generally recognisable. Alas, I've waffled (such is a weakness of mine).[/size]
There were a number of songs in the sixties about the colour yellow: The Call Me Mellow Yellow, by Donovan, Yellow Submarine by the Beatles, Yellow is the colour of my girlfriend's dress, (line from a song), Yell, oh, yell truth into the world!

If you think Instagram quotes are bad, then try opposing the opinion of some hockey-wives on some other forums. They will descend on you like a flock of vultures and tear your liver out while you are still alive. I don't know how many so-called hockey-wives there are out there, (I call them so) but at least one, and she may have many, many duplicate personalities.

Every word is just a word. (You can quote me on Instagram.) Even the word "word" is just a word. Recursively enough.

In fact, if you ask Nick_A, he'll tell you that in the beginning there was the word.
ihoardpoetry
Posts: 16
Joined: Wed Feb 14, 2018 12:15 am

Re: Hello!

Post by ihoardpoetry »

-1- wrote: Wed Feb 21, 2018 1:51 am
There were a number of songs in the sixties about the colour yellow: The Call Me Mellow Yellow, by Donovan, Yellow Submarine by the Beatles, Yellow is the colour of my girlfriend's dress, (line from a song), Yell, oh, yell truth into the world!

If you think Instagram quotes are bad, then try opposing the opinion of some hockey-wives on some other forums. They will descend on you like a flock of vultures and tear your liver out while you are still alive. I don't know how many so-called hockey-wives there are out there, (I call them so) but at least one, and she may have many, many duplicate personalities.

Every word is just a word. (You can quote me on Instagram.) Even the word "word" is just a word. Recursively enough.

In fact, if you ask Nick_A, he'll tell you that in the beginning there was the word.


Damn, I'll have to check that out. Though, I'm more of an 80s fan, if I'm honest (my parents' influence stuck). Yellow is by far the greatest colour, I'm sure if I were asked to write a piece on it I could do so with ease. Anyway, I digress.

I'm unsure if this is a geographical dialect, but I think what we would call 'hockey-wives' in the U.K. would be 'soccer/football moms' (ensure it's spelt with an 'o' not 'u' to emphasise the Americanisation, naturally). I can definitely envisage the trope, and they are rife on Instagram, though I think their natural habitat is Facebook, posting Despicable Me Minion memes with seemingly deep quotes. Honestly, some of the posts are so reminiscent of my angsty teenage years (what am I saying? I'm still *in* my teenage years) that it hurts.

Honestly, that was too many 'words' to be included in one sentence. Though I definitely get your drift. Language is just a tool we use to reference and communicate about varying phenomena, categorizing them using weird abstract sounds that somehow make sense to our brains effortlessly. The human brain is cool and weird. Like, 'spoon' is just a spoon but only because we have categorized this particular set of items under the domain of 'spoon', and spoons are no less legitimate for it. I think the same can be said of things like love. We are just using words to categorize patterns and occurrences - finding patterns, perhaps, as I heard somewhere we are hardwired to do (I would like to know if this is true or not).

Fourth Gospel, if I'm correct? "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God", John 1? I'm sure my religious studies teacher would be proud. Incidentally, we studied John's Gospel, though not from a strictly theological point of view, it was more like a literary analysis: thematically deconstructing it and observing its historical and social context. I actually found it pretty interesting. Despite the fact that I'd say I'm pretty atheist myself, I find religious iconography and symbolism pretty cool, so studying the texts as literature is something I find interesting.
User avatar
-1-
Posts: 2888
Joined: Thu Sep 07, 2017 1:08 am

Re: Hello!

Post by -1- »

I hear you, IHeardPoetry, on all fronts.

I am a fan of long sentences. I'd rather read and write a bunch of run-in sentences than get through the hacking cough-like style of Hemingway-like writers. Hemingway, being American and a Nobel-prize winner, had enough clout to poison the writing of North American writers for over four generations. They swear by short sentences. In schools, you get whipped, tied to the whipping post, if you write long sentences. Whereas sentences can be long and non-confusing, as long as the undulation of the ebb-and-tide of ideas and their density is well proportioned. Heck, Milne, in Winnie-the-Pooh, wrote paragraph-length (ten or more lines long) sentences, and that was children's literature! And then Hemingway comes along and each person unable to write cohesively thinks he was a genius. He was, but just because someone else writes short sentences, he may still remain a non-genius and furthermore, an incompetent writer.

Brrr. Ho-hum ho-hum.

With regards to your Bible knowledge: I am no judge of that, I hardly read any of the lines there. Not for lack of interest, but for lack of ability to read. I suffer (and so does my immediate human environment*) from an advanced case of ADD, and I can't read. Only humour. And the bible is famous for not having even one single solitary joke in it. Not one that you guffaw to, anyhow.

I am also a teen-ager. My ex girlfriend, back 35 years ago, when we first started dating, said to me, "Andrew, I imagine you will go from your teen-age crisis straight into midlife crisis without a break." I was 28 at the time, but a rather immature twenty-eight-year old. And guess what: she was 23 years older than I.

She's still alive, in her eighties, in some old folks home, busy pooping her diapers. But from the outside, she still looks gorgeous. I mean that, not joking. Taut, soft skin, nice smell (after a fresh diaper change), beautiful face, nice, feminine voice, beautiful, lush hair.

That's my how-do-you-do.

One thing is puzzling. "Soccer/Football moms" with an 'o', not 'u', to emphasize Americanization. Which of the quoted words in ye faire Englande is spelled with a u? Futball, or Sucker? I like sucker moms. We call them MILFs here. Problem, there is not enough of them to go around. Or maybe you are in Germany? Fussball. Or in Poland. Futball. Or in Hungary. Labdarugas.
User avatar
-1-
Posts: 2888
Joined: Thu Sep 07, 2017 1:08 am

Re: Hello!

Post by -1- »

(and so does my immediate human environment*)
*) my inability to read makes me talk more than my share in social situations.
User avatar
-1-
Posts: 2888
Joined: Thu Sep 07, 2017 1:08 am

Re: Hello!

Post by -1- »

vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Wed Feb 21, 2018 1:47 am
I think he must have seen Groundhog Day.
Is that a movie? If it is, it sounds like the title of a very scary horror movie.
Post Reply