Philosophy is Dead

The point was Fido to discuss whether I was being philosophical or not in that post. If I was I have proved philosophy is not dead.

I certainly like Boswell's Life. I like the style of that period. Particularly Sterne.

I just got a full version of that instead of the condensed... Got it on my reading list... His statement about american slavers was classic..

That's the truth; I've seen this happen too often in this country where white success was to be emulated. Too often, most standards where based on white achievements including our educational system and income levels.

And that reveals a great deal about you fa.

What can you do about it? It isn't improving anything you continually going over and over with that stuff. By happy I presume you mean less unhappy.

It's built in to the human race to suspect the outsider and with some force if the outsider starts getting too powerful. Amin threw the Asians out of Kenya because "they are too clever for my people". It doesn't matter what you say about that. It happened. History is full of persecution of outsiders once they start influencing the way of life already fairly settled.

Okay--this is a new sort of world with communications being what they are. But it's city communications mainly. The human race doesn't change much just because the city sets the tone. Things are screwed down pretty tight in cities. Plenty of city people have dropped out and gone to places less tightly screwed down. The ones going in the other direction have a completely dfferent motive.

You will have that sort of discrimination everywhere. It doesn't have to be caused by appearance. The up-coming brash estate-agent Tory M.P. would be mercilessly discriminated against in the clubs where Tory M.Ps. who owe their position to owning land, gather. Unsuccessfully too. The former lot have taken over the Tory Party and are eyeing up the land. A popular policy with people who have no land.

The only solution is a completely homogenous world. Once a minority have got their feet under the table it starts discriminating against new outsiders. Who would you not have round for dinner? Who would you not have marry your daughter or your sister?

If you arrive in a new world you can expect to be marginalized and in a form of bondage. Both are relative terms anyway. Millions want to come to America if that fence is anything to go by. They must accept the marginalization and the bondage. It's a deal. And accept it for their children too if they can't blend in. It's the way of the world. Blowing up the marginalization and bondage, especially when they are as mild as they are, does not, imo, help your cause. The response in the pubs is to go back whence you came if it's unacceptable. All you achieve by moaning, instead of getting on with it, is to provide nutrient for the extreme right. And the more success you have the more extreme and popular the right will become. It was out just yesterday battling with the cops in one European city.

It's a very complex picture and if you simplify it down to a few words then your opponents will follow your example.

Basically you are saying that you're a square peg in a round hole and that the hole should change. That the circle should be squared.

Swallow it whole is my motto and practice artful dodging.

Sure; and why wouldn't anyone want to emulate perceived immorality and poverty...
I know; and it has to sound racist; but it is not because though not perceived as immoral, there is a ton of immorality in our religion and society generally and a great poverty of thought and philosophy... People do not want to shine a light on this society which wants to project an image of morality to the world... There is not a place on our yielding flesh not scarred by disease or ravaged by infection... There is no true morality to our morality, no wealth our poverty does not curse...

Thanls Fido and Splendius, they are very relevant and astute points which I would love to hear more about!

There isn't a lot more to be said john.

But you might be interested in reading Thorstein Veblen's essay The Intellectual Pre-eminence of Jews. It can be found in a collection of his essays under the title Essays in our Changing Order which first appeared in The Political Science Quarterly Vol. XXXIV in March 1919.

Can you link it to me Splendius?

Your local library. Very few booksellers will have it.

The Magical Journey (Huntington Beach, CA, U.S.A.) bookseller has a copy for £5 or $7.50. Plus postage. There are a few for sale on Abe Books.

The Theory of the Leisure Class is online though.

I like that book..

Well Fido and Splendius, I can't promise that I am going to buy either of those books that you mentioned above, but I am intent on getting Stephen Hawkin's new a grand design, if that is any consolation? PS his book seems to be about cutting edge astro-physics and other difficult but intriguing snippits into real philosophy, despite his assertion at the beginning that philsophy is dead! Ironic huh!

We are all free to choose what we read john.

I don't think philosophy is dead. It's maybe backed into a cul-de-sac but that's not the end of the world. Unless the open end gets blocked up of course.

Hi splendius, well I brought Hawkins' book, but I must say that I am not inspired by his first few chapters which seem to be laying pretty hard into the idea of *God* via the greeks. Hopefully the rest of the book will pick up with some metaphysics, if I ever get around to reading it!

how we think of philiosophy is the important thought

it is important

My favorite philosopher, Jose Ortega y Gasset, traces the origin of "Philosophy" to the early 5th century BCE when Heraclitus of Ephesus and Parmenides of Elea formulated differing theories of reality. Heraclitus held that reality is change, whereas Parmenides held that reality is changeless Being. Philosophy developed from Parmenides' theory as Plato found changeless Being in Ideas. Ortega claimed that what was needed was a non-Eleatic, i.e. a Heraclitean concept of Being or reality as change. He proposed what he called Vital or Historical Reason as going "beyond philosophy."

Regarding Science Ortega defined it as an attempt to tell a story that is true every time it is told, i.e., a changeless story. But we now know that scientific "truths" are not "true everytime they are told." For instance, we all learned the scientific "truth" that "two atoms of hydrogen combine with one atom of oxygen to form one molecule of water." But this only occurs under "standard conditions of prssure and temperature." But if we go back to shortly after the "Big Bang" conditions were such that there were no atoms but rather a "plasma" state consisting of free floating protons. At that time the statement "two atoms of hydrogen combine with one atom of hydrogen to form one molecule of water" would have been meaningless.

Only over time did this plasma cool down to the point where the existence of atoms was possible. Even then, it required further cooling down for "water" to exist. And in about another billion years the sun will increase its radiation to the point that the surface of the Earth will likely become too hot for "water" to exist on it. So the "truth" that "two atoms of hydrogen combine with one atom of oxygen to form one molecule of water" will no longer be "the story," at least on Earth.

I posted this on another thread, but think it's also relevant here.

From indiaenvironmentportal.com:


Interesting subject; god.

My recent journey to India was also an education about the early religions of India. Let me try to summarize from the many pages on the subject provided to us by our Tour Director in India into a few paragraphs to share what he told us.

First of all, when dictionaries defined what religion was, they had two important components; 1) a scripture, and 2) a founder. However, when it came to Hinduism, Hindus had their scripture, but no particular founder. That's the reason we find most dictionaries describing Hinduism “a way of life” rather than a religion.

Thousands of years ago when the people of Europe and central Asia looked for warmer climates, they settled in Iran and India. They called themselves the “noble breed ones” - the Aryans. They brought their religion called Hinduism into India. Since the Aryans were more advanced in their use of horses and weapons, they suppressed the indigenous people and imposed their religion on them.

The ancient religious literature of India is divided into two kinds. One is called Sruthi and the other Smriti. The word Shruti means that which was heard. The Vedas fell into this category and was considered divinely inspired. The word Sruthi is much like the word al-koran in Islam which also means that which is heard. The other kind of religious literature is called Smriti based on human authorship. The Hindus are asked to refer to the Vedas as the ultimate source of knowledge.

The word Veda simply means knowledge or perception. It is a compilation or an anthology of poems recited by seers at various times.

When the Aryans first settled in the south of the river Sindhu, there was no name called Hinduism. The letter S was pronounced as H by the Arabs who called the people south of the river Hindu.

When the Greek traveler Megasthenes wanted to write about India, he took the word Indu and produced a work called Indica, and from that name came the word India.

Certain religious organizations in India have taken the mantle to convert people into Hinduism. They simply had to believe in the five tenets to be a Hindu.
1.Sanatan Dharma – or eternal faith. Life has always been here and life will always be here.
2.Vasudeva Kodambakkam – that all creatures of life come from one creator and everything is one family of the creator.
3.Ishta Devata – is the freedom to worship god in any form a person likes
4.Adhikara Bheda is much as one wants to be accepted as they are, the same respect needs to be given to all the creatures. Everybody's ego is accepted as it is.
5.Lastly, the faith in the Vedas as the ultimate scripture.

There are 29 different languages spoken in India with over than 1-million speakers of those languages.

On Buddhism:

The Hindus who believes in god, the Buddhist who are agnostics, and the Jains who denies the existence of god still have one common ingredient in all religions born in India, and that's the concept of Karma – where one is, birth after birth thrown into the cycle of birth and death, reincarnation again and again in this rotating wheel of life without any freedom. Any desire was bondage that was severed only through extinguishing all desires and renunciation of all. Sanayasa is what they call it in Sanskrit.

Many strange things happened when the Buddha was born. When the Buddha was born, it was by tearing open the belly of his mother, Maya Devi. She did not feel any pain, but died fulfilled and in bliss. As soon as Buddha was born, it took seven steps in all directions then lay back in its original position. The astrologers predicted that it was a definite sign of a very noble birth. Buddha was christened Gautama Siddhartha, or the accomplished one. Buddha's exposure to the outside world happened later in life, because his father forbade him to go outside the palace grounds. When he saw sickly and dead people, he wondered if that could happen to him, and his charioteer said yes. He disappeared for ten years, but appears back as the Buddha – the enlightened one; he became god.

Many came to listen to his first sermon at Sarnath. (I was there during my first visit to India in ___).
Compared to the Sermon on the Mount by Christ, the Buddha eloquently defined his most important mission – to set in motion the wheel of justice (Dhamma), and delivers the first discourse to his five friends about the wheel of justice – the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta. The Buddha sent his first five disciples to every part of the country.

With the Buddha, patience was the most important virtue. The journey was more important than the destination. The journey was in fact the destination. (I'll have to remember that.)

The Buddha demystified many things and taught meditation as a pure therapeutic technique without any religious tags attached.

The Three Universal Truths of Buddha:
1.Everything in life is impermanent and always changing.
2.Because nothing is permanent, a life based on possessing things or persons doesn't make you happy.
3.There is no eternal, unchanging soul and “self” is just a collection of changing characteristic attributes.

The Four Noble Truths:
1.Suffering exists in life.
2.The cause of this suffering is attachment.
3.The cessation of suffering is attainable
4.There exists a path to achieve cessation of suffering.

You can become god.

I believe this is an earlier period establishment of religion that Ortega identified as originating in the early 5c BC in Ephesus with the same philosophical formulation of religious ideas.

NOTE: You can also visit my travelogue on South India at travelpod.com. Look for me as c.i.222. Let me know what you think.

Hell is an unenlightened mind.

Philosophy is in no means dead, at least not to me. I question everything, I question things science can never answer, and yet even some things it already has. I question every second I exist, how every tiny move of my finger could have possibly changed my life or others, the choices i've made, the things around me, whether anything in science is even correct, or whether it's a trick to make us simple humans believe it is correct by a higher being... theres so much philosophy in my mind, and there always has been. I'm only seventeen now, but i've been this way since i've been a very young boy, around the age of five or so. I was questioning my existence even then, and the things around me.

It's okay to question your existence, but don't let it take over your life. Motivation to do well, and set goals, should take up more of your thinking. Your inquisitive nature will not disappear, and still enjoy what life can bring.

hmm , interesting



don't question your existence or the things around you for you are absolutely here and so are the things around you