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GOclimb
Trad climber
Boston, MA
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Mar 11, 2009 - 01:06pm PT
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Largo wrote:
>>Go wrote: "God and Religion are comforting. It takes a certain
>>kind of bravery to put that aside and say "I can do with what
>>we've got."
>So Go, what is it that we "got?" Not an idea or a concept or
>representation or belief of what we got, but really and truly
>what "what" is.
>Not a trick question . . .
>JL
Maybe not a trick question, but I'm not sure I understand it. I think it's clear what we've got. A fascinating universe around us, another one inside us (in our heads), a body, and a bunch of cool people to interact with. And a little while to do with it as we see fit. As for what to do with this little time period we each have, I think maybe Blake got it right when he said "And we are put on earth a little space that we may learn to bear the beams of love."
GO
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WBraun
climber
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Mar 11, 2009 - 01:17pm PT
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Go -- "And a little while to do with it as we see fit."
But it doesn't belong to us, we are not even the real owners of our mortal bodies.
So people just speculate on what our purpose is. All mental speculators.
Mental speculators think "Today at 3:00 am in the morning the stop sign has no value because no one is around therefore I will disregard.
Mental speculators have no real knowledge ......
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jstan
climber
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Mar 11, 2009 - 01:49pm PT
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PIP:
This morning, after not sleeping well I:
1. Realized I had already solved the differential equation I had been working on
2. Suddenly wrote out how one actually evaluates the finances of a company
3. Figured out why the Neanderthal girl had been sustained for forty years
I'll get to 3 shortly but first I have to say it is well known we work out our problems while sleeping, generally most effectively during REM. Now I also realize poor sleep means one is working harder. Extending this further it suggests the time to work on things I would rather not do - is in the morning. The mind has not already begun to build up and begun to work in parallel on the next day's problems.
Now to 3 and this peripherally bears on religion.
With frequent life threatening injuries in what I assume were fairly small groups of hunter-gatherers the Neanderthal had constantly to deal with stress and deep uncertainty. They would have sought some form of assurance, perhaps like some people today try to obtain through what we call religion. Now when the young girl was so totally broken up but unexpectedly continued to live she was accepted as a sort of talisman. If she can live then it is a sign that we also may yet live.
What happened so long ago, in a way, can perhaps allow even us to better understand ourselves.
GO:
600,000 years actually makes any commonality even more interesting. Whatever it is that seems shared first came into being perhaps a million years ago.
So let's go back several hundred million years and ask if the fish which has been caught and then released then becomes afraid.
Another example is a track left by three upright creatures in Ethiopia some two million years ago, as I remember. Three tracks, one robust, one gracile and the third much smaller converged with the gracile track and then was lost. Up! may date way way back.
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GOclimb
Trad climber
Boston, MA
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Mar 11, 2009 - 02:25pm PT
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Off topic, but a useful FYI:
Neanderthals were not ancestors to humans. Rather, they are a cousin to homo sapiens. The two branches are estimated to have split over 600,000 years ago.
Both species lived, interacted, and perhaps competed with each other until around 30,000 years ago, when the last recorded Neanderthals disappeared. Who knows, perhaps those loving Neanderthals were successfully hunted into extinction by their more warlike cousins? Anyway, to assume that their culture influenced the culture that shaped Homo Sapiens is certainly possible, but by no means certain (as it would be if we were descended from them).
Sorry for the off-topic post, but this stuff is fascinating (IMO).
GO
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GOclimb
Trad climber
Boston, MA
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Mar 11, 2009 - 02:34pm PT
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>>Werner wrote: Go -- "And a little while to do with it as we see fit."
>>
>>But it doesn't belong to us, we are not even the real owners of our mortal bodies.
>>
>>So people just speculate on what our purpose is. All mental speculators.
>>
>>Mental speculators think "Today at 3:00 am in the morning the
>>stop sign has no value because no one is around therefore I will disregard.
>>
>>Mental speculators have no real knowledge ......
Frankly the above sure sounds like speculation to me. You may think that the religious documents you base your conclusions on are above doubt, but really, that's just your opinion.
Still, if it gets you through the day, and doesn't hurt anyone (in fact, I'd go so far as to say that your way of thinking helps you live a life that's far more life affirming and helpful than those of many people on this board) then I have absolutely no problem with it, and wouldn't convince you to think otherwise even if I could.
Cheers!
GO
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WBraun
climber
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Mar 11, 2009 - 02:55pm PT
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Who's talking about religion?
Only you, I wasn't ....
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KuntryKlimber
Mountain climber
Rock Hill, SC
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Mar 11, 2009 - 02:59pm PT
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Richard Rorty has a lot to say about philosophical problems of truth and ineffability. I haven't read the mirror of nature but i presume it will be the end of my philosophical inquiry.
Rorty on Truth
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GOclimb
Trad climber
Boston, MA
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Mar 11, 2009 - 04:12pm PT
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>>WBraun wrote:
>>Who's talking about religion?
>>
>>Only you, I wasn't ....
If I misunderstood you, of course I'd welcome it if you want to clarify what you meant.
GO
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Mar 11, 2009 - 04:24pm PT
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I Love and Appreciate Atheists whether they come to experience Spirit or not.
Anyone who seeks God without embracing Love is barking up the wrong tree.
I haven't been following this thread as I'm having too much fun, but just sharing some good vibes from the other side of the planet.
Lots of love
Baba
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Fat Dad
Trad climber
Los Angeles, CA
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Mar 11, 2009 - 06:02pm PT
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"Religion has a great role in developing kindness, decency, morals, ethics, equality, courage, humility and steadfastness in the modern world. And that should make religionists proud and impart great dignity to the traditions and teachings.
But they need to be certain of their place, and allow science its scholarship and development, for the good of the human race. Without continuing to develop science, we will soon lose the desperate footrace we have with population, disease, famine, war, and ignorance."
Despite efforts by some newer Christian churches to undermine it, your hope is already pretty well established in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. The Jesuit order, just to give a single example, has as its primary focus education, with a strong focus on classical teachings. Virtually all of the Jesuit institutions in the country, from college to grade schools, were manned by Jesuits, all with advanced degrees, who taught subjects such as physics, chemistry, biology, etc. I went to a Catholic high school and there was never so much as a peep about the validity of creationism as a scientific theory in any of the science course I took.
Even before then, St. Thomas Aquinas relied so heavily on the teachings of Aristotle that he found it necessary to baptize him so to speak long, long after his death given the contribution of his philosophy to theology and other branches of learning.
Unfortunately, with some of the non-denominational evangelical churches, you've got some really misinformed people who have engaged in some sad efforts to do things like teach creationism as a viable theory, etc.
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pip the dog
Mountain climber
planet dogboy
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Mar 11, 2009 - 10:32pm PT
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Baba,
> I Love and Appreciate Atheists whether they come to experience
> Spirit or not. Anyone who seeks God without embracing Love is
> barking up the wrong tree.
Amen.
I’ve sensed that spirit – at moments through you. As an atheist I have come to understand just this (if nothing more): if we are in fact just a bunch of mathematically improbable mutants who accidentally became self aware and left roaring through space on a wet rock, we might as well hold hands. no?
I am forever struck by the fact that at the very core of all of the major religions (and most of the others I am aware of) – is this that one simple idea: That compassion, alone, will set us free. Perhaps because compassion alone allows us to escape from the lonely prison of our own heads. I dunno...
Tyndale translated the Aramaic Greek ‘agape’ as ‘brotherly love’. And Tyndale’s work latter became most of the KJV bible – the testaments in the vernacular. The Vatican (my ancestor’s heavies) hardly digged this – as it interfered with their exclusive power to read and hence explain the Gospels, so they hunted Tyndale down and roasted him. I myself would have urged Tyndale to translate agape as ‘compassion.’ But so it goes, I wasn’t there, just then. And lucky me -- as in that I was spared being burned at the stake with him.
Cromwell so respected Tyndale’s intent and genius; he used what little authority he had left to assure that Tyndale was strangled to death while on the stake, before the fire was lit. An act of compassion, I guess. Cromwell got no such compassion – soon after he was executed and his severed head was boiled and mounted on a pike in a public place for all to see, for over a decade).
Oops, yet another digression… As if I can figure the soul of this out in words and books.
~~~
> Lots of love
And there you have it, my Baba.
Amen.
(from the Middle English, via Old English, via the Late Latin – as derived from the Hebrew āmēn: “I believe”)
In that simple core focus on compassion, if not much of all the rest of the imponderable and yet immediate stuff of the mystics I am forever drawn to, I do believe...
~~~
Still waiting for your next ‘razz’ from the subcontinent. Feed me!
^,,^
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pip the dog
Mountain climber
planet dogboy
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Mar 12, 2009 - 12:08am PT
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Jstan,
> PIP:
> This morning, after not sleeping well I:
> 1. Realized I had already solved the differential equation
> I had been working on
> 2. Suddenly wrote out how one actually evaluates the finances
> of a company
> 3. Figured out why the Neanderthal girl had been sustained for
> forty years
me, i'm still clueless in my efforts on #1 and #2. But as to #3...
> I have to say it is well known we work out our problems while
> sleeping, generally most effectively during REM.
You get REM sleep? Sheesh, lucky you. I don’t – well not in cheesy hotel rooms after a day of hearing the suits prattle on about toilet paper and panty liners. Me, I mostly just pass out eventually and wake up in precisely the same position all stiff and sore. My girlfriend flies out to visit ever so often. And I get to lie there awake forever watching her roll and thrash and jog and giggle in her sleep, REM sleep. She wakes up all refreshed and lit up and full of insights. Me, I just go for a run, sore and stiff.
Out in the mountains I get actually get REM sleep and lots of it, which is why I forever want to be there. For ‘there’ I am forever the first one up and firing up a brew and having these long conversations with… well, mostly myself.
Um, never mind…
~~~
> With frequent life threatening injuries in what I assume
> were fairly small groups of hunter-gatherers the Neanderthal
> had constantly to deal with stress and deep uncertainty.
> They would have sought some form of assurance, perhaps like
> some people today try to obtain through what we call religion.
> Now when the young girl was so totally broken up but
> unexpectedly continued to live she was accepted as a sort of
> talisman. If she can live then it is a sign that we also may
> yet live.
Absolutely, John. I think you are dead on right. Carrying that broken children for decades was, I suspect, their way of giving the finger to a world where people were forever getting their skulls crushed by a cave bear, or getting stomped to death by a mastodon, or simply starving to death in the dead of winter.
I also liked your use of the word ‘talisman.’ How about this small variant: those too broken to hunt or gather were left with little to do but watch, pay attention, and remember. And after years of that they became invaluable. They remembered that the elk herds came through after the third full moon in the dark of winter. They remembered just where that cave with the reliable spring was, and how to get Ootook to take a deep breath and relax.
In time they became, I think the current academic term is ‘a shaman’. And in that they became well worth carrying.
Just a thought…
~~~
> What happened so long ago, in a way, can perhaps allow even
> us to better Understand ourselves.
Amen. It astounds me that most of those around me seem to have lost all track that through 95% of human (or close) history we were all hunter/gatherers. And that the at most 2% of our history, our now, in the midst of cable tv, and freeways, and jobs with 401k’s they seem to believe that we are hard wired for, well, Manhattan or LA.
Me, I think that evolution doesn’t work all that fast. Me, I think that we are still mostly wired as hunter/gatherers. And we make decisions accordingly. But try telling that to a suit with a Lexus.
As a quick example, why is it that most guys, in their youth, are forever trying to hump absolutely everything that twitches. And why is that women, even very young women, forever tend to stick with droopy butt guys who demonstrate a sense of commitment (if for entirely the opposite reason of what the ladies want to believe)?
How about this: think Darwin. Way, way, BITD if you were a guy who still has extant descendants, you humped everything. While way, way, BITD, if you were of the opposing gender, you perhaps guessed that getting pregnant meant 6 or so months when you needed to rely on some guy who was reliable – to eat, and not get slaughtered by a cave bear or some guy from another clan fighting for the same limited resources.
Just a thought…
~~~
When I’ve tried to explain this to smart people, they are forever falling into the trap of assuming that such decisions were made assuming Darwin and planning accordingly. Of course not, dammit. Those who genes and ancestors are still among us were not cro-magnons who anticipated Darwin and sat there and thunk it out at great length. Of course not. Those who made it through evolution’s sieve were simply those who accidentally got it right – likely for all the wrong reasons -- and hence survived. And hence live in your neighborhood.
Well, just a thought…
~~~
I believe that there is oh so much we can understand among the suits, and shopping malls, and pick up bars – if we simply remember that evolution only works so fast. And not nearly fast enough that it all suddenly changed with the advent of the industrial revolution.
We are all still hunter/gatherers – and are wired to think that way. In another 30,000 or so years, if shopping malls and freeways still exist, this might change. But in the meantime we are all frightened bipeds in a dark cave, with immediate and shocking memories of all the things that can go wrong. And we act accordingly. I figure what successes I’ve had among the suits and at the pick-up bars is entirely based on this which I believe.
Just a thought…
~~~
“We must prevent the mind shaft gap!” (I still have that rented Strangelove DVD and rented DVD player. It’s on just now…)
I much enjoy your insights, John
^,,^
~~~
[there is this tune that I echoes through my head when I’m trying to survive in traffic, or lost in some meat market bar, or (and mostly) when dealing with the suits. You can find it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoNmNmXExZ8
now the video is rather lame, PC, and junior high. But the lyrics and the energy of the tune come so often to mind – here in “civilization.”
“Admire me, admire my car, admire my clothes…
“I’m the first mammal to wear pants! -- IT’S EVOLUTION, BABY!”]
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jstan
climber
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Mar 12, 2009 - 11:39am PT
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Pip:
Your ideas as to what people may and may not realize lie at the heart of a discussion by David Buss on Darwinism as applied to the new field of Evolutionary Psychology. We first came on this in Episode 2 of the "Voices of Science" by Richard Dawkins. If we were to have a hundred years of serious development along the line of this approach to psychology we might no longer need to have so many wars or even these irritating depressions and recessions.
After all is said and done we do in fact, purposely cause all of these things.
Ta,
Edit:
Pretty wild video.
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GOclimb
Trad climber
Boston, MA
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Mar 12, 2009 - 01:38pm PT
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Indeed.
150 years ago, Charles Darwin revolutionized our understanding of life, including where we humans came from.
100 years ago Sigmund Freud revolutionized our understanding of the mind.
It's high time the two schools of thought were merged. I know a lot of work has been done on this already. But it hasn't really exploded onto the public scene yet.
GO
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WBraun
climber
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Mar 12, 2009 - 02:24pm PT
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Freud's philosophy is the business of the hogs and dogs, and it has been taken as philosophy.
Dealing with the body and dealing with sex life is the animal business, and they are passing on as philosopher, scientist.
Such nonsense.
The goal of knowledge is not there.
This Darwin's theory as very big invention or discovery. Simply childish rascaldom. There is no reason; there is no sense. Man came from monkey -- why not coming now?
The goal of knowledge is not there either.
Theory = worthless.
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Jaybro
Social climber
wuz real!
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Mar 12, 2009 - 03:37pm PT
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"I don't need faith (theory?) , I have experience." -Joseph Campbell.
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pip the dog
Mountain climber
planet dogboy
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Mar 12, 2009 - 04:07pm PT
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GO,
> 150 years ago, Charles Darwin revolutionized our understanding
> of life, including where we humans came from.
> 100 years ago Sigmund Freud revolutionized our understanding
> of the mind.
> It's high time the two schools of thought were merged.
Oh no! Disaster! We must prevent that merger at all costs. Call the Coast Guard, get General Ripper to send in a bomb wing!
~~~
Darwin is science. Had Darwin not discerned natural selection, someone else would have soon enough.
Freud is not science. Freud is more like Tolkien, both dreamed up a huge fairy tales. Tolkien called it entertainment, fine. Freud called it science, not fine.
90% of what Freud hawked so feverishly as science has long been abandoned by actual science. Quality stuff like his adamant insistence that schizophrenia is caused by improper potty training.
The remaining 10% of “Freud” that still warrants serious consideration are solely those insights that Freud stole from Socrates, Shakespeare, William James, Carl Lange, and Schopenhauer.
Freud was adamant to his dying day that he had not read Schopenhauer, or James, or Lange.
“Methinks thou dost protest too much” (Herr Dr. Shakespeare, on "negation")
~~~
I will say this for Freud, he was a profoundly powerful writer, with a self-confidence that bordered on the demonic (I suspect his medicinal cocaine helped fuel this fire). As such reading Freud can be useful to writers. But science? Not even close.
I took a class with this guy who made me read pretty much all of Freud – a pile a solid 4 feet high. Because I respected the professor so, I did it. but I grew to hate Freud more and more by the page. I forever felt like the guy was SCREAMING at me, at all of his readers. Kinda like a Rush Limbaugh with an actual vocabulary.
But in one of his last essays, at the very bottom of that huge heap I had to read, “Analysis Terminable and Interminable” – and on just about the last page, I found this one quote that led me to almost admire the guy (though not forgive him those late nights reading his endless prattle – and certainly not accept a word of his fantasy was actual science).
In that essay, which Freud wrote near the end of his life, in agony with mouth cancer and with the agony of beinning to discern the true extent of the holocaust in Germany, Freud was trying to write his final argument (of oh so many) that his “science” was as complete as it was rock solid.
And on the last page he wrote (this from my memory, which I am confident is close if not verbatim) “In the end, what the psychoanalyst offers the patient, is love.”
I sometimes wish I had never read that line, for it was easier and more entertaining to simply despise that massive ego. But to see him write that, just then, at the end of his furious career, made me realize that this guy actually had a soul.
That after decades of endless in your face drop kick roaring about His "Big Science" with all of it's ever changing psycho-babble, Freud chose to sign off with a sentance that abandoned His Massive Science-ette for for a moment of simple humanity. Remarkable.
~~~
But, oh, the very thought of merging Freud’s massive story of… well, Freud – with Darwin's science – gives me _such_ a case of the heebies.
It also dawns on me just now that reading my endless prattle might well be as grueling for the lot of you as when I had to read Freud. mia maxima culpa -- and yet another case of the heebies.
^,,^
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Jaybro
Social climber
wuz real!
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Mar 12, 2009 - 04:55pm PT
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BTW, I had not taken you for an atheist, Khanom. Fascinating posts, it is a fascinating, evergrowing 'world'.
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