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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Nov 25, 2014 - 11:41pm PT
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Thanks for your empathy Mike but I am a survivor of an American graduate school so it's not the first time I've encountered criticism. :)
As for fructose,let me remind him again, that I have been on the front lines teaching human evolution in college anthropology classes for 35 years. He can't honestly accuse me of not doing my part for science. And yes, since most of my students were average joes in terms of academics, I do think a lot about what works with them and what doesn't. For sure, average people who are 18-30 years old are much more open to new ideas than those, including the well educated, in late middle age.
This brings me to DMT's query.Other than teaching biological anthropology, I've also taught Asian religion and culture in a Humanities Department, so mainly I have been learning and teaching the traditions of the past. When people live and travel in Asia, what interests them for the most part is the past, not the crowded modern cities with all the technology and pollution we have and more.
The need for a new western paradigm only becomes obvious when dealing with Americans back in the motherland. The new atheism with all its criticism of western tradition and the religious mirror held up to ourselves by Islamic fundamentalists since 9/11, have changed things forever.
I also sense that a new ethic is arising in regard to how we view animals and their rights. This to me is significant progress in understanding ourselves as part of the natural world. I see it as evolution creeping in the back door. It is also familiar to me from Asian religions.
Meanwhile, I encounter new ideas from time to time and throw ideas out there. This is what people with academic backgrounds do. Too bad, these are immediately assumed to be my personal dogma fixed in stone and a critique of others. They're just ideas which as Mike says, come and go. We can't live without them but we needn't take them as inflexible truth either.
And yes, I hope to do some writing in the future that contributes to the new paradigm, but I have the same problem as most educated people, but especially scientists. After dealing with the documented and referenced minutiea in professional academic publications most of my life, it's difficult to write something musical, artistic or poetic that will truly inspire people.
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 26, 2014 - 08:50am PT
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philosophies evolve of their own accord, by blood and chaos
You can't invent religion period.
Real religion is eternal.
Real philosophy is eternal.
All the rest are sectarian and relative according to how close they come to the top.
Most people view or see the top thru their binoculars from far away or licking the jar from the outside to taste the inside,
then start mental speculating about what that top or in the jar is like.
Only the rare bird ever goes to that very top to never return to the non dual mental speculative interpretative material plane.
To find such a soul is very very rare for the searcher who must also be very very sincere.
The searcher will be tested to the ultimate end for their sincerity.
Most all fall away to suffer repeated birth and death.
Who here is willing to dive to the bottom where there is no more air of their own false egotism.
It's the most difficult and the most easiest simultaneously.
No material work ever comes close, none, zero.
It transcends all material qualities and work.
Only the topmost succeed.
The living already has all the qualities but not the quantity of the supreme truth within.
This how they know when they meet that truth.
Just as a thief will recognize another thief when they meet ....
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MH2
climber
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Nov 26, 2014 - 10:30am PT
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Impressive points.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Nov 26, 2014 - 11:06am PT
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That's a quite dogmatic position, WBraun. Are the dogmas from a sect? Or are you seeing it all from Your top?
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Nov 26, 2014 - 12:15pm PT
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You can't invent religion period.
Seriously? Religion, as an act of man, changes with the wind. What would you think of that Heaven's Gate cult who committed mass suicide so that there souls would hitch a ride on that spacecraft which was hiding in the tail of comet Hale-Bopp?
As an aside, I bet that the valley was incredible when that huge comet was in the sky
Real religion is eternal.
OK. I will grant you that. What is "real" religion, and what is not?
Real philosophy is eternal.
Perhaps, but there are many conflicting philosophies, and many conflicting beliefs. The Big Question which always bothered me, when I was a youngster in the Methodist Church, was how could I possibly pick the true religion? I had just realized that people around the world believed with all of their heart in totally different religions.
Honestly, perhaps you can answer that question which nagged me:
How is a person supposed to pick their religion? We have already covered the ground that a person is highly likely to practice the religion of their family or geographic area. They pick it blindly. How does a person solve this dilemma?
This really bothered me. Hindus will not eat meat. Muslims and Christians and Jews happily devour meat. Except for pork. Only Christians eat pork. If you have ever been around pigs, you will understand why it is considered a dirty animal by Jews and Muslims. Pig sh#t is about the stickiest, stinkiest, and most foul substance imaginable. And pigs roll around in their own feces.
With such conflict between religions, how did you answer that question, Werner? You aren't a typical American Christian, so I assume that you found the correct religion as an adult, and a rare one (for California) to boot.
I'm being serious here. That was a big one for me. All of the Abrahamic Religions say that non-believers can be killed, yet God told Moses that you should not kill. I need a clarification please, God.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Nov 26, 2014 - 12:21pm PT
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Well I have to respectfully disagree with DMT although as a child of the '60's I thought like he did at one time. My generation proved very good at tearing down decrepit and corrupt edifices of what had worked in the past. Now 50 years later, I can't see that much of it has been replaced with anything better and some of it is worse. So my conclusion is that you need ideas and a vision of where you're going, not just a dislike of where you're from.
In the past, the ideas that worked for people maybe slowly evolved. The earliest belief systems came about in preliterate cultures so we don't have a record of that. The great teachers of the axial age who changed peoples' thinking to a more universal set of values beyond the tribe one was born into - Jesus, Buddha, and Mohammed - did so as individuals. I suspect you are right that we may be past the age when the majority of people follow single individuals, though we have plenty of contrary evidence for small sects where such devotion still exists.
It may be that technology and the ability to spread ideas at an emotional level as well as intellectual, will create a new group consciousness. When I started teaching evolution 35 years ago, most of my students had never been exposed to it. Later, I came to realize that they had, but they didn't know it. Every Discovery Channel show about Chimps and Gorillas, every National Geographic show about fossils in Africa had prepared them for the idea. All I had to do in most cases was provide the intellectual framework for what they had seen before and do it in such a way that I didn't demean their cultural, social, and religious connections. In the past ten years or so, I began telling them that how they reconcile the great traditions of the past with the new knowledge is their responsibility, that's what being alive at this moment in history means and they liked that idea.
So maybe we're both right at some level. We need a vision my style and things are evolving on their own your style?
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Nov 26, 2014 - 12:49pm PT
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DMT, I'd like to hear an elaboration on your last idea. That sounds very interesting.
As we watch Ferguson burn, I think all of us who lived through summers of cities burning in the '60's and thought the Great society would end all that, have to wonder now. We did buy ourselves time from the destruction and negative image (pretty hard to police the world when you can't control your own society) and we did uplift a whole lot of smart and hardworking minority people to the middle and higher classes. Obviously though, we did not stop systematic racism and racial profiling, police brutality or mindless, self destructive mob violence. We helped the talented but not so much the really down and out.
At the same time, to see this happening again, I think every person who supported the Great Society and the upheaval of the '60's has to question whether it was entirely the right approach and where do we go from here? Personally, one of the lessons learned is how hard it is to change people and values. I ask myself if I will end up twice in my life supporting voting rights for Black people in the south? That's kind of discouraging but what's the alternative? One step forward, two steps back? Two steps forward, one step back? Who knows?
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Nov 26, 2014 - 01:02pm PT
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I have to agree with Jan when she deals with the relationship of "Science" and "myth".
One of the current cultural difficulties is that our nature knowledge or "science" is seen as discrediting all mythologies/religions. And, no doubt, myth and religion need to keep up with what we can say with certainty about the universe.
However the problem here is a real misunderstanding with regard to:
1. The notion of the incredible similarity found in all mythological thinking both in terms of geography and historically. Why is this? Why is there a near universal understanding/belief in the notion/awareness of god if that belief isn't a profound element in human psychology?
2. The idea that understood as metaphors of the human psyche mythological symbols CAN be brought up to date and CAN communicate wisdom in conjunction with scientific thought and that the validity of mythological wisdom as metaphor is not undermined by the facts of science.
3. That both the pursuit of science and the understanding and wisdom of myth properly read can coexist.
4. That ultimately epistemological understanding, complete knowledge, doesn't bestow upon us a means of relationship, a device for reconciliation. That to simply say "deal with it" with regard to an existential universe will never satisfy the human psyche.
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Psilocyborg
climber
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Nov 26, 2014 - 02:17pm PT
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How is a person supposed to pick their religion? We have already covered the ground that a person is highly likely to practice the religion of their family or geographic area. They pick it blindly. How does a person solve this dilemma?
Only lazy people pick a religion. And they don't pick a religion, they pick a hobby. Spiritual truth is only found within. To me that spiritual quest is just an aside though. It is like quitting mid-season to study the history of baseball. Just play the damn game, play by the rules, finish out your season, and enjoy it.
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Bushman
Social climber
The island of Tristan da Cunha
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Nov 26, 2014 - 02:20pm PT
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Individual World Views
The process of people utilizing the scientific method has produced a large percent of the tools and materials we utilize to survive with, enjoy, and prosper with in today's world. Granted, the scientific method has also provided humans with the means to create or cause ecological disasters, genocide, weapons of mass destruction, and possibly the destruction of our species and many others species of life here on earth. Regardless of the latter, I would prefer to have had all my vaccinations, that the Nazis did not win WWII, that there might be a treatment for cancer, and I that am able to find shelter, nutrition, and security for myself and my family.
I attribute most of the necessities and conveniences of today's life to scientific advancement and scientific achievement. I respect and honor the pioneers of these fields. Most people work with science and scientific formulas in some capacity. The many jobs requiring an advanced knowledge of science, math, engineering, or technology with all of their various specialties in these fields make up a majority of the workforce in most countries today. We all utilize science in our everyday lives and cannot argue effectively that an unseen deity has provided the technology of our modern day lifestyle to us, or that it was portent in the ancient scripture of any religion. But, my Smartphone does not create voices in my head nor does it also point the way for me to formulate a new world philosophy which will give direction and moral guidance to myself or civilization into the future.
I also understand that most people formulate or incorporate a personal belief system early in life and are rarely budged from those beliefs except by some adjustments along the way or by some form of trauma, or life changing epiphany, or through a deep dissatisfaction with the religion, philosophy, or other belief system they once held. Many, like myself, have experienced most if not all of these types of adjustments to their personal philosophy and world view throughout their lives. I do not claim to have vast and intricate knowledge or to have been given special instruction in all of the nuances and traditional practices of the many religions of the world, but even as a child in the church where my father gave sermons on the virtues of a Christian life, no other voices outside of my family or that congregation spoke to me. I repented and surrendered at a tender age out of peer pressure, guilt, shame, fear, and a desire to please my parents and the people in their congregation.
But there were voices. The voices I heard were the voices of the men and women of our history books and of today's world. Thomas Jefferson, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Robert Kennedy, John Glenn, Mahatma Gandhi, Bob Dylan, Martin Luther King Jr., John Lennon, Jack Kerouac, Neil Armstrong, and Nelson Mandela to name but a few. Their words were words of inspiration, their strengths were in their convictions, their passion and their dedication was their driving force, and they gave life and meaning to ideas of which they spoke. The voices I heard were not so much voices, but championing of ideas, ideas about fighting tyranny, democracy, pacifism, standing against racial and social injustice, artistic expression, space exploration, and scientific discovery.
I have learned that most of us follow our own intuition. If we are lucky we find what peace and simple joys that life affords, or other passions of the hands, the mind, and the heart. What we believe is the meaning of life, or what is god, or what is our true purpose here in earth are personal choices and discoveries. They are choices and/or ideas, and they are journeys along which some of us will not be swayed from in our chosen philosophy, religion, or conviction. Others of a more pragmatic bent might be less rigidly dogmatic in holding to a permanent world view.
Personally, I believe it's our responsibility to help our progeny prepare for a world requiring advanced skills in science and technology and that our way as a civilization lies like the arrow of time, towards the future. I tell my grown kids that according to theoretical physicist, Michio Kaku, that the next 100 years are the most dangerous years ahead for human civilization, and I tell my grandchildren that with the right ingenuity, hard work, and luck, that anything is possible. Of course, that too is open to speculation. One thing is for certain, according entropy and the second law of thermodynamics, nothing stays the same.
-Bushman
11/26/2014
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Nov 27, 2014 - 09:20am PT
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Superb posts by everyone. Terrific. I am grateful to be here.
Jan, really heartfelt and intelligent writing.
Great points DMT. Honest, as always.
Werner, you rule. I nodded my head throughout. Yes, yes, yes.
Paul, I love your views. As always open and considerate, but keen.
Base, you always provide a consistent world view.
Bushman, you’re a poet, even when writing prose. I love your list of voices.
Psilocyborg, perhaps a religion choose you. It’s funny (interesting) how we “find” what we want; we may have the causality backwards. :-)
Hey, before I forget . . . Happy Thanksgiving to Everyone!
I know there are some things going on in the world these days that some folks might not like, but I am happy for our little corner here.
For the first time in years, my wife and I be spending the day home rather than at family’s, and it feels very warm to us doing so.
Be well.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 27, 2014 - 11:35am PT
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Look over there at the Climate Change thread. Absolutely no new information has been posted there for thousands of posts. The deniers have access to so much bad data, that those guys play dueling charts with Ed. Why Ed wastes his time on them is beyond me. (He did just write a good article about how climbers damage micro flora)
Thanks for the compliment on the article, the connection between the contributions on the Climate Change thread and the philosophical basis of the Alpinist article are born in science skepticism.
I'll explain how.
The Climate Change thread presents a number of passionate arguments contrary to the prevailing mainstream explanation of the 20th century climate. This mainstream view is relatively recent, probably not quite 30 years old. The implications of the explanation are potentially significant, and the consequences of changing the Earth's climate is not absolutely known. The root cause is the energy use of an increasing human population as it makes its way into "modernity" but when you think about it, evolution is all about an organism's use of energy.
The ability for humans to puzzle this out and understand it is awesome, the inability for humans to overcome their biology to avoid the consequences is horrific. We have a real sense on what to do, but we cannot agree (and I'd say we will not agree) on a course of action. We will let nature play out its hand even as we know the likely outcome.
The Climate Change thread provides a skeptical viewpoint whose thread can be pulled to see how the mainstream view explains the challenge. In so doing, the veracity of that mainstream view can be tested. I take the arguments of the "denialists" more seriously than they take them themselves. It is worth my time (I'm not a practicing climate scientist) to actually work through the arguments and see if they have any validity at all, and if the climate science mainstream has the power to explain. Where it cannot do so there is generally a lot of research surrounding the question, trying to resolve the issues. This activity usually has defined the issues, part of the much maligned "reductionist" approach to doing science, but an approach that has been hugely successful (I'm all for alternatives to "reductionist" science, there have been none presented that have demonstrated success).
As for the Alpinist article, it is about the same issues, though "microscoped" down to a human level and deeper. In that article I take the reader's deep love of climbing outdoors, and the profound experiences that they have, and point out the simple fact that we are active in that environment, and that that activity is not all good, though we do not know what it is we are doing. In analogy to the 20th century climate, it wasn't until the end of the century that we had clues that human activity would change the environment.
Many of the older climbers have witnessed the huge increases in people participating in climbing. Many of us marvel at the idea of being home on one day, usually in some major suburban, civilized region, and traveling, in one day, to a place that very few people have ever been to. While a cliche, our modern life has reduced the size of the Earth, and provided that access to those of us with the means to engage in that travel, which is most of the "modern" world.
The inclusion of humans in environments where humans never dominated has vastly altered the Earth. Among the last places to feel the boot of humankind were those inaccessible, as the vertical realms that we as climbers so cherish.
That vertical wilderness has also been understudied. We are faced with the dilemma of acting with little or no knowledge of how our actions are affecting the very place we desire to be. In another cliche, we are "loving the place to death."
Now the "objectification" of subjects is a consequence of the scientific methodology that allows us to separate our preconceptions of those subjects from what is "really happening." It is a way of excluding human experience from understanding, and by understanding I mean the ability to predict the outcome of situations in some precise manner, a quantitative manner being the "best."
"Subjectification" seems to be ultimate aim of religion, in relatively modern Christian thinking (the result of the Reformation) it is the existence of a "personal God" that is sought, the idea being that we have a personal relationship with God that is not qualified by some religious orthodoxy. Jan has spoken about the inability of science to provide guidance to people who need it to resolve the very personal needs.
My criticism of this "subjectification" has to do largely with the difficulty in separating what part of our experience is "individual" and what part is due to our biological similarities. It is an important issue, and ultimately an existential issue.
Taking on a subject like "love" might be hubris, but it is not one that hasn't seen a huge written literature in practical "philosophy." But what parts of the "emotion" are individual and what parts a consequence of biology. The hormonal "reward system" that drives us to reproduce is strong, and that is a logical consequence of evolution. We interpret many parts of this behavior in some mystical manner, and throughout history have parsed the elements of those confused emotions into different types of "love." But whatever we have concluded, we recognize these behaviors as essential, subjective and given them the status of a "right."
We must all have mixed emotions over the modern Chinese policy of one-child families. We are two minds, and this illustrates the problem. One mind sees the absolute logic of limiting population size to match the ability of that population to provide for itself. Instead of letting nature take its course, through limiting the population by starvation, disease and warfare, the "logical" step was taken to limit the birth rate to manage the population size.
The "right" to reproduce seems so fundamental, however, that such a policy is hugely difficult to accept on a personal level, and not only that, enforcing such a policy represents a societal intrusion at a literally intimate level of our lives.
In this particular clash of "objective" and "subjective" spheres we see the difficulties that face the species.
It is the same, writ small, for us climbers.
When the absolute details of the objective consequences cannot be absolutely and definitively stated with unanimous agreement, we allow our subjective desires to rule our actions.
When I defend myself to Debbie at the dinner table, "those plants I 'gardened' out of the cracks today are probably common" she replies that "we don't know" what those plants are.
I'm still gardening, because I justify to myself that maybe they really are common, and maybe I'm not really significantly changing things. It is the fulfillment of my subjective desire, and its priority over my objective knowledge, and the objective understanding of the limits of that knowledge.
In the end my conclusion is that humans can't overcome this dilemma, and will suffer the consequences of it. That's my objective view. It's not just an opinion, we know, empirically, that all species have limited lifetimes, so Homo sapiens sapiens will someday cease to be. Given that we cannot discuss our own deaths objectively, the death of our species is a grander taboo topic. But it will happen.
So why not "party to the end"? if whatever we do doesn't matter, ultimately, why not do whatever?
And of course if comes down to the subjective, our reverence for this place, the Earth, and the feeling that we should be good stewards of it.
I am sure, but cannot prove, that such feelings are a part of our biological makeup and an evolutionary adaptation. We cannot escape that, but while I am writing this, it is awesome to contemplate that astounding consequence of evolution and the purely material origins of it, and the ultimate consequences of it. It is beautiful in my personal aesthetic and it is a philosophy to me, and one that does inform my daily life in all aspects.
But if science has taught me anything, it has taught me to be patient in the face of seemingly unresolvable paradox. I understand that most people want and need certainty, it is a gift to be liberated from such a burdensome desire.
happy thanksgiving to you all
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MH2
climber
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Nov 27, 2014 - 01:34pm PT
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And of course if comes down to the subjective, our reverence for this place, the Earth, and the feeling that we should be good stewards of it.
A toast to living with uncertainty and to this feeling that we should be good stewards, perhaps connected to our feelings for our children. Humans are an odd mix of the selfish and the unselfish.
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 27, 2014 - 04:18pm PT
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I understand that most people want and need certainty,
Nobody wants or needs certainty.
It's already built into every single living entity.
There's absolutely no need to manufacture certainty that's already there .....
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Nov 27, 2014 - 10:38pm PT
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MkeL's urs i always love reading cause mostly i agree, which = a we.
Although agreeing with the teacher IS mostly what i've learned from all my teachers in all the space of time that i have been taught. So i'm not sure if this is a compliment to you personally. Or Atom ally
Reality is pure and absolute brahman only. The world is maya. It is beyond judgment or discernment. It is beyond intelligent elaboration.
sometimes i'm not sure if ur thinking past me, or before me? The last part of this, Yea, it's as easy as "what came first,the chicken or the egg?". The first part,,, well, i'm not familiar with the verbiage.. but the middle part, isn't "beyond judgement or discernment" giving in to cause-n-effect?
i wish i were watching you write an answer on a chalkboard..
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Nov 27, 2014 - 10:47pm PT
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Man/Woman, i wishh i could catch up on the rest of this page tonig...
but i worked all day and am quickly drf.iting offfffff
i can muster/
A Happy Thanksgiving to All, and To All, A Happy THanksgiving!!!
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jstan
climber
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Nov 28, 2014 - 09:17am PT
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But if science has taught me anything, it has taught me to be patient in the face of seemingly unresolvable paradox. I understand that most people want and need certainty, it is a gift to be liberated from such a burdensome desire. E/H
I don't know why Ed spends the time on really important contributions like this, when the site allows the contents of whole threads to be deleted, on a whim.
ST is vaporware.
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Bushman
Social climber
The island of Tristan da Cunha
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Nov 28, 2014 - 10:22am PT
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For myself, posting here is a form of mental exercise. Others might consider it otherwise.
Hopefully, we are saving and preserving what is important to us somewhere else.
I save most of what I write whether I think it's any good or not and periodically archive it at
Writers Guild of America, West, for a modest fee. A lot of stuff I write doesn't get posted here if it's long or doesn't fit, with some exceptions.
'Uncertainty Dog'
In swirling mountain mists the eyes that see my thoughts unveiled apprise,
They looking on with a knowing glance I plagiarized myself the chuckling mind shows no surprise,
Unexacting how the work must be,
"Move along sir, please, there's nothing here for you to see,"
That all the dots don't seem connected here it's not an absent fact,
The skills so mustered thrift and spare a maladjustment least of which my lack of tact,
Finding on this road to chaos thinking I'm here to direct,
What knits morosely this my furrowed brow,
Never too far out of his zone uncertainly dog is at his best,
Ordering here and ordering there with a tick for the worst,
At a loss for the answer I'm seeking out my angry heart to counsel the disquietude and show respect,
What harm to air my foolishness to the wind?
Where the dots don't connect,
Most of which I fear,
To leave this world in such a lawless and disordered state,
What difference it then where I go?
This diet of uncertainty well known and founded sure and tested set and cast in proven fact so laughingly I hope to grasp,
What matters it what chaos reigns when certainly nowhere I'd be?
Where there is such uncertainty.
-bushman
11/28/2014
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Nov 28, 2014 - 11:21am PT
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Badass kukris.
We come equipped, thanks to evolution, with the capacity to love, share meaningful relationships, adapt to others, and forgive, regardless of the depth of our knowledge of science, art, or myth, for that matter. Our mind body systems are literally built for it.
To proscribe a need for believe in myth to 'complete' another's psyche is as ridiculous as it sounds.
Pure projection.
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