May your camel never suffer from loneliness.

- Mongolian blessing

Nobody is perfect. :)

That song makes me cry.

Do some art. Take up astrology or tarot. It's a body of symbolism that goes on and on and reveals how suicide relates to other parts of life.

Otherwise just cry and wait it out.

You're a good citizen.

Do you have an aggressive counterpart for our Funnies? — John

No. There's another dangerous spider here called Brown Recluse, but they're shy.

So if you came across a funnel-web spider, would you kill it?

How to get to distant galaxies. Can't imagine it yet. Maybe one day, though.

No religion "at heart" can stand pluralism. — Cavacava

"There's a conflict in every human heart." -- somebody

Young Christians are more interfaith than their elders. I discovered this during some years living near a Southern Baptist seminary. One student told me that the real divide in Christianity in the US isn't between denominations, but between liberal and conservative Christians.

Is this a bad sign for the future of Christianity?

And Islamic leaders need to be deeply engaged in this dialogue — Wayfarer

What Islamic leaders? Name one.

They're not hostile at all. I actually had one on me and it didn't offer to bite. When I think of it, I've been around them all my life and never been bitten.

"Until the contemporary period, secularization in Muslim countries had taken place routinely, with no tension between secular and religious authorities (except in Iran in the twentieth century, but precisely because Iran has a form of church that does not exist in the Sunni world). — StreetlightX

Bullshit. Ottoman Empire.

Theocracy doesn't have to mean, and doesn't usually mean, that the head of state is identical to the religious leader. It's the relationship between the two that marks theocracy. The religious leader supports the legitimacy of the king and the king provides the religious leader with authority. Saudi is typical.

This arrangement produces a strong, resilient backbone for a society. Think about what has to happen to leave that behind. How is the government's legitimacy affirmed if a religious leader isn't doing it? How does a church maintain its authority without political back-up? What are the conditions which would force a community to abandon the time-honored formula of church/state union and try a real secular government?

Usually not. They're under things as well. They start behaving a little oddly in the autumn though.

Sounds like you have bug buddhist tendencies as well. Black widows aren't aggressive. But that one was in my house. Too close.

I'm a Bug Buddhist. Seriously. I'm taking my recycling to work to dispose of it because some ants started a civilization in the bottom of the recycling bin I'm suppose to take out to the side of the road every week. I keep thinking I should be a normal person and dump the ants out, but I know I can't.

I'm painting a front room and I carefully relocate a little spider who had set up shop in the corner. I consider last year when I allowed two different mother spiders to raise their tiny young in the comfort and seclusion of the back room. I groan.

The problem is that insects and spiders, especially little ones, are just so fucking amazing. All that complicated stuff packed inside a little device that can spin webs, make little underground caverns, and yes, fly. Some of them can fly.

Dangerous ones... not so much, but yes: last year I felt something on my face and I casually brushed it. It fell onto my t-shirt. It was black. With a little red spot. Shit.

I did take it out back and earnestly telepath to it that I was sorry. I crushed her.

I'm still sorry. I need a priest.

I think if resigning would divert an asteroid on a collision course with earth, Trump wouldn't resign.

Everybody is just waiting to see what the investigation brings to light.

Sharia isn't merely a set of religious practices, it's a legal code that specifies offenses and punishments. — Sivad

M.Q. Zaman says it's mostly a set of customs. This has posed a challenge to the dream of some Pakastanis to fully institute Sharia: Pakastani judges are used to operating with codified law. It's part of their British heritage. Some suppose that in time Sharia could be codified, but it would be a massive undertaking.

I would expect that the vast majority of Muslims in the world would not earnestly wish to live without any law but Sharia because of its limitations. Slavery, for instance, can't be outlawed by Sharia.

But there is disagreement among Muslim scholars. This video is pretty long, but it's an interesting conversation.

Yes. Good point.

Maybe I missed the memo; but, does anyone else think 2001 is philosophical? — Question

I did send out a memo on that. Maybe it was eaten by a virus and transformed into a command to launch a nuclear strike on Sweden. Hope not.

Arthur C Clarke's story is somewhat dimmed by Kubrick's movie-making grandeur. Just watch it and don't try super hard to figure it out.

A group simply needs a unique style of pottery to be considered a culture by scholars. Is there an identifiable Islamic artistic style? Yes. It obviously has Persian roots, but it's a reflection of the aversion to iconography in Islam. Instead of "There is no Islamic culture"

How about: "What do you mean by Islamic culture, Wayfarer?"

I'm not sure if it's philosophical or psychological. Both?

Inception, Edge of Tomorrow, Pandorum, Interstellar

Some of us still cling to the hope and the heritage of the Enlightenment. And for us, clarity is itself a value. — Srap Tasmaner

Scientologists seek to eliminate irrationality from themselves and ultimately humanity, and the word they use for their goal is "clear." There are at least two sides to every story. If you only understand one side, you're only seeing 50% of the truth.

Imagine a flatscreen tv that's playing a talking head, announcing the last two sentences of the previous paragraph.

The postmodern aesthetic is hollow and sometimes intensely self-conscious. It is hard to put into words what goes on when the whole human psyche becomes a piano. By comparison, raw, earnest modernism is childish, but the best postmodern stuff is not being condescending at all. There's love in it.

You're hovering near a stoic viewpoint. Note that you don't actually have to provide anything logically satisfying.

Just point to the way people use the words and drop the mike.

True it now becomes impossible to have an intelligent discussion about the concepts on the table... but look at your interlocutor objectively. Was there ever any chance of an intelligent discussion? If not then you have lost nothing.

Does it have anything to do with your philosophical views or no?

Thanks for the movie recommendation...Ill keep my eye out for it. I have roku so I can search for it.

I didn't know you have it. When were you diagnosed?

Agustino asked me if we could have dinner so he could beg for his position on this forum. I asked him if I had his loyalty and he said no. I asked if he had me under investigation and he denied it. So I'm going to have to fire him.

Sorry ag, you're just too much of a grandstander.

Schizophrenia is a terrible disease.

Flee Agustino! There's nothing but assholes here.

Plants change sunlight into bird food. This planet changes sunlight into birds.

:)

No, it's not private, but it is certainly individual. An individual does not exist in a vacuum, and there is no objective viewpoint from which he can pronounce as if from on high, but any philosophical utterance will come from the individual viewpoint, warts and all, or not be philosophical.

This links with the first point. This intrinsic limitation of the philosopher's activity is a big part of the reason why it's not a science, but a search. We are always striving to divest ourselves from the accretion from external authorities and to refer to the immediate experience. — Mariner

I totally agree. Plato has Socrates say that all philosophers long for death because they long for a vantage point on life itself (the assumption being that this perspective is available to the departed.)

My experience with philosophy is that I experience some life, try to make sense of what I experienced, occasionally gain insight from reading a philosopher's writings, then go back and experience more life... over and over.

What's been your experience, if you don't mind?

Your third point resonates with me, but I wonder then about the way a philosopher speaks for a certain culture or generation. It's not a private perspective is it?

Perception of body medicine can also be flawed. Pregnant women don't need a cure, but their condition can be life threatening. Same for depression.

Thomas Moore said "cure" and "care" are etymologically related. Bla blah blah.

Japanese aesthetics says flawed is good.

Having no difficulty inflicting pain on animals is a sign of psychopathology that could manifest in more dramatic ways. So I'm keeping my eye on you.

Probably. There is something primal a person has to overcome in order to consciously inflict pain. It's a precarious path. The name for that thing in the shadows is insanity: loss of the ability to judge and therefore to function. Believe it or don't.

Dude is found to have numerous decapitated heads buried in his back yard. They're all from females and they're all facing his bedroom. Its hard to imagine what environment he would thrive in?

Think about how we measure the unmanifest or potential energy, say in the case of fluid dynamics.

Eh... I would have led you through it and even touched on how it relates to Aristotle. You would have come out the other side understanding this scientific model better than you ever have. But you had to be a jerk.