• Get Creative!
    Oh yeah, I released this new album. My best stuff yet...kind of wondering if I'll write music again...

    https://matthewanderson.bandcamp.com/album/the-window
  • The Shift: Does anyone feel that?


    Sounds like a change in your perception. And/or if you're putting out a different energy these days, people will respond differently, and your perception of them will change. Inner development is good!
  • Existential Ethics and Antinatalism


    Edit, nevermind, I see he was banned.
  • Existential Ethics and Antinatalism


    "Life is sacred". Claims like these feel supra-rational; i.e., rationality actually has nothing to say about such a claim, because it can't, via it's own rules. The claim functions above rational thought. For life to be sacred, it needs to be other than rational. And it certainly is so. This feels like a good beginning point.

    Not much, sorry @Wallows; I know you requested a response from me on this topic. And I know I brought in rationality on my own, there.

    I guess a natural rebuff to my post would be "why begin with 'sacred' as a concept"? And I would counter, "why begin anywhere else?" I'm a true existentialist, I guess...
  • The Unconscious at Work
    Jung is under-appreciated.
  • Bannings


    True, I'm just one of the few nostalgic types around here I guess. Or if anything, I think the sort of spiritual analogy of being "banned" hits me, or something. It's that pesky Christian-ese.
  • Bannings


    I agree that it was justified, and that he had a poor signal-to-noise ratio, at least in theory...I just find it sad, in a weird way, to see cantankerous folks who boiled my blood suddenly gone. I don't know, it's a weird paradox. Maybe the "iron sharpens iron" trope. Posters who were essentially my polar opposite getting banned makes me feel less...present.
  • Bannings
    I certainly didn't get along well with TS or S, but it's weirdly saddening to see them get banned, as long time posters. And I agree with @Wallows, I was waiting for that inaugural Terrapin OP...I think I even called him out on that once...
  • Game - sentence evolution
    Damn, I wanted to get in on this.
  • Abolish the Philosophy of Religion forum


    A disturbingly insane idea. There are lots of low quality phil of religion threads, of course, but you can't strong arm or wish-fulfill your way into the type of philosophical milieu you wish you existed in. The reality is that you exist in one where there's a large push (often from younger people) to ask these questions, albeit often poorly.

    The more interesting question is why all these threads exist.
  • I, God must be atheist, am quitting the site... I feel stupid compared to many of you here
    I've made plenty of ungracious exits, and then plenty of ungracious entrances afterwards. I'm pretty sure no one is enriched, but here I am. Btw, your name is an annoying non sequitur.
  • Job's Suffering: Is God Still Just?


    What I got out of Job, over many years of being brought up very Christian, was, weirdly, the Christian gospel narrative itself. Job as a blameless, "upright" dude nonetheless suffered greatly. So...his "works", his actions, didn't win him any favors; he still faced suffering. ("not by works alone", etc.) No matter how perfect he was, he still suffered. He wasn't exempt. He does function as a Christ figure, of sorts. But, outside of Christianity, this is a lesson that rings, if anything, even truer. The spirit of the story breathes even clearer: pain will find you; suffering will find you; you are not special, just because you follow the rules. And, as all religions attest to, the experience of suffering, if accepted humbly, leads to wisdom. And wisdom is a beautiful gift; an esoteric gift.
  • Purpose of humans is to create God on Earth


    Philip K. Dick has nothing on you. Let me know when your first (or latest) novel is out!
  • Get Creative!
    If you ever wanted to hear the art rock record I've been working on for four years (well before I began annoying the shit out of people on here) which I've finally completed...well, now you can listen to a pesky little sampler and then wait two weeks until you can actually listen to the whole album...

  • Preacher, why should anyone take your word for it?


    Preacher, why should anyone take your word for it?

    Much like Socrates, I'd take any really important information from some super-being, from that super-being.jorndoe

    Do you take this really important information directly from Socrates?
  • What are you listening to right now?


    Trash! Sounds like it was written by Max Martin? If not, his mark has been made.
  • Bird Songs, Human Tongues
    Question: Is music just a pattern of notes? It seems to be the case because it doesn't matter which frequencies form the basis of the piece so long as the intervals between notes are carefully crafted.TheMadFool

    I don't get what you mean. A single frequency forms the basis of a musical note, and then tons of other frequencies are built on it instantly based on a lot of factors (the harmonic series; the resonance of the instrument, the resonance of the room, frequency masking and it's result etc). Maybe you meant notes, not frequencies? If so I still don't get what you mean if you meant that "It doesn't matter which [notes] form the basis of the piece as long as the intervals between notes are carefully crafted". Why would it not matter? The difference in tone between D major and D flat major, for instance, is pretty huge, aesthetically. I'm probably missing your point here. But I also don't understand what "isn't music just a pattern of notes" means, either. As if reducing something like music to the mechanical workings of it, to mere acoustics, can define or explain music. So no, reducing music to it's mechanical acoustic properties doesn't create a canvas for building "speech music". I mean I guess you could just sing whatever you have to say?...
  • A transition from Agnosticism to Gnosticism.


    Get outside dude! I sometimes go on walks in the city for hours. Sometimes seeing a new corner of the city I've never laid eyes on sparks the imagination. Good for the soul if nothing else.
  • Bird Songs, Human Tongues
    Being a musician can you tell me the differences and similarities between music and language?TheMadFool

    I think I gave a few above. Generally, language conveys meaning, and music can maybe suggest some meaning (at best), but then things get hairy because language (body language, etc) can also suggest, and some music beats you over the head.

    Music is about harmony between sounds. A musical note, A for example, by itself isn't music but if followed by other notes in a particular order we get music. As far as I know notes are particular frequencies.TheMadFool

    I don't wanna split hairs, but I consider drone music to be music. So, if you sit on A for 12 minutes...and you make it sound nice...it's music. Maybe music is about an emotional response to sound? Maybe.

    In English for example the sound "K" is distinguishable at any frequency of the musical scale. That's how songs work rightTheMadFool

    If I can get metaphorical, then no. Musical keys, for instance, possess their own "personalities". The classic example is that D major is "bright" and "intense", whereas D flat major (one half step down, so one "step" in the western scale down) is considered "lush" and "beautiful". Tones seem to depend on their scale location in terms of how they're experienced by listeners.
  • Ethics and Knowledge, God


    But how did you arrive at that conclusion?
  • Hate the red template


    I do. I was a little buzzed last 'eve.
  • The power of truth
    I mean what you say may be so for yourself, but are you entitled to extrapolate that it must therefore be so for others?Janus

    I don't see how this is an argument because i can turn the reverse around on you, no? Can you extrapolate that it must therefore be so for others "for yourself", within your view?

    But, as a quick argument for my position... I would say that "reverence" is a concept that originally obtained within a religious context. Reverence suggests something "holy", something "set apart". You can make an argument that "nature" or "humanity" fill the role of something "set apart", maybe, but you're still indebted to the original religious context, and so, at the least, you're required to show how the old religious context of this concept is out dated, and how your new context of understanding this concept holds new water. If that makes sense.

    Besides the idea of nature is not necessarily confined to phenomena (See Spinoza).Janus

    Was just using your language there.
  • The power of truth
    The only other candidates for absolutes would seem to be nature and humanity. Can they also be counted as divinities, worthy of our reverence? Reverence for all of nature, including humanity, would seem to be the most useful influence I can imagine right now, given the current looming convergence of crises that have resulted precisely because of a general lack of this kind of reverence.Janus

    I'm pretty dubious that the concept of having reverence can obtain (or not be a lie to oneself) without a concept beyond the given (nature) or the personal/relational (humanity).
  • Hate the red template
    Congratulations on discovering a colour that expresses equally the notions of cancer and diarrhea while dressing its inherent abomination up as an innocuous neutrality. This is surely the colour of evil. I need a drink.Baden

    I literally lol'd.



    I know how to do a lot of crazy shit with digital audio, but I don't know the first thing about "warm" colors. You might as well have said...any other word. But yeah, it looks like s***.
  • Hate the red template


    Sometimes it's grey.....
  • Hate the red template


    What, the color of poop?
  • Hate the red template
    Yoaw this gr/a/e/y just makes me feel even more boring than I actually am. Maybe this is actually the ideal TPF color though? Boring AF? Or, alternatively, wouldn't it be more ideal to choose a color that makes people think we're less boring than we actually are? Without, of course, slipping to the other extreme and trying to frame ourselves as "red" people (god forbid). What about a nice magenta? Is that back in style yet?? Oh! What about whatever the fuck it was before this disastrous change??
  • Hate the red template
    The reticence of red @'s are still problematic, oh powers that be.
  • Hate the red template
    What is this? Gray? Grey? I can't fucking tell. I'm so ungrateful.
  • Hate the red template
    Yoaw this red is so bad
  • Hate the red template


    Or my homeboi Berdyaev?
  • Hate the red template
    I feel like red is literally my least favorite color.
  • Ethics and Knowledge, God


    The God concept arrived at via reason is a dead god.
  • Bird Songs, Human Tongues
    Spoken language isn't really music for the simple reason that no one buys recorded speeches or ordinary conversations for their musical value. However there's a possibility of an unknown determinator we may be unaware of or perhaps what is frankly music and what is language fall on a spectrum of what is music.TheMadFool

    Doesn't poetry, or rap, span the gap and blur the line? I mean, to your credit, clearly spoken language (like for instance if you and I were having this conversation in person) would not be particularly musical. So spoken language as such, to me, remains a neutral. But as soon as cadence is introduced, or rhythm...essentially, it's possible for language to acquire a musical quality in a non musical setting. I guess as a musician I find that significant, but maybe not so much for others. But it does bring up an annoying question of "when" music "begins". And no, no one buys recorded speeches for their musical quality, but spoken word is, in fact, a sub genre of various musical genres. So, spoken word can function musically, even when not functioning poetically in a strict sense. I guess I'm splitting hairs here.

    However, language can be spoken even by the worst singer on earth.TheMadFool

    So what evidence can you supply that the worst singer on earth will learn to sing in order to follow the evolutionary development of language becoming music? Using your argument, how will the NON-musically inclined learn to use music as language? This whole idea in particular seems particularly nonsensical to me.
  • A Genderless God
    Yow where @Bridget Eagles at tho...