'Time' as I am using it is a blunt force, unreasonable, and indifferent to stones, murder, love, hate, war...

I think of it as metaphysical, as the opposite of God, order, law, perfection, necessity.

Depends on what you think "Time" is.

Same as it was before, just time.

Time is a menace, destroys everything, fully indifferent to all that occurs in it, & wholly necessary.

I don't believe in nothing.

I think the opposite of God is time...but I like your story.

What's the opposite of God, for you.

What is the opposite of God?

It does not say, that x or y omnipotence can do this and that and x or y can not to his and that, it says bot of them is possible.

If both are possible, then neither of them are necessary.

If it is the 1st Cause, then isn't every subsequent caused, less.

What's "A mental stimulus"

If there is one, then there is a way to make an other one.

Why bother?

Homersapien: Scientists have found that D'Oh may have been one of the first words spoken by humans

.

... what is the origin of the spiritual sense of beauty?

A beautiful work of art does not correspond to our judgement's sense of a normative concept in the referent as presented. The tree is no longer a tree in a work of art. The law, the limit of the concept in judgement is freely transcended by the beauty in the work, and this transcendence is pleasurable. It drives our imagination, and in doing so it opens up cognitive space, illuminating what was not previously seen, enabling new concepts. The spirituality of a beautiful work of art, its aura. is that excess, or transcendence over our normative concepts, made possible by the work of art.

Funny:

I don't disagree, I too think that something of the original sexual physical orientation remains, it makes the new gender reality possible.

Grayson Perry is a very talented potter, a transvestite and a very insightful person. He won the 2003 Turnner Prize. He accepted it in drag, as his alter ego Claire. His wife (a psychiatrist) and his daughter were in attendance. S/he also met the Queen, there was no big deal, it was not discussed

Grayson says that now he is expected to show up in drag, which he indicates kinda takes the edge off being in drag. Obtaining his notoriety has robbed him of his mystery. People are part of the fantasy. how people want to be perceived. The mystery 'thing' interested me.

Anyway, I told my friend I would support him as long as s/he does not become a drama queen.

Yes, I guess so. A very good friend of mine told me recently that s/he has been taking hormones to become a women and is now going on a 2 year program to do the full make over.

The interesting part is that s/he continues to be attracted to women, so s/he is transforming into a lesbian.

S/He says he has been depressed for years, but since taking the hormones s/he is no longer depressed.

Sexual reassignment surgery.

Before the internet age, art was, in a sense, rare. It was rare in the sense that you had to travel to an art museum or a concert hall to experience it. It was possible to be a fan of music, or even a composer or performer yourself, and only get the chance to see your favorite orchestral pieces performed maybe a few times in your life. And to know that that piece was one of your favorites, you had to have gone to see it without knowing whether you'd like it, and you also had to be familiar with enough other material to compare and to understand what you liked.

Prior to the internet there were libraries and recorded music available in listening rooms. I remember sitting in a room filled with thousands of volumes of art books it was fantastic. I don't think the internet's rendition of fine art have reached the quality of a well printed art book.

The internet has made seeing art and listening to great music vastly easier. It has given everyone the ability to view all kinds of art works, without spending a fortune, or leaving the house.

All this is limited,and with the exception of the literary arts, art as represented in mass reproduction in books, on the TV or other medium is not the same as 'the real thing'. There is literally nothing like standing in front of Guernica's encompassing massiveness.

Gender is a question of desire, which can be literalized. A Transsexual is not limited by a desire.

We can change our sex really and therefore gender, physically by taking the right hormones, having the genitals and other physical features modified. What the transsexual desires can become literally the way they are, they are not limited to subjective desire..

Gender is a question of desire, which can be literalized. A Transsexual is not limited by a desire.

[reply="Bitter Crank;9717

Italians have better food. I'll take baccala (at least its not treated with lye, my stomach just rolled), you can keep your lutefisk, and the cream herring too. Give me a lasagna, spaghetti with meatballs, pasta, pizza, tomatoes mozzarella, the best wine & women in the world!...just fuhgettaboutit, the Italian got the credit because Italians have the best food in the world and the biggest mouths.

That's crap, and you have said nothing, the funny thing is that I think you realize this. The United States is a representational form of government. To now use that form of rule as defective is worst than Trump's attempt to portrait his conviction as truth.

OK, then, forget the argument that it is immoral....that these mementos still offend a significant section of our population... that they blatantly blaspheme Lincoln's words.

It "ends" with the people who have to live and work in their presence. If these people don't want these mementos, then they ought to have the right to have them removed. If this is still a country of the people, by the people for the people, and they voted to remove the statue, then it ought to be removed.. In the same manner as the State of Georgia recently stopped flying the Confederate Flag on its statehouse. I don't believe there is logical or moral argument or any other rational argument that over rules their collective of choice of how they wish to live, what they want to see everyday.

That's why these statues are coming down in many Southern States.

Note I have not said that these statues necessary need to be destroyed (although I think it would be preferential) but rather archived, as someone suggested...as in a museum or equivalent. Where maybe they could be understood in their proper context, but I am not even sure of that.

Well then how could you have said "By all accounts..." ?

But don't you see that approximately 15% of our population is black, many descendants of slaves who were treated immorally and were continually mistreated even after the war and many claim are still being mistreated by the majority. The cities/states where these monuments and other symbols are located have every right to remove them from their daily lives. Let these mementos be archived put them in a swamp, the desert or wherever.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

In my "ignorance", I believe that this monument, the Confederate Flag, and the other mementos, materially mock Lincoln's words.

Nature Neuroscience, patients who had been blind since birth underwent sight-restoring surgeries as children or adolescent. In the day or two following surgery, patients seemed unable to match what they felt with their hands with what they saw, the researchers found, but a week later, they could.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/04/11/when-the-blind-suddenly-see-do-they-know-what-theyre-looking-at/#.WZMlr1GGPlJ

Apparently the brain rewires itself which takes a little time, but not too long.

Trump finally denounced the KKK and their White Supremacist cohorts for their actions in Charlottesville yesterday, but he tweeted nothing about it and he tweets about everything.

Instead last night he retweeted Jack Posobiec tweet from Saturday night:

Meanwhile: 39 shooting in Chicago this weekend, 9 deaths. No national media outrage. Why is that?

Jack Posobiec is an American alt-right, pro-Donald Trump Internet activist and conspiracy theorist known primarily for his controversial comments on Twitter. Wikipedia

Trump denounces alt-right movements but then he marginalized the events in Charlottesville by contrasting them to the horrific, but not ideologically inspired, violence in Chicago. I think this legitimizes the alt-position and provide it with a kind of Pyrrhic victory.

Compare this to Obama's tweet on 8/12 where he quoted Nelson Mandela: [tweeted part in bold]

"No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or background or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite," read the tweet, quoting a line of text from Mandela's autobiography, "Long Walk to Freedom."

Twitter noted that Obama's tweet was the most liked tweet they have ever recorded since starting, with 2.5 million likes and climbing.

Hi Prothero.

By all accounts Robert E. Lee was an honorable man

Take a look at this article.

It is via language acquisition that we learn what to call things, how to behave in certain situations, what's considered acceptable and/or unacceptable, what to aspire towards and what to avoid, how to get what we want, etc

I think that during language acquisition we learn to normatively associate emotional import to certain words. There are a lot of words, but I think the baby concentrates on certain 'emotively charged words' (love, hate. and so on) and how they are used. The big word for a child is "No", it is said in many ways to the child, the child learns by observing the context and the inflection, the countenance of the speaker the speaker's intent. Determinate negation is learned.

The concept of what ought to be done is learned.

I would also say that there are times when one's emotion is the sole cause effecting/affecting one's behaviour, with and/or without metacognition.

So action without reflection based on emotion, but any such action must be in response to something, We may not be totally aware or even conscious of the cause.

The OP is about the mechanics of thought/belief. There must be a difference between beliefs based on experience (that particular tree) versus those which are understood discursively (formally, the universal 'trees'). We must presuppose an orderly world, because that is what we find.

The Atlantic Magazine was established in 1857, it is a well regarded moderate publication. The letter and information I referenced were taken from it.

The Lost Cause myth based on the work of historian'David Blight writes in his 2001 book Race and Reunion,

Shortly after the war, Blight writes, former Confederate Gen. Jubal Early gained control of the Southern Historical Society and used it to "launch a propaganda assault on popular history and memory." Later groups like the United Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy worked to "control historical interpretation of the Civil War." In this interpretation, popularly known as "Lost Cause" mythology, the Confederacy was fighting for some vague conception of liberty, not the right to own slaves; its soldiers were unparalleled warriors defending their homeland who were only defeated because of the Union's structural advantages; and the postwar subjugation of black Americans was a necessary response to lawlessness.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/adamserwer/why-were-finally-taking-down-confederate-flags?utm_term=.cck3zzZk#.ajwpddVZ

Lee said what I quoted ....here is the letter read it for yourself. http://fair-use.org/robert-e-lee/letter-to-his-wife-on-slavery.

And of course it tiredly brings up familial separation as the only dig on Lee's character, without even discussing why families were often separated in the first place.

The forced separation of families was tragic. You can't white wash the calamity of slavery with false truths, that was tried and it failed.

Put the statue in a swamp.

The Civil War was the bloodiest war in US history.

“The traditional estimate has become iconic,” historian J. David Hacker said. “It’s been quoted for the last hundred years or more. If you go with that total for a minute—620,000—the number of men dying in the Civil War is more than in all other American wars from the American Revolution through the Korean War combined. And consider that the American population in 1860 was about 31 million people, about one-tenth the size it is today. If the war were fought today, the number of deaths would total 6.2 million.”

Robert E Lee who is often thought of as a brilliant tactician made one significant tactical error, he joined the wrong side. (The South after the War generated a myth, which stuck. It was that the Rebel soldiers were fighting for their home, and not an economic system which relied on slavery...the "Lost Cause", which is still bandied about)

Lee's character is part of the historic myth.

He was a slave owner and wrote the following is from a letter (which is ofter misquoted) he wrote in 1856.

I think it however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild & melting influence of Christianity, than the storms & tempests of fiery Controversy.

So slavery was bad for white people and good for black people, only God can change that.

The following from the Atlantic Magizine June 4th, 2017.

Lee’s cruelty as a slavemaster was not confined to physical punishment. In Reading the Man, the historian Elizabeth Brown Pryor’s portrait of Lee through his writings, Pryor writes that “Lee ruptured the Washington and Custis tradition of respecting slave families,” by hiring them off to other plantations, and that “by 1860 he had broken up every family but one on the estate, some of whom had been together since Mount Vernon days.” The separation of slave families was one of the most unfathomably devastating aspects of slavery, and Pryor wrote that Lee’s slaves regarded him as “the worst man I ever see.”

It is hardly a wonder that cities such as Charlottesville do not wish to be associated with Robert E Lee, his statue or anything else that has to do with him.

Sorry, not teaching tonight.

A witch hunt to try to remove any historical sign of oppression and injustice is not the path to healing, better relations between diverse groups, and a more just society.

Germany does not allow statues of Hitler. They think it will not help them heal. They will not forget the what happened.

The town decided to have the statue removed. they live there, its their decision and I think it is the right one!

Put it in a swamp.

Statues are symbols, read in the context to which I replied.

It's not up to me, the town planned to remove the statue....these thugs came in and created holy hell. I don't see any statues of Hitler up in Germany.

I don't dispute that he made his choice, but it was the wrong choice. It was a choice based on an immoral economic system. To now treat him as a symbol, begs the question.

Ok, 155 years ago.

I agree, he was a traitor, who fought against our country. He should have been hanged.

The upcoming removal of the statue was the reason why the White Supremacists, KKK and others went to Charlottesville, The lady went to stand up for the statues removal, 'They' killed her.

So yes, while the statue did not fall on her, it was indirectly contributory to her death. If the statue was not there she would still be with us.

Tell that to the family of the lady who was killed or the other injured.

Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.

TA-NEHISI COATES

You don't have to look that far to see that gerrymandering in some states is skewed to the determent of poorer, blacker neighborhoods. The FED still has to monitor bank's lending due to Red Lining. The Wells Fargo Bank paid $135 million and Bank of America $335 million to settle discrimination suits in 2011, but the damage was already done.

'Tear down that statue'

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 enacted July 2, 1964 is a landmark civil rights and US labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. That changed things.

Beside Robert E Lee was a traitor, a turn coat...who should be abhorred as much as Benedict Arnold. Let the polliwogs in a swamp adulate to him.

(P.S. Maybe Mr. T will join them)