Unsatisfying Crap!

When a nation has a nice sense of humor,
Horse's drag manure through their fields.
When a nation loses its sense of humor,
Horses bear soldiers through its streets.
There is no greater folly than ignoring our own horseshit!
There is no greater disaster than losing our sense of humor!
There is no greater sickness on earth,
Than buying unsatisfying crap nobody wants!
Poisoning the very ground and each other,
Feeling incapable of ever stopping!

Physics describes everything in the universe as expressing entropy, or crap rolling downhill, that can suddenly transform into poetry in motion and vice versa. Not only that, it expresses synergistic-normalization where even synergy appears to diminish its own contents and produce crap results. Its what the I-Ching describes as, "The Turning Point" and what physicists call the lowest possible energy state of the complete system. Two pendulums hung on the same wall are the classic example in physics of this principle of nonsensical synergy that diminishes its own impact or what can also be described as synergistic-normalization or yin-yang push-pull dynamics or just plain shit happening with another example being relaxing on a couch when some damned fool startles you and you hit the ceiling.

Its what can cause the smallest molehill to grow into a giant mountain of bullshit overnight and either come crashing down on you all at once or vanish inexplicably in the light of day. Feynman described the process of modern science documenting this phenomenon as attempting to prove all our theories are wrong just as fast as we can. The cartoon characters of Tom and Jerry illustrate this principle by chasing one another in circles until you can't even tell if they are just running for fun. The identity of anything and everything goes down the nearest cartoon rabbit hole or toilet of your personal preference. Sometimes crap rolling downhill can suddenly transform into poetry in motion and back again so rapidly that it makes 90% of this game half-mental which, of course, means that Murphy really was an optimist according to the standards of modern science.

Perhaps you should do some reading. — Wayfarer

I see nothing there that elucidates Buddhist views of metaphysics. Without a clear distinction of what constitutes metaphysics Buddhism is merely so much mysticism no matter how complex their logic happens to be. I can point to a stone and say that's a rock and everyone can understand what the word means to me. I can also rock back and forth in a rocking chair and say that is a rock and everyone can grasp what I'm saying, but without Buddhism being able to make such simple distinctions between what is fantasy and reality, real and a dream, even in specific contexts all their words are meaningless gibberish.

All around the mulberry bush!

'Maya' is not a Buddhist term at all. Sure there may be millions of un-informed Buddhists, but that doesn't justify relativism. Buddhism has a definite scope and content. — Wayfarer

Without a clear statement of a Buddhist stance on metaphysics it has no demonstrable scope or content!

Not so. I think even the most skeptical readings of Buddhism reveal a common, identifiable and unique set of ideas, principle of which is 'dependent origination'. There is a definite 'sasana' (dispensation). — Wayfarer

Every Buddhist I've ever talked to has refused to acknowledge that the concept of maya is a clear metaphysical distinction between reality and illusion. Without a clear definition of their terminology its all just so much mysticism to me no matter how many people might believe what they say has some sort of meaning. According to the National Science Foundation one in five Americans insists the sun revolves around the earth!

I thought he asked the person who was there to tell his friends he had a good life.

Dictionaries, though, or at least good ones, attempt to account for context by giving examples of use and alternate definitions. Unless we maintain that circumstances of use of a particular word are always significantly dissimilar, which would seem to be to maintain effective communication is impossible or sporadic, that's about the best we can do at least as far as "ordinary language" is concerned. So I think it's useful to consult a dictionary particularly where issues like "the meaning of life" are being addressed. At the least, we can learn whether what we are addressing bears any relation to the common use or some common uses of the words we're using. That provides clarification if nothing more. — Ciceronianus the White

Even Jesus was supposedly tempted on the cross and just about everyone has last regrets no matter how good a life they live.

It used to be more common for dictionaries to provide definitions listed according to how they were used historically, but publishers like to sell their books and too many people insist history is boring and not terribly useful for what they wish to use a dictionary for. The examples they give in dictionaries provide clues as to syntax from which grammar can be extrapolated because grammar is derived from its proximity to syntax. Its pattern matching which is why words only have demonstrable meaning in specific contexts.

When we assemble words into sentences to communicate something they lend one another more meaning, but the fact remains no matter how loud you yell at someone who doesn't speak English they can't understand a word you are saying. A hologram of a featureless ball provides a graphic example of how this works. If you chop up a holographic film containing such an image each piece retains the overall image of a ball, just fuzzier and less distinct the smaller the pieces become. Like the Cheshire Cat's grin, the last thing to vanish as you keep chopping the film up into smaller and smaller pieces is the symmetry of the ball. This is similar to what physicists call supersymmetry and those who simply refuse to believe such a thing is possible can't understand a word you are saying!

It reminds me of a 12 year old boy whose parents had to take him to see a psychiatrist when he suddenly refused to speak English and started using only the computer programming language of "Basic". That's what happens when you refuse to acknowledge that words don't have any intrinsic meaning and life doesn't always make sense.

Language as circular logic, what a great idea! Deja Vu, that feeling that you've.... Deja Vu, that feeling that you've...

I would have hoped he would at least have said something witty about Ogden and Richards.

I wonder, though, what you intend to convey by referring to "merely" the "most popular definition of words." Is the most unpopular definition better, or greater, in some fashion? Is the popular definition the wrong definition? How unfortunate it is, then, that we have dictionaries. Where do I find the appropriate definition of words? — Ciceronianus the White

Perhaps he was referring to them when he said, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent!" I always interpreted him myself as meaning that some jokes should never be repeated, while others should never be told the first time, but you never know.

Dictionaries are great references, but words only have demonstrable meaning in specific context. If it were otherwise we'd have some sort of clear system we could use to choose which specific definition works best for any particular thing we wish to communicate. Something Wittgenstein understood and which contradicts categorization. Hence, the reason many find his philosophy incomprehensible and claim he was a mystic, while others complain his philosophy is like reading an auto-repair manual. Personally, I think its just more dry, dry, dry academic humor and, on his deathbed, his last regret was not formulating it as a comedy.

The common dictionary merely contains the most popular definitions of words listed according to their popularity. Philosophy by popular consensus is a new one on me. The story goes that when Wittgenstein was asked the meaning of meaning he quipped, "What do you mean by what is the meaning of meaning?"

Existentialist angst can be viewed as merely a dark school of comedy and, unless you can categorize emotions logically, whether or not they make any sense remains debatable, especially in light of the fact the US government has classified certain jokes a "Vital to the National Defense" and a recent theory of humor has established that its about perceiving something as being low in entropy. The implication is that categorization alone can't describe everything observable which, of course, is the same implication as quantum mechanics and even Godel's Incompleteness theorem.

Buddhism is whatever Buddhists say it is making it difficult to determine where and when it originated. Lao Tzu came close to saying, "The past is merely a memory, the future only a dream", but he most certainly did not say those exact words because the Tao that can be spoken of is not the eternal Tao and Taoists frequently find themselves having to explain that to Buddhists who like to think their religion expresses everything.

Britannia no longer rules the waves and the banks and international conglomerates are running everything. Either way you're screwed so the question is would like it in the front or the back end? If things get really bad I'm sure the majority will bend over and grease their ass like everyone else so I don't really understand the question. Sometimes its just best if to let people complain and cry first and only apply the restraints if absolutely necessary.

What we call conscious thought and unconscious intuition is merely a question of context. Socrates said knowledge is the only good and, I would add, ignorance is the only evil. Know thyself for habits are end of honesty and compassion, the beginning of total confusion. Meta-ethics without self-knowledge are merely mortality by another name.

One of the more controversial aspects of Taoism in particular is that it implies the secular and religious, metaphysical and mystical, are indivisible complimentary-opposites constantly at war with one another, yet, depending upon one another for their ability to thrive and survive. They form what many today might describe as a dysfunctional relationship with both totalitarian religious and atheist communist countries now largely relegated to the third, while the US with its strong traditions of rugged individualism and separation of church and state has become a world empire by pitting their own secular institutions against religious ones.

Note this can also explain why Islam has thrived largely in the third world using the argument that neither laze fare capitalism nor atheist communism can provide any real sense of community without something like Sharia law being imposed. Its Three Stooges slapstick based on a chicken flock memory centric hierarchy which also happens to describe how our neurons organize. The behavior of a chicken is not significantly different from any one of its own neurons because its a scalar or analog architecture and it reflects the fact they are relying heavily on their collective memories.

Yin will always transform into yang in extreme contexts explaining why today in China long avowed atheists are converting to Christianity in record numbers, often complaining they can no longer rely upon their increasingly capitalistic government to instill values in their children. The majority of thriving democracies in the developed world are increasingly secular, however, they are neither especially atheist either. Their agnostic populations tend to double within a generation to roughly 30% and the majority either describe themselves as merely spiritual or agnostic. It seems the minute their governments start providing a comprehensive safety net they abandon organized religion like a dead weight and, in the US, the poor have largely abandoned church services and have become famous for watching televangelists in their social security offices. Meanwhile, the embattled middle class has been attending services in record numbers with the young abandoning fundamentalist churches en mass complaining the pulpit has become a political stump.

Dawkins is an idiot like so many atheists I've come across and the New Atheists have been called "A Betrayal of the Enlightenment". In extreme situations yin will transform into yang explaining why the atheists rely upon essentially the same tactics as their fundamentalist competition of re-interpreting the common dictionary to suit their agenda and becoming notorious as online trolls arguing for argument's sake. Next I expect them to start going door to door just like the fundamentalists. Psychologists have repeatedly complained that fundamentalism meets all their criteria for a mental disease, but so does militant atheism if you ask me.

Although philosophy is love of wisdom it doesn't follow that philosophers would be wise. — jkop

They say in China today you can still come across the occasional vagabond meditating in the woods, but if you ask them if they are Zen or Taoist they will likely chase you away with a stick yelling, "NO! I'm just me! Go away!"

Socrates refused all payment for teaching, didn't even support literacy, never wrote down his philosophy, and was normally as quiet as a church mouse preferring to simply ask questions or spout the same lame jokes repeatedly.

Without a personal truth philosophy and wisdom are merely words politicians spout while, with one, its possible to change the world for the better.

science is more useful to us because it has reliable predictive power — VagabondSpectre

Science is merely a tool and without the wisdom to use it we have world wars.

Humor and beauty are indivisible complimentary-opposites and modern academia have merely turned the art of denial into a science for profit. That's why both Socrates and Lao Tzu were able to run circles around them even thousands of years ago using ancient tribal wisdom.

This year a guy in charge of a US nuclear missile silo was shot and killed by his counterpart for attempting to launch. Dr Strangelove and McArthur are merely the more prominent examples that are harder for corporations and governments to censor from the public.

Its the new nuclear threat. The US has come close to nuclear war perhaps half a dozen times including once when some general in command of a base decided it was best to just get it over with and send all the commies to hell. The US, Russia, and China have been hacking one another to death in recent years with the EU complaining the US is even taping their phone systems and giving their industrial secrets to US companies. The US is close, if they haven't done so already, to producing a quantum computer capable of cracking any encryption code on the planet and Putin is starting to feel like Saddam Hussein, that is, just another turkey about to be served at Thanks Giving dinner.

Despite Americans constantly insisting that every vote matters and they must choose from among the lesser of many evils, there is no evidence whatsoever to support that assertion. The only study I've even heard of that addressed the issue asked people ahead of time how they planned to vote, if at all, and then went back again after the election. They found the so-called "apathetic voters" were correct and no matter how they might have voted they could never have made the slightest difference in the outcome. This isn't rocket science people, but simple statistics, and the complete lack of such studies reflects the will of the American people.

Other studies support the same conclusion with less direct in-your-face evidence such as a twenty year study by Princeton that concluded no matter who was elected to office only the top 10% of the wealthiest ever got anything they wanted. Some 60% of Americans consistently insist that the government and mass media they call "evil" lie to them for their own protection even when as few as 7% approve of their own congress. Its Three Stooges slapstick of see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil explaining why a huge professional wrestling fan and reality TV star has absconded with the republican party. The lights are on, but nobody is home and in ten years of asking people if they even know the simple distinction between a lynch mob and democracy I have yet to hear the correct answer.

Notably, Americans have always tended to vote along strictly racial and religious lines, yet, whichever candidate advertises more tends to win. The truth simply no longer matters when the only way to sway an election differently is to advertise more than your opponent. Its the mentality of cattle merely following the food right over the cliff when they stampede and arguing about who is blame all the way down.

When is a joke not simply a joke? This year the federal government finally admitted they have classified a few jokes as "Vital to the National Defense" due to the mathematics they express being used to develop weapons. This is the same thing that Planck ran across when he discovered quantum mechanics and begged his colleges to please explain the joke.

Already the first quantifiable theory of humor has been established and two computers have been constructed which spit out better than average jokes and serious western academia, politics, religion, and philosophy will never be the same again nor will Vaudeville apparently because it is now possible to earn a degree in comedy.

Philosophy can have a sense of humor.

Richard Feynman said the minute you think you understand quantum mechanics you are wrong! The corollary joke being if you believe you don't understand then you do understand, because it never made any sense to begin with! Hence, for you to get a moratorium on me talking about quantum mechanics you would first have to prove that I am talking about something intelligible. :)

Some hippies like the Rainbow Family Tribe are anarchists that embrace some tribal traditions and often see the world from a much more tribal viewpoint in general. In the Rainbow Family's tradition many are Socratic-Taoists because both the wisdom of Socrates and Taoism came from tribal traditions. We can sit around in the same room and all casually note that time is passing in a more organic fashion than usual. For us it is merely mother nature or yin-yang dynamics expressing themselves in a somewhat more unusual manner like seeing a double rainbow or whatever. Time is not what westerners think, but much more complex as even quantum mechanics has established and Asians in general will often testify to. We understand the western ideas about time, and know from everyday experience its just their personal bullshit about everything having to make metaphysical sense.

But I wonder if they thought that each new day is a new day or as the same day restarting all over, same chores, (milk the cow, pitch the hay, plant, hoe...) with nothing new....time as the cycle/rhythm of life, and the monuments marking the return of something already started rather than the forward progression of time? Maybe it became progressive once trading with others became normalized. — Cavacava

Over half the world doesn't perceive time as linear as westerners do. It is more organic and there are times when time behaves more like it has a life of its own. This is something tribal hippies experience frequently, but few other westerners. It is the greater context determining its own content or what can appear to be synergy normalizing itself. The future can be viewed as both static juxtapositions and flow dynamics or bandwidth capacity that increases and decreases in different ways including metamorphic effects.

Constructal Theory by Adrian Bejan is closer to the issue by western philosophical standards and has been proposed as an amendment to the second law of thermodynamics.

We are the world, we are the children of a greater truth,
Our beautiful words hang in the air between us,
Defying even unbalanced gravity herself.
Rainbows of beautiful words that say what words cannot.
Sparkling laughter that becomes infectious,
Delightful giggles echo, rolling across the floor.

Time is the fire within which we burn, while memory is the ice within which we freeze. One without the other is simply impossible like having an up without a down or back without a front. We dance round in a ring and suppose, while the secret sits in the middle and knows.

Stephen Pepper is a famous Contextualist author in the line of Wittgenstein who wrote "World Hypothesis" describing four rudimentary worldviews. Treating every word as a variable with no intrinsic meaning or value empowers Contextualism to do a complete end run around metaphysics altogether because the greater evolving context is always sufficient to describe everything observable. Its a bit like staring into infinity and seeing the same four patterns repeating until they're lost in the distance and can be equally well described as pattern matching ruling the universe. Four fold symmetry reflects the convergence of infinite dimensions within the intrinsic mathematics or what is known in physics as supersymmetry.

There must be a four fold symmetry applicable to everything if there are such things as higher dimensions or even if the universe is to keep that a mystery and this can be described as part of the metaphoric logic of existence itself. In a metaphorical universe every dimension or universe would inevitably transform into its complimentary-opposite of nonexistence and everything would appear to organize around what apparently does not exist such as the future. Among other things, in physics it would explain the mass of the Higgs Boson as reflecting the fact that symmetry and asymmetry are so fundamental it will require cosmic ray energy levels to observe symmetry vanishing into indeterminacy. It also means, if you prefer, you can describe philosophy as concerned with Metaphorical Fuzzy Factual Metaethical Bullshit Values because analog yin-yang logic rules the universe.

Notably, on his deathbed, Wittgenstein's last regret was not formulating his philosophy as comedy.

We are all climbing the same mountain with many paths to choose from, our feet shape the path as the way shapes our feet while, when you don't know where you are going, you just might get there making 90% of this game half mental. :)

Sorry, but you are wrong about how the brain works according to all the neurology. The human brain is organized on a fundamental level as an analog self-organizing systems logic analogous to a distributed gain amplifier that obeys Bayesian probabilities vanishing into indeterminacy. But all that can be considered a fancy way to say our neurons search for what's missing from this picture by first generating enormously complex patterns and then comparing them. Its metaphoric logic that suggests the mind and brain are the particle-wave duality of quantum mechanics.

Another implication is that synergy can work in reverse as well and, for example, a child attached to their small toy as the meaning of life itself will, nonetheless, grow up to embrace bigger and better things. Whether they want their toy to become less meaningful for them or not their attachment will slowly fade and become more abstract until it can be lost like a drop of water in the ocean. The collective synergy of all their growing thoughts and feelings actually blunts or normalizes their individual impact which, in physics, are known as yin-yang push-pull dynamics. Synergy is transforming into normalization and vice versa obeying a principle of the Conservation of Efficiency and Creativity. That is, everything that exists resembles the creativity of a Big Bang and finale of a Big Crunch because everything organizes around what's missing from this picture.

Time is the greater context and its contents transforming into one another with quantum mechanics providing the best example. The Quantum Zeno Effect ensures that a watched pot never boils while, normally, quanta won't stop moving. Quantum mechanics are formulated in infinite Hilbert spaces or dimensions, while their mathematics show no preference whatsoever for the arrow of time. The implication is that even if time is running backwards and forwards simultaneously we only see it moving forward because our minds don't work backwards. Space and time are conflating their identities which explains why we have nonlinear temporal effects like this and those of Relativity.

We perceive everything changing because a static universe is inconceivable, but we also see hints of one such as Mach's Conjecture because the only thing we can ultimately know is that we know nothing. Mother nature's sense of humor is every bit as wicked as she can be beautiful. This also explains things such as why its impossible to achieve a perfect vacuum, the speed of light, etc. as all merely the fact a context without any significant content and vice versa is simply a contradiction.

He's accomplished as well, but wasn't when started out. Neither were the Beatles. Leonard Cohen is right, it is like pinning a medal on Mount Everest.

I don't think you can sensibly refer to the process you described as involving "recursive metaphors"; an unfolding context that reveals the specificity of a metaphorical meaning does not involve recursion in terms of the metaphor itself. That would be something like the meaning of the metaphor being applied to itself and thereby performing the function of illiciting further layers of meaning. This is not what's happening in the resolution of contextual vagueness; what's happening is simply the revelation of further information which narrows down the possible scope of meaning.

As for grammar and syntax, the latter is part of the former, so of course they are inextricably related. When you talk about syntax, you are by definition talking about grammar. So, I don't know what you mean by "grammar is related to the proximity of syntax" or how it relates to the rest of what you said. What is the "proximity of syntax"? The proximity of syntax to what? (i.e. What are you suggesting syntax (the rules concerning clause and sentence formation) is close to)? And how does that relate to grammar in any way other and above being a part of grammar? — Baden

Ah good, someone who knows more about the subject than I do in some ways!

Life, the universe, and everything can be considered a metaphor from which all other metaphors can be derived. For example, for me life is the paradox of our existence making everything ultimately paradoxical and part of a universal recursion in the law of identity. The Taoists formulated a recursive metaphoric logic using this approach 12,000 years ago. Another way of expressing the same concept is that everything that exists is context dependent.

This is analog logic from which digital or dualistic classical logic can be derived and expresses how the human mind and brain are actually organized, while you are talking about them from the opposite point of view as if dualistic logic ruled the universe which is demonstrably false. Grammar is derived from syntax which is ultimately based upon metaphoric logic and merely concerns how different parts of speech and concepts are put together to make more sense out them.

http://literarydevices.net/syntax/

The process is based on pattern matching and much of the neural networks responsible have already been mapped out in the brain. In the brain, grammar is actually physically as well as metaphorically derived from its proximity to syntax. In fact, for me, there is no distinction between the physical and metaphorical just as there is none in quantum mechanics.

Shadows provide an everyday example of how what we perceive is context dependent, rather than merely being an issue of scale or any particular attribute of anything. What we might call a shadow in the daytime can become a faint light in the dark and, you could say, the shadow is but the eternal memory of the light. Even in a sealed vacuum chamber virtual particles will appear out of nowhere and the human eye is sensitive enough to detect a single photon ensuring that nobody is ever left completely in the dark. Mathematically speaking, photons appear to experience isomorphic space-time, where they cannot distinguish between forward or backwards in either space or time, just as we might say a shadow experiences neither space nor time because it has no content.

Similarly, as far as anyone can tell, photons are emitted and absorbed instantaneously just as we might say any shadow appears and disappears instantaneously and photons merely convey energy and information with perfect fidelity just as we might say a shadow conveys the lack of energy and information with perfect fidelity. The famous wave-particle duality of quantum mechanics can therefore be attributed to their extreme context dependence from a human perspective because even whether they exist or not simply depends upon the context. Without a context, for example, its also impossible to distinguish a joke from a truth. Everything being context dependent explains why its impossible to produce a perfect vacuum, absolute zero, or attain the speed of light as merely yin transforming into yang or the context and content exchanging identities.

It's true that words have psychological resonances beyond their dictionary definitions; they carry with them the baggage of the context in which they have been used / misused over time, and certainly a good writer recognizes that fact and uses it in their writing. Beyond that I'm not sure what you mean by "contextual vagueness".

Again, I don't follow this. By "recursive logic" are you referring to an awareness of the embeddedness of your choice of metaphors in changing sociocultural contexts over time? And how could this "reconcile" grammar with what you're writing? — Baden

Someone saying, "She's Hot!" is an example of contextual vagueness and how words only have demonstrable meaning in specific contexts. Whether the speaker is referring to a good looking woman, a car, a boat, or a hamster with a fever cannot be determined without a more explicit context. If they add, "She Hot! Just look at those curves!" you still can't tell if they are talking about a woman, a car, or a boat, but its pretty easy to rule out a hamster with a fever. That is the recursive logic where the contents become more explicit as the unfolding context does.

Russian Kachinka dolls carved out of wood and nested inside one another are a graphic example of the same principle. The smallest doll on the inside has the least detail painted on it. A matrix such as a spreadsheet illustrates the same principle as well. The more you grasp how recursive metaphors work the better you comprehend how grammar is related to the proximity of syntax.

Of course, but that merely makes Dylan a great entertainer rather than a great musician. Bruce Springsteen is another great example and is known as "The Boss" because among other things the guy has real presence and integrity on and off stage, but to call him a great musician is a stretch to say the least.

There's a difference between an entertainer and someone who can actually play an instrument. Next you'll be telling me someone lip syncing to someone else's voice is a great singer.

Every classic work of art including music has turned out to express a Fractal Dragon equation. Literature tends to express multi-fractals with Finnegan's Wake being by far the best example. The book I'm writing is based on the Fractal Dragon of the Tao Te Ching and, combined with a sequel it should express a multi-fractal of a Fractal Dragon within a Mandelbrot.

No accounting for taste and, personally, I have no taste for accountants.

His musicianship has been widely criticized. He was never very good on harmonica and his guitar is pretty sloppy as well, at least, when he started out. Personally, I was grateful when his vocal cords were damaged in an accident because I sing and can't stand to listen to him screaming out those bad notes. However, there is no denying he is a great song writer as well as lyricist. His words often contain political references that the mainstream never grasped because he was not talking to them.