Same, I had mild symptoms (including total loss of smell) about two and a half weeks ago, was quarantined from work for two weeks, and just finished my first 3 day half-week back at work.

Yes. I think maybe I feel pressure to put something beautiful out in a dark time, as contrast, rather than just reflecting reality...my work is usually less a reflection of reality, but it's ok to shift gears.

Art as a means to share feeling, simply. — praxis

That's still a good reminder, though. I'm probably overthinking it here; if other people are "feeling a bit dark", maybe they'd relate to it, and appreciate it, rather than feel pulled down by it.

:lol: Your creativity is about as unpredictable as mine. — praxis

'Tis the life, t'isn't it

The first one with the four silhouetted figures is digital and the last two are oil paint. — praxis

Ah yes, I have a beginners eye, but I can see that now, looking back. Dare I ask for an...artist's statement? (now that I've first digested the work, obviously!!) btw, you can refuse! It's you're right, dammit!

"to feel with", as in to feel concurrently what's happening in the world? If so, I like that expression, and do "feel with" it. And I'll post the link when it's uploaded. Might be this week, might be in 6 months.

The TP fixation is interesting. Btw, are these all actual paintings? Pretty impressive if so. I have a dark ambient record in the cooker (darkest ambient stuff I've done), but it actually feels too dark to put into the world right now...maybe in a few months or so, assuming things have cooled off.

I say turn the whole place into a lounge. Cigarettes, beers, a jukebox, live music on the weekends; casual philosophical conversations that sometimes explode into deep revelations...

@Baden

I overreacted, sorry. Disagree, but apologies for getting carried away there.

Word, I'm just waiting here in the lounge, where no one else will hear what you have to say. :ok:

No, fuck the mods, in this instance. i.e. @Baden @jamalrob @StreetlightX @Hanover, etc. Fuck them for moving a thread that deals with universal problems to the lounge where no one will see it, and it will happily die. Fuck that shit.

Not at all; as the mods well know, the lounge is where threads go to die. Hell, everyone knows that.

Lol, a cogent argument is assumed. But that's totally fine, I'd be happy to hear a "non-cogent" argument if you have one to give. I'd probably respond in a similarly non-cogent manner. Non-cogency is sort of my speciality...

Give me a fucking break, who moved this to the lounge? @Baden @StreetlightX @jamalrob @Michael @Hanover@fdrake

What a fucking disgrace to philosophy.

Yeah, that was not a cogent explanation, so I would need one, in order to respond.

I've had some extremely acrimonious exchanges in the past about these subjects, so I'm cautious. — Wayfarer

I've had acrimonious exchanges about lots of things here, which doesn't detract me from posting, but maybe it should? Or maybe not. I'd rather cut my teeth right in, when I feel the urge, and bandage the wounds later.

Bardos I only know as a phrase from reading about the Tibetan Book of The Dead (I think?). Which interests me for sure. I haven't gone there, but have been attracted to it.

Something stuck with me, which is that beings in those between states will instinctively follow or attach themselves to things they're drawn to, which are very much a result of the habits they've formed. So if you're drawn to the wrong things, end up manifesting in bad states of being - meaning that habits will have disproportionately large consequences in such a situation. — Wayfarer

Oof, I hesitate to be too specific (now I get what you mean about being cautious) but this is exactly what Robert Monroe talks about in his "Journey's Outside The Body" series of books. Which, if you "there's-no-life-outside-the-body-LMAO" strong bois can fathom, is actually an extremely logical and scientific description of OBE's that are something similar to @Sam26's descriptions of NDE's.

Word, I'm cautiously with eternal return in the sense of reincarnation, maybe..?? Not sure what you mean otherwise. At least from what you quoted.

Anyone else actually get the 'rona? :party:

Just finished:

Roadside Picnic - Arkady and Boris Strugatsky -- Good, need to re-read, but Tarkovksy's film adaptation as "Stalker" was far better.

Just started:

The Last Days of New Paris - China Miéville (funny, I read far more fiction from the far left than anything else...it's good shit)

American Gods - Niel Gaiman
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus - Wittgentsein (via the recent thread)

...On deck.

I'm on board with the vagueness, but also, why not thrash it out here? What better place to play devil's advocate and challenge the boring, typical notions? I'll unleash the devil's scourge any day.

Side-note: I don't want to disrespect those who are in extreme pain (though they represent a minority and not the "overwhelming majority" as javra claimed) and employ coping mechanisms to deal with it. That's a rational strategy. Though to a degree surface-level; there's a certain level of deliberate self-deception involved probably. Anyway, I'd jump on that bus too if I needed to. — Baden

I'm just re-reading this, and is the suggestion here that religious feeling is a coping mechanism for "extreme pain" (whatever that is)? Or am I mis-reading that?

Because moral behavior is good in itself. The way to verify that is to experience it. If you experience it, then it obtains. — Baden

I don't think that's enough. Moral behavior obtains emotionally, ultimately. But emotions are fleeting. Experience is tied to emotion.

My position, more precisely, is to deny that there is any reason, evidential or otherwise, to believe in life after death. — Baden

I've had experiences to say otherwise, so I think the conversation ends here, properly speaking, via our two approaches. But I'm more than happy to carry on.

The flippancy must be catching. — Baden

Didn't mean to be flippant about his passing, my bad. Thought it wasn't too soon...

I reject the premise that it's ultimately possible to verify that moral claims objectively obtain. — Baden

Ah, here we are. I...don't, I think. Yes, I definitely don't reject that.

How does "it not being possible to verify that moral claims objectively obtain" not matter? I think I can sense where we're going, but I'm asking in good faith, ready for the ride (but I know it's also a beaten horse; skip if you want).

All I'm getting at is...I can't even summarize it in a sentence, I guess.

Lemme try this: It's flippant to deny the possibility of life after death.

And Jeff is cool but over-rated. Typical 27 club shit. (And clearly I'm aware you didn't actually think that posting some stupid Jeff Buckley lyrics would make me say "oh yeah, exactly! That's exactly what I meant!")

I made mustard, but it was too chalky. It still smelled and tasted good, but the texture was off-putting. Be careful.

No, but you've started talking a lot more flippantly than you used to. Hop all's good in your hood...

You're summarizing an interpretation of my ideas rather than addressing them here, which is fine, I guess. But I won't amass more troops against your summarizations of your interpretations of my ideas.

:meh: Damn, I remember the days when we used to have some discussions.

I want to embrace the sentiment of "life is a good in itself", but this is exactly what I'm talking about when I say "religious posturing". Life is hell for a lot of people. But sometimes, the people who's lives are a living hell seem to understand life the best. This seems like a complexity that can't be solved with a yes/no answer to the question of whether life continues after death. To the say the f'ing least, you know?

You haven't addressed the problem I'm trying to illustrate about whether a moral claim can work without a metaphysical antecedent, as far as I can see.

Yeah, it is exactly nihilistic to reject life because you can't have more, considering nihilism as meaning life is meaningless. If there's no "more", there's no antecedent, then there's no meaning, as I was trying to illustrate (probably didn't do it well). But your tone suggests that this is selfish; that it's selfish to want more than life. Under what grounds is it selfish? (or did I misread you?)

And no, for me, it's not about "ultimate reward". I can't give two shits about reward. What I want is for moral behavior to obtain concretely; beyond the criminal act, beyond the penitentiary, beyond the rehabilitation... it needs to mean something other than what it means in the blow-by-blow moment of our lizard brains. If it's going to mean anything at all. Off the top of my head...

I admittedly think about the possibility of an afterlife a lot (religious upbringing detritus), but if anything, I think what keeps me thinking of it, other than left over religious feeling, is a problem of nihilism. I can't get away from the sense that, for any moral statement to be meaningful, it requires an antecedent. And if the antecedent is argued to exist within the same physical world in which it's object exists (i.e. an argument from someone who denies an afterlife), then the moral statement itself breaks down. So for a moral statement to obtain, there needs to be a framework that's supraphysical, which suggests "life beyond life", if you will. Life beyond the birth-and-death experience that lasts 70 years, if one is lucky (or unlucky).

In other words, there's a lot of political screeds around here from folks who don't believe in an afterlife. What i don't understand is...why are these political issues morally problematic to you if you believe you'll die in x amount of years, and devolve into a state of nothingness? Why waste your energy windbagging about the latest horrible politician if, when you die, it's all meaningless?

So it's a nihilistic problem. Am I missing something? If not, how do we avoid nihilism and reject the possibility of an afterlife at the same time?

PS - also, I feel like a common sentiment from you non-afterlifers is the concept of "furthering the race"; "my life ends, but I make the lives of children better". So what? Who cares? Do you actually care? It feels like religious posturing.

When are you headed back?

Hang in there, Shawn.

Roadside Picnic - Arcady and Boris Strugatsky

Yeah, I used to be way into all his projects; I first got into it in high school, but nowadays the only stuff that's aged well for me is Bass Communion and some No-Man, particularly Together We're Stranger. I do still love Insurgentes though, that album messed me up freshman year of college.

Woah are you a Steven Wilson guy or something?

edit: i have no picture uploading skills for my age

Anyone else working a retail job 5 days a week right now? Nah? Philosophy is easy when you're "quarantined". :party:

Why'd they turn the song off?

*Fixed it

I guess I can't tell how tongue-in-cheek this thread is, but I would say that my old grouchy freshman Honors English prof said it best...he wanted to teach us to "think and write clearly". Half of the entitled Honors kids dropped the class because he mostly gave us C's and D's (the horror), but that has stuck with me. I don't care to be a "philosopher", but I do try to "think and write clearly".

I did eventually drop out of the Honors College, btw, but not the two semesters of that class. I think I got a C overall.

Interesting, I've found that I agree with you 75% of the time or so on the art stuff, but someone like 180 Proof is someone I've disagreed with a lot (just by reading, not by interaction). If anything, maybe that just throws a further layer of complexity unto the issue. I agree with x, who disagrees with y, who agrees with z, who sort of agrees with x, who doesn't love y, etc. Complexity of disagreement.

I'm curious if anybody here feels like there are other people here who generally agree with them on more or less their whole philosophical view? And if so, who? — Pfhorrest

But anyway, I highly doubt this. Even the people I tend to agree with most are people I still have differences with. I seem to remember you and I having a conversation in which I mentioned the fact that I agreed with you a lot (on an issue, probably artistic), but I felt that that made discourse boring. I can see how this thread might be a little bit of a response to that. But it's kind of true. Disagreement fuels the fire of discussion, no? I guess the ideal is situations where there's "shades" of disagreement, but within the shades there's a sort of "general color" of alignment of ideas.