Time is a unit of measurement. Pretty much it. — DifferentiatingEgg

What does measure the time then?

Ah, wow! Great. I never did get through the French writers. I know they are important, but for different reasons, I preferred to read other authors. For example, although Sartre is a reference of existentialism, I always focused my attention on Russian novelists.

It would be pleasing to know what book or novel you are specifically referring to; I can't figure out any author or title in your post. :smile:

Habemus papam.

Eminentissimum ac reverendissimum Dominum Robertum Franciscum
Sanctae Romane Ecclesiae Cardinalem Prevost
qui sibi nomen imposuit Leo XIV.

He is American.

Pope Leo XIV (born Robert Francis Prevost).

Interesting input, thanks.

As I shared previously, it could be hard to approach God in any kind of system. Your example could fit in order to try to prove his existence from a metaphysical perspective. God could be that planet that spins all on its own, and "we" orbit around him due to motion or due to how he makes us spin or move in any other mechanical motion.

But I still believe that my point above can't approach God's existence; if we accept God is a thing with a system himself, then it means he is a set of elements, and if an element is left behind, then God is at risk to no longer existing or working. As I understand it, it seems that set (as the planetary system) works because the elements are always together.

According to many believers, God is above all that. It is more abstract than a set of quantum elements. For this motive, I believe that God's existence could be understood in an epistemological view.

Then, I think we should try to elaborate an argument using epistemology. Whether with truth, belief, or justification. I don't have the necessary and sufficient knowledge to elaborate on this. Probably in the near future.

You seem to be equivocating between "dependence" as being a function of something else and being grounded in something else. — SophistiCat

Sorry to interrupt. I believe I also confuse the use of "dependence" as being a function or as being grounded in something else. This is metaphysics, and I am aware that it holds a lot of complexity to reach a clear conclusion. But I would like to know if understanding the distinction between "dependence" in terms of function or grounded could help us approach God's existence from a metaphysical view. Is this where we should start?

Yes, I am suggesting that, but only if we try to prove God's existence from a metaphysical point of view though. I agree with you that a fundamental layer of reality (God?) could evolve from an initial state without an external cause. But I would like to stop here because, as far as I am concerned, it is not plausible to approach God through a fundamental or quantum system because God is not a set of elements. This is why I stated that we might be able to approach his existence through belief or any kind of epistemology. Sadly, I don't have a strong argument to convince you.

I would like to know if it is plausible to prove God's existence through belief, truth, or justification and then elaborate an argument. This is why I asked if God's existence can be approached by epistemology. :sweat:

And that pure quantum system can be applied to God, right? Or the candidates you were thinking of.

What if we focus on epistemology instead of metaphysics in order to understand this question? We can use propositional knowledge or practical knowledge in the form of skills with the point of proving God's existence. I mean, what if we try to prove it through belief, truth, or justification instead of focusing only on the origin of God?

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez congratulated Albanese and the Labor Party on social media stating that Australia and Spain would continue working together for social justice and the defense of common values.

Australia y España seguiremos trabajando juntos por la justicia social y en defensa de nuestros valores comunes.

We are the only Spanish-speaking country that congratulated "Albo" and the Labour Party, but I don't know if that's really relevant.

I have read the novel, but no, I didn't watch the film.

It is complicated. At the beginning of his writer career, he seemed to be a shy young person, but surprisingly, he started to transform in a very different way. "Confessions of a Mask" and "The Sound of Waves" are examples of a soft or 'chill' writer; and his 1960s novels took a different notion: very influenced by existentialism, the traditional culture and values of Japan and a clear fetish for destruction and death, as he shows it in The Temple of the Golden Pavilion or The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea.

Mishima was a controversial person, but I believe it is worth reading some of his novels and trying to understand the author.

He was unsure about the role of physical power, uncertain about his sexuality, and conflicted about his culture and the future — Tom Storm

I agree. Mishima faced those psychological issues during his life. However, I believe it would be interesting to know where the issues began: either when he was rejected by the army or after WWII. Many Japanese suffered crises of identity after the loss in the war. But the main example of this was Mishima. A very talented writer who ended up eaten by everything he believed. I will not say that's fine, but we will hardly meet any writer like him. There is an interesting interview with Japanese cinema director Shohei Imamura and he said about Mishima: he is clearly an interesting person but quite contradictory with his beliefs. People like him die soon.

Why didn't Mishima volunteer as a Kamikazi pilot? — 180 Proof

He wanted to; but the army didn't allow him for two main reasons: 1) He didn't know how to play a plane; 2) he was considered 'weak' or 'ill' due to his physical appearance, so all the possible chances to fight in WWII were dismissed by the army.

:up:

Thanks for allowing me to take part in this thread. It was interesting to learn about Australian politics. I wish good luck to Albanese and all the best to you folks. I guess you would keep posting updates here, so I will be aware of everything that happens in the new government from now on.

85 seats with only 41.4% counted. It is clear that Australians wanted Albanese again.

Will that give the ALP the balls to make some interesting decisions? — Banno

What do you expect from them now on?

:up:

The vote counting is one of the main things that triggers my anxiety.

I see. This could be one of the most boring federal elections ever, then. By the way, the press of Spain also says that Labour will win these elections and Alabanese will remain in charge because 67 % of women (born since 1997) are leftist and the feminist vote is very strong there. I don't know where the hell they got that statistic, but the point seems reasonable. They also say that 50 % of men below the age of 29 are also 'labourist' or social-democrat.

Here is the text in Spanish. I know you use ChatGPT; I guess it can help you to translate it into English.

El 67 por ciento de aquellas mujeres nacidas entre 1997 y 2012, muchas de ellas votarán por primera vez, tienden a apoyar a la izquierda, algo que también hacen el 52 por ciento de las chicas de otras generaciones. Según esta encuesta, el 50 por ciento de los hombres menores de 29 años se inclinan por el voto progresista, frente a sólo el 40 por ciento de los hombres de otras generaciones.

It is not the first time I read that people claim that Japanese society in the context of WWII was 'mediaeval'.

This is a difficult point to explain to a Western person. It was even difficult to understand for me, even though I am very passionate about Mishima.

First, we should not use concepts such as 'mediaeval' because this is a Western notion of the world. If we want to understand Mishima, we have to see Japan from a different view.

Why was Mishima bellicose? Most of his biographers agree that Mishima got a trauma when he was rejected by the Japanese army. At that time, when he was less than 20 years old, he just wanted to serve the country and (probably) had the fetish of dying in the field, like a good samurai. But any of this happened, and his dad (an influential person) forced him to study instead of supporting the army. Mishima never forgot the fact that he was rejected since then, and he starts expressing it through different characters in his novels because, according to him, it is better to die young (youth is equal to purity) and in the army (loyalty) than old in a house (this means dirt, corruption and boredom to him).

Why did Mishima start with physical training and form his own army? I guess he started to feel 'incomplete' with only writing novels, and he wanted to become a 'man of action'.

Honestly, after reading most of his books, I believe he always wanted to die the way he did. He even stated in an interview that he did not expect to live past the age of 50, and he committed suicide at the age of 45. His pursuit was the heroic death that he did not have in WWII, but I believe it is worth noting how he changed over time. From shy novelist to samurai warrior.

How is it going? :eyes:

I am following the news updates and live results here: Federal Election 2025 live.

When does voting end? You have until 6pm, local time, to vote before polling places close.
That means voting will have ended in eastern states while polls remain open in Western Australia.

Once polling places close, counting begins.

It is 16:00 in AU; thus, the counting is to begin in just two hours!

No, please! Don't remain in silence. Every question, comment or opinion on 'Sun and Steel' or Mishima is welcome!

I didn't continue with the summary because of the damn blackout of last Monday. :confused:

Not at all. — Wayfarer

No, I forgot until you mentioned it. I voted on Monday. — Tom Storm

I expected no less from my brave Aussie heroes. :strong:

@Banno @Tom Storm @Wayfarer @kazan

24 hours to go folks. Are you nervous? :smirk:

I am reading 'Election Day Reminders', and this one blew my mind:

It’s compulsory: Voting in the 2025 federal election is compulsory for the 18.1 million people on the electoral roll. Anyone who does not cast a vote will not only miss out on having their say in the election but will also receive a non-voter notice and may have to pay a fine.

Holy Moly, I thought that only happened in South America.

The time difference between Spain and AU is +8. So, when I wake up tomorrow morning, I guess most of the election day will probably be in its twilight.

Sí.

I am ready to talk about 'Divine Simplicity' with you again.

:wink:

As I previously shared in the 'currently reading' thread, I am reading Mircea Cărtărescu. He is from Romania, and he was born and raised in 1960s Bucharest. The two parts of his novel (Blinding) are a mix of dreams, memories, surrealism and nostalgia in the neighbourhood of his childhood. It also appears a red windmill that seemed to be very big, and the size of this construction impressed Mircea a lot and shows up in his dreams (and nightmares).

I tried to search on Google for the locations, and the results were fascinating.

"Stefan cel Mare" is the neighbourhood of Mircea. A brutalist Soviet-like building, but I like it. I feel positive vibrations, and the neighbourhood seemed to be vivid and full of joy:


It is very hard to find the red windmill on Google. Mircea says that it is located in 'Dambovita'.
Yet I guess it looked like this but red coloured:

Blinding, Book Two: The Body by Mircea Cărtărescu.

The narrative and imagination of Mircea are just amazing. I am addicted to his trilogy called 'Orbitor' in Romanian; translated as 'Blinding' in English and 'Cegador' in Spanish. Quite good. It is a constant stream of dreams and hallucinations in 1960s Mircea's Bucharest. :flower: :sparkle:

Chapter I: Pages 3-6.

Of late, I have come to sense within myself an accumulation of all kinds of things that cannot find adequate expression via an objective artistic form such as the novel.

Sun and Steel was written in 1968. Two years before Mishima took his life. We can perceive from the first line of this essay that he was aware of some kind of 'evolution', but for some reason, he couldn't express it in the way he used to do. I guess the present work was that. The rest of the novels Mishima used characters to camouflage himself. This is a 'face-to-face' essay. Mishima is showing himself without taboos.

The “I” with which I shall occupy myself will not be the “I” that relates back strictly to myself, but something else, some residue, that remains after all the other words I have uttered have flowed back into me, something that neither relates back nor flows back.

This is interesting. Mishima is now at a point of no return. He is no longer a novelist but something else. A warrior? A samurai? A Japanese nationalist? He was perfectly aware of his transformation. When he stated that 'neither relates back nor flows back', he was probably thinking of suicide.

One day, it occurred to me to set about cultivating my orchard for all I was worth. For my purpose, I used sun and steel. Unceasing sunlight and implements fashioned of steel became the chief elements in my husbandry. Little by little, the orchard began to bear fruit, and thoughts of the body came to occupy a large part of my consciousness.

Important feature: Mishima was also interested in bodybuilding. I think he just used metaphors: orchards, husbandry, fruits, sun and steel. The pure work on the body. His physical body started to occupy the largest part of his awareness. Time for the katana and not the pen.

First comes the pillar of plain wood, then the white ants that feed on it. But for me, the white ants were there from the start, and the pillar of plain wood emerged tardily, already half eaten away.

Mishima had a poor image of himself when he was young. I can't know if this thought continued to the rest of his days. Everything started when he was rejected from joining the Japanese army because he appeared to be sick and not strong enough. This is something that influenced him in most of his novels, but writing didn't heal Mishima, and he felt like the pillar of plain wood was already half eaten away. Time for building a more robust body. He no longer will be rejected for being weak.

The natural corollary of such a tendency was that I should openly admit the existence of reality and the body only in fields where words had no part whatsoever.

Mishima started his journey to bodybuilding with accepting another reality. Surprisingly, he never left literature behind. He kept writing for two years straight. He even finished his trilogy with 'The Corruption of an Angel'. Yet Mishima felt the necessity to prepare himself for the 'point of no return' that I referred to before.

It is perhaps only natural that this type of panic and fear, though so obviously the product of a misconception, should postulate another more desirable physical existence, another more desirable reality. Never dreaming that the body existing in a form that rejected existence was universal in the
male, I set about constructing my ideal hypothetical physical existence by investing it with all the opposite characteristics. And since my own, abnormal bodily existence was doubtless a product of the intellectual corrosion of words, the ideal body—the ideal existence—must, I told myself, be absolutely free from any interference by words. Its characteristics could be summed up as taciturnity and beauty of form.

That summarises pretty well the first chapter. :smile:

Mishima is now in another reality; he is preparing his body to go to a point of no return, and words can be left behind. Now, we will see how he goes through it.

In this way my mind, without realizing what it was doing, straddled these two contradictory elements and, godlike, set about trying to manipulate them. It was thus that I started writing novels. And this increased still further my thirst for reality and the flesh.

:sparkle:

TO BE CONTINUED...

Is anyone interested in doing the second chapter? :smile: Feel free to comment!

I want Francis back too. What a big loss!

I thought the same: that the next Pope could be from Africa. But, as @tim wood noted, they are too conservative, and it is unlikely that the devoted cardinals of Francis want them.

Let's see what happens...

Sedes Vacans

Final version:



- We cropped the land of Antarctica and put it on the upper left of the corner. I think it is a good idea when the land is drawn in the flag. It could be simple, but considering that Antarctica is a special land, it is worth having it there.

- On the other hand: we have a red fish on the down right side. What is the meaning of a red fish? This was my idea, and it comes from Japanese heraldry. The red fish is called 'Koinobori.'
Koinobori symbolizes hope for the future, good health, strength, and courage.

:smile:

Hey, praxis! Thanks for your feedback. We are still working on it. Drawing a flag is more difficult than I ever thought. Nonetheless, Martín found the following flag on the Internet. We think we will use it as a pattern or something.



Best regards!

Edited.

El asesinato del perdedor (Translation in English is not available) by Camilo José Cela.

(Martín Orensanz) @Arcane Sandwich and I (Javier Miranda Jiménez) are creating a fictional Antarctica. It has its own constitution, government, people, nationality, laws, etc.

We are doing this for fun, and it is stimulating our imagination and creativity.

I am responsible for drawing the new flag for our fictional Antarctica. I have three different samples, and only one will be the official.

Feel free to comment on them. Either you think they are ugly or need something.

Example n⁰1:



Martin didn't like it because it has Japanese stuff, and the colours are out of place. I agreed with him because the point was to make up the simplest flag ever.

Two new versions:

Option A (plain and simple):



Option B (Igloos are traditional Artic houses)

I only read literature, but thanks for the input anyway. I believe there are some folks here who actually read it, but they are busy with other stuff, or they are just shy to share their thoughts. We never know what is going through the reader's mind! :wink:

From what aI have been able to work out, this is very different to the situation in Spain. — Banno

We could have different issues, but the problems are the same: speculation and exclusion of first-home buyers.

Investors also have tax income benefits if they invest in real estate. Capital gains on investment properties are taxed only at 25% if you are an enterprise and just only 10% if you are a fund. For this reason, most of the buildings in central Madrid and Barcelona are owned by funds, not persons.

Apart from being a cheap investment, our government no longer constructs public housing. I believe they are concerned that most Spaniards will be unable to afford the loans. So the soil is free to be mined and speculated on.

Notice that the income of the average Spaniard is €1,500 or even less. The price of leasing a normal house is around €1,200, and the loans are around €700 per month. As you can see, property prices cut into Spaniards' ability to save.

A different context, yes. But we end up in the same problems as you: Housing affordability.

Oh, and of course that come from the 1990s. We also had neoliberalism here.

Housing affordability is a worldwide problem, Banno. :wink:

Nobody anywhere knows how to stop it.

This is very helpful for those (like me) who are not Australian but are interested in the next elections. Well, the world is large, and it is interesting to learn from others.

State of the states: six politics experts explain the key seats across the country.

New South Wales: How the 2025 federal election will play out in NSW is difficult to predict for two reasons: 1) The first is the recent redistribution which, as ABC analyst Antony Green’s pendulum shows, has redefined many electoral boundaries.
2) The second is the number of crossbench MPs.

Queensland: For decades we said Queensland was a key “battleground” in federal elections where seats north of the Tweed so often held the keys to The Lodge. But, for the past 15 years, federal elections have seen little movement in Queensland except, of course, for 2022 when the Greens won three seats.

South Australia: South Australia is rarely a key battleground in federal elections, and only comprises ten electoral seats. -- Wow! Just only that seats?

Tasmania: There are two main seats to watch in Tasmania. The large, rural seat of Lyons is one of the most marginal in the country. On the surface, Franklin – Australia’s only non-contiguous electorate – looks like a safe Labor seat. Another point of interest is who will pick up the votes won by the Jaquie Lambie Network (JLN) in 2022. The JLN is not running candidates following a spectacular implosion at state level – and where those voters find a home could be crucial, particularly in Lyons.

Be careful with the Tasmanian devil, mates!



Victoria: Victoria is shaping up to be a crucial state for the major parties. Several seats are held by the Labor and coalition parties with a margin of less than 5%. -- Folks will sing 'VICTORIA' after winning the seat.

Western Australia: The five WA seats to watch are Curtin, Bullwinkel, Forrest, Pearce and Tangney. -- Beautiful beaches, sunsets and that pink smoothy called 'Lake Hillier'. It takes me more than 20 hours to get there. So bad. Why are you that far from the rest of the world?

The less that you hear about the politics in my country, the better. Our chaotic way of managing a state might make you feel dizzy. We still have a 'royal family', which causes a lot of problems. Catalonia has been an important territorial crisis, despite having abandoned their independence movement, etc.

At least we are kind; the weather is great and the food is lovely. :razz:

And also I think our Westminster-style parliamentary democracy (which we have in common with Britain) is preferable to the presidential republic model of the States. — Wayfarer

I also like that parliamentary style, where the debates and legislation are serious. Not a show in which the showman shouts bollocks while his political group members applaud or the opposition throws acid. This is the toxic foggy ambience in which some of us are.

@Banno and also

I just found on Google this interesting analysis (Australian voters may not be deeply polarised) that is relevant to what we discussed this week. The most 'meh' election you have witnessed.

The new research demonstrates: Australian voters are not deeply polarised or highly enthusiastic; instead, they are both uncertain and ambivalent. To put it bluntly, we are the anti-America. Where, in the US, people are toxically polarised and unable to see politics through any other prism than their own partisan lens, in Australia our passions are lower but so are our biases. — Patricia Karvelas - ABC AU.

The fact that the polarisation in your country is relatively lower than in many other countries, I believe that means something positive: that Aussie people didn't get sick from the poison of politics. I don't confuse apathy with ambivalence here. It is important because key challenges (such as climate change) would not be affected by polarisation. It will be worthwhile to follow the election season of this beautiful country, where people appear to be mature and cautious. We have much to learn from you here in Spain.

Interesting, Tom. It is true that it also makes sense if we see it in the other way.

I knew you were a Labour voter when I started sharing ideas and views with you in this thread. I believe you also already told me. So, it is clear that you will vote for a left-wing approach.

Although apathetic voters can help billionaires like Musk, I still believe that people lost confidence in politicians for a lot of reasons. I think politics should be a boring job again and not this kind of circus controlled by the current showman. It is time for discussing the important matter in the parliament for hours and not writing a "tweet" or saying a weird thing because media will cover it.

I'm not sure if I'm to blame for my own apathy, but I have only voted in European elections in recent years. I often vote in my local council's elections. However, I believe my vote is wasted. It's intriguing how you perceive it, Tom: it's better to vote than not. You believe in the system, which is significant.

Anyway, no one was watching. — Banno

Do you think Aussies lost political attitudes? Or did you simply become more neutral than ever?

I don't know... Given the current state of politics, I believe a lack of interest in politics is understandable. [edited to make more sense to my reply to Banno]