The book takes place in the early 1950s while the movie takes place in the 1970s. Entirely different worlds. — T Clark

Indeed.


Director Robert Altman on The Long Goodbye - Note, spoilers.

"Originally I didn’t want to do it. I’ve enjoyed reading Chandler, though I never did finish The Long Goodbye, and I liked those 1940s movies, but I just didn’t want to play around with them. I was sent the script by the producers and at first I said, I don’t want to do Raymond Chandler. If you say ‘Philip Marlowe,’ people just think of Humphrey Bogart. Robert Mitchum was being proposed for it. But I just didn’t want to do another Philip Marlowe film and have it wrap up the same way all the other films did. I think it was David Picker, the production chief at United Artists, who suggested Elliott Gould for Marlowe—and then I was interested. So I read Leigh Brackett’s script—she wrote the script of The Big Sleep for Hawks—and in her version, in the last scene, Marlowe pulled out his gun and killed his best friend, Terry Lennox. It was so out of character for Marlowe, I said, ‘I’ll do the picture, but you cannot change that ending! It must be in the contract.’ They all agreed, which was very surprising. If she hadn’t written that ending, I guarantee I wouldn’t have done it. It said, ‘This is just a movie.’ After that, we had him do his funny little dance down the road and you hear ‘Hooray for Hollywood,’ and that’s what it’s really about—Hooray for Hollywood. It even looked like a road made in a Hollywood studio. And with Eileen Wade driving past, it’s like the final scene in The Third Man! I decided that we were going to call him Rip Van Marlowe, as if he’d been asleep for twenty years, had woken up and was wandering through this landscape of the early 1970s, but trying to invoke the morals of a previous era. I put him in that dark suit, white shirt and tie, while everyone else was smelling incense and smoking pot and going topless; everything was health food and exercise and cool. So we just satirized that whole time. And that’s why that line of Elliott’s—’It’s OK with me’—became his key line throughout the film.” —Robert Altman

Perhaps... It was an old English advertising slogan for Hienz baked beans... It seemed apropos.

1. Good means, good ends
2. Bad means, good ends
3. Good means, bad ends
4. Bad means, bad ends — Agent Smith

5. Beanz Meanz Heinz

Very interesting account of Minneapolis. It all sounds kind of familiar. It doesn't get dramatically cold here (average overnight winter temp around 45f). I can't imagine the added challenges of homelessness in a truly cold location.

What will work? I don't know. — BC

Nice summary, BC. The problem with these issues is they get picked up and 'understood' differently be folk who hold different world views. A conservative world view might argue that people should earn any success or recovery through discipline and hard work and that people should be strong and say "no' to drugs. This minimises the role of the state and support work in being part of the solution and puts most of it back on the individual to overcome their problems.

I'm not a big fan of this model, but the attraction to these frames and tropes is big - even in my country where medicine is mostly free or subsidized and there is a welfare safety net. It's a huge subject, with many nuances.

I've worked in the area of homelessness, mental health and addiction for the past 3 decades in various capacities. My take: homelessness is not one thing and may come about for various reasons that are not shared by all people affected. Almost anything you say about homelessness, the opposite is also true. It effects men and women, poor people and rich people. People with no education and people with degrees. It effects people with intellectual disabilities and people who are above average intelligence; people who uses substances and people who have never tried drugs. It gets the young and the old, the sick and the healthy.

Certain groups are more likely to become homeless since they have fewer resources with which to combat set backs and unexpected expenses. We all know who they are - students, low income workers, people from disadvantaged backgrounds, isolated lone adults, those with chronic health or mental health issues. First Nations people.

Services are underfunded, systemic limits to resources needed are catastrophic. Options available may be inadequate.

My own belief, having followed many hundreds of people back into stable housing, with support from clinical and psycho-social services is that different people require different approaches and different housing and support models. A nuanced range of responses is required, But in the end, affordable, secure housing, better jobs and incomes, access to education and health services are critical elements. There's no quick fix and for the most part the serious damage is already done by the time people come to services for help. Much better to prevent homelessness (eviction) and help people to secure a reliable decent income than meet with them after things have collapsed and they are on the streets.

I'd propose a far more serious failure, if what you say is true, and that is that people are seeking meaning and virtue from the political theory or leader du jour. — Hanover

I'm pretty sure there's more than one serious failure going. :wink:

And any policies that exacerbate the wealth gap are culpable of that specifically. And poverty is a leading cause of many ills. But as I pointed out, these problems are also older than those policies. — Pantagruel

Poverty is caused by and maintained by numerous factors and has always been with us (as the Bible might say) but it's clear that certain social policies can alleviate or exacerbate poverty. It's held by many commentators that neoliberalism has done the latter.

I'm not an economist, but it's worth noting that supposed Leftist governments were also keen on neoliberalism, as I mentioned before. NL been the foundational presupposition of many Western governments. It's essentially the idea that deregulation and privatisation are the primary answers to economic problems, leaving an untrammelled market to take no prisoners and abandon communities. Hence all the dead manufacturing industries in industrial towns all around the world.

Resolving the issue of global inequality is likely to require much more than ending neoliberalism, I imagine it would require a vast change in economic and social policies and practices and a rethinking about what community means. This is unlikely to come from any government of whatever party.

Interestingly in 1998 philosopher Richard Rorty virtually predicted a Trump-style politicial reponse coming out of neoliberalism.

...members of labor unions, and un-organized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers - themselves desperately afraid of being downsized - are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.

At that point, something will crack. The non-suburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for - someone willing to assure them that once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen and post modernist professors will no longer be calling the shots...

One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion... All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet

- R. Rorty Achieving our Country

Neoliberalism is the set of policies mentioned, enacted over the last 40 years, with predictable results.

The people in government and business carrying out these policies are indeed to blame— whether they identify as neoliberal or not. — Mikie

Yep, neoliberalism underpins almost all economic and social policy in the West today and has since the days of Thatcher and Reagan. This deregulatory approach has not just changed economic systems it has become the lens - the foundational presupposition - through which meaning and value has been understood. Even the supposed Left (Hawke Keating in Australia; Blair and New Labour; Clinton in the US - were eager to support it.) The human being has become a consumer and MBA grads the high priests. If you're not making money or being 'productive' subject to a narrow definition, you're a non-citizen.

I think Tony Judt, who died in 2010, nailed this social change 15 years ago.

“Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. For thirty years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material self-interest: indeed this very pursuit now constitutes whatever remains of our sense of collective purpose. We know what things cost but have no idea what they are worth. We no longer ask of a judicial ruling or a legislative act: Is it good Is it fair Is it just Is it right Will it help bring about a better society or a better world Those used to be the political questions even if they invited no easy answers. We must learn once again to pose them.

The materialistic and selfish quality of contemporary life is not inherent in the human condition. Much of what appears “natural” today dates from the 1980s: the obsession with wealth creation the cult of privatization and the private sector the growing disparities of rich and poor. And above all the rhetoric that accompanies these: uncritical admiration for unfettered markets disdain for the public sector the delusion of endless growth.

We cannot go on living like this. The little crash of 2008 was a reminder that unregulated capitalism is its own worst enemy: sooner or later it must fall prey to its own excesses and turn again to the state for rescue. But if we do no more than pick up the pieces and carry on as before we can look forward to greater upheavals in years to come.”

― Tony Judt, Ill Fares the Land

The art critic Arthur Danto famously declared that after Warhol’s Brillo box exhibit philosophically interesting art was no longer possible. — Joshs

I always liked this quote attributed to Cézanne - “The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.” .

Thanks. If I could, I'd have that drink with you. :up:

It's possible that any of us can write things here which are interpreted as insensitive. No doubt I have done so before. But I question your sincerity as a gatekeeper of respectful communication if your immediate response is:

your experiences of life are likewise some bullshit off the television, I'm sure. — frank

I would venture this is an example of some considered abuse, while my response to the OP was sincere. If it was taken as insensitive or blunt, I apologise.

You're the one spitting on other people's experiences. — frank

Really? There was no intention to 'spit' on anyone.

Having a bad day, Cobber?

t's in keeping with what a Korean guy told me about life there. Maybe the same is true in Indonesia. — frank

Yeh, pretty sure they have advertising in Indonesia. Very nice this time of year.

What do you think? Can you relate to what I think/feel? — niki wonoto

No. The idea that life is a competition just sounds like the dull and inchoate musings of advertising folk. Life is whatever you make of it. Don't overthink it and avoid harming others, Son. You'll be fine.

COMMENT ON ABOVE

I read over my response above and your OP again after the stern words of @Frank. On reflection I also think what I wrote here was not very useful and glib. Sorry.

What I should have said is that the idea that life is a competition is unhelpful and stress making. It's the chief myth of our times, thanks mainly to marketing, advertising and social media. Trying to beat other people in happiness, wealth or power is likely a zero-sum game.

It may sound banal but the best we can do in life is not judge ourselves by the standards of others and not over analyse our situations. We can only do the best we can with what we have and try not to harm others along the way. The experience of living is unjust and unequal - to a great extent this is out of our hands. Some people find Stoicism helpful on this subject.

Pardon my probing for meaning : How do you characterize your "indifference" to philosophical Ontological origins*1? Is it aggressive Atheism, or apathetic Agnosticism, or mundane Traditionalism*2, or some other pre-Philosophy understanding of the natural world*3? Or just Anti-Religion, as the parallel to politics for the cultural powers-that-be to dominate the common people? Or perhaps merely Anti-Ontology as a feckless waste of time in a heartless/mindless/pointless material world? :joke: — Gnomon

You're welcome to probe. Not that I have much to say. I don't think humans have access to reality as it is in itself - the best we do is generate provisional narratives that, to a greater or lesser extent, help us to make interventions in the world. These stories tend to be subject to revision and never arrive at absolute truth. I also hold that my experience of the world does not have need for most metanarratives; I am a fan of uncertainty. I am also a fan of minimalism and think that people overcook things and want certainty and dominion where knowledge is absent and where they have no expertise.

If atheism is a simple lack of belief what is the average goal of an atheist? Their hope for the future? Aspirations? Motivations? Motivations for continuing/propagating life? — Andrew4Handel

So I am an atheist (and I know from experience that atheists hold different values and beliefs, aside from this one small matter of belief in deities). Just as Christians, say, are likely to have radically different answers to the same questions. Humans do not fall into rigid categories merely based on a belief they hold.

The questions you pose are, I suspect, somewhat unnatural. People live and do things and hold values without holding a shopping list of explicit value statements you seem to be fishing for.

Me

Average goal for the atheist? I have no idea what this question means, but I can tell you my plans for this year.

Hope for the future? I hope humans get their act together - minimise suffering and take some substantive action to address inequality.

Aspirations. I'm looking to buy a new house. Someone close to me is dying of cancer - I will help support them.

Motivations I am content and generally positive and fortunate. I wish others were too. I tend to take each day as it comes and make minimal plans.

No worries about disagreeing at my end. I am simply trying to understand where you are coming from. :up:

But I must ask. Do you then conclude that there is no point in doing science at all? — Mark S

I've not said science is useless. Science can be a very useful tool and can be a consistently reliable approach to making useful interventions in our world - especially through technology.

That means the idea that important aspects of what is in our reality and how it works can be understood is a provisionally true, highly robust, scientific hypothesis - not a premise. — Mark S

What do you mean this is 'not a premise'? I said nothing of premises. I am saying yours is a metaphysical presupposition that science in some magical way has access to reality as it really is. 'Reality' is one of the big unresolved questions of philosophy.

This conversation might be better served if you can demonstrate in clear dot points how your approach works on a particular moral question.

Let's take slavery is wrong as a starting point. Can you work though this?

If that room last night had, instead of eighty people, been eighty dogs, cats, monkeys or just about any other animal, the result would have been pandemonium.

To be sure, people do evil things. But this is the exception, and we pay it considerable attention. Overwhelmingly, people do cooperate. (those who don't are in the main disenfranchised males). — Banno

Nice, a funny and acute observation.

Along those lines, I wonder, is there a common root for all such endeavors? Did philosophy begin somewhere? If so, where and how and when and why and who and what? — Bret Bernhoft

Philosophy probably began with conversation. This exchange of ideas led to the creation of values and beliefs and a concomitant exploration of whether these were accurate. Humans can't help but manufacture meaning and explanatory narratives and argue about them.

I am not saying there is a solution but I prefer this way of thinking to current models. In the end it could all descend into meaninglessness. — Andrew4Handel

Fair enough. My own view is that life is a bucket of shit - more for some than for others. Don't overthink things. Actions matter more than theorising. Do what you can to prevent suffering.

Nihilism can be a real problem. — Andrew4Handel

What's the alternative to nihilism you can identify in the world today that does not come with any harms or problems?

Sorry Mark, I am unconvinced and the arguments seem nebulous.

Women who are being exploited and are questioning the morality of that exploitation should be easily convinced. — Mark S

Not if they think this is god's will or the natural order. Chances are they won't even be seeing the same empirical 'reality' you think you see.

Science has empirically shown it is a powerful means for understanding what ‘is’ and how it works. — Mark S

This is taking the view that reality can be understood - a metaphysical position. I think a lot of people might dispute science's capacity here as @Joshs has outlined.

However , rival views of the role of science (Kuhn, Feyerabend, Rouse, Rorty) reveal Popperian science (as Curry calls his approach) as stuffed with philosophical presuppositions that lead to a reductive treatment of human motives. — Joshs

science has not shown it is a suitable means for understanding what ought to be or what we imperatively ought to do. — Mark S

You keep coming back to this and I am not sure why. I haven't raised Hume's is-ought problem.

As an ethical naturalist and fallibilist, the truth value of moral claims about 'what harms persons, other animals and ecosystems' is discernible, ergo preventable or reducible. 'Supernaturalist criteria' for "justifying the moral norms" of natural persons was a brief, maladaptive interlude of the last several millennia out of an almost two hundred millennia span of eusocial h. sapiens existence. 'Divine command theory', as far as I can tell, is moral nihilism (e.g. Plato's Euthyphro, Nietzsche's The Antichrist), and the last century or so of substantive secularization has been and continues to be a struggle against vestigial priestcraft and normative superstitions. — 180 Proof

This is a lovely paragraph, thanks. It's the closest I think I could get to finding an objective way forward in this space. I suspect many people already understand that what harms conscious creatures and the environment is anathema and from here we can locate a foundational basis for most approaches to moral problems. I need to keep being reminded of this.

I have often thought too that divine command theory is just a variation of moral nihilism - it commits the human to the status of an empty drone and it is utterly disrespectful to our innate capacity for love, empathy and solidarity.

People don't seem to comprehend the lack of truth value in issue in morality.

Morality may as well be a religion if it is just making up a system of rules and ideas to keep people happy.

But it has no truth value. No one has discovered a truth value to moral claims or moral instructions.

So moral systems are a sham at heart but people don't believe that so keep on making moral claims relentlessly. — Andrew4Handel

Remember religious or theistically derived morality is just as much of a sham. The morality of any believer is as subjective and dependant upon interpretation and personal preferences as any kind of moral system. It's something no person can escape, no matter whether they believe in Jesus or jack shit.

The desire for a magic position, a transcendent foundation seems to be concept that is hard to shake.

Morality is an open conversation humans have about what they value and how they should live. In most countries today, legislation seems to do the bulk of the work and sometimes gets changed as behaviors which communities used to consider immoral no longer are - homosexuality, women getting the vote, use of illicit drugs, square dancing in a round room, etc.

We probably agree on most matters of morality - not killing, stealing, lying, cheating, etc. Personally I don't think we need a theory of morality. We certainly can't get people to replace their moral thinking (which may be part of a complex web of intersubjective agreements) with evidence based or fact based frames. Morality is often a community and aesthetic response to the world. The best a society can do is use legislation so that small communities don't incorporate child sacrifice or some other egregious human rights violation as part of their faith.

Yes, understanding the function of past and present cultural moral norms as solving cooperation problems does require a worldview — Mark S

That's your foundational axiom or presupposition, which is not one all people would share. How do you get buy in for this when many people think morality comes from - gods/s, higher consciousness, a Platonic realm, etc?

The next problem is how to establish what counts as an appropriate cooperative model. Communism?
Anarcho-syndicalism? Participatory democracy? As soon as you talk about societal cooperation you enter into politics.

one that accepts, rather than rejects, science as a powerful way to understand what ‘is’ in our universe and how it works. But don’t we agree about that? — Mark S

Sounds to me like this is heading towards scientism. Science can be a useful and powerful tool with which to make interventions in the world. But it does not get us to absolute truth and I think the questions of what our universe is and how it works (along with many others) are open questions.

You begin with a metaphysical position - that reality can be understood by humans and that science is the chief tool in this enterprise. Not sure about that. Many would not agree. How do you get cooperation about this metaphysics?

I'm thinking Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Lou Reed. — Jamal

Probably Bowie, Tom Waits and Nick Cave too. With such characterful voices, it is obvious they would not make it on American Idol...

Slickness has become a value that supersedes the art - movies are the same, thanks to CGI. Almost everything looks a certain way (perfect lighting and colour) and must contain visual hyperbole/stunts to make it in the market place.

How many of the multiple comments on youtube 1960’s songs saying they wish they were alive in that era, that the music was much better then, come from people younger than 30?
— Joshs

How would you or I know? Youtube has been around for over 14 years; it's used by people of all ages. — Noble Dust

I read a lot of Youtube comments and this is a popular observation, but not just about music, it touches everything - sitcoms, tonight shows, buildings, any shit from the 50's to the 80's. "I'm 20 but I wish I was around when Bewitched was on TV every night. Imagine how cool to watch it live on the air. Nothing today comes close.' and other gems.

For all the recent slandering of "boomers", Youtube is abounds with young folk filled with reverence to the boomer past, in almost every way, from cars to presidents. I think this is just a trope probably absorbed through all those nostalgia movies (like the recent Elvis) which fetishises the past as an era of golden greatness and 'when it was done first'.

I don't think atheists should be complacent in their atheism nor religious people complacent in their theism. It is an ongoing process of trying to understand reality and find meaning. — Andrew4Handel

I think this is a wise observation.

Note: I believe there are also many wonderful people who believe in god, who practice religion, who behave justly and are inclusive. I am friends with several.

That is what I am disagreeing with and the argument of this thread. I have been arguing it entails a worldview. — Andrew4Handel

I'm not convinced but I guess you may hold a definition of worldview which is different to mine. I think atheism is a very broad church (if you'll pardon the term) with a diversity of views. But it is true that there are some atheists who have a worldview which embraces scientism.

I think that there are nihilist consequences to atheism in conjunction with scientific materialism that has been promoted and denied at the same time. — Andrew4Handel

If the opposite of nihilism is theism, which holds values that allow for the torment and torture of believers with stories of sin, guilt and hell fire, etc, then nihilism looks promising.

What was the motivation for notable atheist Lawrence Krauss writing the book — Andrew4Handel

Probably a key exponent of scientism, right? His argument may well be correct. But who would know? Are you a physics genius who fully understands this material? I know I'm not. His motivation is anyone's guess, but I suspect it is to let people know that choosing the God-of -the-Gaps option is not the only story available or useful.

This goes against the idea of a simple disbelief in gods if you have to write thousands of words in response to arguments for God. — Andrew4Handel

Not really. Many atheists see themselves as former victims of religion. Hence the very popular self-help group, "Recovering from Religion". Many are also horrified by what is being done around the world in the name of gods. And theists/apologists constantly claim the best use of reason proves god. Often variations on the very arguments by Aquinas you put up earlier.

That's a major reason why atheists cultivate and respond to arguments. There's a culture war over god. Theism can be defended or it can be dismissed by reason. The arguments do not belong solely to the theists.

The debate matters because the consequences of prominent theisms around the world, held in place by these ratty old arguments, are so often bloody awful - think Modi's Hindu nationalism, the Saudi's Wahhabi Islam, American evangelicalism, and the role of religious violence worldwide (Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Syria, Kenya, etc, etc).

The question of belief in god can not be separated from the behavior theism so often generates. So if you say atheism leads to nihilism, I would say to you, if the opposite of nihilism looks like theism as practiced around the world, then how is it better?

The cosmological argument.
The moral argument for God.
Aquinas's Five ways
The ontological argument
The argument from beauty
The argument from consciousness
The teleological argument — Andrew4Handel

Yep, the traditional 'proofs' of god. Most atheist books and freethinker polemical works respond to these old things. There are thousands of pages answering these arguments. There are thousands of words on this site answering each and every one of these arguments already. We go around and around. :wink:

The point is we have many potential alternatives to 'god of the gaps' or goddidit.

'I don't know' is perfectly reasonable too.

And fallacies like the appeal from ignorance or the argument from incredulity are not a good solution to such hoary old questions.

"I can't imagine another answer for X but the magic man did it." - is not a solution.

The role religion had in morality is in claiming there was a moral law giver and that that entity could generate moral truths. — Andrew4Handel

I understand that but it's pointless if no one can agree about what the truths are. The thing that actually matters - a morality - is missing.

If they reached the current conclusion of evolution by natural selection thousands of years ago what influence would that have had on them? — Andrew4Handel

You keep forgetting that there is not an atheist worldview. You might be thinking of secular humanism. Or scientism. Atheism is about the answer to just one question. There are atheist idealists and mystics. They are not all Richard Dawkins.

art of the current thinking is that there is no teleology or purpose or end goal plus the eventual heat death of the universe through entropy. — Andrew4Handel

I am an atheist - I have almost no interest in causation or teleology or quantum woo. As I keep saying humans make up stories and manufacture intersubjective communities of truth. Some of those truths can be tested empirically, many cannot. We can't possibly hope to know the answers to many of the questions we pose. They may not even be proper questions, just the limits of the human imagination going around and around making meaning, dreaming up scenarios.

:up:

It seems impossible now to be an atheist uninfluenced by religious cultures and to be able to claim these cultures could have been created by atheists. — Andrew4Handel

Sure. But nor could you claim that atheists could not have created a similar culture. Or even that it might have been better (less guilt, less piety, less misogamy, less ritual, less colonization, less hang ups about sex, etc).

I have no idea what a purely atheist history of humans would have looked like. — Andrew4Handel

Indeed. But the problem is atheists don't have a lot in common, except for where they stand on one question. They might be right wing or left wing, libertarians or communists. So morality, like today, would be about aiming for a consensus amongst the contradictory cacophony of opinions.

If people don't agree on a definition of morality then that is an unresolvable problem itself with no objective arbitrer to refer to — Andrew4Handel

But it is seen as an unresolvable problem and always has, unless we are in a dictatorship or a theocracy.

Even within the one religion there is no agreement about morality. Look at where Christians are (all over the shop, frankly) on abortion, women's rights, trans rights, capital punishment, homosexuality, stem cell research, gun ownership, etc... Religious people and atheists only have personal preferences and philosophy to resolve the matter of how we should conduct ourselves towards others. In theists' case, it's derived from their personal interpretation of who they think god is and what they think god wants. How could that possibly go wrong? :scream:

Based on what I'm reading, it sounds like you are closer to ignosticism - which (in essence) says that the very notion of a deity or deities is incoherent. — EricH

Maybe. I generally agree with that gods are incoherent ideas. But it is easier to say one is atheist as it's a word people know. I never find much profit in getting bogged down in definitions. If you don't believe in god then you are an atheist, regardless of any other beliefs. It's the answer to a single question.

I am pistically atheist and epistemically agnostic. — Fooloso4

Nicely put.

Yes. Atheism is a response -- part rational, part emotional -- to traditional religious god-models of a "magic man" in the sky. But philosophers typically avoid anthro-morphic definitions for their ultimate/universal (non-particular) Ontological theories. And, since their logical models are hypothetical, they don't claim to have physical evidence to support their notions of Logos or First Cause. — Gnomon

Yes, I know all that. I read Paul Tillich and was close to theosophical and Buddhist groups in the 1980's. I studied Carl Jung and I read J Krishnamurti. There's probably not a version of god or higher awareness, idealism, non-dualism or quantum speculation I haven't been exposed to, at least in part.

Perhaps you "don't care" about the esoteric mysteries of Eastern Religions or Quantum theory — Gnomon

Yes. I'm also not interested in air conditioning or folk dancing. Unlike you perhaps, I am not overcome with the need to make meaning or find 'ultimate realty'. I am content and mostly satisfied by life as it appears and frankly whatever ontological beliefs we hold, the moment we leave home we are all naïve realists. :wink:

And the esoteric mystery of Ontological origins is a fundamental philosophical concern. :smile: — Gnomon

Amongst many hundred of other philosophical concerns. Great that it matters to you. I'm all for diversity.

Which comedians would you choose for the best comedy team ever in history? — universeness

If I want a laugh I might pop on Blue Velvet. Most contrived comedy irritates me - whether it is stand up or the mawkish material of Chaplain. I liked Billy Connolly and Robin Williams in some dramatic roles.

What did you think of the point made in the comedy show 'The big bang theory,' where one of the characters points out a fatal flaw in that movie — universeness

That point was made by a critic a long time before that show. Not sure how the ark would have gotten safely to the US without Indy, but as it turns out Indy (like all of us) is impotent against two things - the rage of god and the implacable bureaucracy of the American government. The ark gets boxed up and put away in an anonymous warehouse. I always got a chuckle out of that.

:up: Mainly classical, jazz and old school blues. By blues I mean Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf, Memphis Slim, Lighting Hopkins.

What music do you enjoy out of interest?

The abundance and beauty of the variety of tropes, metonomy, synechdoche, prosopoeia, metaphor, and the way they all blend and merge seamlessly and effortlessly into one another. If anything is more than real, for me, this is. — Pantagruel

I enjoyed the Proust I read back in the 1990's - he seems to be prefiguring a form of phenomenology, particularly through the experience of memory.

Merleau-Ponty was influenced greatly by the proto-phenomenological insights presented by the novelist Marcel Proust in his seven-part novel À la recherche du temps perdu. Like Merleau-Ponty's philosophy, Proust's novel was about the experience of experience. Indeed, Merleau-Ponty himself wrote: "No one has gone further than Proust in fixing the relations between the visible and the invisible," (6) meaning the relations between the objects we perceive in the world and the sens of those objects (or situations) we mysteriously perceive in the same moment. For Merleau-Ponty, Proust - though a novelist and not a trained philosopher or phenomenologist - offered a model of how to get "back to the things themselves."

https://www.themontrealreview.com/2009/Travel-and-habit-in-Merleau-Ponty-and-Proust.php

YES, that's exactly what I'm trying to illustrate. Myself included, the only difference being that I'm (hopefully) aware of the phenomenon happening to me. — Noble Dust

Yes, I have gone with that too. I rarely wear anything but black so I kind of opted out of fashion 25 years ago.

24 (?) year old guy got hired and my other co-worker informed me that my musical choices "gave him anxiety". — Noble Dust

I hope it was something profoundly unsettling, but I'm worried you're going to say Steely Dan... :wink: