Heidegger rolling in the flowers type thing? Speculative again, but depends how condensed the joy of transgression is into the fear of punishment. I'd tend to say the prohibitive is constitutive. Primally and developmentally, fear is dominant re the macrosocial (society) level with (ideally) a balancing love at the microsocial (family) level. So, applying socio-linguistic (ritual) origami to nascent awareness gives you a recognizably human consciousness, the price of which is psychological boundaries that may be practically impenetrable. Transgression can be joyful but as pleasures are behaviourally conditioning, the telos of that path veers towards ostracization / incarceration / self-destruction, and that presents a huge mental barrier for Joe Average. But, sure, the potential is likely there. — Baden

But maybe, pace Bataille, having sex near your mother's corpse while wearing a mitre isn't a necessary prerequisite for rolling in the flowers.

Even if the real is that in which the social and symbolic is suspended, it doesn't follow that the only access to it is trangressive violence to the social and symbolic. If you're playing chess and also want to sip lemonade, you don't have to knock the board over first.

You mean we can't do whatever we like in the game? Yep. — Banno

that's a soberer way to put it, but yes.What's important tho is that the world is our games and something else as well.

In the relevant sense, the world is our games. — Banno

But also the obscure source that can disrupt the game, even when we're playing in way that has always before been right.

Or make that Beijing, continued Sally coquettishly. I'm being earnest! Bob said earnestly.

Ok, so let's say conceptual or language games take place within a shared terrain. You can divide it up however you like, but all games still succeed or founder insofar as they're in some way adequate to the terrain. Mere internal coherence is not enough. There's still the question of whether there is the possibility of a unified theory or whether what we always have is a patchwork of loosely connected conceptual games that we shift between depending on what we're doing. If there's a metaphysical question lurking here,it's whether the world itself is any less patchwork than our games. (but importantly, if it isn't, that isn't full relativism. games still work or don't.)

But I don't think these views incompatible. Language games are not conceptual schemes.

The "Slab!" game and the counting apples game could be played by the very same person. But in what sense could we translate one into the other? — Banno

It's clear in that case, but above we were reducing the information-transfer aspect of language by focusing on the game-like nature of actual fact-exchanges and how learning a fact it only knowing-how when embedded in a larger game. Isn't a Kuhn suggesting something like competing conceptual games?

Edit: I see you addressed that just above.

Not sure what you mean. — schopenhauer1

The rainbow metaphor is Schop. I'm saying he had recourse to the fluctuating emotional states of his readers when he deployed it. It works, its a good image, but it works because he knew how to use words to modulate affective states.

Let's suppose I grant you this argument. I don't necessarily, but just for the sake of argument- what does this prove or not prove? I can always say the grid is simply the background that is always there once born and thus itself is part of the structure. — schopenhauer1

Snarkily : there are ways of looking at one's life that aren't centered, like room service, around how comfortable you are. Use it the wrong way and @Baden gills (which I am in favor of) can simply become a demand for air-conditioning plus an awareness of inevitable outages, and the Final Outage.

Can you speak more about 'compliance' ?

Another way at this.

(1)Replace 'conceptual schemes' with 'conceptual games' - various ways of knowing-how, rather than knowing-that.
(2)Retain Davidson
(3)Retain Wittgenstein
(4) Is there one all-encompassing game (or potential-game) all other games can be (in principle) translated into?

Only laboring the point because I think you're right to offer a corrective to the idea of language as information transfer. But if it isnt also information transfer, and is instead just making moves in games, the corrective itself can get very weird.

Knowing such a date consists in so much more than the bare recitation. It's about knowing that it was after the start of the war in Europe, before the bombing of Tokyo, the event that caused the US to become involved, launched from aircraft carriers and so on. It's about being able to talk knowledgeably on the topic, and to relate it to other things you know. — Banno

I mostly agree, and was hinting at something similar in my paragraph about the historian vs the studying-to-test-well student (tbf it was an edit so may have gone in as you were responding.)

But : does that mean that the student doesn't know that pearl harbor was bombed on 12/7/41?

But I would still say this isn't quite right in regards to structural suffering. Structural suffering means that the there are no countable minus-strokes, as the phenomena is just always in the background. Examples would include deprivation, and challenges to overcome. These are always in play once born, by definition. — schopenhauer1

Right but this transcendental root of suffering, if you like, says that there are guaranteed to be minus strokes. What makes these minus strokes minus strokes minus strokes? The same view, the same grid, that the mere seer of contingent harm, uses to evaluate a stroke's bad/good valence. Structural suffering still retains the view where any given moment can be treated in isolation as bad or good. It just goes a step further and explains why there will always be bad moments and how they'll far outweigh the good.

The fluxes of various emotional states do not have as much to do with this aesthetic understanding of life. — schopenhauer1

If you're implying that the aesthetic is above flux, that strikes me as clearly false. If you have a certain rainbow over a waterfall metaphor for the aesthetic, that could *sound* true, but the pull of that metaphor is itself is due to a flux in emotional state.

Nick Pizzolatto was the screenwriter. His inspiration was Thomas Ligotti's Conspiracy Against the Human Race. That book is a non-fiction book on Pessimism that is unrelenting in its gloom, but he knew that this would be too much to maintain it to the very end on a mini-series. — schopenhauer1

But people are inspired all the time by things, and that doesn't mean they accept it wholesale, with no personal qualifications or hangups. I knew Pizzolatto was into Ligotti et al - had he states somewhere that he fully accepts the pessimist viewpoint? It seems equally plausible to me that there's a mix of genuine enthusiasm and a popular artist's sense for what could be cool.

What's going on here? Is the point only for the student to be able to make the noises 'Pearl Harbour was bombed on December 7th, 1941' on demand?

Then that might be what is done in that little game. And what looked like information passing from one mind to another was a step in a game of recitation. — Banno

That's a possible thing, but it's neither nor here nor there, since I'm not talking about a situation like that, but about people learning what date an event occurred on.

But what actually is learning what date pearl harbor happened on? I guess the deflationary answer is that its learning what date pearl harbor happened on. If the kid wasn't actually learning what date pearl harbor happened on, it would no longer be the example I'm giving.

Of course the significance of the fact changes quite a bit depending on the means you have at your disposal to contextualize that fact. A professional historian can read a lot more into a date than someone just learning to pass a multiple choice test. But does that mean the fact - PH bombed on 12/7/41 - is a different fact if used in different language games? It's possible, but that's what opens up the vaccuum.

I see this plus-stroke or minus-stroke more characteristic of contingent harms. Structural harm would be a constant in the equation. — schopenhauer1

But, with the structural perspective, you still have minus-strokes. Only now you have a conceptual apparatus that allows you to see them as contingent instances of a general harm. Both perspectives (contingent harm/necessary-structural) bring with them a certain way of looking at things - as though you had a cartesian grid with an 'origin' of neutrality from which you could determine the positivity or negativity of a state by seeing where it is in relation to that origin

Well, that is a default. We are always working through them. In that sense, philosophy is always preserved too late- or anything that is descriptive of the situation rather than the primary situation discussed. Philosophy is mainly looking at things through analysis and description, so in that way, all that can be done is to describe the world through words, and then to analyze what is the case from that secondary response. Otherwise, there is just silence. However, if philosophy is any form of therapy for the pessimist, this secondary world would suffice, if not just for catharsis and to understand better what is going on. — schopenhauer1

Ok, but two points. The first I've made before.

(1) It may be cathartic the first time around, but then its diminishing returns. Catharsis becomes addiction very quickly. Catharsis is freeing. Addiction looks like a compulsion to repeat.

(2) I don't mean to say that philosophy should be the thing itself, rather than a delayed reflection. I'm trying to suggest that this particular philosophy is trying to 'freeze' the thing itself in a certain way, to have control over it. Good philosophy ought to change in accordance with life. Pessimism isn't like that. It installs itself, sets down roots, and then translates everything that passes by into revalidations of itself.

Perhaps the king sees better what is the case? Same with Buddha, who was a prince, right? The assumption then is something along the lines of, "Cultivate your flowers". We are certainly put in abusive situations and then have the need to justify them. But if you "step up" and "get er done" perhaps it will all work out, right? Comply, comply, do not deny. Life is a struggle, but the struggle brings meaning, right? Everything is what it is, right? — schopenhauer1

But what if there was a way of living which was neither compliance nor defiance? Besides, if you're worried about giving the abuser too much satisfaction - the victim's defiance is the spice par excellence for the abuser. If you define yourself against something, you still define yourself through it.

No, the screenwriter didn't want to leave the viewer with a Sunday night/Monday morning feeling (metaphorically speaking), but rather a Friday night/Saturday morning feeling. — schopenhauer1

Do you mean that friday night/saturday morning is gritty and real and sunday night/monday morning is fluffy and false? If so, I'm trying to say that Cohle's pessimism is wayyy less gritty than the thing he's avoiding.

I put this, a similar point, to Banno earlier and received no response:

Information is pervasive, not confined to words. Words, if they work, activate informed responses. In ordinary language this is called 'conveying information'; which is a 'movement' metaphor; don't take it literally and the problem dissolves.

Too deflationary of the concerns motivating his thread perhaps? — Janus

Perhaps, yeah. The correct title would be 'not *all of language* is moving information.' @StreetlightX already solved the problem in a very short post. Information-passing is a subset of language use.

I don't quite understand the thread. I mean, I get the idea [Wittgenstein, slabs, Austin, performativity etc] but I'm not sure what the occasion is. Haven't @Banno & others gone over this near a million times before? Wittgenstein's notion of language games is one of the most recycled themes on this forum (and its predecessor.) It's as though a resident Kantian, after years of involved forum discussion, posted a thread named 'the ethical is categorical'.

Maybe the op is an implicit response to some skirmish somewhere else that I missed.

So you think my suggestions would lead to some form of relativism? — Banno

Not necessarily. I mean that if you're doing away with 'moving information from one head to another' then, though you've improved our understanding of salt-passing, you have an explanatory vacuum for language use like e.g. a teacher telling a student 'Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7th, 1941'. If that's not information-passing, we need an alternate characterization.

@Banno Doesn't making language about what we do in this way leave us vulnerable to the maundering, marauding post-truth postmodernists? Is there no fact of the matter? I'm told such and such happened on such and such a date - but really all that's happening is someone else is doing something with language to me?

I think I'm on the same page as both @Baden & @fdrake. I liked the gills/cruise ship metaphor. I think its right to focus on its function rather than its content. Pessimism, a coping device, is meant to preserve something. And it seeks to preserve that something so insistently that, like fdrake said, it precludes transformation.

There's an element of control in all the pessimists. Schopenhauer had a system, Cioran had a perfectly manicured literary persona, and Beckett was obsessed with exhausting all permutations of a severely limited set of elements in a limited space. They're all incredible writers, and great fun to read, but there's a limit to them (tho Beckett is much harder to reduce, ...I do really like him.)

@schopenhauer1 you differentiate between structural accounts that focus on the necessity of suffering and weaker 'contingent' accounts that focus on particular harms. Both views take as given a static reference point where anything can be considered a plus-stroke or a minus-stroke situated along [bad] and [good] axes. Echoing fdrake, I have a sense that transformation happens when you don't judge things as good or bad, you take them as they are, and figure out how to work through them/with them.* The only way to work through anything is to is let go of the grid of concepts that lets you organize everything from without. Which puts the 'something' in danger of no longer being preserved - but really that shouldn't matter, because whatever is preserved is preserved too late.

If you shut yourself in, it goes without saying everything will seem to repeat futilely. Ecclesiastes ,so the legend goes, was written by a King - those guys are famous for being trapped in a world of artifice. Movie pitch : King Midas only everything he touches turns to an illustration of structurally necessary suffering.

The pursuits, hopes of attainment, and actual attainments of the goods themselves do not necessarily make life less negative. In fact, that could inform us of the fact that we are deprived already. Always overcoming or dealing with something. — schopenhauer1

_______
*canonical TV-pessimist Rust Cohle is misread as truth-speaking hero when the show telegraphs, frequently, that his Pessimism is a defense against working through his guilt over his daughter's death. 'Our planet's a gutter in the abbatoir of the slums of the ghetto of the universe' is way less meaningful than 'I was responsible for my daughter's death. But it's easier to deal with.

@Wallows OP is veering toward r/iamverysmart territory. It's good to acknowledge strengths, including intellect - but be wary of fetishizing any attribute. That'll rapidly hamper any capacity for clear self-reflection.

More on smuggling reflexivity into the gallery? — frank

Like Duchamp's fountain and all the stuff the came after, esp conceptual art. Art that's less about the artwork itself than how it makes you think about art. (imo this whole trend has metastasized now, but at the time I'm sure it was fresh)

Sometimes, too, art is just about the act of creation itself, and its effects on the audience/viewer are of secondary concern. Think of playing with toys and inventing worlds as a kid, even though no one was recording. Or also think of being a kid and finding another kid who had a way of doing make believe that totally sucked you in.

But then I feel art probably doesn't have an essence, so there's also a message-conveying way of looking at it and also a behavior-eliciting way and also a perception-inducing way and a patronage-securing way and a self-marketing way and a smuggling-reflexivity-into-the-gallery way and a virtuosic way and a self-differnentiating-to-secure-identity way etc.

You gotta do you. I certainly didn't intend to try to pull you away from something personally meaningful, something which draws you toward it. I respect that you don't want to compromise your vision for the sake of others. Yes! (but also, although...)

I will say that I wouldn't characterize your approach 'a disposition to argument.' As an outsider, looking on, it seems more like an aesthetic thing : the joy of puzzling out out how to express the chaos of thought in bold magisterial sentences.

Regarding that last thing, that's something I feel like I get. I spend a lot of time with whirling thoughts that don't make much sense, and I feel relieved when I can fit them into another medium. But sometimes the cost of that is overvaluing expression, or wanting to identify more with what I say and how I say it than what I think and - most importantly - do. (this may be the thing I struggle with most.) The weirder & more difficult real life is, the more important stately prose is, at least for me. I can log on to the forums and pretend I'm master of everything. I stammer like an idiot talking to a girl at work, but then later, online, I say something that sounds (at least to me) dope af about Kant, with a little stylistic flourish.

But the thing is: what makes writing really good is when you let in the weird, uncomfortable stuff. Not allowing that stuff to dominate, or overrun, but to flow into whatever else you're doing. I don't want to suggest you stop playing with the complex, legal-ish prose you have. That seems to be part of your thing, and means a lot to you. I guess I'm just curious what would happen if you brought some other aspects of your life into communion with that part. I think it could be cool. You might enjoy the writings of Cormac McCarthy. He did a lot with weird legal-ish prose, but in a reworked way.

Alright, got you. (By the way, my first, gut, reaction to your prose was that it sounded a little like legalese, rather than any particular author.) I didn't want to focus on the fake thing. I did want to make you feel just a little uncomfortable, but I may have gone about it the wrong way.

if I read you correctly, you're objecting to the charge of imitating past authors with the defense that you simply favor a similar prose style. Bolstering the defense: you note that you add elements that your alleged models lack; it's not just more of the same.

My characterization's not quite right though. You're objecting to the charge of fraudulence.

But, in my counterdefense, I never suggested you were a fraud. I suggested your approach would make you vulnerable to others who might suspect that. This is the difference I see: There's 'pretentiousness' and then there's feeling compelled to present one's thoughts in exaggerated ways. The former is a wrapper around nothing, while the latter is trying to preserve something valuable by wrapping it snugly in layers of borrowed splendor, as though it couldn't withstand an outside chill.

I think you do have plenty of value to say, and I think that your eccentric grappling -no bones here, it is eccentric, and eccentric's cool - but your eccentric grappling with ornate prose suggests you have all sorts of inventive energy. That's why I'm ribbing you, trying to nudge you. It would be cool if you could let some of that wrapped-up prose-energy loose - I think you have a lot to work with, if you could find a way to just speak freely. I'm going to be very blunt here : the style you've adopted may win occasional admirers, but it's going to be a red flag for most posters (including people who aren't vulgar philistines etc. It will turn away good posters.) Most people won't say this directly, they'll just click to the next thread and leave it be. But the style is an encumbrance, and it won't serve you.

But, I also think you don't need it.

Even if it feels weird at first without it.

(but also, seriously, if you want to just focus on the ideas on the thread, kindly (or bluntly) tell me to fuck off. I'll admit I'm derailing. I'm going off on this, because your post struck me largely as an experimental/technical prose exercise)

Right, but what are you saying to me? ( I'm pretty sure I understand now what you're saying but --) Just say it! It's ok if it's simple in plain language. At least you'll be saying it straight.

recap of last post:

---The recognition of simply being fake [ adverbial clause that doesn't work grammatically (or any other way, though I know you're talking about 'final flowering' from our convo)] is based on a falsehood, and so has uncertain worth. To make sure that one seems different from people who came before one [ungrammatical transition] isn't a necessary condition for what's different from an unfounded assumption of falsehood (further grammatical confusion - this doesn't flow. Leaving the rest of this sentence out. It's so fatally compromised that countenancing - countenancing :wink: - the rest of it would fling the reader irrecoverably into linguistic chaos)

It's not often that people seem good at separating truth from expressions of prejudice and blind conviction [lose 'manifestation'] ---

Summary over.

My reaction :

I actually don't know what you're saying, because the post just plum doesn't make sense.

(And this is coming from someone who *enjoys Proust* !) (I enjoy Proust!) (Proust is grammatically complex!) (He's French!) ( The Cookie Thing !)

So a challenge, because I think you can handle it: how would you have phrased that post if you were just saying what you were trying to say? Just off the cuff, straight. Flourishes welcome, but only if they don't distract, and serve to strengthen the force of the message. (analogy : Picasso would have sucked if he painted Raphaels. Raphael himself would have sucked, if, living in the twentieth century, he painted Raphaels. Picasso worked because he painted what he was feeling (tho, we must remember, he was a troubled man). Anyway, just go for it. Say what you're saying. You wouldn't be able to write such eccentric old-style posts, if you didn't have some simmering capacity for invention that you'd redirected into a constrained rhetorical space. Lift the blinds! Channel it here and now!

The flower is a good one but is imitating other, older flowers, and it distracts. makes some ppl think its a false flower when its not.

tldr: youre clearly smart, but everyone seems smarter when theyre themselves. thats what draws people in.

ha, closer! But for real just imagine you're talking to your friends, or even yourself, and no one cares (no one does, alas) and just say what you want to say. That's enough! and its even better. Imagine high style as a final flowering. It arises organically out of the movement upward. You can't jump to the top.

Caveat: don't get tricked into thinking occasional vulgarity safeguards the real shit. Don't oscillate - integrate!

:cool: theres the real ontological requisite

ah man, but that's...

@Vessuvius
I like polished classical prose as much as the next guy, but it seems like the prose style you favor is cramping you here. As others have mentioned, your prose sparkles most when you break out of the high style. & In terms of the high style : I mean this nicely, but there are a lot of missteps. It isn't quite right, semantically. Stylistically, it's strained. Why force your ideas into an alien medium? It comes out so much better when you say what you're saying as it is.

@Wallows Sorry you're going through that. I've been there a few times, it sucks. I think fdrake has the right approach, in terms of looking at what brought you there very clearly.

I don't know if this will help at all - thoughts are viscous and weird when you're there, this is abstract - but there's an idea that suicidal thought is a final temptation before actual, beneficial, change. It's like you have a set of interrelated thoughts and habits that is no longer working, and is ripe for sloughing off. But the mind is so resistant to shedding battle-tested armor that it gets confused and tries to preserve the armor even at the cost of what the armor was initially meant to protect.

You could also think of the pain and confusion as a corrosive element dissolving the old skin - if you just hang on long enough, and attend as best you can to what's happening, you'll come out on the other end better equipped.

The paradox is it has to seem really bleak before you're willing to let go of what seemed protective but is now hurting.

Last time I went through a suicidal spell, I came out the other side with a girlfriend (which had been, to me, an impossibility) and a clear awareness of what blocks me. It didn't lift the blocks entirely, but it did lay a minimal groundwork for moving forward. Anecdotal evidence, naturally, but at least sometimes it works itself out.

In any case, I hope you feel better.

I agree that ambition and rewards for achievement are not antithetical to "society" as the collection of what people value at the same time. People have been raising children for time out of mind with the purpose of replicating what they see as the best thing to be. To that point, Margaret Thatcher once said: "Society does not exist. There are only people and their families."

Her statement is absurd from the point of view that she said it while shaping the circumstances of such people. But there is a value in the point of view being expressed. There is a connection between civil institutions and what makes a person more or less effective within them. A parent makes their best effort at preparing their child for whatever that is. What is strong for some situations is a weakness in others. In some times, being strong and forthright and vocal about things will get you killed. In others, being silent and reticent will make you a door mat for others.

And it is at this point the question of the best form of government should be framed. There are conflicting versions of the best things.

We are not ready for Plato's discussion of the Good. — Valentinus

Yeah, I think that's a fair analysis.

In regards to your remarks about Roman society, one of their innovations was a process of introducing new citizens on a large scale.
So, is that an expansion of rights or a participation in a larger a set of privileges? — Valentinus

It seems like both? If I read you right, do you mean a larger participation in an existing set of privileges?

I guess my background question has to do with events in the US from the1870s to WW1: the idea of eugenics settled pretty quickly and deeply into the national consciousness.

It was an age of revolutionary engineering feats. It made sense to look at humanity as something to engineer. Why was it that any counter view was too weak to temper that impulse? — frank

I'll admit I don't know much about the history of Eugenics (or the period from 1870-1920 in general.)
But... the pharaoh let Moses and his people go after a battle of who could summon the strongest plagues. The Old Testament is God's good because he's stronger through and through. Might was right, not just for the eugenicists, or even Thrysymachus, but all the way back to the Israelites in bondage.

So maybe social eugenics was just a very old idea in newfangled mechanist clothing? Same great taste, but now its scientific.

I took your post to question my motives, as if I truly don't care about the traumatized, but I'm just more interested in promoting my brand of conservatism. My point is that I'm interested in the philosophical component of this issue and that's why the focus is on the ethical issue, not on my expressions of sympathy for the young girl and her family. While the latter is humane and appropriate in other contexts, it's not part of this discussion.

Anyway, all of this is an aside and ad hom. — Hanover

That sounds right.

If your post is supposed to be a standalone exercise in standalone ethical questions, then I'm out of line. I'll leave you to the standalone question. Have at the philosophical components.

I would not do that.

I am talking about a concept here.

Jesus H. Fucking Christ. Can we have an actual philosophical conversation? — Frank Apisa

I've been having a philosophical conversation with you. But it seems like nothing registers as 'philosophical' until that person either agrees with you or sets you up for some tawdry Oscar-Wilde-clone come back. You can't just sit at the wise-misanthrope home-plate waiting for fastballs down the center. You're neither Kurt Vonnegut nor Mark Twain.

Frank, you're much older than me, and I appreciate your wisdom, but your philosophy sucks. You have some vague problem w/ censorship. I'm sorry W.C. Fields never said 'fuck.'

You have some vague, frankly stupid, ideas about how censorship works. They're not, or at least haven't been so far, interesting.

That's what my post was. Either figure out how to respond interestingly, or keep doing your 'under appreciated golf course oscar wilde' bit for no one.

The proponents of the "strong" as a right in itself do not subscribe to the concept of society.
Pick a lane. — Valentinus

To play devil's advocate, Roman society rewarded - and cultivated - ambition and determination. Rewarded it with wealth and power. And it worked! for quite a while. The two -ambition, society - aren't mutually exclusive. I'm not on board with the Thrasymachus thrust of the OP, but I don't think 'society' stops it cold.

No worries at all, I'm usually having a mood myself.

My feeling is that, you're right, social darwinism and freudianism have a lot of mechanistic qualities. But that's not the same as saying mechanism entails them.

To take an analogy from art, you could say that artist x's style depends on certain precursors and stylistic conventions, but those precursors and conventions don't lead necessarily to that artist.

Or if you did say that, you'd have to provide a very robust argument for that.

I'm, quite honestly, sickened that people could just stand idly by while a young, thoughtful lady killed herself.
1h — NKBJ

Ok