well, religion is a matter of faith, and to that extent people require conviction. most people need some kind of belief to an extent. fair enough.

the problem is when everything else outside of religion becomes a matter of faith and conviction, and the mind closes and has no room left for doubt. in other words, everything becomes religion. it's not a lottery prize, it's an illness.

you all seem like you think you know everything, no point picking out a specific individual lololol

i dont hold faith and conviction in a high regard.

i also dont believe in the need for belief. its just a story we tell ourselves because we are dedicated to the idea that nihilism can be overcome through denying it, because our beliefs must be stronger than reality because reality is only an expression of our mind or some other shit.

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but yes, that's EXACTLY THE PROBLEM. when they attack things outside of religion. they want to build up the symbolic power of their religion, so they need things for it to crush/undermine. science is the one they chose now because science is their biggest threat and they realize on a sub conscious level that it's going to fucking decimate them. they've been bluffing and playing for time. that's what the post modern era has all been about. failed attempts to put off the inevitable. the vain hope that this failure itself means something.

the idea of knowing everything doesn't make a lot of sense. however i have to admit to becoming very cognitively closed in recent years probably out of desperation.

i fuck up all the time. also, i make a lot of typos. and my social skills are subpar, as is my eye-hand coordination.

I know everything I know, except for what I forgot. :P

all cognition is based on ignorance

me neither, but in some critical situations it can give you powerful morale. i.e., useful even if untrue.


i've been reading your posts for quite a while and i still can't follow your idea of nihilism, etc. i wish you would define it in the most narrow way possible. i suspect that by this you mean that the universe is absurd and indifferent?

as for the need for belief, it's psychological. the mind can only handle so much. i think it's more or less like what aldous huxley said, that the mind needs to discard most perception and focus on what works in order to optimize survival. belief helps people keep their shit together. it has a function. william james justified religion on that basis.

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science is founded on doubt. i love science for that very reason. it's the perfect antidote to dogma--even if people who don't really understand the scientific mindset try to turn scientific knowledge into dogma.

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ha ha, movie thread!

everyone should go read scott bakkers threepoundbrain blog i keep quoting/plagiarising him in this thread

i think my idea is that if i can make it look like it makes sense to me then it will make sense to other people.

science is not founded on doubt, its founded on empirically verifiable knowledge. but it works because it does not deal with what we want to be true, and therefore unlocks a bounty of knowledge and technique precisely because it deals a right hook to our biases ability to interfere with our knowledge.

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belief - i think you are still playing ideological games here. noone has any need for belief whatsoever. you don't need belief to get out of bed and go get a sandwich. you need belief to socially report your glorious grasping to whatever folk psychological mythos of the self and its noble meaningful purpose you want to spout to look good to the other apes who will reward you with grains from the field and chants of your name.

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nihilism - yes the universe is indifferent to us and we have no good reason for existing at all and not killing ourselves. also perpetuating existence is a dubious prospect at best because all we are doing is pushing the date of our eventual extinction forward into time, which is also pointless.

i think that our culture has these subtle but all pervasive ideological manoeuvres. its like - commodity cool nihilism. its like the idea that by consuming and "participating" you are asserting your freedom FROM nihilism by denying it thus taking its potential threat away. but the trick is you are supposed to think that nihilism is a threat to your beliefs, but your beliefs can overcome it because everything is relative and therefore perspective trumps reality.

but the truth is that all human history - its all been nihilism. that's the fundamental field on which all human endeavour has been working in.

i think that once you truly understand nihilism you can view human affairs through a different lense. you can see beyond the need to believe or uphold any ideology whatsoever. i don't like using the word "freedom" because it has a lot of connotations in these times, but it is a sort of freedom.

also nihilism allows you to go beyond good and evil.

but i wonder what nihilism actually is? i mean, does it have a neurological coordinate? are nihilistic states of mind brought about by a specific neuro chemical/environmental state?

i found nihilism very powerful because there have been times when i adopted a totally nihilist perspective, and it helped me in business and life. i was finally able to accurately use information i ALREADY POSSESSED. like - that guy is not going to get his act together and get sober and be a good person. of course, beforehand i KNEW this yet it seemed i could not bring myself to properly realize it and factor it into my decisions. i could see peoples motives and make wise predictions on what they would do.

but of course, with this perspective comes the rational thought "well, why don't i just kill myself?" for a while I was able to sort of walk the tightrope avoiding this perspective.

i think nihilism might be a more accurate form of cognition, but we have an allergic reaction to it because it inevitably questions the point of pursuing our self interest at all. maybe its a kind of thinking that subtracts certain normal delusions that we have. maybe it allows us a perspective that is more in touch with the universe itself, because it allows us to factor in the uselessness of existence, and this seems to allow us a greater understanding of what existing things will actually do?

 

“I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.”- Kurt Vonnegut



This is my philosophy.

well, that too, but the basic scientific attitude is one of asking questions-- see? if you don't doubt anything you don't need to test anything. there is no science without an open mind. there is no science without question. and science DIES when it becomes dogma. science is always testing itself

you have to look at the origins of science to see the power of those doubts in their time. is the earth really flat? does the sun really revolve around the earth? is fire really phlogiston escaping matter? do some objects fall faster than others in a vacuum? is there such thing as a "life force"? is the atom really like a raisin pudding? is gravity really an attractive force? etc. etc.


i'm not playing games (i resent that accusation), but if belief didn't present an evolutionary advantage to the nervous system it would have gone the way of our amphibian tails (see fetal development).

just because belief can be useful (to many) it doesn't follow that it's either indispensable nor necessary. for example, belief that god ordered you to be fruitful and multiply will make your genes spread more which will spread the believing gene more.

this is perfectly compatible with the nihilism you espouse, as an absurd universe is neither in favor nor against belief. only our own drive to truth is against belief. or maybe it's a mutation. but that's our personal problem and it ends when we do.



but you don't need a "reason" to not kill yourself just like you don't need a reason to eat a sandwich. i mean you just live on and you just eat a sandwich like a good machine. actually, i think "a reason" is more of a prerequisite for suicide. except for lemmings which do it instinctively.


but just because something is pointless it doesn't mean that it has no value for me. in other words, something can have value for you even if it has no meaning for the great fucking universe. i mean the universe and i are two different people. if the universe wants to be absurd that's fine, i don't give a shit; if there is no god, it doesn't alter me; i'm fine being an orphan and i can still find value in things because this good machine that is me gives its value to me.


you mean purchasing as a way to get meaning? like "this is my brand!"-- that kind of shit?


if you mean that all human endeavo(u)r means nothing in the end then sure!

but i am not concerned with those questions because i do not require the universe to approve of my actions. i am not in the end. and yes i know my actions are absurd in an absurd universe. i still derive value from them though.

 

Castaway On The Moon:
Nothing short of a masterpiece - 8.5 - 9/10

thanks for this! and thanks for talking about movies again.

(this isn't on netflix yet but i've put it on my kweee. it predicts i'm gonna love it and it's usually right).

last was post was buried under oodles of crapola so i feel compelled to repost:

watched a bunch of things this weekend…

THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP



i love watching michel gondry's movies because it's like getting inside the mind of a very imaginative child with awesome toys. having said that, i didn't like his main character too much because of his arrested development condition. i laughed a bit when i heard it was all autobiographical (in a way). poor guy! but a fun movie. first time i see charlotte gainsbourg, she has her dad's face and her mom's body and hairdo.

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THE DAMN UNITED



i liked it, but this one needed to restore some deleted scenes, because the final print is incomprehensible without them. i wish they had the "extended version" option on the disc because what the fuck was that man doing in his office during the game? had he been sent off by the ref? was he shitting his pants? no? jeezus… fucking incomprehensible. good story and good characters (even though i understand much was fictionalized), and there's an extra on the disc about "the changing game" which as a nice addition.

LIFE OF PI



gorgeous, visually, and amazing story, i just didn't like the whole religious angle which is supposedly the backbone of the whole thing, but still, what a spectacle, fucking wow. only weird thing was looking at his CGI uncle with the weird body, the way his face moved was creepy as fuck. as for the rest, jeezus, tremendous visuals.

TREASURES IV: DISC 2

an unmitigated borefest. 11 minutes of fog moving off a hill "to teach us how to see" (thanks, professor). a fast-forward tour of new york in the 60s. some lady in a hammock, and jack smith making faces or giving a blow job to a balloon. the unlistenable "music" of angus maclise. a drag queen giving a blow job to a banana (more obvious please). 9 minutes of people in an escalator (clever-- but 9 minutes!?!?). 36 minutes of some other thing i decided to skip because no avant-garde anything should last 36 minutes (ha ha, no, i didn't have time to watch it and just wanted the next movie in the queue sent).

the singular wonderful exception to all this nonsense was george kuchar's I, AN ACTRESS, which had us laughing hard and we watched twice. george kuchar was indeed an amazing actress!



there was also the first segment of ken jacobs's "little stabs at happiness" featuring jack smith, which was pretty great and disturbing, but then he has to keep adding more and more segments and boring footage until you just want to kill him.

one thing i noticed in all or most of these people or at least a lot of them they were ivy league dropouts. correlation or causation?

plus:

RUSH


great mainstream movie, more intelligent than the average blockbuster, and good fun for when you're stressed out and need to sit in front of the tv with a beer. good action, great noise, good looking people-- the script is a bit manichaean in its opposition of "passion vs. reason" (but passion has its reasons/ but reason hides a passion, etc.), which is shallowly pleasant while the story unfolds but suffers upon later reflection (because it's a bit too obvious). nevertheless, apparently the movie has the approval of the main people depicted (cough cough), who collaborated with the filmmakers. good fun for weekends, parties, etc. watch with big speakers!

pic saved.

(=how can we not just by this pic run and watch that movie?)

ha ha, yeah, if you haven't, you should--it's beautiful