Obiwan
Member
Nice idea. I found him a bit irritating tbh.Break it up 30 minutes a day?
Nice idea. I found him a bit irritating tbh.Break it up 30 minutes a day?
But is any idea really original? I have come to understand that creativity is a personal filter we use when trying to create something. I am a poet and musician. I get all my good ideas by either writing or listening to another persons work. All the greatest works in history were copied in one way or another. Striving for pure originality will not get you very far in the arts. It’s like the age old saying, “Good artists copy, great artists steal.”
About five minutes later I grabbed a spoon to mix a bowl of salad and yes, the spoon started to bend and then broke.
This is the very problem with the arts as they are now. I've heard this often "good artists copy, great artists steal' and it's such a dismissive approach to creativity. Yes, it's true, if you need to make a buck. But the greatest of artists did not do this, their piece of the weave of creation was utterly unique and that's what made it special, and that's why they died in poverty and always will, b/c the market is not reflective, in any way, of true art.
WTF was in that salad?
I listened to those when the podcasts came out. Panpsychism is impossible to prove, if a planet is conscious it's clearly a different variety of consciousness to our own. One can pray to a deity or a saint because they occupy a human space, at least theoretically. I'm not sure what mercury and I would have in common.
For seven thousand years men just like you and me have been dicking around with spirits and rituals, testing what works, and what doesn't.
The concepts of “all is one” and “all are connected” seem re-occuring, particularly during NDEs but also during other STEs such as messages received during abduction scenario accounts, meditation, or psychedelic use. It seems clear there is something to it. It’s difficult to know what exactly is meant by this when people speak of it though as it probably carries some level of innefebility with it. It seems we are “one” and yet “separate.” They aren’t mutually exclusive, or are they?
Regarding whatever “magic” is; magic is a word we use for something which we feel is contrary to our physical laws. But “REAL magic” is not contrary to any law. It is an underlying theme of reality, just as “real” as the second law of thermodynamics, or gravity. I think, for contemplative purposes, ifs helpful to stop thinking of anamalous phenomena as magical and mystical and recognize them for what they are, part of the genuine fabric of reality.
To be clear, I have a lot of sympathy with that viewpoint. It's highly likely that nature has a dynamic intelligence driving its seamless systems, I just don't believe it's a type of intelligence we'd be able to make sense of. So while the organic world, micro and macro should be treated with the greatest respect, I'm not a pagan and wouldn't worship it as an end in itself. As someone who spends much of his time in wild places, it would be bizarre not to recognise the importance of nature in creation.Well, you definitely come down on Terrence Mckenna's side vs. Sheldrake's on this one...
For me, if nature is full, at every level, of self-organising wholes with their own ends, nested in larger gestalt wholes, and it is fields of some sort that keep the show on the road, perhaps acting as the link between the implicate and the explicate (like our minds interact with our bodies), and fields of higher complexity systems do exchange information with lower complexity systems..... then it's entirely plausible to me that we could a) be apart, in some way, of the Earth's consciousness, the Solar System's, even, and b) that we could partake in an exchange with higher levels of organisation than ourselves. Of course, this exchange, filtered as it would be through our perceptions, may take on culturally/personally appropriate or very strange forms.
Y'know, if shamans can talk to plants and some parrots can read their owner's minds.... why not?
Maybe the grey aliens are Zeta Reticuli! :)
Anyway, blah, blah, blah.
Are you absolutely sure that magic operates entirely on laws, or could it be possible to violate the laws? What law says that all laws of nature must be always followed and cannot ever, ever, EVER be broken? Is there an Abyss of unstructured insanity outside this bubble of sane structured reality, and is it possible for a spirit to ride the boundary between structure and non-structure and pull in something novel? If reality is consciousness or ideal in nature as Radin believes, then who is to say this meta-consciousness is perfectly rational? If it wasn't perfectly rational, how would we notice if our method for analyzing reality (science) is designed to eliminate from consideration anything irregular or irrational?
If its possible to violate a law, then its not a restrictive law of reality in the first place and violating it is thus in perfect accord with reality.
I don’t see “appealing to a higher law” a mutually exclusive and contradictory idea with the idea that you are “appealing to a higher conscious being.” To me, you could just as easily say, “it’s a law that you can call on a higher conscious being to affect change.” Different ways of phrasing the same idea, depending upon your intent. The whole talk of laws in this case I find very difficult.
Well maybe not! During the 1980's version of AI, people began to get desperate for an AI demonstrator, and the law was considered a suitable candidate. I didn't follow what happened that closely, but clearly we haven't replaced judge or jury with AI robots!"Law" implies a fully automated system with consistent application and without any capriciousness. Appealing to a conscious being implies that the conscious being has a will of its own and has decision making capabilities not bound by any law or causal chain. If there is any such thing as true free will, it is by definition the opposite of a mechanistic law-bound process.
I suspect that some sort of consciousness goes all the way down through living systems:To be clear, I have a lot of sympathy with that viewpoint. It's highly likely that nature has a dynamic intelligence driving its seamless systems, I just don't believe it's a type of intelligence we'd be able to make sense of. So while the organic world, micro and macro should be treated with the greatest respect, I'm not a pagan and wouldn't worship it as an end in itself. As someone who spends much of his time in wild places, it would be bizarre not to recognise the importance of nature in creation.
I think everything is alive, but as its "aliveness" cannot be embraced in a way that distinguishes it from deadness, my oak table's daemon is in bondage to its role as a setting for dinner.
I think the arts would be best to get back to the idea that their subject should evolve creatively - not just be searching for something 'new'. Thus a composer should be free (i.e. not be shunned) if he starts with Chopin (say) and develops his ideas on top of Chopin's work, rather than starting from some obscure a-tonal base, and producing something pointless!This is the very problem with the arts as they are now. I've heard this often "good artists copy, great artists steal' and it's such a dismissive approach to creativity. Yes, it's true, if you need to make a buck. But the greatest of artists did not do this, their piece of the weave of creation was utterly unique and that's what made it special, and that's why they died in poverty and always will, b/c the market is not reflective, in any way, of true art.
Well maybe not! During the 1980's version of AI, people began to get desperate for an AI demonstrator, and the law was considered a suitable candidate. I didn't follow what happened that closely, but clearly we haven't replaced judge or jury with AI robots!
The problem is that law as interpreted by conscious beings is more subtle:
Law: Stealing is taking without the owner's consent."
Yes, but how far do you have to move something for it to count as 'taking'? If you have a pile of bikes outside an undergraduate lecture hall, does moving a bike to get at your own, count as stealing?
Does grabbing a bike to dash down the road to call an ambulance count as stealing?
Suppose you are a policeman, and you take the bike because you think it has been stolen!
Etc, etc.
Human laws are more like real legal interpretations, not like mathematical laws, so if you appeal to the law of a higher being, it will be interpreted by the laws of common sense, not logic!
David