Gord Wrote:
>
> First of all Chad, I consider myself an aspiring writer and
> student . . . I
> am not a scientist; thus I am essentially one of those
> "common folk"...
Gord, when I refer to the "Common Folk", I intended those persons that
believe in magic and mysticism. I don't think you fall in that group. Common
folk, as you refer to, do not write the things you do.
> hey, I sometimes even admit that I consider myself white trash! [And
> somewhere around here there's a photo of the trailer I lived
> in once to
> prove it.] ;p But I think "common folk" can be literate in
> the arts and
> sciences if they try... in my country as in yours we have
> libraries and
> basic education and a degree of luxury that allows a great many people
> (though unfortnuately not all) the freedom to learn about
> almost any topic
> if one wants, regardless of one's work-specialization. It's
> not optimal,
> but with work it's possible. Being "common" folk is an excuse, I know
> several people coming from far poorer backgrounds and tougher
> situations
> than I have ever been in who also know more than me about a
> whole plethora
> of topics, including science, even when it's outside their speciality.
> That said, what I was dismissing regarding "faeries" was
> simply the notion
> of their *literal* existence. This says nothing to the fact that the
> experience has been widely reported. I just don't think there
> *literally*
> are fairies and elves in the world. But this doesn't dismiss peoples'
> EXPERIENCES of faeries.
I do suggest that they do literally exist. That they are created and
destroyed from person's belief. Just as some true believers suffer from
Stigmata, the possiblity is that they are products of the mind, but they do
manifest literally. The Fairies of Pre-industrial revolution are today's
Ghosts and UFO's.
It just calls into question their
> interpretation of
> that existence. For good reason, actually. I've spent a lot of time
> thinking about the isomorphic nature of what we find in a
> great number of
> these kinds of narratives that we find in a great many cultures: fairy
> abduction, alien abduction, abduction by gods and devils and spirits,
> descents into the underworld of Hades or of the orishas . . .
> It's like
> there is a set of narrative structures that seem to be
> reshaped to fit the
> society in which the person telling the story lives and tells
> it. (In the
> same way that James Joyce apparently saw Telemachus from _The
> Odyssey_ and
> Hamlet as kind of versions of the same character.) I'm sure
> there is an
> explanation for this apparent deeper quasi-standard pattern,
> something to
> do with experiences. All I am dismissing is the details of
> the literalized
> explanations that various cultures concoct to explain such widespread
> experiences. I dismiss faeries like I dismiss orishsas and
> the greek gods,
> it's a level playing field after all. But the pattern of
> experience raises
> interesting questions about the nature of the psyche, about
> imagination,
> about the way social myths are sustained (I don't believe
> that everyone who
> claims they've seen an alien has had an experience of it, by
> the way), and
> probably it tells us a lot about the ways in which our
> imaginations are
> shaped by our cultures, and about how we can "literalize" and
> "narrativize"
> even the most befuddling experience.
I agree, with the caviat that it is possible that they do exist literally.
I'm not saying that there is a hidden civilization of Fairies in certain
forests throughout the world. I believe that the come in and out of
existence, as we belive them. Heinlein expressed this in there being other
realms where our art and beliefs manifest themselves. I can only refer, as
evidence of this, in events like stigmata, faith healing, remote viewing.
I think that we can agree that there is no magic, only explanations.
>
> Finally, I don't dismiss people as crazy just because I can't
> explain their
> experience or beliefs. Beliefs are divergent -- there is no way to
> establish an ultimate truth anyway, but within a kind of
> scope of tolerant
> coexistence and respect and compassion it doesn't matter -- and
> experiences are subjective. But I might question someone
> using inductive
> logic to try establish "truth" from a subjective experience
> like having
> seen a rasta-fairy-in (*groan*) the backyard garden. I wouldn't call
> someone with temporal lobe epilepsy "crazy", by the way, but
> they sure see
> some weird things. And I wouldn't call a depressed person "crazy", but
> their subjective perception of the world (and especially
> other people) can
> vary widely from that of a non-depressed person. [As I know
> from my own
> experience in the black pit.]
>
> It's just that, after all, lots of things in history were
> given mystical
> explanations, such as the movements of the planets or an
> event like a whole
> village suddenly bursting into St. Vitus's Dance. Many of
> these have later
> been explained by the Copernican solar system and a more sophisticated
> understanding of gravity and interactions of it between
> planets, or the
> realization that ergot fungus growing in rye (or is it
> barley?) can cause
> symptoms of what was called St. Vitus Dance (a natural source
> of some of
> the same stuff that's in LSD, apparently). Suddenly you don't
> need legions
> of angels and devils and other invisible beings (who occasionally are
> visible according to a few people) to explain experience. Uncle Occam
> strikes again with his sharp razor.
>
> >You assumption seem valid to me. I would suggest that the
> only circumstances
> >where we could have visited Mars, would have been from acts
> of Uplifting by
> >you know who (and I don't mean God).
>
> I think Uplift by fairies and elves is even more unlikely
> than Uplift by
> Martians. ;p
Oh! Now you're freaking me out! ;-)
>
> >Check out
> >http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/msss/camera/images/4_6_face_rele
> ase/index.html
> >Nasa went back to the same site to take pictures to answer
> the question. If
> >you did believe in the Face, you will feel stupid after
> seeing this site
> >(Unless you believe in NASA conspiracies).
>
> Which is the standard (zzzz) response to NASA's Face-On-Mars
> rebuttal --
> that *is* a conspiracy executed by "the man" to keep us
> ignorant of "the
> truth" which is obviously "out there."
>
> >There is no face on Mars, there are no canals, these are not
> the 'droids
> >your are looking for...
>
> Hahahaha. Indeed. There might be a few neat fossils, though, and maybe
> *maybe* some kind of highly extremophile life under the surface or
> something. *Maybe*. But I doubt it.
>
> >It is my belief that the same thing that drives us to make
> babies, is what
> >drives us to go to Mars. There is no explaining it -the Universe has
> >hard-wired it into us. I don't think we need a reason.
> Someday, someone will
> >be driven enough to make it to Mars, to satisfy this
> "cosmic" urge. Perhaps
> >one may not feel the urge as strongly as in others, but be
> patient, Mother
> >Nature is working on that!
>
> I'm more than a little suspicious of that claim. Why would
> you say that
> expansionism and frontier-seeking is an innately human thing?
> I'd contrast
> that with the way China expanded as a nation (except for Xinjiang and
> Tibet, I'm under the impression it was historically more of a case of
> invaders becoming Sinicized ["Chinese-ified"] over time, and a lot of
> working out of internal power structures and organization,
> rather than what
> we see as the expansionist urge -- but this is a loose
> impression and I am
> not a specialist in the history of Asia). It seems to me that
> a lot of the
> "migration" of people was linked to resources, in the long
> historical view:
> either following or searching for better grazing land for
> the herds they
> either kept or hunted; or driving people out of a particularly rich or
> convenient area of farmland or hunting, or whatever. This is
> different from
> a kind of "driven to expand outward" in that nomadic
> existence seems to
> center on "here" (being wherever you happen to be), where expansionism
> centers on the place from which you expand out.
>
> As for Mother Nature working on it, be careful about what you put on
> Nature. :) In an environment where going to Mars routinely
> gets you killed,
> Mother Nature would seem to be eliminating this
> self-destructive urge; in
> an environment where trying to get to Mars is easily
> possible, and people
> who do it thrive, prosper, and reproduce a lot, I suppose
> Mother Nature
> might be imagined to be make such an urge widespread. But
> really I think
> the playing field is a lot closer to the conscious side of
> us, our culture
> and our values and our imaginations and our commerce and all
> of that --
> the stuff that's all Nth order effects of the way our genes
> interact, and
> environment, and all sorts of things. Does that make sense?
I would agree with there being many interactions involved. I view us getting
to Mars, as an unexpected result of some other product (man, I know there is
a term for that...can anyone help me out here?). Take the computer industry
as an example. To quote the tired phrase "Who knew!". Nature has a way of
"getting there", even if it is not the most direct route.
Nature is a multi-processing Mother.
Nerd From Hell
>
> Gord
>
>
>
