Ah Ham, here we go again. You can choose to look at it that way, but where does it get you? Let me show you a different path:
Neg: The self and its experience is deceptive from the gitgo. Pos: The self and its experience is instructive from the gitgo. Neg: It acquaints each of us with a world of beingness in which 'I the observer' > am the central focus. Pos: It teaches us about a world in which I the observer seem to be the central focus. Neg: > My joy, my pain, my desire are what respond to this world, and they are as > real to me as its physical objects. The only reality I know is my > individual role in the universe; everything else is hearsay or second-hand > experience. Pos: My joy, pain and desire are responses to the world of perceived physical objects which teach me by analogy about reality and help me form a role in the universe. The only reality I know is the only reality there is, so why bother with a pejorative "only"? Neg: >From my subjective POV everything happens to Me, exists for Me, and depends > on Me. I am, in fact, the center of all reality, and if I should cease to > be, just as assuredly so would my universe. Pos: >From the comfortable armchair of my chosen existence, I contemplate the all around me and using my center to reason; concluding that when or if I should cease to be, my universe continues the patterns I contribute while I am here. Neg: Gnarly, perhaps, but deceptive as well. My intellect alone sees through > this deception, but intellect is in many ways alien to the self -- a > composite of deductive and analytical skills acquired from my social > environment as a means of reflecting on the values of my objective reality. > Negative Neg (which of course, = +): "my intellect alone" ??? As if that wasn't enough? What the heck, Ham. If you want more than intellect to guide you, you are really grasping for the ineffableness of it all. Heck, intellect sees through the deception then its not deceptive any more. And I also contradict the intellect as being alien to the self. For me personally anyway, the two get along quite fine. In fact, I posit that the self is an intellectual construction so how could there be any sort of conflict? > All experience must be recalled in order to reflect on it. What we > apprehend "in the moment" is raw sensory data. "raw sensory data" is a just as much a reflective category as any other. Just as much an intellectual division of reality. > This disparate data has to be assimilated and integrated by the mind > before it can leave an impression of the reality external to us. In truth, > we live in the present through our impressions of the past. What we value > today is maningful only insofar as we can associate it with what we valued > yesterday. Such is the serial nature of experiential existence. > I believe the primacy of value means that it has ways of imposing itself upon us, regardless of our memories of the past. > And I can't call that preintellectual apprehension "undifferentiated >> value" >> because by god, I sure am differentiating in the moment. This moment of >> artistic revelation is different from all other moments by its unique call >> on my soul from a more harmonious dimension. >> >> And finally, the selective differentiation is not any act of my >> experience, >> it resides not in the act but the experience of my experience. It is what >> comes to me, presents to me, inspires me and makes me respond in some way. >> When I'm very happy with my response, I call it "art". >> > > > Your "experience of experience" is memory recall. I should have emphasized the first "experience" so you'd catch that I was contrasting the "experience" of experience with the "act" of experience that you postulate. I don't see activity in experiencing, I see action in response to experience. Even what you consider to be instantaneous or "direct" experience is a > deception. There you go again, gettin' all Neg on me. Deception? How do you know? How can you prove that my experience corresponds not at all to reality? The best you can postulate metaphysically is the unknowableness of such a thing, but to assert absolutely in the positive or the negative implies a knowledge that transcends the normal. Which is fine. Go ahead. Do so. Make my day. Explicitly, though, rather than illicitly implicitly like you done there. > My point was that how we feel about the world depends on our value > sensibility. Since postmodernists have trashed most of their traditional > values, what they create in rap music, "pop" art, and new age philosophy > tends to be sensationalistic rather than beautiful. Well the way I see it, what is created is a reflection of what is seen. City life with little natural beauty is the inspiration for rap. Popular art is inspired by popular culture. New age philosophy stems from a shallow culture of image worship wherein appreciation for the deep and meaningful words of past and new thinkers is glossed over because it's too difficult to get into all that depth when you can just present some egoistically attractive concept (yer ALL GOD) that's been quickly and simplistically rationalized. > >> "To me the meanest flower that blows, brings thoughts to deep for tears" >> focuses upon the idea that Nature is our ultimate teacher of Value - it is >> in natural relations we can contemplate the truly pre-intellectual Quality >> in all objective reality. >> > > True enough. But then, what in existence is not "natural relations"? > What I call "virtual reality". The world of created images and stories which comprise modern media and 90% of modern man's meaningful input. These are manipulated relations. Manipulated by Big Bro the Giant with an intention to deceive and subjugate. And most hateful of all - nature shows. Ugh. Or did you think Lemmings really do commit suicide? John C the anti-lemming > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ > -- ------------ Doing Good IS Being ------------ Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
