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  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 7:22 pm on October 26, 2014 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , philosophy, ,   

    Religion 101: the Quest for Meaning 

    Hindu God

    Hindu God

    In the Beginning was the Question: WTF? And thus was born Consciousness, self-consciousness, both blessing and curse. Could the origins of consciousness be of anything besides the juxtaposition of Self and Other? I doubt it. From that is born the recognition of basic relationships, very similar to Boolean logic: more than, less than, equal to, etc. This is primal thought, thought without language. From that all the plethora and panoply of consciousness is possible.

    Now that we have language, it’s hard to imagine thinking without it, because we certainly do think in a language, just as does a computer. But computers existed, and had functions, before language, and so did we humanoids: not much, perhaps, but some, enough to populate several continents, apparently for no other reason than that they were there, and had food.

    From the basic relationships come causal relationships: if this, then that, every time, so one must be the cause of the other. Animals do this all the time, and without language, as we know it. Yet they exist—and have meaning, to us, at least. This cause-effect relationship I suspect is the origin of ‘reason’, in fact, and arises very early in the history of thought, in fact the same word in some languages. (More …)

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 6:59 am on October 3, 2014 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , philosophy, ,   

    Evolution for Dummies: Junk DNAAND the Double Helix of Culture 

    crown of thorns

    crown of thorns

    If evolution really favors smaller more adaptable units—which it apparently does—then Americans are in trouble, we with our much-heralded ‘ownership society’, especially cars and houses, the bigger the better. America is overweight, but it ain’t just carbs and fat. It’s fuel injection and renovated flats, these possessions that possess us, these conveniences that encumber us, these adornments that weigh us down, down to the ground, six feet under, rest in peace…

    Dinosaurs went extinct and so likely will we, as Americans of the central model paradigm, at least, hocked to the gills with credits and debits and accounting tricks and treats, and plenty of reasons to retreat; why bother with success, anyway, when there are so many reasons for failure? How did you want to go down in the Apocalypse, btw: was it war, famine, disease, or flame? It’s no wonder; it’s nobody’s shame, just butterfly effects gone wild with mathematical precision…

    Self-sufficiency used to be considered a positive personality trait, hard work a must. Saving was encouraged, if not absolutely required, and in God we trust; all others pay cash. Now we’re a nation of leveraged, selfied-out crybabies waiting in line camped out all night for our iPhones and soma, got a ticket for N’awlins but the bus stops at Houma, all cashed out and nothing left to buy, can’t buy a thrill, all we can do is cry…

    Even unemployed Americans have iPhones, of course, money no object, that’s a fact, that’s currency; homeless people, too, now, taking donations online, gotta’ check on the status of food stamps, see if that Social Security check is in the mail. Half the world lives on less than three dollars a day; see how many iPhones that’ll buy you, true poverty struggling to eat very day, not Yelp or snap-chat, giga-chips and cookies with no trans fat…

    But rich people are worse, crunching their numbers between gold fillings, fracking veins and splicing genes, GMO cereal killers with their high-flying lifestyles on private jets and multiple planes, properties portfolios and multidimensional probabilities, many worlds possible, taking off and landing with the frequency of junk, buying and selling people like so much chattel and so many cattle, bodies for sale, ten bills a pop, credit cards accepted, swipe it where you wipe it…

    The Anthropocene Age has been a blast, a quick short spurt of consciousness and destruction after years of ignorance and bliss, man inserting his thingie into multiple orifices, simultaneously, plugging holes and creating new ones, just for the Hell of it, just because it’s there, Mt. Everest and the Moon, by horoscope and all good offices, all for the good of mankind, come Hell or high water, reduced to comfort food and memories, that’s entertainment…

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 3:05 pm on June 23, 2014 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , nurture, philosophy,   

    #Nature vs. #Nurture and the great Human Crap Shoot 

    Nature vs. Nurture is one of the great debates of history and science, at least since the origin of the science of genetics, i.e. whether human lives are more the product of genetics or experience. This is closely related to the previous philosophical debate of free will vs. determinism. The subject is literally something of a ‘chicken vs. egg’ question, though, largely unanswerable and ultimately futile, that egg and that coop both necessary and more or less equal. So let’s call it a draw.

    It turns out we have far fewer genes—a mere few tens of thousands—than would account for the variety of human and biological experience, and many of those only come into play when ‘turned on,’ oh baby. If the hand you’re dealt cannot really be changed (would you even want to? That’s YOU), then the hand you play is (almost) infinitely open-ended, so fair enough. If you’re lucky you may even get to throw a few cards away and request some new ones. Bottom line: get off your ass and create your life.

    (More …)

     
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