Post: #126

Well - I guess so. I remember a similar thing happening to my buddy Mark Minter.

And that...

Oh never mind.

Post: #127

But on a serious note.

I don't find women interesting or fun to be around.

Sorry - just the way I am.

Post: #128

(04-17-2014 05:52 PM)cardguy Wrote:  But on a serious note.

I don't find women interesting or fun to be around.

Sorry - just the way I am.

Um, this forum is exclusively about men being around women.

Post: #129

Man... I think our buddy Cardguy is gettin off from all of this attention!! I do respect the members of this forum and I don't intend on causing trouble, but you're sounding like the equivalent of a fat activist saying health at every size regarding the own thread that you started asking a validation question!! It's been going on a bit to long in my book.

With your history on the forum, your obvious intelligence about philosophy and all of your rep points, it's inconceivable in my mind that you're not a big player on this blog giving tips with the likes of Roosh and Tuth!! Something else is going on because you're hamstring on this thread is of Jezebel proportions!!

You had mention that on a previous thread on how you can't get rid of your belly... and that you don't care. So why ask the question? With all of the info on health around here between Intermittent Fasting and Juicing, it's inexplicable on how anyone interested in health can't seem to get some results.

With all of the winners in every facet of life on this forum, it's inconceivable on how you argue the way you do! I truly do respect your history on this forum, but damn enough is enough. Even me I'm still somewhat of a mess, but I'm way better than before with the info that I got from here! And you got here 3 months before I did, but with 20x the posting history and wayyy more rep points!! So this totally doesn't make sense... something is going on my friend!!

Post: #130

I agree - this thread is going round in circles.

See you all in a different thread!

Post: #131

(04-15-2014 01:55 PM)cardguy Wrote:  I'm 32 and have never had a girlfriend.

Is that weird?

I would say yes. But given you have an interesting perspective on life, that's not a bad thing. I think many people find most people 'annoying.' I used to, but not so much anymore. Although that's irrelevant, because the truth is, I actually really enjoy the company of women, always have. I've been a horny bastard ever since I can remember, before I was even 5 yo. But I only enjoy the company of very select women. They have to be beautiful and stable, which we know is a very selective sieve. For me, those criteria have resulted in two legitimately great LTRs.

Have you ever come across a woman who was better than you in some way? Actually learned something from a hot bitch who also happened to be smart? Any woman who you would think 'hmm, she's kinda hot and could be a good mom.'

Post: #132

Here's a letter from Richard Feynman, who epitomizes the "rational" scientist, to young Stephen Wolfram:

Quote:CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
CHARLES C. LAURITSEN LABORATORY OF HIGH ENERGY PHYSICS

October 14, 1985

Dr. Stephen Wolfram
School of Natural Sciences
The Institute for Advanced Study
Princeton, NJ 08540

Dear Wolfram:

1. It is not my opinion that the present organizational structure of science inhibits "complexity research" - I do not believe such an institution is necessary.

2. You say you want to create your own environment - but you will not be doing that: you will create (perhaps!) an environment that you might like to work in - but you will not be working in this environment - you will be administering it - and the administration environment is not what you seek - is it? You won't enjoy administrating people because you won’t succeed in it.

You don’t understand "ordinary people." To you they are "stupid fools" - so you will not tolerate them or treat their foibles with tolerance or patience - but will drive yourself wild (or they will drive you wild) trying to deal with them in an effective way.

Find a way to do your research with as little contact with non-technical people as possible, with one exception, fall madly in love! That is my advice, my friend.

Sincerely,

(Signed, 'Richard P. Feynman')

Richard P. Feynman

Post: #133

I appreciate the help and advice.

But - off subject - Feynman could be a bit of a dick.

Post: #134

(04-17-2014 04:27 PM)Icarus Wrote:  A passage from Ernst Jünger's Eumeswil:

Quote:At times I see them as if I were walking through the streets of Pompeii before the eruption of Vesuvius. This is one of the historian’s delights and, even more, his sorrow. If we see someone doing something for the last time, even just eating a piece of bread, this activity becomes wondrously profound. We participate in the transmutation of the ephemeral into the sacramental. We have inklings of eras during which such a sight was an everyday occurrence.

This Jünger passage is a good illustration of precisely the kind of vacuous literary sentimentality I was talking about. There is absolutely no reason to think of any of these experiences as "wondrously profound" merely because they are the last of a certain kind. This is, at best, akin to the kind of Aspie pedantry that makes someone buy for his collection the last ball that Babe Ruth hit for a home run, simply because it happened to be his last home run. Is there, in fact, something special about that ball, or even about that home run? Of course not. What is meaningful is the whole arc of the career, and most particularly what he was able to accomplish at his height, and perhaps some hits that were crucial to the team winning a championship -- not some unremarkable moment fetishized for insipid numerical reasons.

But it is actually worse than that. The reason Jünger so desperately rhetoricizes these "last experiences" and attempts to convince himself and others that they carry some special weight, is because he believes all experience to be equally empty and futile. And it is this deeply felt totalized emptiness of all experience that leads him to attempt to "sacralize" such terminal experiences -- since, because he "knows" that no experience is of any actual or intrinsic value, but all are equally "meaningless", it is only by such purely formal and arbitrary manipulations that the longed-for but impossible sacralization can be achieved.

This is, incidentally, the kind of darkness and stupidity that is shared by many serial killers -- they are often obsessed with the idea that they get to decide what another person's final moments will be like, and that there is some revelation of truth or significance to be gained from witnessing this. They fetishize the supposed profundity of the sense that these moments are just like any others, and yet somehow also -- magically -- different and special. All of which is nothing more than the stupefied superstition of a mind beset by darkness and emptiness.

(04-17-2014 04:13 PM)Wutang Wrote:  I remember you previously mentioning that the laments of someone who is in their last days or otherwise weakened mentally or spirtually is something not worth looking at simply because it's from someone who is weak. Conversely, you could say that the words of someone who is currently at the pinncale of success is not worth listening to since it's bred out of someone going through fair weather conditions that will pass inevitiably - kind of like listening to a hot chick in her early 20s at the height of her feminine powers reasoning about life - a view that most people here would say is completely out of touch of what actually goes on in life. Now, I actually don't think that but I do think it's good to listen to people on both sides of the fence (a better mental imagery might be that of someone on top of the hill and someone at the bottom) in order to understand the full range of human experience - that's all I'm really saying is that all parts of life are worth studying, not just the moments of triumph.

This has nothing to do with fair or foul weather. It should be obvious that the most valuable contributions will generally be those produced by men at the height of their mental and physical powers which is a very far cry from a "hot chick" whose mental powers are nil at all times. While it is occasionally possible for a weak or even dying man to contribute something of value, this is rare -- and certainly, nothing that men say on their deathbed should be overvalued merely because of that particular context.

(04-17-2014 06:40 PM)Icarus Wrote:  Here's a letter from Richard Feynman, who epitomizes the "rational" scientist, to young Stephen Wolfram:

It's a decent little letter from an old Feynman to the rather annoying Wolfram. His point about ordinary people is particularly good and of course he was right about the uselessness of an institution for "complexity research" (one has been founded anyway in Santa Fe and has produced absolutely nothing of value). The suggestion to "fall madly in love" is an old man's quite excusable and charming sentimentality. I gave Feynman as an example of a man of substance (not a "rational scientist" whatever that means), and this letter is a reasonable illustration of that.

Post: #135

Cardguy,

I want to preface this by saying if you answer "yes" I'm not going to go on some sort of long-winded anti -tobacco rant...

Do you smoke cigarettes?

Post: #136

No - I don't. Don't like the taste or the smell. Disgusting habit.

Post: #137

OK.

I've really got nothing to add or contest then.

... was grasping at straws anyway, but when I replaced the smoking habit with the exercise habit I noticed a slight uptick in my interest to get out and socialize.

This thread's been all kinds of interesting / entertaining. Respect to your sterling defense of the hermetic lifestyle.

Post: #138

@ Lizard - I think we'll just have to agree to disagree. I think we just come from too different mindsets and our beginning premises are just far too divergent for us to be able to convince each other of the value of each other's position. You seem to be a pretty optimistic guy in general and also a believer in the inevitable progress of humankind while I tend to have a more dim view (ie. John Gray of "Straw Dogs" fame). The one thing I will add though is to look at Roosh's writings - I enjoyed all the stories of his various successes traveling around South America and Europe at the height of his playerdom but I do enjoy just as much if not more his more introspective writings such as the ones he is producing now. I think if we were missing one or the other then his works would not have full effect on all of us that it does now.

Post: #139

Wutang, I'm curious about what your "beginning premises" are -- and about what you think mine are. If you feel like elaborating, please do.

Roosh is indeed an interesting writer and I too enjoy both kinds of posts by him. But it strikes me that he could be a yet more interesting writer if his writings did not always divide so neatly -- that is, if they blended these supposedly irreconcilable modes in an organic mixture of both deep emotion and well-observed fact.

Post: #140

(04-16-2014 04:21 PM)bonkers Wrote:  Cardguy, you said in another thread ("Anyone got a belly that won't go away?" thread) that you were in the "hookers, titty bars and porn stage of my life now."

Yet you are only 32? Surely that's too young to give up and just go for P4P isn't it? Heck, I think most on here would agree that 32 would be heading towards your peak years.

What gives?

It's all about return on investment. If he has to make a gargantuan effort just to occasionally bang mediocre British girls. Can you really blame him? All of the English speaking countries are huge sausage fests with tons of girls with shitty attitudes. The most rational decision is to probably either leave, or resort to something like that while you're stuck there.

Post: #141

(04-15-2014 01:55 PM)cardguy Wrote:  I'm 32 and have never had a girlfriend.

Is that weird?

No, you are just lucky.

Post: #142

(04-17-2014 08:24 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  This Jünger passage is a good illustration of precisely the kind of vacuous literary sentimentality I was talking about. There is absolutely no reason to think of any of these experiences as "wondrously profound" merely because they are the last of a certain kind. (...) But it is actually worse than that. The reason Jünger so desperately rhetoricizes these "last experiences" and attempts to convince himself and others that they carry some special weight, is because he believes all experience to be equally empty and futile. And it is this deeply felt totalized emptiness of all experience that leads him to attempt to "sacralize" such terminal experiences -- since, because he "knows" that no experience is of any actual or intrinsic value, but all are equally "meaningless", it is only by such purely formal and arbitrary manipulations that the longed-for but impossible sacralization can be achieved.

If you were ridiculing some effeminate academic who never left the comfort of the Ivory Tower and who lived through the books written by greater men, I would take your objections a bit more seriously.

However, Ernst Jünger spent almost 4 years in the trenches on the western front in WWI, he led 100s of men into battle, he stormed the British and French trenches numerous times, participated in most major battles, saw hundreds, perhaps thousands, of men getting killed on the battlefield, killed enemy soldiers, was wounded over 10 times. He was also in France during WWII as a military intelligence officer and witnessed several German deserters getting executed by firing squad. Several of his friends and acquaintances in the German Officer Corps were involved in the failed attempt to murder Hitler in 1944 and were executed by the Nazis. His own son was forced to join a penal battalion of the Wehrmacht for ridiculing Hitler and was killed in action by the Allies in Italy in 1944. His other son committed suicide in the 1970s. And the book from which the passage was taken was written in the 1970s, when Jünger was in his 80s, over 3 decades after the end of WWII, and 2 decades before his own death in 1998 (some 8 decades (!!!) after the end of WWI).

Apparently, you have greater life experience with death than he did. After all, he only saw entire platoons of his own company of Hanover fusiliers getting blown to smithereens by British artillery in WWI. You obviously have seen much more war and death, and you know absolutely everything about life because you are a "man of substance" (whatever that means) and will never have any regrets and doubts whatsoever, because only weaklings deviate from the worldview they held at the peak of their lives.

Let's say that the only thing we agree on is that the Santa Fe Institute never produced anything of value, and is little more than a cushy country club for bored academics.

And thanks for telling me what Jünger thought about life and death. I have been reading his books for years and trying to understand his worldview, but your brilliant and succinct paragraph enlightened me once and for all!

Post: #143

Icarus, I respect your passion for Jünger. It was certainly not my intention to ridicule him, and I'm sorry if it came off that way.

But it is not only, or even mainly, effeminate academics whose minds were benighted by what I call nihilism. So was virtually every brilliant and literary man since Nietzsche. No amount of experience, manliness, courage, or even nobility, is enough to allow a man to see through the dominant metaphysics of the age. (Although a very few brilliant men of the past century have escaped its onus more or less by accident of disposition, personality, and involvement with certain supreme American energies whose nature and provenance has nothing to do with that metaphysics -- hence my seemingly random examples of Jack LaLanne and Richard Feynman).

The utterly felt conviction of "meaninglessness" as metaphysical truth drove the most brilliant and sensitive men of the past 100+ years -- of whom Jünger was certainly one -- into a frenzy of more or less intensely expressed literary gestures. But these gestures, however they may impress us with their pathos or nobility, are not the same as a thoughtful understanding of objective reality. They are indeed, strictly speaking, vacuous -- to take the most prominent example, Samuel Beckett's entire writing is little more than the alternation of such gestures with reflections on their vacuity. The world falls away from those who experience it as "meaningless" all the way down the line -- their thinking is deranged by the metaphysical conviction of nihilism. If one wishes to hear a truly sane, wise, and balanced general discourse, one is obliged to go to an earlier time -- that is why I so often find myself quoting Dr. Johnson when I need to find the best and most trenchant expression of some human or moral truth.

It can be hard to reconcile one's love for a writer as a man of emotional depth, pathos, and nobility, with the understanding of his limitations as a man of his time, beset and tormented by a dominant metaphysical view of the world. But I believe that this is necessary to get a good handle on almost every figure of note in the past century or more.

Post: #144

Maybe I can split the difference between you two? :-)

Nietzsche was interested in how we can find meaning in a meaningless universe with no God.

One of his ideas was to imagine that the universe would repeat its history over and over forever.

As such - every action you take in the universe will not be taken just once. But an infinite number of times.

He called this Eternal Recurrence.

I am not sure if he actually believed this idea - or if instead (as I suspect) he was throwing it out there as a way of framing your life. Such that every moment of it takes on more meaning for you. Since each decision you take will be repeated over and over again for all eternity.

Post: #145

cardguy, that goofy notion of the eternal return is a good little illustration of the kind of vacuous literary gesture that brilliant men since Nietzsche have been compelled to make under the sway of the totalized conviction of "meaninglessness".

Post: #146

I suspect it is not possible to ask questions about whether or not the universe has meaning.

It takes you past the limits of sense in the use of language and becomes a senseless question (ala Wittgenstein and the Tractatus).

As such everyone's account of what meaning they feel life and the universe has is as equally valid as any other.

I suspect the universe is like one of those Rorschach tests:



Everyone has a different opinion and response to what they see.

This is where God would come in handy. Since he is outside the universe - he might be able to come to a viewpoint which would give the correct sense of meaning to our universe.

With all that said - I live my life in a very shallow and ironic way. I enjoy the fact that the universe is meaningless (to me) since it fits in with my inability to take anything seriously.

Post: #147

(04-18-2014 09:30 AM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  The utterly felt conviction of "meaninglessness" as metaphysical truth drove the most brilliant and sensitive men of the past 100+ years -- of whom Jünger was certainly one -- into a frenzy of more or less intensely expressed literary gestures. But these gestures, however they may impress us with their pathos or nobility, are not the same as a thoughtful understanding of objective reality. They are indeed, strictly speaking, vacuous

And what is objective reality?

Only physical, non-human reality is truly objective. Physicists and chemists work with objective reality. The behavior of electrons, photons, atoms, and molecules does not depend on the thoughts of the experimentalist studying them. Feynman's Quantum Electrodynamics does not depend on the political winds of the era. Feynman's work is eternal.

When humans enter the picture, it's a total mess. If humans believe something, then they create human reality out of mere thought, and this reality is always subjective. Perhaps the only objective reality about humans is that every human was born and every human will die one day.

Error seems to be the one constant in history. Every era is ridiculous in its own way. Progressives look at the past and see an endless sequence of blunders and massacres, and believe that their era is the first sane one in history. A born historian knows that the present era is also ridiculous. But why bother? Better enjoy my life peacefully and decoupled from the Zeitgeist. Of course, I must pay attention to the Zeitgeist to protect myself, i.e., to know what I can and cannot say at dinner parties and job interviews.

And what is "meaning"? It is a human construction. Atoms just exist. Humans are mere biological machines who assign meaning to things depending on what wild passions move them. I think that Feynman's work is much superior to Nietzsche's work, since the former discovered eternal truths, whereas the latter merely documented the insanity that characterized his era. But I don't expect everyone to agree with me.

Post: #148

@TLOZ - I have picked up some books on Wittgenstein and am going to be investigating his work again. The older I get the more I find myself thinking about the sorts of things that he was writing about.

Post: #149

(04-18-2014 11:13 AM)cardguy Wrote:  @TLOZ - I have picked up some books on Wittgenstein and am going to be investigating his work again. The older I get the more I find myself thinking about the sorts of things that he was writing about.

cardguy, I'm glad to hear that. But if you want to do yourself a real favor, don't start out by reading books on Wittgenstein. Just pick up the Philosophical Investigations and read it from the beginning (yes, I know you've read it before -- that does not matter).

It is impossible to exaggerate the fall-off in quality from LW's writing in the Investigations to the secondary literature. I wish there was a truly excellent primer on the Investigations but there is not. There is no substitute for the real thing.

Post: #150

Here is the book I am reading at that the moment:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wittgensteins-Me...019966112X

And I have a collection of essays about the Tractatus I may get as well.

From there I will see how much further I want to get into it again. I haven't got the stamina to jump in and just read PI at the moment.