grylliade.org Free minds. Free markets. Free beer.

Yeah, in this vein, Nietzche is the first to pop into your head, but for me, right after that comes Schopenhauer. His comments about women were just unbelievable, and he comically pessimistic. Still and all, when you wipe away the headline grabbing stuff, you are left with the nagging sensation that he had a point in there somewhere.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Schopenhauer

Somebody fed his Mogwai after midnight....

Nietzsche was the way he was because of the syphilis that he got from having to pay for sex, and the risks therefrom. The man was so unappealing he had charisntma.

Does it make me a complete nitwit that I don't even know who Blavatsky was?

Here's your "complete nitwit" T-shirt, Timothy. I'm already wearing mine.

dude what the fuck you know math.

*laughs*

"Dodgy people who have written interesting things" depends a lot on your definitions of "dodgy" and "interesting", but I immediately thought of Sam Sloan. He's apparently quite the expert on Chinese chess, and his books on it are supposed to be very good, and he really did argue and win a case before the US Supreme Court, but he's also a nutcase and completely devoid of any understanding of acceptable social behavior.

Chess and similar games do seem to attract the odd ones, though, like Bobby Fischer.

More along the lines of Blavatsky, Ouspensky, etc, I thought of Aun Weor. (Took me a while to remember his name, though.) His ideas on sex sound kind of like Evola's, in that they're supposedly transgressive in their openness, but in retrospect they look heavily influenced by traditional Latin American society.

Hey guys, I know neither math nor how to crack the dhex code, so I think I win the race to the bottom here.

Robert Walpole?

Charles I?

Charles Townshend?

Archbishop Billy Laud?

Don't leave me hanging, man.

Oh, yeah, him.

*shrugs shoulders walks away whistling a jaunty sea shanty*

If it makes you guys feel better, the only reason I know who Madame Blavatsky was is because when I was little, a well-meaning but clueless grownup who knew that "Jennifer likes books" and "Jennifer likes science" gave me for my birthday a book with a title like The Reader's Digest Compendium of Occult Mysteries. That is why I know all about Blavatsky, and the aliens who built the pyramids, and that the reason ghosts can walk through walls is because they're retracing steps they took in their lifetimes before said walls were there.

oh i forgot liber oz, which will warm the cockles of many a libertoid heart:

i tend to think of it like this: even the most "rational atheist" brain is filled to the brim with absolute nonsense and fantasy (i.e. deconstruct some pornography sometime). that other people construct cosmologies and theologies to explain what is right and wrong is not unusual. (i.e. objectivism, which seems to be a perfect example of this)

what is, of course, quite annoying is when people forget "oh this is a script that i follow made up by me" and either think that people should be impressed by it or that people should actually follow it. this is not, sadly, unique to mysticism or any other form of craziness.

most mysticism is, but so is most everything. i mean, herr billy and all...if that isn't an example of cosmology building for the sake of mystical aggrandizement, i don't know what is. we see it with a lot of libertarians as well, or rather i do - the political identity becomes a justification for all sorts of weird structures to explain why the world is the way it is. (satirized by the whole DEMAND KURVE thing but could be applied equally to "you first" socialists and the like)

i think what changed my mind about this was that i kept meeting a lot of insanely misogynistic "rationalists" and i had a series of really weird things happen that neither broke my brain with insanity sauce nor made me religious or spiritual. a lot of it is tapping into a brain state that is just plain weird, i think, plus conditioning - hence the fixation on repetition, as with learning any skill. so i end up, as a downside, having all sorts of honestly dumb conversations with people because i'm a good listener and i won't immediately go "you fucking suck, dumbass" when someone says something dodgy or otherwise religious; as an upside, i end up having all these dumb conversations and learning a tremendous amount about the way people conceptualize the world around them, and just how dominant our narratives end up being in our lives.

Maybe I'm just not built for this sort of thing. I'm a materialist. I'm a Humean skeptic. All beliefs are suspect, and actual knowledge is really rare. Try to understand the assumptions you are making and try to minimize the impact of the eggregious ones in your thinking.

What bothers me is ignorance delivered in condescending tones.

Don't get me wrong. I like those bar conversations with wierd people and I like new perspectives. Quite a bit, actually. It is why I hang out here. I just lose patience quickly when it becomes apparent that the source of the perspective is some sort of self serving mythology, and every comment gets filtered through the BS before exiting the mouth.

EDIT: The best mystical concept, and the one that I'm very comfortable with, is, "I've always just had this feeling that so and so was the case, but I can't really explain where it comes from. When I feel like that, the experience is kinda like ...." I like that conversation.

QFT!

Preach on, brother!

Oh, hallelujah!

*rah* *rah*

crowd goes wild

Nope, nope, nope, nope, absolutely not. I am thinking specifically of (1) the H&R Thread of Anarcho-Madness, and (2) a thread that was over at writer Charles Stross's site once. Where people literally used those phrases. By the way, Stross really came across as a smug, arrogant and dismissive asshole. To the extent where it might interfere with my enjoyment of his work. (Note: This is the book thread, and I led my comment around to alluding to books. See what I did there?)

i can't speak for physics, but if anything hinduism is the opposite. "maya" (the illusion, confusion, etc of the world) is created by our own thoughts and minds, because we're not paying attention.

yes.

also it's probably the place most "weird" porn comes from.

(all porn is weird though)

no, i think he would fit in just fine.

Makes perfect sense to me.

My metaphysics and epistemology come strongly from Hume and Rorty; I basically believe that there is no actual reality, just a whole bunch of equally valid interpretations of perceived fact patters. That is, Occam's Razor is one valid choice above many, and if you choose to believe in the magical fire spirits or whatever I can make fun of you or something but you're not actually wrong, per se. And so there's no way for me to prove that you're wrong. It's just a matter of picking the interpretation of the world that works for you and makes you happy.

Now, before Ayn_Randian (or someone else) comes and jumps down my throat, one of the ways in which an interpretation of the world can 'work for you' and 'make you happy' is by, say, allowing you to make useful predictions about what will happen in the future. A worldview that consistently yields bad information is unlikely to work or make you happy, in the long run. But I'm not going to say that worldview is wrong, strictly speaking; it's just stupid.

dhex - "V" from "V for Vendetta"...I have a sense that BB is playing at "V". The character is very educational as to the mindset.

So I'm tossing Alan Moore into the mix.

I've never seen the movie either...are you saying that you heard they glorified "V" more in the movie than they did already in the comic?

*Boggles*

AR: Yes, they did. Much of the moral ambiguity of the comic is missing in the movie. Still, it's a lot of fun.

oh yeah we had this discussion before...i was wondering why it was so familiar.

needless to say timothy i think you are entirely missing the point of said "torture."

someone who would agree with me is today's installment, g.i. gurdjieff.

now, i love this guy for two reasons: his obsession with life being "work" as well as "the Work" and that he came up with a hilarious explanation for human stupidity. you see, it keeps the moon full and well-fed, and if we did not have stupidity, we would not keep the moon fed, and it would fall on us. that's as good a reason as any.

now, gurdjieff distilled is actually quite interesting. he did bring some stuff back from his travails across asia, and if nothing else, he had an interesting life, with running from czars and communists and whatnot. (along with the usual haigiography, of course.)

as a postive and negative the guy was a hardcore elitist. yet his personal life is littered with stories of bad art collections (because he would "loan" someone money they needed via a sale rather than embarass them; or perhaps he had bad taste in art to boot.) and other acts of random kindness, which may seem odd coming from someone whose entire system of thought revolves around the fact that we are all mostly asleep most of the time. then again, maybe not - a friend of mine way back when in college said that he'd been most impressed with gurdieff when he spent a whole day doing a little exercise - "remembering yourself" - i.e. being aware of yourself - every time you walk through a doorway, and then only noticing that when heading in for dinner he had walked through about ten arches without remembering a damn thing.

i can see how a system like that would instill compassion in anyone who took it seriously, because you'd fail so damn often that you couldn't help but realize that no one is immune to falling back asleep.

needless to say there are quite a few douchefucks who were attached to good ole gi, including (depending on who you listen to) ouspensky, who outside of his book "the fourth way," which is a q&a format record of talks that gurdjieff gave, he didn't seem to produce anything interesting. again, will to power stuff will always attract those with neither.

recommended: beezlebub's tales to his grandson, meetings with extraordinary men.

note: i mentioned gurdjieff in the clusterfuck thread at h+r because hey, who knows...there is a deep compassion deficit (not pity, but compassion) in this world, and every little pebble helps. since the word "compassion" would be greeted with some mixture of revulsion and threats of violence (because it means i want to steal your money, obviously!) oblique strategies must be called upon.

well, I think what I was driving at was that whole "Do what thou wilt", which V quotes in the strip. And I think Billiam's attempt was to state something akin to: "Yeah, do what thou wilt and be prepared for blowback..."

Maybe...I just felt a lot of connection in the obtuseness of V's ruminations vice Billiam's, although the difference is that V did it in motherfucking style...and style counts for a lot.

what did he write that was dodgy?

i see what you mean regarding billiam.

and i think it gets to the heart of why will to power stuff always attracts those with neither.

ok so we're back. i'm finishing up revolt against the modern world. i would not recommend everyone read it like i would recommend everyone read barzun's from dawn to decadence, but it probably won't bore anyone. the weirdest thing, beyond the race of the spirit stuff and the natural aristocracy type material, is his fixation on how the "common" in man is also the most destructive. in this sense evola appeals to left and right, because both sides see that kind of "pandering" as a source of vile decadence. it's just a matter of what they're doing wrong - either buying stuff being evil or fucking incorrectly.

also tomorrow is what the bleep do we know drinking party! whee! i look forward to crying with laughter and screaming "look out for that time warp ms. maitlin!"

Principal Snyder was in What the Bleep Do We Know? It was all downhill after he got eaten by that snake.

man i always have to look up your guys entertainment related references.

weird note on evola: he shares the same kind of traditionalist disdain for rampant capitalism that most conservatives do, but for different reasons. (he sees it as uprooting the natural transcendent order of hierarchy.)

if you enjoy order, the chaos of markets is probably not your bag.

if you enshrine order, then shit...definitely not your bag.

Clearly Pat Buchannon enjoys a bit of buggy-whip-enhanced slap and tickle with the wife during business hours.

(Were I wittier, I'd figure out how to shoehorn an AMC Gremlin in there somewhere.)

The "giant sucking sound" was Ross Perot, I thought.

This went over my head. Was there something in the news that I missed? And I thought I had pretty good records of all the celebrities who are freaky. Pat Buchanan ... wife ... in a Gremlin?