https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/210800.html

Might be of some help.

Hi. I've read some of this - haven't finished it, will get back to it tomorrow. Really interesting paper though. The main quandary, to me, is that your keep using before-life as a way of mirroring after-life in terms of conscious perception of a state analogous to dreamless sleep or timelessness. But I feel as if this is not applicable, because, although it might as well have been timeless as we were unable to experience it as we were not born, I feel like we were unable to either perceive or not perceive this timelessness as we were not born yet. We had yet to come into being, rather. I feel like any NEC timelessness cannot be compared to a pre-birth timelessness because we had no way of perceiving the latter.

I would be curious in reading this too if you could link the original article OP.

When Davis is quoted as saying "we couldn't make it ourselves," I think the "we" he is referring to is the United States military, not humankind.

Weird watching history occur in real-time.

The following is paraphrased from my own experience, conventional wisdom and Jordan Peterson's latest book:

1. Wake up the same time every morning, doesn't matter what time you went to bed but make sure you wake up at the same hour every morning, and make that hour the same as a typical person's would be, so say eight o' clock or so.

2. As soon as you wake up, before you do anything else, eat a high-fat, high-protein breakfast. A classic English fry hits the nail on the head here. It may not be the "healthiest" but for our purposes and intents it's the best thing a depressive can eat. (Essentially this will keep you going much longer than a breakfast based in sugars or carbohydrates will, which would provide a short boost and then a dip. Obviously it's much better for the metabolism than not eating breakfast at all.)

3. Try your best to get AT LEAST eight hours of sleep.

4. Daily exercise, thirty minutes to an hour; cardio one day, weight training the next day.

I can't stress how much building a daily routing out of the above will benefit your life. Try it for a week or two and report back.

You've misread the situation. Considering the state of Western media, most people do.

You know Iraq wasn't invaded because of human rights, that was merely emotional rhetoric to stir up support for the war. The real reason for the invasion was a neoconservative belief that democracies are more likely to do business with other democracies; converting a "pillar" of the Middle East into a democracy was supposed to have a "domino" effect, meaning other autocracies would follow their lead. This, in turn, would burgeon commercial enterprise between the US, the UK and other recently-turned democratic Middle Eastern states. People talk about the petrodollar, they talk about the weapons of mass destruction, they talk about the welfare of Iraqi citizens under Saddam Hussein - none of that had anything to do with it. Mostly it had to do with what I just outlined, as well as allowing the West to counter Iranian domination in the area (and, by extension, Russian interference). The great game.

Onto North Korea. Consider Iraq. Consider Libya. Iraq was invaded because the US knew it didn't possess nuclear weapons and thus mutually assured destruction was not a viable option. Libya, on the other hand, possessed a nuclear article. Gaddafi was only overthrown after he naively agreed to give up his nuclear arsenal following extended diplomatic discussions with the West. North Korea has no intention of ever using its nuclear weapons. Ever. There is no nuclear threat from North Korea to anyone in the world, despite the madman scenario Western media depicts. Truth of the matter is that North Korea has sustained itself for eighty years by being a calculated and rational player in foreign relations. It knows that the only way it can ensure it won't be invaded by other countries is to continue bolstering its nuclear supply and throw out a few crazy threats every few months to keep everyone on their toes. The country is topical now because there's a lot of uncertainty around the South China Sea, with South Korea possibly looking to do more business with China than the US, and China, naturally, being the world's next superpower, is North Korea's only true ally (and even then that relationship is frayed). It's a question of geographical dominance. North Korea is merely a proxy. Their nuclear weapons and capability of wiping out Soeul are just guarantors of their prolonged security. Add onto that the fact that China and South Korea (and Japan, how did I forget Japan) will never let the US try anything without massive retaliation, you realise the situation is the product of military flexing and posturing. Nation states only care about their own survival - there is far too much risk to invade North Korea in order to save its citizens, but even if there was mitigated or minimal risk, no country would do it because there's nothing to gain from doing so on an economic basis. No war has ever been about liberating a certain people from an oppressive regime, despite the tendency to frame it as such.

Edit: if you think for a second that the US or any other nuclear power are going to give up their nuclear arsenal then you should do some serious reading because all that's going to happen from here on out is nuclear proliferation.

Edit 2: so as for what we should do about North Korea, absolutely nothing. Everything works out better that way for everyone.

Without meaning to alarm you, this sounds like something you should consult your GP about. That's not to same it's a problem or anything, but you certainly seem to think it's a problem, and if you do think it's a problem, then you need to get real medical advice, not talk to unqualified people on the internet. I mean that in the best way possible.

Any sources for this? Also my first time ever hearing anything like this and am very curious to see it backed up.

John Banville - The Book of Evidence.

Guy Debord - The Society of the Spectacle.

Always try to read three books simultaneously, one fiction/short stories, one philosophical/non-fiction and one book of poetry. But I haven't been able to find a book of poetry that has held my attention recently.

The idea that violent video games cause violence is real life is ridiculous. I can't believe it's still being used by the media so many years after the original case, the title of the game escapes me now, the one that generated violent video game hysteria. Easy sensationalism for the media I suppose.

Disclaimer - I'm rather inebriated at the moment, but this essay is a pretty fantastic analysis of Eyes Wide Shut. Worth reading. Penny for your thoughts, etc.

Some very interesting interpretations thus far. I look forward to revisiting this thread when I come back down to earth.

Dare he post the obligatory +1?

I hope you don't mind me hijacking your thread. I've just begun my own foray into the works of Mister Nietzsche with Beyond Good and Evil. I've read two chapters in it and I quite like the polemic, poetical style. Reminds me of Mister Stirner in more ways than one. The Prejudices of Philosophers was a good read, currently making my way through A Natural History of Morals. The only thing is that some of the chapters have me absolutely puzzled, as if I cannot make sense of what he's saying at all. I understand it's supposed to be interpreted but sometimes I have simply no clue. Would anyone be able to point me in the direction of annotations for BGAE? It would be greatly appreciated.

Understood. Poor phrasing and reading comprehension on my part. Apologies fellows.

You misunderstood me. I'm just saying that men should be able to dispute allegations of sexism women may make. Just because a woman says it's sexism doesn't necessarily make it so. Your previous post insinuated that women should not be challenged if they determine a post or person to be sexism because men cannot empathise with such a viewpoint, but that's an absolutely bizarre thing to say. Men can be victims of sexism too. We should be able to question the legitimacy of such claims.

If a woman was deemed sexist she would be given grounds to defend herself and her actions. But what you're saying is that a man shouldn't because the woman is always right.

If I'm misinterpreting what you originally said please do correct me.

Why shouldn't men argue with women over the merits of sexism? Men can be the subject of sexism too. Sounds like a double standard to me. Women shouldn't be placed on a pedestal just because they're a minority on the forums.



I've never understood the concept of ignoring users. You shouldn't be able to just selectively ignore an opinion or person you disagree with - then you're just turning an anything goes discussion forum into an echo chamber.

Nothing about the situation playing out here pertaining to Augustino appears to be a matter of objective sexism to me however. It almost seems as if everyone has a differing subjective definition of sexism, with at least fifty per cent not considering Augustino's posts to have been sexist at all! How do you explain this in a world where sexism is as objective as a tree, a rock or even a house?

Edit: who decides what the correct understanding of sexism is then?

Edit 2: even the concept of 'treating women as lesser' is a subjective perception.

A tree, a house or a falling rock are objective phenomena. Sexism is defined by one's subjective perception and thus cannot be categorised as a 'logical meaning expressed by the world'. Those are some serious mental gymnastics, I think Wittgenstein may like to have a word with you.

Edit: what sort of definition of 'consensus' is that? Who has an objective understanding of the issue here - how is this not a matter of he said versus she said? Why is it the person crying sexism has been given the upper hand in such proceedings? Have you ever heard of tyranny of the majority? Or tyranny of the minority?

Your last paragraph was oxymoronic. Deeming something sexist is most definitely based on consensus. Defining anything as sexism is wholly attitudinal, subject to whichever group is in the majority (or, as clearly evident in this case, making itself loud enough to appear a majority).

Sexism is defined by ideology. Not acknowledging this depicts you as an ideologist by default.

Attempts to debate someone and immediately gets blocked. Fantastic example of debating standard expected.

I cannot for the life of me understand the controversy surrounding this line. It's basically just reiterating the age-old adage that people say one thing and do another, i.e. people are hypocrites. That's not controversial, that's not sexist, that's just common sense. If you think someone votes in the privacy of a voting booth in the same way they would vote in public, then I have some bad news for you.

If you're prepared to be bothered by comments on a message board dedicated to philosophy, you may want to rethink how dedicated to philosophy you are. Philosophy forces us to confront thoughts that make us uncomfortable in order to help us grow and develop as human beings. Augustino's writings were polemic and provocative to the extreme, but surely you've encountered far worse in the philosophy books you've read. Nothing Augustino wrote in his poetical style is sexist simply because you deem it so. Censorship is only ever detrimental to the quality of discussion generated. When you decide what people can and cannot say in situations as blurred as this, you're damaging the ability of people to discuss philosophy amongst themselves here. If you wish to only participate in social situations where you won't encounter anything you disagree with, there's plenty of other corners of the Internet to seek refuge in. Just don't drag this place down to that level based on neo-cultural Marxist/postmodernist/third wave feminist ideology.

I have never subscribed to the extroversion/introversion dichotomy. It seems to me that it's basically a broad spectrum, with the extroverted ones learning social cues and expected actions from repeated social processes from a young age, while the introverted ones made missteps along the way and never quite made it past some arbitrary plateau specific to the person in question. I believe every introvert could become an extrovert, but after adolescence learning these social cues and expectations and adapting to them or incorporating them subconsciously becomes much more difficult, similar to different stages of learning a language or a musical instrument. Socialising by nature is exhausting, that shouldn't be a surprise. You're keeping your brain constantly alert for hours at a time. How is that not exhausting? Regarding a feeling of reward, what exactly did you think was going to change by forcing yourself to become more extroverted? Working as a cashier and forcing oneself to interact with people isn't exactly the definition of a successful extrovert.

I don't believe solitude is a function of introversion either.

Thank you for clearing matters up for me, Bitter Crank. It is difficult to appreciate the lay of the land when just starting out.

Interestingly enough, the ending is rather reminiscent of the Google memo making headlines at the beginning of this week (which was, as per usual, hilariously misinterpreted by leftists desperate to outleft each other). It could be argued that such claims are considered sexist under neo-cultural Marxist ideology - yet many social scientists would agree that such discourse is and should be up for debate and that more research should be done on the topic. It's not inherently sexist to question the status quo.

Edit: it could also be argued that attempting to silence dissenting views as sexism is in actuality a form of censorship. All of the quotes supplied thus far have been brash and self-assured, sure, but are they really topics we should not contemplate, especially in an era of diversity and identity politics? Can we justify gender quotas et cetera if we are not prepared to ask difficult questions pertaining to their effectiveness? The quotes seem acceptable for discussion to me. In my opinion sexism is too easily thrown around in 2017 as a synonym or excuse for not having to read an opinion one disagrees with.

Edit 2: John Harris' post below me embodies the type of attitude I'm referring too. Delete evil, see no evil, hear no evil, immune to the possibility of ever actually having to debate evil... is this not a philosophy forum I have recently joined? One should be convicted enough in their own beliefs to be capable of challenging them!

Hey Bitter Crank. Why don't you go fuck yourself?

I legitimately cannot tell what's real and what's banter in this thread, but seemingly the burden of proof lies on you.

I am unsure as to what you are proposing with this post (or poem). Perhaps you could provide more elucidation on your viewpoints? Are you talking about democracy? If you are talking about democracy, then it's relatively early to be electing its end date. What do you mean by power? Your sentences seem to pertain to the concentration of power in the hands of elites within the neoliberal political and economic system but it is far too cryptic to understand exactly what it is you are trying to say.