What mythos have the West produced in the past 1000 years? [Archive]

sktarq

2017-09-20, 01:21 PM

The whole dominance of Amore over Agape and Eros in the West - that started really in the 1200's

and thus the related works of courtly love, etc that were derived from that. . . and the related individualistic/social group support rebalancing which caused huge shifts in how older works were rebuilt after this period.

Plus everything from DnD, to Tolkein, to all the ideas of what people thought the rest of the world was like based on people like Pissarro and Marco Polo.

Even the world of galaxies and atoms is a mythos. Constructed via a system of observation and inference. But a mythos IS about a mental construct by which you view the world. And for most a magnetic field or the atomic bomb basically is magic controlled by wizards called engineers and scientists-they work with invisible stuff using total jargon and strange devices to make seemingly impossible stuff happen. But I'm guessing you were referring a mythology based one.
"Mythos: the underlying system of beliefs, especially those dealing with supernatural forces, characteristic of a particular cultural group." From Dictionary.com
or From the New Oxford
"A set of beliefs or assumptions about something.
‘the rhetoric and mythos of science create the comforting image of linear progression toward truth’ "

Bobb

2017-09-20, 01:37 PM

Yo, from the future here.

Tailspin, the tv show. Just needs a few eons to ferment. ;)

Anonymouswizard

2017-09-20, 04:24 PM

sktarq

2017-09-20, 04:43 PM

Actually since "Jedi" started showing up in the UK census as the most popular write in for religion-other a few years back (and may have gotten a box since) I could totally believe that.

J-H

2017-09-20, 04:46 PM

The question is really what has/has not lasted the test of time. Darth Vader probably will, as an iconic figure of darkness. The PT movies...not so much.

Many well-known/iconic figures from even 80 years ago are gone. The Shadow? Little Orphan Annie? Groucho & Marx? Mickey Mouse is around and recognizable, but he's a cardboard cutout when it comes to story and character. What stories from 150, 250, 500 years ago do we still know about and refer to?

In addition to chivalry/courtly junk as mentioned above, I would add:
-Robin Hood
-Romeo & Juliet and their imitators
-The myth that the Roman Empire died in 476, and that the Eastern Roman Empire was a bunch of also-ran imitators.
-The Enlightenment and Science vs. Religion (Galileo, etc.). I don't think we can delve into this much due to forum rules, but we can probably all agree that there is a story or set of stories here that almost everyone knows and accepts as part of the background.
-The cowboy or (related), the Lone Gunman/Western. Westerns are way down right now, so this may not stand the test of time. Still, I could show anyone a stick-figure drawing of two people in a street with cowboy hats and arms akimbo, facing each other, and it'd be recognizable.
-The Scottish as heroic freedom-loving rebels (border raiding for sheep? off the radar).

I am having a hard time coming up with explicitly fictional sets of stories from pre-1800 that are still around and resonate, aside from what's already been mentioned. Perhaps the Noble Savage, as in Last of the Mohicans, Hiawatha, Pocahontas, etc.?

sktarq

2017-09-20, 06:15 PM

Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolfman, the Mummy etc. . . sure we think of the movies at early 20C stuff but all were based on books and legends that were older but not THAT old. (those legends did have their own precursors-but so did everything pretty much) and are pretty much part of today's popular mythos.

Blackhawk748

2017-09-20, 06:20 PM

Reddish Mage

2017-09-20, 07:37 PM

The Round Table/Arthurian myths is probably the closest thing no?

Limited to past 1000. So as much as I'd like to bring in Norse Mythology, Beowulf and such and such. I'll keep it to Medieval and later.

So knightly romances, the knightization of the Arthurian myths (the myths themselves date farther back but the way WE get them them is impacted by later tellings). Robin Hood. Brothers Grimm. Much Eastern European lore regarding vampire and witches...

Tales of Fair Folk (elves fairies and so on) STARTED before the year 1000, but most of our actual tales are from the last 1000 years. Also most monster stories (like stories about dragons). In addition, almost everything written down in the West about magic, mysticism or witchcraft that we actually have in writing come from within 1000 years...

That's a pretty good mythology, and I didn't even get to like the 18th century, let alone the 20th. :smallwink:

Sprütche

2017-09-21, 04:49 AM

Pirates? The romantic version of movies is distant enough from the historical model. Seafaring stories in general, although they date back farther than thousand years.
Other professions come to mind: musketeers, crusaders, chivalry, secret societies.
Men in black and government conspiracies are probably to young to count as a mythos.

Kato

2017-09-21, 05:38 AM

Yora

2017-09-21, 06:25 AM

You could say a proper mythology is something that almost everybody knows even if they don't know they know it.

All the big myths of western society are things that are censored on this forum. Like how our culture is meant to be and what keeps it from being a perfect match to that.

Hazyshade

2017-09-21, 06:29 AM

I feel like a massive problem here is the vague definition of mythos. Some are arguably more fitting but others just way more obscure. How many people must be aware of something for it to constitute a mythos? :smallconfused:

I have a sneaking suspicion that the donnadogsoth definition of mythos is something that everyone is aware of, and that consequently the correct answer is "we haven't produced any worth mentioning because we haven't yet adopted Plato's vision of a single global monoculture", and that donnadogsoth is going to tell us how we should go about fixing that.

Fawkes

2017-09-21, 09:42 AM

Now taking bets on how many pages it'll be before Donnadogsoth quotes white supremacist rhetoric. Again.

shadow_archmagi

2017-09-21, 09:42 AM

Probably the best mythyness*popularity score is going to be Star Trek. Hugely popular fantasy epic that consists mostly of morality tales? Yeah, that about nails it.

Eldan

2017-09-21, 09:54 AM

I have a sneaking suspicion that the donnadogsoth definition of mythos is something that everyone is aware of, and that consequently the correct answer is "we haven't produced any worth mentioning because we haven't yet adopted Plato's vision of a single global monoculture", and that donnadogsoth is going to tell us how we should go about fixing that.

Under that definition, we never had mythos, as at least, say, the Sentinelese will not have heard of it.

Telonius

2017-09-21, 11:05 AM

Are we talking capital-M Mythology, Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung-style? I could name several, but they're a bit too closely related to politics and religion. The general idea of powerful people conspiring against the general population is one that's a bit safer to mention (though it does intersect with politics a lot, particularly early to mid 20th century). It crops up everywhere in literature and pop culture, from "1984" to X Files to half the "politician villains" in Marvel/DC.

Another sort of mythology that I've been noticing very recently is one that takes a very different form from previous myth. I'm not sure what else to call it, other than the "Coming Out" story. (Not necessarily as gay, though it can be that). It doesn't really have the structure of the classic Hero's Journey. It's not quite the same thing as a Bildungsroman or coming-of-age theme, either, though it does seem to have some superficial similarities. The main character is fighting against themselves and society (rather than an external monster like most Hero's Journeys). After a trial, both the protagonist and the society comes to accept who they are. There aren't necessarily any gurus or magical teachers to help. The main character is often on their own, or in the company of only a few others in similar straits.

kraftcheese

2017-09-21, 11:53 AM

Now taking bets on how many pages it'll be before Donnadogsoth quotes white supremacist rhetoric. Again.
Probably not too long; there's a pathetic amount of weird European ethno-nationalist "things were better in my non-existent version of the Middle Ages when WE weren't polluted by foreign cultures and modern attitudes" goofery going on in almost every one of donna's posts I've seen over the last few weeks.

This obsession with "ancient high culture" vs. "degenerate modern media" is pretty transparent.

Anonymouswizard

2017-09-21, 12:53 PM

Probably not too long; there's a pathetic amount of weird European ethno-nationalist "things were better in my non-existent version of the Middle Ages when WE weren't polluted by foreign cultures and modern attitudes" goofery going on in almost every one of donna's posts I've seen over the last few weeks.

This obsession with "ancient high culture" vs. "degenerate modern media" is pretty transparent.

As somebody not experienced with his posts, as someone who believes in 'modern high culture' how quickly should I flee from this thread and is it a good idea to take my 'racial and cultural mixing is good' beliefs with me? Or is this more of a Darth Ultron's Railroading situation?

Knaight

2017-09-21, 01:10 PM

Lvl 2 Expert

2017-09-21, 01:13 PM

Gambrinus the Beer King?

The Buckriders?

Pokémon?

Thrudd

2017-09-21, 01:18 PM

A "mythos" is just a collection of myths. A myth is a story or legend. The collection of myths that have been told in western civilization over the past 1000 years is vast, from the middle ages until now, people have already mentioned a lot of them. In our culture, the line between "myth" and "work of fiction" is blurry, so some clarification might be in order. Since "works of imagination" was specified, I think it's clear that we're including works that were created for entertainment.

Arthurian legends (esp. Le Morte D'Arthur), the Nibelungeleid, the Icelandic sagas, Fairy Tales of Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, The Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost, Irish mythology including the Ulster cycle

For the modern era, I think we could definitely include Tolkien's work, Star Wars, Star Trek, The superhero universes of Marvel and DC, illuminati-style conspiracy theory stories along with alien abduction, bigfoot, etc - ie everything that's been on X-Files, David Icke, ancient aliens/atlantis/hollow earth/ascended masters and galactic councils

Tons of things I'm sure I didn't think of

Kantaki

2017-09-21, 01:22 PM

Arthurian legends (esp. Le Morte D'Arthur), the Nibelungeleid, the Icelandic sagas, Fairy Tales of Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, The Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost, Irish mythology including the Ulster cycle

Lied. It's Nibelungenlied.
Although Leid fits pretty well too all things considered...

Thrudd

2017-09-21, 01:56 PM

Lied. It's Nibelungenlied.
Although Leid fits pretty well too all things considered...

Ha. typos that turn out to be true.

Kantaki

2017-09-21, 02:10 PM

Ha. typos that turn out to be true.

Those are the best kind.:smallbiggrin:

And this one is especially fitting seeing that the end makes the Red Wedding look like a childrens' birthday.:smallamused:

No really, G.R.R. Martin has to try much harder if he wants to match that.

I really shouldn't have written that.
He might take it as a challenge.:smallwink:

Anonymouswizard

2017-09-21, 02:30 PM

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-21, 06:41 PM

I have one: Clive Barker's Hellraiser.

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-21, 06:45 PM

Are we talking capital-M Mythology, Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung-style? I could name several, but they're a bit too closely related to politics and religion. The general idea of powerful people conspiring against the general population is one that's a bit safer to mention (though it does intersect with politics a lot, particularly early to mid 20th century). It crops up everywhere in literature and pop culture, from "1984" to X Files to half the "politician villains" in Marvel/DC.

If there is a Jungian/Campbellian exegesis for these various mythos I'd like to read about that, too. Are there any mythos that don't fit into the Jungian mould? Does the Pokémon mythos express anything archetypal or is it, as my superficial knowledge of it suggests, just a kiddified version of a normal menagerie run through the mill of postmodern product design?

Another sort of mythology that I've been noticing very recently is one that takes a very different form from previous myth. I'm not sure what else to call it, other than the "Coming Out" story. (Not necessarily as gay, though it can be that). It doesn't really have the structure of the classic Hero's Journey. It's not quite the same thing as a Bildungsroman or coming-of-age theme, either, though it does seem to have some superficial similarities. The main character is fighting against themselves and society (rather than an external monster like most Hero's Journeys). After a trial, both the protagonist and the society comes to accept who they are. There aren't necessarily any gurus or magical teachers to help. The main character is often on their own, or in the company of only a few others in similar straits.

Wouldn't you call that "the origin story"?

Fawkes

2017-09-21, 07:00 PM

As somebody not experienced with his posts, as someone who believes in 'modern high culture' how quickly should I flee from this thread and is it a good idea to take my 'racial and cultural mixing is good' beliefs with me? Or is this more of a Darth Ultron's Railroading situation?

Last time, after some doomsaying about how we were living in a new dark age (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22374469&postcount=46), hand-wringing about the "denial of universal principles of art, science, statecraft, and morality" (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22374828&postcount=55) and how our current cultural artifacts are "substitutes for a real culture, like existed in the Middle Ages" (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22376859&postcount=93), and a coded warning about the collapse (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22376859&postcount=93) of our 'majority identity' (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22377920&postcount=115), he ended up recommending we destroy the rocky mountains to flood Nevada or something, (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22384942&postcount=222) so that was a fun thread.

In a previous thread, he said that the world was being ruined by porn, divorce and people being gay (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22047214&postcount=153). He really is not a fan of pornography and homosexuality. Or women dressing themselves. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22050593&postcount=219) Then there was some anti-semitic conspiracy theory stuff and a manifesto about how he admired Russia's authoritarianism (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?525188-Hoaxing-the-gender-studies-prof/page9). That was not a fun thread.

Also, he double posts constantly.

Lethologica

2017-09-21, 07:27 PM

I have one: Clive Barker's Hellraiser.
If that qualifies, then nearly every piece of popular fiction, literature, culture, etc. from the last two centuries does as well. I'm not saying it doesn't, but it seems like this question is very easy to answer at that point (if very difficult to answer comprehensively due to the sheer volume of relevant material).

Telonius

2017-09-21, 07:52 PM

If there is a Jungian/Campbellian exegesis for these various mythos I'd like to read about that, too. Are there any mythos that don't fit into the Jungian mould? Does the Pokémon mythos express anything archetypal or is it, as my superficial knowledge of it suggests, just a kiddified version of a normal menagerie run through the mill of postmodern product design?

Wouldn't you call that "the origin story"?

Well, the Jungian mold is (by nature) pretty all-encompassing. It works extremely well to describe a lot of stories. The reason why it does, is a matter of a lot of debate. On the one hand Jung and Campbell think that it's because of a pre-existing idea or archetype that most of the culture shares, that manifests itself in stories. Other analysts consider that to be kind of pushing it, and think it's more about transmission of similar stories, and structures within the stories that are easiest to remember being the ones that get passed on.

Personally I think Campbell was onto something with his examination of shamanistic versus cyclical myths; these are the seriously, seriously old ones that we only have access to through oral traditions and the very earliest written stories. Basically, when a culture has a complete change in circumstance in which their primary way of getting energy (literally through food or more metaphorically) that event is accompanied by a new form of myth. This was evident when people moved from hunter-gatherer societies to agrarian societies. Their energy no longer came from the hunt, it came from the land and the crop. Trying to remember this without the book in front of me, so I might get this wrong; but rebirth myths were almost nonexistent in the nomadic shamanistic cultures. They only started happening when people settled down and planted crops. That's when you get things like the Osiris myth.

My own suspicion is that we've recently had a similar sort of a shift. In the modern world we have no connection to the cycle of rebirth and seasons, at least not as far as it relates to how we get our food and energy. For most people living in cities, as far as they're concerned grain and meat come from a grocery store or a restaurant. So the day-to-day struggles we have bear extremely little resemblance to the circumstances that gave rise to rebirth myths. They're less meaningful to people, so they connect less to them. Something like the "coming-out" story might be the next wave of mythology. (I like Origin Story as well; though in comic books they don't necessarily get accepted by society afterwards).

EDIT: Speaking of, had to run to the grocery store...

Anyway, I have seen a few examples of this sort of story. Something like Disney's Frozen is a particularly interesting case for me, since it has two different kinds of myth going on simultaneously. Anna goes through the more typical Hero's Journey story, while Elsa is absolutely in a Coming-Out story. As far as when these started, I really don't know the exact date, but two big ones happened in the early 1960s. X-Men's first issue was 1963, and the general plot line follows that structure. (Individual heroes might or might not qualify). The very next year (and a lot less seriously), another one that pretty much everybody recognizes was made: Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

S@tanicoaldo

2017-09-21, 08:40 PM

Well, it really depends on how you define mythos, is like asking examples of poiuytrewq in western civilization without telling us what poiuytrewq, besides the fact that words seem to have different meaning for you makes this really hard.

The dictionary says:

mythos
[mith-os, mahy-thos]

1.
the underlying system of beliefs, especially those dealing with supernatural forces, characteristic of a particular cultural group.
2.
myth (def 1).
3.
mythology (def 1).

But you said not to do with religion so i take it could be two things.

1- An epic story with characters overwhelming odds and recognizable archetypes, if that’s the case we have tons from "To kill a mocking bird" to "War and peace" basically almost any piece of literature qualifies.

Or

2- A story with supernatural elements such as Gods, other dimensions, deities and monsters, if that's the case we still have tons, here are some examples from the top of my head:

-Stephen king mythos.
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/darktower/images/9/95/Dt7_ck.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20090713170335

-Song Of ice and fire mythos.
http://www.dana-mad.ru/gal/images/Ted%20Nasmith/A%20Song%20of%20Ice%20and%20Fire/ted%20nasmith_a%20song%20of%20ice%20and%20fire_cas tle%20black%20at%20the%20wall.jpg

-Pathfinder mythos.
http://static1.paizo.com/image/product/catalog/PZO/PZO9226MAP_500.jpeg

-Forgoten realms( They gave us iconic mythological creatures such as Liches and Beholders).
https://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/forgottenrealms/images/5/59/1479-faerun_low-res.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20091010101152
http://images.mmorpg.com/features/10169/images/Beholder1_t.png
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/forgottenrealms/images/1/12/Lich.JPG/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/350?cb=20070303012948

-Middle earth mythos.
http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/jims-middle-earth-lotr-server/images/5/50/Wiki-background/revision/latest?cb=20160524005722

-Narnia mythos.
https://static.quizur.com/i/b/56eb21e6948746.7561986056eb21e61ee028.85063630.jpg

-Demon's souls.
https://entropymag.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Nexus-statue.jpg

-Hyborian mythos.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/hmXkjQiC5HY/hqdefault.jpg
http://www.castelodafantasia.net/conan02.jpg

-Adventure time.
https://img00.deviantart.net/0406/i/2013/321/2/0/epic_adventure_time_wallpaper__by_triforceoframen-d6ulxr9.jpg

-Alice mythos.
http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/aliceinwonderland/images/b/b0/Mockturtle_tenniel.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20091007034223
http://www.jabberwocky.com/pics/jabberwocky.jpg

-Creepypastas.
http://images6.fanpop.com/image/photos/34600000/creepypastas-creepypasta-34667871-500-340.jpg

-Alan moore mythos.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/38/82/2e/38822e36c8c533cf4fa6d08d61ba4d2f.jpg
https://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/lxg/images/3/35/Blazing-world.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20121215104000

-Sandman mythos(The endless)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/78/The_Sandman-_Endless_Nights_Poster_by_Frank_Quitely.jpg
https://www.dailydot.com/wp-content/uploads/8e7/e0/f9b5d7b05679c3ead76079881df33c73.jpg

-Vertigo in general.
https://comicsforum.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/dony-fig-1.jpg

-BlackHorse.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f8/Dark_Horse_Comics_logo.svg/1200px-Dark_Horse_Comics_logo.svg.png
https://d2lzb5v10mb0lj.cloudfront.net/darkhorse08/features/index/hellboyep.jpg

-Dark souls.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLaCmCxb4tA

-Jack kirby's cosmic side of Marvel and DC.
https://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/11122/111220335/4416543-2215320163-14084.jpg
https://source.superherostuff.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/marvel_cosmic_heros_double_page_spread_in_color_by _slateman-d6c7g6l.jpg
http://cdn.springboard.gorillanation.com/storage/craveonline.com/legacy/article_imgs/Image/death%20of%20new%20gods.jpg

-Pan's labyrinth
https://resizing.flixster.com/sh4jOoj4K-6HVpYT7sqP4EppdXA=/300x300/v1.aDs1MTE5O2o7MTc0NjA7MTIwMDs3MDA7NDY0
http://images.mentalfloss.com/sites/default/files/panhed.jpg?resize=1100x740
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTc5NTg0MDI1NV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNTI5MDg3Mw@@._ V1_SY1000_CR0,0,1490,1000_AL_.jpg

-Dark universe.
http://cdn.wegotthiscovered.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Shared-Universal-Monsters-Movie-Universe-Header-1.jpg

-Doctor who.
https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/816324843243274241/EQr4oejx.jpg
http://iaith.tapetrade.net/doctorwho/images/timelrd1.jpg

-Discworld mythos.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bf/Discworld_gods.jpg

-Lankhmar mythos(Fritz leiber).
http://pro.bols.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Lankhmar-Cover.jpg
http://www.stormbringer.net/images/mouser/gods.jpg
http://www.rpgnoticias.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/imagen_01.jpg?x76308
http://ovicio.com.br/wp-content/uploads/lankhmar2.jpg

-Dracula.

-Star wars.

-Star trek.

-Alien.

-Ufology.
http://img11.deviantart.net/107b/i/2015/149/a/a/alien_races_on_earth_by_humon-d8v7xir.png

-Warhammer.
http://onlysp.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/The_Best_HD_HQ_Hi-Res_Wallpapers_Collection_-_Fantasy_Art_by_tonyx__1300_pictures-253.jpg_wallpaper_warhammer_online_age_of_reckonin g_14_1920x1080.jpg
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/8/80/Tome_of_Corruption_by_RalphHorsley.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20130323195720
http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/c/c4/Khorne_by_alexboca.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20140603022205

-Diablo.
https://www.destructoid.com//ul/408445-diablo-3.jpg

And that's all I could think for now, is that good enougth for your tastes? ;p

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-21, 10:03 PM

mythos
[mith-os, mahy-thos]

1.
the underlying system of beliefs, especially those dealing with supernatural forces, characteristic of a particular cultural group.
2.
myth (def 1).
3.
mythology (def 1).

But you said not to do with religion so i take it could be two things.

1- An epic story with characters overwhelming odds and recognizable archetypes, if that’s the case we have tons from "To kill a mocking bird" to "War and peace" basically almost any piece of literature qualifies.

Or

2- A story with supernatural elements such as Gods, other dimensions, deities and monsters, if that's the case we still have tons, here are some examples from the top of my head:
...
And that's all I could think for now, is that good enougth for your tastes? ;p

I'm thinking in terms of the Cthulhu Mythos. They're not the basis for an established real-life religion, though they contain a fictional religion. There are celestial beings, immortal things, cultists, literature, it's got some heft to it. Similar the Marvel Comics Universe would apply, as would I imagine the others you've colourfully listed.

Do you have any thoughts on if any of these mythos apply to what Telonius has mentioned, the lack of a modern myth cycle that would apply to the post-agrarian age?

The modern age is mythically defined by television, handheld screens, soon AR glasses. That's where we get our energy from, we can literally even order food from them thus dispensing with the need to actually physically set foot in a grocery store. But the myth cycles that have come are not singular, as this thread has shown, but multifarious. Are there any commonalities that can be attained to, maybe to a new archetype or archetypes?

2D8HP

2017-09-21, 11:02 PM

Limited to past 1000. So as much as I'd like to bring in Norse Mythology, Beowulf and such and such. I'll keep it to Medieval and later.

Well the stories are probably older, but since the

Poetic (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetic_Edda)

and

Prose Eddas (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prose_Edda)

were probably written down in the 13th century, I'd say you can include them.

..how quickly should I flee from this thread...

Good question, I waited a couple of days to post myself, in this case I advise limiting responses to the first post, the ones in response to it (advice that I obviously broke by responding to you. Comme ci comme ça).

Anyway, off the top of my head:

The Anansesem (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anansi)
(Ghana - also known as the "Br'er Rabbit" tales in the USA)

The Táin Bó Cúailnge (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%A1in_B%C3%B3_C%C3%BAailnge)
(Ireland)

The Mabinogion (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mabinogion)
(Wales)

Kalevala (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalevala)
(Finland)

and

The Silmarillion (http://click.mail.macmillan.com/?qs=4691b76892ecd04254a4eca872f27d9adf2f571af0d255 09b0cb1fd471144a8d62b2e2899a00b78225f5aa0337c761a9 )
(England)

Hazyshade

2017-09-22, 12:38 AM

Last time, after some doomsaying about how we were living in a new dark age (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22374469&postcount=46), hand-wringing about the "denial of universal principles of art, science, statecraft, and morality" (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22374828&postcount=55) and how our current cultural artifacts are "substitutes for a real culture, like existed in the Middle Ages" (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22376859&postcount=93), and a coded warning about the collapse (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22376859&postcount=93) of our 'majority identity' (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22377920&postcount=115), he ended up recommending we destroy the rocky mountains to flood Nevada or something, (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22384942&postcount=222) so that was a fun thread.

In a previous thread, he said that the world was being ruined by porn, divorce and people being gay (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22047214&postcount=153). He really is not a fan of pornography and homosexuality. Or women dressing themselves. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22050593&postcount=219) Then there was some anti-semitic conspiracy theory stuff and a manifesto about how he admired Russia's authoritarianism (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?525188-Hoaxing-the-gender-studies-prof/page9). That was not a fun thread.

Also, he double posts constantly.

It depends what you believe the point of arguing with people on the interwebz is. If your enemy doesn't have the option of behaving in the present any differently from the way they've behaved in the past, then it's the definition of futile.

Then again when I tried playing D&D I got told I wasn't doing it right because I used to check that individual kobolds wanted to kill us before attacking them, because Geneva Convention.

SaintRidley

2017-09-22, 01:05 AM

In terms of how the rest of the thread is likely to react, or what? Historically the way these things go is that a bunch of really bad thinly veiled white supremacist arguments get brought out, the rest of the posters swat them down, and eventually the thread gets locked.

And through the power of dogwhistles, donnadogsoth always manages to escape without a ban.

Must be great to politicize the Middle Ages in the service of a racist agenda. As a medievalist, it sickens me to see that happen here and in the real world where white supremacists love to co-opt medieval iconography in order to lay claim to a past that was nothing like what they imagine it to be.

Hazyshade

2017-09-22, 01:50 AM

As a medievalist, it sickens me to see that happen here and in the real world where white supremacists love to co-opt medieval iconography in order to lay claim to a past that was nothing like what they imagine it to be.

It sickens me to see white supremacists claim legitimacy however they do it, but I feel that criticising white supremacism for being historically inaccurate is a dangerous game to play. A white supremacist wouldn't be making their white supremacism any better by making it more historically accurate. Or even by providing conclusive proof that they were right about the past and we were wrong. Maybe white supremacism worked out just peachy in 1380 - that wouldn't make it any more the right answer when we consider it on its own terms in 2017.

kraftcheese

2017-09-22, 05:34 AM

It sickens me to see white supremacists claim legitimacy however they do it, but I feel that criticising white supremacism for being historically inaccurate is a dangerous game to play. A white supremacist wouldn't be making their white supremacism any better by making it more historically accurate. Or even by providing conclusive proof that they were right about the past and we were wrong. Maybe white supremacism worked out just peachy in 1380 - that wouldn't make it any more the right answer when we consider it on its own terms in 2017.
We're skating very close to politics here, but I'd say I'm happy to use any tool to discredit reactionary ideologies like white supremacy; I'll use scientific evidence, sociology, history, philosophy, morality, whatever I can.

I guess the useful thing about using evidence-based things like history, science, etc. is that they can't be turned aside by someone with different views as easily as subjective stuff like morality.

Hazyshade

2017-09-22, 06:54 AM

We're skating very close to politics here, but I'd say I'm happy to use any tool to discredit reactionary ideologies like white supremacy; I'll use scientific evidence, sociology, history, philosophy, morality, whatever I can.

I guess the useful thing about using evidence-based things like history, science, etc. is that they can't be turned aside by someone with different views as easily as subjective stuff like morality.

I find the exact opposite. You can hide in a science fortress - or a holy-book fortress or any other "objective" fortress - and declare that you've kept the subjective stuff out, but the very act of hiding in that fortress will have been a moral decision. You said yourself that science is just a tool in the quest you've made a moral decision to take on, which is discrediting white supremacy.

The only fortress that can keep the subjective stuff out is a fortress that's built of the same subjective stuff. White supremacy is bad because I take the equality of all humans to be a fundamental value. I don't care whether science and history are on my side, or on the white supremacists' side, or neutral. For me to smugly quote scientific and historical evidence as though the absence of that evidence would affect my moral decision in any way, would just be cowardly and dishonest.

2D8HP

2017-09-22, 03:04 PM

...But the myth cycles that have come are not singular, as this thread has shown, but multifarious. Are there any commonalities that can be attained to, maybe to a new archetype or archetypes?

I grand unifying cultural myth?

Done.

In the middle of the 20th century a historic event was quickly mythologized and turned to story

You must have films featuring a common man Band of Brothers (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BandOfBrothers) often multi-ethnic and multi-national (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FiveTokenBand), in a squad (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheSquad) fighting a great evil.

You can include "Resistance" tales as well, making it an even more international "mythos", and besides Hollywood, many novels, films of many nations, and television shows tell the same tale.

When I was a child and youth an often broadcast example on television was:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/e7/Hogan%27s_Heroes_Title_Card.png/250px-Hogan%27s_Heroes_Title_Card.png

Hogan's Heroes (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogan%27s_Heroes)

..which has the squad as Trickster Heroes (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickster) an archtype often used, such as.in the Anansi tales of west Africa (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anansi).

I believe that "ticks all the boxes".

Your welcome.

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-22, 04:48 PM

I grand unifying cultural myth?

Done.

In the middle of the 20th century a historic event was quickly mythologized and turned to story

You must have films featuring a common man Band of Brothers (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BandOfBrothers) often multi-ethnic and multi-national (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FiveTokenBand), in a squad (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheSquad) fighting a great evil.

You can include "Resistance" tales as well, making it an even more international "mythos", and besides Hollywood, many novels, films of many nations, and television shows tell the same tale.

When I was a child and youth an often broadcast example on television was:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/e7/Hogan%27s_Heroes_Title_Card.png/250px-Hogan%27s_Heroes_Title_Card.png

Hogan's Heroes (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogan%27s_Heroes)

..which has the squad as Trickster Heroes (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickster) an archtype often used, such as.in the Anansi tales of west Africa (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anansi).

I believe that "ticks all the boxes".

Your welcome.

Good idea, thanks. It certainly is the capital event, and it supplies origin, valuation, and the sacred all at once, supplanting all others and echoing down the decades, at least for the West. Non-Western cultures certainly don't care.

Knaight

2017-09-22, 05:16 PM

Good idea, thanks. It certainly is the capital event, and it supplies origin, valuation, and the sacred all at once, supplanting all others and echoing down the decades, at least for the West. Non-Western cultures certainly don't care.

Putting aside how the dramatic events of the 20th century to have worldwide implications or even be worldwide, and how the example is set in WWII specifically which as "world" in the description for a reason: Where exactly are you getting the idea that the idea of an extremely close brotherhood fighting a great power is some sort of uniquely Western idea? Putting aside the extremely obvious counter examples (e.g. the entire genre of wuxia, starting with Water Margin) in literature, does the term "colonialism" mean anything to you? Did it even occur to you that the idea of a small band pushing back against some sort of grandiose occupying force might have an extra appeal in places where colonial powers ruled during living memory?

Thrudd

2017-09-22, 05:16 PM

Good idea, thanks. It certainly is the capital event, and it supplies origin, valuation, and the sacred all at once, supplanting all others and echoing down the decades, at least for the West. Non-Western cultures certainly don't care.

Non western cultures don't care about WWII? Unless you're just talking about fascism and the European fronts, people of the Pacific and East Asia were involved as well, with huge repercussions for all. You could argue that THE defining event of the war, the thing most capable of being mythologized, took place in the Pacific, not Europe.

Knaight

2017-09-22, 05:29 PM

Fawkes

2017-09-22, 06:10 PM

Now taking bets on how many pages it'll be before Donnadogsoth quotes white supremacist rhetoric. Again.

It certainly is the capital event, and it supplies origin, valuation, and the sacred all at once, supplanting all others and echoing down the decades, at least for the West. Non-Western cultures certainly don't care.

Ooh here it comes...

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-22, 06:23 PM

Putting aside how the dramatic events of the 20th century to have worldwide implications or even be worldwide, and how the example is set in WWII specifically which as "world" in the description for a reason: Where exactly are you getting the idea that the idea of an extremely close brotherhood fighting a great power is some sort of uniquely Western idea? Putting aside the extremely obvious counter examples (e.g. the entire genre of wuxia, starting with Water Margin) in literature, does the term "colonialism" mean anything to you? Did it even occur to you that the idea of a small band pushing back against some sort of grandiose occupying force might have an extra appeal in places where colonial powers ruled during living memory?

I was referring to the fact that to my knowledge non-Western cultures generally don't care about WWII [European Theater]. I could be wrong and would like counterexamples. Does Malaysia care about WWII [European Theater]? I tend to think these other countries and cultures have their own history to think about, not some European fratricide from seventy years ago.

The WWII foundation myth is foundational to the West. Nowhere did I argue that that kind of myth is unique to the West, though, of course, if anyone can name a similar myth that is comparably negative in its essence I'd certainly care to read it. Indeed this entire thread aids my search for mythos that are unique to the West. If such could be found, then the obvious juxtaposition would be with the WWII foundation myth, with possibly interesting outcomes.

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-22, 06:27 PM

Non western cultures don't care about WWII? Unless you're just talking about fascism and the European fronts, people of the Pacific and East Asia were involved as well, with huge repercussions for all. You could argue that THE defining event of the war, the thing most capable of being mythologized, took place in the Pacific, not Europe.

Yes, of course I'm talking about the European Theater. That's where the Holocaust happened, which aside from the birth of _____ ______ was the most important event in all of Western history. I'm sorry if I misled you or anyone else, I recognise that there was something going on with regards to Japan and its colonial ambitions at about the same time.

EDIT: Just in case anyone attempts to misconstrue and/or libel me for my past few posts, let me distinguish between "foundation myth" as in a collection of stories, narratives, symbols, and understandings which act as a basis for a civilisation to operate on, and the Holocaust as an historical event. My use of the phrase "foundation myth" should NOT be construed as indicating that I think the Holocaust was a myth. I am quite aware that there was an historical event commonly called the Holocaust, and it is not my intention to cast doubt on its veracity.

Knaight

2017-09-22, 06:38 PM

Yes, of course I'm talking about the European Theater. That's where the Holocaust happened, which aside from the birth of _____ ______ was the most important event in all of Western history. I'm sorry if I misled you or anyone else, I recognise that there was something going on with regards to Japan and its colonial ambitions at about the same time.

Yes, if you specifically define "world war two" to only include the parts that didn't involve a particular group fighting in it then that group is likely to care less. As just one example, a lot of very specific events can get referred to in passing as "something going on with regards to Japan and its colonial ambitions at about the same time".

Fawkes

2017-09-22, 07:01 PM

Remember, kids. It's only libel if it isn't true.

Lethologica

2017-09-22, 07:04 PM

I was referring to the fact that to my knowledge non-Western cultures generally don't care about WWII [European Theater]. I could be wrong and would like counterexamples. Does Malaysia care about WWII [European Theater]? I tend to think these other countries and cultures have their own history to think about, not some European fratricide from seventy years ago.

The WWII foundation myth is foundational to the West. Nowhere did I argue that that kind of myth is unique to the West, though, of course, if anyone can name a similar myth that is comparably negative in its essence I'd certainly care to read it. Indeed this entire thread aids my search for mythos that are unique to the West. If such could be found, then the obvious juxtaposition would be with the WWII foundation myth, with possibly interesting outcomes.
You really don't have to look very far for comparatively negative myths in other cultures (insofar as this qualifies as a 'myth' in the first place). The 'century of humiliation' (which includes some really awful s*** from WWII) is a foundational myth for modern China. The atom bomb is a foundational myth for modern Japan. The privation of post-Cold-War Russia is a foundational myth for present-day Russia. Etc.

If you're looking for myths that are unique to the West, that's a very different ask than what was originally stated.

Hazyshade

2017-09-22, 07:04 PM

Good idea, thanks. It certainly is the capital event, and it supplies origin, valuation, and the sacred all at once, supplanting all others and echoing down the decades, at least for the West. Non-Western cultures certainly don't care.

Are we actually seriously entertaining this idea?

That the Second World War "supplies origin, valuation and the sacred" is all very nice, but it fails utterly to fall into the category "mythos produced by the West in the past 1000 years" because it is not a myth. Or even a mytho. You can't "mythologize" something that is a verifiable historical fact. That's simply not what that word means. You can tell stories that use WW2 as a setting, but a basic requirement of a myth is that the purported historical facts are capable of flexing to meet the requirements of the narrative, and that is very, very clearly not the case with WW2.

Lethologica

2017-09-22, 07:12 PM

Are we actually seriously entertaining this idea?

That the Second World War "supplies origin, valuation and the sacred" is all very nice, but it fails utterly to fall into the category "mythos produced by the West in the past 1000 years" because it is not a myth. Or even a mytho. You can't "mythologize" something that is a verifiable historical fact. That's simply not what that word means. You can tell stories that use WW2 as a setting, but a basic requirement of a myth is that the purported historical facts are capable of flexing to meet the requirements of the narrative, and that is very, very clearly not the case with WW2.
Huh. To me it seems very, very clearly the case that the historical facts of WWII can be and have been flexed to meet mythical narrative requirements. The myth about the supreme virtue of American military might, for example. The merits of the myth itself are debatable, but that it's partly rooted in a particular reading of WWII seems undeniable.

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-22, 07:14 PM

Are we actually seriously entertaining this idea?

That the Second World War "supplies origin, valuation and the sacred" is all very nice, but it fails utterly to fall into the category "mythos produced by the West in the past 1000 years" because it is not a myth. Or even a mytho. You can't "mythologize" something that is a verifiable historical fact. That's simply not what that word means. You can tell stories that use WW2 as a setting, but a basic requirement of a myth is that the purported historical facts are capable of flexing to meet the requirements of the narrative, and that is very, very clearly not the case with WW2.

If so, then we need to add a new definition to allow for a "foundation myth" as for example the United State's revolutionary war, and later the Civil War, which were effectively bases for mythology, having the same emotional effect as mythology. See also the examples Lethologica gives above.

Hazyshade

2017-09-22, 07:35 PM

To me it seems very, very clearly the case that the historical facts of WWII can be and have been flexed to meet mythical narrative requirements.

Am I to take your word for it that you, Lethologica, occupy a privileged position with respect to these historical facts? The very fact that you can judge all the narration against what actually happened means that it fails the first requirement of a myth.

The myth about the supreme virtue of American military might, for example.

That's not a myth, that's a belief. A value judgement. Myth doesn't just mean "any old statement that I disagree with".

the United States' revolutionary war, and later the Civil War, which were effectively bases for mythology, having the same emotional effect as mythology.

Again, how did you manage to get into this frame of reference where you're able to see through the emotional effects to the real, historical facts, and yet still be qualified to tell us about the emotional effects?

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-22, 07:54 PM

Am I to take your word for it that you, Lethologica, occupy a privileged position with respect to these historical facts? The very fact that you can judge all the narration against what actually happened means that it fails the first requirement of a myth.

That's not a myth, that's a belief. A value judgement. Myth doesn't just mean "any old statement that I disagree with".

Again, how did you manage to get into this frame of reference where you're able to see through the emotional effects to the real, historical facts, and yet still be qualified to tell us about the emotional effects?

I don't understand what you mean. Are you asking whether or not I can tell when a picture has a frame?

Bohandas

2017-09-22, 08:09 PM

-Matter of Britain (King Arthur)
-Matter of France (Charlamagne)
-Robin Hood
-Star Wars
-Star Trek
-Discworld
-Middle Earth
-The Cthulhu Mythos
-The intersecting wack conspiracy theories about the Freemasons, Knights Templar, and Illuminati
-The Church of the SubGenius
-GWAR
-fairy lore
-various sometimes intersecting creepypastas; zalgo, slenderman, et al.
-JFK conspiracy theories
-Sherlock Holmes
-UFO conspiracy theories
-the birth certificate conspiracy theory
-chemtrail and water supply fluoridation conspiracy theories
-All the various intersecting stuff associated with modern christmas/hannukah/new years/festivus
-the dubious lore surrounding various missing persons such as Amelia Earhart of Jimmy Hoffa
-homeopathy and various other quack medical theories
-fluffy ponies
-Power Rangers
-The Simpsons
-The Marvel Universe
-The DC Universe
-the lore surrounding the bermuda triangle
-marxism
-capitalism
-objectivism
-bigfoot/nessie/the jersey devil/cryptids
-James Bond
-incorrect facts and legends about the founding fathers
-Planescape
-the flying dutchman/ghost ships
-orgone
-incorrect facts and lore about pirates
-the hollow earth
-vampires
-zombies
-springheel jack
-Paul Bunyan
-Pecos Bill
-dubious lore about Johnny Appleseed
-dubious lore aboit Davy Crockett

veti

2017-09-22, 09:06 PM

Any story whose oldest known original version is still in copyright cannot be called "mythology". It's a defining characteristic of mythology that there is no authoritative version - different writers can and do reuse the same characters and settings in different ways, without ever having to look over their shoulder or ask permission to do it.

So, Star Trek/Wars - nope. Marvel/DC - no. Mickey Mouse, Winnie the Pooh - definitely not. Tolkien - sadly not ("sadly" because he wanted to create exactly this kind of mythos, but since his death it's been predictably hijacked by people who just want to milk it for money).

Definitely mythic: the whole Arthurian court, Robin Hood.

Then there's huge tranches of seriously researched and documented history that's used in the same way, but authors have to be slightly careful in their treatment because they're messing with real history. This category includes: the buccaneers, the courts of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, the Pilgrim Fathers, the Wild West, just about every civil war ever fought (for some reason, civil wars give rise to a lot more interesting stories than the conventional, international kind). The most recent addition to the pantheon of "instant settings for whatever morality tale you want to tell" is probably World War Two (which has given us fiction ranging from South Pacific to Catch-22 to Schindler's List, Cryptonomicon, Inglourious Basterds, Blackout/All Clear).

Then there are stories that could individually qualify as myths, in that they're often retold in pursuit of different agendas, but it's hard to describe them as belonging to a coherent mythos. Things like: Little Red Riding Hood, Faust, the werewolf, Frankenstein, Sherlock Holmes, Phineas Fogg, Sweeney Todd. Some of these do in theory have a definitive version, but as time goes by the originals slowly get eclipsed by the retellings.

Hazyshade

2017-09-22, 09:40 PM

I don't understand what you mean. Are you asking whether or not I can tell when a picture has a frame?

Come on, this is a piece of cake for someone with your philosophical grounding. I'm asking how you can know anything about the emotional effect of a myth if you aren't experiencing it as reality but as a myth. If you want a silly analogy, try explaining to me what being blind feels like. Moore's paradox. If we're going to allow you to define whole new categories of myth into existence based on the relationship of their emotional effect to the emotional effects of other myths, we need to know how to verify these emotional effects for ourselves, otherwise you could be talking complete nonsense.

Thrudd

2017-09-22, 09:40 PM

Wait, are we talking about things that are currently a "mythos" with an origin in western culture, or guessing what real world factual events might possibly contribute to a "mythos" far in the future (such as might arise from a loss of records and technology or some sort of dystopian repression of information)?

I would hesitate to call mistaken or over-simplified beliefs formed out of ignorance of fact or caused by inadequate education to be "myth". That many people are not well informed about the past and have bought into one form of propaganda or another doesn't really meet requirement for "mythos", does it? I thought we were looking for "works of imagination", like the Cthulhu mythos.

veti

2017-09-22, 10:31 PM

You can tell stories that use WW2 as a setting, but a basic requirement of a myth is that the purported historical facts are capable of flexing to meet the requirements of the narrative, and that is very, very clearly not the case with WW2.

It depends what you consider "the basic historical facts". To be sure, there are a lot of facts about WW2 that you can't "flex to meet the requirements of the narrative" - but it's perfectly possible to frame your story such that those facts are not particularly important, the story itself invents whole new ones to fit around it.

Consider Raiders of the Lost Ark. It's a wholly fictional story, but it uses the premise of "Nazis building strength before the outbreak of war" as its backdrop. It provides instant context; everyone knows who the Nazis were and exactly why we should root against them. That's what myth does - it provides narrative elements that writers can use to shortcut their worldbuilding. But the actual historical facts of Nazism, or the rise and fall of the Third Reich, are utterly unimportant to the story.

Now think of Catch-22, which uses the setting of WW2 to tell a story of how the little guy is helpless in the face of the tyrannical authority of the US military. Compare and contrast with Saving Private Ryan, which uses the setting of WW2 to tell a story of how that same US military spares no effort to do the right thing by its soldiers. Using the same setting and characters (although admittedly it's a stretch to call "the US military" a "character") to tell stories with diametrically opposing morals - that's definitely a "tell" for mythology.

2D8HP

2017-09-22, 10:49 PM

....Using the same setting and characters (although admittedly it's a stretch to call "the US military" a "character") to tell stories with diametrically opposing morals - that's definitely a "tell" for mythology.

That "well-spring of story" aspect is what I was getting out.

In the USA we had the "settling of the west" as myth/legend (I'm sure if I channel surf right now I'll find a "western"), but that's pretty much just a US thing, so I didn't think it fit.

The "Matter of Britain" (Arthurian legends) some, and the "Matter of France" (Carolingian romances) as well as the Iliad had some historical kernal that story-telling grew from.

As we get further from the actual events legend takes over, and the stories change to fit the times there told, not the times there set in (Arthur has knights in full armor, Kelly's Heroes has a hippie etc.

Lethologica

2017-09-22, 11:08 PM

Am I to take your word for it that you, Lethologica, occupy a privileged position with respect to these historical facts? The very fact that you can judge all the narration against what actually happened means that it fails the first requirement of a myth.
I don't see my position as particularly privileged, no. Nor do I think this view requires such a privilege. And you may set your requirements as you please, but I think veti does a good job of explaining how history produces something that certainly looks like a myth, even if it doesn't fulfill your requirements. I would go a little further and say that even stories more closely tied to the facts can become part of that myth-like structure, depending on how they emphasize different facts and different relationships between facts. The historical facts are what they are, but there is not necessarily a clear line between narratives about those historical facts, stories that simply use those historical facts as a backdrop, and myths.

That's not a myth, that's a belief. A value judgement. Myth doesn't just mean "any old statement that I disagree with".
I didn't offer agreement or disagreement with that statement, and your guess about my position happens to be wrong (though I suppose you would also have been wrong if you had made the opposite guess, as I do not adhere to a binary view of that statement). Nor is the statement the whole of the myth--the statement is the Aesop that the myth is about. The myth is the reading of WWII (and other historical events) forming a framework that supports the Aesop.

Hazyshade

2017-09-23, 05:20 AM

It depends what you consider "the basic historical facts". To be sure, there are a lot of facts about WW2 that you can't "flex to meet the requirements of the narrative" - but it's perfectly possible to frame your story such that those facts are not particularly important, the story itself invents whole new ones to fit around it.

Consider Raiders of the Lost Ark. It's a wholly fictional story, but it uses the premise of "Nazis building strength before the outbreak of war" as its backdrop. It provides instant context; everyone knows who the Nazis were and exactly why we should root against them. That's what myth does - it provides narrative elements that writers can use to shortcut their worldbuilding. But the actual historical facts of Nazism, or the rise and fall of the Third Reich, are utterly unimportant to the story.

You've invented tropes there. Being part of a shared cultural lexicon doesn't make something a myth. You need the concept "Nazi" to understand ROTLA? Okay, but you also need the concept "archaeologist", and if you're going to call that a myth, is there actually a noun in the English language that doesn't serve as a mental shortcut?

I don't see my position as particularly privileged, no. Nor do I think this view requires such a privilege. And you may set your requirements as you please, but I think veti does a good job of explaining how history produces something that certainly looks like a myth, even if it doesn't fulfill your requirements. I would go a little further and say that even stories more closely tied to the facts can become part of that myth-like structure, depending on how they emphasize different facts and different relationships between facts. The historical facts are what they are, but there is not necessarily a clear line between narratives about those historical facts, stories that simply use those historical facts as a backdrop, and myths.

There is a clear line. If you can completely demolish a narrative with the four words "that didn't really happen" and be provably correct, then you cannot call it a myth. That is not what "myth" means.

I didn't offer agreement or disagreement with that statement, and your guess about my position happens to be wrong (though I suppose you would also have been wrong if you had made the opposite guess, as I do not adhere to a binary view of that statement). Nor is the statement the whole of the myth--the statement is the Aesop that the myth is about. The myth is the reading of WWII (and other historical events) forming a framework that supports the Aesop.

No, that last sentence is not even wrong. You can't equate "myth", "reading" and "framework" unless you stretch the meanings of those nouns way beyond their ordinary English meanings.

Lethologica

2017-09-23, 06:00 AM

*shrug* I'm going to go on talking about those myth-like objects as long as someone in the discussion thread finds them interesting. You're free to keep yelling at me for definitional reasons, if you find that useful.

Razade

2017-09-23, 06:21 AM

Are we actually seriously entertaining this idea?

That the Second World War "supplies origin, valuation and the sacred" is all very nice, but it fails utterly to fall into the category "mythos produced by the West in the past 1000 years" because it is not a myth. Or even a mytho. You can't "mythologize" something that is a verifiable historical fact. That's simply not what that word means. You can tell stories that use WW2 as a setting, but a basic requirement of a myth is that the purported historical facts are capable of flexing to meet the requirements of the narrative, and that is very, very clearly not the case with WW2.

Tell that to Romance of the Three Kingdoms. A mythology based on actual events. How about the Illiad. Based on (according to most scholars) an actual war. Still mythology. Even mythology to the Greeks after a point. The list could go on and on. You're looking at one very narrow definition (one, might I add that's rather modern) and saying it's the gold standard. That's...laughable. Is what it is.

Hazyshade

2017-09-23, 06:41 AM

You're looking at one very narrow definition (one, might I add that's rather modern) and saying it's the gold standard. That's...laughable. Is what it is.

You're looking at a definition that isn't even a definition, because it potentially encompasses everything humans have ever done, said and written. Yes, my definition is narrower than that, because I like to be able to use words to refer to things smaller than 1 planet in size.

This whole "WW2 is a mythical construct" reminds me of the time a physics professor sent an article to a postmodern studies journal claiming that gravity was a social construct. Not the statement of the law of gravity, but gravity the actual physical force. They published it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair).

Lethologica

2017-09-23, 06:46 AM

Hazyshade

2017-09-23, 07:34 AM

If we are to make this a definitional yelling contest, can we at least cite a nonzero number of sources? Hazyshade, I know you've been posting for a while on this thread - for the benefit of someone without laptop access for the moment, can you link any posts where you've cited a source for your definition if I missed it? Thanks.

Look at the sky. It is blue. If you like, you can stretch the definition of "green" until it includes the colour of the sky, and you can challenge the rest of us to cite chapter and verse to prove that "green" doesn't include the colour of the sky. No-one has ever dis-proven the green-ness of the sky, have they? Because the sky fits perfectly into the category "blue", and the only reason you'd ever try to call it green is if someone on a message board had challenged you to think of lots of things that are green and you were struggling.

World War 2 fits perfectly, beautifully, into the category "historical fact". If you are trying to shoe-horn it into the category of mythical construct or "myth-like object", it is a sign that you have run out of actual myths to talk about and you are making stuff up.

Lethologica

2017-09-23, 08:09 AM

Your self-evidence argument relies on the premise that myths and history are mutually exclusive, but I'm afraid that is precisely the point of contention.

If called upon, I could readily offer a definition of blue and green color ranges by wavelength and demonstrate that by this reasonable definition the sky is typically blue and not green. (And since color words are subject to some degree of cultural construction, this is not as useless an exercise as you might imagine.) I would certainly hope that you can do the same for your strident assertions about a term that is not quite so objective as color (qualia aside).

You will find that it's much more work to convince me that you do not need to cite any definitions than to simply cite a definition. Certainly, if myths are so self-evidently defined the way you suggest, you will not have to look far to find a definition that matches your claim. And if no such definition is forthcoming by the time I have access to my laptop again, I have no problem with submitting whatever definitions I find for this thread's consideration. If we are going down this definitional rabbit hole, we may as well do it properly. At worst it will stave off the inevitable derailment into real-world politics and thread lock.

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-23, 10:10 AM

Come on, this is a piece of cake for someone with your philosophical grounding. I'm asking how you can know anything about the emotional effect of a myth if you aren't experiencing it as reality but as a myth. If you want a silly analogy, try explaining to me what being blind feels like. Moore's paradox. If we're going to allow you to define whole new categories of myth into existence based on the relationship of their emotional effect to the emotional effects of other myths, we need to know how to verify these emotional effects for ourselves, otherwise you could be talking complete nonsense.

One can experience a work of art and then retreat a step to realise that it is art and does not constitute the whole world. Or, one can be intoxicated by a drink and then sober up and put the experience into perspective. I'm not immune to the American foundational mythology, I feel it, it's a heavy idea, but, it has not consumed me to the point I'm unable to recognise it as a mythology. I have "stepped back" from that picture.

How can others understand it if they don't understand it? They understand it by stepping back from whatever picture they have been looking at, and thus getting the notion of that's like, to have been under the spell of a founding myth. That "notion" is going to be the same for all founding myths, just like focusing the eyes is going to be the same for all paintings. So, there's a basis for understanding the emotional effects of the American founding myth, which the student can bolster by reading the relevant material.

If we couldn't do this sort of thing, then how could we hope to understand any other individual person?

Hazyshade

2017-09-23, 10:40 AM

Your self-evidence argument relies on the premise that myths and history are mutually exclusive, but I'm afraid that is precisely the point of contention.

What?! That's exactly what it doesn't rely on. Green and blue are not mutually exclusive. I really have no idea where you got that one from. If you want to take the word "myth" and insist that it includes historical events of which living people have direct experience, knock yourself out! But once you let in some historical events, what's to stop all historical events getting in, and leaving you with a definition of "myth" that's indistinguishable from the entirety of recorded history? You then need to import a whole other apparatus for distinguishing between historical facts that qualify as myths and historical facts that don't, and those decisions are going to be far more arbitrary than if you'd just started by excluding things from one category that fit much better into another, which is how humans use words.

it has not consumed me to the point I'm unable to recognise it as a mythology. I have "stepped back" from that picture.

That's what they all say. All the people in the large picture who have stepped back from the small picture.

Rynjin

2017-09-23, 11:57 AM

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-23, 12:08 PM

That's what they all say. All the people in the large picture who have stepped back from the small picture.

The next question is what is the "in between" space--the space between the "small" pictures of the sundry mythos? What are we "stepping back" into? Someone like Cusa might say, we are stepping back from colours to the apprehension of vision. Or the stepping back from individual beings to apprehending Being itself. If so, then stepping back from individual mythos or myth-cycles should lead us to Story as an archetype, or Mythos in of itself.

Hazyshade

2017-09-23, 12:37 PM

Quite frankly I'm the most important person in the world, though Hazyshade is far more likely to ruin my fun word game by demanding I make a basic level of sense than the rest.

Fixed it for you.

The next question is what is the "in between" space--the space between the "small" pictures of the sundry mythos? What are we "stepping back" into? Someone like Cusa might say, we are stepping back from colours to the apprehension of vision. Or the stepping back from individual beings to apprehending Being itself. If so, then stepping back from individual mythos or myth-cycles should lead us to Story as an archetype, or Mythos in of itself.

If you click the first blue link in any Wikipedia article and repeat, you end up at Philosophy! :biggrin:

Rynjin

2017-09-23, 12:54 PM

Fixed it for you.

Golly, you sure showed me with your original and insightful joke that nobody has ever made before.

Hazyshade

2017-09-23, 12:58 PM

Golly, you sure showed me with your original and insightful joke that nobody has ever made before.

What joke?

Lethologica

2017-09-23, 01:48 PM

What?! That's exactly what it doesn't rely on. Green and blue are not mutually exclusive. I really have no idea where you got that one from. If you want to take the word "myth" and insist that it includes historical events of which living people have direct experience, knock yourself out! But once you let in some historical events, what's to stop all historical events getting in, and leaving you with a definition of "myth" that's indistinguishable from the entirety of recorded history? You then need to import a whole other apparatus for distinguishing between historical facts that qualify as myths and historical facts that don't, and those decisions are going to be far more arbitrary than if you'd just started by excluding things from one category that fit much better into another, which is how humans use words.

Oh, dear. So mutual exclusivity was not part of your argument? Then I can't see that it has any relevance whatsoever. If something can be green and blue, then arguing that something should not be listed among green things because it is so very, very blue makes no sense at all.

As to how I decide whether some historical facts are myths while others are not, I'm afraid you've made a category error. I do not argue for the facts themselves to be myths, but for certain readings of those facts and stories related to those facts to be part of myths. I consider other mythical features of those stories only somewhat restrained by their degree of historicity. (Again, further precision in defining those mythical features will have to wait until I'm in a position to seek out and cite relevant evidence, but in the meantime you're free to offer your own.)

What joke?
Perhaps Rynjin meant to offer a relatively charitable explanation for your rejoinder, which frankly has few other merits to recommend itself.

Hazyshade

2017-09-23, 02:38 PM

Oh, dear. So mutual exclusivity was not part of your argument?

Well, if you treated my posts as attempts at communication rather than as inconveniences that you have to endure before you're allowed to double-post, you wouldn't have to guess these things.

As to how I decide whether some historical facts are myths while others are not, I'm afraid you've made a category error. I do not argue for the facts themselves to be myths, but for certain readings of those facts and stories related to those facts to be part of myths.

Firstly, is it possible to get more imprecision into a single sentence? Certain readings? Stories related to those facts? Part of myths? That could mean literally anything.

But secondly, you don't argue for the facts themselves to be myths?

To me it seems very, very clearly the case that the historical facts of WWII can be and have been flexed to meet mythical narrative requirements.

It's just about the only time in this thread that you actually used words to make yourself clearer instead of more obscure. Don't take that away from us?

S@tanicoaldo

2017-09-23, 03:10 PM

Any story whose oldest known original version is still in copyright cannot be called "mythology". It's a defining characteristic of mythology that there is no authoritative version - different writers can and do reuse the same characters and settings in different ways, without ever having to look over their shoulder or ask permission to do it.

So, Star Trek/Wars - nope. Marvel/DC - no. Mickey Mouse, Winnie the Pooh - definitely not. Tolkien - sadly not ("sadly" because he wanted to create exactly this kind of mythos, but since his death it's been predictably hijacked by people who just want to milk it for money).

I know that I’m going with the OP crazy definition of myth not the actual facts, I mean he said Hellraiser is a great exempla of western myth so I just rolled with it.
To be fair the only truly American mythological archetype is of those vagabonds who hop from place to place in trains and have a set of codes that they use to know which houses are good to ask for stuff and which are not;

Good idea, thanks. It certainly is the capital event, and it supplies origin, valuation, and the sacred all at once, supplanting all others and echoing down the decades, at least for the West. Non-Western cultures certainly don't care.

What?

Are you serious? Are you really this unable to look past your own belly button to realize that history affects other people and nations too? Have you ever seen Godzilla? Have you ever watched Akira? Are you going to ignore all the Japanese post atomic art production? Really? Right in front of my salad?

Razade

2017-09-23, 03:20 PM

You're looking at a definition that isn't even a definition, because it potentially encompasses everything humans have ever done, said and written. Yes, my definition is narrower than that, because I like to be able to use words to refer to things smaller than 1 planet in size.

You're wrong. Here's a definition of a Myth.

a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.

a usually traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon creation myths

A traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining a natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.

And this would be enough if words weren't more than label.

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-23, 03:31 PM

What?

Are you serious? Are you really this unable to look past your own belly button to realize that history affects other people and nations too? Have you ever seen Godzilla? Have you ever watched Akira? Are you going to ignore all the Japanese post atomic art production? Really? Right in front of my salad?

Mmm-hmm... (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22410974&postcount=53)

Yora

2017-09-23, 03:39 PM

Quite frankly you're all wrong, though Hazyshade is far more wrong than the rest.

World War 2, as a historical event, is not a myth. It's real, it happened, it's a verifiable fact.

However, much like the aforementioned other examples like the Trojan War and last years of the Han dynasty, it has taken on a life beyond that. The former was mythologized in the Illiad, the latter in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and World War 2 has likewise taken on a life of its own as a romanticized period of heroes and villains, gathering around itself a whole mythology based around Hitler's fascination with the occult and is a popular setting for many, many fictional (but sometimes plausible) stories. Each country has its own take on WWII, though I believe most of us are more familiar with the US's particular brand in the wholesale creation of mythical, larger than life heroes like Captain America or GI Joe.

World War 2 isn't a myth, but it has inspired the creation of a mythos all its own.

The war was a factual event. But humans don't record facts. Humans record narratives that colllect the information they consider to be true and the most important and which creates a simplified chain of causes and effects that is easy to grasp. Once one such interpretation becomes the commonly accepted narrative and turns into something that gives meaning to and showcases the values of a society, it also becomes a myth.

That American troops landing in Normandy had a significant effect on the following events of the war is something that all historians agree on. However, the idea that American soldiers dealt the deciding blow that made Germany lose is a myth.
The invasion force consisted of 73,000 American soldiers and 83,100 British-Canadian soldiers; 200 American ships and 892 British ships; and 305 American landing craft and 3,261 British landing crafts. And the British-Canadian troops had their parts of the coast taken and secured before than the Americans (though the Americans might very well have gotten the hardest parts to take). And at that stage of the war the Allies had already taken half of Italy (and you can simply go around the Alps through eastern Austria to get into Germany) while at the same time the Soviets had been driving back German forces on the Eastern Front for 16 months with 6,500,000 soldiers. What really happened from a strategic perspective was that American and British forces both succesfully opened a new supply line to support their already ongoing land war on the European continent. Had the American or British forces failed at their landing, then the other one still had a chance. But it doesn't make as good a story as a single day of fighting deciding the greatest war in history from which the Americans emerged as the greatest power.

America was still responsible for the Allied victory, but not with soldiers marching on Germany but through supporting the British and Soviets with money and supplies. It was an industrial war and American industry completely crushed two highly advanced empires at the same time. But it's not rich industrialists who risked their lives and died, so this is not the way a society remembers what happened. Instead school books and political speeches tell the tale of how it was their own soldiers who saved the world from evil on the battlefield.

And that's really how all of history works. All casual common knowledge history is myth.

sktarq

2017-09-23, 03:43 PM

And that's really how VAST MAJORITY of history works. THE VAST MAJORITY OF casual common knowledge history is myth.

There fixed that for ya. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. The principle stands.

S@tanicoaldo

2017-09-23, 03:47 PM

What's up with people fixing other people's posts? That's like so rude.

sktarq

2017-09-23, 03:55 PM

its a jokey way of an otherwise very dry, highly repetitive post about the weakness of an absolutist argument in a setting where a counter-example will be likely forthcoming.

Hazyshade

2017-09-23, 03:57 PM

You're wrong. Here's a definition of a Myth.

Yes. A different definition. Not the one we were talking about.

Yora

2017-09-23, 04:00 PM

There fixed that for ya. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. The principle stands.

No, I disagree. It's not that historians and historic memory all lie. The vast majority of it is true. But all of it is always a simplified abstraction of everything that happened with the author making a subjective choice of which details are important.
Human memory is not like a video camera. We don't record things as they have happened. Our brain stores a story of what has happened and recreates images and sound that match that story when we remember it. That story is based on the things we actively noticed and that seemed important to us at the time, not on everything we actually saw and heard. And when talking with other people about the event or reading other reports of it, the story stored in our brain changes, either to negate conflicting details between the acounts or to include proof that an account we don't like can't be true.
And when you try to gather the memories from hundreds or thousands of people covering many weeks or months, years or decades after the events, you get something incredibly distorted that you first have to sort out and put into an order. Which is always based on what you already assume actually happend and was important. And that doesn't even include people actively lying to further their own goals or supressing memories that don't conform with their world view and personal morals.

I'm not saying all of history is a complete fraud. But it's inherently extremely murky and turns into complete subjective speculation when it comes to explain why something happened or what its consequences were.

Razade

2017-09-23, 04:01 PM

Yes. A different definition. Not the one we were talking about.

Not the one you're talking about and attempting to say is the only definition. Lethlogica is very clearly talking about the definition I gave, as am I and as are other people when they cite the possible romanticist aspect of World War 2 from what we term History (a modern notion) with Myth and Mythology.

sktarq

2017-09-23, 04:08 PM

I'm not saying all of history is a complete fraud. But it's inherently extremely murky and turns into complete subjective speculation when it comes to explain why something happened or what its consequences were.

Not necessarily. We can have good records of how for example diplomatic communication was received and how it effected another nations leaders reaction. This can then become a very clear part of the mythic version of history. See the Cuba missile crisis for an example.

Bohandas

2017-09-23, 04:13 PM

also Time Cube and Lyndon Larouche

S@tanicoaldo

2017-09-23, 04:18 PM

also Time Cube (...)

You silly, everyone knows the cube is the space stone not the time one. :smallamused:

Bohandas

2017-09-23, 04:26 PM

There is a clear line. If you can completely demolish a narrative with the four words "that didn't really happen" and be provably correct, then you cannot call it a myth. That is not what "myth" means.

This would relegate all mythologies to non-myth status (unless you somehow believe that "that didn;t really happen" does NOT automatically follow from "that's not even possible" and sometimes additionally "that's not even plausible"). I think you're thinking of legends

EDIT:
Though admittedly I've conflated the two concepts in my prior posts as well.

Fawkes

2017-09-23, 05:02 PM

The problem with this conversation is that it was started by an authoritarian striaght-white-male supremacist with an axe to grind about how modern culture is inferior to his imagined ideal because it's got too many minorities in it there was no definition given of what a mythos is, leading everyone to come at this topic from different angles and then clash over the undefined semantics.

2D8HP

2017-09-23, 05:22 PM

....isn't a myth, but it has inspired the creation of a mythos all its own.

:redface:

Oh of course. Sorry I meant "Myth: common wellspring of story", not "myth: false belief".

Depending on which definition, I can see Hazyshade's objection.

The problem with this conversation is that it was....
...there was no definition given of what a mythos is, leading everyone to come at this topic from different angles and then clash over the undefined semantics.

Um yes, there is also a particular reason that I chose "Hogan's Heroes" as an example, which seems to not have been noticed.

sktarq

2017-09-23, 06:03 PM

I would say a short lived Mythos would have been founded on the American ideas of Manifest Destiny. The concepts that undergird the various Trappers/Oregon Trail/Lumberjack/Gold bug-49ers/and various Wild West stories all draw from the similar root mindsets. Daniel Boone, Paul Bunyan and the whole Frontier pantheon were a somewhat varied bunch but so were the Roman or Greek pantheons. . . that the fundamental ideals of the relationship between man and nature, expansion in general, the humanity/worth of the Native Americans, "independence", etc have changed significantly in the last 50 years and have seen a weakening in the social relevance of the tales associated with this mythos. Those that have survived and thrived have had to adapt to a different cultural set of norms. Why modern westerns are often just a sub-type of a period drama vs their own genre.

But the Mythos was developed in the west in the last 1K years

Bohandas

2017-09-23, 06:32 PM

dps

2017-09-23, 06:42 PM

Um yes, there is also a particular reason that I chose "Hogan's Heroes" as an example, which seems to not have been noticed.

I thought it was just an unsuccessful attempt at humor on your part.

2D8HP

2017-09-23, 06:57 PM

I thought it was just an unsuccessful attempt at humor on your part.

Another unsuccessful attempt.

S@tanicoaldo

2017-09-23, 07:24 PM

The modern age is mythically defined by television, handheld screens, soon AR glasses. That's where we get our energy from, we can literally even order food from them thus dispensing with the need to actually physically set foot in a grocery store. But the myth cycles that have come are not singular, as this thread has shown, but multifarious. Are there any commonalities that can be attained to, maybe to a new archetype or archetypes?

No it's not, I think you meant the contemporary age.

Hazyshade

2017-09-23, 07:34 PM

cite the possible romanticist aspect of World War 2 from what we term History (a modern notion) with Myth and Mythology.

You are just brainstorming words now.

This would relegate all mythologies to non-myth status (unless you somehow believe that "that didn;t really happen" does NOT automatically follow from "that's not even possible" and sometimes additionally "that's not even plausible"). I think you're thinking of legends

EDIT:
Though admittedly I've conflated the two concepts in my prior posts as well.

Ah, but no! If I took a harmless household myth about how a particular local rock got to be a certain shape, let's say "a troll did it", and I proved that there have never been any such creatures as trolls on planet Earth, what do you suppose the effect on the myth would be? Zero. The keepers of the myth know perfectly well that trolls didn't exist. That's not the point of the myth. The Olympian gods defeating the Titans - what knowledge could you or I or any human present or future possibly find out that would make a dent in that myth? If we somehow find out that it's not true, well, it's not supposed to be true. It's a meme, in the original Dawkins sense. Its truth value is of zero importance.

But fast forward to WW2 and the situation is completely different. We have so many primary sources that there is no excuse for getting things wrong. If I was looking through some old documents and I found a handwritten confession from the radio operator on the USS New Jersey that he disliked Admiral Halsey and had deliberately left that sarcastic padding phrase (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_world_wonders) in that decoded message in 1944, that would be big news. That tale would be updated to take my discovery into account. So the "myth", if you insist on calling it that, is a good myth only as long as it's true. Not being true would destroy it as a myth.

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-23, 07:45 PM

The modern age is mythically defined by television, handheld screens, soon AR glasses. That's where we get our energy from, we can literally even order food from them thus dispensing with the need to actually physically set foot in a grocery store. But the myth cycles that have come are not singular, as this thread has shown, but multifarious. Are there any commonalities that can be attained to, maybe to a new archetype or archetypes?No it's not, I think you meant the contemporary age.

Thank you S@tanicoaldo, that's what I meant. Do you have any answers to my question?

Ronnoc

2017-09-23, 07:48 PM

You are just brainstorming words now.

Ah, but no! If I took a harmless household myth about how a particular local rock got to be a certain shape, let's say "a troll did it", and I proved that there have never been any such creatures as trolls on planet Earth, what do you suppose the effect on the myth would be? Zero. The keepers of the myth know perfectly well that trolls didn't exist. That's not the point of the myth. The Olympian gods defeating the Titans - what knowledge could you or I or any human present or future possibly find out that would make a dent in that myth? If we somehow find out that it's not true, well, it's not supposed to be true. It's a meme, in the original Dawkins sense. Its truth value is of zero importance.

But fast forward to WW2 and the situation is completely different. We have so many primary sources that there is no excuse for getting things wrong. If I was looking through some old documents and I found a handwritten confession from the radio operator on the USS New Jersey that he disliked Admiral Halsey and had deliberately left that sarcastic padding phrase (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_world_wonders) in that decoded message in 1944, that would be big news. That tale would be updated to take my discovery into account. So the "myth", if you insist on calling it that, is a good myth only as long as it's true. Not being true would destroy it as a myth.

That doesn't mean the world wars cannot be a source of myths, look at gremlins, the entire folklore of which came from ww1 aviators and mechanics

2D8HP

2017-09-23, 08:58 PM

I'm thinking in terms of the Cthulhu Mythos...

Again with the Lovecraft!

I have one: Clive Barker's Hellraiser.

I don't think that this fixation on finding "truths" in 20th century horror fiction is healthy.

....But the myth cycles that have come are not singular, as this thread has shown, but multifarious...

Yes, we have a diversity of story.

I think most of us find that a good thing.

..Are there any commonalities that can be attained to, maybe to a new archetype or archetypes?

Attained?

Thank you S@tanicoaldo, that's what I meant. Do you have any answers to my question?

I can't speak for S@tanicoaldo (who wonderfully cited numerous "mythos"), but I'll speak for myself.

Since at least the 19th century there have been numerous attempts to develop classifications of the Motifs (http://guides.lib.uw.edu/c.php?g=403912&p=2749149Folklore & Mythology: Tale Types and Motif Indexes) used used in Folklore and Mythology.

I believe the attempts may be called a part of Folkloristics (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folkloristics).

Perhaps you should check out The American Folklore Society (http://www.afsnet.org/?page=AboutAFS) to find out more.

But to really study the subject, I encourage you to broaden your interests beyond "the west".

As for "archetypes", I really don't understand what you mean, or what your goal is.

Please use simpler language.

Olinser

2017-09-23, 09:04 PM

I don't know if 'mythos' is necessarily the best term, but the past 100 or so years has seen the creation of basically the entire genre of Space science fiction, along with a number of generally accepted 'standards' like FTL travel, the existence of other advanced intelligent life, etc.

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-23, 09:41 PM

Again with the Lovecraft!

I don't think that this fixation on finding "truths" in 20th century horror fiction is healthy.

Yes, we have a diversity of story.

I think most of us find that a good thing.

Attained?

I can't speak for S@tanicoaldo (who wonderfully cited numerous "mythos"), but I'll speak for myself.

Since at least the 19th century there have been numerous attempts to develop classifications of the Motifs (http://guides.lib.uw.edu/c.php?g=403912&p=2749149Folklore & Mythology: Tale Types and Motif Indexes) used used in Folklore and Mythology.

I believe the attempts may be called a part of Folkloristics (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folkloristics).

Perhaps you should check out The American Folklore Society (http://www.afsnet.org/?page=AboutAFS) to find out more.

But to really study the subject, I encourage you to broaden your interests beyond "the west".

As for "archetypes", I really don't understand what you mean, or what your goal is.

Please use simpler language.

By archetypes I mean rich symbols that pervade story, in the sense of Carl Jung or Joseph Campbell.

This quote has intrigued me:

Personally I think Campbell was onto something with his examination of shamanistic versus cyclical myths; these are the seriously, seriously old ones that we only have access to through oral traditions and the very earliest written stories. Basically, when a culture has a complete change in circumstance in which their primary way of getting energy (literally through food or more metaphorically) that event is accompanied by a new form of myth. This was evident when people moved from hunter-gatherer societies to agrarian societies. Their energy no longer came from the hunt, it came from the land and the crop. Trying to remember this without the book in front of me, so I might get this wrong; but rebirth myths were almost nonexistent in the nomadic shamanistic cultures. They only started happening when people settled down and planted crops. That's when you get things like the Osiris myth.*

My own suspicion is that we've recently had a similar sort of a shift. In the modern world we have no connection to the cycle of rebirth and seasons, at least not as far as it relates to how we get our food and energy. For most people living in cities, as far as they're concerned grain and meat come from a grocery store or a restaurant. So the day-to-day struggles we have bear extremely little resemblance to the circumstances that gave rise to rebirth myths. They're less meaningful to people, so they connect less to them. Something like the "coming-out" story might be the next wave of mythology.

I thus wonder if we have entered an age of a new kind of myth. Do we return to the shamanic, does the cyclical somehow survive, or do we invent something new?

Bohandas

2017-09-23, 09:49 PM

Since World War 2 has been mentioned I would bring up the idea that Hitler was somehow a special person; both the Nazi version of this myth that glorified him and the Allied version that treats him as more than just the particular fascist pinhead who happened to end up on top. Nazis are fungible

runeghost

2017-09-23, 10:17 PM

I'd add the old Start Wars EU to the modern mythos bin. I'm not sure it'll survive long enough, but it very much has the potential to become a true mythology.

2000 years from now they'll be teaching kids about how the American civilisation of ancient times on old earthpracticed a religion following the Jedi gods, who walked the galaxy as mortals before ascending to godhood on their deathbed, and of who the greatest was believed to be the Skywalker, child of the fallen good Vader, who fought against the evil Emporer Palpatine to free the galaxy from demons known as Sith.

Search your feelings, you know to be true.

And obviously it's all true. I mean, there's a real place called "Skywalker Ranch" owned by a guy called Luke! And Jedi are a real religion, although many powerful states don't recognize them as such!

Take that and run with it for a 1000 years and who knows what you'll get, but it'll be something.

Lethologica

2017-09-23, 11:48 PM

Firstly, is it possible to get more imprecision into a single sentence? Certain readings? Stories related to those facts? Part of myths? That could mean literally anything.
No, it means simply what it says.

But secondly, you don't argue for the facts themselves to be myths?
You go on to quote me saying that historical facts can be flexed to meet mythical narrative requirements. That does not mean the facts are the myths, so if you're using that quote to claim that I ever argued such, you are mistaken. I'm afraid that much of what you consider my lack of clarity is simply your incautious reading.

Yes. A different definition. Not the one we were talking about.
Since you have yet to offer a definition, and since you are not the only person who determines what definitions of myths are relevant in this thread, and since Razade has demonstrated that a historical (or claimed historical) basis is a reasonable component of definitions of 'myth', neither I nor anyone else has reason to adhere to your stated requirement.

Hazyshade

2017-09-24, 01:48 PM

You go on to quote me saying that historical facts can be flexed to meet mythical narrative requirements. That does not mean the facts are the myths

So to return to the very first question that you didn't answer, if the myth is all in the interpretation and not at all in the facts, then who exactly made you the judge of what's mythical and what's not? Are we supposed to believe that you are a myth-free thinker, that you're not every bit as misinformed about the True Facts as the people who believe this myth you're talking about?

I'm afraid that much of what you consider my lack of clarity is simply your incautious reading.

No, I'm afraid it's simply your lack of clarity, because I don't have this problem with anyone else.

Lethologica

2017-09-24, 03:38 PM

So to return to the very first question that you didn't answer, if the myth is all in the interpretation and not at all in the facts, then who exactly made you the judge of what's mythical and what's not? Are we supposed to believe that you are a myth-free thinker, that you're not every bit as misinformed about the True Facts as the people who believe this myth you're talking about?
To me this question is every bit as incoherent as you claim my statements are. I didn't claim to be the judge of what is and isn't mythical. I didn't claim to be myth-free. I didn't claim to be in possession of the True Facts. And none of that has anything to do with...what the hell are you even arguing at this point, anyway?

No, I'm afraid it's simply your lack of clarity, because I don't have this problem with anyone else.
I'm not even the only person giving you this problem in this thread. And it starts with your insistence on a peculiar definition of 'myth' that you refuse to share with the class. Perhaps you're having trouble finding it in a dictionary?

S@tanicoaldo

2017-09-24, 04:19 PM

Thank you S@tanicoaldo, that's what I meant. Do you have any answers to my question?

I wish but I really don't get a word you are saying, you speak as if all this evolution we had is a bad thing and want to find something I don't get, "the myth cycles that have come are not singular" have they ever being singular? What do you mean by singular? New archetypes? Have you read/watched American gods?

In that book the old gods(Like Odin) have to fight the new gods, since humans create the gods tough faith a powerful source of power they used to worship the thunder, nature and wind(The old gods) but now they worship other things(Technology, media, money etc..) So is that what you are looking for? Can you use English and make a direct and straight forward question without all that eloquence and sesquipedalian oquaciousness? Maybe then I’ll be able to help. Trying to find the answer to a question that I don’t know what’s asking so first I have to decipher what you are asking is quite an ordeal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VZGfce3wjk

And here: LInK (https://youtu.be/QPtMRjr-uS8?t=21s)

leafman

2017-09-24, 05:31 PM

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-24, 06:25 PM

I wish but I really don't get a word you are saying, you speak as if all this evolution we had is a bad thing and want to find something I don't get, "the myth cycles that have come are not singular" have they ever being singular? What do you mean by singular? New archetypes? Have you read/watched American gods?

In that book the old gods(Like Odin) have to fight the new gods, since humans create the gods tough faith a powerful source of power they used to worship the thunder, nature and wind(The old gods) but now they worship other things(Technology, media, money etc..) So is that what you are looking for? Can you use English and make a direct and straight forward question without all that eloquence and sesquipedalian oquaciousness? Maybe then I’ll be able to help. Trying to find the answer to a question that I don’t know what’s asking so first I have to decipher what you are asking is quite an ordeal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VZGfce3wjk

And here: LInK (https://youtu.be/QPtMRjr-uS8?t=21s)

You're using terms like “sesquepedalian” and “loquaciousness” and you have trouble with my English?

It's hard to ask a question when people don't even know what “archetype” means in this rich old educated year of 2017, but, here is a video that will help you grasp this concept better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wywUQc-4Opk

This thread's chief purpose is listing the myths and mythos of the West this past 1000 years. It's new purpose, is to ask whether the current, er, lots and lots of myths from around the world, have anything distinct about them that would distinguish them as specifically, shall we say, industrial in nature.

As was said previously, there were hunter-gatherer cultures, and there were agrarian cultures, and now there are industrial cultures. The old birth-rebirth cyclical myths associated from agrarian cultures still exist, but they exist alongside the lots and lots of myths from around the world, and there doesn't seem to be any unity, singularity, whatever you want to call it, just a lot of competing noise. I wonder if there will develop an overarching industrial (or, goodness forbid, postindustrial) mythology that will unify these competing things.

I wonder if there are new myths and symbols that are developing. “American Gods” is close to what I am asking about, but does it represent one-of-many myths, or does it represent something overarching?

S@tanicoaldo

2017-09-24, 06:36 PM

I know what they are, but isn't the whole point of archetypes is that they universal and timeless?

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-24, 07:41 PM

I know what they are, but isn't the whole point of archetypes is that they universal and timeless?

Did the first culture to tell the first myth know all the archetypes, or were the archetypes discovered by them? Most people today do not know the archetypes, though they participate in them through the variety of contemporary myths--to these people, the archetypes are new. Are there any we have missed in our stock-taking?

SaintRidley

2017-09-24, 07:41 PM

I think the question in the OP has been answered at this point: Yes the "West" has spawned many myths in the past 1000 years. The last 500 years have been chock full of them, everything from "real" witches in Salem, Mass., to cryptozoological creatures of all shapes and sizes, to the gunslingers of the Wild West. There will always be new myths as long as humans have a penchant for exaggeration.
"The greatest lies have origins in truth."

500 years ago indeed. Hell, pretty much right after the English break from the Catholic church and the dissolution of the monasteries they invented the myth of the Dark Ages. The American Civil War has been subject to a concerted effort to reframe the facts of the war to exalt the south since the day it ended. World War 2 has become a touchstone for good vs. evil as discrete sides when the reality on the ground was not nearly so clearly cut (the German state was monstrous, but the average front line German soldier was no more so than the average Allied soldier, who could be quite monstrous in reality). It doesn't take more than a generation for a mythic narrative to overtake the reality of an event.

2D8HP

2017-09-24, 09:06 PM

....I wonder if there will develop an overarching industrial (or, goodness forbid, postindustrial) mythology that will unify these competing things....

I don't know anything about "overarching", but off the top of my head the industrial age American folktale most known to me is:

John Henry (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_(folklore))

And they're thousands of American commemorative ballads and songs of the industrial age,

"I Dreamt I saw Joe Hill"
I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night
Alive as you or me
Says I, But Joe, you're ten years dead
I never died, says he
I never died, says he

In Salt Lake, Joe, says I to him
Him standing by my bed
They framed you on a murder charge
Says Joe, But I ain't dead
Says Joe, But I ain't dead

The copper bosses killed you, Joe
They shot you, Joe, says I
Takes more than guns to kill a man
Says Joe, I didn't die
Says Joe, I didn't die

And standing there as big as life
And smiling with his eyes
Joe says, What they forgot to kill
Went on to organize
Went on to organize

Joe Hill ain't dead, he says to me
Joe Hill ain't never died
Where working men are out on strike
Joe Hill is at their side
Joe Hill is at their side

From San Diego up to Maine
In every mine and mill
Where workers strike and organize
Says he, You'll find Joe Hill
Says he, You'll find Joe Hill

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night
Alive as you or me
Says I, But Joe, you're ten years dead
I never died, says he
I never died, says he

"Which Side Are You On?"
Come all of you good workers
Good news to you I'll tell
Of how that good old union
Has come in here to dwell

Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?

My daddy was a miner
And I'm a miner's son
And I'll stick with the union
Till every battle's won

They say in Harlan County
There are no neutrals there
You'll either be a union man
Or a thug for J.H. Blair

Oh, workers can you stand it?
Oh, tell me how you can
Will you be a lousy scab
Or will you be a man?

Don't scab for the bosses
Don't listen to their lies
Us poor folks haven't got a chance
Unless we organize

"Pastures of Plenty"
It's a mighty hard row that my poor hands have hoed
My poor feet have traveled a hot dusty road
Out of your Dust Bowl and westward we rolled
And your deserts were hot and your mountain was cold

I worked in your orchards of peaches and prunes
Slept on the ground in the light of your moon
On the edge of the city you'll see us and then
We come with the dust and we go with the wind

California and Arizona, I make all your crops
And its North up to Oregon to gather your hops
Dig the beets from your ground, cut the grapes from your vine
To set on your table your light sparkling wine

Green pastures of plenty from dry desert ground
From the Grand Coulee Dam where the waters run down
Every state in this Union us migrants have been
We'll work in this fight and we'll fight till we win

Well, it's always we rambled, that river and I
All along your green valley, I will work till I die
My land I'll defend with my life if it be
'Cause my pastures of plenty must always be free.

...but I have a feeling that the "unity" they sing of is not what you're looking for.

Hazyshade

2017-09-25, 03:59 AM

To me this question is every bit as incoherent as you claim my statements are. I didn't claim to be the judge of what is and isn't mythical. I didn't claim to be myth-free. I didn't claim to be in possession of the True Facts. And none of that has anything to do with...what the hell are you even arguing at this point, anyway?

Do I have to use bullet points?

You're telling us that WW2 is a myth that the way we understand WW2 is a myth that certain "readings" of WW2 are in some way related to certain parts of certain unspecified myths.
Okay. Great.
You're also telling us that not everything is a myth. That the entirety of human culture doesn't come under the heading "myth".
Well, duh.
Therefore, somewhere along the line you're making a distinction between myths and not-myths, aren't you?
If you're using the word myth in a sentence, either you're claiming the right to distinguish between myths and not-myths, or you're wasting everyone's time.
Now if you're talking about Ancient Greek myths from a distance of 2,000 years, sure. If you're talking about a myth contained in a work of fiction, fill your boots.
But you are at exactly the time and place when myths about WW2 are going to be at their fullest effect.
"The myth about the supreme virtue of American military might, for example." (in your words)
And the counter-myth about the non-virtue of American military might.
And the myth that anyone actually believes in the "supreme virtue of American military might".
See? Anyone with an inflated sense of their own significance can run around pointing at ideologies real or imaginary and going "Ha! Myth!"
So what makes your 20th-century myth-detector any more reliable than mine, genius?

Razade

2017-09-25, 04:10 AM

Do I have to use bullet points?

Boy this is going to be fun.

You're telling us that WW2 is a myth that the way we understand WW2 is a myth that certain "readings" of WW2 are in some way related to certain parts of certain unspecified myths.

A fact that only you seem to have a problem grasping actually. Lethlogica isn't so much telling as we're all agreeing that this is the case. Except for you.

Therefore, somewhere along the line you're making a distinction between myths and not-myths, aren't you?

Aren't we all? Are you not? You're demonstrably doing so.

If you're using the word myth in a sentence, either you're claiming the right to distinguish between myths and not-myths, or you're wasting everyone's time.

Discussion and language has nothing to do with ownership on words or rights to use them. What in the hell are you even talking about?

Now if you're talking about Ancient Greek myths from a distance of 2,000 years, sure. If you're talking about a myth contained in a work of fiction, fill your boots.

Ah see, there you are. Deciding a line between what's a myth and what's not a myth.

But you are at exactly the time and place when myths about WW2 are going to be at their fullest effect.

Is Lethlogica? How do you know that?

See? Anyone with an inflated sense of their own significance can run around pointing at ideologies real or imaginary and going "Ha! Myth!"

Lethlogica hasn't done that once. The only person who has acted on their sense of significance is...you...

So what makes your 20th-century myth-detector any more reliable than mine, genius?

Well for starters, Lethlogica has at the very least pointed to definitions that agree with how he's using the word instead of saying that the word myth means something and then refusing to point to a definition. There's that. There's also the fact he never claimed that his "myth detector" was any better or worse than anyone else's. There's that too.

Lethologica

2017-09-25, 04:32 AM

Hazyshade, were you really engaging on the personal level of being offended that I claimed to detect myths in a place you didn't? Instead of, say, the level of understanding why our definitions and identifications of 'myth' appear to differ and possibly even arriving at some kind of agreement on how to define the term. Like you think identifying myths or having a definition of the term is a matter of personal ability or something.

I have no interest whatsoever in that conversation. I don't regard my viewpoint on myths and things that relate to them as a matter of personal pride or...you said "inflated sense of their own significance"? How odd. I don't understand that kind of investment in this issue at all. I don't claim that something is a myth because it makes me feel important or significant or reliable to do so.

Is it the particular choice of Aesop? The way you describe how I identify myths, it seems like you view them as objects of ridicule or falsehood. Am I distressing you by claiming that 'the supreme virtue of American military might' is a lesson inspired by WWII mythmaking (among other sources) because you think I'm being unfair to that specific position? Would I have been free from your aggression if I had just chosen a different historical event or Aesop to talk about?

Or is it just because I used "very, very" as a modifier in my initial comment?

*shrug* I'll cite some things that inform how I distinguish myth from non-myth. They're not my invention or my ability or my pride or whatever. They're just tools that we use to clarify communication sometimes. Not all of these definitions are particularly relevant to the way 'myth' is being used in this conversation, but I'm past caring about slicing them up for your benefit. After all, you won't do even this much for your own position.

Definition of myth

1 a :a usually traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon creation myths
b :parable, allegory Moral responsibility is the motif of Plato's myths.
2 a :a popular belief or tradition that has grown up around something or someone; especially :one embodying the ideals and institutions of a society or segment of society
seduced by the American myth of individualism —Orde Coombs
the utopian myth of a perfect society
b :an unfounded or false notion the myth of racial superiority
3 :a person or thing having only an imaginary or unverifiable existence the Superman myth The unicorn is a myth.
4 :the whole body of myths a student of Greek myth

myth
[mith]
noun
1. a traditional or legendary story, usually concerning some being or hero or event, with or without a determinable basis of fact or a natural explanation, especially one that is concerned with deities or demigods and explains some practice, rite, or phenomenon of nature.
2. stories or matter of this kind:
realm of myth.
3. any invented story, idea, or concept:
His account of the event is pure myth.
4. an imaginary or fictitious thing or person.
5. an unproved or false collective belief that is used to justify a social institution.

Mythology

Mythology or godlore refers variously to the collected myths of a group of people[1] or to the study of such myths.[2] Myths are the stories people tell to explain nature, history, and customs.

Myth is a feature of every culture. Many sources for myths have been proposed, ranging from personification of nature or personification of natural phenomena, to truthful or hyperbolic accounts of historical events to explanations of existing rituals. A culture's collective mythology helps convey belonging, shared and religious experiences, behavioral models, and moral and practical lessons.

The study of myth began in ancient history. Rival classes of the Greek myths by Euhemerus, Plato and Sallustius were developed by the Neoplatonists and later revived by Renaissance mythographers. The nineteenth-century comparative mythology reinterpreted myth as a primitive and failed counterpart of science (Tylor), a "disease of language" (Müller), or a misinterpretation of magical ritual (Frazer).
Recent approaches often view myths as manifestations of psychological, cultural, or societal truths, rather than as inaccurate historical accounts.

myth
NOUN

1A traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining a natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.
‘ancient Celtic myths’
mass noun ‘the heroes of Greek myth’
More example sentencesSynonyms
2A widely held but false belief or idea.
‘the belief that evening primrose oil helps to cure eczema is a myth, according to dermatologists’
More example sentencesSynonyms
2.1 A misrepresentation of the truth.
‘attacking the party's irresponsible myths about privatization’
More example sentencesSynonyms
2.2 A fictitious or imaginary person or thing.
‘nobody had ever heard of Simon's mysterious friend—Anna said he was a myth’
More example sentences
2.3 An exaggerated or idealized conception of a person or thing.
‘the book is a scholarly study of the Churchill myth’

myth
(mɪθ )
Word forms: myths
1. variable noun
A myth is a well-known story which was made up in the past to explain natural events or to justify religious beliefs or social customs.
There is a famous Greek myth in which Icarus flew too near to the Sun.
2. variable noun
If you describe a belief or explanation as a myth, you mean that many people believe it but it is actually untrue.
Contrary to the popular myth, women are not reckless spendthrifts.

Hazyshade

2017-09-25, 05:49 AM

Hazyshade, were you really engaging on the personal level of being offended

Am I distressing you

Would I have been free from your aggression

:smallconfused: uh...

ohhhhh. Right! That's why I can't seem to say 2 plus 2 is 4 without everyone guessing that I meant something different and then tipping a bucket of patronising, sesquipedalian waffle over my head. Because I chose an avatar called ClericGirl.
What happened when a man and woman switched names at work for a week (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/gender-inequality-man-woman-switch-names-week-martin-schneider-nicky-knacks-pay-gap-a7622201.html)

Razade

2017-09-25, 06:10 AM

Brother Oni

2017-09-25, 06:15 AM

Great bait mate.

I agree. It's a pity we're not allowed to post animated gifs here, because now would be a great time for the 'Abandon Thread' rocket powered snail one.

2D8HP

2017-09-25, 09:43 AM

...This thread's chief purpose is listing the myths and mythos of the West this past 1000 years. It's new purpose, is to ask whether the current, er, lots and lots of myths from around the world, have anything...

...there doesn't seem to be any unity, singularity, whatever you want to call it, just a lot of competing noise. I wonder if there will develop an overarching industrial (or, goodness forbid, postindustrial) mythology that will unify these competing things....

Seriously Donnadogsoth,

I encourage you to get off the "behaviour marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity" (http://lmgtfy.com/?q=behaviour+marked+by+obsessive+preoccupation+wit h+community+decline,+humiliation+or+victimhood+and +by+compensatory+cults+of+unity) road, it doesn't end well.

Fawkes

2017-09-25, 10:28 AM

I agree. It's a pity we're not allowed to post animated gifs here, because now would be a great time for the 'Abandon Thread' rocket powered snail one.

I could be wrong but I believe the rule is just no gifs in avatars/signatures.

Edit: Yep.

Avatars and signature images must be static (ie. not animated). Animated avatars or signature images will be subject to immediate removal.

Animated images are still allowed as post content (preferably in a spoiler) but not in your signature or as an avatar as they detract from the rest of the forums when they are attached to every post.

https://i.imgur.com/ZgwIASL.gif?noredirect

Lethologica

2017-09-25, 10:48 AM

:smallconfused: uh...

ohhhhh. Right! That's why I can't seem to say 2 plus 2 is 4 without everyone guessing that I meant something different and then tipping a bucket of patronising, sesquipedalian waffle over my head. Because I chose an avatar called ClericGirl.
What happened when a man and woman switched names at work for a week (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/gender-inequality-man-woman-switch-names-week-martin-schneider-nicky-knacks-pay-gap-a7622201.html)
Not that I'm magically free from gender bias, but I assumed that was a guy avatar (insofar as I bothered to assign it a gender at all, which I mostly didn't).

I said you seemed offended because you made a big deal about me somehow claiming to be better at detecting myths than you. I wondered if you were distressed by the claim being about WWII in particular because you made an especially big deal about WWII, to the degree of outright disregarding your position about history and myth when it came to other historical events. And I said you were aggressive because you damn well have been.

If I were to label any behavior here as patronizing, it's assuming that your position is as self-evident as 2+2=4 and that no one could possibly have a legitimate reason to disagree, let alone at length. Regardless, having my psyche analyzed from anonymous distance by a hostile party is even less interesting than being personally attacked over what I call a myth. This will be my last post on the subject in this thread; you may say whatever you like in reply, but it will be to a brick wall.

Hazyshade

2017-09-25, 11:04 AM

This will be my last post on the subject in this thread

Thank goodness for that.

So as I was saying before that pointless tangent:

Donnadogsoth, you started off by defining mythos as "works of imagination sufficiently expansive and rich as to constitute a mythology" - assuming we've agreed not to call World War Two a work of imagination, have we pulled together enough examples of those for you to trace some archetypes from them? I'm curious whether there's a natural boundary between an archetype from a mythos, and a common or garden trope from a TV series.

2D8HP

2017-09-25, 11:26 AM

I agree. It's a pity we're not allowed to post animated gifs here, because now would be a great time for the 'Abandon Thread' rocket powered snail one.

There's precedent for it:

Nah. I think this thread has already jumped the rails enough I think I'm going to go ahead and...

http://www.threadbombing.com/data/media/29/AbandonThread.gif

On that same thread I found these quotes:

...Let's keep this forum a place where people who need to escape politics can escape politics, OK? OK....

....Dear Reader Who Emailed That They’re Not Buying My Book Because I Recently Included a Gay Character: I deeply apologize for waiting so long. Had I been more proactive in offending your sensibilities, you could have stopped reading years ago. It won’t happen again, I assure you.

Which may or may not be relevant to this thread, but may be worth being mindful of (for me as well).

Friv

2017-09-25, 11:45 AM

I know what they are, but isn't the whole point of archetypes is that they universal and timeless?

If you listen to Jung, there are a vast, vast number of archetypes, far more than people have easily recognized. This nicely lets you sidestep the usual difficulty with a collective unconsciousness, that being that things that are "culturally universal" turn out to be not so universal at all once you start digging.

To the OP: If you feel that there's a lot of noise and not much unifying structure, I would suggest that this is largely because our history and mythology haven't been recreated piecemeal centuries after the fact by historians and scholars interested in creating a unified cultural myth to draw on. I assure you, the people of a thousand years from now will invent a cultural mythos that we believed that is every bit as unified as the ones we invented for the people of our past.

Lethologica

2017-09-25, 11:47 AM

Oh, I don't know if we have enough examples to draw a conclusion yet. maybe these will help? (https://books.google.com/books?id=OVO7bWoTr2IC&pg=RA2-PT158&lpg=RA2-PT158&dq=mythology+of+source=bl&ots=IRvVoGXZeO&sig=QyS957SleHOVsF6us3ZqtDNbRtw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwij1cL-3sDWAhXHrVQKHQp-BikQ6AEIXDAO)

2D8HP

2017-09-25, 12:10 PM

...If you feel that there's a lot of noise and not much unifying structure, I would suggest that this is largely because our history and mythology haven't been recreated piecemeal centuries after the fact by historians and scholars interested in creating a unified cultural myth to draw on..

That's a very good point, if you read any extensive Cyclopedias or Dictionaries of Classical Mythology you'll find thaf the "Who's Who", and "What's" change depending on the poets/playwrights/storytellers of antiquity.

In many ways Greek Myths were like modern day fan-fiction, some names and stories repeated, but molded by each teller, with no "canon".

S@tanicoaldo

2017-09-25, 01:18 PM

Did the first culture to tell the first myth know all the archetypes, or were the archetypes discovered by them? Most people today do not know the archetypes, though they participate in them through the variety of contemporary myths--to these people, the archetypes are new. Are there any we have missed in our stock-taking?

I can't believe I have been lectured about not knowing what archetypes are by a guy who asks this kind of questions.

There wasn't any "first cultures" people don't learn archetypes, they are part of us, they are something similar to universal fragments of the collective unconscious present in every myth and culture from the most tribal to the most technological.

The use of myths is because that's where they are mostly easily recognizable but it's not a exclusivity, they are not invented, they are not created by culture A or B, they are everywhere because they are us, we are part of them just as they are part of us.

Bohandas

2017-09-25, 02:50 PM

Again with the Lovecraft!

I don't think that this fixation on finding "truths" in 20th century horror fiction is healthy.

How can you say that when over the past year we have seen the reawakening of forgotten slumbering ancient forces inimical to the wellbeing of humanity?

2D8HP

2017-09-25, 03:14 PM

How can you say that when over the past year we have seen the reawakening of forgotten slumbering ancient forces inimical to the wellbeing of humanity?

While generally I regard bluetext as a vile act almost as foul as sarcasm, WHICH I NEVER DO!!! (Except maybe once or thousands of times), I nevertheless succumb:

Why whatever could you be referring to?

Fair point.

S@tanicoaldo

2017-09-25, 06:21 PM

While generally I regard bluetext as a vile act almost as foul as sarcasm, WHICH I NEVER DO!!! (Except maybe once or thousands of times), I nevertheless succumb:

Why whatever could you be referring to?

Fair point.

Depending on his answer I may become a trope (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GoMadFromTheRevelation).... I never tough that someone could literally do that but depending on what he says that may happen to me.

137beth

2017-09-25, 08:21 PM

I’d say Baum’s world of Oz and its accompanying mythos is a good contender. Most people who grew up in the U.S. have heard some version of an Oz story, and the most popular versions aren’t even by the original author.

2D8HP

2017-09-25, 10:11 PM

Depending on his answer I may become a trope (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GoMadFromTheRevelation)..... .

I suspect that you have it reversed, and understanding the OP's additional questions requires chemically Induced Schizophrenia (http://www.schizophrenic.com/articles/schizophrenia/drug-induced-schizophrenia)

"Jung’s discovery of the collective unconscious and the function of archetypes arose from his own dreams and visions, but more importantly from the investigation of the fantasies of his schizophrenic patients"...
..."Jung became increasingly fascinated by the psychotic ideas of mentally ill people, and particularly of schizophrenics, and it was in fact his interest in this material which culminated in his discovery of the collective unconscious."

...It's hard to ask a question when people don't even know what “archetype” means in this rich old educated year of 2017, but, here is a video that will help you grasp this concept better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wywUQc-4Opk

This thread's chief purpose is listing the myths and mythos of the West this past 1000 years. It's new purpose, is to ask whether...

Um.. right.

...“Whenever we speak of [symbolic] contents we move in a world of images that point to something ineffable. We do not know how clear or unclear these images, metaphors, and concepts are in respect of their transcendental object. . . (However) there is no doubt that there is something behind these images that transcends consciousness and operates in such a way that the statements do not vary limitlessly and chaotically, but clearly all relate to a few basic principles or archetypes.”--(Psychology and ........, Carl Jung)

“Whether this psychic structure and its elements, the archetypes, ever ‘originated’ at all is a metaphysical question and therefore unanswerable...” (The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, - Carl Jung)

“Man’s task is…to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious. Neither should he persist in his unconsciousness nor remain identical with the unconscious elements of his being, thus evading his destiny, which is to create more and more consciousness. As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.” (Memories, Dreams, Reflections, - Carl Jung)
Reading Jung's words reminds me of the talk of "adults" when I was a child in the 1970's, I get a strong sensory memory of the scent of incense and ....other things, here's the soundtrack (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6EXCIWlm1fs)!

Jung reads like gibberish or (worse) Alchemy (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology_and_Alchemy) to me.

I love reading Myths, Legends, Fairy Stories, and Folk Tales, but until it's turned into literature I have no use for unprovable "science".made from fever dreams.

NO THANKS.

137beth

2017-09-25, 10:30 PM

What's up with people fixing other people's posts? That's like so rude.

But is rudeness an archetype in western mythos?

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-26, 08:57 AM

I can't believe I have been lectured about not knowing what archetypes are by a guy who asks this kind of questions.

There wasn't any "first cultures" people don't learn archetypes, they are part of us, they are something similar to universal fragments of the collective unconscious present in every myth and culture from the most tribal to the most technological.

The use of myths is because that's where they are mostly easily recognizable but it's not a exclusivity, they are not invented, they are not created by culture A or B, they are everywhere because they are us, we are part of them just as they are part of us.

You're arguing archetypes are both universal and constant?--that every culture used every archetype? This would contradict my hypothesis that there are other archetypes waiting, ones related to industrialism as opposed to agrarianism and shamanism.

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-26, 10:38 AM

If you listen to Jung, there are a vast, vast number of archetypes, far more than people have easily recognized. This nicely lets you sidestep the usual difficulty with a collective unconsciousness, that being that things that are "culturally universal" turn out to be not so universal at all once you start digging.

To the OP: If you feel that there's a lot of noise and not much unifying structure, I would suggest that this is largely because our history and mythology haven't been recreated piecemeal centuries after the fact by historians and scholars interested in creating a unified cultural myth to draw on. I assure you, the people of a thousand years from now will invent a cultural mythos that we believed that is every bit as unified as the ones we invented for the people of our past.

That may be, Friv. Do you know of any case where a visionary in the present was aware of the unifying cultural mythos that men of the future would invent for said present? Or are we always in darkness, always looking in the rearview?

S@tanicoaldo

2017-09-26, 10:57 AM

I suspect that you have it reversed, and understanding the OP's additional questions requires chemically Induced Schizophrenia (http://www.schizophrenic.com/articles/schizophrenia/drug-induced-schizophrenia)
"Jung’s discovery of the collective unconscious and the function of archetypes arose from his own dreams and visions, but more importantly from the investigation of the fantasies of his schizophrenic patients"...
..."Jung became increasingly fascinated by the psychotic ideas of mentally ill people, and particularly of schizophrenics, and it was in fact his interest in this material which culminated in his discovery of the collective unconscious."
Um.. right.
...“Whenever we speak of [symbolic] contents we move in a world of images that point to something ineffable. We do not know how clear or unclear these images, metaphors, and concepts are in respect of their transcendental object. . . (However) there is no doubt that there is something behind these images that transcends consciousness and operates in such a way that the statements do not vary limitlessly and chaotically, but clearly all relate to a few basic principles or archetypes.”--(Psychology and ........, Carl Jung)
“Whether this psychic structure and its elements, the archetypes, ever ‘originated’ at all is a metaphysical question and therefore unanswerable...” (The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, - Carl Jung)

“Man’s task is…to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious. Neither should he persist in his unconsciousness nor remain identical with the unconscious elements of his being, thus evading his destiny, which is to create more and more consciousness. As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.” (Memories, Dreams, Reflections, - Carl Jung)
Reading Jung's words reminds me of the talk of "adults" when I was a child in the 1970's, I get a strong sensory memory of the scent of incense and ....other things, here's the soundtrack (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6EXCIWlm1fs)!

Jung reads like gibberish or (worse) Alchemy (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology_and_Alchemy) to me.

I love reading Myths, Legends, Fairy Stories, and Folk Tales, but until it's turned into literature I have no use for unprovable "science".made from fever dreams.

NO THANKS.

Don't be so dismissive of the "Insane" the truth is that the normal and pathological is are things that don’t really exist, it varies from society to society and sometimes even within the same society and from time period to time period.

You don't have to be schizophrenic to get Jung it's only that those people are closer to and have a deeper connection to the collective unconscious than we could ever hope.

Can you truly say that an "insane" person (Let's say someone who self mutilates their own body) is not as capable of great things as a "sane" person? That they are not as relevant and that what they have to say is not as valid?

But is rudeness an archetype in western mythos?

Something exclusive to western societies for sure, the ester society’s would not be able to come up with such complex archetypes. ;p

You're arguing archetypes are both universal and constant?--that every culture used every archetype? This would contradict my hypothesis that there are other archetypes waiting, ones related to industrialism as opposed to agrarianism and shamanism.

Yes, they are universal that's the whole point of the archetypes, they are universal, it doesn't matter what kind of society you have it'll still use archetypes even if it's a subversion it still sues the archetype as base.

2D8HP

2017-09-26, 11:00 AM

....my hypothesis....

Just wow.

Thank you Donnadogsoth for you have taught me the "higher truth" of the Call of Cthullu game (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/TabletopGame/CallOfCthulhu), that it is indeed possible to be driven insane (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SanityMeter) by reading!

Depending on his answer I may become a trope (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GoMadFromTheRevelation)..... .

Iä! Iä Shub-*****rauth!
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn dagnabbit!
"In his house at*R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming".
http://rs166.pbsrc.com/albums/u91/pearlin2/BANGHEADDESK.gif~c200

S@tanicoaldo

2017-09-26, 11:04 AM

Just wow.

Thank you Donnadogsoth for you have taught me the "higher truth" of the Call of Cthullu game (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/TabletopGame/CallOfCthulhu), that it is indeed possible to be driven insane (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SanityMeter) by reading!

Iä! Iä Shub-*****rauth!
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn dagnabbit!
"In his house at*R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming".
http://rs166.pbsrc.com/albums/u91/pearlin2/BANGHEADDESK.gif~c200

Hey, don't use your text induced insanity to avoid my question and points! :smallmad::smallamused:

Friv

2017-09-26, 11:35 AM

That may be, Friv. Do you know of any case where a visionary in the present was aware of the unifying cultural mythos that men of the future would invent for said present? Or are we always in darkness, always looking in the rearview?

To the best of my knowledge? The latter.

I'm sure that there have been people who have guessed what the future would say about them, because a lot of people have guessed a lot of things, and some of them were pretty smart, so statistically they'll get a prophecy right eventually. It's how a lot of those conspiracy/prophecy books work (and I used to read a lot of those as research for games and stories).

But in general, the flattening effect of a cultural mythos comes from a mixture of (a) a gradual loss of stories that aren't capturing the imagination, and (b) a desire that humans have to have things fit into categorized boxes.

I mean, the vast majority of our understand of Greek myth comes entirely from the work of less than a dozen authors' interpretations of a single set of stories, and in every case we have only a fraction of what they themselves wrote. Our understanding of the Greek gods is tilted heavily towards the male gods, because the Greek tradition tended towards men telling the stories of male gods, and women telling the stories of female gods, and the women's traditions tended towards oral memory so most of it never got written down.

But we don't like that, so we try to link these stories together, puzzle out themes, and assemble clues, and when we're done we say, "This is what their story was".

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-26, 11:36 AM

Donnadogsoth, you started off by defining mythos as "works of imagination sufficiently expansive and rich as to constitute a mythology" - assuming we've agreed not to call World War Two a work of imagination, have we pulled together enough examples of those for you to trace some archetypes from them? I'm curious whether there's a natural boundary between an archetype from a mythos, and a common or garden trope from a TV series.

I imagine the difference between an archetype and a mythos is akin to the difference between a value and a principle. I value my legs but legs are not a principle, are they? I think the archetypes are like mental organs that we value, which all have to be there to have a living mind, whereas a mythology is the sum of these organs influence us like they were collectively a principle, as of Gravitation say, by which we orbit Life.

S@tanicoaldo

2017-09-26, 11:41 AM

I imagine the difference between an archetype and a mythos is akin to the difference between a value and a principle. I value my legs but legs are not a principle, are they? I think the archetypes are like mental organs that we value, which all have to be there to have a living mind, whereas a mythology is the sum of these organs influence us like they were collectively a principle, as of Gravitation say, by which we orbit Life.

The problem with archetypes is that unlike organs we can't see them, so we have to go for secondary sources such as myths where they emerge as recognizable symbols and patters.

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-26, 11:55 AM

Yes, they are universal that's the whole point of the archetypes, they are universal, it doesn't matter what kind of society you have it'll still use archetypes even if it's a subversion it still sues the archetype as base.

Thoughts on Campbell's idea courtesy of Telonius (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22408326&postcount=38) that agrarian cultures emphasised cyclical birth-rebirth myths? Is there a particular type of myth industrial culture emphasises?

S@tanicoaldo

2017-09-26, 12:12 PM

Thoughts on Campbell's idea courtesy of Telonius (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22408326&postcount=38) that agrarian cultures emphasised cyclical birth-rebirth myths? Is there a particular type of myth industrial culture emphasises?
I'm not as familiar with the works of Campbell as I'm with the works of Jung but my personal vision is that cyclical birth-rebirth themes are still relevant to our society, most important the use of technology in the quest to escape from said cyclical nature of the universe and reach immortality by mundane means rather than spiritual ones.

When people create techniques and products in the hopes of looking younger than you really are but most of the time end up looking like terrible abominations, parodies of your younger self, that's a representation of the fear of death in our modern society and the hopes that technology may allow us to transcend such "limitation" (Spolier alert: It won't).

Anyway people still have to deal with birth and death, seasons, and the concept that all things pass is still part of life.

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-26, 12:51 PM

The problem with archetypes is that unlike organs we can't see them, so we have to go for secondary sources such as myths where they emerge as recognizable symbols and patters.

At the risk of being gauche, wouldn't they show up on brainscans?

thorgrim29

2017-09-26, 01:05 PM

At the risk of being gauche, wouldn't they show up on brainscans?

I'm sorry what?

golentan

2017-09-26, 01:07 PM

At the risk of being gauche, wouldn't they show up on brainscans?

Why do people who know nothing about biology feel qualified to talk about beyond bleeding-edge outcomes of research?

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-26, 02:16 PM

I'm sorry what?

Shouldn't thought patterns associated with Jungian archetypes show up on brain scans, so that we could identify which archetype is operating in a person's mind at any given time?--describe what the neural architecture is of the Hero, the Shadow, and so forth?

Misery Esquire

2017-09-26, 02:21 PM

Red Fel

2017-09-26, 02:21 PM

Okay, I don't know who started conflating Campbell and Jung, but I think it's high time we settled that particular record.

Jung's concept of archetypes is based on the theory of the collective unconscious. That which is a Jungian archetype is so because it appeals to something in us, irrespective of culture or history, on an instinctual level. Or, to put it another way, Jungian archetypes are prescriptive - they exist innately, and we identify them subsequently.

Campbell's concept of archetypes is based upon an historical survey of mythology and literature. That which is a Campbellian archetype is so because it pops up in various forms of the "Monomyth." Or, to put it another way, Campbellian archetypes are descriptive - they exist as a labeling mechanism for something that a scholar with too much free time observed after reading way too many stories.

This is a common issue. People frequently talk about Campbell's archetypes as reflecting things that a story must have, which misses the point - Campbell never said that a story must have these traits or aspects, but rather merely observed, "Hey, it's pretty neat just how many stories do have these things."

Now, all that said:

Shouldn't thought patterns associated with Jungian archetypes show up on brain scans, so that we could identify which archetype is operating in a person's mind at any given time?--describe what the neural architecture is of the Hero, the Shadow, and so forth?

This is not how brain scans work. Brain scans don't show you what a person is thinking. At best, they show you which parts of the brain are active at a given moment. In theory, we can infer from varying activity levels how a brain is reacting to a given stimulus, assuming an absence of other stimuli. Even then, that doesn't actually tell us about "thought patterns" or "which archetype is operating" - those aren't things that our technology can do.

sktarq

2017-09-26, 03:35 PM

Shouldn't thought patterns associated with Jungian archetypes show up on brain scans, so that we could identify which archetype is operating in a person's mind at any given time?--describe what the neural architecture is of the Hero, the Shadow, and so forth?

In theory perhaps one day. . . as for today's tech. Nope.

While some forms of brain scans can recognize a pattern that are associated with certain things. - So if you think of a red circle or green triangle or blue square it can recognize the difference. . . but it does so by first recording a scan of what that particular person's scan looks like for each option. And a few people have learned how to control things by thinking in patterns of such color/shape combos (like a virtual keyboard or wheelchair). But the scan is really just matching a preset scan not reading from scratch. And it generally doesn't work consistently for things much more complicated than that.

perhaps if you scanned during stories with known archetype cues enough times you could tease out when archetype cues are being activated in a later "unknown" story. But that is well beyond what we seem to be able to do today in terms of the signal (archetype) to noise (the rest of story) ratio and may well be impossible. And still would only work for that one individual. And that assumes the "archetype" exists as a thing in the brain. It may well be a more Campbell like idea of its useful in talking about stories but is not how we actually experience them.

Brain scans are useful in pattern recognition but they can not yet, and may never, be able to see "what a person is thinking".

Lord Joeltion

2017-09-26, 03:37 PM

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-26, 04:51 PM

This is not how brain scans work. Brain scans don't show you what a person is thinking. At best, they show you which parts of the brain are active at a given moment. In theory, we can infer from varying activity levels how a brain is reacting to a given stimulus, assuming an absence of other stimuli. Even then, that doesn't actually tell us about "thought patterns" or "which archetype is operating" - those aren't things that our technology can do.

I read once that there was a part of the brain where brain impulses to speak were translated into motor impulses that would go to the vocal cords. If we could scan that part of the brain (with advanced brain scanners) we would know what the person is going to say before they said it.

It seems the same should apply to thought. Conscious thoughts exist in a screen in the mind. It's a kind of output, albeit currently only visible to the subject. If I think "peace" I will have an associated metaphorical image along with the thought of the word "peace". Why wouldn't there be a part of the brain where these things are assembled? Why couldn't that part be read by advanced machines? (Even if "part" is distributed across the lobes and hemisphere and so resembles a paint splash rather than being in a neatly localised region.)

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-26, 05:47 PM

The New Bruceski

2017-09-26, 06:34 PM

Misery Esquire

2017-09-26, 06:38 PM

I read once that there was a part of the brain where brain impulses to speak were translated into motor impulses that would go to the vocal cords. If we could scan that part of the brain (with advanced brain scanners) we would know what the person is going to say before they said it.

Yes, that's correct. The brain sends messages to the rest of you, to get the rest of you to do what you want it to do. A sufficiently delicate device may be able to pick up these signals, but all you'd be doing is receiving the impulse sent... As it was being sent. So, you'd have the "electronic copy" of what they're saying, right now. It wouldn't give you any future knowledge of what they're going to say (or how they're going to say it) in thirty (or even one or two) seconds any more than they know. In fact, if they are speaking something they've memorised in advance, you'll have less because the signal travelling to their mouth (etc.) doesn't include "What I'm going to say, but later".

It seems the same should apply to thought. Conscious thoughts exist in a screen in the mind. It's a kind of output, albeit currently only visible to the subject. If I think "peace" I will have an associated metaphorical image along with the thought of the word "peace". Why wouldn't there be a part of the brain where these things are assembled? Why couldn't that part be read by advanced machines? (Even if "part" is distributed across the lobes and hemisphere and so resembles a paint splash rather than being in a neatly localised region.)

Yes, if you put the word Peace on a screen in front of them, and ask them to try concentrating on only what's on the screen you'll get the mess of electrics in their brain that might correspond to the word peace, if you do it over and over until you have a consistent picture. It doesn't tell you what their narrative or personal thoughts are on peace, only that the pattern corresponds to the word. And its (probably?) different for everyone. There's no way to predict what they'll think of in the immediate let alone ten seconds after you tell them to stop. Even if you have someone read, say, A Hero's Journey in the most generic form a thousand thousand times, you'll never have any sort of viable information because you can't tell what they were thinking of instead of the story the eight-hundred-and-thirty-sixth time on page fourteen, or at any other point.

S@tanicoaldo

2017-09-26, 06:43 PM

I don't think anyone has mentioned this one but it's too important to ignore: music. "Rock gods" and the like. Taken together recording artists form a panoply more important than the likes of the Marvel or DC universes, indeed they rival organised ________ with a collection of rich and expansive works of imagination.

I swear that lliterally half of the time I have no idea of what you are talking about, the worst part is that the way you write makes it seems like it’s obvious and a consensus shared by all the posters.

Shouldn't thought patterns associated with Jungian archetypes show up on brain scans, so that we could identify which archetype is operating in a person's mind at any given time?--describe what the neural architecture is of the Hero, the Shadow, and so forth?

No... No they shouldn’t, they are pure mental and unconscious concepts, get it?

And since archetypes are mental instances they can't be seen or proved, heck we can't even prove if the unconscious realm is real. (https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/supersurvivors/201707/does-the-unconscious-really-exist) and that's where they all originated from.

Frankly I don't even know why you would want to do such thing in the first place. What's the point of knowing which archetype is being used at what moment?

Brain scans don't show you what a person is thinking.

Thanks the gods we still have privacy in our minds and in our thoughts.

That a scholar with too much free time observed after reading way too many stories.
Now that's just mean :p And a job I would love to have.

Red Fel

2017-09-26, 06:58 PM

I read once that there was a part of the brain where brain impulses to speak were translated into motor impulses that would go to the vocal cords. If we could scan that part of the brain (with advanced brain scanners) we would know what the person is going to say before they said it.

No. We would know that the part of the brain commonly associated with sending speech signals to the vocal cords is acting up. That's it.

There is currently no "advanced brain scanner" that can detect the content of nerve impulses. At best, we can detect that they are being generated.

By comparison: Think of a brain scan like walking into a book store. You can see whether the store is full, see where people are looking at books and which sections are most populated, but you can't actually read any of the books, because this is a bookstore and not a library, come on, people.

It seems the same should apply to thought.

Seems, but isn't. Should, but doesn't.

Conscious thoughts exist in a screen in the mind. It's a kind of output, albeit currently only visible to the subject.

Is that how conscious thought appears to you? Do you have evidence that it appears that way to everybody? Conscious thought is completely intangible - aside from instruments that allow us to detect that parts of the brain are active, there is no visible mechanical manifestation of thought.

If I think "peace" I will have an associated metaphorical image along with the thought of the word "peace".

You might. Someone else might have a sensation, like relaxation. Someone else might hear a sound, like chimes. It's almost as if the human machine isn't a mass-production model, but a uniquely and fiercely individual organism. It's almost as if thought - that nebulous theory of consciousness - is almost completely without physical counterpart.

Why wouldn't there be a part of the brain where these things are assembled?

Because they're not LEGO bricks.

Why couldn't that part be read by advanced machines? (Even if "part" is distributed across the lobes and hemisphere and so resembles a paint splash rather than being in a neatly localised region.)

For the reasons I've stated.

Look, you have your own idea of what thought is, and that's fine. That's something philosophers have debated for centuries. But there is no physical or mechanical component to thought that we can detect. All we can detect - all we can detect - is general activity. Heat signatures, basically.

What you're describing equates far too perfectly the human machine and the man-made machine, and the two are not the same. If they were, we'd be living in Ghost in the Shell already. You can't upload your brain into a computer because thoughts are not sequences of ones and zeros. Machines can't see what the mind can visualize. You're trying to ascribe a mechanical model to a metaphysical construct and it does not work that way.

golentan

2017-09-26, 07:20 PM

What you're describing equates far too perfectly the human machine and the man-made machine, and the two are not the same. If they were, we'd be living in Ghost in the Shell already. You can't upload your brain into a computer because thoughts are not sequences of ones and zeros. Machines can't see what the mind can visualize. You're trying to ascribe a mechanical model to a metaphysical construct and it does not work that way.

Maybe we are! Maybe this whole thing is a simulation designed to study cognition!

In which case, I have complaints to file with the project manager, regarding test conditions and the quality of subjects.

Zendy

2017-09-26, 07:31 PM

Can you truly say that an "insane" person (Let's say someone who self mutilates their own body) is not as capable of great things as a "sane" person? That they are not as relevant and that what they have to say is not as valid?

It's not as valid.

My guess is that if the person doesn’t have the good sense to know that they should not cut their own body, what they have to say is invalidated for the lack of basic human logic, how can you trust someone who doesn't understand basic logic "Hurt is bad for you"? Name one self-harm cry baby who really did something relevant for society, guess what, you can’t! Because people who do relevant things are sane, you can’t change the world from a mental asylum.

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-26, 07:36 PM

No. We would know that the part of the brain commonly associated with sending speech signals to the vocal cords is acting up. That's it.

There is currently no "advanced brain scanner" that can detect the content of nerve impulses. At best, we can detect that they are being generated.

By comparison: Think of a brain scan like walking into a book store. You can see whether the store is full, see where people are looking at books and which sections are most populated, but you can't actually read any of the books, because this is a bookstore and not a library, come on, people.

Seems, but isn't. Should, but doesn't.

Is that how conscious thought appears to you? Do you have evidence that it appears that way to everybody? Conscious thought is completely intangible - aside from instruments that allow us to detect that parts of the brain are active, there is no visible mechanical manifestation of thought.

You might. Someone else might have a sensation, like relaxation. Someone else might hear a sound, like chimes. It's almost as if the human machine isn't a mass-production model, but a uniquely and fiercely individual organism. It's almost as if thought - that nebulous theory of consciousness - is almost completely without physical counterpart.

Because they're not LEGO bricks.

For the reasons I've stated.

Look, you have your own idea of what thought is, and that's fine. That's something philosophers have debated for centuries. But there is no physical or mechanical component to thought that we can detect. All we can detect - all we can detect - is general activity. Heat signatures, basically.

What you're describing equates far too perfectly the human machine and the man-made machine, and the two are not the same. If they were, we'd be living in Ghost in the Shell already. You can't upload your brain into a computer because thoughts are not sequences of ones and zeros. Machines can't see what the mind can visualize. You're trying to ascribe a mechanical model to a metaphysical construct and it does not work that way.

As a metaphysical idealist I find that reassuring. The human mind's ability to think in metaphors is its stalwart against being replaced by machines and if all thoughts are impregnable and non-transferable to binary code that speaks better for the future of mankind than the popular materialist "uploading" fantasies.

You're like a mental masseur, you know that? You should charge for your services.

S@tanicoaldo

2017-09-26, 07:41 PM

Name one self-harm cry baby who really did something relevant for society, guess what, you can’t! Because people who do relevant things are sane, you can’t change the world from a mental asylum.

https://www.biography.com/.image/t_share/MTE1ODA0OTcxODExNDQwMTQx/vincent-van-gogh-9515695-3-402.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ea/Van_Gogh_-_Starry_Night_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg/1280px-Van_Gogh_-_Starry_Night_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

golentan

2017-09-26, 08:05 PM

As a metaphysical idealist I find that reassuring. The human mind's ability to think in metaphors is its stalwart against being replaced by machines and if all thoughts are impregnable and non-transferable to binary code that speaks better for the future of mankind than the popular materialist "uploading" fantasies.

You're like a mental masseur, you know that? You should charge for your services.

You realize non of that prevents machines from being capable of cognition in the future, only makes it hard to do subtle analysis of and manipulation of human brains?

Basically, the group-mind of hyper intelligent, immortality through mental save states, metal flesh and metal minds future is possible.

You're just probably not invited.

Red Fel

2017-09-26, 08:10 PM

You're like a mental masseur, you know that? You should charge for your services.

I do, and I do. Now just lay back and let me "massage" your mind some more.

Friv

2017-09-26, 09:24 PM

Lethologica

2017-09-26, 10:46 PM

You're thinking of the brain like a computer, with bits of data being handed from one place to another following various instructions, and we could somehow tap into a transmission line and read what's being sent.

It's not like that. The brain is a soup of neurons that are connected and constantly reconnecting to each other, with electric impulses flashing between them or through the soup. We've got some ideas of how it's organised, mainly by looking at people whose brains are broken in some way and seeing what's affected, but that's a far cry from figuring out how it works or how any of this actually manifests as thought or consciousness. Even advances we've made in giving people the ability to control artificial limbs or communicate through artificial speech aren't a matter of learning to read the brain, instead they're hooking up a system and the brain learns how to adapt itself to use it.
Yep. And even insofar as it is like a computer, that just means we're able to see that certain parts of the computer are active while the computer is doing certain things, which is a far cry from actually seeing how the electrical activity produces the behavior.

It's not as valid.

My guess is that if the person doesn’t have the good sense to know that they should not cut their own body, what they have to say is invalidated for the lack of basic human logic, how can you trust someone who doesn't understand basic logic "Hurt is bad for you"? Name one self-harm cry baby who really did something relevant for society, guess what, you can’t! Because people who do relevant things are sane, you can’t change the world from a mental asylum.
Alan Turing revolutionized computing, helped win a war, and committed the ultimate form of self-harm. There are countless other examples.

People are f***ing complicated, man.

Razade

2017-09-26, 10:51 PM

It's not as valid.

My guess is that if the person doesn’t have the good sense to know that they should not cut their own body, what they have to say is invalidated for the lack of basic human logic, how can you trust someone who doesn't understand basic logic "Hurt is bad for you"? Name one self-harm cry baby who really did something relevant for society, guess what, you can’t! Because people who do relevant things are sane, you can’t change the world from a mental asylum.

It's not as valid

My guess is that if the person doesn't have the good sense to know that they should not treat others like cattle, what they have to say is invalidated for the lack of basic human compassion, how can you trust someone who doesn't understand basic empathy "Being a great screaming jerk is bad for you"? Name one inhumane child who really did something relevant for society, guess what, you can't! Because people who do relevant things have empathy, you can't change the world from your arm chair psychology office.

The New Bruceski

2017-09-27, 01:05 AM

Alan Turing revolutionized computing, helped win a war, and committed the ultimate form of self-harm. There are countless other examples.

People are f***ing complicated, man.

Well he was chemically castrated and ostracized for who he was. Not hard to figure out why he wound up depressed and suicidal.

Lvl 2 Expert

2017-09-27, 06:31 AM

Well he was chemically castrated and ostracized for who he was. Not hard to figure out why he wound up depressed and suicidal.

Yet the argument Letho was reacting to was that any "self-harm cry baby" is a mentally handicapped monkey who doesn't understand pain is bad, and that therefor nobody who has ever harmed themselves in one way or another can have ever contributed anything to society. It's an argument that can only exist through a lack of understanding of the human condition, both emotionally as a person who has experience with other people and theoretically as a person arguing about psychology, and while I can't hold a lack of either experience or education against the author I do believe one can live a much fuller life if striving after a little bit more of both. Alan Turing is absolutely an example that contradicts the theory. Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicides) has a far from complete list of more people that may serve as examples to counter this idea, including Robin Williams (who was too good at humor to be a retarded monkey), Virginia Woolf (who was too good at writing complex characters), Aaron Swartz (who had developed enough software to be taken up in the Internet Hall of Fame by the time he committed suicide at 27) and allegedly (it's been a while) Hannibal, yes, the one with the Elephants.

Zendy

2017-09-27, 06:39 AM

Lvl 2 Expert

2017-09-27, 06:58 AM

Crap! I guess you guys are right people's life are a lot more complex than I first assumed, but still in some cases crazy people do more harm to themselves and the people around them then good.

Should they be left to their own devices? Thuink of all the cool art those awesome artists and scientists could have done if they didn't kill themselves.

Or are you all pro-suicide as well?

Not as such, no.

I'd say I'm pro euthanasia. When a person has a durable death wish, they are done with living, they should, I think, have the right to decide to end their lives, because it's their life, and if we don't give them control over that, what is anything else worth? I understand this is a very touchy subject and there are a lot of valid arguments to be made against it (for instance: you have value to those around you, shouldn't they have a say in what happens to you?), but for me this one weighs strongest, if properly applied.

Many suicides and other forms of self harm are not born from a durable death wish though, they are the interpunction in dark times in peoples lives from which they can come back. Most people who attempt suicide yet live don't try it again. In fact, you can lower the suicide rates of an entire city by placing anti-suicide fences on its most famous bridge or along an easily accessible railway. People who would have otherwise jumped there do apparently not instead go somewhere else. Similarly, in countries with lots of (hand)guns, having a gun in the house is the prime risk factor for suicide. This supports the idea that a lot of suicides are if not impulsive choices definitely part of an internal struggle, and if you can prevent the dark side from winning that struggle at that one vulnerable moment, you can prevent it from winning at all. I have several close relatives that belong to the group of people who tried ones. I'm very happy they're still here, and it seems to me at least like they're doing just as well as you'd expect for "normal" people. So I believe that sometimes people can use help. I also believe that the easier we make it to talk to people who care about death and wanting to die, the easier it is to help this group.

I've needed help before, I need some form of help roughly every day. There's no shame in needing help because you're confused by emotions rather than by math or a train schedule for a change. It happens. That's the way I see it at least. Even if you're otherwise a great mind in one field or another.

But that's probably getting a little off topic by now.

Can I also say thank you for your response? It doesn't happen often that I read something I really want to object to, for whatever reason, and that the person then replies "o yeah, maybe that was a bit of a simple comment for such a complex issue, wasn't it?" I think a lot of us could help ourselves by thinking about replying like that every so often.

(Note to moderators: although suicide, euthanasia and mental health are also political topics I think I did a fair job of staying away from that side of it, and I would like to be informed of any changes you'd like to see, if any, rather than having the topic closed.)

2D8HP

2017-09-27, 07:44 AM

Don't be so dismissive of ...

Hey, don't use your text induced insanity to avoid my question and points! :smallmad::smallamused:

Well since contrition is in fashion now...

As a metaphysical idealist.

"Metaphysical idealism"?

.
RED FEL! RED FEL!
Red Fel,
As seemingly one of the most learned (or just articulate) Playgrounders I'm asking you for some help my in being less... well really knee jerk dismissive (and kinda a jerk really) of "inner space".

They're many shelves at the library (books by Plato, Berkeley, Kant, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, Pirsig, etc) on things like "collective unconcious", "ideal forms", "souls", "metaphysical idealism", etc., that I just don't follow. While a lot of the language seems opaque to me, Plato (in translation) through his character of Socrates uses pretty simple language that seems easy to follow... until the conclusions. The whole "reality beyond the material world" is just a mental step I don't make, and it's easy for me to just dismiss it as "nonsense".... except, there's so much of it!

On reflection, with so many of my fellow humans speaking and writing on these matters, I'm wondering if I'm the equivalent of someone who's color blind saying, 'Yeah right "Blue'', pull the other one why don't you!'

Red Fel, these "idealist" ideas, are they like a language that may be learned, or are they more like colors that may only be felt by those who have an innate ability to perceive them?

Red Fel

2017-09-27, 10:30 AM

Red Fel, these "idealist" ideas, are they like a language that may be learned, or are they more like colors that may only be felt by those who have an innate ability to perceive them?

I'm reluctant to declare any concept the exclusive province of a privileged few. "Idealism," like any other thought or notion, is something which anyone can study, can learn. Will some people be naturally more receptive than others? Yes, because minds work differently. Same is true of harder sciences. Same is true of poetry or drama, mathematics or history. Some people are better at learning it. But with very few exceptions, that doesn't mean that others can't learn it.

The bigger question is: Do you want to?

theNater

2017-09-27, 11:52 AM

As seemingly one of the most learned (or just articulate) Playgrounders I'm asking you for some help my in being less... well really knee jerk dismissive (and kinda a jerk really) of "inner space".

They're many shelves at the library (books by Plato, Berkeley, Kant, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, Pirsig, etc) on things like "collective unconcious", "ideal forms", "souls", "metaphysical idealism", etc., that I just don't follow. While a lot of the language seems opaque to me, Plato (in translation) through his character of Socrates uses pretty simple language that seems easy to follow... until the conclusions. The whole "reality beyond the material world" is just a mental step I don't make, and it's easy for me to just dismiss it as "nonsense".... except, there's so much of it!
One doesn't have to believe something exists to discuss it, or even to use it as a model for things that do exist. It's not possible to construct a tangible perfect circle, but when we're making a bunch of pizzas we can assume each is a perfect circle when trying to figure out how much dough and sauce to use.

So the collective unconscious, for example, can be used to describe common behaviors in humans due to common biology and/or culture. When those common behaviors are pervasive enough, it can be useful to think of them as being pre-built into people or spread through a kind of low-level telepathy, even if neither of those is actually the case. Most people will recognize a wise old mentor when one arrives in a story, and why that is the case is often irrelevant. So we discuss the mentor archetype as being just there, even if further study might reveal why it is there(and even demonstrate that it's not there in all people).

Friv

2017-09-27, 01:12 PM

Crap! I feel like a jerk now(I was having a bad day). I guess you guys are right people's lives are a lot more complex than I first assumed, but still in some cases crazy people do more harm to themselves and the people around them then good.

Should they be left to their own devices? Thuink of all the cool art those awesome artists and scientists could have done if they didn't kill themselves.

Or are you all pro-suicide as well?

First up, thank you for stepping back from the previous position. I appreciate it.

And to answer your question - I would agree that people who are having difficulties, of whatever sort, should be offered help. I don't think that having those difficulties or needing that help invalidates people from being inspirational, productive, or from making a permanent and positive mark on society, and I think we've gotten enough examples to prove my argument.

Ebon_Drake

2017-09-27, 03:34 PM

I don't think anyone has mentioned this one but it's too important to ignore: music. "Rock gods" and the like. Taken together recording artists form a panoply more important than the likes of the Marvel or DC universes, indeed they rival organised ________ with a collection of rich and expansive works of imagination.

I wouldn't say popular music as a whole forms some kind of collective mythos, but there are aspects of it that could be seen as mythologised. Some artists have deliberately cultivated their own fictional narratives, the obvious one being David Bowie with his various personas and high concepts like Ziggy Stardust, The Thin White Duke and the post-apocalyptic world of Halloween Jack and the Diamond Dogs. You could perhaps say the same of bands with strong images like KISS, Alice Cooper, Marilyn Manson and Daft Punk, or of bands producing arty concept albums like Pink Floyd. There are also some bands that get mythologised for living the rock'n'roll lifestyle such as tales of the excesses of The Rolling Stones, Iggy Pop and The Who. I guess the same could go for various rappers claiming to be "gangsta" and so on, it's not my forte but I'm never clear on how much of that is actually true, how much is front or kayfabe and how much is outright fiction.

There are also events within music that could be seen as mythologised to a degree such as Beatlemania, the birth of punk, or 80s hair metal supposedly getting suddenly swept away by 90s alt-rock. Commentators often like to draw a clean narrative of how musical genres have come and gone over time when the truth is generally much more complex and hodge-podge. The same could also be said of individual artists like Kurt Cobain, Tupac or The Smiths who can get somewhat beatified as musical geniuses and their significance to a scene or genre exaggerated - Cobain for instance often gets treated as though he single-handedly created grunge out of nowhere when the truth is he had a clear trail of influences and contemporary peers.

2D8HP

2017-09-27, 05:09 PM

I'm reluctant to declare...

...The bigger question is: Do you want to?

That is a big question!

It really depends on how tired I am at that moment.

It would certainly be the easier (and lazier) way for me to simply dismiss "metaphysics" and the like as "Insanity spread by words", but that wouldn't help me in "seeing the world through the eyes of others" (being empathetic).

Also I want to have some understanding of such thought for some of the same reasons that Thomas Bulfinch suggests are reasons to study Classical Mythology,

"For mythology is the handmaid of literature; and literature is one of the best allies of virture and promoters of happiness.”... ...“Without knowledge of mythology much of the elegant literature of our own language cannot be understood or appreciated.”

So it may be with such philosophies?

One doesn't have to believe something exists to discuss it, or even to use....

Thanks!

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-27, 06:40 PM

golentan

2017-09-27, 06:43 PM

Surely you'd agree that metaphysics are inescapable. Everyone must have some metaphysical basis for living their life, unless they are simply akin to a feral child, snuffling and crawling along without mind. If you were to explore metaphysics then you might find it worthwhile to find out simply what your metaphysics are, as described by the relevant specialists.

I always get weirded out by arguments like this. "I cannot imagine an alternative, therefore one does not exist."

2D8HP

2017-09-27, 08:54 PM

Surely you'd agree that metaphysics are inescapable...

Actually the thought hasn't occurred to me.

...f you were to explore metaphysics then you might find it worthwhile to find out simply what your metaphysics are, as described by the relevant specialists.

A very quick reading of what is meant by "metaphysics" (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaphysics/), doesn't lead me to understand how there may be distinct "my" or "your metaphysics", so I must not be getting something, if there's a text that makes that intelligable to me please let me know (no videos please!).

Note: Plato seems to be the foundation of much of this, but despIte the translations being in relatively simple language, I just don't follow the conclusions that he has Socrates make in Meno and The Republic for example.

"All knowledge is recollection"?

I just don't get that.

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-27, 08:54 PM

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-27, 09:10 PM

Actually the thought hasn't occurred to me.

A very quick reading of what is meant by "metaphysics" (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaphysics/), doesn't lead me to understand how there may be distinct "my" or "your metaphysics", so I must not be getting something, if there's a text that makes that intelligable to me please let me know (no videos please!).

Note: Plato seems to be the foundation of much of this, but despIte the translations being in relatively simple language, I just don't follow the conclusions that he has Socrates make in Meno and The Republic for example.

"All knowledge is recollection"?

I just don't get that.

There's no need to get that deep. Just read philosophers, understand them--goodness knows many don't write to be understood!--and determine what your options are. The example I like to use is metaphysical naturalism versus dualism versus idealism. Do you believe everything is nature, is natural, that there is no supernatural dimension? Or do you think that there are two planes of existence, two substances, namely matter and spirit? Or do you believe that there is only mind, and that what we think of as material is really a function of the mind?

If you believe option A, you have destroyed free will because all processes of the mind are necessarily nothing but the processes of the brain which is subject to the laws of physics. If you believe in option B, you may have your free will but cannot explain how your will manages to act on the matter making up your body and the world around you. If you believe in option C, you get your free will and an intelligible explanation of how will can act on "matter".

Another way to look at the above is to simply decide whether or not you believe in free will and then determine your default metaphysical assumption.

golentan

2017-09-27, 09:29 PM

That reminds me of asking someone "What's your philosophy of life?" and he says, "I have no philosophy of life!" while driving too fast, scarfing down Big Macs, and playing it fast and loose in love.

See, this is why I have a problem with you. You imply negative value judgements on anything that you don't understand, or as the case may be, don't want to understand, and you argue by assertion.

You assert that someone must care for metaphysics to avoid animalistic existence, but you don't try to prove it. You assert that certain things have a quality and that it's self evident, but ignore contrary evidence. And you hide it behind flowery language and obtuse definitions.

Metaphysics is the study of first causes and the nature of reality as qualia, yes? Why would I need to worry about the forces which created the world to live in it? Do people have to deliberately create or seek out purpose? Does a mind have to be similar to human norms to matter?

The world is a vast and complex place. I know where I stand on my philosophy of life and questions of metaphysics, but I don't insist that it's the only correct worldview. I would well believe that a being, alien to me, could have a perfectly valid existence without any need to examine it.

You keep trying to limit things down to easily digestible chunks. Archetypes and axioms, and stumbling when people ask you for your definitions, or to prove what you view as self evident. You stumble around blindly and claim great vision in the face of entire fields of study in science, history, and philosophy. Smug, self assured, facile.

2D8HP

2017-09-27, 10:15 PM

I always get weirded out by arguments like this. "I cannot imagine an alternative, therefore one does not exist."

That reminds me of asking someone "What's your philosophy of life?" and he says, "I have no philosophy of life!" while...

:confused:

golentan's comments could well describe my difficulties in understanding the concepts you promote Donnadogsoth, but they somehow remind you of asking someone for a succinct verbal description of their beliefs, and that someone who said they didn't have one, and has the behaviors you listed?

Again I don't follow the connection

Definition of Philosophy by Merriam-Webster (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/philosophy)

1a (1) :all learning exclusive of technical precepts and practical arts

(2) :the sciences and liberal arts exclusive of medicine, law, and theology a doctor of philosophy

(3):the 4-year college course of a major seminary

b (1) archaic :physical science

(2):ethics

c a discipline comprising as its core*logic, aesthetics, ethics,metaphysics, and epistemology

2a :pursuit of wisdom

b :a search for a general understanding of values and reality by chiefly speculative rather than observational means

c :an analysis of the grounds of and concepts expressing fundamental beliefs

3a :a system of philosophical concepts

b :a theory underlying or regarding a sphere of activity or thought*the philosophy*of war

4a :the most basic beliefs, concepts, and attitudes of an individual or group

b calmness of temper and judgment befitting a philosopher

Does "a set of ideas about how to do something or how to live"? fit your meaning of a "philosophy of life?

There's no need to get that deep. Just read philosophers, understand them...

Not recently but in years past, I've read a little Michael Sandel, John Rawls, Plato, and a lot of Bertrand Russell

...Do you believe everything is nature, is natural, that there is no supernatural dimension?

Yes.

...Or do you think that there are two planes of existence, two substances, namely matter and spirit? Or do you believe that there is only mind, and that what we think of as material is really a function of the mind?

No to both of those beliefs.

...If you believe option A, you have destroyed free will because all processes of the mind are necessarily nothing but the processes of the brain which is subject to the laws of physics. If you believe in option B, you may have your free will but cannot explain how your will manages to act on the matter making up your body and the world around you. If you believe in option C, you get your free will and an intelligible explanation of how will can act on "matter".

Another way to look at the above is to simply decide whether or not you believe in free will and then determine your default metaphysical assumption.

If I'm following your reasoning for there to be "free will" all material reality must be considered a figment of the imagination?

I'm pretty sure that if that were the case my "free will" would be for me to be an accomplished poet instead of my spending the month unclogging the drains in the jail and the autopsy room at work this month.

Red Fel

2017-09-28, 08:25 AM

That is a big question!

It really depends on how tired I am at that moment.

It would certainly be the easier (and lazier) way for me to simply dismiss "metaphysics" and the like as "Insanity spread by words", but that wouldn't help me in "seeing the world through the eyes of others" (being empathetic).

Metaphysics, or philosophy, isn't actually about "seeing the world through the eyes of others." Not to get bogged down in details, but most of philosophy really isn't concerned with individual perspectives. (Certain concepts, like solipsism, of course...) The vast majority of philosophy is less about perspectives, and more about absolute truths - like morality, beauty, or even truth itself.

Further, learning about philosophy - like learning about any other science - won't necessarily help you to be empathetic towards people who study or follow that particular academia. What it will do is better enable you to understand the terminology - the technical jargon. (Like "collective unconscious" or "ideal form," for example.) And frankly, most of those concepts can be expressed in plain language. Technical jargon is a useful abbreviation, but really it's just a way to tightly bundle a broader concept that can be explained in simpler terms.

Also I want to have some understanding of such thought for some of the same reasons that Thomas Bulfinch suggests are reasons to study Classical Mythology,

"For mythology is the handmaid of literature; and literature is one of the best allies of virture and promoters of happiness.”... ...“Without knowledge of mythology much of the elegant literature of our own language cannot be understood or appreciated.”

So it may be with such philosophies?

Bulfinch is describing mythology as the basis of literature, not metaphysics. And he's not wrong. Mythologies and ancient texts form the basis for much of the modern corpus of literature. Even gritty modern novels frequently contain allusion to Tantalus or Oedipus; even realistic or historical novels owe a lot to Biblical analogy. I actually had a class back in my academic days where, in order to study literary classics, we first had to study mythology, Bible, and Jungian and Campbellian archetypes, in order to understand the layered allusions and concepts that the authors consciously or unconsciously included in their narratives.

My point is, philosophy won't necessarily help you appreciate literature. It will certainly add a layer of thought, if not understanding, to your views on life, the universe, and everything. But it's hardly a mandatory practice. I've known plenty of perfectly good, perfectly happy people who gave little, if any, thought to the "Why?" questions in the universe.

Surely you'd agree that metaphysics are inescapable. Everyone must have some metaphysical basis for living their life, unless they are simply akin to a feral child, snuffling and crawling along without mind. If you were to explore metaphysics then you might find it worthwhile to find out simply what your metaphysics are, as described by the relevant specialists.

I disagree entirely. I have met ample people, perfectly decent, moral, and intelligent, who give no thought to philosophy one way or the other. I decline to accept the argument that metaphysics is a necessary precursor to morality and civilization, instead choosing to believe that the peak of moral development is a person who chooses to do good because it is good, rather than based on any external code, theory, or compulsion.

Philosophy is a school of thought, not a label. You can't simply argue, "That person is a good person, therefore he must have metaphysics," because that's just a post hoc ergo propter hoc argument ("X causes Y; because we see Y, there must be X"). That's a fallacy, and we can do better than that.

Lord Joeltion

2017-09-28, 09:13 AM

My point is, philosophy won't necessarily help you appreciate literature. It will certainly add a layer of thought, if not understanding, to your views on life, the universe, and everything. But it's hardly a mandatory practice. I've known plenty of perfectly good, perfectly happy people who gave little, if any, thought to the "Why?" questions in the universe.
Curiously (or maybe not), some literary background may help you understand better the writings of philosophers. I'm pretty damn sure the only reason I managed to grasp Nietzsche better than the average teenager*, was thanks to having read some of Hesse and other writers influenced by Dostoyevsky before him.

*Not that teenagers should read him. Or Hesse. Dostoyevsky certainly isn't for puberty.

I disagree entirely. I have met ample people, perfectly decent, moral, and intelligent, who give no thought to philosophy one way or the other. I decline to accept the argument that metaphysics is a necessary precursor to morality and civilization, instead choosing to believe that the peak of moral development is a person who chooses to do good because it is good, rather than based on any external code, theory, or compulsion.

Philosophy is a school of thought, not a label. You can't simply argue, "That person is a good person, therefore he must have metaphysics," because that's just a post hoc ergo propter hoc argument ("X causes Y; because we see Y, there must be X"). That's a fallacy, and we can do better than that.
I wholeheartedly agree with this, specially the first part.

Frozen_Feet

2017-09-28, 09:13 AM

@2D8HP: "metaphysics" is study of the nature of reality. When empiricism and falsifiability are introduced to it as axioms, it becomes physics and hence science.

Pick up any object near you. Ask yourself: "what shape is this object?" Then ask "why is this object the shape it is?" Then ask "how can I know what shape the object is?" You may know the physical, scientific answers to these questions. But before those questions could be asked, someone had to ask metaphysical questions like "what is an object?" or "what is knowledge?" or "does an object exist independent of my knowledge of it?"

Various forms of idealism posit that mental states have primacy over material. For example, a chair only exists because someone thought of a chair. Additionally, influenced by Plato, various forms of idealism posit that ideas, the thought-forms that define reality, exist in pure form independent of material things.

For example, mathematical idealism posits that entirety of existence is really just math, and rather than "inventing" math, humans merely discover mathematical rules which govern existence.

Philosophy, in general, is a pretty broad category. As a rule of thumb, whenever you are thinking of thinking, such as by asking questions like "why is this important knowledge?", you are engaging in philosophy whether you recognize it as such or not.

2D8HP

2017-09-28, 09:56 AM

.

.

.

Thanks guys for your thoughtful and intelligable posts!

What I'm hoping to achieve is to hsve enough knowledge so that I may read Donnadogsoth's posts without my being knee-jerk and automatically dismissing his words as "Dadaist verse".

To explain himself he posted a video on "Jungian archetypes" that made little sense to me, and I just don't get his
"you might find it worthwhile to find out simply what your metaphysics are, as described by the relevant specialists."

How can there by any "your metaphysics" and "relevant specialists" to find them?

What does he mean? His explanations just get me more deeply confused, I assume that there ideas behind the words, but I can't decipher them.

Red Fel

2017-09-28, 10:34 AM

Thanks guys for your thoughtful and intelligable posts!

What I'm hoping to achieve is to hsve enough knowledge so that I may read Donnadogsoth's posts without my being knee-jerk and automatically dismissing his words as "Dadaist verse".

To explain himself he posted a video on "Jungian archetypes" that made little sense to me, and I just don't get his
"you might find it worthwhile to find out simply what your metaphysics are, as described by the relevant specialists."

How can there by any "your metaphysics" and "relevant specialists" to find them?

What does he mean? His explanations just get me more deeply confused, I assume that there ideas behind the words, but I can't decipher them.

I will readily admit that I don't think I fully follow a lot of what he says. I find his technical jargon to be dense, and often impenetrable. That's not to say he's wrong, but rather that if I can't follow it, I can't pass judgment on its accuracy or validity.

I will say, however, that the phrase "you might find it worthwhile to find out simply what your metaphysics are, as described by the relevant specialists" strikes me as bordering on the nonsensical. Metaphysics are the study of universal concepts and truths; by necessity, universal precludes the personal possessive "your." Likewise, the phrase "as described by the relevant specialists" strikes me as an appeal to authority, a fallacy that I particularly loathe. (The fallacy assumes that, if a person is an expert in a topic, then what they say on that topic must be correct.) To assume that a "relevant specialist's" description of metaphysics is correct based on the fact that said person is a "relevant specialist" is fallacious at best. The thing about metaphysics is that there is no authority on the subject; there are many schools of thought, but no one can claim to be an authoritative "relevant specialist." If they could, it would cease to be philosophy, the study of the ineffable, and become science, the study of the provable.

All that said, don't dwell on the fact that you can't penetrate the jargon. It's not a prerequisite to understanding the subject generally, just to understanding the speaker specifically.

Zurvan

2017-09-28, 10:44 AM

That reminds me of asking someone "What's your philosophy of life?" and he says, "I have no philosophy of life!" while driving too fast, scarfing down Big Macs, and playing it fast and loose in love.

I'm sorry but when you say that you kind of thing end up looking like a self-righteous judgmental jerk., do want to be that?

There's no need to get that deep. Just read philosophers, understand them--

Not everybody has the need to lick the balls of some dead old guy who spent his free time thinking and writing about the questions we ask ourselves in the shower or when we are taking a dump, some people can just live their own lives by their own rules and ideas, the fact you read and think about philosophy and philosophers don't make a better person and the fact the you think and act as if did just shows how superficial your reading of the texts are.

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-28, 11:07 AM

I disagree entirely. I have met ample people, perfectly decent, moral, and intelligent, who give no thought to philosophy one way or the other. I decline to accept the argument that metaphysics is a necessary precursor to morality and civilization, instead choosing to believe that the peak of moral development is a person who chooses to do good because it is good, rather than based on any external code, theory, or compulsion.

Philosophy is a school of thought, not a label. You can't simply argue, "That person is a good person, therefore he must have metaphysics," because that's just a post hoc ergo propter hoc argument ("X causes Y; because we see Y, there must be X"). That's a fallacy, and we can do better than that.

I do not suggest everyone is a conscious metaphysician, but, that everyone fits into some metaphysical category or other. 2D8HP has declared himself a fundamentalist materialist, and that's good to know. It is a part of self-knowledge to know what one is.

There is far too much "I'm a unique person!" going around when dollars for doughnuts everyone fits onto the map somewhere. Philosophy is too old and large not to have categories for virtually everyone, even if some categories are relatively broad and fuzzy.

It is better to know where we are and who we are that to not. Yes?

2D8HP

2017-09-28, 11:42 AM

...Metaphysics are the study of universal concepts and truths; by necessity, universal precludes the personal possessive "your."...

A cursory reading of what is meant by "Metaphysics" gave me that impression as well.

......All that said, don't dwell on the fact that you can't penetrate the jargon. It's not a prerequisite to understanding the subject generally, just to understanding the speaker specifically.

Um yeah, does anyone understand the bulk of the OP's posts to this thread, or is it just me that finds them mostly indecipherable?

2D8HP has declared himself a fundamentalist materialist

Well that post I mostly understand, except that before your post I've never encountered the phrase "fundamentalist materialist" so I've never "declared" myself a phrase I was ignorant of.

A very quick web-search reveals that "Fundamentalist Materialism" is a phrase made up by Robert Anton Wilson who is most famous for a parody of conspiracy theories.

Donnadogsoth are your posts a long elaborate joke?

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-28, 11:56 AM

Not recently but in years past, I've read a little Michael Sandel, John Rawls, Plato, and a lot of Bertrand Russell

Have you read Russell's Conquest of Happiness? That's one of the most accessible and useful philosophical books I know.

If I'm following your reasoning for there to be "free will" all material reality must be considered a figment of the imagination?

I'm pretty sure that if that were the case my "free will" would be for me to be an accomplished poet instead of my spending the month unclogging the drains in the jail and the autopsy room at work this month.

Dualism is an option that allows free will, but faces the functionality problem of how supernatural will can affect natural matter.

With idealism the answer is yes: a very powerful figment, inescapable in fact, and usefully so. But, yes, if there is only mind, then matter is an hallucination, so to speak.

S@tanicoaldo

2017-09-28, 12:03 PM

A very quick web-search reveals that "Fundamentalist Materialism" is a phrase made up by Robert Anton Wilson who is most famous for a parody of conspiracy theories.

Donnadogsoth are your posts a long elaborate joke?

https://i.imgur.com/QCeVnbJ.gif

2D8HP

2017-09-28, 12:06 PM

Have you read Russell's Conquest of Happiness?

I read it a decade or more ago (late '90's or early 2000's.

I don't remember much from it so thanks for the suggestion.

Dualism is an option that allows free will, but faces the functionality problem of how supernatural will can affect natural matter....

And you've lost me again.

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-28, 12:08 PM

Well that post I mostly understand, except that before your post I've never encountered the phrase "fundamentalist materialist" so I've never "declared" myself a phrase I was ignorant of.

A very quick web-search reveals that "Fundamentalist Materialism" is a phrase made up by Robert Anton Wilson who is most famous for a parody of conspiracy theories.

Nevertheless you get the idea.

Donnadogsoth are your posts a long elaborate joke?

If so they partake of the essence of comedy, namely despair.

http://orig12.deviantart.net/259b/f/2011/233/0/c/the_joker_by_cesar_romero_by_w_e_s-d47f7v8.jpg

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-28, 12:16 PM

And you've lost me again.

Under dualism, there are two substances, matter and mind. Matter comprises what we see in the physical world, chairs and hares and clover and books and what not. Mind comprises our thoughts, emotions, sensations, and wills. These are two totally different substances, matter and mind. And matter is governed, apparently, by laws of nature, the laws of physics, such that they never break these laws.

If so, then how can mind (will, free will) successfully order any particle of matter to "break the law"? How can one's will be free, if it cannot order matter to do that which physical law tells it it must otherwise do? Imagine matter and mind as being two sheets of clear glass laid next to each other. How can the top sheet (mind) cause anything to happen in the bottom sheet (matter)...or vice versa for that matter.

Free will requires, necessitates, demands there be a supernatural element to man. If so, how can the supernatural affect the natural, when they are two different substances? If all is mind (idealism), then that one substance (mind) can affect itself, which is clear, provided change is possible at all. But with dualism it is not clear at all how mind can affect matter. I'm not saying there is no solution, only that it's a problem.

Kantaki

2017-09-28, 01:44 PM

http://orig12.deviantart.net/259b/f/2011/233/0/c/the_joker_by_cesar_romero_by_w_e_s-d47f7v8.jpg

Where did you get a photo of my old teacher?:smalltongue:

2D8HP

2017-09-28, 02:19 PM

Under dualism, there are two substances, matter and mind....

That was much more clear.

Thanks.

thorgrim29

2017-09-28, 02:48 PM

Free will requires, necessitates, demands there be a supernatural element to man. (bolded text emphasis mine)

In response to this I have 3 things to ask.

First of all, says who? I'm not as into philosophy as you seem to be but I know that there are materialist schools of philosophy, most importantly (to me) existentialism. And even if there weren't... so? Thinking about thinking for most of your life doesn't necessarily make you right or important. Might make you interesting and worth listening to but nobody knows everything.

Second of all, so what? Why should what you would prefer to believe affect reality?

And finally, why should we humans be so special? Why is it so important to you that humans be in a different category than the rest of the universe?

I think you have it backwards a touch, you start from the conclusion you want and look for a way reality could arrange itself for it to be true. Which, to your defense, seems very Platonic. I take the opposite approach, and so far my conclusion is that we are purposeless specs of carbon hanging on to an insignificant ball of dirt floating around in an infinite and uncaring cosmos. I find that comforting it a weird way...

Lethologica

2017-09-28, 03:46 PM

DD was talking about dualism, and it's reasonably hard to have dualism where the non-material part of reality isn't supernatural to some extent.

He was also taking about free will, and it's reasonably hard to have free will that doesn't posit some form of causally original consciousness outside of natural law. If the choices of consciousness are caused by natural law, they are not free; and if they are determined by chance, they are not choices...so either there's something in nature besides those two things, or there's something supernatural about free-willed beings.

Which is not the same as claiming that free will exists, or that dualism is true. (DD may have made those claims earlier, though - I haven't been paying close attention.)

2D8HP

2017-09-28, 04:03 PM

DD was talking about dualism, and it's...
...to some extent.

Now that some meaning of the terms used have (thankfully) been clarified, I fear that further discussion may take us places where the Forum may not go.

Anyway we're pretty far past the original topic (though the new topics were brought up by the OP).

Maybe a new thread is merited, but I'm guessing that to really discuss what the OP means may not be Forum appropriate, but I'm not very informed on those matters, and I'm definetly not a Mod.

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-28, 05:54 PM

First of all, says who? I'm as into philosophy as you seem to be but I know that there are materialist schools of philosophy, most importantly (to me) existentialism. And even if there weren't... so? Thinking about thinking for most of your life doesn't necessarily make you right or important. Might make you interesting and worth listening to but nobody knows everything.

You have alternatives to materialism, dualism, and idealism?

Second of all, so what? Why should what you would prefer to believe affect reality?

Solipsism wouldn't have the slightest effect on a person's behaviour toward others?

And finally, why should we humans be so special? Why is it so important to you that humans be in a different category than the rest of the universe?

Because we are the only species known able to understand (principle) and transform (through technology) the Universe. Not just able to sniff out food or build a burrow, up to the limits of our genetic programming, but transform the entire Universe through understanding and technique, to no known principled limit.

I think you have it backwards a touch, you start from the conclusion you want and look for a way reality could arrange itself for it to be true. Which, to your defense, seems very Platonic...

I start with what humanity is and then ask what kind of universe could hold such a creature. All I'm certain of relating to the current stitch of this thread, is that materialism is incorrect.

I take the opposite approach, and so far my conclusion is that we are purposeless specs of carbon hanging on to an insignificant ball of dirt floating around in an infinite and uncaring cosmos. I find that comforting it a weird way...

That's like looking for meaning in a sentence by examining each of the letters in turn instead of reading it.

Razade

2017-09-28, 06:25 PM

You have alternatives to materialism, dualism, and idealism?

He doesn't need to. You don't need an alternative to know and declare something non-nonsensical or wrong. He also never claimed to. Nothing in what you quoted even comes close to garnering a response like the one you have.

Solipsism wouldn't have the slightest effect on a person's behaviour toward others?

I'd expect not since everyone is, at some level, tethered to solipsism. No one I know of at least has a counter to Hard Solipsism. The simple fact that we MAY be the only mind doesn't change the fact that that the world we inhabit doesn't seem to show that. Even if we're living in a fake reality, it's the only reality that we know of and to act otherwise is both foolish and a little deranged. We lock people away for acting like it isn't. We have labels for them too. Most people don't seem to let the idea that this may not be real effect their behavior.

Because we are the only species known able to understand (principle) and transform (through technology) the Universe. Not just able to sniff out food or build a burrow, up to the limits of our genetic programming, but transform the entire Universe through understanding and technique, to no known principled limit.

Heeeeeeeeeey....took you long enough to go to Special Pleading and Puddle Thinking.

I start with what humanity is and then ask what kind of universe could hold such a creature. All I'm certain of relating to the current stitch of this thread, is that materialism is incorrect.

1. You haven't demonstrated that you know what humanity IS. I'd imagine if you knew that answer you wouldn't be here claiming it. You'd be winning awards. Also considering all your other posts where you say gay people can't love quite the right way as regular people and it pushes a pedophilia agenda, that free speech is bad when it makes you uncomfortable and your adverse reaction to porn and your oft cited (and continued failure to understand the fallacy of Appeal to Authority) quote from Noam Chomsky on pornography...your understanding of what humanity is is comparable to a blind man trying to tell others about the color blue.

2. You know for certain materialism is correct? Well, much like number 1, that is for sure a load of bull. But hey, if you really do give us the evidence and reasoning. You're not going to though. Donnadogsoth only likes to speak is meaningless paragraphs and vague deepities. Mostly because if he said what he really wanted to, he'd be banned, but also because like so many other times before it reveals the depravity of your Totalitarian Fetishism.

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-28, 07:18 PM

He doesn't need to. You don't need an alternative to know and declare something non-nonsensical or wrong. He also never claimed to. Nothing in what you quoted even comes close to garnering a response like the one you have.

I'd expect not since everyone is, at some level, tethered to solipsism. No one I know of at least has a counter to Hard Solipsism. The simple fact that we MAY be the only mind doesn't change the fact that that the world we inhabit doesn't seem to show that. Even if we're living in a fake reality, it's the only reality that we know of and to act otherwise is both foolish and a little deranged. We lock people away for acting like it isn't. We have labels for them too. Most people don't seem to let the idea that this may not be real effect their behavior.

Heeeeeeeeeey....took you long enough to go to Special Pleading and Puddle Thinking.

1. You haven't demonstrated that you know what humanity IS. I'd imagine if you knew that answer you wouldn't be here claiming it. You'd be winning awards. Also considering all your other posts where you say gay people can't love quite the right way as regular people and it pushes a pedophilia agenda, that free speech is bad when it makes you uncomfortable and your adverse reaction to porn and your oft cited (and continued failure to understand the fallacy of Appeal to Authority) quote from Noam Chomsky on pornography...your understanding of what humanity is is comparable to a blind man trying to tell others about the color blue.

2. You know for certain materialism is correct? Well, much like number 1, that is for sure a load of bull. But hey, if you really do give us the evidence and reasoning. You're not going to though. Donnadogsoth only likes to speak is meaningless paragraphs and vague deepities. Mostly because if he said what he really wanted to, he'd be banned, but also because like so many other times before it reveals the depravity of your Totalitarian Fetishism.

You don't believe in principle, and so you don't believe humanity is capable of increasing its potential population density with no principled limit, and you think that materialism, dualism, and idealism are all "nonsensical and wrong". What exactly do you believe? Where are you coming from?

Razade

2017-09-28, 07:29 PM

You don't believe in principle, and so you don't believe humanity is capable of increasing its potential population density with no principled limit

Meaningless gobbledegook which has nothing to do with any of the points raised. What do you mean I don't believe in "principle". What principle?

and you think that materialism, dualism, and idealism are all "nonsensical and wrong".

I do? How do you know that? I find it odd you're just going to assert that when I don't think I've ever made a statement on any of those things on this website. It's ESPECIALLY odd when I'd (if I had to) identify as a methodological naturalist and thus HAVE to be a materialist on some level. So I can't even imagine where you'd get the idea that I think they're nonsensical or wrong. I also don't have a problem with people having ideals. So yeah. Just more nonsense so you can actually avoid constructive dialog. Just further evidence that you're not actually interested in (because you can't thanks to forum rules) talking about what you believe in a clear manner.

What exactly do you believe? Where are you coming from?

What I believe is irrelevant to the wider topic. I detailed some things I believe above, I don't think I can get much further with the forum rules sadly.

S@tanicoaldo

2017-09-28, 07:34 PM

https://media.tenor.com/images/54451401d52c0dd2fe9ee5752857d53c/tenor.gif

2D8HP

2017-09-28, 07:48 PM

https://media.tenor.com/images/54451401d52c0dd2fe9ee5752857d53c/tenor.gif

Damn that's a lot of popcorn!

Just how big is that bucket?

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-28, 08:30 PM

Meaningless gobbledegook which has nothing to do with any of the points raised. What do you mean I don't believe in "principle". What principle?

Any principle! Do you have any principles, or are you an unprincipled person?

I do? How do you know that? I find it odd you're just going to assert that when I don't think I've ever made a statement on any of those things on this website. It's ESPECIALLY odd when I'd (if I had to) identify as a methodological naturalist and thus HAVE to be a materialist on some level. So I can't even imagine where you'd get the idea that I think they're nonsensical or wrong. I also don't have a problem with people having ideals. So yeah. Just more nonsense so you can actually avoid constructive dialog. Just further evidence that you're not actually interested in (because you can't thanks to forum rules) talking about what you believe in a clear manner.*

Okay, I see. So, do you accept the consequence of your materialist position and reject free will?

What I believe is irrelevant to the wider topic. I detailed some things I believe above, I don't think I can get much further with the forum rules sadly.

I ask because you and I, among all the pairs of interlocutors I have participated in on this board, seem to have the least in common. We do not seem to be able to communicate at all, the reasons for which you will no doubt heap upon my head like crowns of ivy. I wonder what is the most we have in common. I turn to principle (see above). Do we share ANY principles, or are we effectively like different species?

Razade

2017-09-28, 08:47 PM

Any principle! Do you have any principles, or are you an unprincipled person?

Oh, of course I do. I'm not in jail after all.

Okay, I see. So, do you accept the consequence of your materialist position and reject free will?

I don't see any conflict between the two honestly. Depending on how you define it. Cartesian Free Will? No, I don't think we have it. You have Free Will in so far as you only see half the room. As it were. You don't know every potential outcome and you don't know the outcome that's going to happen, so to you it's a choice. To you, the viewer, it's a decision made freely.

I ask because you and I, among all the pairs of interlocutors I have participated in on this board, seem to have the least in common.

Not so sure about that.

We do not seem to be able to communicate at all, the reasons for which you will no doubt heap upon my head like crowns of ivy. I wonder what is the most we have in common. I turn to principle (see above). Do we share ANY principles, or are we effectively like different species?

Well. The reason we don't seem to be able to communicate is because you refuse to elucidate us on any of the utter nonsense you spit forth and when you do, the very few times you have, have been so abjectly awful...that I'd honestly rather not consort with you in person. Knowing what I know.

We're the same species regardless of what principles we do or don't have in common though. You're a human, I'm a human. That's just how it works.

I imagine we both agree that killing for wanton pleasure is wrong. I think that's a principle most people have, demonstrably so in fact. So there's one.

thorgrim29

2017-09-28, 08:51 PM

You have alternatives to materialism, dualism, and idealism?

I don't actually, and I can't think of an internally coherent (although I would question the internal coherence of pure idealism) one off the top of my head, doesn't mean those are the only 3 options though... As it happens I am a materialist, more or less a secular humanist in fact. But it's not like I was drifting though life with no principles until I picked up a Sartre book, it's more like I came upon that school of thought, found it was a pretty good match for my preexisting values, and explored it a bit to see what I could get from it and what I disagreed with. Calling myself that doesn't mean I'm supposed to follow everything related to that school of thought... people have layers, like onions.

Solipsism wouldn't have the slightest effect on a person's behaviour toward others?

What does that have to do with the price of butter? I'm saying that what you would prefer to be true should not be taken into consideration when trying to figure out what is true. Of course that's largely impossible, human psychology being what it is but we should still strive for it if we want to get anywhere.

Because we are the only species known able to understand (principle) and transform (through technology) the Universe. Not just able to sniff out food or build a burrow, up to the limits of our genetic programming, but transform the entire Universe through understanding and technique, to no known principled limit.

Ok so special pleading... not much to do here but say I disagree. Not that we are the only known species to do so, but that that makes us anything more special than a very clever ape.

I start with what humanity is and then ask what kind of universe could hold such a creature. All I'm certain of relating to the current stitch of this thread, is that materialism is incorrect.

I hate to bring up Socrates but that's pretty foolish. Also, special pleading again (and argument from incredulity I think?)

That's like looking for meaning in a sentence by examining each of the letters in turn instead of reading it.

And your side of the argument is like gutting a sheep and looking for meaning in it's guts.

2D8HP

2017-09-28, 11:39 PM

Any principle! Do you have any principles, or are you an unprincipled person?

Oh, of course I do. I'm not in jail after all.

(Butting in for some dang reason, my how the thread turns! You sure know how to starta party Donnadogsoth!)
My principles make me go to the Jail most days of the week, principally the duty I feel to provide for my family and perform the job I promised to do (the Jails not that bad, the "guests" watch Game of Thrones and Empire, though I think they had them watch one of the "Twilight" movies as well, which may count as punishment).

That I go to work in the Jail most days also shows my lack of principles in that I drive a car to work which I think counts as one of the most selfish and evil things I do.

...do you accept the consequence of your materialist position and reject free will?

When the first electron spun out of the first atom it set in motion events that would lead to me typing this post.

...I ask because you and I, among all the pairs of interlocutors I have participated in on this board, seem to have the least in common...

..Not so sure about that.

Hey! I thought I had the least in common!

For example I love political correctness! LOVE IT! LOVE IT! LOVE IT! Though I tend to call it "common courtesy", and "politeness", oh wow "political" and "politeness" both have "poli" in them! Almost like both are about living in a "Polis"?!

Those wacky classical civilization Athenians!

Also I would be proud if someone were to call me a "social justice warrior"!

Go ahead!

....still waiting.

...anyone?

Oh well.

:frown:

Which reminds me of the thread topic, I believe that "culture war" is a myth in the Hazyshade sense of "false belief"

Is that opposite enough?

Also I hate bugs, sports, and fan-fictions.

FNORD!

Seriously Donnadogsoth, I don't see any particular reason to single out Razade's posts, you are very confusing to me

Razade

2017-09-29, 12:52 AM

(Butting in for some dang reason, my how the thread turns! You sure know how to starta party Donnadogsoth!)
My principles make me go to the Jail most days of the week, principally the duty I feel to provide for my family and perform the job I promised to do (the Jails not that bad, the "guests" watch Game of Thrones and Empire, though I think they had them watch one of the "Twilight" movies as well, which may count as punishment).

That I go to work in the Jail most days also shows my lack of principles in that I drive a car to work which I think counts as one of the most selfish and evil things I do.

Are you...serious? I'm not IN jail. As in I'm not incarcerated. It's a common turn of phrase. I'm sure it's a common turn of phrase in San Francisco and the Bay Area too. You can't be that obtuse. Unless you're just trolling. If you're not, get the stick out of your behind. You knew exactly what I meant.

YossarianLives

2017-09-29, 01:11 AM

Also I would be proud if someone were to call me a "social justice warrior"!You rotten, no-good, cultural Marxist, beta, social justice warrior! Stop destroying western civilization. :smalltongue:

Lvl 2 Expert

2017-09-29, 04:00 AM

Under dualism, there are two substances, matter and mind. Matter comprises what we see in the physical world, chairs and hares and clover and books and what not. Mind comprises our thoughts, emotions, sensations, and wills. These are two totally different substances, matter and mind. And matter is governed, apparently, by laws of nature, the laws of physics, such that they never break these laws.

If so, then how can mind (will, free will) successfully order any particle of matter to "break the law"? How can one's will be free, if it cannot order matter to do that which physical law tells it it must otherwise do? Imagine matter and mind as being two sheets of clear glass laid next to each other. How can the top sheet (mind) cause anything to happen in the bottom sheet (matter)...or vice versa for that matter.

Free will requires, necessitates, demands there be a supernatural element to man. If so, how can the supernatural affect the natural, when they are two different substances? If all is mind (idealism), then that one substance (mind) can affect itself, which is clear, provided change is possible at all. But with dualism it is not clear at all how mind can affect matter. I'm not saying there is no solution, only that it's a problem.

But why would that be required for free will?

Let's say mind is just another form of matter, you could build an artificial construct that works exactly like my brain, because my brain follows the laws of physics. That means I'm predictable, at the very least in theory. But does predictability exclude free will? In other words, is free will unpredictable? You know someone hates getting kicked down the stairs, you've cleverly deduced that about their behavior. You then kick that person down the stairs, would you really expect them not to get mad because they have free will?

I think if you're looking for what it really means to be a creature that makes their own choices you should look more at agency. The object me has the power to make a decision and act on it. Even if the decision was predictable, it was mine, my brain cells processed outside signals and via a whole cascade of signaling pathways put my muscle cells into motion. There is not a very hard distinction here between objects with and without free will, after all one could argue that a brick processes signals from a gravity field from outside by accelerating along the direction of that field, it's hard to make that truly distinct from what we do, even if our process is orders of magnitude more complicated and involve a whole lot of internal interactions that the outside world does not or barely partake in.

Still I find that to me it's the most meaningful way to look at free will I've encountered. I'm my own thing. I'm too complicated for me to fully apprehend in every exact detail at every possible moment, and yet I do stuff that seemed non-obvious at first glance. Is there anything more to free will?

(As a side note, in a universe with quantum mechanics no process is absolutely deterministic, but the brick falling and me getting angry after being kicked down the stairs could play out differently if you reset the situation to exactly the same beginning and let it play again, but as I argued above, I do not consider randomness a sign of free will.)

Frozen_Feet

2017-09-29, 04:07 AM

What I'm hoping to achieve is to hsve enough knowledge so that I may read Donnadogsoth's posts without my being knee-jerk and automatically dismissing his words as "Dadaist verse".

Eeeeeh don't hold your breath. I understand what Donna's saying yet I *still* think what they're saying is nonsense when not just plain obsolete and wrong.

It's not Dadaist, because that would require it being based on anti-art aesthetic, when Donna's views are almost polar opposite. But nonsense is nonsense regardless of school...

"you might find it worthwhile to find out simply what your metaphysics are, as described by the relevant specialists."

How can there by any "your metaphysics" and "relevant specialists" to find them?

Asking "what your metaphysics are?" Is one of the more intelligible questions Donna's asked in this thread, actually.

To understand it, remember again: metaphysics is study of the nature of reality.

And pretty much all humans have assumptions on what is real, even if they have never formulated those philosophically. These assumptions manifest in how they act.

For example: when you see a rock, and then turn your head, do you think the rock keeps existing? That's a metaphysical assumption, called ontological inertia (literally "things which are known to exist have tendency to keep existing"), or object permanence in psychology.

For contrast, infant humans and many animals don't have a concept of this. If you take a rock out of sight of a baby and then bring it back, the baby literally thinks it's a new rock each time. This is also why peek-a-boo is so damn amusing to babies.

As for who would be "relevant specialist" for answering the question "what assumptions are you making about nature of reality?": if you're doing this as "fun to know" exercise, a philosophy teacher would be a good start. Or you could just read few dozen Wikipedia articles, it's not like basic philosophy is rocket science.

If you're doing this as serious "I want to know myself" exercise, I would actually recommend a psychologist. Because unlike a philosophy teacher, a psychologist might also be able to tell what your views tell of you as a person.

Well that post I mostly understand, except that before your post I've never encountered the phrase "fundamentalist materialist" so I've never "declared" myself a phrase I was ignorant of.

"Fundamentalist materialist" in context of philosophy just means you believe that:

1) all things are primarily made of matter
2) all apparently non-material things arise as a result of interaction of material things.

Use of "Fundamentalist" is largely redundant in the phrasing. But as far as semantics go, it can be justified: fundamentalist materialist = the view that reality is fundamentally material = the view that reality is founded on matter and interactions of matter.

Modern scientific monism (could also be called physicalism) is an evolution of this, expanded to include more sophisticated notions of physical substance such as energy, force, space-time etc. Scientific monism can be formulated thusly:

1) all things are of the same substance
2) all apparently different things arise as a result of this substance interacting with itself according to natural law (AKA Physics)
3) it is possible for humans to observe and acquire accurate information of these interactions.

Donnadogsoth are your posts a long elaborate joke?

Sadly, I think Donna's serious. If you were asking of Darth Ultron, on the other hand...

Anyways, the reason why I'm perpetually uninspired by Donna is because some things they say are in flat violation of scientific monism, and hence in violation of findings of modern science. Like, what is this crap about humans being able to "increase their population density without known limit"? Or humans "being able to transform the entire universe"?

Or anything about free will. Like, ahahaha, free will. The red herring to end all red herrings as pertains to philosophical discussions. What next, philosophical zombies?

Knaight

2017-09-29, 04:18 AM

"Fundamentalist materialist" in context of philosophy just means you believe that:

1) all things are primarily made of matter
2) all apparently non-material things arise as a result of interaction of material things.

Use of "Fundamentalist" is largely redundant in the phrasing. But as far as semantics go, it can be justified: fundamentalist materialist = the view that reality is fundamentally material = the view that reality is founded on matter and interactions of matter.
Looking at denotation to explain the choice of the term "fundamentalist" is misleading here. It's what the term connotes (particularly among people likely to actually describe themselves as materialists) that makes it worth using.

Anyways, the reason why I'm perpetually uninspired by Donna is because some things they say are in flat violation of scientific monism, and hence in violation of findings of modern science. Like, what is this crap about humans being able to "increase their population density without known limit"? Or humans "being able to transform the entire universe"?
At the very least, the actual physical size of humans is a pretty hard limit, and while I find the idea that the upper bound on population density is a packing problem completely ludicrous it still serves to trivially refute the idea that there's no known limit.

Frozen_Feet

2017-09-29, 06:32 AM

@Knaight: Yes, I know people have tendency to use "fundamentalist" to mean "a zealot".

I'm deliberately using non-loaded, literal definition of the word as a form of generosity towards Donna. Which I have very little of otherwise, as witnessed by the rest of my post. :smalltongue:

Red Fel

2017-09-29, 08:16 AM

I ask because you and I, among all the pairs of interlocutors I have participated in on this board, seem to have the least in common. We do not seem to be able to communicate at all, the reasons for which you will no doubt heap upon my head like crowns of ivy. I wonder what is the most we have in common. I turn to principle (see above). Do we share ANY principles, or are we effectively like different species?

I can't speak to why you and Razade don't seem able to communicate, but I can say that part of my difficulty following you stems from your over-reliance on technical jargon. Just because I understand the concepts doesn't mean that I remember all the terminology, and your remarks are so dense with terms of art that I'm forced to rely on context clues. And when the entire context is made up of still more jargon, it makes it hard for me to follow what you're trying to say.

A point I often emphasize: when writing, please keep your audience in mind.

Now, that said, I take issue with your question, "Do we share ANY principles, or are we effectively like different species?" (Again, I know it wasn't aimed at me, but I take issue with the question itself.) Setting aside the fact that I am a being so far beyond you all, it's like comparing a mountain to a molecule, I've known many people with many different sets of principles. And while, as I've mentioned, they (like anybody) are laughably far beneath me and my notice, I wouldn't go so far as to say that they're somehow a different species. I think that's rather strong, provocative hyperbole, wouldn't you? Unless you espouse the position that it is principles - and not just principles, but your principles specifically - that define "human," that's a pretty harsh statement. (And if you do espouse that position... Wow. Just wow.)

2D8HP

2017-09-29, 08:45 AM

Are you...serious? I'm not IN jail. As in I'm not incarcerated. It's a common turn of phrase..

I was seriously attempting to use irony to communicate to Donnadogsoth principally that he should not single you out for attack.

It appears that my posts are also failed attempts at communication.

:frown:

You rotten, no-good, cultural Marxist, beta, social justice warrior! Stop destroying western civilization. :smalltongue:

:biggrin:

Thanks!

That's just about the nicest thing anyone has ever said!

May I put that in my Extended Signature (maybe with some extra EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!)

....Asking "what your metaphysics are?" Is one of the more intelligible questions Donna's asked in this thread, actually.

To understand it, remember again: metaphysics is study of....

Thanks for the translations @Frozen_Feet!

:smile:

"Fundamentalist materialist" in context of philosophy just means you believe that:

1) all things are primarily made of matter
2) all apparently non-material things arise as a result of interaction of material things....

If that's the meaning than Donnadogsoth is spot on in terms of how I view reality, I was reacting negatively to being called that because a very quick web-search highlighted "Joseph Stalin is the ultimate fundamentalist materialist" which made me suspect it was slur.

Unless he meant it as a compliment?

I think I'll go back to my earlier default of not trying to decipher DonnaD's posts, and just read the other posts to his threads.

"Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown".

Frozen_Feet

2017-09-29, 10:39 AM

Oh, "fundamentalist materialist", even in the neutral sense I posited, is definitely a slur to people with radically opposing views.

Just like "communist" is a dirty word to capitalists and "capitalist" is a dirty word to communists.

So don't worry, "fundmentsalist materialism" is definitely bad to Donna. Even if it is perfectly descriptive of your beliefs and you can't find anything wrong with it.

YossarianLives

2017-09-29, 11:01 AM

:biggrin:

Thanks!

That's just about the nicest thing anyone has ever said!

May I put that in my Extended Signature (maybe with some extra EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!)
Ha, go ahead. I'd be honoured.

2D8HP

2017-09-29, 11:14 AM

Ha, go ahead. I'd be honoured.

Done!

Time to celebrate!:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=roRQ2mNwMMQ

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-29, 03:26 PM

Oh, of course I do. I'm not in jail after all.
(see below)

I don't see any conflict between the two honestly. Depending on how you define it. Cartesian Free Will? No, I don't think we have it. You have Free Will in so far as you only see half the room. As it were. You don't know every potential outcome and you don't know the outcome that's going to happen, so to you it's a choice. To you, the viewer, it's a decision made freely.

If your mind is purely an epiphenomenon of the electrochemical processes of your brain, and every last particle of your brain is subject to the iron laws of physics, then in what meaningful sense are you free? Free as a washing machine shuddering its way across the basement floor?

Well. The reason we don't seem to be able to communicate is because you refuse to elucidate us on any of the utter nonsense you spit forth and when you do, the very few times you have, have been so abjectly awful...that I'd honestly rather not consort with you in person. Knowing what I know.

We're the same species regardless of what principles we do or don't have in common though. You're a human, I'm a human. That's just how it works.

I imagine we both agree that killing for wanton pleasure is wrong. I think that's a principle most people have, demonstrably so in fact. So there's one.

Alright, let's take that. If you have at least one principle by which you govern your life, then if you are thoughtful you should recognise that there is more than one principle in the world, and so we can speak of a class of thought objects which we can call “principles”.

From this, consider the technological expressions of mankind to date. Each respective type of tool, from docks and roads to watermills and internal combustion engines to hammers and screwdrivers, down to the simple machines of plane, pulley, incline plane, and screw, represent concretisations of discoveries of physical principle.

At any given time, the knowledge, and technological expression, of society exists to a certain degree. Call it T. T represents the total power over nature, in our case over Terra, that society can muster. If knowledge is lost, if technology is lost—in other words if our tools break down and we don't repair or replace them, or if we forget how to use the tools we have—then our T is reduced.

The value of T is that power over nature is power to survive by reordering the biosphere to better suit our needs. An example of this is draining a malarial swamp, thus making room to build human habitations whilst getting rid of a disease vector. Another example is the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution of 10,000 BC, whereby the principle of the seed and the tilling of soil converted useless land into a relatively reliable food source. From this we get the basis for civilisation. And etcetera. T thus represents a given resource base that we have to work with.

This resource base, in principle, rates how many people we can sustain per square mile. This does not mean that that number of people are actually alive at any given time, but, rather, that if we had to or wanted to we could sustain that many. In other words, T rates the potential population density, and the degree T exceeds actual population density gives us how much of a redundancy or “buffer zone” we have, to deal with natural catastrophes, for example. A society where T = actual population density would be running on the edge so to speak, with no capacity to deal with any demands on its energy and ability above and beyond day to day operations.

Potential population density is bounded by the particular limitations on knowledge operating at a given time. So, in that sense it is limited. But, the limitations on knowledge in principle are nonexistent. There is no principle delimiting human knowledge, just accidental happenstance that denies us total knowledge. The species homo sapiens is capable of discovering whatever there is to be discovered, however long and through whatever trials that may take.

It's not a common idea, but so what? It's an intelligible one and I know you as a human are capable of grasping it.

georgie_leech

2017-09-29, 03:50 PM

It's not a common idea, but so what? It's an intelligible one and I know you as a human are capable of grasping it.

And summarily rejecting it as insufficient and ignoring reality. You've made a claim: X is limited by Y, Y can raise to arbitrary levels, therefore X can rise to arbitrary levels. Both of your premises are wrong. Population density is limited by more than just our ability to shape our environment. Our ability to organise society in efficient ways and the literal physical space we occupy are both other limitations in our ability to clump together. Our ability to shape our environment to our own ends is limited by the amount of stuff in said environment; at the extreme end, there is only so much physical carbon in the Earth's biome and mass that could be used to create food.

Even if an argument is valid (the conclusion follows from the premises), an argument is still true or false based on whether the premises are true or false. Don't confuse people not accepting your argument for failing to understand it.

Razade

2017-09-29, 04:25 PM

(see below)

Oh, this should be good.

If your mind is purely an epiphenomenon of the electrochemical processes of your brain, and every last particle of your brain is subject to the iron laws of physics, then in what meaningful sense are you free? Free as a washing machine shuddering its way across the basement floor?

I already explained. I can't see the determined outcome and make the choices I make with as much freedom as I can. I told you, it's not Cartesian Free Will but since no one has demonstrated Dualism...well there ya go. I am a single actor on the stage. I can't see all the actors, the lights, the etc etc etc so I move as I wish and move as I'm given options. Even if the play is scripted, I don't know the script.

That's good enough for me.

Alright, let's take that. If you have at least one principle by which you govern your life, then if you are thoughtful you should recognise that there is more than one principle in the world, and so we can speak of a class of thought objects which we can call “principles”.

Yep. See, it helps to explain what you mean with the words you use.

From this, consider the technological expressions of mankind to date.

Oh we're already kicking off with psuedo-meaningless terms. The "technological expressions of mankind to date". What does that mean? Do you just mean all the things we've built? Are you claiming that it's somehow an aspect of our desires that we have cars and buildings and medicine? What the hell does any of what you just said actually MEAN and what are you trying to drive at with it.

Each respective type of tool, from docks and roads to watermills and internal combustion engines to hammers and screwdrivers, down to the simple machines of plane, pulley, incline plane, and screw, represent concretisations of discoveries of physical principle.

The word you're looking for, I think, is concretions and...so what? What you're trying to say here is that all our inventions are the sum total of our understanding of the physical world. So what?

At any given time, the knowledge, and technological expression, of society exists to a certain degree. Call it T. T represents the total power over nature, in our case over Terra, that society can muster. If knowledge is lost, if technology is lost—in other words if our tools break down and we don't repair or replace them, or if we forget how to use the tools we have—then our T is reduced.

This is...like sifting through mud with a coffee pot. Assertions without evidence, claims without anything to back it up. Attempting to mysticize (to make mystical) industry and information. It's...absurd. It's beyond absurd. You're making what you think is a bang up argument and then turning around and pointing to everything you think is wrong with the world through that lens and going "SEE!!! I'm totally right!" Except nothing you've said actually...demonstrate what you're attempting to argue. You're so far into question begging that it's not even funny.

The value of T is that power over nature is power to survive by reordering the biosphere to better suit our needs. An example of this is draining a malarial swamp, thus making room to build human habitations whilst getting rid of a disease vector. Another example is the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution of 10,000 BC, whereby the principle of the seed and the tilling of soil converted useless land into a relatively reliable food source. From this we get the basis for civilisation. And etcetera. T thus represents a given resource base that we have to work with.

I mean...technology CAN do that sure. But T sure is starting to mean a lot. T is our resource base (which...exists outside of technology), the sum total of knowledge (only partially related to technology) AND "technological expression". Boy, can you cram any more buzzwords in?

This resource base, in principle, rates how many people we can sustain per square mile. This does not mean that that number of people are actually alive at any given time, but, rather, that if we had to or wanted to we could sustain that many. In other words, T rates the potential population density, and the degree T exceeds actual population density gives us how much of a redundancy or “buffer zone” we have, to deal with natural catastrophes, for example. A society where T = actual population density would be running on the edge so to speak, with no capacity to deal with any demands on its energy and ability above and beyond day to day operations.

Potential population density is bounded by the particular limitations on knowledge operating at a given time. So, in that sense it is limited. But, the limitations on knowledge in principle are nonexistent. There is no principle delimiting human knowledge, just accidental happenstance that denies us total knowledge. The species homo sapiens is capable of discovering whatever there is to be discovered, however long and through whatever trials that may take.

I think it's really awesome that we know a guy whose worked out the formula for correct population density by calculating the sum total of knowledge, technological expression and our number of resources.

When you win the Nobel Prize, give me half the prize money. Please.

It's not a common idea

Calling it an idea would be charitable.

, but so what?

It puts you on the level of the dude no one wants to sit next to on the bus because he smells like fertilizer and talks to a pedgion he keeps in his front pocket.

It's an intelligible one

The hell it is. It's buzz words mixed with psuedo-science crossed with bold ass assertions blended with spiritual baggage.

Even if it was intelligible that doesn't make it right, it doesn't make it cohesive, it certainly doesn't make it valid. The phrase "green space men from Jupiter are eating socks" is intelligible but it's meaningless all the same. Intelligibility does not equate to correctness. Or soundness. Or validness.

and I know you as a human are capable of grasping it.

Ah, the soft "well if you were smart you'd understand it" backhand.

sktarq

2017-09-29, 04:43 PM

I was seriously attempting to use irony to communicate to Donnadogsoth principally that he should not single you out for attack.

It appears that my posts are also failed attempts at communication.".
This was good, but....

I think I'll go back to my earlier default of not trying to decipher DonnaD's posts, and just read the other posts to his threads.

"Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown".

Over the last couple years I have appreciated the quality of your posts. Often referencing things from my childhood to detriment of others getting your point perhaps. Informative with out looking too good, or talking too wise. But this part here may be your finest summation, humour, et al.
Thank you for making my day a bit better. (yes that was a Kipling quote on purpose-and the highest praise I give)

EDIT:

Thanks!

That's just about the nicest thing anyone has ever said!

May I put that in my Extended Signature (maybe with some extra EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!)

And this part I just find the link to Yossarian enormously humourous....it fits the handle so well

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-29, 05:20 PM

I don't actually, and I can't think of an internally coherent (although I would question the internal coherence of pure idealism) one off the top of my head, doesn't mean those are the only 3 options though... As it happens I am a materialist, more or less a secular humanist in fact. But it's not like I was drifting though life with no principles until I picked up a Sartre book, it's more like I came upon that school of thought, found it was a pretty good match for my preexisting values, and explored it a bit to see what I could get from it and what I disagreed with. Calling myself that doesn't mean I'm supposed to follow everything related to that school of thought... people have layers, like onions.

I don't disagree. I suppose there could be trialism, quadrialism, infinitism, and Cthulhuism. But, you say you're a materialist, do you see how materialism disallows free will? (See my response to Razade, above).

What does that have to do with the price of butter? I'm saying that what you would*prefer*to be true should not be taken into consideration when trying to figure out what*is*true. Of course that's largely impossible, human psychology being what it is but we should still strive for it if we want to get anywhere.

I'm not so sure, but what I'm sure of is that what is true in part depends on individual decisions. If I choose to buy a brick of butter I have changed the Universe by changing the facts. Before the butter was in the store, now it is in my refrigerator, all because I have made a decision and carried it through. So with Solipsism, it would change the facts of the matter because a solipsist would, unless they're playing the “pretend to be normal” game, act differently towards the world than a non-solipsist would, at least on that count.

Ok so special pleading... not much to do here but say I disagree. Not that we are the only known species to do so, but that that makes us anything more special than a very clever ape.

It gives these clever apes the license to rule the cosmos, because nothing can stand against us and we have no reason not to have solidarity and advance our interests as a species. The principle of the human mind gives us our own reason to exist, whereas the beasts are merely operating on their blind instincts, not on self-awareness and intelligible principle. We should be good stewards, but stewards we must be if we are to serve our own interests, which amount to the amassing of principle, technological expression, and survival and flourishing. (See my response about potential population density to Razade, above.)

I hate to bring up Socrates but that's pretty foolish. Also, special pleading again (and argument from incredulity I think?)

See my question about free will, above.

That's like looking for meaning in a sentence by examining each of the letters in turn instead of reading it.
And your side of the argument is like gutting a sheep and looking for meaning in it's guts.

I note you counter my literate objection with a magical one. Magic is very interesting and may even have some use, but, I'm talking about inference, not augury. I infer that the words I read on my computer screen under the name “thorgrim29” were written by a living human being somewhere at another computer screen. That's not haruspicy, that's rational inference. So with the examination of the cosmos as a whole and mankind's unique characteristics in it. There we find an intelligible universe, that, when understood and properly propitiated, obeys us. Not to see that is to defy human existence to keep on existing lacking principle, lacking intelligibility. It's a short step from “purposeless specs of carbon” to “Western civilisation is nothing but a phallogoic enterprise.” If you see what I mean.

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-29, 05:33 PM

I can't speak to why you and Razade don't seem able to communicate, but I can say that part of my difficulty following you stems from your over-reliance on technical jargon. Just because I understand the concepts doesn't mean that I remember all the terminology, and your remarks are so dense with terms of art that I'm forced to rely on context clues. And when the entire context is made up of still more jargon, it makes it hard for me to follow what you're trying to say.

A point I often emphasize: when writing, please keep your audience in mind.

Good point. I have endeavoured to explain potential population density to Razade and the thread visitors in general, and I don't know how much more colloquially I can explain it without being so vague as to be vulnerable to tiresome sidetracking semantics issues, but I'm trying.

Now, that said, I take issue with your question, "Do we share ANY principles, or are we effectively like different species?" (Again, I know it wasn't aimed at me, but I take issue with the question itself.) Setting aside the fact that I am a being so far beyond you all, it's like comparing a mountain to a molecule, I've known many people with many different sets of principles. And while, as I've mentioned, they (like anybody) are laughably far beneath me and my notice, I wouldn't go so far as to say that they're somehow a different species. I think that's rather strong, provocative hyperbole, wouldn't you? Unless you espouse the position that it is principles - and not just principles, but your principles specifically - that define "human," that's a pretty harsh statement. (And if you do espouse that position... Wow. Just wow.)

I meant the question in terms of a principled (civil) man and an unprincipled (feral) man being effectively of two different species, so different must they think and act towards each other and the world. Razade claims to have principles and so we are on the same plane in that regard, though, so there is the possibility of communication. I have a trapdoor in front of my throne however waiting for people who espouse postmodernism.

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-29, 05:50 PM

And summarily rejecting it as insufficient and ignoring reality. You've made a claim: X is limited by Y, Y can raise to arbitrary levels, therefore X can rise to arbitrary levels. Both of your premises are wrong. Population density is limited by more than just our ability to shape our environment. Our ability to organise society in efficient ways and the literal physical space we occupy are both other limitations in our ability to clump together. Our ability to shape our environment to our own ends is limited by the amount of stuff in said environment; at the extreme end, there is only so much physical carbon in the Earth's biome and mass that could be used to create food.

Even if an argument is valid (the conclusion follows from the premises), an argument is still true or false based on whether the premises are true or false. Don't confuse people not accepting your argument for failing to understand it.

Methinks you underestimate the power of ideas, and that is the root of your objection to the common sense understanding I have given of human potential. "Our ability to organise society" is governed by principles of morality and art, as typified by the output of the sadly non-typical Friedrich Schiller, or the general welfare principle or other principles of human organisation are not in fixed quantity but that which we can discover and add to our larder.

"Literal physical space" is a brute notion. Who knows how we can overcome it? I have an idea: genetically engineer humans to be three feet tall. That would save enormous amounts of resources and multiply the space available.

"[A]mount of stuff in said environment"? We don't know how much stuff in in any given environment. Ever used Gorilla Glue? It expands! The physical "stuff" grows larger. Who knew there was about 200 different uses for coal? It's a ridiculous waste to just burn the stuff, according to one expert I read. Maybe there is something about zinc that will generate an industrial revolution, that we can extract more "stuff" from metals than we ever thought possible! There is no telling how much stuff there is in anywhere, any more than the first paleolithic individual knew there was all that red stuff inside him before he got mauled by the sabretooth tiger. Look at Luna? Nothing there but rocks, right? But she's loaded with Helium-3! We didn't know that until we discovered what Helium-3 was, until we knew what to look for. BAMF! Stuff appears in response to new knowledge!

"[P]hysical carbon in the Earth's biome and mass that could be used to create food"? Who says we need to eat carbon? Who says we can't synthesise carbon? Who says we can't import carbon from Outer Space? We might not lick the carbon problem for a while, but there's no principle saying we can't. Remember all those people who said man would never fly? And then again never fly to the Moon? And now people say poverty will never be solved? And people say we'll run out of resources?--which is true if we don't keep thinking and producing ideas!

Fawkes

2017-09-29, 05:57 PM

I don't know how much more colloquially I can explain it without being so vague as to be vulnerable to tiresome sidetracking semantics issues, but I'm trying.

This is a joke, right? That was sarcasm?

Razade

2017-09-29, 06:28 PM

This is a joke, right? That was sarcasm?

I know I had a good solid twenty minutes of laughter thanks to it.

SuperPanda

2017-09-29, 06:51 PM

Well this thread has been enlightening - both in ways that are a compliment and in ways which aren't. I'm far more versed in Literature, Lubguistics, and Psychology than I am in Philosophy. With that background parts of this conversation have been mystifying to me because of how familiar they are.

Example: Free Will vs. Determinisim.

This is particularly odd to me since the literary movement of Naruralism more than an 100 years ago already combined the two into a model of limited Will that is perfectly coherent within the doctrine of "materialism."

This is even more confusing to me because the argument that Thought and Will represent unknowable dimensions of existence also posit that "T" is potentially infinite (for humans). Those seem to be inherently contradictory.

So where do I fall? I have no idea what the label would be so instead so I can present my thoughts and hopefully get feedback.

First I'll take exception to the idea of "Free" Will. Science has already demonstrated limits on people's abilities to exercise will. The brain suffers choice fatigue when made to carefully consider alternatives for extended times, resulting in impulse actions which defy the person's Will. So there are some biological limitations to our ability to express our Will. They might be surmountable, but that brings me to the linguistic case. Humans might eventually be capable of Free Will, but that is not now and never has yet been the case for us.

So if Will is not Free does it exist at all? To answer that I turn to my dog. I have a two year old Golden Retriever, she is both very cute and very good at making herself understood. I'm going to lay out two examples which I am confident shows that she possesses Will.

Example 1: I have trained her to be able to "wait" with a treat on her paw before eating it. She naturally shows no restraint when it comes to food particularly if the food is breads or beef. If I ask her to perform this trick when she is excited by many new things or when she's frustrated from having been around many temptations she fails. If I ask her to perform it when she is calm she can succeed. She very clearly does not want to wait for the treat. She also clearly wants to be praised for succeeding. She must exert her will against her instincts and impulses to "be a good girl."

Example 2: when she was still small and we'd have a little home wrestle play I would pin her or pick her up to make her stop mouthing. The "password" to be let go was a lick. If we were not playing but she was bored, hungry, thirsty, or needed the potty she would scratch and bite at me until I got what she wanted - this worked but also made me upset. Without being directly told to she experimented with other expressions, settling on licking my hand. If I'm doing something else and she starts trying to lick my hands repeatedly I now check her water, check the time, or take a break to give her attention. - her behavior changed mine. She expressed her Will. In addition she experimented with different behaviors, connecting to other similar lessons.

In the world of today dolphins are thought to have been recorded having a conversation. Elephants have been recorded returning to a grave to mourn. Birds have been shows capable of maths and tool use. I now find it difficult to accept the idea that such things are exclusively "Human" or "supernatural."

Our mind remains largely a mystery. It is possible that it is a mystery we won't crack (we are after all trying to understand and absurdly complicated system from within that same system). It is also possible that we will one day know it - either through augmenting that system beyond its design parameters or because the system really is that strong.

golentan

2017-09-29, 07:01 PM

On the subject of free will, donnadogsoth... have you never heard of a probability curve? We don't live in a clockwork universe, and cells do not have the precision of interlocking gears, and if you have a way to predict the future behavior of living things, molecules, or atoms singly or in aggregate in complex systems there are almost no fields of science who wouldn't LOVE to have a look at your equations. Even at the macro level, with the "stately and predictable motion of the spheres," physicists can go CRAZY over the general case of the three body problem, and "I know the mass, position, and velocity of objects which are moving with no outside forces according to principles which have been understood for centuries" is about as predictive as you can get.

2D8HP

2017-09-29, 07:07 PM

...Thank you for making my day a bit better....

:smile:

Your very welcome! And thank you very much for your kind words!

Also, by quoting Kiplimg you've shown that you're a far, far better man than I!

The closest I've come to quoting Kipling was:

To mangle Kipling:
"What should they who only know of Dungeons & Dragons, of D&D know?"
(I believe the original poem (http://www.telelib.com/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/verse/volumeXI/englishflag.html) was about some tiny place where it rains a lot, which is clearly not as important as D&D!).

You rotten, no-good, cultural Marxist, beta, social justice warrior!!! Stop destroying western civilization 2D8HP!!!. :smalltongue:

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-29, 07:10 PM

I already explained. I can't see the determined outcome and make the choices I make with as much freedom as I can. I told you, it's not Cartesian Free Will but since no one has demonstrated Dualism...well there ya go. I am a single actor on the stage. I can't see all the actors, the lights, the etc etc etc so I move as I wish and move as I'm given options. Even if the play is scripted, I don't know the script.

Sounds like you're trying to shoehorn in some manner of free choice, when you believe that everything that makes up “you” is purely material and thereby subject to material laws. ≠

I think it's your materialism that's doing you in, actually. If you contradict yourself by believing you are purely material AND you have free choice, that's a major spanner in the works in terms of understanding the idea of ideas, and ideas as they might relate to human economic enterprise.

From this, consider the technological expressions of mankind to date.
Oh we're already kicking off with psuedo-meaningless terms. The "technological expressions of mankind to date". What does that mean? Do you just mean all the things we've built? Are you claiming that it's somehow an aspect of our desires that we have cars and buildings and medicine? What the hell does any of what you just said actually MEAN and what are you trying to drive at with it.

I'm trying to show you something, and you're tripping over, I think you're working at tripping over, basic terminology.

For, what could “technological expressions of mankind to date” possibly mean? Well, a pair of pruning shears, a pickup truck, a basket, a ladder, these are all technological expressions aren't they? They're physical expressions of mental knowledge. A tool is a perceptual expression of a mechanical concept. So the “technological expressions of mankind to date” would mean all the tools we've made, but the word “tools” isn't clear enough because it's not just hammers and saws it's technology, all forms of technology, that's being referred to—and to date, so everything we have, our total equipage of technology.

The word you're looking for, I think, is concretions and...so what? What you're trying to say here is that all our inventions are the sum total of our understanding of the physical world. So what?

Let me see if I can boil this down even more. We have a technical idea base, a fund of all our technical ideas. These give rise to a technology base, the sum of all our tools. This is T. Power over nature is everything we can do with our tools, including survive, including keeping a given number of people alive in any given area. And if we lose our tools, or the knowledge of how to use them—if T decreases, in other words—then we can no longer support a given number of people in a given area, but can only support a lesser number of people. In other words, potential population density goes down, because we can't get our apples to market because the trains aren't running.

I mean...technology CAN do that sure. But T sure is starting to mean a lot. T is our resource base (which...exists outside of technology), the sum total of knowledge (only partially related to technology) AND "technological expression". Boy, can you cram any more buzzwords in?

Of course T means a lot. How much more meaningful a concept can there be? I'm not saying it's the last word in anything, but it's certainly up there.

The resource base does not exist outside of T. Without the knowledge of the existence of the resources, there is no resource base. Discoveries create resources where before there was nothing but “stuff”.

Even if it was intelligible that doesn't make it right, it doesn't make it cohesive, it certainly doesn't make it valid. The phrase "green space men from Jupiter are eating socks" is intelligible but it's meaningless all the same. Intelligibility does not equate to correctness. Or soundness. Or validness.

An idea may be intelligible and false, but never unintelligible and true, except should one be shown the idea, as if in a language one does not understand, and one takes it on faith in authority that the idea is intelligible.

Ah, the soft "well if you were smart you'd understand it" backhand.

Remember the diceless RPG called Amber? In it a player could buy “bad stuff” for his character. Bad stuff made life difficult and narrowed the character's eyes at everyone, everyone seemed to be subtly nefarious to him or her, even people who were actually good-natured and well-disposed towards him or her. You act like you've got a few dots in bad stuff.

Donnadogsoth

2017-09-29, 07:12 PM

Lethologica

2017-09-29, 07:18 PM

They're unpredictable, aren't they, almost like they're making free decisions.
That's a bad argument, because we're unable to predict a lot of things that don't appear to have the capacity to make free decisions (like three rocks orbiting each other in space), so 'we can't predict it' is at best a very, very weak indicator of 'is making free decisions'.

Razade

2017-09-29, 07:32 PM

Sounds like you're trying to shoehorn in some manner of free choice, when you believe that everything that makes up “you” is purely material and thereby subject to material laws. ≠

No. It's an illusion of free choice. I'm just saying that the illusion is enough because who cares. It seems I have Free Will even when I don't. Same as living in a computer simulation. If all I know is the simulation and all I can respond to, react to and investigate is the simulation than it doesn't matter to me on a local level whether this is reality or not. Same with Free Will. Even if I don't, I don't know that I don't because I don't know the determined outcome and thus, my actions are mine to determine in a local sense.

I think it's your materialism that's doing you in, actually. If you contradict yourself by believing you are purely material AND you have free choice, that's a major spanner in the works in terms of understanding the idea of ideas, and ideas as they might relate to human economic enterprise.

Considering I just said I think the "free" part is an illusion and may not be ultimately real, I don't see a contradiction.

I'm trying to show you something, and you're tripping over, I think you're working at tripping over, basic terminology.

Technological expression is not a "basic" term or expression. It doesn't even come up as a Google Search result.

For, what could “technological expressions of mankind to date” possibly mean? Well, a pair of pruning shears, a pickup truck, a basket, a ladder, these are all technological expressions aren't they?

No. They're objects. Not expressions of technology.

They're physical expressions of mental knowledge.

If that's how you're choosing to define Technological Expressions, then of course they are. No one but you is going to call them that though so it's a useless term.

A tool is a perceptual expression of a mechanical concept.

Again, if that's how you want to define it. Again though, that's just on you. No one else calls it that and it's meaningless.

So the “technological expressions of mankind to date” would mean all the tools we've made, but the word “tools” isn't clear enough because it's not just hammers and saws it's technology, all forms of technology, that's being referred to—and to date, so everything we have, our total equipage of technology.

As said. Totally, utterly meaningless. The expression (as you call it) doesn't have inherent value. A pair of pliers doesn't mean anything other than the use you get out of them (sentimental meaning nonwithstanding). There isn't inherently Good or Positive or any other buzzword you're going to try and leap to just because someone made pliers off of an idea in there head. There's no intrinsic worth there.

Let me see if I can boil this down even more. We have a technical idea base, a fund of all our technical ideas.

Do we? Prove it. Because I don't see it and I think the assertion is laughable.

These give rise to a technology base, the sum of all our tools. This is T. Power over nature is everything we can do with our tools, including survive, including keeping a given number of people alive in any given area. And if we lose our tools, or the knowledge of how to use them—if T decreases, in other words—then we can no longer support a given number of people in a given area, but can only support a lesser number of people. In other words, potential population density goes down, because we can't get our apples to market because the trains aren't running.

One doesn't follow the other. You are, again, defining something into existence and then going "see! this is right because something else!". Our potential population density is not tied to the sum total of our technical base (whatever that means) and it doesn't hinge solely on our power over nature. In fact, our population base may well go DOWN because we've "dominated" nature too much.

Of course T means a lot. How much more meaningful a concept can there be? I'm not saying it's the last word in anything, but it's certainly up there.

You're a riot dude. Your T means nothing because it's too broad to mean anything. It's not the last word on anything because it's not even the first word on anything. It's...a collection of ideas formed out of half based assumptions on the world skewed by your world view. It's not making sense to anyone but you because you're so much smarter than everyone. It's not making sense to anyone but you because

The resource base does not exist outside of T. Without the knowledge of the existence of the resources, there is no resource base. Discoveries create resources where before there was nothing but “stuff”.

Well that's weird. Iron existed before we knew how to smelt it. It was absolutely part of our "resource base" (again a meaningless term that you're just making up wholecloth) even when we couldn't use it. Invention is driven by NEED. You're so backasswards that it's painful. We didn't invent smelting and THEN create iron. Iron already existed and we created smelting to utilize it.

An idea may be intelligible and false, but never unintelligible and true, except should one be shown the idea, as if in a language one does not understand, and one takes it on faith in authority that the idea is intelligible.

The facts about gravity are true even if I don't understand them. The facts about the germ theory of disease are true even if it's unintelligible to me. The mythology of Lords of the Rings is intelligible to me but that doesn't make it true. The truth of something doesn't hinge on its intelligibility.

Remember the diceless RPG called Amber? In it a player could buy “bad stuff” for his character. Bad stuff made life difficult and narrowed the character's eyes at everyone, everyone seemed to be subtly nefarious to him or her, even people who were actually good-natured and well-disposed towards him or her. You act like you've got a few dots in bad stuff.

I don't actually. And here you are trying to psychoanalyze me. Again.