Contemplate This!
(words + a picture + you)
We no longer run life based on old wives' tales. We now base it on new wives' tales.
We like to think the world of fiction is true.
Perhaps my culture is WannaBe.
Idea: a clock that run deliberately slow.
With the growth of texting staring into space is becoming a lost art.
We cannot get expert knowledge from the Internet. You would not want your surgeon Googling during your operation.
With all the people in the world, and all of our labor saving devices, why do we still not have enough time.
Are we monkeys? Of course not. But we have monkeytude, mammalitude, and animality bred into all aspect of our daily lives. We have monkey elements to the very core of our being. We 'know' it but we do not honor it, or demonstrate much awareness of it. We like to think we are reasonable.
Why teach art? You can justify art on status, tradition, conservativism. But once you get it, you don't need to answer that question to enjoy art.
Instead of speaking about four causes, perhaps we can speak of four (or more) understandings.
We hardly know why we like anything. We cannot say why we like the music, clothes, television shows, movies, and makeup we like. (Why is that? We don't know that either.)
Most life takes place unknowingly.
Pay attention to your attention.
We think without thinking.
I can't wait for the Tao.
Television newscasters — I don't like their tone of voice.
Sitting in front of Fox News (not all that different from any other news) I hear fear and tension, and not a hint of irony.
There is nothing here we need to listen to. Most of it is none of our business.
It does not have to be like this. Why is there not a news show that is more like a contemplation room, a casual meditation on the world.
This Just In: world is not coming to an end.
When we say 'we', we are not including dogs.... or birds.
Philosophy has a big lesson in using big words.
Why can't we come to some agreement on reality?
Leaves falling
in the parking lot,
their job undone.
What is the opposite of becoming tired to someone?
Becoming awakened?
These days schools should teach monotasking
Although life may be easier and safer, the human dance is as complicated as ever.
It all takes time.
I want to learn all sorts of things,
but I don't want to take the time.
It may be philosophy's function to point out that no one has it figured out, but it is also its function to explain why no one has it figured it out.
A lack of interesting conversations don't really matter. We just like being with others.
Utilitarianism is not right or wrong. Utilitarianism is right in these significant ways, and wrong in these ways.
We are free will.
Are we attractive to celebrities because of the dinner parties they would take us to?
There comes a time we are strong enough to obey.
My New Theory of Art™ (from 2010): We just like to look at pictures. (That's how simple we are.)
But what is a picture?
My New Theory of Music™: Music is regularity. We are comforted by its predictablity in melody, rhyme, rhythm, notes and harmony.
Leadership is not a job.
Religion is not like the blind men and the elephant. It is more like the blind men and the country.
Allegorical and symbolic sentences are not merely true or false.
A keen appreciation of allusions is a kind of intellectual cleavage. Or, watching a movie you notice you have seen that actor in another movie.
Thinking a new translation will make for a deeper understanding of the text is like thinking slightly better boots will make it easier to climb Mt. Rainier.
Do you have to read Kant in order to understand Kant?
You can't scare a cat by showing them a gun.
So, what do you think am I trying to tell you?
Instead of thinkers, explorers, discoverers, inventors we now have survivors, big brothers, the great racers and the biggest losers.
Moral Questions: What if you are just relaxing by checking out someone else's ass?
Defending the academic field of philosophy is not doing philosophy.
Religion is a radical oversimplification of the world which (properly) downplays so many things.
We are mostly unaware of why we do and why like the things we do. We are simply drawn to it. Would it be possible to create a simple vocabulary to talk aboput this?
What are you doing right now? You are doing many things. You can take the frame that feels most comfortable.
Perhaps with the rising income disparity the 1% will be creating a new aristocracy. The old aristocracy gave us many wondrous things. What might a new aristocracy look like?
One response to the decline of learning in society, is to hang out with only those who still value it. What we fail to see is the demographics of this.
By all means let us pretend that critical thinking exists and that it matters.
People lie. Isn't that interesting. You cannot ask people for certain information and expect them to answer truthfully. They can't or they won't. They don't have to.
As we have celebrities mostly known for being famous (Boorstein), so we also have celebrity ideas.
Sometime the important moral step is just the awareness that this is a moral situation (and you can think about it).
Go on-line
Find something new
Now
Waiting for something to happen. We art.
You make your peace with your submission.
Since the number of signifcantia we can hold in our mind remains somewhat stable even as the world enlarges. So the number of insioginificants is growing.
My philosophy grows slowly, like hair, or like a beard. I grow fingernails of thought.
The writer sits in a room populated with imaginary beings.
It seems to me that B.B. King couldn't have had the blues for years.
My kind of dictatorship? dictatorshopped
Instead of thinking about this (or that) we file it away.
Teaching on-line classes: So much clicking. So little care.
One reason for a lack of books is that we hit the paywall. Our greatest minds are hidden away and all we get are book reports.
The world I experience I do not consciously experience.
Inside the world lies 'my' world.
Heaven is here.
Here we are with our loved ones.
If free will does not exist, it will be necessary to invent it.
The Tao that can be controlled is not the true Tao.
I need a mask that shows people who I really am.
Questions for Old People™: What surprised you most about life?
If you can look it up on Internet, why teach it? You should teach how to look it up.
We like to feel our importance. Religion provides a way of doing that.
Our mind's privileged access to stories of the hero, also underlies a form of leadership.
Free will the back-side of holding people accountable.
The part of other people we can control is the ego.
What do I really think?
Why do I get irritated at people? A woman, talking on her cellphone, parked her large car (are all these details relevant?) to drop off her books at the library and I had to maneuver around her to my parking spot. Did she make me have to think!? (Being irritated is not a pleasant waste of time.
Idea: a movie that is hyper-realism of ordinary life: driving a car, bathrooms, eating... analogous to photorealism in painting: movierealism.
We need a relationship so we can have someone to text.
We have made the world to suit us. It is not clear we are built to live in a world that suits us.
We have so many things that small our world(s).
In the primal days of mankind, one had to explain to humans why there was death in the world. Why would you have to explain that? Is the default belief of consciousness to think you will live forever?
One size does not fit all, nor two, nor twelve nor eighty-seven.
There are multiple, incompatible ways to be human.
Are you as smart as someone from ancient times?
I was looking into Chinese sacred texts, and up popped an ad for Chinese singles. This is wrong kind of ad to popup here, now. It is the wrong kind of multitasking. (And sometimes multitasking is wrong.)
In an ideal world we would be able to opt out of distracting ads.
Don't repress your true thoughts so much you are unaware of them. On the other hand, don't be resentful of the fact you are aware of it, but cannot say it.
We critique culture by religion, and we critique religion by our culture.
Daoism is a religion that honors spontaneity.
We are offended by subservience between husband and wife, but we do honor subservience between parent and child. So subservience is not the problem.
What is it to watch a TV series? There are different (sets of) answers for different people — and for different TV series.
An inheritance is a bulb festering in the soil for a very long time. We may not need to see it bloom, but we hate to see it bloom in another person's yard.
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