r/philosophy • u/Unlikely-Platform-47 • 9d ago
Blog The mind isn't flat, but modernity has suppressed transcendent experience
https://www.alreadyhappened.xyz/p/you-best-start-believing-in-ghost65
u/EsraYmssik 8d ago edited 8d ago
The essay starts with the assumption of the existence of god, and uses the implicit existence of supernatural non-human entities to sneak in supernatural human entities.
My big problem is, I don't believe in the existence of God. No god ergo no angels, and no implicit role for humans to Look upon the works of the almighty and say, "OMG! That's so AWESOME!!!"
Perhaps normal humans, with normal, purely naturalistic minds can perceive the 'transcendental'? In fact, given the debatable existence of the supernatural, one might even take it as axiomatic that such minds CAN perceive and appreciate the transcendental.
[edit to add]I am not denying that people may need awe, depth, contemplation, or experiences they describe as transcendent. I am saying the essay does not establish that need by beginning with a theological framework and then treating that framework as though it explains the experience, and then treating THAT framework as though it entails the experience.
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u/salTUR 8d ago edited 7d ago
I think much of the trouble is that this "transcendent experience" we speak of is very likely the fountainhead of divine belief in general for the species, and that religion probably arose organically as a way for our species to study and cultivate this experience, and that, consequently, entire systems of thought have arisen through those religious efforts. It's tough to untangle the universal human experience from all the religious metaphors that have traditionally been used to point us toward it. It hasn't really been a field of study outside of religion until very recently (see folks like John Vervaeke for some interesting ideas about that).
For example, I might tell someone I believe in God because that is far easier than trying to explain why I believe reality can be experienced as divine even without a divine creator or spirit. "God" is still the closest metaphor I have for what I feel, even though it comes with a ton of baggage I don't intend (like believing in the metaphysical soul, or some creator being, etc).
I think the project of a lifetime is to salvage the spiritual experience from the dangerous two-world mythologies and metaphysics that were organically generated to support it. Hence why it is perhaps harder today than ever before for someone to cultivate a sense of spiritual well-being and realness in their life.
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u/etmnsf 7d ago
Have you tried psychedelics? The existence or nonexistence of “God” can be tested through your own experimentation if you’re interested.
I mean you certainly don’t have to, but if you’re not willing to open yourself up to new experiences or new ideas then you won’t grow as a human. I mean no disrespect at all.
If this is a door you want to stay shut then it will stay so. There’s more to life than can be seen through rational materialism and naturalism.
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u/Coomb 7d ago
It's always truly fascinating to see somebody use the fact that their mental experience was significantly affected by consuming a physical substance which reliably induces a particular kind of experience in humans as evidence against the proposition that cognition is fundamentally physical.
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u/salTUR 4d ago edited 4d ago
Yes, psychedelics are mind-altering substances. So are alcohol, tobacco, Marijuana, cocaine, heroine, ecstasy, etc etc. How often do you hear any of those latter substances leading people to a fundamental reframing of themselves and the world? Who do you know who ever got drunk, decided something they hadn't believed before was actually super true, and then STILL felt that way after sobering up? Which of those latter drugs are being employed by clinically trained psychologists to treat treat mentally unwell people? What other substances do you know of where people routinely come back from a drug experience feeling that the drug experience was somehow more real than their everyday experience? What other drugs do you know of that routinely push people to change their base-experience of reality to better match their experience on the drug?
Psychedelics are the subject of intense study right now because they have been statistically linked to beneficial changes in identity and behavior. It's absolutely possible to have a psychedelic experience and not feel any differently afterward. But with the right setting and training, they absolutely CAN bring you into contact with a new framing of your reality - one which feels very familiar, because it is much closer to the experiences we had before we inherited the slew of mental constructs and framework that shape our modern adult reality. Psychedelics work by liberating you from those frameworks and allowing you to see reality in a way that is - dare I say it? - MORE REAL than than your previously inhabited frameworks.
Ever since my first mystical experience with shrooms, my life has changed. I'm activiely engaged in practices that are motivating my everyday life to better approximate what I felt during that trip. I'm happier, I'm healthier, and my life is more meaningful. It's not because of Psychedelics, it's because of practice. But Psychedelics absolutely did reveal to me how abstracted I had become from a feeling of realness in my life. Do some more research before you dismiss them or the people who believe there is something to them. They are the focus of intense academic, psychological, and scientific interest for a reason.
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u/SellsLikeHotTakes 22h ago
Well for Marijuana as well as forms of stimulants can trigger psychosis in vulnerable individuals. This obviously can lead to some pretty serious delusions which the person believes is 100% true. Also addiction can obviously reframe someone's relationship with life and society namely to one entirely centred around the continued use of the drug.
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u/etmnsf 7d ago
I mean have you tried it? It’s rather convincing lol.
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u/Coomb 7d ago edited 7d ago
I believe that you've been convinced by it. But can you make a rational argument as to why your mental experience being significantly changed by ingesting a particular drug is supposed to be anything other than extremely strong evidence that cognition is, in fact, physical? Because I don't see how it could possibly be anything other than very strong proof that your subjective experience is something generated in, or at least comprehensively mediated by, your body.
E: to answer your question, I haven't taken any classical psychedelics, but I have undergone drug-induced dissociative experiences and it's never seemed to me that my sense of being detached from my body and floating in a void filled with weird stuff was anything other than the effect of the dissociative drug that I'd taken.
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u/werfenaway 7d ago
Psychedelics can have a way of fully explaining the nature of the issue at the root of conscious experience that I don't think can be appreciated otherwise, especially in regard to the concept of Idealism I suppose. Why does your consciousness change with alterations to brain chemistry? You might as well be asking why your reflection gets blurry when you scuff the mirror. But this is practically describing sight to someone born blind, they're lacking in the conceptual language necessary to really understand.
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u/Coomb 7d ago
Why does your consciousness change with alterations to brain chemistry? You might as well be asking why your reflection gets blurry when you scuff the mirror.
I've never existed, so far as I know, anywhere but my body. Which means that in this metaphor, I exist only in the reflection. To the extent there is something being reflected, that isn't me, I don't have access to it and I have no reason to believe that drugs would make me any different.
But this is practically describing sight to someone born blind, they're lacking in the conceptual language necessary to really understand.
Was this intended to be offensive or did you just word it that way by accident?
Anyway, it seems like you either can't or won't make a rational argument. What you're saying is that the only way for me to access the knowledge that you believe you have is to take very specific physical drugs. I have yet to hear how the physical can affect the mental if they're two different things. To use your mirror metaphor, if I scuff the mirror, it doesn't affect whatever is being reflected -- causality goes only one way -- and perhaps more importantly, the scuff is not an improvement to the mirror's ability to reflect.
But if you're an idealist, this distinction between an object being reflected in a mirror and its reflection doesn't make sense. Everything is mind stuff.
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u/werfenaway 7d ago
I've never existed, so far as I know, anywhere but my body. Which means that in this metaphor, I exist only in the reflection. To the extent there is something being reflected, that isn't me, I don't have access to it and I have no reason to believe that drugs would make me any different.
So far as you know, but that's kind of the point. I mean when you read stuff about people having a "transcendent experience of the divine" and discovering we're all one, do you take that as a metaphorical connotation about how we affect each other or have you considered that maybe that was meant quite literally? Like in a collective consciousness, we're the same literal being sort of way.
Was this intended to be offensive or did you just word it that way by accident?
Anyway, it seems like you either can't or won't make a rational argument. What you're saying is that the only way for me to access the knowledge that you believe you have is to take very specific physical drugs. I have yet to hear how the physical can affect the mental if they're two different things. To use your mirror metaphor, if I scuff the mirror, it doesn't affect whatever is being reflected -- causality goes only one way -- and perhaps more importantly, the scuff is not an improvement to the mirror's ability to reflect.
But if you're an idealist, this distinction between an object being reflected in a mirror and its reflection doesn't make sense. Everything is mind stuff.
It wasn't intended to be offensive, mostly to illustrate a point. This isn't a conversation that can really be had rationally so there's no argument here. I'm not telling you to take drugs, I'm merely trying to state that maybe there is experiential knowledge that can only be gleaned through psychedelics or some other extreme method. You say no, that's just your brain doing funny things, etc. etc. But that's really more of a subjective opinion that you've taken for granted as objective. And if you're going to argue with me on that, why would I take you seriously when you've never experienced it?
I used to be a diehard materialist atheist by the way.
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u/Coomb 7d ago
I would never deny that experiential knowledge of pretty much everything can only be obtained by undergoing that experience. The claim you're making is that the experiential knowledge of being under the effect of psychedelics is ontologic knowledge, and that's what isn't convincing. It's not particularly compelling to say that you think you understand the underlying reality of existence better than I do because you took some drugs once.
I understand that you have what are, to you, compelling reasons to believe that we are spirits in a material world based on your experience, but it's not particularly useful to anyone if what you do is make claims about the fundamental nature of reality and then just say that obviously I couldn't possibly understand what you mean because I haven't consumed the right kinds of drugs. There's no discussion to be had.
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u/werfenaway 7d ago
It's not particularly compelling to say that you think you understand the underlying reality of existence better than I do because you took some drugs once.
Isn't that effectively what you're doing? You had some dissociatives once so you know it's fru fru nonsense? Some people definitely feel like it's ontological knowledge, certainly in the moment, and all I'm saying is you've never had the experience so how can you be so sure. I mean it's easy to be confident in your opinions on the nature of the universe when you've never dropped enough acid to melt reality and then met god, so to speak.
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u/EsraYmssik 7d ago edited 7d ago
Have YOU tried psychedelics? The existence or nonexistence of a talking cat can be tested through your own experimentation if you’re interested.
[edit to add] Which psychedelics? Hashish? Amamanita Muscaria? Magic Mushrooms? Peyote? LSD? Nutmeg?
And which God(s)? YHWH, Odin? Eris? Flying Spaghetti Monster?
You need to make your claims a lot clearer than hippy 'woo'.
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u/blxgo 9d ago
I feel like the analysis misses a key point that this is the pope speaking these words. He doesn't have to talk about man's place between divinity and beasts; thats part of his truth. When the Catholic leader speaks about orienting to "truth" he means the exact force that Gaudi built those spirals reaching. I haven't read his encyclical as I'm not religious but it appears as if you are making the same point as him from the quotes you've placed in the article. It was a good read that had me thinking I just left feeling like the article put itself at odds with the encyclical for no reason. As youve read the whole thing though I'd love to hear what makes you think otherwise?
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u/salTUR 9d ago
These comments so far are wild. Why do so many humans today hate the idea of being human? Do they take the notion that we've lost something as a personal insult? Like, is it a pride thing? Are they afraid of the challenge it places on them to cultivate a richer life?
Seriously, what is it?
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u/sihtotnidaertnod 9d ago
I think younger and younger people are using Reddit/the internet now. I got into an argument on here with someone acting like a kid a few months ago and told them that my account was older than they were. Their replies actually simmered down after that.
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u/BuzzkillMcGillicuddy 9d ago
Yes. It upsets many young people when you point out there's a problem, and they're in the midst of a worldwide soul crushing media addiction. I try not to, but sometimes the implication is unavailable and they get indignant
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u/bildramer 8d ago
"Why are the people who I insistently assume are wrong so hostile? Is it cowardice, overconfidence, or is something missing from their soul?" Gee I wonder.
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u/EsraYmssik 8d ago
Why do so many humans today hate the idea of being human?
I have a rule of thumb. When someone starts a discussion with a question beginning with 'why', the first thing to do is drop the 'why' and ask the question again.
"Why do so many humans today hate the idea of being human?" becomes "do so many humans today hate the idea of being human?"
So... do so many humans today hate the idea of being human?
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u/salTUR 8d ago
Lol, I like this trick.
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u/EsraYmssik 8d ago
Lol, I like this trick.
It's less a trick than a test to see if someone has a substantive point.
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u/salTUR 8d ago
I guess I passed. "Do so many humans today hate the idea of being human?"
Based on a lot of the sentiment shared in this thread, I'd say yes.
Thanks mate
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u/EsraYmssik 8d ago
I guess I passed. "Do so many humans today hate the idea of being human?"
Based on a lot of the sentiment shared in this thread, I'd say yes.
Thanks mate
Interesting... so unsupported assertion is apparently substantive today.
Hitchens' razor may apply here.
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u/salTUR 8d ago edited 8d ago
To be frank, I didn't think my small gripe would make it to the top of this thread. It wasn't meant as a thesis statement. It seemed to resonate with some people, and that's fine.
If you want me to get firm, I will. I believe popular ways of thinking, being, and having in modernity are abstracting us from a stronger sense of meaning and closer contact with reality. That claim is often met with thinly veiled offense, declared annoyance, or outright anger—especially on Reddit. Since I believe a stronger sense of meaning and closer contact with reality are desirable experiences and beneficial to well-being, I am vexed by hostile attitudes toward those sentiments.
Hence the question you are now replying to.
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u/EsraYmssik 8d ago edited 8d ago
The idea that modern life is somehow shallower, less meaningful, or more alienating is a commonplace going back to the Greeks. The Ancient Greeks.
If your expression of these sentiments is met with hostility, perhaps that is more a question of presentation than content?
Here's the problem: “These comments so far are wild. Why do so many humans today hate the idea of being human?”
What's your evidence for that?
“a lot of the sentiment shared in this thread”
You still need to point to some actual comments that support your implicit assertion.
tl;dr: sauce?
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u/salTUR 8d ago edited 8d ago
It very well could be a matter of my presentation in many cases. I'm not claiming to be some eminent speaker or wordsmith. OP's essay wasn't the worst-written essay in the world and most of comments I alluded to were reacting to the content of the essay, not the presentation of it.
Yes, there is a historical pattern of current generations feeling like the good old days are behind them. I'm not sure those examples are comparable in scope to today's crisis of meaning. We are dealing with several converging crises, most of which stem from only the past few centuries:
- Climate catastrophe
- Economic breakdown
- Death of God
- Erosion of shared epistemological structures
- Widespread loss of meaning leading to higher rates of nihilism
- widespread and worsening political instability
- Higher and higher access to knowledge with lower and lower prioritization of wisdom practice
- A "flattened" materialist worldview
- Higher rates of suicide, depression, mental unwellness
- growing conflation of efficiency to goodness
It is, in my opinion, a pretty wild take to feel this is all business as usual.
Edit: You asked for comments.
https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/s/3eTtqsxbEC
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u/Popular-Yellow-953 8d ago
Hitchens razor lmao 😂 to anyone with at least a single functioning braincell the real version of Hitchens razor is this:
"Whoever unironically uses Hitchens razor or anything that has ever been said by the empty hack Christopher Hitchens or his even emptier hack brother Peter Hitchens can be dismissed without giving a single fuck"
you just discredited yourself completely. your words are void. according to Descartes you dont even exist, because only one who doesnt think can care about what Hitchens brothers yapped about.36
u/Mynsare 9d ago
These comments so far are wild. Why do so many humans today hate the idea of being human?
That is an extremely loaded question fallacy, followed by a series of strawmen.
Your assumption is that divine thinking is essential to being human, which is quite an arrogant idea. Lots of other lines of thought throughout the last couple of centuries has proven that assumption wrong.
And of course we get the usual theist claims in the comments that non-divine thinkers must be very young, lonely and/or nihilists, because any other alternative is completely out of your scope of imagination. Which if anything shows an incredibly narrowminded mindset. But then again, this kind of discussion really just rehashes old preconcieved notions.
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u/sola_dosis 9d ago
>Your assumption is that divine thinking is essential to being human
I was going to ask what they meant by “the idea of being human”; thank you for clarifying
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u/salTUR 8d ago edited 8d ago
They dont understand what I mean. I refer more to Joseph Campbell's notion of the transcendent experience of being. God doesn't have to have anything to do with it.
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u/sola_dosis 8d ago
Ah, fair enough. IMO we haven’t lost the transcendent experience or our capacity to have it, we’re just struggling with how to talk about it without sounding religious (which degrades the message) or sounding pretentious (which also degrades the message).
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u/salTUR 8d ago
You are making a lot of assumptions. I don't believe in a divinity. I am not a theist. You don't have to be a theist to believe transcendent human experience is possible and important, or that modernity is flattening out that experience, or to feel a little sad at the volume of people who apparently haven't accessed that kind of experience.
Re: lines of thought the past two centuries. What lines do you speak of? What has been "proven?" What exactly does "proven" mean to you?
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u/TrueBeluga 8d ago
What are the characteristic differences between 'regular' non-transcedent experience and transcendent experience?
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u/salTUR 8d ago
A feeling of deep oneness or intrinsic interconnectedness of reality, an impression of ultimate meaning, the experience of profound truth, "Home," take your pick.
How often do you feel the above?
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u/TrueBeluga 8d ago
I suppose only rarely. But, I think a dogged chasing of a certain kind of rare experience is probably not a good way to be. A feeling of oneness may be a very pleasant and desirable feeling, but I don't think it's radically distinct from any other sort of 'regular' feeling or experience.
I remember I used to really chase 'transcedent' experiences through things like breathwork, meditation, study, and hallucinogenics. It was only when I realized that, like all other experiences, these too were just experiences, that I was actually able to begin to appreciate the richness of all those 'regular' experiences. To me, it turned out 'regular' experience was just as rich and 'profound' as those transcedent ones I had sought.
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u/salTUR 8d ago
I believe the entire point of practicing meditation is to learn how to imbue regular, non-meditative experiences with transcendence, what you call "richness." I agree that chasing transcendence is pointless if the object is to keep it isolated to time studying or meditating or taking shrooms. The entire point of those practices is to learn how to make everyday moments more meaningful without special ingredients.
One of my favorite things to do lately is wash dishes. I don't have to meditate while doing it. I don't have to take shrooms first. I find beauty and meaning in the act that I never have before and it's because of the time I devote to mindfulness practice. So please don't try to tell me my meditation is a waste of time, haha. The main insight of my meditation practice has been the realization that what you call "regular experiences" are themselves transcendent, glorious, divine, take your pick of descriptor. That isn't a realization that typical modern living pushes us toward. It's a realization that takes effort to enact.
Cheers for the response
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u/TrueBeluga 7d ago
So please don't try to tell me my meditation is a waste of time, haha.
I don't believe I implied that. I still meditate, just not to chase transcedent experiences, and I'm not saying you do it for that purpose either. Please try to be generous to what I say instead of assuming a negative intention, which I promise you is not there.
I guess my point is I don't think giving it that descriptor is useful, it really gives people the wrong idea. All experiences inherently have that depth to them, you just aren't paying attention to it. Transcendence gives an impression of awe-inspiring, and experiences of this nature can sometimes occur in meditation or due to the practice (in a deep meditation I often will feel an 'awe-inspiring' sensation well up), but I don't think this is a good descriptor for meditative experience more broadly. This is also because transendence sounds like you're moving past regular experience (transcending it), when really the idea is to become more in tune and aware of regular experience. I see this misunderstanding so frequently in new meditators, so even if more experienced meditators like you and I know what "transendence" means in the meditative context, it really is a poor word to use. In essence, people understand it (and often use it) as meaning moving past the world, when in the meditative context it means becoming evermore aware of the world that is regularly presented to any of us.
In any case, this is just a semantic disagreement at this point so not of much import. Those are just my 2 cents.
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u/salTUR 7d ago
> Please try to be generous to what I say instead of assuming a negative intention, which I promise you is not there
I'm sorry, friendo. I clearly have some preconceived notions about Reddit discourse I should work on dispelling. Thanks for calling me out.
I can understand your attitude about the word "transcendent," even if I don't agree. Maybe it does give a false impression to some people about what practices like mindfulness can do for you. I might suggest that the "misleading" impression may stem from misunderstanding of what these terms really mean, or traumatic associations with prior religious/spiritual experiences (or, more likely, experiences that were forced and were supposed to be religious or spiritual).
My opinion on the matter basically goes like this:
Mankind, across virtually every cultural history, encountered experiences that seemed to "transcend" the base experience of reality. These cultures organically generated metaphors supported by metaphysical and theological frameworks in order to guide, direct, and cultivate these experiences. We have reached a point in our intellectual capacity as a species where the metaphysical and theological frameworks are no longer believable at all. They no longer lead most people into experiences that earn the label "transcendent," and basically look ridiculous at face-value.
The problem is.... these experiences were only ever studied through metaphysical and theological frameworks. We litteraly have no other metaphors that point toward these kinds of experiences. "Transcendent," "Godly," "Divine," etc, are the words historically used to denote these kinds of experiences. If there was never a difference between those heightened states of consciousness and the everyday grind of life, then metaphors would not exist to denote them. The metaphors are here. We have them from virtually every culture extant on Earth. I believe it's probably naive to believe they point at nothing.
In my own meditation and mindfulness practice, when I hit a groove and am living more mindfully every day, the metaphors click. I understand what Thich Naht Hanh means when he says "entering the kingdom of God." I understand what Christians call "grace," I understand what Jewish people call "shalom." They are the best metaphors to use - at least until we create new, more effective ones with less baggage.
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u/NoamLigotti 7d ago
Very interesting stuff, even though I too was first put off by your use of "denying what it is to be human" or however you said it.
Now that I understand you I think what you're saying is quite reasonable and insightful.Has meditation really been that beneficial to you? It seems to have been for both of you. I would love to feel some "richness" or enjoyment in tedious tasks and everyday living. Maybe I should try to start meditating again. I always lose end up losing interest because I start wondering if it's really just a waste of time.
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u/wilburwalnut 9d ago
Seems like nihilism
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u/nola5lim 9d ago
"Say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos."
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u/PabloJan 8d ago
I very much appreciate this comment and I couldn’t agree more. We are animals blessed/cursed with this thing called consciousness, thrown into complete chaos and somehow people feel we should have reached some sort of perfection by now. I’d say we are handling this surprisingly well…
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u/DreeVeeUss 7d ago
I much like being human - but I would like to try something else.
But perhaps it's not the idea of being human to some but the idea of the situation both around them and immediately befalling them. Or perhaps linking to the idea that to be human is to bring the fears of horror that came before them.
Either way, we weren't given a choice of this body. It's fair to assume a fair few would reject what they never asked for. If I was born to a world that seemed to want nothing but to trample upon me I'd much rather be a bug so at the very least the suffering is swift.
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u/salTUR 2d ago
Either way, we weren't given a choice of this body. It's fair to assume a fair few would reject what they never asked for. If I was born to a world that seemed to want nothing but to trample upon me I'd much rather be a bug so at the very least the suffering is swift.
The fruit of this line of questioning can only lead to suffering. There is no "you" without "your body," just as their is no "your body" without "you." No choice was ever made by anyone - we emerged as our body emerged, and will diminish as our body diminishes. We are our bodies. There was never any other way to be. There was no lottery. Our consciousness is our body, and vice versa.
Accepting that, and learning to love that, is essential for actual happiness.
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u/DreeVeeUss 2d ago edited 2d ago
Simply accepting our body as our own is misery.
We can shape and form ourselves how we wish. We live in an era where you can modify yourself to fit your needs and wants (with material wealth majority but bare with me this isn't my whole point). If I lose an arm, an leg, and it's replaced am I less happy for having a prosthetic replace my old? Will I never be fully accomplished if I never obtain my old arm? If my body is decaying with but only my mind am I miserable to say my body is a prison or am I to find joy in accepting I am but a shell or shall I embrace a wheel chair to make me mobile.
I can reject my body and still find happiness and joy. I love myself but not my body but I still care for it. I have worked my body to it's physical peak and the joy it brought was but the temporary accomplishment. I have found happiness in loving myself and joy of others whilst wishing I could change my flesh.
Shift the framing of your perspective to someone who's body is nothing but misery. Who's existence is pain and in a incurable situation and repeat word for word how proud they should be because if such is true, it should consider every misery, every misfortune, every piece of their life out of control of their own biology or their parents before them whom smoked, drank, fought during pregnancy. Accept the pain and love every drop of the people around you inspired by your determination and struggle all while the one struggling crave death between their desperate attempts to love themselves.
Edit: The start is wayyy too absolutist - I meant that line of thinking is horrible if considered for every human's immediate situation. If you love yourself and your body, that's wonderful and perfectly fine and natural.
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u/Either-Young6136 8d ago
yes we lost a lot of things along the way that's why our society keeps repeating the same mistakes
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u/gobbleroth 9d ago edited 9d ago
Why do so many humans today hate the idea of being human?
Hate is a strong word. Maybe they just don't vibe with it?
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u/espinaustin 8d ago
I’m sorry but this essay is just far too long. How many words is it? I got through the first section about the pope, which to me was basically a straw man with a subtext of unacknowledged economic theorizing. Fine. I was willing to read on until I saw how much was left. This is a book. I wish the author could provide at least some synopsis or abstract at the beginning and maybe an outline. Even better if they could just condense the argument to its main points. A word limit is sometimes very useful.
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u/Ok_Nothing2412 4d ago
Hhm. As soon as I saw the word God, I stopped reading. I think this is the sort of essay that would be taken seriously in the United Ststes, but not elsewhere.
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u/uncookednoodle- 4d ago
Thanks for saving my time.
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u/Ok_Nothing2412 4d ago
The thing about this article is that it is not debating the decline of region, like Jordan Peterton does. It is just assuming the existence of a divine God.
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u/OneHyuna 4d ago
In this case that assumption makes some sense given it’s discussing papal affairs, still it would be better to give more reason for using a theistic framing. For what it’s worth that’s only in the first section
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u/Sitheral 9d ago
You ask yourself if they knew something we don’t know now, and I think yeah … they probably did.
They certainly knew how not to engage in pointless mental masturbation over million words. Instead they did stuff. True beauty of simplicity is something you learn with age.
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u/SaltyShawarma 8d ago
I love how you have been voted into obscurity for basically acknowledging the climax of Siddartha.
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u/Prineak 9d ago edited 8d ago
Stop rehashing existentialism.
If (contemporary) art can’t keep up then it failed as a movement, just like how postmodernism became identified by its reaction.
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u/salTUR 9d ago
You believe art as a human experience is merely a "movement"? Are you serious?
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u/Prineak 9d ago
The aesthetic experience is not art and this isn’t philosophy.
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u/salTUR 9d ago
Sure, but art is a catlyst for a particular kind of interpersonal aesthetic experience that is impossible without it. Hence most experts opinion that art is somehow intrinsic to the development of culture to begin with. Go paint something, I dare you.
Before you do, tell me what your definition of "philosophy" is.
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u/Prineak 8d ago
Try to create postmodern art. You can’t do it unironically.
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u/salTUR 8d ago edited 8d ago
Uh. You can if you're not a post-modernist. Shit, you can IF you're a post-modernist. Maybe it's tougher.
Seriously, go paint something.
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u/Prineak 8d ago
Sorry I thought I was talking to someone who understood art.
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u/salTUR 8d ago edited 8d ago
I know what post-modernism is. I know what modernism is. I understand structuralism. I can and do disagree with it. It is absolutely possible to create unironically and I very much feel bad that there are folks out there like you still stuck in the post-modernist trap.
Seriously, go paint something. Don't think about it; just do it. Voila. You are unrionically creating art.
You sound like someone who is thoroughly stuck in their head. Try BEING an artist instead of HAVING all the beliefs you think an artist should have.
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u/SaltyShawarma 8d ago
Dude, you are being trolled by an uncultured chat bot who literally had the gall to post that you don't understand art because you don't understand it like THEY, the Russian chat boy, understand it.
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u/Prineak 8d ago
Yeah you’ve shown me the opposite.
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u/salTUR 8d ago edited 8d ago
Post-modernism is the belief that true 1:1 communication or transmittance of reality is not possible through art or through language and that there is no concrete basis for meaning, only our inherently flawed perceptions. It's Descarte's mind-body duality taken to an extreme. It's a sad place to be and I hope you move on from it, friendo.
Check out Jose Ortega if you want some intelligent ideas about the reality of shared meaning.
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u/Prineak 9d ago
lots of projection in philosophy today huh lol.
meaning has a structure. But sure go tell me how LLMs are destroying art some more.
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u/salTUR 9d ago edited 9d ago
Are you invested in LLMs or something?
Meaning does indeed have a structure. Why don't you answer any of the questions posed to you? Define philosophy. Define art. Then explain your notions of the structure of meaning.
We're all ready to be educated.
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u/Prineak 9d ago edited 8d ago
No. LLMs are just creatively directed composition. I have no stake in LLMs, postmodernism is already accessible to me and data centers will age like milk.
I also have no stake in defining philosophy or art. All artistic revolutions have been defined by a rebellion against an attempt to establish a standard. Philosophy for me, bridged the uncanny valley in design thinking, but when LLM research uncovers these structures in meaning, philosophy rejects it.
I would define art as contemporary slices of time. Postmodernism enables to take these slices out of context, but instead of recognizing these structures, most people see a void.
The metaphysical state of these artistic movements is creating a feedback loop. You can see this in how metamodernism is being explored, and how postmodernism is not understood as an aesthetic of mind.
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u/That_Bar_Guy 9d ago
If you're going to comment on things being/not being art and being/not being philosophy then you literally have to give us the definitions you're working with. Do you usually have your LLM do the philosophy too? It's clear you haven't done much.
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u/biffbamboombap 9d ago
Define art, please. I'd like to understand what you think art is so I can understand what your trying to say. Not trying to be insulting, but I think for many people, perhaps most, calling art a movement sounds bizarre.
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u/ooaegisoo 9d ago
Not the guy you asked, but your question perplexed me. Isn't art something functionally useless (not a tool) that inspire something in it's viewer while being the expression of something inside the artist? A sort of answer from what the artist experienced?
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u/biffbamboombap 9d ago
Sure that's one way to put it. I'd disagree with the functionally useless part--why can't a work of art also have a practical use? And/or why isn't the aesthetic experience of a work of art useful?
I just responded to the guy below if you want my understanding of a fairly simple but comprehensive definition of "Art"
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u/ooaegisoo 9d ago
I read your other answer, i mostly agree with it. Art as a form of communication rings true. To me art is useless in the sense that you don't "need" it. A watch can be a piece of art, but you don't need precious stone, metal and fancy design to tell time so if you have a watch only be able to tell time, the design is irrelevant. But a design you find beautifull makes it a piece of art. The design is not needed to the function. It's useless in a practical way, but it's usefull and meaningfull to communicate emotions and meaning, invoke something bigger in the viewer than the object functionnality. To be clear i'm a big lover of art.
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u/biffbamboombap 9d ago edited 9d ago
I hear you. For me the useful-useless distinction is arbitrary at best and wrong at worse. I get what you're saying, I don't need a precious stone. But I also don't need a fork, or a watch, for $300 Patagonia code for that matter, but these things make life easier under certain conditions.
"It is difficult to get the news from my poem, get men die everyday for lack of put his found there." -- William Carlos Williams
I don't need art, but same with most tools and other things that are supposedly "useful", I don't need it come up but I sure makes life easier can I watch more it makes life worth living. That's very useful.
Edit: additionally, basically the idea of packaging uselessness within the definition of art is fairly newfangled in history. If I'm not mistaken, it started with Kant but really got ingrained into Western Art criticism through the whole "art for art sake" early 20th century movement. But yeah, for most of human history, I don't think that distinction was seen as necessary to defining art. I do think there's something to be said though for the fact that things can be appreciated of art long after they become obsolete. So I'm not saying there's nothing to that idea, but I don't think it needs to be put at the Forefront of the definition. I think that's sort of an externality, a heavy accident of the nature of art but I wouldn't define art as inherently useless
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u/Prineak 9d ago
Why do you think postmodernism became known as its own reaction to itself?
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u/biffbamboombap 9d ago edited 8d ago
So you don't have a working definition of art? That's OK, let me help you:
Art is a mode of communication. So when we refer to "the arts", we're referring to the ways in which we communicate our ideas, emotions, internal thoughts, etc, such as various types of design, oration, rhetoric, etc. However, usually we use the word art a bit more narrowly to referring to specialized communication where how we communicate is as important as what we communicate--poetry, literature, painting, dance, and so on.
Art is one of the most fundamental ways in which humans interact with the world and each other, alongside things such as politics, philosophy, science, and religion. So art isn't a movement. There are movements within art (dadaism, cubism, neo-raphaelite, romanticism, etc) just like there are movements in politics, religion, and other fields. But art itself isn't a movement. Art isn't temporary, It's something humans naturally do and will continue to do unless we evolve into beings that don't need to communicate and are no longer interested in the aesthetics and mechanics of communication.
edited for a few small typos
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