Slavery is Freedom

[Sunstone]

I agree.
It raises the question though do we understand what we consciously think?

Excellent question! What does it mean to understand something?

In the field of consciousness, understanding is relational. We understand "A" to the extent that we have drawn a relationship between "A" and "B", "C", etc. So all conscious understanding is based on relationships. For instance, we don't consciously understand what the cross means in Christianity until we have related the cross to various thoughts or ideas.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

They are made of symbols (of which words are one type). Gadamer hadn't read Temple Grandin.

He may have read it - he did read a lot. I'm still working on him... I didn't think that he ascribed to the word-sign theory, but artistic thinking (which I consider to be non-verbal) and plenary thinking are definately linked in his etemology.

 

[doppelganger]

He may have read it - he did read a lot. I'm still working on him... I didn't think that he ascribed to the word-sign theory, but artistic thinking (which I consider to be non-verbal) and plenary thinking are definately linked in his etemology.

Temple Grandin is alive and writing today. She's a professor at Colorado State University with autism, who studies the way in which animals "think." She's made contributions to biology, neurology and philosophy- her biggest contributions are in the area of designing more humane methods for storing and slaughtering food animals. In her book, Thinking In Pictures, she describes how "language is my second language."

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Temple Grandin is alive and writing today. She's a professor at Colorado State University with autism, who studies the way in which animals "think." She's made contributions to biology, neurology and philosophy- her biggest contributions are in the area of designing more humane methods for storing and slaughtering food animals. In her book, Thinking In Pictures, she describes how "language is my second language."

Gadamer is recently deceased. The man was working after he turned 100. I thought he died in 2005, but the all-knowing wiki places his death in 2002.

Observe the overlap:

Hans-Georg Gadamer (IPA: [ˈgaːdamɐ]; February 11, 1900 – March 13, 2002) was a German philosopher best known for his 1960 magnum opus, Truth and Method (Wahrheit und Methode).

Martin Heidegger (September 26, 1889 – May 26, 1976) (pronounced [ˈmaʀtɪn ˈhaɪdəgɐ]) was an influential German philosopher. His best known work is Being and Time.

Wilhelm Dilthey (IPA: [ˈdɪltaɪ]; November 19, 1833 – October 1, 1911) was a German historian, psychologist, sociologist, student of hermeneutics, and philosopher.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (IPA: [ˈgeɔʁk ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈhegəl]) (August 27, 1770 – November 14, 1831) was a German philosopher and, with Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, one of the representatives of German idealism.

Immanuel Kant (22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was an 18th-century German philosopher from the Prussian city of Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia). He is regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of modern Europe and of the late Enlightenment.

 

[doppelganger]

Gadamer is recently deceased. The man was working after he turned 100. I thought he died in 2005, but the all-knowing wiki places his death in 2002.

I only know him for Truth and Method. I never imagined he was still around so recently. Thanks.

 

[doppelganger]

Observe the overlap:

Apostolic succession?

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Apostolic succession?

I'm a part of it, baby!

:beach:

 

[angellous_evangellous]

I only know him for Truth and Method. I never imagined he was still around so recently. Thanks.

You're welcome. Gadamer's favorite form of teaching and thinking is the Socratic conversation... there are books published in 2000-4 with him just talking with other scholars. Conversations with Gadamer... and such. Excellent works.

 

[doppelganger]

I would argue that what constitutes a "need" is also malleable, and that conspicuous consumption creates an expectation level rendering most people as living in poverty while at the same time creating yet another way (in addition to war) to create unnecessary goods and use up surplus labor while at the same time creating the aura of entertainment necessary to placate the masses. Being in debt in a society where status and identity is based on one's ability to consume unnecessary goods creates an independent "end of the world" hysteria where one's employment is the difference between being a participant in that society whose presence is recognized as valuable based on what he owns, and being excluded from the fruits of that society and left, like the injured wildebeest, to protect itself and its offspring from predators as the herd moves on.

Consumerism creates a particularly useful form of hysteria.

Is consumerism a soul-consuming beast?

 

[Guitar's Cry]

Is consumerism a soul-consuming beast?

I finally got around to reading 1984...

What strikes me about the sentence is the way it relates to the position of big business in the modern world and the political idealism of global free trade.

The Party exists as a way of maintaining a clear class order indefinitely, and it does so through the various methods discussed here; and in particular, the war state of an economy that is controlled exclusively by a shadowy, only half-realized political entity.

Our economy thrives off something similar. The Coke and Pepsi war is just as potent as the Oceanic and Eurasia war. Procter and Gamble and Johnson and Johnson are another form of Ingsoc and Neo-Bolshevism. Synergy and proactive are essentially Newspeak words.

And with the free-press no longer free, and advertisements filling our waking life, and the telescreen...I mean, television is central to our lives, it's hard to believe that this was written in 1949.

Prophetic indeed.

 

[Beaudreaux]

This is the last post in my series on George Orwell's brilliant novel 1984. The title of this post is one of three tautologies that are the foundation of the "Party" that rules inviduals in their private and public lives. The text I want to look at is not from the novel itself, but from the Afterword, written by reknowned philosopher and psychologist Eric Fromm in the "Signet Classics" edition of 1984:

What do you think of Fromm's assessment of Western and American culture? Do we delude ourselves into thinking that the presence of materialist choices equates to indivualism, initiative and idealism in a bureaucratic world of religious and poltical dogmas? What of the endless barrage of commerce driven "art" (apologies to PureX), assaulting us at all times with slogans and images designed to rework our notions of who we fundametally think we are?

How much is materialism and the onslaught of brand-driven Western socieaty mitigated by the forms of religion and spirituality that predominate in Western societies? Or have they largely become another aspect of the same commercial machinery?

What is individualism? What is its value you to? How is one an individual?

Like so many others, I had become a slave to the lkea nesting instinct. - Anything clever, like a coffee table in the shape of a yin-yang, I had to have it. The Klipsk personal office unit. The Hovetrekke home exerbike. Or the Ohamshab sofa with the Strinne green stripe pattern. Even the Ryslampa wire lamps of environmentally-friendly unbleached paper. I'd flip through catalogues and wonder "What kind of dining set defines me as a person?" I had it all. Even the glass dishes with tiny bubbles and imperfections, proof that they were crafted by the honest, hard-working, indigenous peoples of......wherever.

 

[linwood]

I first read 1984 when I was in junior high school and quite honestly was not knowledgeable enough about the world I lived in to truly understand he had written an analogy about communist socialism.
I didn`t even really know what socialism was at the time.
I re-read it a couple of years ago and never did the paralell with the USSR pop into my head.
Instead I kept seeing his symbolism as analogous to my own culture here in the USA in almost every concept.

Fromm`ss assessment is right on from my perspective.

What is individualism? What is its value you to? How is one an individual?

Individualism is being the oddball, the societal misfit who sees through much of the "doublespeak" we`re fed on a daily basis.

I know a few of these people and while I don`t agree with their point of view always I do respect the fact that they ain`t drinkin` the kool-aid.

It is so valuable to me that I`m raising my child intentionally to be one of these odd-balls.
In doing so I know I`m almost certainly guaranteeing her life is more difficult than it has to be.
I have seen however that a life lived outside the box is the best way to live it to the fullest