Posts by Sophia Williams

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So, what was the actual issue here? Who exactly is being offended by beauty???
I'm going to need an explanation...
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Laura Roberts61 said:Hmm, a harlot, you say... my ex—who is now my current partner—actually told me that woman reminds him of me... hmm, I wonder what he really meant by that... the problem is I want to watch it, but I just can't for one reason: NOBODY KNOWS WHERE TO FIND THAT DAMN MOVIE... ARGH... I guess I'll never truly know who I look like...

You look like Pat Veg...?! 👏
And to your boyfriend, I say this— Like father, like son! ...
Well, it has to be available somewhere in Washington, D.C....😎

I'm not sure what the vibe is like over there, but you have to check out this movie—Penélope Cruz is an absolute knockout!
The plot actually holds together quite well, too—it’s not just some mindless softcore flick, there's a touch of "magical realism" involved 😁 😉, but because of beautiful Penélope, the film is definitely worth catching on the big screen or a high-quality Blu-ray...
😎

Gaudrath said:I can hang upside down from the ceiling and I don't have any issues... 😛

Honestly, ceiling lighting is just completely "out"...😉 😁

John Walker74 said:Well, if I'm right-handed, then my right palm should be facing outward—meaning the right palm stays on the left side...
I just don't feel comfortable doing it any other way...😁

🙂?

No, actually—you need to use your left hand to steady that dominant hand... Just to help it settle down, you know?

John Walker74 said:Seriously though—do I really sound like a lefty to you?

I’m a righty, obviously—using my right hand to act, while the left just... receives.😁 😉

I was being quite literal—you have to essentially "disable" your dominant hand, so righties end up resting their left hand against their right palm!
When you mentioned using your right hand for the left, I thought you meant you were neutralizing your more active hand—that's all I meant...
😉 😁

John Walker74 said:And what about you?

I usually make sure to sit properly—very disciplined—😁 though I always keep my spine straight (honestly, I can't even imagine trying to meditate in an armchair)—with my right palm resting over my left...

That is how a Lefty should handle it. 😉 😁

Karen Sanchez19 said:hollowviper72

Why is it impossible to find any actual Transcendental Meditation techniques anywhere—and do written instructions even exist? I suspect... that the teacher plays a massive role in this process...

😁

One doctrine of Mahesh's masters suggests that every Westerner should have their own guru—someone they pay ten percent of their monthly income to in exchange for an "initiation"... which essentially just covers the cost of a personalized mantra and a private lesson on how to meditate...

The science behind TM benefits can actually be explained by entering what’s known as an alpha state of consciousness—essentially a way to "rest while staying awake"... One prerequisite, which someone else here already touched upon, is the reduction of thought—ideally reaching that point where you aren't thinking about anything at all...

Even Fromm pointed out that it’s actually the best remedy for stress...
In the books regarding TM, however—you see—there is all this praise for the volume itself, and of course the mantra and specific techniques... but you really do need a guru...

When it comes to astral projection, you can find plenty of material in works by Crowley or Dion Fortune—and others like them... But they seem to suggest that for a "true" astral experience, one would actually need to be clinically dead "here" just to wander "there"... Otherwise, it’s nothing more than a visualization exercise. Honestly, looking back, both Crowley and Fortune feel a bit unserious to me nowadays...

Honestly, TM is such a solid remedy for stress—just fifteen minutes in the morning and again at night... It’s tough to get moving at first, though—you might find yourself getting frustrated when you just can't seem to quiet that constant mental chatter...

Autogenic training definitely leads to that relaxed state—but there’s a catch—after a while, you can become resistant to those mental images, like feelings of lightness or airy sensations, until they just stop working for you...

Richard Hernandez13 said:Are you studying directing?

I actually thought "Femme Fatale" would appeal more to people who truly understand cinematic language—rather than just the casual crowd...

In my opinion, this is the finest work Brian De Palma has delivered since "Moonstruck"—and it’s fascinating that he actually co-wrote the script, too. It’s honestly a tragedy that a talent of his caliber has to scrape by with projects like "Mission: Impossible" or "Mission to Mars" (seriously, whenever his survival was on the line, the poor guy ended up stuck in some 'mission')...

Is it really possible that I'm the only one on this forum who actually likes "Femme Fatale"?

This is truly a cinematic testament from Brian De Palma. We certainly hope he keeps filming—but this movie is packed with self-references to his entire body of work. Even nods to "Mission: Impossible"...
Sergei Eisenstein would be absolutely thrilled to see his successor.
The film stands as a monument to cinema itself as an art form.
Simply stunning... Raskolnikov...
The sheer dominance of music and editing over dialogue—Brian De Palma has proven here that he alone is capable of being the new Alfred Hitchcock...
It could practically serve as a PhD in film editing...
Brian De Palma acts as a narrator without a script...
Between the dreamlike time jumps and that Freudian obsession with clocks—time always hitting 15:35!—you see the whole history of film, from German Expressionism through the works of Russ and Vsevolod Pudovkin and Sergei Eisenstein, all the way to Hitch and Orson Welles...
What makes the film feel so postmodern and contemporary is its multilingualism—especially in a piece where the voice is secondary to the score and the cuts...
Instead of a "message" 🙂, we get a story—and for the first time from De Palma, one with a happy ending...
🙏

I spend my whole day scrolling through those blonde bombshells—it's quite a distraction...

urbannomad30 said:Come on, please—don't go that far! That comparison just doesn't make any sense at all!
Unless, of course, the cat had been on every known drug before this happened...

This really feels more like a topic for Natural Science...😉 😁

I honestly don't know—I've always been a huge fan of American cinema... but those low-budget B-movies were always just so tedious for me. Even Jarmusch feels dull, and frankly, Tarantino doesn't really do anything for me either...
Now you guys are all jumping down my throat, but hey—that's just how it is...

But this movie? It’s such absolute garbage that even cat vomit would taste better.
And above all, it’s an outright insult to the viewer's intelligence.🙂
If you haven't seen it yet, please—do yourself a favor and skip it.

Sophia Williams
Haha, it could work—though I'm honestly not sure how we'd navigate all those copyright issues. Everything would need a serious polish first...😉

Copyright? Is everyone really out here just copying and pasting everything?😁 😁
Well, if that's the case, let's just call it a bootleg edition then!🙂

obelix said:😲 Did it really end up being that much???😁

Honestly, we should have these kinds of deep—well, maybe slightly controversial—discussions more often...😉

We might even end up writing a book out of it...😁

Could we get an anthology published by Reddit??? 😁 Are there actually any financial terms for something like that?

obelix said:So, there’s this symposium coming up called "PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE: MODERN THEMES AND PERSPECTIVES"—it's being put on by the Library of Congress this Thursday and Friday, November 6th and 7th, right here in Washington, D.C... if anyone's interested, it would be great to attend.

Maybe a few of us could meet up afterward at ☕?

☕
What an idea!😎

adriatic said:For two years now, I’ve been trying—to no avail—to spark a real conversation about art. On the old forum, a moderator just moved my thread over to "General Fun," which really tells you everything you need to know about how people here view art.

So, let’s try leaning on the heavyweights—even if I’m no expert and certainly no devotee of Hegel, one simply can't ignore him:

Hegel argues that ART is actually the lowest manifestation of the absolute spirit—essentially its sensory representation. Religion shows up through preconceptions and feelings, while philosophy uses pure concepts, serving as the most appropriate form for the absolute spirit.

Within art itself, there is a hierarchy ranging from the visual arts, as the lowest forms, up to poetry and music, which sit at the top. If memory serves, Plato held a similar view.
Personally, I find that quite appealing... 😁

But before Hegel, we had Kant, and here is what W. Jerusalem says regarding his work:
Kant taught us that in an aesthetic judgment, "we do not relate a preconception to the object via reason, but rather to the subject through the feeling of pleasure and displeasure." An aesthetic judgment, he claims, isn't a cognitive one; it doesn't highlight any specific attribute of the object, but rather allows the subject to express the feeling that the object awakens within them.
According to Kant, the sense of beauty is distinct from mere pleasure—which is sparked by a pleasant object—and from the joy that accompanies goodness.😉

Heidegger would likely agree with you during the later stages of his career—he eventually turned his focus toward art, specifically poetry. However, much like a comparative linguist, he believed that poetry preserves the ancient, primal meanings of words. He sought out those words and meanings within the poetry of his fellow countrymen, interpreting them through essays however he saw fit.
If we consider the claim that German is the finest language in the world—especially for philosophy—we might feel a bit skeptical about that particular "phase" of his work...

Anyway, back to the idea of POLARITY. It seems like the history of philosophy is just a circular rotation of Platonists and various shades of materialists—whereas in science, ever since Aristotle, things haven't changed much—engineers and theorists have been chipping away at the heliocentric model, much to the horror of the clergy.
Is Geza referring to the SUBJECT-OBJECT POLARITY??🙄

geza said:What even is "positivism"? In the context being used here—referring to some kind of positivism within modern science or contemporary philosophy—it simply doesn't exist. Positivism is a hollow concept... much like the outdated notion of
"dialectical materialism," just more noise lost to the void of human stupidity. True wisdom regarding the whole—which is what philosophy actually is—doesn't recognize any such thing as positivism!
If someone truly believes that philosophy can be broken down into mere branches, sub-fields, or rigid structures, then I wish them a very pleasant journey into the "philosophy of nonsense"—where they can obsess over specific niches or perhaps a structure titled: THE PHILOSOPHY OF GUILT.
I am waiting for someone—perhaps you, Atlantic—to actually begin speaking philosophically about the Whole... say, the totality of the Human Being.

But that is exactly what true philosophy fights for—the INTEGRITY of philosophy itself. It should aim to "embrace" both science and religion (though goodness knows the phenomenologists want this, and I can already see the religious folks cringing)😉 so that all intellectual activity becomes truly INTEGRAL.

That sense of wholeness is the ultimate Holy Grail for any systematic way of thinking about the world.

The legacy of Ojama Macutacu—founder of Kyokushin Karate—and his incredible feats and philosophy...
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I had the honor of meeting John Doe—but he’s the one who invented what you might call "REAL Aikido"...
The focus there is strictly on raw power and practical skills meant for SWAT teams and police units.
All that meditative stuff regarding "chi" or "ki"—the kind they fake in movies like "Beverly Hills ninja" starring the lovely and charming, though sadly departed, Chris Farley—is just pure fiction.
As for myself, I train Kyokushin Kai karate, and the legends surrounding its founder are actually true. Stories about him living solely on fruit and grass under a waterfall, or taking down fifty bulls by hand—well, those are documented facts.
But that style of karate is "hard," so I suspect it wouldn't suit your—if I may guess—gentle nature.
Here, I'll promise to send you Ojama Matsutasu's website just so you can look into it, but following the principle of negative compensation—you know, yin against yang—you probably shouldn't even start with Aikido if you're looking for actual self-defense. You'd just be kidding yourself. Go for something intense instead.

Mind you, this is technically the Spirituality section.
In that case, I recommend:

Tai-chi-kung.

I'll try to find a link. It isn't quite what you're thinking of, like Taoism or anything similar—it's something else entirely, yet deeply spiritual.
There is this concept of prenatal and postnatal qi, which you blend within the diaphragm through specific breathing techniques and exercises that resemble yoga or Taoism; by achieving this "turtle breathing," you essentially rejuvenate yourself and extend your lifespan...
😎 I have it all in a book, but I haven't been able to track down a link just yet... I'll do my best to find it next time. 😎