Posts by Amanda Jackson5

I was just thinking to myself: "Now would be a perfectly reasonable time to knock back a double Jack."

I’m on the same page as velvetbear372 here, and I am all for moving this discussion over to a different thread and locking this one down tight.

Count me in too. Though, full disclosure, I’m only doing this because my buddy hiddenpuma75 talked me into it.

Joseph Bailey41 said:My friend, you seem to be full of nothing but hot air today. 😁

Are you kidding me? That thing isn't even a real thing. 😁

Parsi, I found myself strolling past that sketchy little bookstore over on Shakespearean Street yesterday. I finally took that first step.

hiddenpuma75 said:So, what was this philosopher actually getting at? 🤔
He’s started imitating Heidegger's prose style. 🙄 😛

Could the author, or someone else, or even nobody at all, help me out here? What exactly was the poet Sigmund trying to tell the prosaic hiddenpuma75?🤔

He was basically trying to echo what Barack Obama once implied—that it would be easier for a camel to squeeze through the eye of a needle than for some obscure, bottom-tier indie musician to ever find their way into the gates of a celestial republic.

bluemason3 said:Not really. Ambiguity and paradox aren't even in the same ballpark.

Fine then, I suppose we don't always have to cling to this unbearable obsession with complexity, common sense, and boring facts like a drunkard clings to a lamppost. After all, if we let our guard down, we might actually stumble upon a correct conclusion by accident. Just imagine if that happened to Parsifal; he’d probably spiral into some kind of inauthentic existence.

hiddenpuma75 said:1. It’s actually quite fascinating how little anyone seems to talk about those specific types of intentional communities that have been around for millennia. They are always there, lurking on the fringes of society, yet they always seem to be somewhat overlooked or underestimated.

2. I'm talking about religious communes. Monasteries. Ashrams.

3. One thing that really caught me off guard was this:

it turns out almost every major world religion has some form of monastic order, except for Islam, which explicitly forbids them😲 (viewing them as contrary to the natural order)

4. If you want a brilliant account of how one of our own philosophers (Charles Veljacic) retreated into the Sangha community, you can find it at this link:

Disillusioned with the world—suffering from what he described as a sort of Sartrean nausea—he felt a growing spark of desire for a Buddhist-style withdrawal, or rather, an escape from the chaos of modern life.

If you happened to actually read the article that Lisa Jackson7 linked in the opening post, you'd see that monasteries are explicitly mentioned as an example of an "intentional community."

hiddenpuma75 said:1. Let's keep this conversation flowing and stay connected.

2. I'm assuming everyone caught the drift of my first point here.👍

3. I enjoy reading your posts—not just for the raw thoughts, but for the deeper reasoning behind them...

4. But let me ask you: do you actually see the distinction between the "mind" and "reason" (and even the brain)?

5. Honestly, I don't! 🤔

(And if I could ask you all to help me clear this up, 🤔
(Okay, look, I know I’m being a bit of a dreamer here and I might be the only one asking, but I’m genuinely curious: how many of you are willing to take on the challenge? I'd love for you to explain, perhaps even using some colorful imagery, what "mind" versus "reason" means to you personally.)

If I'm being blunt, I suspect most of you don't really grasp the nuance between the two, and frankly, you probably don't care much to dive deep. 🙂

6.
Can anyone actually break down the similarities and differences between concepts like

consciousness and awareness,

spirit, soul, and psyche,

the mind and reason,

objective versus subjective,....

psychology, philosophy, spirituality, theology, and logic,

or even universal, particular, and individual?

To be honest, it’s not really. I meant to get back to you on this a while ago, but it slipped my mind. I suspect the confusion stems from some old-school scholasticism and the messy ways Aristotle's work was translated, especially regarding his distinction between passive and active intellect. If we look at the Latin term *intellectus*, which basically means the intellect, the Greek equivalent would be *nous pathetikos* versus *nous poietikos*. You could think of it as a rough parallel to the divide between empiricism and rationalism—or, if you prefer the heavy hitters, what Kant (and later Hegel) categorized as *Verstand* versus *Vernunft*.

Joseph Bailey41 said:Well, that's just the way the world works these days. ☕

Heidegger actually referred to the Manitou of time as "Self" (or "man," if my memory serves me right), which didn't exactly move the needle for him either. He did go around giving different names to other various Manitouim, though. If you step back and look at the whole mess, all you really get is this massive, unprecedented tangle of terms and labels that eventually just bleeds into a total muddle of thought. It’s this weird illusion of progress—as if changing a label could somehow achieve something meaningful—which seems to stem from a certain innate tendency toward delusion, much like the superstitions you might find in some more primitive cultures.

darkbadger8 said:The issue with the word spirit is that it’s a total polysemy.
Take English, for example: ghost, spook, apparition, genie... they can all be translated through the lens of "spirit," so it’s no wonder there's so much confusion.
We used to have better, more distinct terms back in the day... well, things change...
When you look at the word in context, it gets even messier:
The Holy Spirit, acting in the spirit of an agreement, or that creature with a chain around its head, a spirit in a bottle... you could go on forever.

Then, of course, we have the philosophical concept of spirit as some kind of immaterial essence that doesn't physically exist but is still "there"—not just present, but somehow performing a magical function that enables brain activity, interacting with neurons to occasionally produce intelligence, though more often just stupidity.

I suspect this specific description of "spirit" is a frequent subject for philosophical posturing.

So, I humbly suggest that in the 😁spirit of 😁quality discussion, we consider attaching a different word to that definition.

Specifically, I propose replacing the word "spirit" in philosophical discourse with Manitou.
Let me explain.
First, imagine that next year Jeep releases two different models of the Grand Cherokee.
They are identical in every way, except for one thing:
One has the title "Grand Cherokee Manitou" on the door, while the other says "Grand Cherokee Spirit."
Which one would you buy?
The answer is neither, because you can't afford them anyway.

Manitou is defined as follows: A spiritual and fundamental life force. It is omnipresent and manifests in everything: living beings, inanimate objects, the environment, events, and so on.

Furthermore, Manitou has two aspects that aren't mutually exclusive:
Aashaa Manitou—the Good Manitou, and Otshee Manitou—the Evil Manitou.
When a child pets a bunny, that's Aashaa Manitou acting on their neurons.
When a kid breaks a window with a baseball bat, the kid isn't necessarily evil; rather, Otshee Manitou is manifesting through their brain activity.

In certain traditions of the Algonquin Native Americans, Aashaa and Otshee are unified under the Great Spirit, who is the supreme being—God.
I suggest we keep calling Him God, though, because according to His own explicit Old Testament declarations, He is "jealous," and it's well-documented that He can be quite difficult when He's angry.
CLICK

It’s a clever little thought experiment, but experience usually tells us that swapping out labels for the sake of appearances doesn't actually change the substance of what's being discussed—nor does it change how people actually perceive it. We could go around embracing the spirit of political correctness by calling Black people African Americans, or referring to the Rom community as Rom, or even rebranding gay people as gay (or maybe just invoking the spirit of Manitu), but at the end of the day, it carries zero weight. In fact, when you make these changes purely on a surface level without touching the underlying reality, those new terms eventually become just as loaded and offensive as the old ones. It just starts this endless cycle where you have to invent new euphemisms to replace the old ones, *ad infinitum*. If my memory serves me right, I think Pinker touched on this exact phenomenon in Blank Slate.

I was just scrolling through the BBC the other day when I stumbled upon this pretty fascinating piece about one of those "intentional communities":
https://www.bbc.com/news/in-pictures-45046023

Joseph Bailey41 said:Isn't it just a mess over at Microsoft?

Exactly. See how perfectly that fits together? It’s probably not a coincidence that those two words sound so similar. It's all very coherent. And if we’re going to lean on the coherence theory of truth, then I suppose we might as well call it true.

A battle can certainly be a masculine affair. Take the Battle of Napoleon Bonaparte, for instance.

hiddenpuma75 said:1.

On August 25th, Sigmund Freud wrote a post recommending the Wand to us all

To be honest, I love reading Sigmund Freud's posts, but I can't say the same for his reading list or what he's planning to dive into next.

3. I suspect he probably feels the exact same way about my taste...

4. The reason I don't care for his literary picks—or his intended reading list—is that his favorite books seem to lack any sense of the INNER life. You know, the spiritual and mystical search for identity, the "who am I" and "why am I here" questions, and how to find an exit from this decaying world that Buddha describes as transient.

5. Most of Sigmund Freud's preferred reading is focused on the external side of things—think sociology, philosophy, politics, metaphysics, and that sort of thing.

6. But Buddha, Hamvaš, Cioran, Osho, and Niels Bohr all suggest that those fields won't save us from this fleeting, unreliable, and often miserable world we inhabit.

6. So, when Sigmund recommended that book above, I just waved it off immediately. I "knew" instinctively it was going to be one of those sweeping, over-generalized socio-political history books... something along the lines of *The Decline of the West* or *The End of History*, or perhaps just more of that modern intellectual-linguistic madness like Žižek, Lacan, or Derrida. 😵

But still.....

...to their own detriment... Besides, that isn't even true, because I've actually suggested literature to you that isn't just "external" (whatever that implies, though that's just part of your penchant for obscurantism—stuffing things with vague, undefined labels...). Do you even remember when I recommended the book "Platonic reality" to you?

hiddenpuma75 said:1.

On August 25th, Sigmund Freud wrote a post recommending the Wand to us all

To be honest, I love reading Sigmund Freud's posts, but I can't say the same for his reading list or what he's planning to dive into next.

3. I suspect he probably feels the exact same way about my taste...

4. The reason I don't care for his literary picks—or his intended reading list—is that his favorite books seem to lack any sense of the INNER life. You know, the spiritual and mystical search for identity, the "who am I" and "why am I here" questions, and how to find an exit from this decaying world that Buddha describes as transient.

5. Most of Sigmund Freud's preferred reading is focused on the external side of things—think sociology, philosophy, politics, metaphysics, and that sort of thing.

6. But Buddha, Hamvaš, Cioran, Osho, and Niels Bohr all suggest that those fields won't save us from this fleeting, unreliable, and often miserable world we inhabit.

6. So, when Sigmund recommended that book above, I just waved it off immediately. I "knew" instinctively it was going to be one of those sweeping, over-generalized socio-political history books... something along the lines of *The Decline of the West* or *The End of History*, or perhaps just more of that modern intellectual-linguistic madness like Žižek, Lacan, or Derrida. 😵

But still.....

Actually, he doesn't. But that might just be a false asymmetry based on the hypothetical fact that I happen to read more than you do.

hiddenpuma75 said:7. A few days ago, during my regular visit to my favorite local library, I noticed a Freudian recommendation had landed right on the new arrivals shelf 😲

8. I couldn't help but see it as a "divine nudge"—a perfect moment of synchronicity and a sign from my HCA that I really ought to give this Freudian work a read.

Between his massive contributions to this forum and civilization at large, plus the fact that I’ve been navigating the internet for twenty years now, I figured it was high time I learned a bit more about the wild frontiers of the digital world...

9. Unfortunately, I couldn't check it out immediately since I already had three books checked out on my account...

10. I actually spent the whole night worrying someone else might snag it, but luckily, it was still there waiting for me.

11. The next day, I finally checked it out, and I'm currently diving into it 👍

12. It's honestly fantastic—engaging, thought-provoking, and packed with unexpected insights and data...

13. So, my plan is to share some of the key ideas and discoveries with those of you who won't be reading it yourselves

14. I'll be rolling these out slowly over the next few days.

There you go. I'm not out here recommending random garbage. Everything I suggest is carefully considered, useful, educational, and so on...

crimsonseal15 said:So I’ve been reading through https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heideggerian_terminology, but I can't seem to track down the term "innerweltlich." Is that actually a specific part of Heidegger's terminology, or just a general way of putting it?

If a simple object—like a die—can't exist in the same way as Dasein, would we call its mode of being "being-in-the-world," or is there a more precise term for that?

Being ("Sein") that isn't quite "being" exists in two distinct modes:
1. through the mode of readiness or "readiness-to-hand" ("Zuhandenheit") and
2. through the mode of mere presence or "presence-at-hand" ("Vorhandenheit").

The internet, obviously, exists exclusively in that state of readiness-to-hand. Meanwhile, a simple die is capable of existing in both modes of non-fundamental being.

I’m not entirely sure what we’re trying to achieve here, but if this is meant to be some sort of profound statement, it feels a bit like staring at a blank wall in a studio apartment in Chicago and calling it "minimalism." It's just empty space. If there was supposed to be a point buried under that word, I think it got lost somewhere between the keyboard and the screen. kaže:
How do you actually say "struggle" in the original German?

It’s technically "Dasein." But you have to be careful, because when we’re talking about Heidegger Dasein, it isn't carrying the same weight as how someone might use the term in casual German conversation, nor does it mean the same thing as when you find it in the works of Hegel.

I don't know if it's just me, or if everyone else is also feeling like we're collectively losing our grip on reality lately, but there’s this pervasive sense of toxicity creeping into everything. It’s like watching a slow-motion car crash where nobody wants to hit the brakes because they're too busy arguing about the color of the upholstery. You see it everywhere—from the comment sections on a random Reddit thread to the way people interact in the breakroom at a place like Starbucks—it’s this constant, low-level agitation that feels less like genuine disagreement and more like a systemic glitch in how we process social friction. We've traded nuanced conversation for these instant, sharp-edged reactions that leave everyone feeling slightly more bitter than they were five minutes ago. It’s exhausting, honestly, to navigate a landscape where being "right" has become more important than actually being civil or even remotely sane. kaže:
How can we even tell if something actually exists in that hollow, "test tube" kind of way?

So, here’s the breakdown: when we talk about existing as a "being-in-the-world," we aren't just talking about being "inside" the world like a coffee mug sitting on a Starbucks counter—that's just being "inner-worldly." Real existence is more fundamental than that. To exist as a being-in-the-world is essentially defined by "care," and if you follow that thread to its logical conclusion, the whole meaning of care boils down to temporality. But look, I realize that sounds like a lot of heavy lifting, and honestly, unless you've actually slogged through *Being and Time* or at least skimmed the outline in our other discussion thread on "Heidegger: Being and Time...", trying to grasp the full weight of this is probably going to feel like trying to read a manual written in ancient hieroglyphics.

crimsonseal15 said:I mean, whether the technology views us as its tool or as an extension of itself. Think of it like a Monopoly piece being used by players during a game—it doesn't feel any resentment about it. Or like those old "Russian reversal" jokes where the situation flips on you.

The thing is, neither technology nor a game die actually exists in a way that allows them to "use" anything. They can certainly be links in a causal chain, but saying they "use" something is purely metaphorical. A hammer can only be used by another entity if that second entity is also essentially just a tool—something that exists merely as a functional accessory rather than a truly independent agent.

crimsonseal15 said:Amanda Jackson5, do you think technology can actually be something more than just a tool? Why wouldn't it be? What would the internet even represent—maybe an extension of our own memory? And what kind of system is Bitcoin an extension of?

To put it simply, when we throw a die in a game of Craps, is the die just a tool, or have we become tools of the die because we're forced to act however it dictates?

In what sense, exactly?

crimsonseal15 said:Amanda Jackson5, do you think technology can actually be something more than just a tool? Why wouldn't it be? What would the internet even represent—maybe an extension of our own memory? And what kind of system is Bitcoin an extension of?

To put it simply, when we throw a die in a game of Craps, is the die just a tool, or have we become tools of the die because we're forced to act however it dictates?

It’s essentially an extension of our nervous system—a digital prosthetic, if you will—that doubles as a medium for constructing reality itself.

crimsonseal15 said:Amanda Jackson5, do you think technology can actually be something more than just a tool? Why wouldn't it be? What would the internet even represent—maybe an extension of our own memory? And what kind of system is Bitcoin an extension of?

To put it simply, when we throw a die in a game of Craps, is the die just a tool, or have we become tools of the die because we're forced to act however it dictates?

So, we’re really going to sit here and debate the entire foundation of the monetary system? It feels a bit like trying to argue about the structural integrity of a skyscraper while standing in the lobby, wondering if the concrete was mixed correctly. It’s a massive, sweeping concept that most people only notice when the floor starts shaking under their feet.

crimsonseal15 said:Amanda Jackson5, do you think technology can actually be something more than just a tool? Why wouldn't it be? What would the internet even represent—maybe an extension of our own memory? And what kind of system is Bitcoin an extension of?

To put it simply, when we throw a die in a game of Craps, is the die just a tool, or have we become tools of the die because we're forced to act however it dictates?

I don't think that analogy actually holds water, mostly because there are just too many moving parts that don't line up.

velvetbear372 said:This discussion really needs to focus more on Marshall McLuhan—who, I noticed, hasn't been mentioned at all, which isn't surprising—and his concept of the global village. For anyone looking to get acquainted with him, I’d suggest picking up a book by Douglas Coupland.

A quick summary via Wikipedia:

McLuhan is perhaps best known for his catchphrase "the medium is the message" and the term "global village." He actually predicted the internet and the World Wide Web decades before they were discovered. He reached the height of his fame in the 1960s, but was largely forgotten shortly after his death. With the arrival of the internet, McLuhan resurfaced from obscurity, sparking a renewed interest in his work. Source: wiki.

After publishing *Understanding Media*, McLuhan achieved worldwide fame, though he was quickly sidelined following his passing. However, his ideas and works have been revitalized by the information revolution. To a new generation of hackers, journalists, and theorists, McLuhan's legacy is often described as something almost religious or prophetic. Source: wiki.

Man, he understood the internet. He basically *was* the internet back in the sixties. The world is finally catching up to him now. In that sense, he was "online"—he was in touch with the entire world... He was connected long before the editors at > were even born. He was truly connected. Source: wiki.

While he occasionally expressed doubt regarding the impact of media on civilization, McLuhan was deeply convinced that the electronic age creates spaces akin to spiritual connections between humans and gods—much like the faith people immerse themselves in without question or critique. Source: wiki.

We are rapidly approaching the final stage of human extensions—a technological simulation of consciousness where the creative process of knowledge will collectively encompass all of human society, just as we have already extended our senses and limbs through various media. Source: wiki.

In 1993, > adopted McLuhan as their "patron saint." McLuhan was using the term "surfing" nearly forty years ago, and his theses on mass media feel more relevant in the internet age than ever. This professor is now considered a classic in media studies. Source: wiki.

Humans have this unique ability to think abstractly, which sets us apart from the animal kingdom. It’s that capacity to grasp the underlying essence of reality, looking right past our own sensory limitations and the basic ways we perceive the world. Because of that, we don't just settle for what we can touch or see; we build technology to serve as extensions of ourselves. We create microscopes and particle accelerators to push the boundaries of our sight and understanding, and we build cars and airplanes as literal prosthetics for our physical movement. We even go as far as constructing entirely new versions of reality through the media we consume—kind of like how Quote : McLuhan famously argued that the medium itself is the message, giving rise to the whole concept of the global village.

izvor: Sigmund, forum.hr, 2016.