Posts by ironmarlin1

In this twenty-first century, given how much we've advanced in science and everything we learned from Darwin, trying to claim that altruism is truly selfless feels more like a bit of a collective delusion than anything else. It makes you wonder, though—is being deceptive or dishonest actually considered an altruistic or even a "humane" act? If you ask the humanists and the lifelong altruists, they’d probably tell you that it most certainly is.

We have an absolute surplus of domestic martyrs on our hands, all wearing the Castelli badge. It’s essentially a burgeoning cult where the systematic subjugation of the public is being rebranded through the self-serving pity of a few people who claim to have nothing but "golden hearts." It is pure, unadulterated sentimentality. If we weren't dealing with such blatant emotionalism, these people would actually be hunting for systemic, structural solutions instead of just chasing a fleeting emotional high because they saw some local celebrity in Gloria, Story, or USA Today donating dog food or volunteering at a soup kitchen.

That leaves us staring at the daunting question of whether any common ground can actually exist between us. I mean, how are we supposed to truly grasp what the N. Overman is saying if we have no way to latch onto his thought process—if there’s no shared essence, no underlying idea, or even a flicker of a concept provided by the N. Overman himself to act as a bridge? Or, if we follow the logic of Wittgenstein, how does an N. Overman, who clearly operates within the realm of a private language, manage to make sense of his own internal monologue in the first place?

James Lee77 said:Yeah, so that’s definitely how it works in that tradition, and I think it’s also how we usually use the word "better." I mean, there are probably other ways to use the word besides that moral or "Platonic-Aristotelian" sense, but let me try to explain what I mean by that specific version. Here’s a little intro to Platonic cybernetics—or kind of "cybernetic Platonism," if you want to call it that. 🙂

Take a simple example: "this bread knife is better than that bread knife." What does that even mean? If you say, 1. "it has a higher market value" or 2. "I just like it more" (meaning it's either a social convention or just my own subjective vibe), then in this tradition, those answers are seen as basically sophistry. There's actually a realistic way to answer "what makes this knife better?" It’s because it's more functional. It does what the knife is meant to do more effectively. This knife cuts better than that one—it's like saying this runner is faster than that one. It isn't about my personal opinion, and we don't really have to "agree" on it. It just is: this one is faster, this one cuts better.

If we bring out a few more knives, we can create a hierarchy. Does having that hierarchy mean there's something like an "idea/form (eidos) of a bread knife" at the top? Yeah, pretty much. 😲 If the only variable was, say, cutting speed, there wouldn't even be such a eidos because everyone would just aim for maximum speed, there would be no limit (peras), and so there wouldn't be an eidos. But, once you have two variables that depend on each other, things change. Like, with a kitchen knife, it needs to cut fast, but it also shouldn't be super dangerous for the person using it. So, the sharpness won't be at its absolute max, because that would be too risky. But it won't be minimal either, or you couldn't cut anything. There's a certain value, or a range of values for sharpness, that represents the maximum functionality of that knife—basically, the perfect balance of sharpness relative to cutting power and user safety. You could technically express this with numbers, a formula, or a graph—you know, mathematically. Even if a physical knife with those exact specs doesn't exist, that mathematical maximum of functionality still exists. That is the eidos of a household bread knife.

This makes sense for tools since they have a clear purpose. For any useful object, there’s a realistic—not just conventional or subjective—way to use the word "better." But it's similar with health, where it's not totally obvious if there's a purpose beyond itself. We have a bunch of measurable things (blood pressure, temperature, all those lab results, etc.) that define what being healthy looks like. So, when a value (like your temperature) gets back into the normal range, we say, "you'll feel better soon."

We could list all those variables and say: being healthy means staying within those bounds. So, I guess we could find an ideal functionality, some kind of eidos for living organisms too.Any deviation from that is bad; moving toward that kind of functionality is basically moving toward "better." That eidos exists mathematically, even if there isn't a single actual, living organism out there that fits those parameters.

I guess that’s the most common way people use the word "better"—sort of in terms of being more functional. Plato, obviously, tries to apply a similar logic to every single way we use the word "better."

When it comes to "better" in that specific sense, Nietzsche totally rejects it. Or rather, the only "better" in that context is just "growth," without that growth needing to move toward some peak level of functionality or some eidos (in the sense I mentioned above). My brain immediately jumps to a tumor, but... 🤷

Then again, there are other ways to use "better." I already brought up using "better" for subjective judgment, like saying "this song is better than that one." (That definitely doesn't imply there's some "ideal song" sitting at the top of a hierarchy.) It seems to me that Nietzsche doesn't reject that; if anything, he thinks the Übermensch makes those kinds of personal values universally valid.

Yes, it really does seem that's how Nietzsche views the whole thing. Aristocratic morality is defined by the self; it dictates what is good without ever bowing to some external benchmark. Our tendency to project an outside ''ideal'' or a set of rigid ''criteria'' for the N. Overman to follow is really just a symptom of our own failure—our inability, unlike Nietzsche, to finally break free from the shackles of Platonic categories.

Regarding that second point, I suppose it’s all a bit moot since he eventually turned his back on German music anyway, which makes me wonder if I was even right to suggest he saw any real potential in modern compositions. He essentially argued that Wagner, acting as the quintessential decadent, had poisoned the entire well of music. To be clear, he wasn't necessarily championing the school of thought held by Brahms or Hanslick; rather, he was launching a broadside against the entire musical landscape of his era as a whole.

James Lee77 said:Regarding that first point, I think you’d really dig this article by Barbaric The Coming God (it’s in that essay collection Into an Intermezzo World, published in Washington, D.C., 2010, pp. 141-155.) Basically, he compares how Nietzsche views Dionysus versus how Schelling saw things—like, Schelling was actually talking about the Apollo-Dionysus relationship and the Dionysian roots of tragedy way before Nietzsche did. His main argument is pretty wild: he says Dionysus is essentially the god of the future, but like, in a deep, ontological sense. So, it’s not just some deity showing up later on, but more like this constant, ongoing arrival of what's next. Tragedy itself is always embracing this new future instead of looking for some kind of perfect ending or returning to a state of completion. (I guess that’s probably what Alim means when he talks about "evolution.") According to Schelling, Dionysus as the future eventually finds peace with those old Titan gods from the past, and apparently, Christ is the only one who can actually make that reconciliation happen.

I’ve read the article. Admittedly, I only went through it once without taking any notes, but I believe I've grasped the essence of it. What you’re saying—and what Barbarić argues—regarding Dionysus is spot on. However, what I find truly intriguing is how Nietzsche positions himself as a sort of prophet for Dionysus. To me, that seems to be where his stance becomes somewhat problematic. It feels as though he is personally making promises of a better future, which strikes a curious chord.

At first glance, one might mistake these inquiries for mere homework assignments for a high schooler, though I suspect they actually touch upon much more profound, higher-level complexities.
If there are any members here who have spent some time wading through the works of Nietzsche, I would be deeply interested in hearing your perspectives on a few specific points that I am finding quite difficult to resolve on my own.

My first question concerns the very architecture of Nietzschean expression. To be clear, I am not suggesting that he himself ought to think in a tragic mode while writing about tragedy; rather, I wonder if he has any true justification for promising a new way of living—something akin to his concept of the Übermensch. It strikes me, for instance, that Northrop Frye once structured the Bible as a comedy. In this sense, it functions as a comedy because it lacks a truly tragic hero; following the fall from paradise, there is instead a movement back toward unity. Unlike the figures in Greek tragedy, the characters in the Judeo-Christian tradition aren't met with ultimate doom; there is always a glimmer of hope, a joyful resolution. Yet, what is Nietzsche doing? It seems as though he is attempting to herald a new millennium, much like a Jewish prophet might. Could this perhaps be an ironic maneuver—an attempt to dismantle Christianity by using its own rhetorical tools against it?

The second issue involves his perception of music. Quite early on, in the birth of tragedy, he suggests that modern music possesses superior means for achieving a tragic effect. However, this remains somewhat enigmatic to me. How can we reconcile this with the fact that modern music evolved precisely during an era when musical standards were strictly dictated by external forces, such as the Church or royal courts? Is it even possible for "good" music to exist without being measured against something transcendent or external to itself? Furthermore, weren't both Nietzsche and Wagner operating under a heavy Schopenhauerian influence? Doesn't that imply that, ultimately, Schopenhauer’s philosophy is something fundamentally non-musical?
One could argue that Schopenhauer was the one who finally unlocked the door to musical autonomy. And yet, does Nietzschean philosophy not impose its own set of new criteria upon music? He is famously critical of Wagner, dismissing him as a sort of actor who treats music as a secondary element used merely to underscore his theatrical tics. Perhaps he is right to criticize Wagner for being such a dedicated follower of Schopenhauer, but again, we find ourselves returning to these non-musical metrics.
One might counter that this critique of Wagner—and indeed Nietzsche’s entire body of thought, if we are to label it "philosophy"—actually emerges from the spirit of music itself, rather than from Ideas and so on.

The third point addresses the root of his critique of Christianity. It seems to me that Nietzsche’s opposition to the faith was largely a product of his specific historical context; he viewed Christian moral constraints as obstacles preventing life from adapting to new realities. Specifically, he was reacting to the pressures of the Prussian state, the rise of historicism, and the dominance of science. He saw these developments as symptoms of decadence—typical of an Alexandrian culture filled with hollow rhetoric regarding human dignity or the sanctity of labor. But how did he manage to weave all of this into a singular indictment of Christianity? Isn't the Christian liturgical cycle leading up to Easter exactly the kind of mechanism that should facilitate the renewal he associates with Dionysus (or perhaps he should have linked it to Adonis)? It appears his argument is that what should have been a tragic experience was hijacked to serve the "good news" of a slave morality, creating a closed loop from which there is no escape. But why escape at all? Is it to embrace Nietzsche’s own "good news" of the Übermensch or some new Renaissance? Perhaps it isn't "slave morality" that keeps Alexandrian culture alive, but rather something else entirely—perhaps just the lingering influence of Protestantism?

These are the questions that have been weighing on my mind, and I would dearly love to hear your thoughts or any reflections you might have on these matters.

Jason Gonzalez7 said:That's really interesting; I haven't come across this historical perspective before. Thanks. If you have any reading suggestions along these lines, please let me know...

But what happens when that autonomy clashes with state sovereignty?

I don't find anything wrong with that in a general sense either; I'm just using the term "ideology" here pejoratively, referring to a widespread and uncritically accepted dominant paradigm...

Yeah, consensus as an epistemological trend and the kind of relativism that shapes public opinion by claiming objectivity doesn't exist—it’s most obvious when you see someone leaving comments under an article in The New York Times.

But what's even more interesting is the phenomenon of denying the value of specific actions, events, or opinions. It's just this constant "everything is equally valid" mindset.

What I was getting at was actually inspired by Bernard Williams’ piece, "Tolerating the Intolerable," which appeared in his posthumously published volume, Philosophy as a Humanistic discipline.

But what happens when individual autonomy runs headlong into the sovereignty of the state?

The very essence of a modern state is to safeguard autonomy. Of course, we inevitably run into friction, and the solutions aren't exactly black and white—perhaps it involves evolving our institutions or finding other structural ways to balance the two.

Yes, consensus has essentially become an epistemological fad, fueling a sort of relativism that shapes public opinion by suggesting objectivity doesn't exist—you see this most clearly in the simplest cases, like some guy leaving a comment under an article in The New York Times.

And even more intriguing is this phenomenon where people actively work to deny the valuation of specific events, actions, practices, or opinions. It's this pervasive "everything is equally valid" mindset.

The issue with The New York Times is, unfortunately, baked right into the article itself. Even if we set that aside, I don't think it's accurate to say the general public believes objectivity is a myth. Sure, there are certain trendy ideologies pushing that narrative, but they tend to find their stronghold in subpar academic departments rather than mainstream newsrooms. Most journalistic hacks are far too tethered to their own rigid agendas for that kind of fluidity.
As for relativism itself, the doctrine is fundamentally incoherent, and I believe it’s worth pointing that out repeatedly. When you corner relativists like Richard Rorty or various postmodernists, they usually just try to pivot the conversation, but dismantling relativism is actually quite straightforward. The reason their views gain traction is simply because they feel refreshing when you're stuck in the dogmatic slumber of either standard liberalism or right-wing populism here in the West. However, the occasional valid consequence of relativism is something that can be defended on its own merits, entirely independent of that superficial and fashionable doctrine.

Jason Gonzalez7 said:So, what does tolerance actually mean? For real...

When you look at different ethnic or cultural groups just "tolerating" one another, it feels like everyone is just leaving weapons in their sheds... It’s less about actual integration and more like a frozen cold war where communities stay isolated, harboring mutual resentment while collectively rejecting the culture or the country they moved to. They call it "multiculturalism" and "tolerance," but it really just keeps everyone stuck in a state of permanent, stagnant coexistence without any real change...

What exactly is tolerance if not... Cynical... Giving up on someone else...
In the end, I feel like "progressivism" is really just smothering humanity under a sticky layer of tolerance and relativism... It levels everything out until there’s no will or character left to say: this is good, this is bad, this is right, or this is wrong...

Of course, there will always be different perspectives on certain phenomena and events, but I wonder if this level of fragmentation doesn't eventually erode the very concept of truth itself...

And since truth has become an epistemological consensus, isn't that just a direct liberal concept stemming from anti-structuralism and the '68 era of "progress"? It feels more like a historical and ideological construct than anything else...

People can be anything... they can be better or worse. What about... About the qualifications?...
Does an opinion actually have the right to qualify or rank values...

That kind of openness and humanity is beautiful, but there has to be a limit. Isn't morality itself a boundary? We eventually run into ethics... because opinion leads to... The reality of it...
Black Lives Matter "thinks" certain things, so they "do" certain things.

I agree, though we have to include the possibility of being wrong—both ourselves and others. Having a strong conviction naturally involves defending it.
To me, it feels like this whole "different opinions" cliché actually undermines people of character. It pushes those with actual convictions out of "debates" where everyone supposedly has a right to their opinion, which ends up stripping public discourse of anyone who truly has something meaningful to say...

I'm just wondering why accuracy and morality are being pushed out of conversation, if accuracy is considered "multiple" and morality is "relative"...

True tolerance isn't about finding common ground or actually liking how someone else chooses to live their life; it’s much more about the capacity to disagree—deeply, fundamentally—without feeling the need to step in and fix it. It is the ability to look at a worldview that you find completely objectionable and simply let it exist. That is why I find it so incredibly paradoxical when certain high-strung, pedantic liberals demand tolerance from everyone else as if it were some kind of universal mandate. In reality, what they are actually demanding is a forced consensus; they aren't asking for tolerance, they are essentially demanding that others stop disapproving of their specific set of values. If we want to be intellectually honest, what one can reasonably ask of a neighbor with opposing views isn't their active approval or even their silent agreement, but rather a sense of indifference—a quiet, respectful coexistence where my way doesn't bother you, and your way doesn't dictate mine.

The core of the issue lies in the fact that our modern notions of subjectivity were essentially forged in the West, primarily within the Protestant nations. If you look at the trajectory of social development leading up to the modern era, there are entire epochs that many people simply overlook. Take religious tolerance, for instance—it wasn't just some abstract ideal handed down from on high; it was a hard-won response to the bloody, sectarian religious wars that tore through Europe. However, one cannot simply transplant that specific solution to internal conflicts between different Christian denominations and expect it to work when dealing with large-scale immigration. I’m not suggesting we revert to draconian measures like mass deportations, but rather acknowledging that the exact same sociological formula doesn't necessarily apply to the complexities of newcomers arriving from vastly different cultural backgrounds. So, while you might be onto something regarding how the traditional "formula" of tolerance struggles to hold weight in a multicultural society, we certainly shouldn't dismiss its historical necessity as the vital mechanism that eventually stabilized the fractured landscapes of old Europe.

I found myself circling back to those concepts of subjectivity earlier, mostly because I think we often trip over the supposed contradictions inherent in tolerance. It seems like a paradox, doesn't it? On one hand, you have this tension between respecting an individual's autonomy and your own refusal to endorse their specific viewpoint. If you define tolerance as needing to simultaneously withhold approval while somehow offering recognition or validation, then—strictly speaking—true tolerance becomes a practical impossibility. It’s a logical dead end. However, I suspect we can sidestep this entire headache if we stop viewing it as a contradiction and start seeing it instead as a conflict of competing goods. Think of it this way: when we practice tolerance, we aren't actually agreeing with a position we find objectionable; rather, we are choosing to honor the fundamental autonomy of the person holding that position. In essence, what tolerance truly demands of us is the recognition that upholding human agency is, in itself, a supreme good—one that justifies our decision to disagree.

It is entirely possible to hold the view that one might personally find certain group ideologies or stances completely objectionable, yet simultaneously argue that we shouldn't be reaching for the heavy hand of federal authority to intervene in those matters. One could certainly interpret that specific brand of restraint as a form of tolerance, though I suspect that to truly justify such a limited role for the state, one first needs to embrace a foundational philosophy rooted in autonomy, individual subjectivity, and those kinds of principles.

I really don't see what the fuss is about when it comes to something being both historical and ideological. If you think about it, every single position we hold and every concept we lean on is conditioned by history; they all belong to some overarching ideology, a worldview, or some similar conceptual framework. I’m struggling to wrap my head around what exactly you mean by an "epistemological consensus." Does a consensus necessarily preclude objectivity? Or are you suggesting that a consensus rests solely on arbitrary willpower or perhaps a social contract? I don't think it has to be one or the other, because there are plenty of rationalist theories regarding the will that don't force us to abandon objectivity entirely. In fact, I'd argue it's entirely possible to weave together consensus, volition, and objectivity into a single, coherent thread.

Adam Martin said:I've got my own take on this. Honestly, you just can't write a post as good as mine, so you're acting jealous and trying to gaslight me. I only brought those topics up because the OP mentioned a specific type of political correctness and tolerance that forces people to argue based on current politics. You just aren't thinking deep enough to see that.

People definitely think. It's just that maybe they aren't thinking about the things you think they should be thinking about. But pretty much every solid belief or statement is a formed thought. You might disagree with it or feel it's trivial, but that's totally different from saying people don't think and are just "surviving." You can't survive without thinking.

That Flaubert guy you're into wrote the "Dictionary of Received Ideas," which is basically a catalog of recycled nonsense found at the end of "Bouvard and Pecuchet." Now, are you going to tell me that Bouvard and Pecuchet—who are basically just clueless, ridiculous small-town folks in the book—came up with those ideas themselves? Nope. They just grabbed them, just like we do today. That line about "every formed belief being a formed thought" sounds exactly like something pulled straight from a textbook; it doesn't feel like an original thought to me. And sure, people think when they're surviving—they make choices and weigh options—but they aren't forming real opinions. Doing that requires a level of abstract thinking they just don't need in their day-to-day lives.

That might be true, though I've harbored my own doubts about this for quite some time now, and it isn't just because of this single thread.

Flaubert, whom you seem to admire, actually penned the "Dictionary of Received Ideas"—essentially a lexicon of recycled nonsense. It sits at the conclusion of his novel "Bouvard and Pecuchet." Now, are you honestly going to suggest to me that Bouvard and Pecuchet, those two characters who serve as caricatures of mindless, small-minded mediocrity, arrived at those notions through their own profound intellect? Of course not; they merely absorbed them, much like we all tend to absorb things today. That notion that "every formed conviction or sentence is a formed thought" feels like something pulled straight out of a textbook; it doesn't strike me as the product of any truly unique cognitive journey. And while people certainly think when they are trying to survive—making decisions and weighing options, naturally—they aren't necessarily forging original opinions. For that, one requires a level of abstract reasoning that most people simply don't find necessary in their day-to-day lives.

Borrowing an idea doesn't preclude the act of thinking itself. That's a flawed premise if you ask me. As Hegel once noted, just as no one can eat a meal on your behalf, no one can perform the act of thinking for you.

Adam Martin said:I see what you're doing—trying to tear down any standard for having an opinion, using that whole "opinions are like butts..." line. And honestly, you're spot on.

There’s another messy layer to this. Back in the days of totalitarian regimes, the Party held the monopoly on "correct" thinking. In those dark eras, they had this concept of "self-criticism," where you'd basically have to repent because your views didn't align with the party line. It wasn't some joke; you could end up at Alcatraz or facing an interrogation just for a "verbal offense" until you finally swallowed your pride. This whole system was cooked up during the Inquisition, and even the sacrament of confession is pretty much the same thing. Even Luka Bebić’s quote about defending an opinion different from his own traces back to those vibes.

Things are different now.
Nowadays, people feel forced to repent simply because they disagree with the crowd; they're labeled "unconstructive" just for being different. Nobody actually cares what they think unless they have money to back it up. We don't even hear the opinions of the wealthy, because why would they bother sharing them with us? They're too busy executing their own plans to give us a heads-up.

It’s become more important to parrot someone else's view than to actually have your own.

Why? Because most people aren't really thinking anyway. They've got better things to do than contemplate life. They’ve got shopping to do, or just trying to survive. They care about sex. They're busy testing out new toys. So, the system frees them from the awkward burden of actual thought and the need to have opinions on important stuff—they just need to accept the "alternative" views that are served to them on a silver platter. For example: "I accept that Pride parades are good and necessary. I don't really have a personal take on it, but whatever. I accept a different opinion from my own, which I don't even have." It's way more efficient—no coercion or interrogations required, and the result is basically the same. 😁

This entire thread brings to mind that fat moray eel—but in a completely different sense. It’s all those utterly pointless tangents about politicians drifting into deep philosophical discussions, or being interrupted by tedious news cycles involving Luka Bebić, Pride parades, San Diego, and local eccentricities like Kerum. Or, at least, that’s just my hunch.

People certainly do think, I’ll give them that much. It’s just that, more often than not, they aren't actually dwelling on the things you imagine they are when you're busy theorizing about what's going on inside their heads. It seems like you were about to say something—perhaps a thought that was cut short or an idea that was just beginning to take shape? It feels a bit like standing at the edge of a vast canyon in Arizona, staring into the mist, waiting for the landscape to reveal itself, only to have a sudden gust of wind sweep the view away before you can truly grasp it. If there was a point you were trying to drive home, please, do continue. I’m all ears. Think about it. Almost every conviction we hold, or even just a single sentence we utter, is the byproduct of an actual, structured thought. You might find yourself disagreeing with a particular sentiment, or perhaps you feel it’s trivial and misses the mark entirely, but that is a fundamentally different diagnosis than the claim that people simply aren't thinking—that they are merely "surviving." To suggest that humans are operating on pure instinct alone, devoid of cognitive processing, is a fallacy; after all, true survival would be an impossibility without the capacity to think.

Jason Gonzalez7 said:What does "accepting different opinions" actually mean?

Is it just liberalism, an ideology of tolerance, or simply leveling the playing field in our digital democracy?

What does it truly mean to "accept" something in this context?

And what qualifies as a "different" opinion—does it mean things that look similar but aren't necessarily right or wrong?

Can a "wrong" opinion even be called an opinion?

We could approach this from an epistemological standpoint (though we might just end up going in circles),
we could look at it ethically or religiously (in terms of those core spiritual axioms that exist when two people truly understand one another),
we could tackle it politically, which would probably be most effective...
or we could just look at it through the lens of this forum—I'm sure many of you have been stuck in a debate where someone used this exact cliché to shut things down.

It’s likely just a matter of tolerance. Essentially, you disagree with someone’s take, but you don't go looking to punish them or ban their speech. Let there be a thousand different flowers blooming.

ironmarlin1 said:Well, perhaps. Personally, she isn't really my type.
I neglected to mention that the title of this thread feels like something a complete idiot would post on Facebook. You see those kinds of posts there constantly—just endless streams of them. And then there are the baby pictures. Honestly, I’ve been half-tempted to start jokingly threatening people who post photos of their newborns; you know, telling them I might just have to choke the infant if they dare upload one more picture of it.

Usually, you find things like this over there:

Some particularly dim-witted acquaintance of mine actually "liked" this on Meta:

So, there it is. I was right all along. You people (specifically the ones who kicked off this whole thread) just won't stop bombarding those of us with actual wits (myself included) with this absolute drivel.

The takeaway remains exactly what I stated originally. Regarding that quote from the opening post, my take is that it represents nothing more than the hollow ideology of the Meta generation; the quote itself is merely one symptom of that widespread lunacy.

Keith Lee2 said:Come on, who’s actually fantasizing about the burn of bourbon?🙂
A real man dreams about the heat of being with someone like Angelina Jolie.☕

Well, perhaps. Personally, she isn't really my type.
I neglected to mention that the title of this thread feels like something a complete idiot would post on Facebook. You see those kinds of posts there constantly—just endless streams of them. And then there are the baby pictures. Honestly, I’ve been half-tempted to start jokingly threatening people who post photos of their newborns; you know, telling them I might just have to choke the infant if they dare upload one more picture of it.

Usually, you find things like this over there:

Arthur Barnes said:I was re-reading a column by Darko Macan today, titled as Picasso. He tells this story about how he once settled a bar tab just by sketching something on demand for the waiter—it reminded him of that old anecdote about Picasso paying his restaurant bill with a quick doodle on a napkin. It’s a short read, you can check it out here, though you don't really need to. There's this one quote at the very end that sticks with you:

Believe in everything you want to happen as if it's already yours, because reality is never quite as intense as your imagination. Reality is just imagination, only paler.

(The rest says something about not wanting to hold an ace up your sleeve for everyone we meet, but let's ignore that for now)

Do you guys agree with that? Is imagination actually more vivid than reality? Does it depend on the person? How? And if you actually believed this was true, how would it change the way you live your life? Maybe I posted this in the wrong section... maybe it belongs in Psychology or even the Lifestyle corner 😁, but I couldn't think of a better spot for this thought.

Not really. Since imagination is preoccupied with things that don't actually exist, it carries almost zero weight in the real world—it’s as if the subject matter of our daydreams simply lacks any tangible impact on our physical reality.

Is imagination truly, fundamentally more intense than reality? It’s a question that tends to drift through my mind during those quiet, late-night hours when the world feels a bit too small and a bit too predictable. I often find myself wondering if we aren't all just architects of elaborate, shimmering cathedrals in our minds, only to step out the front door and realize we’re standing in a dusty parking lot in suburban Ohio. There is a certain weightlessness to a thought, an uninhibited freedom where the laws of physics and the tedious constraints of logic simply refuse to apply. In the theater of the mind, you can build entire universes—grand, sweeping epics that make even a Hollywood blockbuster look amateurish by comparison. Reality, by contrast, is often stubbornly granular, composed of nothing more than unpaid bills, lukewarm coffee, and the relentless ticking of a clock. We tend to polish our internal visions until they gleam, while the actual world remains stubbornly unpolished, jagged, and frequently quite underwhelming. Is it possible that our capacity to dream is actually a defense mechanism against the sheer, unvarnished mundanity of being alive?

No, let’s be clear about one thing: imagination isn't like a shot of bourbon. Now, don't get me wrong—real bourbon has that necessary, bone-deep sting that hits you right in the chest. But imagination? It doesn't possess that kind of bite. It lacks the burn.

Does this vary from one individual to another, and if so, in what specific ways? I can't help but wonder about the ripple effects—what kind of implications would such a statement have on one's actual lifestyle or their fundamental outlook on existence if they truly accepted it as truth? I might have wandered into the wrong corner of the forum here; perhaps this belongs under Psychology, or maybe even a Women's Interest thread, or some other niche entirely. 😁I mean, I can’t help but feel like I might have picked a rather questionable corner of the internet to kick off this particular discussion, though I suppose there's no harm in trying.

Well, you could argue that the entire foundation of civic ideology is built upon nothing more than pure imagination. It’s a concept Flaubert explored quite deeply. For instance:

Think of "Bovaryism" as that restless, aching hunger within a person to reach for heights they simply cannot touch—it’s that desperate, constant urge to escape the crushing monotony of everyday life through grand, impossible ambitions. It feels like Flaubert was trying to perform a sort of surgery on both himself and humanity at large, attempting to cure us of our delusions, our naive whims, and those self-imposed laws that lead us astray; he seemed driven by this desire to dismantle that uniquely human impulse toward selfish self-actualization, which, if we're being honest, often comes at everyone else's expense. It all culminates in his own raw, self-revealing cry: "Madame Bovary, that's me!"

To my mind, Emma Bovary serves as this profound, almost aching symbol of sheer human mediocrity—that crushing sense of limitation where one’s internal visions simply refuse to align with reality. It’s that tragic, restless inability to actually manifest who we imagine ourselves to be within the narrow confines of the world we inhabit, a world that rarely offers much room for the grandiosity of the human spirit to truly take root and flourish.

When one considers the tragic trajectory of Emma Bovary, it is impossible not to feel a certain heavy sense of melancholy regarding the sheer weight of her unmet expectations. She wasn't merely a woman chasing whims; she was a soul suffocating under the crushing boredom of provincial life, constantly searching for a cinematic grandeur that simply didn't exist in her small-town reality. It’s much like those modern stories we see where characters chase a hollow version of the "American Dream," thinking that a change in zip code or a flashier lifestyle will suddenly fix a fundamental emptiness within themselves. Flaubert captures this beautifully—and cruelly—by showing how her romanticized visions act as a slow-acting poison. She views her life through a lens of filtered perfection, much like someone scrolling through an endless, curated Instagram feed, forgetting that the reality behind the screen is often just mundane chores and mounting debt. Her descent isn't just about scandalous affairs; it’s about the devastating gap between who we imagine ourselves to be and the quiet, unglamorous truth of our daily existence. It makes you wonder how many people around us are living out their own silent, desperate dramas, fueled by the same misguided hope that life should always feel like a grand novel.

lonegardener said:Yes, for me personally, reflecting on the limits of one's own understanding 😕 intuitively generates all sorts of paradoxes in my head; it seems to me that he is far too "comfortable" with that situation. Whereas I am not comfortable with it at all—quite the opposite. The only thing we share is the recognition that those limitations exist.

Anyway, it reminds me a bit of Harris's philosophy. Essentially, Chomsky argues that while we have limits and can't be certain about how the "mind" works, we also know nothing about what "matter" actually is. The layperson's assumption of what "matter" is has been completely shattered by quantum mechanics (though, from this lecture, I didn't quite notice if that started back with Newton, because as Chomsky points out, you learn it in school and take it for granted, even though it's counterintuitive. So yeah, the idea of a "graviton" felt totally intuitive to me 😬 just like it would to any young kid. 🤣)

And Sam Harris makes a similar claim regarding "morality": that we can't be certain about morality, just as we can't be certain about physical facts; so, where is the difference?

Still, I see a distinction, or at least I think I do—regarding the question posed by this student (or whoever she is)—which Chomsky doesn't even seem to have grasped. 😍

There is something paradoxical to me when the mind reasons about its own intellect, or when a moral subject moralizes about their own morality—it's as if my brain ties itself in knots at those points. 😬

Oh, absolutely—you’re thinking of that book by Douglas Hofstadter. I Am a Strange Loop I haven't gotten around to reading that one yet, but from what I gather, it deals with exactly those kinds of phenomena.

If you’ve been paying close attention, you'll notice that Chomsky tends to lean heavily on Descartes, Hume, and Locke. He’s clearly a devotee of Enlightenment thought and that whole concept of humanity possessing a fundamental "nature." To be fair, that idea has remained remarkably relevant since those days. In a certain light, he isn't wrong. However, just because we use the word doesn't mean we can simply conflate human nature with the kind of physical nature studied in the hard sciences through a bit of lazy equivocation.

I think I’ll find myself quoting Collingwood from... The Idea of History I decided to go a bit more in-depth here, mainly because I think it provides a much clearer overview of the core concept:

I’ve previously argued that Hume's assault on spiritual substance served as the true philosophical precursor to scientific history, primarily because it effectively dismantled those final, lingering traces of substantialism inherited from Greco-Roman thought. Back in section eight, I attempted to demonstrate how Locke and his circle were inadvertently pivoting the entire trajectory of philosophy toward the study of history, even if they hadn't quite realized they were steering the ship in that direction. What ultimately stalled eighteenth-century history from truly evolving into a scientific discipline—preventing it from finally harvesting the ripe fruits of the broader philosophical revolution—was this subtle, overlooked remnant of substantialism that still lingered within the Enlightenment’s ambitious attempt to craft a science of human nature. It’s a bit like how the ancient historians viewed the Roman character; they treated it as this perennial essence that didn't actually "emerge" through time, but rather existed as a constant, unchanging fixture. Similarly, the historians of the eighteenth century, despite their progressive realization that all genuine history is essentially the history of humanity, fell into the trap of assuming that human nature had remained perfectly intact since the dawn of creation, existing just as it did in their own era. They were still viewing human nature through a substantialist lens—as this fixed, immutable bedrock that sits beneath the shifting tides of historical change and the vast spectrum of human activity. In their view, while history itself might never repeat its specific patterns, the fundamental essence of being human remained eternally, stubbornly unaltered.

We see this underlying premise popping up in Montesquieu, of course, but it really serves as the bedrock for almost the entire philosophical landscape of the eighteenth century, stretching back even further than that. Think about it: The Cartesian innate ideas ara The ways of thinking which ara Natural to The human mind as such , everywhere and always. Then you have The Lockean view of human understanding, which operates on the assumption that the faculty is universal—it’s just that it hasn't quite fully blossomed yet in children, those with cognitive impairments, or people living in more primitive societies. Even when we look at the heavy hitters, like how The Kantian mind which as intuition is The source of space and time , as Understanding The source of The categories , and as reason The source of The Ideas of god , freedom, and immortality, is framed as a uniquely human construct, there is this unspoken leap. Kant essentially takes it for granted that this specific architecture is the only way a human mind can possibly function, now or ever. It’s a massive, unexamined assumption. And honestly, it’s so pervasive that even a skeptic as profound as Hume doesn't seem to escape it, a point I've touched upon before. In The Introduction to his Treatise of human Nature He expla... When I find myself wandering back through the dense, winding thickets of the *Treatise of Human Nature*, I’m often struck by how much we overlook the sheer weight of its implications. It isn't just a dusty relic of old philosophy; it’s a fundamental pivot point. I’ve often pointed out that Hume's attack on spiritual substance was The philosophical forerunner of scientific history because IT destroyed The Last vestiges of The substantialism in Greco-Roman thought. It was this specific intellectual demolition that cleared the path for everything that followed. You see, what prevented eighteenth-century history from becoming truly scientific—from actually reaping The full fruits of The philosophical revolution—was this subtle, almost invisible Relic of substantialism that remained tucked away inside The Enlightenment's quest for a science of human Nature. People wanted to study us, sure, but they were still clinging to the idea that there was some fixed, unchanging core to our being. They were trying to build a modern house on top of ancient foundations that were already crumbling. Back then, human Nature was conceived substantialistically as something static and permanent, an unvarying substratum underlying The course of historical changes and All human activities. It was like trying to map the ocean while assuming the water itself was made of solid granite. They couldn't grasp that the "self" wasn't a heavy, permanent anchor, but rather something far more fluid. It’s a fascinating tension. We move from the notion of The Cartesian innate ideas ara The ways of thinking which ara Natural to The human mind as such, everywhere and always, toward something much more fragmented and complex. Even when you look at The Lockean traditions or the massive scaffolding of The Kantian mind which as intuition is The source of space and time, as Understanding The source of The categories, and as reason The source of The Ideas of god, there is always this struggle to reconcile the perceived stability of the soul with the chaotic reality of experience. In the end, reading him is like watching a master architect dismantle a cathedral just to show you that the ground beneath it was shifting all along. He lays out the core objective of his entire life's work by suggesting that all scientific disciplines, regardless of how specialized they might feel, maintain some degree of connection to the essence of human nature. Even if a field seems to veer wildly off into its own niche, it eventually loops back around through one avenue or another. It’s almost like a cosmic orbit—no matter how far you think you've traveled away from the center, the gravity of our own fundamental nature eventually pulls the trajectory right back home. When one begins to peel back the layers of mathematics and natural philosophy, it feels less like studying dry equations and more like tracing the very nervous system of reality itself. There is this profound, almost dizzying sense that we aren't just calculating numbers on a page, but rather attempting to eavesdrop on the fundamental logic that keeps the stars in their orbits and the tides pulling against the shore. It’s a pursuit that sits right at the intersection of pure, abstract thought and the gritty, physical mechanics of the universe—a bridge built from logic that spans the gap between what we can perceive with our eyes and what we can only grasp through the sheer force of intellect., and When we sit down to untangle the messy, beautiful knot that is "Natural Religion," I find myself drifting back to those old debates about whether we can actually grasp the divine through nothing more than our own senses and logic. It’s a heavy topic, isn't it? One that feels both incredibly ancient and strangely modern, depending on how much coffee you've had. I often think about how we try to bridge that gap between the observable world—the physics we can measure and the biology we can map—and that elusive sense of something greater. There's this persistent tension between what we see in the mechanics of the universe and the intuitive pull toward a higher purpose. It reminds me of those long, winding discussions one might have over a quiet evening in a small New England town, where the silence of the woods seems to demand an explanation for its own existence. In many ways, the attempt to find God through nature alone is like trying to understand the ocean by studying a single seashell; you can learn so much about the tides, the salt, and the currents, but there’s always that overwhelming feeling that the vastness itself is telling a story your hands can't quite touch. We look at the intricate clockwork of the cosmos—much like the precision found in a high-end Swiss watch or even the complex systems we study in modern American engineering—and we wonder if there's a Designer behind the gears, or if the gears simply exist because they must. It’s a pursuit that sits right at the intersection of faith and reason, a place where the intellect tries to build a ladder to the heavens using only the rungs of empirical evidence. Whether that ladder holds or collapses under the weight of our skepticism is perhaps the most enduring question of the human experience.' (i.e. the three Cartesian sciences, mathematics, physics, and metaphysics) 'are in some measure dependent on the science of MAN: since they lie under the cognizance of men, and are judged of by their powers and faculties'. Consequently the 'science of man', that is, the science which investigates the 'principles and operations of our reasoning faculty', 'our tastes and sentiments', and 'men as united in society', is 'the only solid foundation for all the other sciences'.

Throughout this entire endeavor, Hume never seems to harbor even a glimmer of doubt that the human nature he’s dissecting within his philosophical framework is specifically the nature of a Westerner in the early 1700s—and that if this same project had been tackled in a vastly different era or a different corner of the globe, the conclusions might have looked entirely different. He operates under the persistent assumption that our capacity for reason, our specific sensibilities, and our emotional leanings are essentially static and immutable, serving as a fixed substrate that conditions all historical shifts. As I’ve mentioned before, his critique of spiritual substance should have, in theory, dismantled this notion of human nature being something rigid and perennial; yet, it failed to do so. Why? Because instead of spiritual substance, Hume simply installed the idea of fixed tendencies to link ideas together, and these "laws of association" were just as inflexible and eternal as any traditional substance.
Hume’s dismantling of spiritual substance essentially boiled down to the principle that we shouldn't divorce what a mind *is* from what a mind *does*. In his view, the essence of a mind is nothing more than its patterns of thought and action. Thus, the old concept of mental substance was effectively traded in for the concept of mental process. However, this didn't inherently pave the way for a historical understanding of the mind, primarily because not every process is a historical one. A process only becomes historical when it begins to generate its own internal logic; but according to Hume’s mechanics of the mind, these psychological laws are pre-packaged and unchangeable from the get-go. He didn't envision the mind as a system that learns to think or behave in novel ways as its activities evolve. While he surely believed that a successful science of human nature would spark progress in both the arts and sciences, he didn't believe it would happen by transforming human nature itself—he never even hinted that such a transformation was possible—but merely by sharpening our grasp of it.

From a purely philosophical standpoint, this perspective was riddled with contradictions. Think about it: if the thing we are striving to understand is something external to us—say, the chemical makeup of a compound—then gaining a deeper understanding of it doesn't actually change the substance of the compound itself. But if, conversely, the thing we are studying is our own capacity for comprehension, then advancing that science improves both the subject and the observer simultaneously. By refining our thoughts regarding the human intellect, we are, in effect, refining the intellect itself. Therefore, the historical evolution of the science of human nature necessitates a corresponding historical evolution in human nature itself. This crucial distinction was overlooked by Enlightenment thinkers because they modeled their pursuit of a psychology on the physical sciences, failing to see that the two aren't actually perfect parallels. Figures like Bacon had noted that mastering the laws of nature grants us greater dominion over it, which is undeniably true. Take coal tar, for instance: once we decode its chemistry, it stops being mere waste and transforms into a vital resource for dyes and resins, but those breakthroughs don't change the fundamental nature of the tar. Nature remains indifferent; it stays exactly what it is regardless of our level of insight. To frame this in Berkeleyan terms, it is God's thought, not ours, that defines reality; when we study nature, we aren't inventing anything new, we're just attempting to retrace God's own mental steps. The philosophers of the eighteenth century mistakenly assumed these same rules applied to the human mind—which they labeled "human nature" precisely to emphasize how much it resembled the physical world. They viewed human nature as a fixed entity that remains untouched by knowledge, behaving just like the physical world stays put.

Honestly, this reminds me somewhat of that particular brand of philosophy championed by Sam Harris. It’s as if he’s arguing that since we have inherent limitations—since we can't truly claim to grasp the inner workings of the 'mind'—well, we don't even know what 'matter' actually is, either. That secular assumption of what constitutes 'matter' has been utterly shattered by quantum mechanics. Though, to be fair, I didn't quite realize that this unraveling actually began back with Newton; much like how Chomsky points out, you learn these things in school and just accept them as common sense, even when they are wildly counterintuitive. For instance, the whole concept of a 'graviton' felt perfectly intuitive to me 😬 just like it would to any young child. 🤣

It feels as though he believes that if you simply fuse two different types of magic together—modern physics and modern conceptions of the mind—a solution will magically manifest from the collision.

And Sam Harris makes a similar claim regarding 'morality': that we cannot be certain about morality, but then again, we can't be certain about physical facts either; so, where is the distinction?

Yet, I do see a difference—or at least, I feel I do—regarding the question posed by this student (or whoever she is) that Chomsky seems to have missed entirely. 😍

Exactly; it's a philosophy built upon the erasure of distinctions rather than an attempt to explain them. Chomsky was referencing Libet's research, which, as he himself noted, says very little about actual human free will—especially given the temporal aspects of how decisions are made—but he failed to see how this strikes at the very heart of his own "theory."

There is something deeply paradoxical to me when the mind attempts to reason about its own cognition, or when a moral agent tries to moralize about their own morality—it's the kind of thought that makes my brain feel like it's tying itself into knots. 😬

Thomas Mann used to call that "nature probing itself." 😍
He suggested that, fundamentally, life cannot listen to itself; nature cannot fully translate itself into pure cognition. 🙂

To build on that point about doing "harm to the natural sciences"—if you look closely, his entire lecture seems to be an attempt to shift away from that old-school, mechanistic view of how things are intelligible in the first place. It’s clearly his way of trying to prevent any actual "damage" to the scientific field. But, if I may, it feels like he's presenting a false dichotomy here. He acts as though those are our only two paths, but they aren't the only alternatives available to us. We don't have to be stuck choosing between res cogitans and res extensa, if we're going by the logic of Descartes; instead, we could take what we now understand about res extensa and use it to demonstrate that these two realms aren't nearly as distinct as they appear.

That was a fascinating lecture. Thanks for sharing the link.

Now, I can’t say I entirely agree with the premise here. I’m familiar with his argument—the idea that the mind should be studied with the same rigor as any other branch of the natural sciences—but I find myself pushing back. He speaks as if thought were merely a "secretion" of the mind, which would imply it functions much like a gland or some other biological mechanism. But there's a fundamental hitch in that logic: we can objectively observe physical secretions. Meanings and thoughts, however, don't play by those rules; they shift and take on entirely different roles depending on who is doing the thinking. Furthermore, while we can argue that physical secretions possess objective properties that exist regardless of our immediate needs or shifting beliefs, it’s far less certain that a thought holds a fixed meaning independent of the person experiencing it. One could attempt to argue this from a standpoint of idealism, perhaps, but that seems to fly directly in the face of the very natural science he’s trying to champion.

Gary Carter said:I am no Rousseau. Which, I suppose, implies he proved that honesty is a virtue in a society that actually values things.😁

I have to admit, I’m struggling to wrap my head around that last sentence of yours. Equal value regarding which specific things, exactly? If we look at the historical context, Rousseau essentially retreated to the countryside because the urban crowds simply couldn't stand him. His tendency to elevate sincerity to the status of a supreme virtue is precisely what drove him to pen his famous Confessions, where he pledged to be brutally honest about the pivotal moments of his life. He operated under this assumption that he was merely misunderstood because he refused to bend to the collective whims or opinions others held of him—which, if you think about it, is just another hallmark of that very same sincerity. At the same time, he championed honesty as a moral pillar. The reality is that people found him insufferable because his insistence on sincerity made it appear as though he were constantly trying to claim a sort of moral high ground, acting as if being "true to his heart" somehow made him superior to everyone else. It reminds me of how Diderot once gave him a sharp rebuttal (in the original French, of course): "Look into your heart, and it will tell you that the good man is in society, and that the bad man is alone."

If I may, I’d like to circle back to a misconception you touched upon earlier regarding the idea that an honest person always voices their opinion. You see, when someone speaks honestly, they aren't necessarily expressing a permanent, unchanging disposition; rather, they are simply stating what they believe to be appropriate or true in that fleeting moment when the question is posed. There is a massive distinction there. This is precisely why a truly honest person often fails to recognize their own statement about having a "permanent disposition" as a virtue. Of course, they *can* perceive it that way, but more often than not, they are simply kidding themselves.

Gary Carter said:That seems to be a trait shared by everyone on the planet, not just the "honest" ones. So, what’s the point? 🙂

The real question we should be wrestling with is whether honesty is actually a virtue at all. Personally, I’d argue it isn't—certainly not when there's an alternative that carries far more weight. There is a profound difference between being a walking open book and simply knowing how to say the right thing at the precisely right moment; the latter is much more valuable than performing transparency for the sake of it. It’s the kind of nuance that explains why Rousseau eventually decided to just pack up and head out to the countryside to live a simpler life.