metonymy4u

The Lacanian post-modern, post-structuralist project strikes me as very Nietzschian in the end, to the extent that they wish to re-cover the mysteries of life as an antidote to modern day nihilism and exploitation. However, i’m not so sure that Nietzsche’s solutions are either 1) viable (can we truly re-invent god after his death?) or 2) all that useful (does it not perpetuate nihilism to try to draw the covers back over the world – to re-submerge it in a medieval obscurity?).

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Part of the problem is that we still separate the mind from the body.

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Emotional pain is often stigmatized in our culture. It is seen as something that is just “in your head,” and conveniently dismissed. So tell me, if you can, is there any pain that isn’t “in your head?” If you cut your finger, does your finger feel the pain or does your brain? If you block all the connections between your brain and your finger (with local anesthetic, for example) does your finger still feel the pain? Of course not. So why is it so surprising to us that pain of any kind should be felt “in your head?” And yet when the pain is in the finger in your head, we don’t assume that it isn’t real do we? Why then assume that the pain that is in your broken heart in your head is any less real?

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They say that the pain of a heart attack is so intense that people would rather die than have the pain continue. Many people have the same daily experience with emotional pain. The thing is, if we felt as much physical pain as we do emotional pain, we’d go to the emergency room or the doctor’s office to get help. Why don’t we do the same with emotional pain? Probably because we would not receive any kind of effective help from the vast majority of health care providers. Because the health care industry is chronically incompetent in the recognition and relief of emotional pain. Instead we show up for “other reasons,” and so don’t get the help we need. If we can’t accurately describe the problem, how can we hope to solve it?

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Call me crazy and I’ll say you’re too kind. Call me maladjusted and I’ll say thank you. What we accept loses its power. Slowly. Slowly.

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The mind body problem is a relic of a dead age. It is the product of ignorance. Ignorance of the relationship between events. Prior to the scientific revolution, people saw a difference between what they took to be animate and inanimate matter. For example, your coffee doesn’t usually talk to you each morning, and your children do (if they’re not adolescents). So we develop a sense of distinct events: living and non-living. But now we understand that as the molecules of your coffee become incorporated into your body, they become part of a living system. Are the so called inanimate molecules that make up your body themselves alive? From this perspective, of course they are. Because they are part of a living system. If you take them out and put them into a non-living system then they are otherwise. The context is all.

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If you choose to make money off of people’s stupidity, then the smarter they get, the less you make. Whereas if you make money off their smarts, then it’s the opposite. Why do so many business people and politicians not get this most basic concept?

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What is Plato’s form of the good? If I were a rationalist, I might say that good is the being of being that exceeds all being. It is our notion of the cause of everything, which some call (good – o) = god. But since I’m not, I won’t.

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The short movie “The Overview Effect” has had a profound impact on many viewers. I suspect it is because like the astronauts who gaze in awe back at the earth, we too are deeply moved by the data of our senses. Our senses that for the first time see the lights of major cities echoed in the myriad thunderstorms spread out over a continental massif– nature’s lights and humanity’s lights brought together over staggering distances. Connections made that could not be previously visualized. Our community re-described on a planetary, or galactic, continuum. When you see connections on this scale, with your own eyes—how can anything ever be the same again?

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I suspect we tell stories about noumenal (divine) love just because we realize its earth bound rarity.

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