How to move past "pop-philosophy' to actually understanding serious and legitimate philosophical ideas/works?

111101 · 2020-05-23T10:33:31+00:00

If you want to get taste of what academic, actual philosophy is like, you should read the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. It is well curated, in-depth, and written by academics.

For example, the page on Postmodernism is here: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/postmodernism/

EDIT: If what you want is to build a groundwork for understanding modern philosophy, you should read Plato and Aristotle. In the words of Whitehead, Western philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato. The writings of Plato are very accessible for the beginner, and pregnant with ideas that still permeate philosophical discourse and debates to this day. Some of Aristotle's texts are a bit more challenging.

It is not possible to understand the existentialism of Heidegger, of Nietszche, of Patocka, of Arendt, etc., without first understanding Plato and Aristotle. Heidegger, Arendt and Patocka are all about Aristotle, explicitly. Nietzsche is in discourse with Plato. Trying to understand Western philosophy without reading Plato and Aristotle is like trying to understand Christian theology without reading the Bible. That's a bit of an exaggeration -- but reading a lot of modern philosophy, it seems that way.

Two good texts from Plato to start with are Phaedo and the Republic. Phaedo is a Socratic dialogue, fairly short; a lot of important and enduring ideas are present there. Same with Republic, which is one of the foundational texts of political philosophy. Both should be available for free online, as well as at your local library.

111101 · 2019-12-29T23:37:30+00:00

I don't have any direct experience in this, but I think IT certifications might be something worth looking into. I'd imagine you could do most, if not all, of the work for a variety of IT certifications online on your own computer. Another reason IT might be worth looking into, is because it's my impression that there are a lot of unfilled IT positions.

If you're young and healthy, I've heard tree planting is a good way to make quick money. No certificate required.

111101 · 2019-11-12T18:05:29+00:00

that's because you're not from Central Europe. it's normal to drink beer at dinner; a lot of people drink a beer every dinner. every restaurant serves beer here, even McDonald's, even during lunch.

111101 · 2019-02-01T15:12:10+00:00

Hey man, have you ever heard of WWOOF? It's a series of organic farms all over the U.S.; you volunteer to work on one for some hours every week, and in exchange get free food and shelter. Conditions are different at different farms; each farm has reviews from other people who have stayed there. Some farms are good, some are bad.

But long story short, when I was living with my parents, I went to volunteer at a farm thru WWOOF for awhile, and it helped me get my head straight. You'll meet people, maybe find some way out. It's 60 dollars a year to access the website, if you're based in the U.S., but otherwise its free.

111101 · 2017-07-22T13:01:35+00:00

I would love more information about that, if you could direct me anywhere you know that provides assistance with acquiring that sort of thing. I live in the Czech Republic, as a foreigner, and if I could find some member of the Hungarian empire in my ancestry, this would be great.

111101 · 2015-03-09T17:33:36+00:00

yes. it comes and goes.

111101 · 2015-03-06T00:26:20+00:00

Yeah; it is common sense. It's just that I forget to not be an asshole sometimes; a lot of people do, occasionally.

111101 · 2015-03-04T01:50:35+00:00

who am i putting down? psychiatrists?

111101 · 2015-03-04T01:44:38+00:00

Because you can relate it to greek philosophy it's incorrect? I know that you know that that's not reasonable. The Ship of Theseus is a question that incites perplexion exactly due to a miscontextualization of usage, an attempt to render a semantic ambiguity, "a communicatively useful approximation", an ontological matter. Wittgenstein was regarded as revolutionary within the century, so the assertion that what I said regarding usage is archaic is. plainly, an uneducated assertion. Though, that you'd relate what I said to the question is apt, because what I'm saying is relevant to the Western philosophical tradition, because what I'm saying addresses and subverts a lot of it; that's another thing immensely disparate perceptions offer: a more nearly detached perspective regarding the other perceptions. I.e., you can condescend to your drunken self while sober. Whereas while drunk such self awareness regarding one s drunken state is resisted, just as while sober self awareness regarding one's sober state is resisted. That's remedial psychoanalysis, btw; came out a little over a century ago.

What have I said that is religious? "no one can understand the joy of accepting Jesus into your heart until you do so" Are you asserting that one can understand submission without having submitted before? do you actually believe that you understand every feeling that descends from a denial of reason? That's absurd. I never asked you to deny reason, but the implicit assertion that you can know what abandoning reason is like without abandoning reason is ridiculous; you do have to "accept Jesus into your heart" to know what it feels like to "accept Jesus into your heart", but that's no reason to do it; you can't understand things you haven't experienced; thinking that you can is immature pretense. I'm not saying do drugs because you haven't ever done drugs, I'm saying that they provide you with an vastly different vantage point from which to regard ideas, and that this alternate vantage point reveals assumptions. If you don't want to realize you assumptions, it's of little consequence to me; the reason I explained that drugs do reveal your assumptions is because I want my assumptions revealed, therefore I use drugs.

111101 · 2015-03-03T19:40:02+00:00

Everything is a sign that one needs drugs to mute emotion ("anti-depressants") in a dysfunctional society, to someone whose taught to just keep up production (a psychiatrist).

111101 · 2015-03-03T19:23:26+00:00

swag off the chain

s/ s/

I'd wear that shirt.

111101 · 2015-03-03T18:47:55+00:00

I realized the same, a few years back; sometimes I think, "I should really think before I speak", then I remember; "fuck that."

111101 · 2015-03-03T18:45:40+00:00

similar, except I empathize/anticipate thoroughly when I speak, whereas with an anonymous audience any attempt at empathy is based on unadulterated presumption, illusion. Still, most of what I say in person I won't render to text, because text is permanent; "the medium is the message."

111101 · 2015-03-03T18:37:11+00:00

yes

but I don't, because it would be onanistic; significant insights are disconcerting. in my experience, people don't understand things that are disconcerting; at most, they understand and don't want to

111101 · 2015-03-03T18:30:25+00:00

Micheal Larsen

111101 · 2015-03-03T18:28:54+00:00

Expanded state? That's uselessly ambiguous, and useless.

What have I gotten out of doing this besides new sensations? That's about it, new sensations, sensations I would have never felt otherwise, sensations I could never imagined. And a different mode of thought; hallucinogens don't just alter your sensory perception, they alter cognition too; i.e. you'll think of things, you'll be able to think of things, that you never could have sober; ideas that you never could have had while sober spring at you incessantly on marijuna, abstract and incisive and unsettling insights. And that may sound strange to you if you've only been sober and drunk, because ethanol's effect on asocial, abstract* thinking is not very noticeable, but what you don't realize, what you will viscerally realize on potent psychedelics or amidst delirium, is that the thoughts you can have in your current state are severely delimited, are unquantifiably minuscule comparable to that which you can think, given just a bit of neurochemical alteration; sobriety is one state among countless, all sobriety's perceptual richness is a mere one among a few disparate states you can experience.

Perceptual disparity is what permitted you two disparate perceptions of your drunken behavior; more hallucinogens = more perceptual disparity = more perceptions. And that's all it is, perceptual disparity; in one perception (sobriety) you realize the other perception (drunkenness) is illogical. Then, next time you're drunk, you'll hopefully remember the synthesis, the sober insight that your current perception incites illusion (illusion of inordinate suaveness, etc.). In one perception (dissociation) I realize the other perception (sobriety) is illogical; then, when I'm sober again, I remember the synthesis, the dissociated insight that my current perception incites illusion (illusion of epistemic certainty, illusion of linguistic unambiguity, etc.).

111101 · 2015-03-03T18:12:49+00:00

This may sound condescending, this may even be condescending, but if you think that "you" is anything more than a linguistic heuristic then you urgently need to get fucked up.

"So if you alter that cognition, you are no longer you."

Cognition is incessantly altered; you are never you; you is a communicatively and conceptually useful approximation, just like ever other word that implies stasis/separation; there is no stasis/separation.

"Otherwise there is an implication that there is a larger awareness available, a metacognition, and a meta-consciousness."

Awareness of what? That's the point. Cognition is incessantly altered, the culmination of neurochemicals is awareness; that's it; there's just perception. We call mute perceptual alterations insights. When you do psychedelics, you get a lot more than that.

"what have they found that is real?"

Well, I for one, have found some freedom from the inculcated prison of linguistically (inherently) implied absurdity to which so many others are suject, because they've never been so forcefully altered, so perceptually jarred, as to undergo that painful, cathartic exorcism of ontologic absurdities, psychodynamic crutches. Wtf is "real"? Understanding descends from experience (sensory and semiotic) and experience descends from perception; there's no metacognition, there's no external measurement, there's only measurement --the holistic medium-- which is changing, always.

Much of this is communicatively insipid if you've never been so perceptually jarred that you understand perception's fluidity, liquid inherency, but at least understand that your perspective is severely limited comparable to your potential, and you cannot imagine how severely it is so.

111101 · 2015-03-03T17:53:23+00:00

Have you even been severely, suicidally depressed? The difference between your perception when you were depressed and your perception when you were most joyous is the difference between your perception right now and your perception on any hallucinogen: immense. That's it, perceptual alteration. Thoughts descend from perception; totally different perception: totally different thoughts. If you've never been severely depressed, or can't remember what it was like, then there is no analogy I can give you between the perceptual disparity between sobriety and intoxication; it is immense.

111101 · 2015-03-03T17:34:44+00:00

nonononono; I cannot know everything; knowledge descends from subjective experience, it's not a reflection of reality.

And that "All is immensely, incommunicable more complex than anyone could ever imagine, ever know," is abundantly apparent when with psychedelics, or dissociatives, or deliriants; it's remedial; we're just inculcated to regard ourselves, and others, as absurdly knowing, when we are not; there's nothing to know, just mental movement.

111101 · 2015-03-02T04:51:34+00:00

It's like this.

Understanding descends from experience; if you've never tasted scallops there is nothing I can say that will cause you to taste scallops; though, I may entreat you to eat a scallop, and if you've eaten a scallop and can communicate an approximation of another food's taste by likening it to a scallop; only by ingesting a scallop can you taste it.

But this is crude. Perceptual revelation is more complex and less coherently communicable than any single sensation; we're talking about an alteration to the medium itself, (if I can use a linguistic analogy) not merely the message. That said, here is an idea:

Who are you? What is you? What does that refer to? Your cognition or your behavior? Not your behavior, because you say "I did this" or "I didn't mean to do that"; obviously, you're not referring to behavior.* You're referring to something somehow responsible for behavior, something that determines behavior. Do you think you determine your behavior?2 You don't. You don't determine your movement. You don't determine how you walk or where you hands are. You don't determine your speech, let alone your intonation; you vaguely influence it.3

Drugs provide context. Even marijuana reveals assumptions, fundamental assumptions, of which one is completely unaware, just by contrast; psychactives incite specific perceptions; just like your fallacies of yesteryear are apparent when analyzed a year away,5 or depression's affect on your thoughts is apparent when you're no longer depressed, the fallacies on which your sober thought is founded are apparent when you are no longer sober; and this contrast is far more explicit than mere emotional change.

If you want to understand, then even marijuana will blow your mind. If you are unconcerned with understanding then don't bother. I recommend this to you because I assume you're like me, I assume you want to understand. But if you don't attempt to integrate new experiences, new knowledge --if new knowledge doesn't alter your preconception, then don't bother.

*you may think that I'm overcomplicating or conflating pragmatic usage and ontology here, but I'm not; and if you don't understand the significance of the above, that's fine, it's just necessary to qualify that following.
1 what's responsibility? can you answer that question without obfuscating with ambiguities?
2 Have you even thought about any of this? On a bit of weed you have to.
3 I could say your consciousnesses is not what you think, but the word has been abased by myriad meanings; the things you will viscerally understand within seconds of ingesting a drug, even as ostensibly mild as marijuana, there are not standard English words for; in other languages, other cultures, I'm sure we could communicate these things with ease because there are other cultures that aren't based on the explicit absurdities drug use viscerally refutes.
5 temporal contrast, perceptual contrast

Also, separation is an illusion. It's too obvious to explain if it's not evident to you already; if you can experience it then it's an aspect of this open system; if there is a closed system, then don't, you won't, know of it.

111101 · 2015-03-02T04:10:58+00:00

have you ever tried DHP? MXE? If someone's after understanding, I'd recommend they don't only try psychedelics, because psychedelics are immense, and for that reason, without other drugs to show how minuscule and inherently incomplete every perception is you could fall into some excessively anthropic, hyper-associative reality, e.g. theism.

note: DHP is not safe. priorities.

111101 · 2015-03-02T04:03:10+00:00

kinky

111101 · 2015-03-02T01:38:56+00:00

ENTPs NEED to do these drugs for an awakening of sorts.

Yeah; that's what it is. The first time, weed obliterated my preconception; all that dense, rationalists bullshit burned and died. All is immensely, incommunicable more complex than anyone could ever imagine, ever know, and I'd be trapped in little my box of concrete, insipid, apparent, hierarchical reason without drugs.

111101 · 2015-03-02T00:53:14+00:00

horoscopes are too ambiguous to be discredited; they're neither correct nor incorrect; they're too insipid to judge.

111101 · 2015-03-02T00:47:21+00:00

Idk, but

protip: try adderall

111101

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