Tag: Philosophy

Max Planck on the Evolution of Ideas

Scientists and philosophers are exquisitely sensitive to the advantage of ideas that already enjoy broad familiarity. The history of science is a long story about good ideas facing rejection after punishing rejection until enough scientists become acquainted with the concepts, at which point they become law. Max Planck, the theoretical physicist who helped lay the groundwork for quantum theory, said: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction
Derek Thompson

Synchronicity – The Police and Carl Jung – ChatGPT on

There is a Police album called Synchronicity. What is the concept of Synchronicity they are referring to? What is the background of this reference?
ChatGPT
The Police album “Synchronicity,” released in 1983, takes its title from the concept of synchronicity, which was popularized by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung.

Synchronicity refers to meaningful coincidences that occur in our lives, events that seem to be meaningfully related but lack a clear causal connection. Jung proposed that these occurrences could not be explained by conventional notions of cause and effect, but rather suggested the existence of a deeper, interconnected order to the universe. In essence, synchronicity suggests that events are “meaningful coincidences” rather than purely random occurrences.

The background of this reference lies in Jung’s work on psychology and his exploration of the human psyche. Jung introduced the concept of synchronicity to emphasize the interconnectedness of the universe and the idea that events could be linked through meaning rather than just through cause and effect relationships.

The Police’s album “Synchronicity” explores themes related to this concept, with lyrics that touch on existential questions, relationships, and the interconnectedness of events. The album cover itself features a synchronicity diagram, depicting a set of circles intersecting with one another, which further emphasizes the album’s exploration of this theme. Overall, the album reflects a fascination with the mysterious and interconnected nature of human experience.

Walking and Freedom from the Bondage of Self

What I mean is that by walking you are not going to meet yourself. By walking, you escape from the very idea of identity, the temptation to be someone, to have a name and a history. Being someone is all very well for smart parties where everyone everyone is telling their story, it’s all very well for psychologists’ consulting rooms. But isn’t being someone also a social obligation which trails in its wake – for one has to be faithful to the self-portrait – a stupid and burdensome fiction? The freedom in walking lies in not being anyone; for the walking body has no history, it is just an eddy in the stream of immemorial life.

A Philosophy of Walking
Frederic Gros

Sufficient Unto the Day is the Evil Thereof – Aphorism, Meaning of

“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” is an aphorism which appears in the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 6 — Matthew 6:34.

The wording comes from the King James Version and the full verse reads: “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

It implies that we should not worry about the future, since each day contains an ample burden of evils and suffering.

Wikipedia


By Evelyn Simak, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14023625

Who Feels It Knows It – Jamaican Saying


From Youtube comments:
@bigben5071
This is Bunny Wailer singing lead

There is a Jamaican and or Rastafarian idea and I think it’s either Who Feels it Knows it or Who Knows it Feels it. Can you give me some sources?
ChatGPT
The phrase you’re referring to is “Who feels it knows it.” It’s a Jamaican saying that has been popularized in reggae music and Rastafarian culture. It essentially means that those who have experienced something deeply understand it in a way that others may not.

While it’s difficult to pinpoint a specific source for this phrase since it’s deeply ingrained in Jamaican culture and has been widely used in various contexts, you can find its usage in reggae music lyrics, Rastafarian literature, and Jamaican proverbs.

One notable example of its use is in the lyrics of the song “Who Feels It Knows It” by Jamaican reggae artist Johnny Clarke. The song reflects on the struggles and hardships faced by people in impoverished communities, emphasizing that only those who have experienced such struggles truly understand them.

Additionally, you may encounter this phrase in writings about Rastafarian philosophy or Jamaican culture, where it’s used to convey the idea of empathy and understanding through shared experiences.

While there may not be a single definitive source for this phrase, its usage in various cultural expressions underscores its significance within Jamaican and Rastafarian communities.

Temporality is Part of the Truth

The goal of being alive is to figure out what it means to be alive, and there is a myriad of ways to deduce that answer; I just happen to prefer examining the question through the context of Pamela Anderson and The Real World and Frosted Flakes. It’s certainly no less plausible than trying to understand Kant or Wittgenstein. And while half of my brain worries that writing about Saved by the Bell and Memento will immediately seem as outdated as a 1983 book about Fantasy Island and Gerry Cooney, my mind’s better half knows that temporality is part of the truth. The subjects in this book are not the only ones that prove my point; they’re just the ones I happened to pick before I fell asleep.

In and of itself, nothing really matters. What matters is that nothing is ever “in and of itself.”

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs
Chuck Klosterman
First Scribner trade paperback edition 2004

Sartre – man is condemned to be free, ChatGpt on

What did Sartre mean when he said man is condemned to be free?

ChatGPT
When Jean-Paul Sartre famously stated that “man is condemned to be free,” he was expressing a fundamental idea in existentialist philosophy. This statement reflects Sartre’s view that human beings are unique in the sense that they possess radical freedom and are responsible for their choices and actions in a world devoid of inherent meaning or values.

Sartre’s existentialism begins with the premise that existence precedes essence. In other words, human beings first exist, and then they define their essence through their choices and actions. Unlike inanimate objects or animals, humans do not have a predetermined nature or purpose. Instead, they are free to define themselves and their values through their choices.

The idea of being “condemned” to be free means that this freedom comes with a burden. It is not an easy or comfortable state of being. With freedom comes the responsibility to make choices, and these choices can be anxiety-inducing and challenging. Sartre believed that many people try to evade this freedom by conforming to societal norms, adopting predetermined roles, or denying their ability to choose. However, he argued that such attempts at evasion lead to “bad faith,” a state of self-deception in which individuals deny their own freedom and responsibility.

In essence, Sartre’s statement “man is condemned to be free” underscores the idea that human existence is marked by the necessity of making choices and taking responsibility for those choices. It’s a call to embrace one’s freedom and to confront the inherent uncertainty and anxiety that come with it, rather than seeking refuge in conformity or denial of one’s true nature. Sartre believed that by fully accepting and embracing our freedom, we can lead authentic and meaningful lives.

Death of Ivan Ilyich – Some Quotes from

Apart from the reflections this death called up in each of them about the transfers and possible changes at work that might result from it, the very fact of the death of a close acquaintance called up in all those who heard of it, as always, a feeling of joy that it was he who was dead and not I.

In reality it was just what is usually seen in the houses of people of moderate means who want to appear rich, and therefore succeed only in resembling others like themselves: there were damasks, dark wood, plants, rugs, and dull and polished bronzes – all the things people of a certain class have in order to resemble other people of that class.

It was all just as it was in the law courts. The doctor put on just the same air towards him as he himself put on towards an accused person.
The doctor said that so-and-so indicated that there was so-and-so inside the patient, but if the investigation of so-and-so did not confirm this, then he must assume that and that. If he assumed that and that, then…and so on. To Iván Ilých only one question was important: was his case serious or not? But the doctor ignored that inappropriate question.

And in imagination he began to recall the best moments of his pleasant life. But strange to say none of those best moments of his pleasant life now seemed at all what they had then seemed – none of them except the first recollections of childhood. There, in childhood, there had been something really pleasant with which it would be possible to live if it could return. But the child who had experienced that happiness existed no longer, it was like a reminiscence of somebody else.

And what was worst of all was that It drew his attention to itself not in order to make him take some action but only that he should look at It, look it straight in the face: look at it and without doing anything, suffer inexpressibly.

‘Maybe I did not live as I ought to have done,’ it suddenly occurred to him. ‘But how could that be, when I did everything properly?’ he replied, and immediately dismissed from his mind this, the sole solution of all the riddles of life and death, as something quite impossible.

Death of Ivan Ilyich
Leo Tolstoy

See also: Ivan Ilych’s life was the most simple and most ordinary and therefore the most terrible.

Love after Love – Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread, Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Found in:
Poems of Gratitude (Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets Series)

Every man is born as many men and dies a single one – Heidegger

The philosopher Martin Heidegger once said, “Every man is born as many men and dies a single one.” There are a handful of preferences shared by almost all infants—for example, for sweet foods and harmonies without dissonance. But adult tastes are diverse, in large part because they’re shaped by the experience of life, and each person enjoys and suffers life in a different way. People are born average and die unique.

Hit Makers: How to Succeed in an Age of Distraction
Derek Thompson

Value of Negativity in Art – Reddit on

Which books are super nihilistic, life-rejecting, depressing, soul crushing with no optimism?
byu/MentalDespairing insuggestmeabook

NellieInk
Are you good?

Insomaniac10
Negative emotions exist – which is precisely why these kinds of books also exist.

We can either choose to live in pretend social media world where we force superficial positivity and infallibility, or we can not only admit our inherent weaknesses but even better we can choose to explore them in order to understand ourselves and the human condition better

Primal_Onyx
Good take. Tired of people locking certain emotions away when they exist on a spectrum. As long as someone’s not hurting others, it’s fine to get in touch with feelings people consider “negative”.

Let’s be real. A lot of people can’t handle their own feelings, so they project that discomfort onto others.

JustARandomGuy_71
If someone write one of those books, he can’t really mean it.
If nothing matter, why put effort in writing a book about it?
To write a book, one must think that *something* does matter.

FrankAndApril
I mean… David Benatar literally wrote the book on the subject:

“Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence”

He’s a central figure in the philosophy of anti-natalism. Life is boring and painful, the good times don’t even come close to balancing the bad, we are terrible to one another, the planet is a mess, it is evil to have children… Only reason not to commit suicide is because “meh, being dead might be worse, so whatever.”

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – Quotes from

Clementine: This is it, Joel. It’s going to be gone soon.
Joel: I know.
Clementine: What do we do?
Joel: Enjoy it.

[Mary reads to Dr. Mierzwiak out of “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations”; the lines are from Alexander Pope’s poem “Eloisa to Abelard”]
Mary: How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot! / The world forgetting, by the world forgot / Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! / Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d.

Joel: Constantly talking isn’t necessarily communicating.

[last lines]
Joel: I can’t see anything that I don’t like about you.
Clementine: But you will! But you will. You know, you will think of things. And I’ll get bored with you and feel trapped because that’s what happens with me.
Joel: Okay.
Clementine: [pauses] Okay.

Mary: Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders.
[they click glasses]
Mary: Nietzsche. Beyond Good and Evil. Found it in my Bartlett’s.

Self Deception in Politics – Two Quotes

An opposition researcher once told me that politicians who hold office at the federal level are invariably a bit delusional. In campaign mode, they’re forced to tell a story about themselves that is idealized and laundered of flaws; eventually they tell that story so many times they begin to believe it. Some slip down the slope into bigger lies.

The Very Good Reason People Like George Santos Lie About Nonsense
Elizabeth Spiers

The viewers deserved better than this election denialism—but in their MAGA hearts, it was what they really wanted. And wherever there was demand to be lied to, there was plenty of supply. “One thing I can’t comprehend,” said Al Schmidt, the Republican city commissioner of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, “is how hungry people are to consume lies and to consume information that is not true.”

Network of Lies: The Epic Saga of Fox News, Donald Trump, and the Battle for American Democracy
Brian Stelter