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| Sand | 2008-02-22 10:34:51 |
The soul, it is claimed
Gets radically maimed
By dealing with time
With its sunshine and grime.
But a soul, when produced
Must be free to be loosed
To be shaped and informed,
Be assaulted and stormed.
It’s the world’s interaction
That gives it its traction,
That donates its muscle,
That moves it to tussle.
Don’t begrudge it its duel
To polish the jewel.
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| Emanuel Paparella | 2008-02-22 14:17:16 |
You'll understand what life is if you think about the act of dying. When I die, how will I be different from the way I am right now? In the first moments after death, my body will be scarcely different in physical terms than it was in the last seconds of life, but I will no longer move, no longer sense, nor speak, nor feel, nor care. It's these things that are life. At that moment, the psyche takes flight in the last breath."
--Aristotle on the Soul
Plato thought of the soul as within the body longing to escape. To the contrary Aristotle and Aquinas think that the body as within the soul and therefore not as a duality but an indivisible unity. Indeed poetry begins the moment we realize we possess nothing, not even our bodies. Food for thought.
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| Sand | 2008-02-22 16:25:33 |
| When you turn off your computer the thing is functionally dead although all the components are in excellent working condition. Food for thought |
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| Sand | 2008-02-22 19:43:56 |
| Incidentally, the Cage quote is especially appropriate in view of his famous piano piece. |
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| Emanuel Paparella | 2008-02-23 04:33:57 |
| To reduce the human being to nothing more than the sum of its component parts, i.e., a machine is in effect to have stripped him of his greatest endowment, his humanity. Only the human being can cheat himself by that kind of cleverness by half. Food for thought. |
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| Sand | 2008-02-23 04:52:24 |
| Some people, unfortunately, have defective basic components. Food but no thought. |
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| Emanuel Paparella | 2008-02-23 05:02:12 |
| So they console themselves with making universal cakes while practicing relativism. I suppose in our brave new world that is called multi-tasking. In former times the metaphor for that sort of thing was that of the snake eating its own tail. Food for thought. |
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| Sand | 2008-02-23 06:35:00 |
| The fact that I amuse myself with cooking really seems to bug you. Adventurous experiments with materials (which includes the very basic technology of cooking) is obviously beyond your limited capability. Your only facility seems to be trying to scam people with your familiarity with old authorities whose thoughts have been useful at times but are frequently totally out of sync with current understanding. This requires no thought, merely a sufficiently large data base to access some clumsy aphorism with vague application to life tied to an antiquated authority. Since most of them neglect current knowledge you incessantly whine about current barbarism while denying that cruelty and callousness has been a prime characteristic of all civilizations and religious faiths in particular throughout mankind's history. Your incapability for sensible thinking has been an outstanding characteristic of all your posts and when presented with facts counter to your idiocy you start dancing around foaming at the mouth and spitting insulting irrelevancies. Your are a funny old academic monkey and amusing to play with but nothing you say has any real import or carries any understanding of the huge advances that knowledge has made in the last couple of centuries. You will not, of course, acknowledge these monstrous lacks in your fundamental comprehension of modern understanding but reply with further groveling to obsolete authorities and idiotic nonsense about current barbarities. |
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| bohdan | 2008-02-23 07:56:38 |
| still messing with your heads... |
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| Sand | 2008-02-23 08:00:46 |
| Absolutely! |
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| Emanuel Paparella | 2008-02-23 11:21:48 |
| Indeed, the voices don't let go that easily...once they have a rationalist in their grip. They may well be faster than death... |
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| Sand | 2008-02-23 11:52:46 |
| And, of course, when a rationalist (someone who views the world through logic and experience) confronts an irrationalist (someone who ignores experience and is immersed in superstition and totally subservient to the authority and dogma characterized by religious belief, you can only expect a good bit of messing around. |
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| Emanuel Paparella | 2008-02-24 14:29:44 |
| Indeed, mess around with the laws of nature and what you get it the church of the FSM worshiping meatballs on spaghetti. Some messing! |
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| Emanuel Paparella | 2008-02-24 19:48:18 |
| P.S. By the way, as previously pointed out "incapability" is a bit messy. Incapacity will do as well. It is simpler and more elegant and used by most people who have agreed to use a common current language. |
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| Sand | 2008-02-24 20:40:48 |
| The condemnation of a perfectly good word by someone almost totally inept in clear concise expression does have a humorous ring to it. |
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| Emanuel Paparella | 2008-02-24 23:39:49 |
| Funny that such a perfectly good word is not given, not even as an alternate, in the Oxford dictionary of the English language. What do Oxford dons know about the English language. An apt memorial on the tomb of a rationalist: he had the last word. |
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| Sand | 2008-02-25 06:51:54 |
| I too find it amusing you are evidently using an inferior dictionary since mine (Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged) clearly lists it. I doubt all your amusing stupidities can be attributed to your dictionary but your awe of your own flawed resources is a strong indication of an unquestioned faith leading you into a wilderness of confusions. |
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| Sand | 2008-02-25 07:20:22 |
There are a couple of points worth making. The first, as to whether “my dictionary is better than your dictionary”, is a childish bit of nonsense not worth much time. There are many words in common uses which are well understood and which are not in the formalized world of many dictionaries. The word “cool” for instance has, through common usage, acquired many definitions and implications not formally listed but is well understood. It is very useful and has a particular flavor that can be valuable. The final test of a word is whether or not it is useful and well understood. Nothing more is necessary.
Insofar as the “last word” is concerned, the proclamation that no one should be permitted an answer to a questionable proposal is an obvious attempt at censorship and a clear indication that the proposal is faulty and has no other defense.
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| Emanuel Paparella | 2008-02-25 11:28:38 |
| Is that what the voices told you? Tell them that before I arrived on the scene there were precious few comments around; that will prove them for the liars they are. Do not allow them in your mind; they are faster than death... and dwell in Plato's poetic cave... |
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| Sand | 2008-02-25 13:13:43 |
| Having no vocal component in your head to aid your thinking seems to have left no alternative to your perennial strut waving Plato like the dried carcass of a dead dog and mouthing ferocious nonsense about death and poetry. It might have had some comic dramatic effect initially but repeating it over and over is not a shtick worthy of someone who would persuade in the direction of some sort of even minimal sense. |
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| Emanuel Paparella | 2008-02-25 16:09:13 |
| The first symptom of cultural philistinism is the villanous and crude propensity to settle intellectual issues with argumenti ad hominem and personal insults; the incapacity to disagree without becoming disagreable. You have exhibited in abundance this tendency, which renders any truly intelligent exchange of impossible, it seems in fact that you simply cannot help yourself. You seem to misguidedly consider it your badge of honor; what makes you stand out like a sore thumb in this forum. Narcisistically Continuing to exhibit it does you no honor I am afraid, and you are deluded if you think that somewhow it improves the overall conviviality and intellectual tenor of the magazine as a whole. |
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| Sand | 2008-02-25 18:03:59 |
| I wonder why your posts, which are overflowing with personal insults to me, should be immune to criticism. When you display intelligence instead of bluster and outright lies I will reply in like manner. |
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| Emanuel Paparella | 2008-02-25 19:59:36 |
| In case alzheimer has set it, may I remind you that the personal attacks were not initiated by me. I am afraid that to stick to the issue with an intellectual bully is to become his enabler. You might have been able to get away with that up to now. For a while you even left the forum sulking that my writings were not being censored or refused. Unfortunately for you it does not work within a journal of opinion and it does not work with me. You may wish to find a propaganda sheet in which you may feel comfortable proffering biased and sladerous views. We have too many totalitarian personalities and bullies that think that they can play fast and loose with the truth and I am not about to be indimidated in becoming another enabler. |
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| Sand | 2008-02-25 20:10:58 |
| Is suffering victimhood rearing its ugly head? Are you about to whine about being censored again? |
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| Emanuel Paparella | 2008-02-26 13:09:45 |
| But you were the one who went to whine to the Lamb with no guiding Light. I suppose "the shadow" does not remember that and finds it more expedient to project... Pity. |
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| Sand | 2008-02-26 13:53:13 |
| It rally sticks in your throat that I mentioned at that site that I agreed thoroughly with his opinion that you were proliferating stupidities at OVI and at that time I wondered whether it was worth my time to expose your nonsense. I was specifically requested by the editors of OVI to return so I assume they felt my contribution had value. Why not complain to the editors of OVI that my exposure of your fakery puts you at some disadvantage? |
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| Emanuel Paparella | 2008-02-27 18:49:24 |
| Projecting again, but the shadow knows and the parading emperor, self-appointed guardian of things he knows nothing about (such as "deconstruction") remains naked I am afraid. |
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| Emanuel Paparella | 2008-02-27 19:24:58 |
| P.S. I wonder if it has occurred to your mind full of voices that the reason why the editors continue accepting my contributions, whether they agree with them or not, is that they see some value in them. They believe what you abysmally ignore; that free speeech and an open mind requires exposure and the entertaining of differend opinions and not merely what is agreeable to oneself; which is to say, look at the other side of the coin too. That is certainly a more intelligent position than that of the censor and self-appointed guardian of political and ideological purity. |
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