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POPSHow Absurd Is That? "Dr. Proulx and Dr. Heine described having 20 college students read an absurd short story based on “The Country Doctor,” by Franz Kafka. The doctor of the title has to make a house call on a boy with a terrible toothache. He makes the journey and finds that the boy has no teeth at all. The horses who have pulled his carriage begin to act up; the boy’s family becomes annoyed; then the doctor discovers the boy has teeth after all. And so on. The story is urgent, vivid and nonsensical. After the story, the students studied a series of 45 strings of 6 to 9 letters, like “X, M, X, R, T, V.” They later took a test on the letter strings, choosing those they thought they had seen before from a list of 60 such strings. In fact the letters were related, in a very subtle way, with some more likely to appear before or after others. he new research supports what many experimental artists have always insisted: at least some of the time, disorientation begets creative thinking."
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POPSThe Myth of Progress <<<Solitude is inimical to power, shuns power, seeks its own progress. A progress that is an illusion, enhancing the few and fooling the masses, is for the solitary the opposite of progress, for it does not consult nature or quiet the mind in order to begin reconsturcting the self. But the theory of progress is an old device masking power, and concealing what the 20th century creative souls — and those brave 19th century figures like Kierkegaard and Nietzsche — unmasked as lies about human nature. What is the alternative to progress for the grand institutions of today? It is a devolution to simplicity, to individuals and small social units, to natural industry and exchange, to a relationship to nature based on value and not exploitation or power. The alternative to progress is a devolution of artificial wealth, privilege, and legitimacy.
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POPSSicknesses Unto Death: extreme and ordinary madness <<<And in the middle of the spectrum lies the grand majority of society's normal, those whom Kierkegaard calls the "philistines." The philistines are those whom one observer calls the "normal neurotics," whom Freud considered repressed by their psyches for their own good because they are not capable of too much reality. They are easily duped by the powerful to do their bidding in relative silence, to pursue their pleasures in stupefying doses, to contribute to society, that great edifice of somnolence and enslavement about which Nietzsche railed. The philistines walk about in "fictitious health," says Kierkegaard, alluding to their contentment with conventional norms, tastes, and values.>>>
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POPSHistoric Figures That Were Celibate He spent years inventing things he never got credit for, like the light bulb and radio, and even believed he could control the weather. He also felt that sex was a drain on creativity and completely pushed aside any woman that was interested in him. Sarah Bernhardt, a famous actress, tried her hardest to woo him but he considered her to be little more than a distraction from inventing a death ray. When asked about marriage, he replied: “I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men.”
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POPSFideism I only learned about this "school of thought" recently ;) Just passin on a link
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POPSThe Courage to Be Useful overview of Tillich's The Courage to Be, supported by general account of existential approaches to anxiety of non-being, including Kierkegaard and Heidegger.
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POPSTo be Interesting and Interested Let Go of Mind <<<The practice of mindfulness – in its psychologically Buddhist sense – has been described as a kind of detachment, dis-identification, i.e. dis-interest from one’s own thoughts, which, as Snelling points out in his “Buddhist Handbook,” are “not us” (3). Notice Snelling's italics: our thougths are "not us." This Buddhist proposition that we are not our thoughts would imply that any real communication beetwen us (and not between our respective fleeting states of mind) would have to be non-verbal... So, then, it would seem that in order for us to show inter-est in others’ thoughts, for us to inter-exist, we need to lose interest in our own thoughts. To co-exist, it seems, we need to never mind our own minds. With no thoughts to stand in the way of understanding, there is nothing between us, there are no gaps of misunderstanding to bridge…>>>
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POPSMore Kierkegaard irony Thank, abailart, for your earlier Kierkegaard clip! He has a number of fascinating ideas which make you stop and think and reflect a while. /e
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POPSMad about the man Comic by Kate Beaton . History is Rad and she's going to come up with more.. List: 1- Soren Kierkegaard 2- Benedict Arnold 3- Agnes McPhail 4- Mary Shelley 5- Queen Elizabeth I 6- Emperor Norton 7- Benjamin Disraeli 8- Nikola Tesla 9- Genghis Khan 10- David Hume
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POPSPhilosophy since the Enlightenment Philosophy can sometimes seem like like a subject that has little practical application, but in studying it the way we think is examined, dramatic differences, and similarities can be seen in the way beliefs can be held by people with apparently rational justification. These beliefs and opinions have a direct effect on the way the world is seen. 'Reality' may stay the same, but if the way it is seen changes, is it the same reality ?
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