I also have been very interested in vortex physics describing electromagnetic phenomena (and thus, all phenomena) especially in relation the idea of the aether. Have you done any reading or have any opinion on that subject matter?
The only one worth following is the one who leads... not the one who pulls; for it is not the direction that condemns the puller, it is the rope that he holds.
And I could be remembering incorrectly, but in the other thread "...Madame Blavatsky..." didn't you speak of a belief in radioactivity being EM in nature? If so, we would be saying that in some manner the strong force, the weak force, and the electromagnetic force are functions of the same source, but the force of gravity is not?
No, I'm not saying gravity is not an effect of EM - I'm simply saying that there's good reasons to think that it's not (the so-far impossibility of gravity shielding). This goes back to the metaphysical bungling I keep mentioning - modern science starts with some true science/solid metaphysics... observations that gravity can't be shielded... then they form a dogma out of it and mutilate all subsequent metaphysics and fudge the numbers, as you said, to force them to fit the dogmatic metaphysics. Every experiment must be "interpreted" in light of the dominant paradigm.
The fact is that the supposedly "settled" questions of science - the fundamental nature of space, the age and size of the Universe, and so on - are the most uncertain! Modern, pseudo-scientific cosmology is the most metaphysically bungled discipline of them all and it is used to justify the most monstrous mutilations of science. The goal? Well, one goal is to invert the natural order of certainty - it is the subjective, not the objective, which is the most certain, that is, the least uncertain. Knowledge external to oneself - that is, knowledge residing in books and the minds of "experts" - is more uncertain than subjective knowledge. Yet the clerical order rests on duping the masses into accepting this inverted view of the world, so the numbers must be fudged and the metaphysics must be bungled in order to "shock and awe" the masses with worm holes, black holes, dark matter and "closed, timelike curves".
Clayton -
I've poked around a little here and there. The trouble is that vortex phenomena are less well understood.
I think there are two glaring areas of research where we could potentially make huge strides in this area: a) investigation of the source of the high-frequency EM radiation from the planets and other bodies and b) the nature of EM energy interchange between heavenly bodies (this is related to (a) of course).
Personally, I am very partial to the idea that the planetary bodies actually function as magentohydrodynamic drives/generators - energy incident to the Sun from free space is transferred to the planets by causing their cores to rotate and, vice-versa, rotational energy is converted by the cores to EM energy and transferred from the planets to the Sun which then emits this energy out into free space. Which process is occurring depends on the energy differential between the planets and free space. This is a speculative idea, at this point, but I think that plasma cosmology has set the framework for further scientific investigation in this direction. If there's a chance to answer the fundamental questions about the nature of gravity, it is more likely to occur from studying the heavens than in the laboratory.
Clayton, where do you get time to read up on all this?
To paraphrase Marc Faber: We're all doomed, but that doesn't mean that we can't make money in the process. Rabbi Lapin: "Let's make bricks!" Stephan Kinsella: "Say you and I both want to make a German chocolate cake."
Well - these happen to be my favorite topics, so I spend a great deal of my spare time reading about them, watching videos, etc. I don't have television and my social life is pretty pathetic right now.
@Clayton
Again, you make a lot of good points regarding religion and the problem people who do not have one face (especially if they believe in some sort of mysticism). But, what mystical elements are there that can be passed on and made relevant to any given person's life? What does an eclipse, for instance, mean to someone without a religion? What does it mean to someone who favors astrology? What insights are there about an eclipse that can be passed on and made relevant? What if you are born during an eclipse?
This is what I'm confused about. Bear with me, as I know that you have touched upon this already, but I'm just not seeing it. I am not someone who really believes in anything mystical, so that may just be why I'm not following you. There are only two concepts that I can get behind regarding magic, and even then, I don't really see them as magical:
1) Karma, but really karma regarding a group of people. In other words, there is a balance in society. A social and cooperative society is healthy, and in general, the standard of living reflects that. But a society heavy with violence and aggression is an unhealthy society, and while the people who suffer may not necessarily "deserve" it, the suffering is an overall reflection of the attitudes of the society.
2) When people train a skill to a point that they are just beyond others in that skill. Whether it is academics, sports, or art, some people have trained to a point where they are just far beyond their peers, and certainly beyond laymen. What they can do in their field sometimes seems like magic. It is not, of course, but that's the closest I can get to believing in magic.
So, I guess I'm just not seeing what astrology has to offer people, at least specifically.
@Clayton again
Regarding karma, maybe this is some of what you have been trying to get at, that there are certain metaphors for human existence. If we think of human society as an organism, if the cells, or individuals, of the organism are busy fighting each other, obviously the organism is unhealthy. Much of the organism will suffer. An organism where the cells do not fight each other but actually work with each other, that is a healthy organism.
I still don't quite see the connection of the stars and whatnot, but I certainly do understand the usefulness of metaphors.
Well, all meaning is relative to the individual (it's a category of valuation) so there is no one meaning. An eclipse means whatever it means to you. Let me put it this way, what is the meaning of bad weather? Why do we call it bad? It is no worse than good weather, only different. Yet we still feel a certain way about it. We dislike it because it attenuates our recreation, endangers our crops or whatever. Moving further along this spectrum, what is good art? Unlike weather, art doesn't serve any particular purpose outside of how it makes you feel about it, that is, outside of what it means to you. So, I am proposing that astrological events are like cosmic art - how you feel about it is up to you (including feeling nothing about it, if you prefer), but insomuch as it makes you feel something one way or the other, it has meaning to you.
This is what I'm confused about. Bear with me, as I know that you have touched upon this already, but I'm just not seeing it. I am not someone who really believes in anything mystical,
Well, my view of the mystical is that it's not something that is "believed in" - only structured knowledge requires "belief"; mystical knowledge is what you know but can't yet structure. Some people might object to my use of the word "mystical", if so, call it whatever you like. The only purpose is to contrast it with "scientific" knowledge.
so that may just be why I'm not following you. There are only two concepts that I can get behind regarding magic, and even then, I don't really see them as magical: 1) Karma, but really karma regarding a group of people. In other words, there is a balance in society. A social and cooperative society is healthy, and in general, the standard of living reflects that. But a society heavy with violence and aggression is an unhealthy society, and while the people who suffer may not necessarily "deserve" it, the suffering is an overall reflection of the attitudes of the society.
Well, there is a more individiualistic view of karma as well... it is "getting what you deserve", that is, the consequences of your actions.
2) When people train a skill to a point that they are just beyond others in that skill. Whether it is academics, sports, or art, some people have trained to a point where they are just far beyond their peers, and certainly beyond laymen. What they can do in their field sometimes seems like magic. It is not, of course, but that's the closest I can get to believing in magic. So, I guess I'm just not seeing what astrology has to offer people, at least specifically.
I think maybe I need to underscore the distinction between astrology and astro-liberalism a little more deeply.
Astrology - as a practical art - consists of many different kinds of specific practices, many of which are of a divinatory nature. I have no problems with people selling these kinds of services though I think the vast majority of it is bogus charlatanism.
But these practical arts are not what I have in mind, at least, not in the first analysis. I think there is room for non-bogus application of these arts but I think it has to be understood in a much more metaphorical way in order to avoid being bogus.
Rather, what I have in mind is the basic idea of looking to the stars first. To reduce my meaning a bit, I'll simplify it and call it an "astronomy-first" view, that is, that the best way to organize the sciences is to put astronomy at the head of the body of human knowledge. Then, the idea is to connect one's own "theory of action" (that is, the de facto rules by which you live your life) to the sciences through astronomy as a metaphor and allow this metaphor to spread its tentacles through all the sciences, not just astronomy (astronomy is just the gateway via the principle "As above, so below").
Human action inherently involves the categories of like/dislike, good/bad, suffering/satisfaction. Taste or preference is the agency by which we distinguish and prioritize the world into these categories. Action is merely the unfolding of the consequences of taste/preference in combination with the fact that we abhor suffering and desire satisfaction.
The structure of the world itself is what has given rise to these categories within our consciousness and whenever we act, we act within the world. So just like we are not surprised to find structural similarities between, say, ice crystals and crystal gems, so we should not be surprised to find that the structure of our environment (especially the basic cycles... day/night, summer/winter, Full/New Moon and so on) and the structure of our own minds - that is, the fact of the faculty of taste/preference and its consequences (human action) - are correlated.
The reason to look to the stars first is, as I noted earlier, because they can't be "fiddled" - you can't just makeshit up about the stars, they're up there where nobody can reach and they do their own thing. The motion of the Earth, Moon and the Sun are facts that have pervasive influence on our environment and, hence, the structure of the human mind. Yet the basic facts of their motions are easily checked by almost anyone and are observable to all alike. There are no intermediaries, no experts, no physicists needed to ascertain these basic facts.
The "leap" is in connecting action with the astronomical cycles - but this is a leap that astrology has made in every other area of human knowledge and, I believe, to great benefit. Satisfaction is day, suffering is night. We seek and desire what is pleasant and beneficient and we abhor what is painful and dangerous. That is the essence of the action principle and it can be connected by structural metaphor (cf ice/gem crystalline structures) not only with the heavens but - through the heavens - to everything else, as well.
In the process, our knowledge is made that much more connected but the real benefit lies in providing a holistic picture of action. Consider health, for example. Health/disease is a category of action... we desire health and shun disease. But bad health consists not only of, say, infections, it consists in every kind of comfort or discomfort which a person might experience, most of which is a result of lifestyle choices. There were innumerable lifestyle choice patterns available to an individual even before the invention of modern technology - the problem is far worse today than ever. Yet the modern medical establishment has very little specific, detailed advice beyond "eat your veggies and get regular exercise." Nice. How about something a little more like a "Human Body User's Guide"? And astrological medicine provides exactly this kind of thing (plus a lot of bogus crap that gets peddled by the charlatans). This is just one example to help you see why I think the connection is beneficial.
I was thinking about this a little more this morning and wondering to myself if we can give any kind of account of the origins of astrology (i.e. more than can be gleaned from the scattered historical/archaeological record). Here's my thoughts for whatever they're worth. Primitive man (pre-Agricultural Revolution... more than 10-20kya) could not have had astrology per se but he was religious. His religion was tribal, pagan (naturalistic/animal-sacrifice/etc.) and polytheistic.
Only after man settled down and began to build semi-permanent structures - including temples - could he have developed anything resembling astrology as we know it - detailed information regarding the order of the constellations through the seasons, regarding the motion and phases of the Moon, and regarding the motions of the planets through the heavens. To over-simplify, we can say that astrology is an urban religion and paganism a rural religion.
On this view, paganism can be thought of as "As without, so within" (horizontal) whereas astrology is "As above, so below" - both capture the same principle that the human body and mind are a mirror of the environment, but in a different way. The lungs are what they are because the atmosphere is what it is. The skeleton, feet and legs are what they are because gravity is what it is. And so on. But paganism is a poor man's version of this principle, that is, it instructs primarily through the use of unimproved nature - geography, plant life, animals, decorations and personal adornments, and so on.
Astrology could not arise until there was sufficient "capital", if you will, to be able to afford to build permanent structures, especially with some degree of precision. The precession of the equinoxes, for example, caused early Egyptians problems when they had to tear down and rebuild their star-aligned temples as the stars very slowly drifted across the sky over the course of centuries - and this is probably how they eventually figured out that the stars are, in fact, precessing with respect to the annual equinoxes. But until you can afford to build a stone structure of sufficient sturdiness as to maintain an immovable alignment to the stars (which couldn't have happened prior to the Agricultural Revolution), you can't know about the precession of the equinoxes.
What's beautiful about this paganism vs. astrology idea is that it correlates well with Carl Oglesby's Yankee vs. Cowby paradigm. Rothbard in multiple places has praised Carl Oglesby's Yankee vs. Cowboy paradigm of revisionist history and presented his own revisionist theories based on Oglesby's dichotomy. But one question that Rothbard doesn't address (and, to my knowledge, neither does Oglesby) is why does this dichotomy exist in the first place?? I wondered to myself whether or not paganism versus astrology could be a root of the conflict or, at least, be correlated with it (i.e. perhaps both arise out of the rural versus urban dichotomy).
To go back to your question - what does astrology have to offer? - I think the answer is that it has to offer whatever early man found in paganism and astrology to begin with.
I reject the Enlightenment narrative of ancient man as absurdly superstitious and invoking gods and demons in order to "explain" the world around himself. For one, I think this is a highly Western-biased view - it is the Roman cult and its progeny (Lutheranism, Protestantism, Anglicanism, etc.) that is obsessed with doxa (ideology, belief)... most other religions in the world, including Eastern (Byzantine) Christianity, are either more concerned with praxis (rituals, what you do, how you live) or at most a balance between doxa and praxis. And I don't think that primitive man was very worried about "explaining" the world - he had little spare time and energy for the luxury of speculative metaphysics.
Religion - like law - has its origins in voluntary interaction (and, I suspect their origins are actually linked). Elders who were respected for the quality and reasonableness of their judgments became arbitrators not because they could force people to bring their disputes to them but because people believed that these respected men would be able to help them settle their disputes. We've been subjected to a system of monopoly law for so long that it's almost impossible for most people to even conceive of a system of law where people show up to court because they both want to.
In the same way, elders who were respected for helping individuals with their own personal struggles - psychological, familial, social, sexual, whatever it might be - spread their ideas and teachings not by virtue of their dogmatic undeniability but, rather, simply by virtue of the fact that people came to them of their own will in order to be taught. As these ideas spread and took root, they gave birth to religions.
So, I don't think that paganism and astrology were about "explaining" anything at all, they were simply a cultural "glue" by which the shaman class administered what we today would call "therapy"; they were polymaths who had wisdom across a wide range of human problems and applied that wisdom in helping people who were seeking help and direction in life. This is in stark contrast to the later priestly class who - as agents of the State to whom they were beholden - inculcated dogma and enforced behavioral standards to whatever extent they could through spooky hand-waving.
The problem with secularism is that it has no role at all for the shaman. It simply abolishes the shaman class out of hand. To be replaced by what? Psychiatrists? Ritalin and Prozac? Who, in a secular world, has the crucial job of helping people in the most general possible sense? I don't mean charity... I mean something more like "teach a man to fish" kind of help. So, the idea of astro-liberalism is to provide a credible intellectual framework for the emergence of a new shaman class that is utterly independent of the State and is relevant even in a secular world because it provides a framework of practical wisdom for helping people.
P.S. gotlucky... keep the questions coming, nothing turns the gears of the mind like objections and challenges...
Hi Clayton, re: monumental architecture prior to agriculture, see Gobekli Tepe, and also look at the known Paleolithic year-round villages such as those of the Natufian culture. Sedentism and agriculture are not simultaneous. It probably led to the domestication of grain, in fact-it's possible that the oldest domesticated grains originated in the area around Gobekli Tepe and were transmitted outward from there.
The earliest signs of astronomic observations also far predate agriculture. They occur alongside other evidences of prehistoric religious activities. By the Neolithic, when the material record is much more available, there's plenty of evidence for longstanding traditions of sophisticated astronomic and astrologic awareness.
Also, paganism absolutely functioned in urban settings right up through the beginning of the Middle Ages in the Western world. It still does outside the West, and it has revived primarily in literate, urban areas in the modern West.
To be specific about the urban/rural issue, I give the example of the Old Testament. The most ancient forms of the Israelite religion attested there are of a polytheistic type. Other deities are mentioned, but their worship is forbidden. Yahweh seems to have taken local forms as somewhat distinct from the official state form, and the shift from this henotheistic format to a hard monotheistic one took place mainly as a result of political necessity: the formation of a strong national/cultural identity in the wake of the breakdown of state authority and the loss of territory.
This happened in the Roman Empire as well: monotheism became the dominant form as the Empire fell, when the government needed to create a sense of unity at all costs.
In both cases, the shift from a polytheistic to a monotheistic religion occurs as a result of political need for central authority, and not as the result of greater urbanization.
Sedentism and agriculture are not simultaneous.
Agreed. But they are much closer than, say, sedentism and industrialization. The point is that detailed observations of the stars and the building of temples to do it are luxuries that require a great deal of capital to be amassed, whether through voluntary or involuntary means. Until that capital was there, it couldn't be used to fund these kinds of activities.
I don't deny this (I'm familiar with the Lost Star of Myth and Time... it's on my to-read list), but I'm defining astrology per se as including a knowledge of the precession of the equinoxes and a general understanding of the motions of the planets (e.g. the pentagrammatic motion of Venus through the sky). This is highly specialized knowledge of the heavens that could not have arisen prior to the building of solid, fixed structures that would reliably maintain their orientation to the sky for at least a century - the equinoctial points precess against the stars just one degree every 72 years.
No objections here, either. It's not a mutually-exclusive relationship. I'm just pointing out that I think there's room to interpret astrology and its related religious traditions as more "urban" "elite" "literate" versus the more "earthy" "rural" "folk" religions that are related to paganism. At least, I like how this narrative fits with the heavy astrological influence in the church of Rome and how they looked down their noses at European paganism.
I asserted no connection between monotheism and urbanization.
I think we're on the same page more or less Clayton, but I still point to Gobekli Tepe and mention that access to this information is MUCH older than agriculture, and vastly older than writing. And that it's not terribly reasonable to assume that a pre-urban people were not equipped to make any observation that required little more than a regular pattern of travel to familiar sites year by year, plus the ability to pass on knowledge verbally. Are you aware of the theories about how Polynesian cultures located new islands to populate by following the flight paths of birds?
Clayton: Well, all meaning is relative to the individual (it's a category of valuation) so there is no one meaning. An eclipse means whatever it means to you. Let me put it this way, what is the meaning of bad weather? Why do we call it bad? It is no worse than good weather, only different. Yet we still feel a certain way about it. We dislike it because it attenuates our recreation, endangers our crops or whatever. Moving further along this spectrum, what is good art? Unlike weather, art doesn't serve any particular purpose outside of how it makes you feel about it, that is, outside of what it means to you. So, I am proposing that astrological events are like cosmic art - how you feel about it is up to you (including feeling nothing about it, if you prefer), but insomuch as it makes you feel something one way or the other, it has meaning to you.
This got me thinking about Season affective disorder.
Clayton: Well, my view of the mystical is that it's not something that is "believed in" - only structured knowledge requires "belief"; mystical knowledge is what you know but can't yet structure. Some people might object to my use of the word "mystical", if so, call it whatever you like. The only purpose is to contrast it with "scientific" knowledge.
I guess I was equating "mystical" with "magical". I understand a bit more of where you are coming from now.
Clayton: Well, there is a more individiualistic view of karma as well... it is "getting what you deserve", that is, the consequences of your actions.
Yes, I know. I don't consider this view of karma to be particularly useful or accurate, as plenty of people don't "get what they deserve". But in the case of society, we can see the consequences of certain dominant actions in societies.
Regarding unstructered knowledge: Would you categorize this with intuitive knowledge? Is it related, the same, or entirely separate?
To take seasonal affective disorder as an example, winter and nighttime, as you have pointed out, are often regarded negatively (though not always). It also just so happens that people tend to get depressed during the winter (long nights and whatnot). So, we may say that nighttime and winter are negative things in this regard, but astrologically, this would seem to be intuitive knowledge. Obviously, if you can chart the brain and see the effects of not enough sunlight, that would be scientific or structured knowledge. But if you are working off of intuition, this would be astrological or unstructured knowledge.
Is this what you are saying? Perhaps not?
But if you are working off of intuition, this would be astrological or unstructured knowledge. Is this what you are saying? Perhaps not?
I wouldn't use the word "intuition" because I associate that with a higher form of knowledge that is developed from long experience with something. For example, someone who has been in the coal mining business his whole life can have an "intuitive knowledge" of coal veins. His long experience with coal enables him to grasp things that he can't even necessarily explain how he grasps them.
Rather, unstructured knowledge is knowledge that doesn't even require grasping - these are things such as how you feel about something. To feel a certain way about something is exhaustive knowledge regarding one's feelings. It's not just intuition, it's the whole package. But what inuitive knowledge and unstructured knowledge share in common is that you can't necessarily explain how you know the facts or how they are correlated with each other.
I'm not so sure that it makes sense to separate this from intuition:
Noun intuition (plural intuitions) Immediate cognition without the use of conscious rational processes. A perceptive insight gained by the use of this faculty.
intuition (plural intuitions)
I can see how you would want to separate intuition gained from experience versus intuition based on emotion, but considering the common definition, I think they really are both classed as intuition. Of course, this would just be a personal choice, but I don't think it makes sense to separate the two types. Consider the seasonal affective disorder. Many people become depressed during the winter or if they don't get enough sunlight. Couple that with the miserable cold and lack of being able to grow food, and you have right there the reasons to consider darkness and winter to be negative. Certainly we could write down all of our reasons for considering them negative (and certainly there are plenty of people who would not consider them negative, but probably most of those people live in a wealthy society with electricity). But for our ancestors, they didn't have to write these things down. They just know that there are negative aspects to the dark. They don't have to chart the brain in order to determine the effects of lack of sunlight on people's brains. For our ancestors, it would be enough to just know there are negative aspects.
And the opposite would be true of sunlight, as you've made clear. But I don't think it matters whether this is an experienced or inexperienced intuition. And I would think that we should give more weight to the experienced intution, as even if it is nonscience, we know that it is based on something. Though sometimes all you have to rely on is emotion without experience. But between the two, I would prefer experienced intuition over inexperienced intuition.
/rambly
@gotlucky: Well, I'm fairly allergic to terminology debates but I think this one is important -
The word "intuition" kind of has its own meaning out there in the wild, that is, as people use it. It can mean everything from "the woman's intuition" to psychic powers to autistic math genius to that tingling feeling you get when someone is staring at the back of your head and you turn to look. I'm not using the word in any of those ways.
Rather, I'm trying to make a distinction between two kinds of knowledge, both of which are important.
1) Highly advanced knowledge of a subject, resulting from study and experience such that the individual who has this knowledge exhibits an uncanny ability to "just know", that is, to get the correct answer when there doesn't appear to the less expert individual to be sufficient information for determining the correct answer. This is what I would term "intuition" but we can call it something else to avoid confusion... let's say, "advanced expert knowledge".
2) Final knowledge. Final knowledge is anything you know as a result of your own direct experience, your recollections and reconstructions of the past or your discursive reasoning. Final knowledge is in contrast to the body of scientific knowledge which exists "out there". Scientific knowledge is something that you assume to be true, praxeologically, whenever you, say, ride an elevator or walk under a bridge but which is still less certainly true than final knowledge. This should not be called intuition because it just isn't intuition in any sense. It's the least uncertain knowledge you have.
I still feel compelled to address the (perfectly valid) doubts raised by gotlucky et. al.
Penn & Teller kick astrology's ass here:
Now, this is what I don't have in mind. I think this is more what you could call "modern" astrology... it's more like believing in Santa Claus. But I don't think this really resembles at all the kind of astrology that Ptolemy or Isaac Newton would have been familiar with.
So, I guess there's a bit of a reputation problem facing astrology. I'm not sure how to fix it but I think the key lies in sort of "cleaning house" and presenting astrological concepts in their historical context instead of just 'going with the flow' of modern practice.
I thought I would just change tack a bit and give an outline of my own understanding of what can be called the Cyrenaic conception of eudaimonia through ataraxia, by way of analogy with Zeno's paradox of the arrow. To the Cyrenaic School - its founder being my own namesake, Aristippus - (physical) pleasures and the avoidance of (physical) pain are paramount due to the Cyrenaic conception of feeling as momentary. Think of the arrow in Zeno's paradox - it is assumed to be in flight from one point to another point, passing through many intemediary points. But at any one time it can only occupy a single space. So it is for man. He acts towards certain ends, and holds fears of the future while looking back on the pains of the past. But he nevertheless always exists in the present, and these painful views of the future and past are an obstacle to his acquisition of ataraxia and therefore eudaimonia. The historical Aristippus (the elder) was known for his calm and cheerful disposition under any circumstance.
@Aristippus: The argument could be put in the form of Zeno's paradox thusly?: Whenever a man attains a real end, no matter how satisfied he may be in the moment, there will always remains some other ends (if nothing else, bodily needs) which will arise in the future, thus marring the perfection of the moment through the anticipation of future want... hence, every move towards ataraxia is only a partial approach to it. Therefore, no matter how many moves a man may make towards ataraxia (ala Zeno's paradox), he will yet remain short of it.
Well, your analogy is actually more in line with Zeno's paradox of Achilles and the tortoise. I was saying something different: that man is perturbed by his imagined future and past path, but he is nevertheless always only existing at one point. From the perspective of that single point of the journey, disregarding the other points, man cannot be harmed by any mental pain - he can only be hurt by physical pain. It seems to me that it is for this reason that the Cyrenaics focused on the alleviation of physical pain and the acquisition of physical pleasure, due to the momentary nature of feeling; since mental pain can only exist in reference to the past or the future, it has no place in the present moment, and since man can only exist in a series of present moments, it has no place at all. Thus, by understanding existence as always occurring in the moment - like the different points along the flight of Zeno's arrow - the Cyrenaics focused on the best measure of physical feeling, since the latter can and does exist in the moment.
@Aristippus: My mistake - I always confuse Zeno's paradoxes with each other.
I am hesitant about this conception of mental pain, it's too purified. Consider an amputee with an imaginary itch in his leg. He is clearly suffering and it is a present suffering and it is wholly mental. And I don't think that is just an isolated exception, I think that psychological anguish can be wholly present, i.e. without respect to a present physical pain and without respect to anything about the past or future.
Weren't there movements in pre-WWII Germany to revive German paganism? People always associate this with the SS nowadays but my understanding is that the Nazis were just hijacking pre-existing popular movements for their nationalistic appeal (i.e. the German religion, as opposed to the Christian religion (which had been soiled by the Jews)).
I'm curious to learn more about these kinds of movements because I guess what I'm really interested in is a kind of "return to religious roots", whether it be paganism, astrology, or whatever. This return-to-roots could be based on local geography (as in the German paganism movement), ancient history (as in astrology) or something else. The primary interest in religious originalism is as a counterpoint to secularism as the alternative to dominant, statist religions. I really, really think that secularists have miscalculated in thinking that religion is some kind of "third-wheel" of human nature which can summarily dispensed in the march to greater future enlightenment.
Religion is here to stay. The question is whether the values being disseminated by religions are pro-state, pro-war, pro-centralization and anti-market.... or not. I think a return-to-roots is a bigger threat to the status quo than doing a root-canal operation to extract religion from human nature.
Consider an amputee with an imaginary itch in his leg.
Well, I would class that as physical.
I think that psychological anguish can be wholly present, i.e. without respect to a present physical pain and without respect to anything about the past or future.
I'm not sure whether that is true (or whether it's false). Care to elaborate further? Based on pure introspection, I would say that mental pain necessarily has a past or future reference. Perhaps there are exceptions.
Clayton - have you read Hume's essay The Epicurean? It might be something to include.
I was rereading your list of philosophers that you are quoting for your book. Anyway, my recent discussion with Minarchst made me realize that I hadn't seen Hillel or Maimonides on your list! So, I am going to go read some material on them (maybe by them if I feel particularly scholarly), and I am going to find some good things for you to add. And you will add them! And then we can call your book The Protocols of the Elders of Libertopia. And then we can take over the world.
Clayton, the Neopagan movement in general might provide you with some avenues of research. Two good histories are Ronald Hutton's "Triumph of the Moon" (British Neopaganisms) and Margot Adler's "Drawing Down the Moon", which focuses on American Neopaganisms but is on the oldish side. There is also the website of Ár nDraíocht Féin, an American Neopagan Druid/Indo-European Reconstructionist organization.
So, I did some reading, and I found some good one liners in the Pirkei Avot, and now I'm reading The Eight Chapters of Maimonides on Ethics. There is some good stuff in here. The only thing that gets me is that all these Rabbis keep bringing things back to Judaism and rituals and prayers! On the bright side, it makes it easy to pare things down for you to consider.
When I'm done reading these I'm going to figure out a good way to list them for you (or others) to read. I'll cut and paste if I have to, but the Pirkei Avot is so short, so I might be able to actually just list chapter and verse and provide a link.
Anyway, I doubt they really have much to offer that you haven't already found in many of the other philosophers, but it might be nice to round it out with some of these, as surely there will be Jews (religious or not) who are interested in libertarianism.
And then we can take over the world.
That's been the plan all along. Bwahahahaha
But there has been some experimental evidence to suggest that gravitational shielding is possible.
No. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_shielding "As of 2008[update], no experiment was successful in detecting positive shielding results."
Really, there are people posting a lot of absurd crackpottery here regarding gravity and "electromagnetic" solar systems. I wonder how many people see this nonsense and get turned off of this website.
Let's go on a physics forums somewhere and introduce them to the labor theory of value and the economic benefits of broken windows.
The current view of the planets as "rocks hurtling around in ellipses but otherwise indifferent to each other" is just completely bogus. The more I read/study the subject, the more I realize that modern astronomy has lost sight of the forest for the trees on this point.
Clearly you need to keep studying. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neptune - "Neptune was the first planet found by mathematical prediction rather than by empirical observation. Unexpected changes in the orbit of Uranus led Alexis Bouvard to deduce that its orbit was subject to gravitational perturbation by an unknown planet.".
Also, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_resonance
Orbital resonances greatly enhance the mutual gravitational influence of the bodies, i.e., their ability to alter or constrain each others' orbits. In most cases, this results in an unstable interaction, in which the bodies exchange momentum and shift orbits until the resonance no longer exists. Under some circumstances, a resonant system can be stable and self correcting, so that the bodies remain in resonance. Examples are the 1:2:4 resonance of Jupiter's moons Ganymede, Europa and Io, and the 2:3 resonance between Pluto and Neptune.
No. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_shielding "As of 2008, no experiment was successful in detecting positive shielding results." Really, there are people posting a lot of absurd crackpottery here regarding gravity and "electromagnetic" solar systems. I wonder how many people see this nonsense and get turned off of this website.
This and the Blavatsky thread are meant for grown-ups, people mature enough to entertain extended hypothetical discussion without prematurely ejaculating on some dogma or other.
As for turning people off, I don't think I could be clearer that plasma cosmology is a minority view in astrophysics and that my own embellishments thereon are, well, my own.
Let's go on a physics forums somewhere and introduce them to the labor theory of value and the economic benefits of broken windows. The current view of the planets as "rocks hurtling around in ellipses but otherwise indifferent to each other" is just completely bogus. The more I read/study the subject, the more I realize that modern astronomy has lost sight of the forest for the trees on this point. Clearly you need to keep studying. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neptune - "Neptune was the first planet found by mathematical prediction rather than by empirical observation. Unexpected changes in the orbit of Uranus led Alexis Bouvard to deduce that its orbit was subject to gravitational perturbation by an unknown planet.".
*shrug - so what?
Also, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_resonance Orbital resonances greatly enhance the mutual gravitational influence of the bodies, i.e., their ability to alter or constrain each others' orbits. In most cases, this results in an unstable interaction, in which the bodies exchange momentum and shift orbits until the resonance no longer exists. Under some circumstances, a resonant system can be stable and self correcting, so that the bodies remain in resonance. Examples are the 1:2:4 resonance of Jupiter's moons Ganymede, Europa and Io, and the 2:3 resonance between Pluto and Neptune.
OK? Your point?
it will be weird to clap our hands and sing gospel worship songs about property rights, prices, speculators, and bashing the central bank.
i lift my hands to believe again
that the free market will slay the government
oh i hold out my heart to the gold standard
oh my money, oh my money.....
fuck the central bank slay that dam beast
i love the freedom and hail austrian economics
mises is great blah blah blah
no. just.... no.
or maybe thats not what you were thinking, i guess it would be cool to awesome concerts that are actuallly catchy, that bash the central bank, and talk about austrian vs mainstream views (keynes vs hayek, parliament of fools,)
and maybe have some plays about austrian economics..
Starting a school would be nice.
“Since people are concerned that ‘X’ will not be provided, ‘X’ will naturally be provided by those who are concerned by its absence.""The sweetest of minds can harbor the harshest of men.”
http://voluntaryistreader.wordpress.org
Daniel Dennett on Universal Unitarian hymns, "I know and love the Unitarians, but I don’t like the words to their hymns. The words are so insipid I can’t stand them. I’d rather sing the good old ripsnortin’ words and then put a little flashing light over the pulpit that says “metaphor.”"
His view of how to replace religion:
I mostly agree with his ideas and a lot of the ideas in this thread are inspired by this speech.
@Aristippus: That was awesome.
My idea is very similar but doesn't necessarily entail living in closer proximity than required to be able to meet in person on a regular basis. This provides the basis for an informal social network that can work around the State through relationships built on extra-legal trust. But it's nice to hear that there are already people out there who are effectively doing this, whatever their background may be.
Have you had a look at this? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Virtues:_A_Treasury_of_Great_Moral_Stories
@Aristippus: Added to my book list.
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LRC linked to this totally awesome article that is perfectly in line with this thread... the only difference is that I would like to see a "historically/culturally-guided/(voluntary) expert-assisted" version of this. I'm all for running experiments of your own devising but I think the economical scientist tries to avoid reinventing the wheel as much as possible. Given that as many as 100 billion people have lived out their entire lives before us, there is a great deal of knowledge out there about how to live life, the hard part is finding and applying it (this is where voluntary experts can assist).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_hack
I'm contemplating writing a little Perl script to act as a "digital butler" ... I need to learn how to set up a local email server so I can get it to send me nudges like this (h/t to above-linked article).
Fascinating stuff. I can only find the 1875-following videos, would like to see the period from the late 17-th century onward... oh well.
In the grand scheme of history, the gutting of the aristocracy is merely a stepping stone to global unification. A dukedom (particularly in England) is a territory that was once its own realm, governed by its own sovereign king. After subjugation to a national king, the ruler of that territory is now referred to as "duke" instead of "king", as it once was.
The King clearly has an interest in stoking anti-aristocratic populism if he can managed to obsolete them by regimenting society (thus easing the burden of governance) and bureaucratizing (thus obsoleting the need for middle-management). In fact, I think this is related to Hoppe's account of the State - his view is that the State is rooted in an alliance of renters seeking to escape their rents and throwing off the shackles of the land-owners. No doubt. But how could the renters possibly have been more organized than the owners since there are so fewer owners (thus, easing organization)? I think the answer is that the Crown actively undermines its aristocracy to whatever extent it can manage through stoking popular discontent in demand of increased taxation (look at the effects of the death tax on the aristocracy, mentioned in the video). Personally, I don't accept Hoppe's theory as an explanation of the origins of the State but I do think it definitely explains the origins of democracy, communism and populism as well as the decline of the aristocracy and the capitalist class.
The aristocracy are not good in that they are wannabe crowns. Nevertheless, they are less bad than the Crown in that they are closer to those they rule. And the more competition between rulers and the easier it is for the ruled to switch between rulers (political unification always makes this harder, not easier), the better it is for the ruled.
Being pro-aristocracy is confused with being pro-privilege - while the aristocracy did indeed enjoy privilege, they were, nevertheless, a check on the power of the Crown. That check has been all but removed in the name of "democracy". It is becoming increasingly clear to me that the interpretation of democracy as the rise of freedom and the decline of privilege is precisely backwards from the case in fact. What people don't understand is that the royals are as exclusive with respect to the aristocracy as the aristocracy is with respect to commoners. There is very little inter-mixing (it is difficult for an aristocrat to marry up into Royalty). The rise of democracy has exactly coincided with dramatically increased political aggregation (trending toward world government). I think it's more than coincidence, I think there is a causal connection.
For the same reasons I would like to see State governors empowered and Washington, DC shut down, I think that we need to look at reviving the aristocracy as a way to once again put the Crown in check. Greece once actively sought a foreign monarch. It is a perverse kind of logic but there is a logic to it. We are being exploited by the natural elites of exploitation/parasitism. The problem is more complex than just security and law because human nature is complex and bizarre. Unless you have your own, home-grown ruler, it makes sense to seek a ruler to protect you from the exploitation of other rulers. He has an incentive to preserve the capital value of the assets of the realm and, as someone who is a member of the ruling Elite, he understands the dangers and wiles of external powers.
Fixed political structures make this kind of wheeling and dealing impossible. It "thins" the market in rulers. Fixed political structures remind me of cell-phone contracts. They give you this really great deal on a phone, up-front, but in order to get it, you have to sign this contract that goes on and on for perpetuity.
So, maybe we need to court nobility from regions with a strong cultural heritage of property rights to come over here and rule at the State level. Perhaps they can help us break the fetters of Washington, DC. Yes, they will still be parasites, too, but at least they're smaller and closer than Washington, DC.