Skeptic, Michael Shermer.., Not As?

[boomerang]

What about a thread on purple prose - all kinds of creative writing?

Entitled: It Was A Dark And Stormy Night

 

[boomerang]

I'm not a man of letters. But I really do hear so much "poetry" nowadays (apologies to National Public Radio) that seems simply a slice of experiential prose, formatted as poetry and read with passion. Or maybe I'm just missing it ?

But there is also poetry that in an abstract way speaks beyond the conscious mind to deeper levels. One of my favorites is "The Waste Land" by T.S. Eliot. As in the world of canvas art there is, IMO, intrinsic reason why the works of Picasso and Jackson Pollock are so highly prized.

Art is attempted communication. And there is, when it works, a kind of mutual inductance between the minds of artist and viewer/reader, analogous to the conveyance of alternating electric current between the coils of circuits that must be "tuned" to like frequencies for transmission to occur.

 

[smcder]

"It's tight rhyme scheme and metrical regularity emphasize its musicality, but the sonnet is also thought of as the first poetic form that was intended to be read silently, as opposed to performed and shared: it is “the first lyric of self-consciousness, or of the self in conflict,” according to Paul Oppenheimer in The Birth of the Modern Mind: Self, Consciousness, and the Invention of the Sonnet"

 

[Oakenwulf]

Founder Of Skeptic’s Society Rattled After Witnessing A Paranormal Event (Michael Shermer) | Collective-Evolution
(recent article on a skeptic mind blow) hehehehehe still fun to read

 

[Burnt State]

Founder Of Skeptic’s Society Rattled After Witnessing A Paranormal Event (Michael Shermer) | Collective-Evolution
(recent article on a skeptic mind blow) hehehehehe still fun to read

Good video. For a real coincidence check out the first article by the OP for this thread.

Here's Shermer about two years earlier with a different take on coincidence and a critique of him as well. Many of the same points were batted around here before the debate on poetry started.

A Skeptic analyzes coincidence…poorly | synchrosecrets

 

[smcder]

Good video. For a real coincidence check out the first article by the OP for this thread.

Here's Shermer about two years earlier with a different take on coincidence and a critique of him as well. Many of the same points were batted around here before the debate on poetry started.

A Skeptic analyzes coincidence…poorly | synchrosecrets

There was a debate on poetry? How did I miss that?

 

[Wade]

Good video. For a real coincidence check out the first article by the OP for this thread.

Here's Shermer about two years earlier with a different take on coincidence and a critique of him as well. Many of the same points were batted around here before the debate on poetry started.

A Skeptic analyzes coincidence…poorly | synchrosecrets

I think the comment by mathaddict2233 pretty much nailed it, if it had been me. under the circumdtances mentioned I would have merely chalked it up to a coincidence.

 

[smcder]

I think the comment by mathaddict2233 pretty much mailed it, if it had been me. under the circumdtances mentioned I would have merely chalked it up to a coincidence.

2233 ... that's hilarious

 

[Burnt State]

There was a debate on poetry? How did I miss that?

Well you briefly debated the merits of my poem despite much effort to assist you with seeing the cut and paste route I stapled onto the screen.

 

[Burnt State]

I think the comment by mathaddict2233 pretty much nailed it, if it had been me. under the circumdtances mentioned I would have merely chalked it up to a coincidence.

Here's the post by 2233 (I bet you when they go to bed at night their 24 hour clock always seems to be at 22:33 when they flick the lights out) as it's worth reading. I think there's a valid assertion here that returns us back to some of the original thread contents which is whether or not there are these links underlying everything, as if there is a grand plan to the matrix and all who inhabit her, as if someone else is running a software piece that we slide in and out of without much notice, whose variance is just enough not to make us too suspicious. Wade, you seem to have been closer to this experience than others. What if anything do you make out of the synchronicities in your life - is there a grand connecting conspiracy at work? are we all trapped in an ancestry simulation? How does one ascribe meaning to acausal events that resonate? As always I'm doubtful but eager to hear possibilities.

"I agree with Anthony: virtually ANYTHING, ANY religious dogma or spiritual concept, or any doctrine or any scientific facts that an individual embraces to the degree that he or she connects it persistently and consistently to his or her belief construct, is over-kill. For me, it’s Freud connecting absolutely everything in a person’s life to his or her relationship, especially sexual, with the Mother or Father. For myself, I do my very best to maintain a sense of balance. To not attach the term ‘synchronicity’ to every single incident that occurs, and contrarily, to not ignore the synchronicities that DO occur with great frequency. Some are infinitesimal; some smack me in the face. But to deny the existence of synchronicity, in my humble opinon, is to deny the fundamental tenet, the foundation of experience in life, and those fundamental, foundational experiences are synchronicity at work. Again, in my humble opinion, synchronicity is the manifestation of the sometimes tangled and hidden web of connectedness of everything and every one in our lives. Certainly everything is not a synchronicity, just as everything we feel isn’t rleative to our relationships with our mother and/or father. Nevertheless, synchronicity seems to me to be ONE of the cornerstones of human existence, and to deny that, is to deny the reality of live itself. AND….to miss the magick that surrounds us every moment of every day. W#e simply must remember to keep it all in balance."

 

[smcder]

Well you briefly debated the merits of my poem despite much effort to assist you with seeing the cut and paste route I stapled onto the screen.

Like assisting an old man across the street, eh? ... well, back in my day

things had rhyme
.... AND reason
and we LIKED it that way,
.....by dang.....

Besides ... I really didn't think you were serious? If you were I'll go back and re read your po em with eye less jaundiced.

I'm just not convinced yet that formal structure limits expression - besides, from the beginning structures have been broken for effect. And I'm not convinced our age can't be spoken effectively about in traditional forms.*

As to structures written for oral conveyance ... we have so little tolerance for repetition that it has to be snuck in on us (and it easily can) ... but there's an intelligence in the structure of parables and sutras that is still valid for a literate culture or even a post literate one.

I can't see where Shakespeare was limited ... would we want Hamlet's unfiltered stream of consciousness? Would we want a pre-show lecture telling us what we were about to see?

If we brought Shakespeare into our time, he might make a quick study of our politics and science as our foibles would be familiar to him. He might abandon the discipline of structure altogether or he might invent new structure or he might continue apace on familiar feet and thus free Dewdney to express his helical thoughts in Sonnetical form.

After reading of recombinant structures and verse reading as well backward as forward ... I thought "I bet the poor man has notebooks filled with Haiku hidden in his basement."

electrile iambs (5)
evoluted fovea (7)
frog leap ripples moon (5)

I seriously did think ... how did you know all of that about what Dewdney is up to ... what he means ... that there is a recombinant structure in his poems? Did someone have to tell you that, did Dewdney have to tell you himself? Does he have to keep telling himself for that matter ... or can you just see all that? and so I didn't re-read your post because I wanted to know what a naive reader could find ... and who's more naive than I?

Can I approach his poetry like a naturalist? Does it yield to rational inquiry? Will well designed experiments be replicable? Or, as with Nature herself will there be a cosmic habituation?

I have a bucket and a spade and I don't mind getting my hands dirty.

So let's see what I can come up with on my own ... I do actually have much hope for me and for Dewdney.

*See "Pale Fire"

Sorry for being OT!

I won't post anymore poetry stuff on this thread.

 

[boomerang]

Sorry for being OT!

Don't be. There's a stream of consciousness that burbles across the landscape of The Paracast Forums that often makes for refreshing drink.

 

[Wade]

Wade, you seem to have been closer to this experience than others. What if anything do you make out of the synchronicities in your life - is there a grand connecting conspiracy at work? are we all trapped in an ancestry simulation? How does one ascribe meaning to acausal events that resonate? As always I'm doubtful but eager to hear possibilities

Well for starters, I haven't really given much thought to the oft mentioned idea that a meaningful coincidence is supposed to give some kind of meaning or lifes purpose to you, while i am not in a position to dispute that i can honestly say that i have experienced more than a few meaningful coincidences and with one singular exception have never had any kind of epiphany, but that one time was a whopper. Take Chris's Yellow Helicopter moment up a few notches and you can begin to understand the effect it had on me. Rather than go into details here if you are interested in background information i invite you to read my long winded submission i have in the personal experiences forum, one of which very much pertains to the issue and indeed can be considered as the driving force of why i joined this particualar forum and why i immersed myself somewhat deeply into a concept that i had long ago acknowledged but still paid little attention to. It is quite imaginatively called "Synchronicity and the Mantis" and i submitted as an attachment ( .Doc) because it was so f***ing long as i tried to be as inclusive as i could about the details, to be frank i had little interest in the study of UFOs until i heard about a possible relationship between UFOs and synchronicity. My thought was "So aliens from other worlds are landing here on earth. In other news water is wet". But to get back to my original point i am sorta focused on considering the relationship of how synchronicty and memes...another favorite subject..can fit into chaos theory. I am thinking about this without the benefit of reading too much outside material on it as i want to see if i can come up with something based on my limited knowledge of all three ideas before i start reading other people's work, if indeed that work even exists. The thing Is I am not schooled in such philosophies so it may be a little arrogant on my part to consider that i could come with something independently without being versed in such things.

On that note i am also trying to read more of the concepts of memes, Here's an interesting point, when i first heard about memes it didn't even enter my mind that there could be a correaltion between memes and meaningful coincidences, but without any outside reading or influences I came to the conclusion that there could be a direct relationship between the two. It was (to me) not unlike chocolate meeting peanut butter, i got hooked into two different ( or maybe not different) and unrelated ( or then again maybe not!) concepts and found myself contemplating where the twain shall meet. I know that there are people out there that scoff at the idea and scoff even more at the idea of trying to make a science out of thought contagion...if that is indeed an acceptable term for it...but i quite like the study of both these fields. Just recently i gave thought to the idea that maybe Prentice Mulford may have been onto something when he opined that "Thoughts are Things" maybe he could be considered an early pioneer in memetics. It can be argued that the show LOST indulged in many things but front and center were the issues i have mentioned (coincidences, memes, how our reality works) and then, sadly i feel that it lost it's way but for a few brief years it was almost the center of my universe and i still didn't know why because i didn't really immerse myself in these thoughts until the summer of 2009 ( again see my personal expiereince submission for context) five years after the show started, but i knew the show spoke to me in a way that i couldn't put my finger on. It was an instinctive reaction and instinctive predilection.


In a somewhat related matter that is another phenomenon that i have experienced in the past...but nowhere near as much often as meaningful coincidences and pretty much non-existent now...this matter of deja vu. At one time when i was much younger i considered the possibility that we were living in a preprogrammed reality, that we were merely living out what was "expected"of us, that we were role players in a giagantic stage production, i felt that i was out of sync with the rest of the world, i guess we are still role players but our roles are more about reacting to things about us caused by people or events far away and quite possible long ago. At any rate i thought that maybe these things we call deja vu and coincidences could be because i (we) weren't where we were supposed to be at that excat precise moment in time. It's hard to articulate exactly what my thought was but it was like there were various speed limits at any certain point and that some of us were either traveling below or above the speed limit when most others were traveling at the precise speed limit. This was well before such movies as the Matrix (or my pesonal favorite Dark City) hit the screens. Needless to say I no longer feel that as i fully embrace the idea that chaos theory is a major driving force of our reality, Where the concept of synchronicity could come in all this i don't know, if it does at all. I suppose you could make a case for it to be evidence in the law of numbers. With all this randomness going on about us and how everyone's destiny is liable to change in the blink of an eye due to the actions of someone else and they are also reacting to a circumstance they had thrust upon them there is bound to be some commonality in some encounters i guess.

 

[smcder]

Don't be. There's a stream of consciousness that burbles across the landscape of The Paracast Forums that often makes for refreshing drink.

If you like drinking from streams ... ;-)

In my case though, it babbles.

Seriously, what I have learned here is that I if you beat a gift horse long enough, it will lead you to water.