Thrasymachus blog post

my old profile answer, in case you're REALLY bored...

An early snow; it's sticking some too, flocking all the blood red and purple Fall foliage white. Stacking up a little on the North sides of headstones. Do the dead know how pretty it is just beyond the soil's darkness an arm's length or so away? I doubt it, but in the quiet of the falling snow, I wondered about that this morning. I'm Rob. My spirit animal is Owl. I read a lot of philosophy (hence the name I took here), manage a cool little Rice Lake motel, love Kurt Vonnegut, fish, play cribbage with this guy that stays here, take my dog everywhere I go, listen to music, watch the decline of Western civilization on the TV sometimes, get tattooed, eat good food, I wonder why there's something rather than nothing, rock climb, write a little, and explore the world and my mind every chance I get. I lie less than anyone I know, but I can be moody and intense sometimes. Lately I've had pretty bad insomnia (this too shall pass), and its gotten me to wonder about how it is we humans let go of our consciousness so readily every night. It seems I've forgotten how, and that's called many more 'givens' into question for me. I try not to have beliefs, thinking that without beliefs only what is real remains, but this sleep-dep thing is making me see I had many more of them (beliefs, like falling asleep isn't a pressing question, or 'space-time' is not a problematic term) than I had realized. Perhaps its simply methodological insomnia. There are beings, and there is Being. Let us not confuse the two. All of the beings have their Being in space-time, but such a theory laden term begs the question immediately over to the materialist camp and is therefore philosophically inadequate, so, methinks, we need a term more suited to describe that spatio-temporal horizon as it appears for that specific sort of linguistic being of the human (Dasein), and I nominate the word: Enflounderment (it is the element in which we all flounder along, taking our floundering so deadly seriously). The Enflounderment occurs in modes ranging from what empty space is to the brain of Albert Einstein (however the Mind may be uncorporeal, and therefore not Enflounderment itself). I'm made of Enfloundrment - eat sandwiches made of Enflounderment - catch fishes made of Enflounderment - live in a house made of, you guessed it: Enflounderment. Anything that is, was or will be, is happening, happened or shall happen in the Enflounderment (Enflounderment inherently endures). We are each the repetition of an Idea, repeated in the Enflounderment. We are thrown into it, as beings (experiences of Being) with Enflounderment bodies and duration (Enfloun-duration just coins itself). It's also quite possible that our minds are yet another mode of invisible Enflounderment, and that there is nothing that isn't Enflounderment - but I'm not here to speculate, not tonite anyways. The Enflounderment is where idea is realized, and us actual extant human beings are just that -an idea realized, as we experience the idea of human being in the first person ( its what we are), wherein our Enflounderment bodies create a window into our Enflounderment world, through which windows our experience of Being first arises, and then brings itself into question as to nature and purpose and why there is anything at all, much less I myself specifically in this specific World. There must be something which cannot be nothing and so is doing this on purpose - was it lonely so now its a multitude? - or else maybe that which cannot be Nothing just is this (& this is what it is, in the sense that its consciousness is fully & only realized in its Worlding processes (I hope to never find out if we're in a computer program)). Had there ever been Nothing, there would still be nothing, if what there is were timeless permanent IS-ness, all would be undifferentiated realized infinity, but instead, A = A, the Principle of Sufficient Reason holds sway, and there is self and Other (the Other being the limiting case of self). Realizing what we are, repetitions of the Enfloundermented human idea, does not release you from the goofyhornysublime actuality of living as this idea of humanity. Maybe not even the gift of death can do that. Enlightenement doesn't grant you the ability to overturn the laws of nature, which is what "Magic Powers" are. If I go outside and call out, "Owl my friend, I need to see you" and a big heart-faced white barn Owl flies by right then, I didn't do something magical. A better analysis is that it was a coincidence. This latter one is wrong in the opposite direction, but not as far wrong as the former one. -And yet the inadequacy persists: if you call the space-time continuum 'Enflounderment', and your body is the residue of your experience, it draws the mind's eye away from what might be experiencing all these human experiences, I think. Maybe an axiomatization wherein we see ourselves as the ends of vibrations could work, because its valid, methinks, and elegantly fits the data if you see it all the way through. The aforementioned Enflounderment would be all those vibrations occurring within the so-called electromagnetic spectrum, and your beinghood, your own private experience of being a self-in-time, would be other wavelengths of non-visible frequency to the Other's sight, and all that vibrates vibrates in front of an ever present unchanging single opening: this coupling of certain vibrations in front of a still open peephole is a life. At death there's an uncoupling. Maybe that's more accurate. (I went through this last attempt pretty fast, hope it made a little sense; it did in my head (Methodological insomnia - yeah, I tried methodological solipsism alone, had a brief case of methodological nihilism that was very depressing and nobody cares (?), but this methodological insomnia gives the pointless horrible agonizing insomnia an immediate silver lining, so yeah, I'm okay with it.) Do not fail to contemplate the nature of the Nothing just because I glossed over it in a sentence predicate - the possibility of the Nothing – to ask why there is something instead of nothing and to answer that but if there had ever been this sort of complete and total Nothing it would still hold sway (I’m talking about the sort of Nothing where there’s nothing anywhere else - there is only the Nothing - no empty space - no darkness - no grayness – nothing contemplating the Nothing - just nothing…) and there would just be nothing; not even God. If you still don’t see what I’m saying - if you’re not seeing how the Nothing can never have been (because there would surely still only be nothing), then you probably need to think it through all the way until you get to the bottom of it. You have to try to conceive of it – the Nothing. Two of the easiest directions that I know of to approach it are these: (1) by trying to imagine what it would be like if you had never been born. It isn’t hard, I used to do it all the time as a kid - just picture the world without you in it. Now try to look at that same thing from your perspective - as you, but you were never born. From your standpoint the world and nothing are the same thing. You have not even been conceived (of). You would be unaware of any darkness, any empty space, or any kind of awareness of your privation of all of all the structures and contents of being. You yourself would simply be nothing, and from your perspective that's all there would be (non-Being). And, (2) try to imagine a vacuum cleaner so powerful that it vacuums everything out of the universe, and when absolutely every last particle of matter is gone, you turn it up another notch and it vacuums out all of the space itself - the Universe collapses in on itself until there is no more empty space – no extension – no opening for Being, and when there is no space left it pulls itself in and with it, all of consciousness goes too and there is no remainder – only the Nothing. The Nothing that has never been. The Nothing that nothing could ever arise from, had it been the case holding sway, so we know now it never has. Since there's never been Nothing, It is always already eternal, always, so no first run novel time through Being is possible. If this all makes sense to you, if maybe you've known me some in some other now in the vastness of this realized eternity, we should talk (this is not everything I have to say).