Metaphysics pub quiz
Nov. 17th, 2004 03:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusTry my metaphysics pub quiz. It consists of ten questions about your relationship with metaphysics. The respondent with the most anti-metaphysical set of answers wins a shinto phallus and a night with Devon Aoki (or partner of their choice, if not a lesbian). The respondent with the most metaphysical set of answers wins the Metaphysician's Magic Pointy Hat. (Whether it's a magic hat or a dunce's cap depends on the angle it's viewed from, and whether the winner inks out the D or not.)
Here are the questions, followed by my own personal answers:
1. Do you think that 'Reality is elsewhere'?
2. Do you think that 'If my life as I live it were all there is, I'd top myself right now!'?
3. Do you notice yourself downgrading your environment because it's not really where your concerns are?
4. Is your body going to seed because you're off in some other world, for instance a computer world or a TV world?
5. Do you subscribe to the core beliefs of Marxism, Christianity, or Platonism?
6. When was the Golden Age, and when will utopia come?
7. Do you accept personal authorship of your own parallel worlds, or know the names of the people who designed them? Or do you call them 'objective'?
8. Do you find yourself using the word 'timeless' when you praise things?
9. What would a world in which people wholly accepted the present as 'all there is' be like? Better, or worse?
10. How will these questions change if physicists discover the Higgs Boson or 'god particle'? (Beware, trick que-whoooooooooooosh OMG, where am I?
1. Do you think that 'Reality is elsewhere'? I think it's my natural tendency, because I'm a dreamy cerebrotonic ectomorph like the kind Swift describes in Gulliver's Travels inhabiting the flying island of Laputa: 'These dreamy philosophers were so absorbed in their speculations that they employed attendants called "flappers," to flap them on the mouth and ears with a blown bladder when their attention was to be called off from "high things" to vulgar mundane matters.' Nevertheless, the fact that I employ people to flap me out of my reverie shows that my heart is in the right place.
2. Do you think that 'If my life as I live it were all there is, I'd top myself right now!'? No. I like my life.
3. Do you notice yourself downgrading your environment because it's not really where your concerns are? I do, yes. Although I mock Radiohead for that 'I don't belong here' sentiment they're always promoting, I share it a lot. But my ideal, the one I'm working towards, is belonging, and accepting.
4. Is your body going to seed because you're off in some other world, for instance a computer world or a TV world? My legs feel as if they're trying to decide whether to just walk off and leave me. 'He doesn't seem to need us any more, so what the fuck?'
5. Do you subscribe to the core beliefs of Marxism, Christianity, or Platonism? They're all there. I've rebelled against Christianity and Platonism, less so against Marxism. But whether I reject them or not, they've all left tire tracks through me.
6. When was the Golden Age, and when will utopia come? The Golden Age and Utopia are both permanent courts of session.
7. Do you accept personal authorship of your own parallel worlds, or know the names of the people who designed them? Or do you call them 'objective'? I accept authorship for them, or know who authored them, and don't call them objective. I try to make them more like scaffolding than buildings -- quick to assemble and quick to take down.
8. Do you find yourself using the word 'timeless' when you praise things? No, although it might have slipped past the censors occasionally.
9. What would a world in which people wholly accepted the present as 'all there is' be like? Better, or worse? It would depend on the quality of the environment they were in. I think if that happened in a degraded environment, it would be a recipe for hell on earth. If it happened in one that people had cared for and nurtured, it could be paradise on earth.
10. How will these questions change if physicists discover the Higgs Boson or 'god particle'? (Beware, trick que-whoooooooooooosh OMG, where am I? That's a trick que-whooooooooooosh OMG, where am I?
Here are the questions, followed by my own personal answers:
1. Do you think that 'Reality is elsewhere'?
2. Do you think that 'If my life as I live it were all there is, I'd top myself right now!'?
3. Do you notice yourself downgrading your environment because it's not really where your concerns are?
4. Is your body going to seed because you're off in some other world, for instance a computer world or a TV world?
5. Do you subscribe to the core beliefs of Marxism, Christianity, or Platonism?
6. When was the Golden Age, and when will utopia come?
7. Do you accept personal authorship of your own parallel worlds, or know the names of the people who designed them? Or do you call them 'objective'?
8. Do you find yourself using the word 'timeless' when you praise things?
9. What would a world in which people wholly accepted the present as 'all there is' be like? Better, or worse?
10. How will these questions change if physicists discover the Higgs Boson or 'god particle'? (Beware, trick que-whoooooooooooosh OMG, where am I?
1. Do you think that 'Reality is elsewhere'? I think it's my natural tendency, because I'm a dreamy cerebrotonic ectomorph like the kind Swift describes in Gulliver's Travels inhabiting the flying island of Laputa: 'These dreamy philosophers were so absorbed in their speculations that they employed attendants called "flappers," to flap them on the mouth and ears with a blown bladder when their attention was to be called off from "high things" to vulgar mundane matters.' Nevertheless, the fact that I employ people to flap me out of my reverie shows that my heart is in the right place.
2. Do you think that 'If my life as I live it were all there is, I'd top myself right now!'? No. I like my life.
3. Do you notice yourself downgrading your environment because it's not really where your concerns are? I do, yes. Although I mock Radiohead for that 'I don't belong here' sentiment they're always promoting, I share it a lot. But my ideal, the one I'm working towards, is belonging, and accepting.
4. Is your body going to seed because you're off in some other world, for instance a computer world or a TV world? My legs feel as if they're trying to decide whether to just walk off and leave me. 'He doesn't seem to need us any more, so what the fuck?'
5. Do you subscribe to the core beliefs of Marxism, Christianity, or Platonism? They're all there. I've rebelled against Christianity and Platonism, less so against Marxism. But whether I reject them or not, they've all left tire tracks through me.
6. When was the Golden Age, and when will utopia come? The Golden Age and Utopia are both permanent courts of session.
7. Do you accept personal authorship of your own parallel worlds, or know the names of the people who designed them? Or do you call them 'objective'? I accept authorship for them, or know who authored them, and don't call them objective. I try to make them more like scaffolding than buildings -- quick to assemble and quick to take down.
8. Do you find yourself using the word 'timeless' when you praise things? No, although it might have slipped past the censors occasionally.
9. What would a world in which people wholly accepted the present as 'all there is' be like? Better, or worse? It would depend on the quality of the environment they were in. I think if that happened in a degraded environment, it would be a recipe for hell on earth. If it happened in one that people had cared for and nurtured, it could be paradise on earth.
10. How will these questions change if physicists discover the Higgs Boson or 'god particle'? (Beware, trick que-whoooooooooooosh OMG, where am I? That's a trick que-whooooooooooosh OMG, where am I?
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-17 03:41 pm (UTC)'The quantum theory of gravity has opened up a new possibility, in which there would be no boundary to space-time and so there would be no need to specify the behavior at the boundary. There would be no singularities at which the laws of science broke down and no edge of space-time at which one would have to appeal to God or some new law to set the boundary conditions for space-time. One could say: 'The boundary condition of the universe is that it has no boundary.' The universe would be completely self-contained and not affected by anything outside itself. It would neither be created nor destroyed. It would just BE.'
Reflecting on the above quote one can imagine interesting answers to 1-9, especially 2, considering Hawking's situation.
Are you familiar with the Proust Questions (http://anthony.darrouzet-nardi.net/proust2.html)?
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-17 05:52 pm (UTC)Put as succinctly as I'm able: There has been an awful lot of "reacting" to nothingness as if the reaction itself held some intrinsic meaning. Buddhism dealt with this quandry hundreds of years ago. Perhaps Chinese Confucianism really is destined to absorb the post-modern world, as we flounder about not knowing how to process the massive influx of constant information.