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?
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-17 07:29 pm (UTC)I'm more interested in looking for reality among other times than among places or potential places.
2. Do you think that 'If my life as I live it were all there is, I'd top myself right now!'?
It is, and I haven't, so there you go. There's so much sex and so many good books here, why would anyone want to do themselves in?
3. Do you notice yourself downgrading your environment because it's not really where your concerns are?
I am an escapist, but a textural rather than a metaphysical escapist. I like, as Coleridge sez, "to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar." Deliberate dissociation is nothing metaphysical, it's very sensual--like pressing your hands to your eyes until you see stars--I like to read books about other worlds or books that make this world otherly, or noodling about on synthesizers making noises that seem strange and clever.
4. Is your body going to seed because you're off in some other world, for instance a computer world or a TV world?
You need to run. It's what makes us human, literally:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/17/health/17cnd-run.html
In the winter I hibernate.
5. Do you subscribe to the core beliefs of Marxism, Christianity, or Platonism?
Nope. Reductive readers. There is more in this world, Horatio, &c.
6. When was the Golden Age, and when will utopia come?
We do a pretty good job of making technology that makes us even more human than we already are. I don't see that changing.
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'?
No one designed my worlds, although Bloom's been pushing an associate producer credit for Shakespeare. Apart from that, I'll accept responsibility.
8. Do you find yourself using the word 'timeless' when you praise things?
No...but how can you not fall in love with Montaigne? He's like your grandfather, only sharper. You can look back down the ages and see those "ironic points of light" still twinkling--they dim or expand over time but the brightest still give off enough light to read by.
9. What would a world in which people wholly accepted the present as 'all there is' be like? Better, or worse?
A Husserlian ekstase--probably intensely boring and ultimately unfeasible.
10. How will these questions change if physicists discover the Higgs Boson or 'god particle'? (Beware, trick que-whoooooooooooosh OMG, where am I?
The terms of these questions changed once with Martin Luther, once with Darwin and once with Warhol and Derrida--I think we're still good for another few decades now. Though figuring out why matter has mass might clear up a few things...
B
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-17 09:01 pm (UTC)The terms of these questions changed once with Martin Luther, once with Darwin and once with Warhol and Derrida--I think we're still good for another few decades now. Though figuring out why matter has mass might clear up a few things...
Yes.