The point here, I think, is that while meditation (for instance) is a valuable piece of technology, the fact that we don't really understand how it works doesn't mean that a pile of woo-woo pieced together from bits of QM, ancient texts and whatever else you're having explains anything at all.
Poetry is a dialogue between the writer and reader, or hearer, or, in a wider sense, observer. The subjective is part of the equation. This does not mean that poetry, art or even the spiritual, cannot be analysed. But in the end, the power in it is how your total experience interfaces with the symbology of the creator. There can be no mismatches. However you 'feel' about the experience of the dialogue is true for you. You can't be me, I'm taken
Same with the myths and stories associated with meditation, physical culture, martial arts and so on where what they're doing is communicating ways to trick your mind and body into effectively doing something. It's when you move outside that and start claiming that the stories have something to do with reality that the problem arises. So chi as an imagined feeling of energy flow that assists in getting your body and mind to co-ordinate to do something is fine. Chi as a unifying force which you can use to affect people at a distance is, uh, less than proven ...
I presume you have never taken heroin, opium and possibly no other external mind-altering drug beyond the low-level endorphin experience of alcohol. I also assume you have not undertaken a rigorous 3 years of constant meditation. But you may have experienced the sublime transcendantal euphoria of hearing a particular piece of music (for example) in which your world suddenly seems perfect, unending and, for just a moment, you become at one with everything.
Is this a change in mind equivalent to hearing the voices of a schizophrenic or the irrational fears of a paranoid, or the narrow-minded blind conviction of the fundamentalist Christian? All of whom believe they are right.
These experiences or states may be 'tricking' the mind and body, but, like poetry, it is the 'tricking' that becomes part of the experience and if rewarding, affects the future interpretation of experience.
There is a tendency to equate science with reality, and everything else is fiction. That seems to preclude the possibility of art also being about reality. That which is not fully communicable by numbers and words, but must be experienced without them, is indeed hard to convey in scientific terms:-)
The fact that often the discussion of science, and the use of science in discussion, pass through the medium of words and numbers puts the arts lot here at a disadvantage sometimes. That is why some of us like to put up pictures and videos.
I think 'll get me coat.... You can't be me, I'm taken
the arts lot
Please... :-(
There is a tendency to equate science with reality, and everything else is fiction. That seems to preclude the possibility of art also being about reality.
Look, if the newagers were talking about art, or poetry, or even literature, I'd give them a shrug and a pass. But they are not. They are talking about medicine. They are talking about quantum mechanics. They are talking about crime prevention. And so on and so forth. Those are all serious real-world issues, and fucking around (you should excuse my French) with nonsensial babbling about spirit planes when faced with real and serious issues is doing humanity a severe disservice.
The Pope doesn't suddenly become entitled to immunity from criticism for his genocidal policies on reproductive health just because he claims that the BS he spews is an art form or should be interpreted artistically (not that he even goes as far as to acknowledge that, but that's for another diary). Neither does Chopra. Or anyone. Reality is not a matter of taste, or subject to popular vote, or revealed through divine intervention. Superstition kills people every day precisely because too many people fail to grasp this simple fact of life.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
Poetry doesn't 'explain' anything either. It is not intended to. It exists in another domain.
Poetry certainly may explain things. That is, it may be explicative, or more suggestive... There are many kinds of poetry, but essentially, it's a form of concentrated, reflective, possibly embellished, linguistic communication.
Unless you can explain what the "other domain" is.
Why, yes.
So what are they and how can they be defined and discussed? A question that, in this thread, lacks answers.
And no, your references to mind-altering drugs, meditation, or music are not answers.
You're not saying what the relevance of art is to the debate here.
The relevance of art and spirituality is not to this specific debate, but to the discourse in general. This debate has simply exposed the incuriosity of some debaters.
I have to put some more time into a diary about it - time that I don't have right now. It is an important point, and one that has raised some polarising passion. I believe in convergence, not divergence. You can't be me, I'm taken
Why isn't anyone on the other side of the debate able to give me a brief description of what their ideas /concepts are? I got the point that they are outside of science, but can't they be described in a post here?
I've been asking questions, and I'm called incurious?
If you have information or something to convey, and I'm failing to get it, it is your failure as much as mine, you know. At least mine is acknowledged. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
Now what was your point again?
See Vedic Mathematics. We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo
I really do not want to incur your wrath again. But I am simply trying to represent an alternative point of view that I believe to be important and, in the long run, contribute to defining what change should be - because I think we can all agree that 'changing the game' is what we are all about. We just disagree on the methods. You can't be me, I'm taken
I cannot spell it out. As several have argued, maybe you don't have to get it, but be it or do it.
Or maybe I can - in another frustrating manner. You insist on reason. I insist on poetry. You insist on boxing. I insist on wrestling. You insist on the external. I insist on the internal. You like sanity. I like insanity. You like logic, I like anomalies.
But the only real difference between us (the above are not real differences in the human scale of love), is that you are not me. You can't be me, I'm taken
art and spirituality
I'm questioning the relevance of art to this debate. Spirituality seems to me to be at the heart of it, since that's emilmoller's subject from his first comment.
Bringing in art seems to me equivalent to bringing in extra-sensory perception: it's a way of presenting the imo strawman argument that there are other approaches and science doesn't understand everything. No one is denying science doesn't understand everything. So what? That does not prove in any way that such a thing as a "spiritual dimension" (level, sphere, zone, whatever) even exists. And, when asked to discuss this by defining and explaining his idea of spirituality, emil just says there are tools, go away and use them for three years, and You Will Understand.
For me, that just won't cut it.
one has to have had first hand experience in order to say something sensible about it
I am not able to reveal anything resembling what I would be trying to describe
I can and did point to the consequences of engaging oneself re spirituality: Nelson Mandela in stead of Al Capone. I hope this makes readers curious re the qualities inherent in the domain I refer to.
I wonder why it is so hard to accept the fact that a specific domain demands other research skills than an other domain. When the differences in qualities and the possibilities to attain them does not persuade, I will not be able to do that neither.
Emil
