Art Lies Beyond Morality
Theres an endless war between art and morality.
Morality is a filter for life. Certain elements of life are acceptable, other elements are not. Morality sets itself the task of filtering out the unacceptable from social life. Morality cannot filter out the unacceptable from life itself.
The artist has the job of presenting life. The presentation of life is not quite the same thing as life itself.
So, neither morality nor art are coincidental with life. Only life is life.
Morality too is a presentation of life, not life itself. Sanctioned social life, morally upright and proper, operates no less as play performance put on artificially than what we find within the theater as paying customers to the dramatic spectacle on stage.
The critical difference between morality and art is that the former prioritizes exclusion, whereas the latter prioritizes inclusion.
The job of the moralist i.e., the job of the minister of the gospel, resides in giving instruction to the masses regarding right thinking and proper behavior. Of course, all of this instruction traces back to the modeling of goodness provided by the savior. Herein we see a curious contradiction: our job as proper human individuals is to hew closely to the modeling of the savior, and yet we mustnt get too close to the ways of the savior lest we become full of ourselves and thereby deify ourselves.
From this contradiction we see the paths plotted by morality and art in reference to life: a) morality has us suppressing our base impulses towards righteousness; b) art has us releasing our base impulses towards carnality.
We have the yin/yang of virtue and catharsis, as taught to us in Aristotles Poetics.
And the church profits along both paths: first it pushes us away from ourselves with morals, then it brings us back to ourselves with sins.
Pundits tell us the engine of art is conflict. Well, conflict is rooted in sin, so we know, then, that the engine of art is sin.
From all of this we know that the artist is the town crier who tries to get away with shouting as much carnal truth about the human nature of sin as possible.
All ideas and disciplines of the human mindscape are drawn from life. Life, therefore, is that source always poached but never exhausted.
It is the inexhaustibility of life that causes the oscillation of moral restrictions and artistic liberations that keep the blood pressure and heartbeat of humans going.
Each human individual faces the continuum question: saint or sinner? Death is the human tragedy forestalled by the necessary oscillation between the two poles before finally succumbing. (There is a proffered escape clause, but nowadays that business is too controversial, so Im leaving it out.)
How does the artist get away with revelation of intensely sinful deeds forbidden mention by moral authoritarians? S/he does it by being good, which means entertaining. Entertainment, that yin/yang that pulls us out of ourselves whilst simultaneously pushing us into ourselves, embodies the pause that redresses.
It is the dual motion of entertainment that sends us out of the theater dressed in a new suit of spiritual clothing. The clothing are the restraints of morality, but the new suit is party-colored hilarity kicking up its heals, and morality can reach for but not grasp that.
Wagner, who so alienated Nietzsche, composed sublime music the righteous cannot not listen to; Nietzsche, the Übermensch so politically volatile and dangerous, wrote artful narratives of anti-morality no votary cannot not read; Dickens, the despotic unfaithful husband, wrote novels no writer cannot not imitate. These are canonical names glorified within the pantheon of human deeds, yet grounded in blood and flesh mired in sin.
Tolstoy, the faithful, seems to have risen above the celestial gore, but no, while the faithful amen his commitment, they cannot not revel in the misdeeds of Anna Karenina and her Count Vronsky.
Should the righteous person eschew the artistry of the unrepentant sinner?
Well, does the art you contemplate reveal human truth, or conceal it? This is the choice between good and evil.
Aside from the above consideration, this question has an easy answer: no. No human individual lives above the oscillation linking moral restrictions and artistic liberations. Art makes us aware of those parts of our human nature that, for one reason or another, we are blind to, so the evil-mongering artist who speaks to your soul should not be foregone because s/he drives you home to yourself, and without your homecoming to yourself, you can make no authentic approach to virtue.
Morality is a filter for life. Certain elements of life are acceptable, other elements are not. Morality sets itself the task of filtering out the unacceptable from social life. Morality cannot filter out the unacceptable from life itself.
The artist has the job of presenting life. The presentation of life is not quite the same thing as life itself.
So, neither morality nor art are coincidental with life. Only life is life.
Morality too is a presentation of life, not life itself. Sanctioned social life, morally upright and proper, operates no less as play performance put on artificially than what we find within the theater as paying customers to the dramatic spectacle on stage.
The critical difference between morality and art is that the former prioritizes exclusion, whereas the latter prioritizes inclusion.
The job of the moralist i.e., the job of the minister of the gospel, resides in giving instruction to the masses regarding right thinking and proper behavior. Of course, all of this instruction traces back to the modeling of goodness provided by the savior. Herein we see a curious contradiction: our job as proper human individuals is to hew closely to the modeling of the savior, and yet we mustnt get too close to the ways of the savior lest we become full of ourselves and thereby deify ourselves.
From this contradiction we see the paths plotted by morality and art in reference to life: a) morality has us suppressing our base impulses towards righteousness; b) art has us releasing our base impulses towards carnality.
We have the yin/yang of virtue and catharsis, as taught to us in Aristotles Poetics.
And the church profits along both paths: first it pushes us away from ourselves with morals, then it brings us back to ourselves with sins.
Pundits tell us the engine of art is conflict. Well, conflict is rooted in sin, so we know, then, that the engine of art is sin.
From all of this we know that the artist is the town crier who tries to get away with shouting as much carnal truth about the human nature of sin as possible.
All ideas and disciplines of the human mindscape are drawn from life. Life, therefore, is that source always poached but never exhausted.
It is the inexhaustibility of life that causes the oscillation of moral restrictions and artistic liberations that keep the blood pressure and heartbeat of humans going.
Each human individual faces the continuum question: saint or sinner? Death is the human tragedy forestalled by the necessary oscillation between the two poles before finally succumbing. (There is a proffered escape clause, but nowadays that business is too controversial, so Im leaving it out.)
How does the artist get away with revelation of intensely sinful deeds forbidden mention by moral authoritarians? S/he does it by being good, which means entertaining. Entertainment, that yin/yang that pulls us out of ourselves whilst simultaneously pushing us into ourselves, embodies the pause that redresses.
It is the dual motion of entertainment that sends us out of the theater dressed in a new suit of spiritual clothing. The clothing are the restraints of morality, but the new suit is party-colored hilarity kicking up its heals, and morality can reach for but not grasp that.
Wagner, who so alienated Nietzsche, composed sublime music the righteous cannot not listen to; Nietzsche, the Übermensch so politically volatile and dangerous, wrote artful narratives of anti-morality no votary cannot not read; Dickens, the despotic unfaithful husband, wrote novels no writer cannot not imitate. These are canonical names glorified within the pantheon of human deeds, yet grounded in blood and flesh mired in sin.
Tolstoy, the faithful, seems to have risen above the celestial gore, but no, while the faithful amen his commitment, they cannot not revel in the misdeeds of Anna Karenina and her Count Vronsky.
Should the righteous person eschew the artistry of the unrepentant sinner?
Well, does the art you contemplate reveal human truth, or conceal it? This is the choice between good and evil.
Aside from the above consideration, this question has an easy answer: no. No human individual lives above the oscillation linking moral restrictions and artistic liberations. Art makes us aware of those parts of our human nature that, for one reason or another, we are blind to, so the evil-mongering artist who speaks to your soul should not be foregone because s/he drives you home to yourself, and without your homecoming to yourself, you can make no authentic approach to virtue.
Comments (92)
(2021)
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/535255
Hoo-boy.
NMorality is a mental habit; social pressure is the filter and the elements of life considered moral pass through this filter and are thus categorised by the individual, culture or institution. Morality is not an aspect of the world outside of human minds.
I'm not sure what you could mean by 'the unacceptable of life itself'. Life simply is.
Very interesting post but you should've left this out if you don't want us to ask what this controversial escape clause is. Is it obvious? You must be sinning here.
Quoting AmadeusD
What is NMorality?
Quoting AmadeusD
This is true. However, some things in life bump against the filter with more force than other things.
Pain. It may not be moral in of itself, but let a human individual experience it beyond a certain level of intensity and s/he becomes hard-pressed not to scream out in rage and despair against that heartless neutrality.
Thich Quang Duc set himself on fire and burned up in protest against political oppression. Although a superb demonstration of life's indifference, it was used as an alarm awakening the minds of the complacent public who are, after all, simply life, albeit life aware of itself.
Quoting Nils Loc
You have caught me in the act of writing pretentiously.
I don't think so. Culture wars are frequent - certain groups/people will utilize moral arguments against art they don't understand or like. The most infamous of course being the Ziegler's Degenerate Art exhibition in 1937.
Quoting ucarr
I think most people will find this anachronistic thinking. Art as sin might fit into some old Christian worldviews. Perhaps you had a fundamentalist childhood?
Quoting ucarr
More anachronistic Christian derived ideas. I would say this is nonsense unless you are part of a particular subculture. Within Zoroastrian or Hindu traditions, say, we have very differnt frames.
Why don't you simply start with the premise that you are a conservative thinker with some traditional ideas about Christianity which you are projecting upon the world of art within a Western context. That might make more sense.
A typo ;)
Quoting ucarr
Yes, but that changes from person to person, culture to culture, institution to institution. Says nothing moral, of itself.
Quoting ucarr
Can't figure out what you're saying here. People cry out in pain. That's just a state of affairs. There's nothing moral in this observation. "Rage and despair" is usually not present. Quoting ucarr
Don't know what you could be tryign to say here, but it didn't move any kind of needle in any direction (the act of self-immolation). So this isn't giving me anything either...
Is this an anfractuous way to say that God is ugly?
Quoting ucarr
Quoting Tom Storm
As humanity survives across the march of time, human nature continues to open new chapters of revelation. The artist works to present substantial details of the revelation. The artist walks a mile in the shoes of humanity-observed non-judgmentally. The more substantial the revelation, the more likely conflict between what is revealed and the local culture's commitments to what human behavior should be. This is the conflict and the war.
Perhaps there is now no new human behavior under the sun, and thus the revelations are repetitions of prior revelations. In that case, art enables us to remember what we've forgotten, and perhaps what we wish to remain forgotten.
If human history continues to be unique going forward, with human nature in new situations revealing heretofore unseen facets of itself, then we can surmise human nature is bigger than local codes governing behavior.
Perhaps the Nazi holocaust shows us nothing new about the murderous impulses of aspiring men, but their hoarding up of the art pieces denounced publicly and treasured privately alerts us to something interesting about the connection between hatred and envy. This peculiar relationship is today still being examined in documentary movies.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting Tom Storm
The human individual will do things to adapt to immediate circumstances and therefore, killing -- even murder -- are not off the table. This is what art reveals when the story features a murderer up against society's disapproval for taking the life of a pawnbroker. He wants the victim's money to finance his greatness of character and its attendant, albeit as yet unrealized, greatness of achievement.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting Tom Storm
Sometimes moral correctness allows only a narrow tolerance between ice and open flame. Of course we're all sinners in the game of steering a course midway between love and hate.
Quoting Tom Storm
The scriptures are a narrative and the higher power is a character within it. Not even the higher power escapes violation of its own prescriptions for right behavior: the older stories include transgressing individuals struck down for what today we count as infractions.
Quoting praxis
While the human individual lives s/he struggles with what is best to do going forward. Having a higher power to take direction from provides comfort. Is God a sub-division of human psychology? Well, the savior was fully human, so I'm on solid ground answering "yes."
Ugliness is quite rare and instructive -- it makes us rethink what constitutes good (The Elephant Man) -- so a deformed higher-power might possess ugliness as one of its infrequent aspects that only the stalwart person can bear to witness.
This reads like uninspired journalism. It has a bit of a grandiose tone but doesn't really say a lot. In fact, I would argue the points made are moot. Is English your first language? I ask only because the sentences seem archaic in structure and the inflated style - 'the pantheon of human deeds, yet grounded in blood and flesh mired in sin' - reads like early 20th century pamphleteering.
In the end you seem to be making the commonplace observations that good art can be made by flawed people. (Let's not use archaic and imprecise words like 'sinner') And you ask is it ok to appreciate such work. This was an essay quesion I dealt with many years ago in early high school. I believe Picasso was the artist in quesion. Bit of a cliché.
Quoting ucarr
You didn't answer any of my points. Another torrent of rococo and imprecise language. Your claims need some form of demonstration.
How about one at random? You write the following.
The artist works to present substantial details of the revelation. The artist walks a mile in the shoes of humanity-observed non-judgmentally.
Please demonstrate this with examples.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting AmadeusD
On a planet with no life, nothing interesting happens.
Life on earth is interesting, and art and morality, in turn, are also interesting to the extent they remain connected to life. So existence without life is not interesting and besides, no human knows anything about it.
Quoting AmadeusD
This is a useless supposition because no human lives in a world without human minds. That being the case, the world outside of human minds is irrelevant to us.
Since we can't escape morality, reference to a world without it yields us nothing.
What I claim to be interesting is the proposition life is bigger than moral life, its derivative. Now, if art is sinful by nature because humans are likewise sinful by nature, and if art, following the lead of human nature, enacts the audacity to be more inclusive than moral life, then the fight between a more inclusive narrative of human reality and the edited version that's morality-friendly amounts to being a fight between true representation and reductive, idealized representation.
Art looks past the ideal towards telling a more complete truth about who we are.
Oh, what direction has a higher power given you?
Quoting ucarr
God is pretty much whatever someone needs to dream up, I think.
Quoting ucarr
We see beauty in ugliness through aesthetic experience (art).
Quoting ucarr
This seems to be just your opinion. I think distilling this, though, we can say that existence is. Life can be. When they coincide in time, interest arises. That said, not all life carries interests in the way you're using it here. So, as with my conclusion here, it's hard to see 'about what' you want to speak... But, i take your point, excepting that we often care about hte interests of non-humans. Even non-living things.
Quoting ucarr
Yet, it dismantles your premise. So, clearly, its relevant to us in demarcating what is moral. Anything other than ideas in human minds carry nothing moral. You seem to admit this, but deny its relevance? How could you do such a thing! :P (i am joking, this is fun!)
Quoting ucarr
We can, though (in a roundabout way) By realising it's not something to be escaped, or anything actionable. It is, simply put, your attitude towards any given thing. Yes, we can't escape this. But that doesn't butter your bread. I would need to know that Morality is something aside from my attitudes to care.
Quoting ucarr
Hmm. Well, this is trivially obvious. I'm not sure why it's interesting. Obviously, life exists outside of moral proclamations. What do you find interesting? Genuine question - can't quite grasp what you want to be talking about, in this area.
Quoting ucarr
...it isn't...
Quoting ucarr
We aren't...
Quoting ucarr
I don't know what you're talking about. This seems to refer to things not present in the conversation. what is "the edited version" and, of what? What is a "more inclusive narrative of human reality"???
Can you please, not lecture, but clarify these for me? I want to say more about your previous statements, but without knowing what these are, I have no idea where you're deriving them, and that might be why they seem nonsensical.
Once you've done so, feel free to then reply to all i've said, in whatever way you please :)
Quoting ucarr
Quoting Tom Storm
I plead guilty.
Quoting Tom Storm
I acknowledge that they are. I posted here because I need to have my points examined critically.
Quoting Tom Storm
I plead guilty.
Quoting Tom Storm
Yes, I am repeating the commonplace observations. Here's how my statement tries to diverge: my claim goes on to imply good art softens moral condemnation by arousing sympathy for the human condition in a dramatic situation with circumstances pushing the individual beyond his limits: Hamlet, bedeviled by the demands of the ghost, the assignations of his mother, the vulnerabilities of his girlfriend and the protests of his adversary, murders Polonius.
Quoting Tom Storm
Quoting ucarr
Shakespeare, in writing Hamlet, lives Hamlet's life non-judgmentally. He walks through his many trials and, in the end, gives Hamlet a soliloquy about choosing suicide over and above the terror of the unknown and even worse, the unearned ruin of Job's lengthy suffering.
It's non-judgment in the rendering of a life that extends art beyond the scope of morals. As AmadeusD says, "Life simply is."
Quoting ucarr
Quoting AmadeusD
Well said. We're agreeing interest arises when human life within an existing world passes time with adventures. To this I add further interest by seeing how much humans can get away with in their behavior.
Love and war are the two big adventures. Can I kiss the girl? Can I shoot the enemy? Everyone who lives pushes against moral boundaries in their effort at living. As you've said, "Life simply is."
Well, the naked fact of being in life as a human individual has no boundaries so absolute we cannot attempt to lie our way out of them. This attempt to lie, cheat, slip and slide our way out of moral boundaries in life, by my observation, is necessary, and that's what I'm trying to focus on here.
[u]Anyone not frequently tempted to lie, cheat and steal their way through life is probably a low-vitality person who is not interesting.
And thus the church shows its wisdom when it declares human nature corrupt from the git-go.[/u]
Even the rare, authentically righteous person has to fend off fiercely their temptations toward pride of person regarding their rectitude. For us humans, Eden without the snake is unthinkable.
When the slithering demon comes on stage, that's when the interest begins.
You say we humans aren't sinful by our natures and that our art likewise -- though sourced from us -- is not sinful. Have you not found that a movie depicting a beautiful sun setting its glow over a vuluptuous woman with soul-stirring music on the soundtrack puts you to sleep after ten minutes if something doesn't go wrong, thus threatening the woman's happiness?
Quoting ucarr
This is one of my best forward passes with the lance of my wit. It is another one of my central points of focus: the artist wants to threaten the beautiful woman with something of interest menacing her composure. If a man doesn't take delight in this rousing of the feminine will to survive, that man belongs in the vestry with the robes and the sashes.
I've underlined all of my central points of focus.
Fair enough.
Quoting ucarr
The famous soliloquy (at the play's half way point) isn't necessarily about suicide. Hamlet is a case of analysis paralysis. The boy simply can't get his act together. If anything his ponderousness is also a warning about speculation over action and the risk that comes with making choices. He is more of an early existentialist... and he is also a confused melancholic.
But I prefer Deadwood to Hamlet.
Quoting praxis
Firstly, I've received the direction that I should fear the higher-power. Without my fear, my arrogance would have me at the bottom of the oubliette before sundown.
Quoting praxis
That's a tempting thing to say, but if you've ever been delivered from your limitations into a situation you could never earn you way into, it's more fitting to feel gratitude towards a higher power.
Quoting praxis
Yes.
So far it seems that the only thing you have to be grateful for is the direction to fear. I for one would not be grateful for that. Perhaps youve received more than the advice to fear a higher power?
Quoting ucarr
You think it sinful to see beauty in ugliness?
If not, there are is some similarity in what he conveys with the ideas of material-impulse (concrete, physical world) and formal-impulse (abstract, rational world) being somewhat bridged by the playful-impulse (aesthetic world).
Am looking forward to Robert Eggers Nosferatu, and the premise is related, pushed to the limit. A young bride is being possessed to the horror of everyone around her, by a really awful demon that wants to copulate with her and she with it (my assumption based on trailer).
But that demon represents what is in us, both men and women, turned up to a degree which threatens an entire community. It is the Id overgrown into a deity, our shadow grown titanic (before which we awe and tremble), the frightful nightmare of human desire gone awry. The transgressions which threaten the status quo in concentric circles from family to nation is a vision of the monster. What is monsterous (akin to all that is deified) is the breakdown of the boundaries of the sacred order, as all kinds of terrible fusions/transgressions occur (like in the transitions of H. Bosch's paintings).
The whole drama is just a meditation on those sinful desires, which can serve a moral function, in so far as we can become aware that they represent the forces within us.
Your thesis sounds in someway evocative or at least relevant to Rene Girard's work (a very weird but interesting kind of Christian). He draws a line between unanimous expulsion of the scapegoat, to the sacrificial rites as what imbues archaic culture with its powers to keep order. It's all very mysterious, archetypal and mythic but it resonates with me.
We are within the ring of the cult/community which may expel us at any time. It just a never ending set of taboos that forms the thresholds of our social structure.
Quoting ucarr
I think you are right. Artists are another kind of God's priests. They form the other pole of the oscillation you speak of that keeps us on the middle path between two kinds of hell.
Moralizers often carry a lot of filth in their own shadows. The evil-mongering artist can do a lot with that.
Instead of art and morality being juxtaposed, is it possible to look at morality as a subset (or genre) of art? Someone living a moral life (define this as you will) can be viewed like a type of performance art alongside of dance, theater and opera.
Quoting praxis
It's true I'm a very fearful person, however, I've received deliverance to a quality of life beyond my own merits, and for that I'm grateful. It took me a long time to realize how much is being done on my behalf by the people in my life, and I'm grateful for my awakening to this truth.
I'm struck by how next to nothing I am outside of society. I think I understand correctly that short time in a deprivation tank and I'd even forget my own name. The human brain can be mighty, but it never stops being frail.
Pain (war) is another instrument of revelation. It forces us to see our real limitations. The depiction of pain is central to art because it is such a powerful driver of human behavior, both towards and away from goodness. Tragedy, that sharpens the focus on the tragic flaw of the noble person, and the self destruction it causes, functions as one of humanity's greatest art forms.
Pleasure (love) is the counterpart to pain and it too highlights our catastrophic limitations: Othello murders his beloved, Desdemona.
I repeat, morality is a derivative of dynamic and forceful lives, and thus it is the handmaid of vitality, not its judge.
Would you choose moral restraints upon the dynamic leader of the people over unrestrained vitality as their motive force?
Quoting Schiller
:up:
Thank-you for bringing my attention to Schiller's pertinent ideas.
It is the equilibrium of evils, vitality/constraint, that compound into beauty, the peak of inspiration. The motive force of highest inspiration becomes an evil when it lacks the proper context for its expression.
Yes, beauty becomes itself when it partakes of, in part, deformity. It's the element of deformation making beauty singular that distinguishes it from the merely symmetrical and pleasingly pretty.
No we see that beauty is closely allied with freedom. Anna Karenina and Count Vronsky, both beautiful individuals, together made a bid for freedom from the moral precepts of matrimony, an honorable institution. Ultimately, they were not strong enough in their own time to achieve escape velocity, but look at the assertive promiscuity of continental society today.
Quoting praxis
On the contrary, I see virtue in the mind's transformation of ugliness into beauty. This process is essential to human perception encountering the radically new: Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, polytonal and violently complex, aurally speaking, sent its virgin audience into fits of violence, their introduction to the transformation process.
Is there a parallel in science with Bohr's Copenhagen Interpretation vís-a-vís Einstein's Denounciation?
Quoting ucarr
Quoting Thales
You have an excellent idea going here. What's to be made of the lives of the saints when they are viewed through the lens of aesthetics? Poet Keats declared, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty, -- that is all." Was his "Ode on a Grecian Urn" also a tribute to lives dedicated to the eternal afterlife?
Looking on the flip side, I confess to struggling with the idealism of the painterly lovers on the urn with their forever unruffled hair. I take too much repose in the mess of real life to feel completely comfortable inside museums wherein look but don't touch is the rule of law.
Is she a good girl if she let's you muss her hair? I say, "yes."
Quoting Nils Loc
:up:
Quoting Nils Loc
Yes. The struggle is both external and internal. As for the external struggle, there's a monster out there lurking, on the hunt for victims (Frankenstein). Morality is correct behavior forestalling victimization.
As to the internal struggle, the monster dwells within and morality is stern repression of its emergence. (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde).
When the existence of the monster is just being discovered, and it still evokes terror within the masses, it is the artist who ventures into the dark cave of destruction with open eyes, ready to escape after close observation, bringing back an account to the people (Oedipus).
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/937529
Quoting ucarr
Quoting AmadeusD
Quoting ucarr
Quoting AmadeusD
Why do you think setting the boundary of morality (within the mind) dismantles my premise (my quote at the top)? Of course what's interesting, or not, depends upon minds.
Here we have an opportunity to define "interest" in an interesting way: it is bias towards one thing or another. Bias presupposes a sentient individual with an enduring point of view accompanied by a set of needs and desires and goals. These things comprise interest and the interesting. I can artificially imagine a world without life. There's no interest and nothing interesting on such a world because there's no bias anywhere. When the wind blows the rocks hither and thither, there's no reaction, no goals achieved or thwarted. All events are a matter of indifference. In short, on a lifeless planet, there's no bias toward desires, no dramatic suspense awaiting outcomes, i.e., no interest, nothing interesting.
If anything, your demarcation of the scope of morality aides my premise by clarifying its theater of action: the mind. Thank-you.
Quoting 180 Proof
This is excellent. Thank-you for making it available herein.
Yes, the existent makes adaptive choices for survival and otherwise and, of necessity, must sometimes compromise moral restrictions in conflict with doing so. The necessity resides within the fact blooming creation is too full of value to allow the sentient total passage through life without doing harm to the innocent.
So, the drama in life is no less about redressing wrongs than about avoiding them.
Now we come to the hard part: art is about seeking out the shrewd deformity that mysteriously and judiciously transforms the ordinary into the beautiful.
Singularity is the heart of aesthetics. As such, it produces a gravitational field around itself that bends, warps and distorts the conventionality of established morality. A viable singularity makes necessary an adjustment in the established morality. Morals must be modified and tailored to the new existential demands of the singularity.
The singularity has two aspects: positive/negative.
Just now we're witnessing singularity in its negative aspect: the ascension to power of a destroyer. The process is warping morality to an extent making the masses dizzy.
Two centuries ago, we witnessed singularity in its positive aspect: the ascension to power of a savior. The process warped morality to an extent making the masses dizzy.
The destroyer/savior switch is the lotus blossom in the center of the garden of the expression.*
The switch keeps us perplexed about the distinction between good and evil.
*The vital artist reaches beyond success to failure.
Frankly Im amazed at how lacking our leaders are in both moral character and unrestrained vitality. I like to think that if one emerged glistening with both they would be unstoppable.
Sure, but I still dont see war.
Quoting Nils Loc
I believe Ive narrowed it down to one of two possibilities: The escape clause is either receiving a free ticket to The Louvre, or being granted a confession at the Vatican. :cool:
Quoting ucarr
Your option (b) is getting close.
Death is the human tragedy forestalled by the necessary oscillation between the two poles before finally succumbing. (There is a proffered escape clause, but nowadays that business is too controversial, so Im leaving it out.)[/quote]
Above I've underlined a word that serves as a clue to the answer. When you realize what it is, the moment will be anti-climactic, as this escape clause is the most heralded news on earth.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting praxis
Some see life on earth as a time of tribulation before one's appointment with their final reckoning. Pain management, during the time of tribulation, holds center position in the determination of the final reckoning.
Does earthly life and its outcome boil down to each person's time management and pain management?
Did you find and attack the serious goals of your life in a timely fashion?
Did you make the world a better place by decreasing the pain of others when you were able?
No, no, and no (in that I havent acted in order to better the world).
Still missing the point.
Quoting praxis
Art and morality within the context of this thread reduce to four elements:
Love | War
Love -- Marriage, home, family, community
War -- Power & Money in service to Partisan: Marriage, home, family, community
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When we love we build: marriage, home, family, community.
When we war we partition marriage, home, family, community into segregated modules.
Love in practice is love on earth.
Love in theory is moral guidance on paper.
As we know, there is no perfect agreement between theory and practice.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Existential | The Social
The Existential -- Flesh & blood humans walking the earth
The Social -- Flesh & blood humans self-constrained to a social contract whose memorized contents are made existential by prescription.
When we act existentially, we are creatures of the natural world.
When we act socially, we are creatures of our own minds.
We're not. The term 'adventure' here is nothing to do with what I've said, and I'm not sure what you mean by it. Interests exist in non-humans, in both senses we might need, so I don't agree with that either. Life, generally, coinciding with existence creates an interest. That's all I'm happy to agree with.
Quoting ucarr
What do you mean 'get away with'? How 'much' of what? What do you mean by 'much' even here?
Quoting ucarr
This seems to be so obviously false It's hard to respond to politely. Suffice to say: No, they aren't.
Quoting ucarr
No. Morality is within each person who lives. It isn't something that can be pushed up against. Your attitudes guide your behaviour. That's all that can be said.
Quoting ucarr are nothing but our personal attitudes. There are no boundaries you could possibly point me toward that could fill that spot, for your utterances. Do feel free to try!
Quoting ucarr
No, it doesn't, in any way that could be conceived by a rational thinker. The church makes this claim based on an ideological Doctrine designed to restrict people's behaviour to that which can be taken advantage of by hte village idiot.
Quoting ucarr
This, now, seems to be you devolving into a religious recitation of some kind? Nothing in this or hte previous part of your reply has any bearing on the concepts you're trying to discuss.
Quoting ucarr
I have to say, this sounds somewhat unhinged, in terms of trying to make any kind of point. Schizophrenic, perhaps.
There is no 'sinful' in nature. It doesn't exist. There is nothing which could be symbolized by the claim "humans are sinful by nature". No such possibility arises in reality.
I have no idea what movie you're talking about, or why it's relevant here. But, soul-stirring music does not put me to sleep, almost by definition. Literally no f-ing clue what hte rest of this passage is for/about/meant to evoke.
Quoting ucarr
This fails, entirely, to answer the questions I put to you in clarifying what it is you're talking about. As with the previous three replies, I literally have no clue what you are trying to speak about.
Quoting AmadeusD
By "adventure" I mean taking action in the world towards a goal and gaining experience as a result.
Quoting AmadeusD
I mean how far can I go outside the established boundaries of acceptable behavior without incurring punishment from the state.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting AmadeusD
I mean love is building marriage, home, family and community; I mean war is taking a partisan stance on behalf of one society of marriages, homes, families and communities in opposition to the same interests held by people in another society.
Don't be polite. Tell it to me straight why building marriage, home, family and community as the important experiences of your life is a claim obviously false.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting AmadeusD
We've already agreed morality resides within the mind. So it's obvious I don't mean a literal pushing up against like pushing up against a stone blocking my path. Yes, my attitudes guide my behavior, and that's internal conflict that I, and you, sometimes push up against (speaking figuratively). We don't always want to do the right thing.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting AmadeusD
Are you claiming never to have gone back on your commitment to do the right thing?
Quoting ucarr
Quoting AmadeusD
I mean to say that the moral guardians of the church are right in their expectation that humans will sometimes fail to faithfully carry out all of their moral commitments. Do you know any individuals who are perfectly faithful to their own moral commitments?
Quoting ucarr
Quoting AmadeusD
Part of my effort in this conversation is defining "interest" as a kind of bias, or partiality towards one particular choice over another choice. So, when I say the slithering snake arouses interest, I'm talking about how the presumed evil of the snake is a type of bias away from the peace of equilibrium towards excitement and, unfortunately, murder.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting AmadeusD
I'm trying to say that either jeopardy or joy are necessary to interest because either state is far from the equilibrium - and dullness - of peace and stability too prolonged.
Quoting AmadeusD
Are you saying you believe crimes such as rape and murder have nothing to do with sinful perpetrators? What do you suppose motivates rape and murder if not being sinful?
Quoting ucarr
Quoting AmadeusD
I'm herein trying to talk about the big experiences in life; they are the ones that promise great pain or great joy.
So, this couldn't possibly be restricted to love and war. Are you able to somehow make those two claims work together?
Quoting ucarr
This is counter to all else you've put forward here. Makes it quite hard to comment on..
Quoting ucarr
They are not.
Quoting ucarr
Are you sure?
Quoting ucarr
Imagine you did none of these things. You can still experience immense adventure, or war. They have no logical connection to one another. THe claim is both faulty (in that you're not being consistent in what you're claiming) and utterly absurd, in that you are claiming there are two motivations for all behaviour. Patently ridiculous.
Quoting ucarr
This makes much, much clearer what you're getting at; thank you. I find it very hard to say one 'pushes up against a boundary' when internally conflicted. If there were a moral 'boundary' rather than a moral attitude, we would want to say these are not the same thing.
Quoting ucarr
This question is not relevant to my objection, but on it's face, no. I have either continued in one mind, or changed my mind. I have never committed to doing 'the right thing', and then chosen to do the 'wrong' thing, noting that only I could possibly make those claims about my own attitudes. That move (i.e committing to the 'right' thing, and then doing the 'wrong' thing, seems a violation of the nature of behaviour)
Quoting ucarr
Again, this has nothing to do with what you claimed, or I objected to. The church claims humans are 'corrupt' against an ideologically divine doctrine. You are not talking about that, and so your comments have nothing to do with what you're trying to talk about. If all you intend to say is that humans, generally, change their minds and are subject to desire that is correct. It has absolutely nothing, whatsoever, to do with 'corruption' or 'the church'.
Quoting ucarr
Same as above. This has extremely little to do with what you seem to want to discuss. It's, firstly, ridiculous anyway, but secondly there is no connection between this use of 'interest' and the way you've used it elsewhere. Interest essentially has two senses: "preference", and "right". Neither are objective(other than within law) or derived from ought but, in the first personal, and the second collective attitudes to objects and events (i.e my interests derive from my preferences, and my rights derive from the collective agreements around ownership, protections etc..). I take it what you mean to say is that conflict invokes preferences for one or other side of the conflict. Trivially true, and has absolutely nothing to do with the Snake, the Garden of Eden or morality. The presumed 'evil of hte snake' is a religious nonsense about a fiction. Perhaps it would be better to stop talking in deep, confused metaphors.
Quoting ucarr
Can't understand what you could be trying to say, despite this. The scene you painted is joyous. Peace can be found anywhere along the spectrum you're invoking. There's also no reason to think that they can't coexist. In any case, it still doesn't touch the claims you've made that I've objected to.
Quoting ucarr
This has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with your claim or my objection. There is no such thing as 'sinful nature'. Crimes are committed for all kinds of reasons. Sin is not one of them.
Moral guidance on paper is merely a fictional story designed to align the wills of those charmed by it.
Totally agree. You saved me the trouble of saying this. Problematic assumptions are not good for philosophical enquiry.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting AmadeusD
I think love and war are two broad categories that encompass most of the important experiences humans have. Likewise, marriage, home, family and community are broadly inclusive of the important human experiences.
Regarding the singular humans, such as priests, nuns, monks, old bachelors, spinsters, elderly shut-ins and even hermits, they oftentimes attach themselves to the four named categories: they attach to their parents, so that's their attachment to marriage, or, they're married to the higher power that frames the church; they attach to their nuclear family of parents and siblings, so that's their attachment to family; they attach to their extended family of cousins, uncles and aunts and also to friends and neighbors, so that's their attachment to community.
Some hermits attach to a spiritual higher power, so that's their attachment to marriage, to the family of believers, and to the world community.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting praxis
Are you charmed and deceived by the ten commandments?
Quoting AmadeusD
A singular person who enlists in the armed services during wartime finds home and family within his platoon; he finds marriage through his belief in his country for which he jeopardizes his life; he finds community within the fellowship of related armed services divisions, and he finds community within the localities he protects as a soldier.
Having just reviewed them, Im not crazy about 1-4 but the rest are okay.
Pentheus, as they guy who transgresses good taste or law, by impiety, is here to be considered in the guise of an evil artist as a sacrificial victim, much like Jesus (perceived to be impious by whatever transgression got him killed). Oh the virtue of piety! What impious artist makes a Christian run back to church?
If ucarr is transgressing the bounds of implicit/explicit virtue/etiquette as an artist contra the philosopher, maybe he is the evil artist.
He must run back to church to give what that unanimous crowd demands, in an alignment of the sensible wills of such a peer group: good, clear, hygienic, rigorous and rational sense in selfless service.
Chatgpt may give us a lecture on piety:
[quote= ChatGPT on Piety]"Piety" refers to a deep respect for and devotion to religious practices, beliefs, or duties. It often involves a reverence for the divine, as well as a commitment to moral and ethical principles associated with ones faith. People who exhibit piety typically demonstrate their religious devotion through regular worship, prayer, rituals, and adherence to religious teachings.
In a broader sense, piety can also encompass loyalty, respect, and duty toward ones family, community, or country, reflecting a sense of duty and honor in relationships and responsibilities. The concept is commonly associated with virtues such as humility, reverence, and obedience to higher moral or spiritual authority. [/quote]
Several songs throughout history have promoted war, either explicitly or by glorifying military conflict. These songs often reflect the political or cultural environment of the time, and they can serve as rallying cries or propaganda tools. Here are a few notable examples:
1. "Over There" (1917) George M. Cohan
2. "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" (1861) Julia Ward Howe
3. "Rule, Britannia!" (1740) James Thomson and Thomas Arne
4. "The Horst Wessel Song" (1930s) Nazi Party
5. "The British Grenadiers" (17th century) Traditional
6. "Katyusha" (1938) Matvei Blanter and Mikhail Isakovsky
7. "Yankee Doodle" (18th century) Traditional
8. "Marseillaise" (1792) Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle
These songs often aim to stir patriotic feelings and rally public support for war, making them historically significant as part of wartime propaganda or national identity-building efforts.
Art can be a weapon, an olive branch, a medicine, whatever, or merely aesthetic.
This is directly contradictory. If the former, not hte latter. If the latter, not hte former. Can you choose one? Is it love and war, or the series of personal opinions on marriage, home , family and community? Honestly, though, it doesn't matter. This does nothing for hte fact that this does not, at all cover the range of human experience, or interest. Not in any way, whatsoever.
Quoting ucarr
And why would this inform you of anything but those individual people's proclivities? It says nothing about 'humanity'. This is so dumb. Nothing you have said supports your inconsistent claims.
Quoting ucarr
To put it a little more politely than perhaps htis demands: No, that's an extreme over-reach in usage of those terms, probably purposefully, to increase the vagueries of your claims. THe claims are bizarre, counter to reality and you've provided nothing to support them.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting AmadeusD
As I've already stated, love and war are both about marriage, home, family and community. They share a large region of common ground. They stand apart on the issue of their approach to fellowship; love does not partition fellowship; war partitions fellowship into good and evil, with both sides demonizing the other.
Example: When America went to war with Germany in 1942, both countries were fighting for the best quality of life for its citizens, and both sets of citizens consisted of married couples, their homes, their families and their communities. Both sets of citizens did similar things in the four categories. However, unlike during peacetime, which in our context here can be likened to love, during wartime, the similar ways of life of the two countries were partitioned off from each other as each side tried to slaughter the other side.
So, love and war and the quartet (marriage, home, family, community) cannot be in a relationship of: If the former, not hte latter. If the latter, not hte former because they have much in common and thus there is no mutual exclusion. On the contrary, there is mutual inclusion because both sides have scarcely any important distinctions between them at all: American marriages_German marriages; American homes_German homes; American families_German families; American communities_German communities. The bone of contention creating the war consists in each side wanting to destroy the other side, and that too is something they have in common!
No they don't. I've been explicitly clear that this is simply not hte case, and so none of your arguments, supposing this, can go through.
There is, sorry to say, not a lot of substance in anything you're saying here. For instance:
Quoting ucarr
This is muddled, nonsensical, rambling attempts at bringing yourself into some kind of focus after failing to make any consistent claim. I am sorry uCarr, but there is nothing to be responded to, other than pointing out the massive inconsistencies, inaccuracies and parochial claims being made.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting AmadeusD
In the above quote you make a claim about my statement. Can you show that my statement is a contradiction? I'm asking you to take the words in my statement and arrange them into a configuration that shows it is a contradiction. This would be an argument supporting your claim.
Backing up claims with supporting arguments is the proper way of doing things here at TPF:
Here's my claim:
Quoting ucarr
Here's my example; it takes what's abstractly expressed in my claim and fleshes it out with practical things configured according to the abstract pattern :
Quoting ucarr
Here's my argument; it invalidates your logic with an alternative interpretation establishing my example as a counter-example:
Quoting ucarr
Quoting Nils Loc
If God consciousness is a sub-division of human psychology (the savior was fully human), then I can advance an argument claiming that what the divine looks like to humanity needs continual fine tuning and updating, and that this work is the work of the artist.
Now, I've declared art being at risk of blasphemy as a natural part of the territory enclosing the artistic raison d'etre.
Are the masses of people entertained? If so, perhaps their pleasure can defuse my condemnation by the state.
Quoting Chatgpt
"With God on our side" mentality running high, battalions enter battlefields. Can a song be musical art and propaganda simultaneously?
Quoting praxis
Is there an aesthetics of human manipulation of context?
Yes and yes.
It is self evident. See:
Quoting ucarr
Is in contradiction to the very next phrase:
Quoting ucarr
You cannot have both stand in the same symbolic role. They are contradictory (though, admittedly, indirectly so).
Quoting ucarr
It wouldn't. But this has become relatively par-for-course in this exchange. The above is not an argument. Its literally highlighting what you've said. There is no further being imparted than your own words. You seem to misunderstand a lot of words you're using...
Quoting ucarr
No, it doesn't. It doesn't even brush up against an attempt to do so. It's waffle. Sorry to say. My position (in that regard) does not involve counter-examples of anything. There was no example to begin with. Again, totally misunderstanding words you're using. UNless you're suggesting you have provided a counter-example to your own example? I can't see how that helps though, as the example was irrelevant and did nothing to support your cliam. I see you've now simply turned that onus on me. Extremely poor form. All i need is your own words, so I can meet the challenge, but this is backward.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting ucarr
Quoting AmadeusD
I've underlined the first sentence in your quote directly above. It's the gist of your argument for refuting my two quoted statements at the top. Your refutation is false because, apparently, you've forgotten something. What you seem to have forgotten is reposted directly below:
Quoting ucarr
As you can see, by my definition of Love and War, marriage, home, family and community are directly linked to Love and War. Therefore, making the same claim about each statement, namely that they are broadly inclusive of the important human experiences is not a contradiction because the two claims, in actuality, are about the same thing, albeit, the thing in question here is a unit articulated into two parts: concentric circles. The outer circle houses the two big parts: Love | War; the inner circle houses the smaller parts that fill in the big parts with pertinent details: marriage, home, family, community.
If I say a Swiss watch runs like a precision mechanism, and likewise, its sweep second hand runs like a precision mechanism, there's no contradiction because the two statements are talking about the attributes of two parts of one unit.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting AmadeusD
in your quote directly above, you make an approach to arranging my words into a configuration that shows it is a contradiction: "You cannot have both stand in the same symbolic role." But I counter-argue that statement by showing that two parts that combine to make a unified whole are not contradictory. Its the combination of the two parts that refutes your ascription of contradiction because contradictions cannot combine.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting ucarr
By my definition, Love and War both include: marriage, home, family, community. If this is true, then they can't be contradictory when defined as I've defined them.
Can you show that, during WW2, it was not the case that there were married couples, homes, families and communities in both America and Germany? An example supporting your argument would have to show that in one country there were marriages, homes, families and communities whereas in the other country there were anti-marriages, anti-homes, anti-families and anti-communities.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting ucarr
Quoting praxis
Do your answers establish a separation between art-in-itself and art-in-itself weaponized?
It is not an argument. Your phrase contradicts itself. I've had to say nothing at all. Simply quote you. It's getting really boring working through your misunderstandings.
Quoting ucarr
Bizarre mate. Not my circus.
Quoting ucarr
They are not. Are you even paying attention?
Quoting ucarr
No, they are not. One is talking about hte 'unit' and one is talking about a discreet part of hte Unit. They are not analogous, and cannot be read-between. In some cases, the same will be able to be said about those disparate things, for other reasons. Something being 'robust' could be true of both options, for instance.
Quoting ucarr
And so they are contradictory. Two parts. Not one. Two. They cannot maintain the same role in your position. This is plain.
Quoting ucarr
They are, though and you did not show otherwise, in any way. Your specific use is what's making htem contradict one another. Not their inherent properties. As noted, its possible to refer to disparate, but related objects, with the same atrributes - but you cannot assign an attribute of totality, to a part of that which is 'total'. "Love and War" cannot be referred to in the same way as whatever parochial elements your shoehorning into that phrase. Attributes of the whole cannot also be assigned to their parts, because they are literally different things.
Quoting ucarr
No, it supports it. Abysmal work.
Quoting ucarr
That is contradictory, already. If both are defined in the same way, they are the same thing and cannot be spoken about as in contrast (which you are doing - this is why your use is what's causing the contradiction). I get the feeling you're trying to do this on the fly, rather than having fleshed anything out before having to meet these objections.
Quoting ucarr
Sorry, but this is irrelevant and absolute nonsense. Nothing here has anything whatsosever to do with my objection. You seem to not be able to understand the really basic tenets being discussed. You refuse to define your terms, you refuse to acknowledge the shortcomings of whatever it is you're trying to say, and you don't even have a clear, coherent point to make. Its really, really difficult to keep interacting with something tha tis just a mess.
If you mean art-in-itself or 'art for art's sake' and art weaponized, yes I've made that separation.
I'd like to move on to the weaponization of religion. Can religion be meaningful and propaganda simultaneously?
I've asked Chatgpt to provide a few examples:
The Crusades (11th13th Centuries)
Spanish Inquisition (14781834)
Thirty Years' War (16181648)
British Colonialism and the Spread of Christianity (17th19th Centuries)
Partition of India (1947)
Rwandan Genocide (1994)
Islamic State (ISIS) and Jihadism (2010s)
Religious Nationalism in Myanmar (2010s2020s)
Salem Witch Trials (1692)
Quoting ucarr
Quoting ucarr
Quoting AmadeusD
Quoting ucarr
Quoting AmadeusD
Quoting ucarr
Quoting ucarr
What I've underlined immediately above is my defense of your attack:
Its the combination of the two parts that refutes your ascription of contradiction because contradictions cannot combine.[/quote]
Here's your latest reply:
Quoting AmadeusD
In your above quote I've underlined the gist of your latest attack; it's merely a repetition of your prior attack. Since your prior attack, I've defended my thesis. Now you have to attack my defense of my thesis. Merely repeating your attack gains you nothing.
Here's the gist of my defense of your attack based on contradiction:
Its the combination of the two parts that refutes your ascription of contradiction because contradictions cannot combine.[/quote]
In order to continue your attack, you have to attack my defense quoted above. You have to show why my thesis is still contradictory, even in light of my defense.
Quoting praxis
I'll venture to surmise from your statement above we agree that art lies beyond morality, the central theme of this conversation.
Quoting praxis
I think the weaponization of religion, unlike the weaponization of art (as propaganda), lies outside of the scope of this conversation.
I have a notion that religion and politics are either nearly or even exactly the same thing. There's a Gordian knot linking religion, politics and morality.
The founding fathers of the United States did a profoundly good thing when they configured a system of government that separates church and state. However, maintaining this separation in the practice of government requires navigation of considerable complexity of statecraft with a nuanced understanding.
If any of what I'm saying here is right, then this topic needs to become its own independent conversation. Do you want to start it? If you do, I'll join with these thoughts in mind.
There is politics in the conservation/construction of any way of being, wherever there are priests and parishioners (politicians and the public) who are "relating to the citizens", promoting the rules and regulation of that way of being in dialectical good will. It's complicated for sure.
Socrates, the founding father of a type of novel dialectic, was condemned by the state.
I heard some notable Rabbi make the comment that Judaism is "portable civilization". You can carry the art of being Jewish from one place to another and endure or enjoy life through it. But one Rabbi might say you have to cut off the skin of your wiener to be a member of the tribe, while another might say that is unnecessary.
And don't forget about Jesus who broke the walls of Judaism wide open to invite the peoples of all nations... if that is what he did. He was the seed of the Christian tree, with all of its ever growing and flowering branches.
I can mentally separate art for art's sake and utilitarian-based art but to say that art lies beyond morality raises it to a Godly height. How is art lived beyond morality?
Quoting Nils Loc
:up:
Quoting praxis
Life is lived beyond morality in that it is more inclusive. I base this claim on the assumption that we as humans, existentially speaking, are more than what we know ourselves to be. For this reason, new experiences and their eventual comprehension keeps history going forward without it being a repetitious loop.
Following from this, art, being more directly linked to and concerned with what human is instead of what human should, follows human-is more closely and non-judgmentally that does establishmentarian morality (the church).
Can human be understood, as opposed to being non-judgmentally observed, outside the context of morality? Maybe not. If not, the question illuminates something important about understanding: it's dependent upon models, that is, paradigms. We say something is right or wrong based upon conformity to a model or standard.
In contrast to this, being and doing, the theater of action of humans, cannot be constrained by a suffocating adherence to an established model; adaptation to an ever-changing world authorizes this transgression. From this truth we know that each newborn child is unique and thus congenitally at odds with moral standards. The eventual social acceptance of the newborn child depends upon his success in conforming to normative standards.
If the strong individual survives moral condemnation for being and acting differently, the chance increases that the gravitational force of this singular person will bend the establishmentarian moral standards to some degree of warpage to his willful state of being.
It is by the continuum of rebellion become revolution that revolutionary social movements push history forward.
The history of world-religion founders is the history of broken moral precedents.
For these reasons, I say that life, and art, lie beyond morality.
I've already directly responded to it. Having shown, by pure juxtaposition, that your two claims are either empty, as they are the same claim, or literally contradict one another, I need do nothing else.
Im not following at all. It seems to me that art beyond morality would be morally inert. It might happen to be completely inline with moral norms or be completely against them, or even more incomprehensible, be with and against simultaneously.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting AmadeusD
Even if they were the same, an identity is not empty, nor is it a contradiction. They are not the same claim; they are similar claims about two different parts of a unified whole.
Quoting AmadeusD
Love and War are two sets, both of which contain marriage, home, family and community as members. The members are doubled by symmetry across two countries.
The two sets are not the same because one set partitions the symmetry and the other doesn't.
A set and its members is not an example of contradiction.
Quoting praxis
Your statement makes it clear you are following. If I stretch the meaning of "inert" a bit and construe "inactive" as being "neutral-adjacent," then life-and-art-beyond-morality are the sources and causes of morality. We can kind of imagine life and art without morality; can we imagine morality without life and art?
Now we're looking at the question: why does the world, capable of immense good, tolerate evil?
Art perceives the world in terms of human bias towards goals. If we can imagine existence outside of the bias of goal-oriented consciousness, then we can see that the non-living undergo all possibilities without bias. Through the lens of consciousness, many of these events are deemed evil because they are life-threatening.
The lack of restraint about events and outcomes in the non-living world becomes charged with emotional and, later, moral value when events and outcomes are perceived by sentients.
Stretch it all you like. Though why not just be real. Art isn't beyond morality any more than baking or dropping a nuclear bomb. Even if you framed the latter as performance art it would still have purpose.
Quoting ucarr
Don't know how you got here from what preceeded it.
This shows me clearly you are not on the ball. THe are two separate objections, based on the two possible avenues you could claim to be running in. Neither actually works for you, and hte above once again, runs the two together which is exactly what I am pointing out causes a contradiction. So, you're doubling down on 1) denying the contradiction, and 2) adhering to the contradictory form. As before, bizarre.
Quoting ucarr
No. As also already pointed out, point-blank, without wiggle room - one is the whole is one is a part of that whole. So, again(getting tired of this), you aren't understanding your own claims sufficiently to present them.
Quoting ucarr
I can, somewhat, get on board with the initial conception here, but the underlined is a total non sequitur and doesn't do anything for us. Countries aren't 'real' in the sense needed to divide or inform an abstract 'set' as you want to be doing. That said, I reject the conception of those sets. Your formulations make no sense to me, provide no criteria and are just picking out random, badly-defined (and, in your world, completely stretched, unrecognizable) terms. So, even if you're going to invoke language-use to support some of these readings (acknowledging when you get to it, your argument might be interesting) no one but you, it would seem, could assent to what you're trying to say. This explains why It isn't making any sense, and is almost impossible to follow. The fact I still have this question:
What are you wanting to talk about here?
Tells me you're being insufficient in your attempt to present whatever it is. You're genuinely waffling through most of these replies and I hope there's a point inhere somewhere, as I've now spent much time trying to point out what appears to me intractable issues in what you're doing. Can you perhaps only try to answer that singular question above? It is still not in any way clear what you want to talk about. The closest I can get is statements like this:
Quoting ucarr
But this is both counter to reality, presupposes several moral 'facts' which I would contend don't, and can't exist, and wants a transitive relation between moral agents and pre-existing states of affairs. This cannot be so. What moral agents do in light of states of affairs can. Those states, however, have no moral charge, worth or indication. They cannot. They are not moral.
Quoting praxis
So, you think morals and purpose entwined. That positions us inside the frame of goals. Things in themselves as such have no goals. Once a sentient exists, he can pursue goals. The naked fact of existence cannot be inhabited through reasoning from the outside, as if non-existence can set the goal of becoming something.
Goals can't get started without the naked fact of existence. That makes existence prior to goals.
A cosmic sentient with unlimited powers may have created humans with their purpose in mind and therefore with human purpose built into their design. This leads to a human life with every action answerable to the innate design of human nature's moral imperatives.
The cosmic sentient may have assumed flesh and blood on earth. If this life was a perfectly moral journey, as needs be if sentient life is framed by innate purpose and morals, then the question of cognitive suffocation stands forward as a debatable mystery operating under the dome of freedom illuminated but not embraced, instead dancing out at the horizon, cavorting, as if ready to fall off the edge before capture.
Cognitive suffocation is blocked by disobedience to human nature's moral imperatives? Disobedience is necessary to human freedom? It is written that the cosmic sentient doesn't block human disobedience for love of human freedom. Is cosmic suffocation unreal, or is human freedom beyond purpose not written in the earthly covenant?
Quoting AmadeusD
My title is my guide: Art Lies Beyond Morality. This is my premise, and I see now it is related to existentialism as I understand it: blooming creation leads to sensory overload for human unless he filters out, morally speaking, what's excess beyond what his brain can handle. The existentialist understands he's artificially simplifying reality, and he comes to terms with this lack of authenticity by making a pact with his conscience: I know my sampled reality is a sham replica standing in for the actual state of affairs of the world, but its the best that I can do in the way of acknowledgement, so I'll stay the course of my jury-rigged reality with as much integrity as I can muster. The foundation of my reality will be personal choices and my fidelity to them.
The above journey enfolds moral choices known to be ultimately artificial, with an overview of one's personal theater of action consequently seen as a rather sincere type of stage play. Objective moral truths, you say? Here on my little stage I want to be interested in what you have to say, and perhaps even more interested in what you do. If there's any measure of cosmic logic that connects my being good with getting what I want, then I'll try to injection mold myself into the various moral strait jackets we reach agreement upon.
Quoting AmadeusD
AmadeusD, I know I have a better chance of winning the lottery than persuading you with anything I write. So now I thank you for your time and attention to what you feel compelled to dismiss after an extended period of time. Soldiering on through someone else's nonsense is commendable behavior on your part.
Because of your patience and endurance on my behalf, I got a mental workout that has aided me greatly in better understanding what I think and what I want to communicate to others in writing.
Probably it won't be long before I post another conversation, and considering your helpful participation in this one, I'll be looking forward to new posts from you.
May have or has?
Since I'm going along with the idea a God-bearing universe is more interesting and more fun than a Godless universe, I'm saying "has."
It isn't a premise. Once again, you do not know the words you are using.
Quoting ucarr
This is senseless. It literally does not mean anything of value to the conversation. It's a claim, across three non-related concepts ('creation', 'sensory overload' and 'morality'). You have not adequate made sense. I'm not sure what else to say - it's not that I disagree; it literally does not make sense and I'm find it really hard not to think you're simply ignoring this so as to not necessarily admit you're waffling (there is precisely nothing wrong with waffling, if you are clear that this is the intention - but even after asking you several times you cannot even distill a point in your claims).
Quoting ucarr
What are you talking about? You are just constantly saying wildly divergent things with no connection whatever to your substantial points, again, misusing words, violating categories and consistently refusing to be direct. What do you want to talk about????
Quoting ucarr
Again what are you talking about? COSMIC logic? This is profoundly unphilosophical.
I very, very much appreciate your candor and respect through the exchange - I have tried my best to be (personally) gentle, if conceptually rough. So, I really appreciate that.
Quoting ucarr
My dear, dear uCarr, this is not in any way a problem from me. You are entirely failing to make any sense. There is a reason we're not following you well, and it is not our comprehension of stubbornness. I've now, over several days dedicated more than two hours of my time to respond to your posts. I am clearly looking for something substantial, and to suggest otherwise as you are here indicates some sort of dishonesty on your part. Perhaps trying to avoid the charge of making no sense?
IN any case, I also look forward to further! THank you :)
The Crusades (11th13th Centuries)
Spanish Inquisition (14781834)
Thirty Years' War (16181648)
British Colonialism and the Spread of Christianity (17th19th Centuries)
Partition of India (1947)
Rwandan Genocide (1994)
Islamic State (ISIS) and Jihadism (2010s)
Religious Nationalism in Myanmar (2010s2020s)
Salem Witch Trials (1692)
Rooting out the God-bearer was interesting.
Quoting AmadeusD
Quoting ucarr
Quoting AmadeusD
premise | ?prem?s |
noun
an assertion or proposition which forms the basis for a work or theory: the fundamental premise of the report.
verb [with object] (premise something on/upon)
base an argument, theory, or undertaking on: the reforms were premised on our findings.
--The Apple Dictionary
Quoting ucarr
What is interesting? Consider the newspaper publishers' credo: "If it bleeds it leads."
existentialism | ?e?z??sten(t)SH??liz(?)m, ?eks??sten(t)SH??liz(?)m |
noun
a philosophical theory or approach which emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free
and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will.
Quoting AmadeusD
Although I believe the opposite of the above quote: interest is the fortress of moral valence, let me nonetheless dive deeply into the modulation populating the gravity well of human experience as it specifically relates to: The Long History of Violence in the Name of Religion.
From the bullet list above, we see that () for the individual immersed within the maelstrom of this history, there looms the threat of existential overload thrice: culturally, morally and physically.
Making peace within a God-fearing culture by paying lip service to it is an example of sampling the long history of life-threatening violence in the name of adaptation for the sake of survival. Keeping faithful to this adaptation is the practice of existentialism.
The dumb show of existential compliance is mainly what religion-manipulating dictators want from their subjects. The real story is more complicated, and the existentialist concedes that.
If we position this world of roiling upheaval beside the non-events belaboring the perfections of daily life within Eden pre-fall-from-grace, then I think a case for the superior interest of the history of violence in the name of religion can be made.
So, in the case of the long history of violence in the name of religion, we have dueling narratives: there's the real situation no one understands fully because it's too much for the wee small human brain to understand beyond sampling, and there's the fiction-with-integrity of the existentialist.
Here's the fun part: the existentialist learns to play the game of "compliance" instead of practicing real compliance.
Existentialist role playing opens up a personal freedom space that forestalls the toxic boredom and shame of subjugation
I asked Chatgpt for another list of fun and interesting historical events:
Preservation of Knowledge by Monastic Orders (Medieval Europe)
Islamic Golden Age (8th14th centuries)
The Abolition of Slavery in the British Empire (1833)
The Role of Buddhism in the Spread of Non-Violence (3rd century BCE onward)
Quakers' Contribution to Social Reforms (17th19th centuries)
Gandhis Use of Religion in Indias Independence Movement (20th century)
The Civil Rights Movement in the United States (1950s1960s)
The Role of the Catholic Church in Mediating Conflicts (Late 20th century)
Buddhist Compassion and Healthcare in Asia (Traditional and Modern Times)
Peacebuilding Efforts by Religious Leaders in Modern Conflicts (21st century)
Summation
The existence of a material thing, when viewed outside the constraining scope of strategic incompletion, stands wrapped within a shroud of mystery at both ends of a continuum: neither the beginning nor the conclusion of material existence can be explained rationally because the practice of reason assumes the existence of material things as its necessary prerequisite.
Rationality and its language of logic therefore are contained within the continuity_continuum of existence. The continuity_continuum of existence being the sine qua non prerequisite for reason, it can make no start outside the material theater of action. Given this fact, there can be no rational explanation for existence-itself-in-general.
Naturalists take recourse to Deism, a doctrine that posits a cosmic creator who only actualizes material reality. In the wake of this rationally unexplainable act of creation, sentients are free to reason forward through material existence toward evolving phases of understanding and control of aspects of the material existence.
More specifically, through the powers of the arts and sciences, sentients are able to reason towards a concept of freedom post material creation. An operational presupposition claims humanity (so far as what is currently known) holds the highest position of freedom as material individuals who know both themselves and their environment.
According to this continuity, existence precedes essence. Per Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Sartre, human, through personally designed action, creates its essence, and thus is responsible for it.
This continuity, then, posits mysterious existence prior to morality and its sets and their degrees of inclusion, both of which are chosen by the individual.
The ancient scribes, who wrote the grammar of morals for the eastern and western hemispheres, by claiming inspiration from an eternal cosmic sentience, clearly worked in terms of existence precedes essence.*
*If the Deist creator is eternal, then existence is eternal. Since more than one cosmic creator is co-eternal with a material manifestation thereof, the question of priority vís-a-vís existence/essence must be examined through the lens of another question: Does any type of existence assume a material component?
If so, then within the mysterious state of being of the Deist creator, existence/essence co-exist with existence holding the overarching position of priority.
Evidence supporting this consists in the mind being grounded in the brain, and therefore the mind/brain interface dwells within the scope of the material.
As the sentient individual evolves, the complexity and absential materiality of personally designed morals will continue to approximate, at the level of the material individual, the grammar of morals assigned by the ancient scribes to the cosmic creator.
I.e. existence (reality) is the all-encompassing eternal, unbounded brute fact. As a pandeist, I concur :100: :up:
Quoting ucarr
Is, unfortunately, that flowery language intended to refer to proper concepts and ideas, lacking wholly in substance, will be argued for ad infinitum in the face of clear evidence of hte above. Politeness apparently does not help in this endeavour, nor does direct application of rationality and reason. Trying to figure out someone's ideas when their language is purposefully ambiguous, contradictory and deceptive is probably a waste of time.
we h. sapiens are embodied subjects (i.e. mindbodies); our minds are more-than-minds (i.e. non-ideality)-dependent;
:up: :100:
I hope you will weigh-in.
Higher-Order Memory
Here we extend the view to any structure which you could draw a circle around: the individual, couple, family, neighborhood, community, town, city, state, nation...
The transgressive self-aware role play of the artist tries to tinker with aspects of a closed structure to change it for the sake of... novelty, amusement, compassion, beauty, justice, catharsis, uility... The reconfiguration of the world can be pushed to all limits but there is inevitably a threshold of destruction, where the potentially adaptive structure falls apart, crumbles, dies. A human dies and so does a nation.
Jesus thinks himself the Jewish Messiah, the young lamb, while the conservatives sigh and shake their fists "this is not the way, you are messing with the way we do things". Such an innocent play by a young man becomes etched into history as a play of the Passion. They nailed this Jew to a cross and it flowered into the rite of atonement. Now we can do it in the school play.
Jesus, the existentialist role player, is condemned for being inclusive. The act of inclusion is the act of compassion, but this warrants the pious moralizers to expel him. It was just a happy accident, if we must look on it that way.
Quoting ucarr
The dogmatic face of morality prioritizes exclusion for greater or lesser freedoms. The free flying artist prioritizes inclusion at risk but you can just as well envision such work as a great act of exclusion, being set in opposition to the collective "morality" of life's tiresome busybody bullshit. Life is just maintenance of structures until death and in that we must tweak, convulse and dance to make the boredom bearable.
The hunger artist, tired of the morality of eating, says, "not today, not tomorrow, maybe the next day". Perhaps there no food on this Earth that isn't tinged with weariness of living. The Jains have an ancient rite of ritual starvation, Sallekhana, in the name of compassion for all living things, to expunge all karmas. It might be reserved for older folks but as a statement I think it is very beautiful. Should the state make that ritual illegal?
How strange and transgressive it would be to consider suicide an art form.
Quoting Nils Loc
Yes. The artist, pushing against the boundaries of what human can be, what human can do, distracts an audience from its tedium: sweet distraction, almost unbearably brief.
When we keep each other entertained with outrageous possibility, that is something seeming sweeter than righteousness, but, alas, it perishes whereas dull sanctity, everlasting to a certainty, bankrolls
existence.