Great Quotes δ' : Being laconic is being philosophical

[Samson]

I am not sure I can believe I am quoting this guy, but I think he sums it up well:

If science is a ‘commitment to truth’ shall we cite all the historical non-truths perpetuated by scientists? Of course not. It’s not science vs Philosophy ... It’s Science + Philosophy. Elevate your Thinking and Consciousness. When you measure include the measurer. - MC Hammer

 

[Kyriakos]

You can't touch this?

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

"Through a spokesperson, the Supreme Court justices declined to comment."
— Lawrence Hurley, Andrew Chung and Jonathan Allen, "The 'shadow docket': How the U.S. Supreme Court quietly dispatches key rulings"

"It was all going so well – then the British turned up."
— Zaria Gorvett, "The ancient fabric that no one knows how to make"

 

[AmazonQueen]

"Nothing was more American than wielding a gun and committing oneself to die for freedom and independence, unless it was wielding that gun to take away someone else's freedom and independence."
- Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

 

[Samson]

“So terror management theory suggests you’d rather your child die than have the culture which takes away the fear of death removed from you. The examples used are often things like the mother of a jihadi who blows himself up and people say ‘wow, how can you celebrate the death of your son?’ or in Mayan culture where children were thrown off towers. But surely the worst example of it is narcissistic consumer capitalism. It gives us this space to function in, it’s addictive, it feeds our hunger and creates our hunger and it pulls you into that space.” - Gail Bradbrook, XR co-founder

 

[Kyriakos]

“So terror management theory suggests you’d rather your child die than have the culture which takes away the fear of death removed from you. The examples used are often things like the mother of a jihadi who blows himself up and people say ‘wow, how can you celebrate the death of your son?’ or in Mayan culture where children were thrown off towers. But surely the worst example of it is narcissistic consumer capitalism. It gives us this space to function in, it’s addictive, it feeds our hunger and creates our hunger and it pulls you into that space.” - Gail Bradbrook, XR co-founder

It seems he is suggesting that capitalism takes away the fear of death, while something like jihadism doesn't (according to those who support "terror management theory"). It is far more obvious (I suppose) in Mayan culture.

 

[Samson]

It seems he is suggesting that capitalism takes away the fear of death, while something like jihadism doesn't (according to those who support "terror management theory"). It is far more obvious (I suppose) in Mayan culture.

I am far from the right person to be critiquing this, but my reading is that there is this psychological theory that attempts to explain some human actions that would otherwise seem illogical as a way of coping with the inevitability of death. Conventional targets for this theory include death rituals, belief in an afterlife and celebration of "heroic death" such as martyrdom. She is saying that consumer capitalism is a widespread example of this phenomenon.

She expounds a bit more here, but it has a fairly easy to get round paywall.

 

[Kyriakos]

At least in the case of human sacrifice, everyone else was to die too if no offering was made. Tezcatlipoca needed human blood to become strong enough to fend off the (other) alien monsters.
With "protecting capitalist society" as a supposed reason for a mother to celebrate the death of her terrorist child, I am having difficulty making a non-trivial connection :/ Arguably you think less of death if you are happy, but usually only a small subset is happy in capitalism (or any other system), and furthermore one would expect their happiness to be more dependent on individual traits, not the system itself. Moreover I don't think it is reasonable to expect "fear of terrorism" to be routinely of a potency which would present a manifestation of an agent of death (say, a jihadist state) as something equally real as the system you live under.

 

[Samson]

We call them essential, but they’re considered expendable.

A medical graduate student, whose mother works in a meat-packing plant where many have died of COVID-19, grapples with the impact of poverty in one of the world’s richest nations. He asked for his name to be changed because of concerns that speaking out might cost family members their jobs.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

"Trust the fact that history will judge events honestly and you will never have to be embarrassed for what your father did. On no account ever be one of those people who criticise but do not follow through their actions. Such people are hypocrites—weak, worthless people who do not have the power to reconcile their beliefs with their actions. I wish you courage, my dear. Be strong in the belief that life is wonderful. Be positive and believe that the Revolution will always win."
—Valery Sablin, final letter to his son, ca. 1976

 

[Ajidica]

“The absence of corrections yesterday was due to a technical hitch rather than any sudden onset of accuracy.”

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2...00-typo-negative-best-worst-grauniad-mistakes
@Takhisis

 

[Sofista]

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2...00-typo-negative-best-worst-grauniad-mistakes
@Takhisis

Audio is unavailable, and would probably remain indecipherable for most here. But just the other day I was listening about a debate on our government, and someone decided to make a detailed comparison with Germany's Grosse Koalition.

Because no one apparently knows how to pronounce German here, I listened for minutes about the merits of the gross coalition.

 

[Takhisis]

×2

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

"Sparta was smashed flat by Macedon, which then left the Spartan government *exactly as it had been before Cleomenes.* That has to be the ultimate indictment of the Spartan system: the spartiates’ worst enemy couldn’t think of anything worse to do to them than to leave them under their own system of government."
—Daniel, replying to "This. Isn't. Sparta, Part V"

 

[Kyriakos]

(loose translation) "We either should think philosophically, or we should not. If we should, then we should. And if we should not, again we should (so as to conclude we should not)". Aristotle

Better than Socrates' reason for marrying, which was that if you wife is good, you will be happy, and if she isn't you will become a philosopher.

 

[Ferocitus]

Quando omni flunkus moritati.
(When all else fails, play dead).

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

Quando omni flunkus moritati.
(When all else fails, play dead).

Bow your head for the Man's Prayer:

I'm a man
But I can change
If I have to
I guess.

 

[Ferocitus]

I think we shall have to take the Chinese in hand and regulate them. I believe that as civilized nations become more powerful
they will get more ruthless, and the time will come when the world will impatiently bear the existence of great barbaric
nations who may at any time arm themselves and menace civilized nations. I believe in the ultimate partition of China - I mean
ultimate. I hope we shall not have to do it in our day. The Aryan stock is bound to triumph.
WSC: A Midnight Interview, 1902.
https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-159/wsc-a-midnight-interview-1902/

 

[Kyriakos]

σημείον εστί μονάς προσλαβούσα θέσιν.

"A point is a monad which acquires a position".
(on a definition by the Pythagoreans)

Up to Aristotle, the term for point in geometry was "stigme", which means "instance". This is because the point - when marked - is not meant to be understood as divisible. By the time of Euclid's Elements, the term used was semeion, which connotes that the position marked is of interest (semiotics has this root).

Might be worth noting also that semeion, by the 2nd century AD, in literature can mean a sign, which practically would not make the specific position of it be of primary importance.

Another reference of interest is to the debate about primacy of position or object in a position - a point presented by Zeno. Some modern writers (such as DeLong) argue that Zeno may have been arguing against what (roughly 1,5 centuries later) Euclid decided to set as a restricting rule of a whole being always larger than its parts - DeLong mentions this due to a discussion of sets and powersets, where a whole often is smaller than (operations of) its parts.