| Home | Journal | Lyrics | Photos | Comments | Polls |
Day to day, do you get enough sleep?
| |<< | < > | >>| |
| i agree. i shouldn't have dignified the convolusion of "Maybe it's just considered great today in the historical sense, the same way that cave paintings are great, or held onto by alleged intellectuals trying to feel superior to others, in which case they still have their subjective reasons, even if they are not in accordance with the truth." with a response 02/13/2003-11:32am | ||
| Personally, i would say that this is more of a lame arguement than a debate. Neither side has a clear premise, and not only that, but the whole "conversation" is plagued with misread arguements, self contradicting arguements and repetition. I'd say figure out what you think before you type, and then continue. Not to belittle anyones feelings of or anything, because i know how dramatic some of you are, but all this seems to have been about is who can construct a better scentence using longer more complicated words rather than a "battle of wits." 02/13/2003-10:39am | ||
| yeah this is getting ridiculous. this will basically come down to two mutually exclusive OPINIONS about life. my viewpoint just happens to be that you do not help yourself or anyone else by walking around with the idea in your head that life is completely meaningless. no one is going to give you props because you are "cognizant of reality" to the point where you just know that everything is pointless. you'll just make yourself and everyone around you miserable. and to what end? 02/13/2003-9:59am | ||
| Why don't you two ladies call each other up and talk this over instead of making us read it. 02/13/2003-9:51am | ||
| Regarding the stupidravershithead.mp3, I have already stated that we have our own subjective tastes based on our experience. This does not deny the fact that objective truths exist. 02/13/2003-8:52am | ||
| As for what causes people to create original things, it is done merely by analyzing something with reason. Reason is always predictable, of course, and Einstein was the first person with the potential to use it properly in his science. His potential is defined by his experience, and perhaps some random traits at birth. Our power of imagination is limited to our experience, but not to our reason. We can logically discern what the future might be like and envision it based on what technology is desired and thus likely to follow. Some might actually pursue the building of technology, and in doing so will apply their reason to whatever the last generation left behind; so is the way of the progression of science. Beethoven, similarly, decided to write a symphony and thought about the best way to go about doing it. 02/13/2003-8:46am | ||
| As for "call me deluded, but i'm going to hold onto the fact that life has meaning for as long as i can," you are correct, your statement is essentially a definition of delusion. An attempt to avoid the truth merely to believe something because it makes you happy. How could life have meaning? How can we at once have purpose, and be free? Impossible. Even if there was a God, our creator, who was controlling our every action; does that give the Universe itself meaning? Meaning is destroyed by the reality that is time. The Universe is doomed to die, inevitably, be it Heat Death or Big Crunch. Nothing lives forever, and because of that, our "purpose" or "meaning" even if we were completely free individuals capable of a choice somehow based neither on randomness nor sequence, would still not exist. We float on a rock, and if we colonize other rocks, if we colonize all of the other rocks in the universe, eventually we all die, eventually the universe dies, and then another eighty million years pass. 02/13/2003-8:37am | ||
| At which point does noise become music? At which point does a splattering of paint become art? At which point does a picture of a tree gain meaning? (And I assure you, there have been many pictures of trees deemed as art). If you wish, you could define music as anything with a melody, harmony, and rhythm, but you'd still have equally pathetic examples of that. I use extremes to make the difference obvious, and there is nothing invalid in doing so. Perhaps Beethoven is not the best music, and has become boring as better music has progessed. Maybe it's just considered great today in the historical sense, the same way that cave paintings are great, or held onto by alleged intellectuals trying to feel superior to others, in which case they still have their subjective reasons, even if they are not in accordance with the truth. 02/13/2003-8:33am | ||
| your description of life and existence as simply an arrangement of electrons is hopelessly sad. do you really think that life has no meaning? if you shoot yourself in the head, your electrons will still be orbiting your nuclei, only some of them would now be splattered against the wall. call me deluded, but i'm going to hold onto the fact that life has meaning for as long as i can. 02/13/2003-7:58am | ||
| As far as aesthetic truths go, I ask this, why do certain people listen to "stupidravershithead.mp3" laughing the whole time and obviously enjoying the experience? The same people may flip on Beethoven and quickly grow bored with it and turn it off. What you call an aesthetic truth is just the collective opinions of those before you, and if that were what aesthetics were, then you'd be right about it being purely mechanical. I hope we'd agree that's not true. As for "Beethoven" vs. "Nails on a chalkboard", you're comparing apples to oranges, saying music is more aesthetic than unorganized noise is meaningless. You want some other ones? Michelangelo’s David is more aesthetic than the last dump you took. The Mona Lisa is more aesthetic than an oil drip in a parking lot. For a fun exercise, try coming up with aesthetic truths about input from scents or tactile sources. 02/13/2003-12:49am | ||
| Really, we are all just a bunch of electrons haplessly and forever orbiting their nuclei. Or we are all just a bunch of amino acids grouped into proteins forming complex molecular structures. Or we are a collection of differentiated cells, each with it's own function to support those grouped with it. Or we are animals, relying on instinct to live and procreate. Or we are primates, simple creatures capable of learning and applying basic knowledge. Or we are something else, but ask yourself this; what set of predictable responses led Einstein to split the atom, Beethoven to compose the beloved ninth, or You to attempt to decompose yourself with such utter disdain. 02/13/2003-12:23am | ||
| don't be ridiculous. the tree example is a fallacy because if you take a picture of a tree to represent anguish then what you're making is not art, and any discussion about how it should be interpreted as art is inconsequential. besides, you're missing the whole point of art. art isn't just about explaining what we particularly like about a painting, art is the feeling in your gut, the emotional response, precisely those things which cannot exactly be described. it's about what you feel, not about an application of society's conventions about what is enjoyable and what is not. 02/12/2003-11:05pm | ||
| You're correct, the artist is not soley responsible. But if you're trying to represent human anguish, taking a picture of a tree outside your house probably isn't the best way to do it, and in that sense you fail to reach your audience. 02/12/2003-10:48pm | ||
| Which isn't to say it's not subjective. For a person such as our droog Alex who was forced to become sick at the sound of the Ninth and hate it utterly, perhaps nails on a chalkboard would be preferable. But there are always reasons, based on established parameters. Nothing in our decisions is accidental or random, we are instead mechanical beings based on our experience. Really, the only two possibilities are randomness and sequence, and far more evidence supports the latter. Both are bleek. Both deny us of any true free will. Do you randomly, for no reason, enjoy that painting? How sad, to admit you are nothing more than preset variables. Do you have reason to enjoy that painting, can you explain what you like about it? How sad, to admit you only do so because of your mechanical, inevitable experience, based on choices made from prior experience, based on choices made from prior experience, all the way back to your very first experience. A machine, a sentient machine, trapped inside yourself. Suppose both exist. The cross between our pre-defined libido and our capability of reason. Then we start random, and end sequentially. It's just pre-set experience, really. Doesn't matter. 02/12/2003-10:47pm | ||
| why must the artist take responsibility for interpretations of their work? misinterpretations are failure on the part of the viewer/reader/whatever, not failure on the part of the artist. 02/12/2003-10:45pm | ||