Mundane Babble

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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Is it a guilty pleasure or a virtue? (Is virtue a guilty pleasure?)

Recent jabs from GCT have made me think about Mundane Babble, gossip, humor, white lies, and their role in philosophical connection or self-realization/expression. I found this quote from a David Weinberger

"Art expresses something big in something small. (If it expresses something small in something big, you leave during the intermission.) Likewise, in small talk, we express ourselves in the details of what we talk about, the words we use, the ones we don’t, how far we lean forward, how tentatively or aggressively we probe for shared ground. Because all of this is implicitly presented, it tends to give a more accurate picture of who we are and what we care about than big, explicit conversations.

Third, because small talk pokes here and there as it looks for ground, you can de-commit to it without hurting anyone’s feelings. Walking out on a heavy talk about God’s presence is history because you “think you heard your cat” is rude. Excusing yourself during a chit chat about whether Brittany Murphy is a Spring or a Winter is not nearly so.

Fourth, I guess I’m more of a constructivist than an archaeologist when it comes to social relationships. My aim isn’t to expose my buried self to you. It’s to build a conversation and then a relationship that eventually is so deep that we can’t disentangle the roots. For that, we need lots and lots of ambiguity. The only people who feel like they can adequately describe us are the ones who don’t know us.

And that’s why I’m ok with many white lies. We can’t get along with one another in the desert of sunlight. I need you not to know everything I’m doing and everything I feel. So, sorry, I’m busy that night.

I am not ok with banter, however. It’s no coincidence that I stopped bantering when I left academics. I couldn’t take the constant pressure to prove myself smarter or funnier than the person who just spoke, especially since I wasn’t."

So.

I thought this was interesting, and a good springboard for discussing the ways Mundane Babble is or isn’t something deeper than meets the eye. I personally muse over whether if Nietzsche, Socrates or a Zen priest were here, whether they’ be more interested in MB than the Phil section - whether they would wile away the hours discussing Twinkies, movies, shoes and sex. IF you had to bet your life, which would you bet they’d frequent more? My answer is obvious.

Yours?

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I think Socrates would go straight to MB and stay there. Nietzsche would write one-line posts in Rant House and respond to no one.

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Yea, I find it interesting that for all of everyone’s pointing finger that most of us are more drawn to Mundane and Rant. In the end it is about being heard and not feeling alone in our thoughts. Bouncing off one another and sharing our lives seems far more satisfying than the serious forums (it seems, though the numbers speak for themselves). In the end it may be finding a balance that suits everyone.

Yea, like that’s gonna happen.

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Faust, that’s funny and affirming. Bessy, it seems clear to me that MB would be about being heard, and that Philosophy has a different agenda, and it’s an apples and oranges thing. But it also seems clear that these two sections overlap in a way that might have an important relation to philosophy, and that’s what I wish to explore.

After a year at ILP (those who remember know I was more earnestly philosophical back then) my push toward whimsy and gabbing about everything but philosophy was actually an application of beliefs arrived at philosophically.

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Oh, I think the rant house and mundane babble is just
as much philosophy as the philosophy area.
Human endeavors all. And anything human can
be philosophical, except maybe buffalo wings.

Kropotkin

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I have felt that all along. Philosophy means nothing without being knee-deep in our own shit, realizing it, and then have the courage to dig ourselves out. Digging out in front of people? Well, that makes us grow even more. It’s those who fear honesty who I feel for the most. They will have the more difficult time coming to terms with themselves over time.

It is because life experience illustrates what we read - when we listen to those “mundane” activities and ideas they put the light bulb over our head - that’s why I am here.

damn, that’s good.

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Data

Philosophers

Data

Philosophers of note cannot be found filling volumes with their opinions about other philosophers.

Portent

Philosophy is frequently found in places that are labeled otherwise.

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Gamer - I think I know what you mean - philosophy shouldn’t be about philosophy, but about philosophers.

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I used to have a sig line that roughly stated that words are about life but aren’t life. And so philosophy is about life, but life isn’t philosophy The mistake is in creating a schism between the two. One informs the other, and it is the creative force of the combining of both that makes us what we are, if we will but let it happen.

Gamer, I like the perception that it is application, both of philosophy and life experience, that is important. In a sense, all of ILP can fulfill the “mundane” function if we keep the right perspective.

faust, I’d say more, but I think yup is sufficient.

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May I ask, why is it that there seems to be an element of snobbery to everything philosopical? The academic side takes over, the words bury us in it and we forget why we are here in the first place. Are we here to impress each other? There will always be someone smarter, more well read, more articulate - you can always find some philosohead to blow you out of the park. The key here (the way I see it) is to grow and bring to the table your own perspective melding it with someones\ elses and formulating perhaps a new one.

I take you all with me in my day. I know I annoy people here. I know I can be silly - a tease - but at the end of the day, I have taken something with me from here and left something behind. That enhances my own philosophy… what you take from me (or not) is yours.

Thanks Gamer.

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Imp is almost Nietzsche.
Is it wrong to love a man?

As for philosophy… there are few things, if any, that do not have a philosophical angle.

-Thirst

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Then why all the elitism? [size=75](I don’t mean you, of course… you are open, giving and critical of no one. :sunglasses: )[/size]

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Elitism: how else will the liberals enslave mankind?

-Thirst

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I have this image in my mind of Siddhartha, Hesse’s, where he spent his whole life searching for meaning. In the end he did become very wise and deep, but finally, he reached a state where he simply rowed on water and watched the water and didn’t really think about it, he just knew something beyond words, expressed in something mundane like the river.

When I first came here I pushed REALLY hard to penetrate past the bullshit layers, and when I dug beneath the grass and sod I found clay and then gravel, and then just endless dark, gritty substance and I grew tired of having dirty fingernails. It got to where I decided, hey, I’m not coming out of the other side, and if I did, no, the Chinese probably aren’t upside down after all, it’d be right side up once I get there. And fuck, I’m already right side up so why dig?

Dig?

So then I babbled with you and maybe to some it looked like posturing and mischief, but to me it felt sublime, like I was babbling like Siddhartha’s babbling brook. If I went into the sore places of some members, probed and teased until they hated me, it was like water running into a crack in the soil - I couldn’t help it, the price of abstaining at the time would have been my soul…and in some way, theirs.

I love the babbling mundanity. It is where the best truths reveal themselves.

There is a good chance I’ll be in London on business for two days in October. I am wondering, philosophically speaking, what I should do when I am there, other than help save a dying brand.

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Gamer=what’s not to love?

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But is there not a difference between a kid with a raquet he found in a dumpster smacking a tennis ball against the wall for a laugh and a professional tennis player killing time and keeping warmed up between matches via the same means…?

Yes, perhaps the action is the same, but there remains a large difference in potential… No…?

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All kids have potential. Wanna talk sports?

Michael Jordan didn’t make his high school basketball team.

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I’d rather talk about allegory. Now - I can’t play basketball worth a damn, and while Michael and me, if by some quirk of fate were bought together on some far flung court for an hour or two, could while away a few minutes throwing the ball around both of us would soon grow bored, him because of my lack of talent, and me for my lack of success.

Some mundane by choice, some by its lack.

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Tab that’s a great point. I didn’t intend to glorify just any odd smalltalker - it was to decide whether a person actively in pursuit of complex ideas might naturally wind up in Mundane Babble. This could happen for a lot of reasons, apathy, frustration, whatever, but I’m suggesting a natural progression that’s in line with the spirit of the original act of seeking - leaving you no choice but to observe and experiment with how language is used in a mundane setting.

In Tolstoy’s War and Peace, I think Pierre had a stint in a working class village where he learned the secret of life by observing Platon, a round, happy go lucky guy who didn’t think in abstractions. Is Platon a philosopher? I’d say no. Pierre in this case might be, foolish as he is. But if they both end up in the same state, does it matter how they got there? In some ways yes, but not in all ways, and certainly not necessarily. Two basketball players - one is born good like Jordan, the other works at it. In the end they are the same, we can debate endlessly about their differences, but the possibility exists for identical pleasure, zen feel of the game and team contributions. Maybe the zone is the zone, no matter how you get there. And the similarities overshadow the differences, which become irrelevant.

But this doesn’t address the gap between a bad babbler and a good one. My argument suggests good babblers are smarter or trickier and having veered from “legitimate” deep thoughts, the babble is much more layered or philosophical, versus true small talk like “Korn, they rock so much dude.” But this brings me back to Siddhartha, gazing at the rippling flux of the river, a gaze not unlike a baby’s - devoid of interpretation or accoutrement - a simple, pleasurable taking in and joining. A tiger growls rather than trying to sound like a pigeon. In trying to sound or think like a pigeon, he sounds and thinks like a tiger only. In sounding and thinking like a tiger, in his growl and mind lives the universe. Or some shit like that.

I guess I want some quotes from sages who said “after all my thinking about important matters, I spent my last days carving wood or staring wistfully at toy sailboats in the fountain square, and in that I found what I had been seeking in my work all along.” Maybe this only reveals a tenacious but ultimately flaccid attempt at justifying my on flight from philosophy proper. I don’t know.

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Ah, but if the kid played with Michael Jordan, he would become a better basketball player. Of course, Michael’s ego wouldn’t let that get in the way of knowing the real importance of the game. The real importance of the game isn’t becoming a star, Tab, but inspiring kids in the real world to become more. Guess what? In the process of that day, Michael would learn something about himself too.

Are you suggesting that we have a screening for future ILP members? There simple are not enough emoticons in this place to cover that one.