Is it a cycle of community masterbation? A group of friends whining, sharing ideas to each other and nodding heads?
Is it a bickle of pickles? A stand where people stand up, say ideas and share themselves to get tomatoes and words thrown at them?
Or is there a team of CEO’s reading our posts, a team of shadows, analyzing our words?
A SuperAi, watching, listening…
Are they doing what we want, or the opposite of what we want?
Are we hopeless in our fight against the Ing, is this our last stand…are we a dying breed?
Is there a supernature watching our words, and our words are part of the master plan?
What is Internet Philosophy…a soapbox…powerless ranting, mental masturbation, a dead end road, cycles of whining that none but a few will hear…or something more?
I describe the spirit as “the gap in communications.”
The meaning in words is so often lost, especially on the internet. People have long debates over old philosophies, because the books were written so unclearly. Sometimes some revelations you just have to learn and experience on your own to truly understand. Even the Bible can make some sense, if you read it in a certain frame of mind, from a certain place of understanding.
You know, you try to pour your heart out, and you either get spat on or the words just dont convey the ideas you want to share.
Well, if there is one thing that I admire the great philosophers for, it is the clearness that they write with and the correctness with which they choose their words. I don’t intend any offense, but most people here are not of equal capability. On top of that, the matter is not always how clear one writes. It has a lot to do with the reader as well. Readers take a subject and make it into their own. This is why books about simple matters often contain a part in which it is explained what it is not about. When I first started with philosophy, it amazed me how Plato and Aristotle wasted so many pages on explaining what was not the case. I found out later. You know it now too.
Plato was often upset with ‘sophists’. He called them people who did not want to know what the other meant in the first place. The used their words only to gain repute for themselves and to ridicule others. Maybe you should read him. You might recognise yourself in it.
The end result is always to plant a new tree in the place of the old and infertile one. Like in the place of the white race which has subdued to an old god which is a sign that the race has become old. Now philosophers, real philosophers, and not simple speculators, try to found a new race, well, a new species.
Which would you prefer Trixie - an unlimited body with no consciousness ------- or the spirit of a god - which could make you fly and which could inspire others to fly – A somewhat limitless mind and heart/
You are a gadfly, Trixie. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing and it could be a good thing.
I like Ben’s analogy which kind of alludes to philosophy as a “hidden city” which has been built over by more modern structures.
philosophy I think can be seen as a city which once was, thrived, had it’s own real culture and active life. But it can never be dead as long as there are archaelogists who go in search of the truth of what lies hidden, as long as there are “archaelogists” and “historians” too in a sense who realize that there is much to be discovered and excavated beyond what can be seen on the surface.
Philosophy in a way is life itself. If IT ends, we’re all buried beneath the rubble of untruths and the never-to-be discovered. The philosopher is like a noble seeing-eye dog…