and in being forced to think about it, I come up with this,
nothing much inspires me… I don’t wake up inspired to
do this or that or any such thing…
my drive is to seek wisdom, knowledge, understanding…
I don’t need inspiration to achieve those goals…
reading me closely, one see’s that I am not inspired by
anybody alive today…I have mentioned Gandhi
and MLK and Spinoza, dead guys who have focused my
search for what the point of existence, but they didn’t
inspire me per se… we achieved this, what can you do?
I am driven by values, and by Kantian questions like “What am I to do?”
“What am I to believe in?” “What can we know?” …
but they don’t reach the level of inspiration…
this search I am on, is not an inspirational one, but a practical one,
what is the point of existence? what does it mean to be human?
How do we achieve becoming fully human? Not just our current state
of being animal/human or some are, just animal, but overcoming those
states into becoming fully human… to overcome the drives and passions
that are anger, hate, lust, greed, overcoming the trinkets of existence,
the drive for money, power, material goods, fame, titles…
I reject these things, but not in the name of being “inspired”
but in the name of becoming better human beings…
am I “inspired”? NO, but I am driven to become something more,
something more human than just an animal responding to
our inner compulsions to feed our need to have more money,
material goods, fame, power, titles…
I cannot say if this is your answer, but it is mine…
I am not inspired to be or do anything…
but I do seek that which will make me more human…
and that is enough…
Wait! Where’s the metaphysics in what I said? Martin was wrong too. His willingness to admit it didn’t satisfy his critics. You can’t please everyone so you’ve got to please yourself. Ricky Nelson said that.
Of course Martin is no longer around to defend his Dasein. Or, for that matter, to explain how his understanding of it might be made applicable to, among others, Adolph Hitler.
On the other hand, my dasein has a lot to say about why those like Hitler came to think the things that they did about, say, the Jews? Or how the Jews come to think what they do about Christians and Muslims? Or the Palestinians?
I know! Let’s start with the “psychology of objectivism”!!
As for Ricky, would not his own conclusions regarding things that pleased him be rooted in dasein? Might he instead have been more rational being pleased with other things? And not just at garden parties.
I am intrigued that many who have written here have written about what does not inspire them, or have acknowledged that there is inspiration, but have not named what inspires them, or how. It may be because I didn’t give enough examples.
My first conscious inspiration came from the three years I spent in Malaysia with my family. Parallel to this was the experience of The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, which was read to us children and influenced the way we played. This was reinforced by the fact that it was customary to give the scout groups, as well as the leaders, names from the Jungle Book. We children pretended to have seen one or another animal, which was only partly true. However, an invasion of monkeys one afternoon was real, and had resulted in all of us kids being locked in the houses while outside the monkeys searched for food and left a mess. Likewise, the warning about ants on the march was real, as was the python that slithered through the settlement and ate a pig. Visiting our nanny’s kampong was interesting, as were our games in the trees and bushes that served as our jungle.
When I got back to England, the stories of Malaysia mixed with those of the Jungle Book, and my classmates in elementary school, after initial enthusiasm, did not buy the stories. “My mom says you’re lying!” is what I got to hear. To me, they were all just stories, and were the Jungle Book stories real? No one seemed to mind talking animals in the book, which I had wisely not integrated into my stories. Instead of telling them, I tried to write down the stories.
I was subsequently inspired by typical children’s books about being a child and what could be considered fun. It naturally led me to go out and do similar things. It helped that my imagination was directed in a certain direction. Later, in middle school, there was a history teacher who, with pictures (which he drew on the board) and stories, gave us an idea of how people lived in days long past, which led to us going out in nature and building dens similar to what he described. My English teacher told great stories, and he also encouraged me to write after hearing my stories of Malaysia. It was also he, through Drama, who got me to express my feelings to well-known classical music pieces and our class developed fantasy stories that we imagined and acted out from the music in front of an audience.
During this time, I was sent to tent camp where we did adventurous things like build a raft to get across a river. We also played shadow theatre and also listened to stories, including from the Bible. This awoke in me a sense of the mystical, the mysterious, and this was even underlined by an experience on the way back, where we got into a huge storm, rocking the boat back and forth for hours, and the skies were indistinguishable from the water. I stood on the deck among all the commotion and was fascinated. Afterwards I struggled for words to describe this experience, which had become an inner need. It was an inspiring time that was unfortunately interrupted shortly afterwards.
It is experiences that move us forward, that awaken something in us.
How did the astral plane inspire you, Dan? Did it provoke a particular strong feeling or reaction, or a feeling that one wants to do something and can do it? Or did you gain an insight into the nature of things?
So, you could say that from these experiences you were inspired to write poetry, have enthusiastic talks with friends and it gave you a rise to keep up the mundane tasks?
I know that you yourself are a musician, could it be said that these people persuaded you to learn to play an instrument and play in a band? Of course, these people grew up under difficult circumstances and it can be said that the also found inspiration that propelled the from apathy to possibility and transformed the way they perceived their capabilities?
Yes, even if you disagree with him in part, it is a pleasure to hear an informed discussion take place and he is in that way very inspiring. There are numerous people who I have found inspiring in the same way, Stephen Fry is one. Not only in what he says, but also in how he says it, it is a pleasure to listen to him. Someone who influenced me early on was Peter Ustinov, and for a while I copied his anecdotal style.
That may be so, but what inspires you? What has brought you forward, helped you realise your potential, and given you faith in your capabilities?
Okay, what drives you then? Can you name it? To say values drive you is okay, but where do they come from?
Yes, I would say that. I would also say that I was inspired to make music by a father, minister, who played the banjo. I was inspired to write poetry by a mother who was a poet and by a mentor, friend of 45 years. These people gave me a sense of belonging. I suppose it is because of that sense that I was able to cope with the ups and downs of everyday life. These folks encouraged me to be the best that was inside of me.
Over and over and over again, your obsession with the things that inspire particular individuals rather than how inspiration itself is, existentially, profoundly rooted in the life that they lived.
In the historical context into which they are adventitiously thrown at birth. In the cultural context in which they are indoctrinated as children. In a series of uniquely personal circumstances from the cradle to the grave that predispose them as adults to go more or less in the direction of the Christian God.
Then the particularly unique experiences that predispose them to “think up” their own most comforting and consoling rendition of this God.
But: In my view, you won’t explore your life from that frame of mind because it confronts you with just how profoundly problematic “I” is here from the perspective of the past. And, from the perspective of the future yet to be, how precarious it can be.
On the other hand, from my frame of mind, you’re no FreeSpirit, or Obsrvr524, or UrwrongX1000 or Pedro. You’re no fulminating fanatic religious objectivist. No Kid. No pinhead.
You [and those here like felix and phyllo and Ierrellus and Maia] have the intelligence necessary to [perhaps] nudge me up out of the hole I have dug for myself in regard to connecting the dots between morality here and now and immortality there and then.
But, in turn, you have the intelligence to recognize that it is actually more reasonable to come down into it.
Ah but you see inspiration is not knowledge. Whether it comes from perception or imagination it is spontaneous and theory free in it’s inception. The question of how it arises seeks to go beyond the purely imminent experience of inspiration into the clouds. Come back down to earth Iambiguous. We’re talking about experience not conjecturing about what’s behind it or above it or below it.
Biggses goal is to turn everyone into a solipsistic stirnerite egoist nihilist. His MO is to attack anyone who advances a thesis about anything, and plunge them into doubt and despair.
Now the trick to beating him - other than being a stirnerite egoist nihilist, naturally (like me) - is to refuse to argue. But to genuinely do this, you have to quite literally not care one iota if anyone agrees with you or not. And that, my friends, is where you fail… and consequently how you lose. You truly DO care, and you want others to share your values, or at least acknowledge them. And when you do that, he’s gonna getcha every time.
Okay well explain what the thesis is here because as I understand it we’re talking about the experience of inspiration which is pre theoretical. Therefore there is no thesis.
It is this that is in itself inspiring. To hear of people meeting people who gave their lives direction, especially when born in a time, area or situation that brings a lot of grief and consternation. It is fascinating that we can even get the motivational pull from a letter, a book, a picture, a music style, a new experience with a friendly family, or, at the other end of the spectrum, experiencing the suffering of people in multiple ways.
I was, for the time of my childhood, mostly busy with the larger picture, only briefly paying attention to particulars, and it was a kind of revelation to meet someone that presented me with a different perspective. Whether my teachers, my extended family, which I only got to know at 15, my black schoolmate and his family, or my Methodist great Aunt, it was their being different that made me pay attention. It was probably why I didn’t do so well at school after the sixth change of schools, because it was somehow always more of the same, and didn’t make me look at the particulars (which is the point of school), except in English language, where poetry fascinated me. My father, however, was the opinion that poetry and stories wouldn’t get me a job. It was only when I started work that I was forced to enquire into the details of the job, being expected to learn how to advise people on decoration and restoration. Later I was a salesperson selling fireplaces, but slowly it all faded back into the background. I was probably the victim of my own privilege.
What I am saying is that it was only when something stood out, that it attracted my attention enough. Has anyone else been in the same situation in which everything is just a backdrop, and you were waiting for something to come into focus? But when that came, it activated you, and started moving?
Okay, cite particular examples of these experiences from your own life. There is what you thought, felt and did before the experience. Then the experience. Then what you thought, felt and did after the experience.
Oh, and if you can, note how these experiences pertained to you connecting the dots existentially between morality here and now and immortality there and then. My own main interest in inspiration here at ILP.
Or, sure, whatever inspires you here to wiggle, wiggle, wiggle.
“wiggle, wiggle, wiggle” such a vivid imagination you have! Haha!
I still get inspired by the earliest blues artists from places like the Mississippi Delta. People like Son House, Charlie Patton, Robert Johnson, Skip James, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, all the way up through BB King Albert King Freddie King and Albert Collins and RL Burnside and the people playing locally carrying on that tradition. Their music and their lives have inspired me since puberty when I came to participate in the Blues scene in Kansas City. The way they overcame their situation by sheer creativity transforming it into a living art form and way of life inspires me and millions of others around the planet.
“Connecting the dots existentially between morality here and now and immortality there and then” is your main interest not mine. Live every moment as if you were going to have to live it over and over for eternity, Dasein.
Was this something that you have always had? Or is it something that you have acquired over time?
I have in my professional life enjoyed the status of being someone who was brought in to analyse situations, but it was something that grew with experience. I saw things at the door, if you like, that other people hadn’t seen although they were close up. For a long time, I couldn’t understand why they couldn’t see it, after all it was there to see. After a while I discovered my own blind spot and became a little more considerate.
The astral plane, as far as i know, is an ultra lite level of physics.
It behaves differently due to its sub nano size.
Thoughts on this level become visible objects.
Also telepathy is common for beings at that level.
The telepathy leads to clear communication,
and a way to get around lies and deception.
So in general the morals are better on the astral.
They still have wars, but it is different than earth wars.
One of the songs that describes an inspirational moment is the song, “The Sound of Silence” by Paul Simon. He starts with waking in the dark with a “vision” that had “left its seeds while I was sleeping”. He said that back then, he sneaked off to the bathroom to try out some chords or some rhymes, trying not to disturb the rest of the household.
The idea that a vision could be “planted in my brain” suggests a mysterious source of inspiration, still within the sound of silence, but needing to burst out. In his vision, he sees “ten thousand people writing songs that voices never shared”, inspired but unable to overcome the silence that grows like a cancer, instead weighed down, oppressed by a “neon god” whose prophetic words are written on walls, and whispered in silence.
Does anybody feel inspired but unable to get his vision out?