FACTS

luka

Well-known member
There are two types of people in this world, people who like facts and people who can live without them.
Are you a fact man? Speaking for myself I can't stand them but this troubles me occasionally and I buy a book of facts, for self improvement reasons, which I never read.

When I see a whole heap of facts staring back at me I shrivel up. What is the point of this, I ask. What am I supposed to do with it?
 

luka

Well-known member
So for instance, i think of myself as being interested in history. I like going to old places and I like going to museums but I have never read a history book. I can't. They are so boring and full of superfluous facts.
 

version

Well-known member
“Facts are but the Play-things of lawyers,-- Tops and Hoops, forever a-spin... Alas, the Historian may indulge no such idle Rotating. History is not Chronology, for that is left to Lawyers,-- nor is it Remembrance, for Remembrance belongs to the People. History can as little pretend to the Veracity of the one, as claim the Power of the other,-- her Practitioners, to survive, must soon learn the arts of the quidnunc, spy, and Taproom Wit,-- that there may ever continue more than one life-line back into a Past we risk, each day, losing our forebears in forever,-- not a Chain of single Links, for one broken Link could lose us All,-- rather, a great disorderly Tangle of Lines, long and short, weak and strong, vanishing into the Mnemonick Deep, with only their Destination in common.”
 

luka

Well-known member
It's obviously Pynchon, partly cos it's you posting it, and partly cos it's obviously Pynchon. I stalled around page 650 of GR but I started again yesterday. I'm on the Counteforce bit now.
 

version

Well-known member
It's a strange book. I loved it, but if I'm not in the mood the 18th Century English is just irritating.
 
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Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I think it's a matter of cognitive predeliction

I have never had a head for numbers, for dates, nor much interest in facts

To this day I can't remember either of my parents birthdays, e.g.

James Joyce was obsessed with facts insofar as they furnished him with material for his books.
 

luka

Well-known member
Do you also feel a bit uneasy about not having a head for facts? Do you have the same misgivings about it that I do?
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
YES!

I feel so many misgivings about the nature of my mind and interests that I'm perpetually haranguing myself

As you know I have no interest whatsoever in politics and very little in current events.

I recognise this is a black mark against me.

Why is it that I just cannot force myself to read the great works of philosophy and literature but I can plough through a pile of true crime library articles about grubby serial killers lickity split?
 

luka

Well-known member
We should do another one actually. Feel Up to BLAKES JERUSALEM. Or even, I dunno, the prelude? What else is there?
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I'm also terrible at geography.

I don't really know where anywhere is in the UK, even - let alone anywhere else.

Also anything adults should know about, like mortgages and taxes. Not a clue.
 

luka

Well-known member
I mean, I know that fact people can't do what I do. I know they can't cut through to essentials in the way I can, can't see the shape of a thing. So I bolster myself with that. But then you have people like JH Prynne who can do everything. Who, I assume, have trained
Their minds to do compensate for an initial weakness. Worked on that weakness and conquered it through POWER
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
There's a good paragraph in Spengler about historical facts, and their distinction from truths. Might see if I can find it and post it here when I get home.

Remember that comelately guy? He didn't just not care about facts but went as far as insisting they didn't exist, lol.
 

luka

Well-known member
I like the notion that facts don't exist. There is No one who has taken psychedelics and not brushed up against that possibility. This is one reason I like the flat earth thing.
 

luka

Well-known member
We should do another one actually. Feel Up to BLAKES JERUSALEM. Or even, I dunno, the prelude? What else is there?

Respond to this tossed tennis ball pls corpse. Leap up and Catch it in your mouth.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I think facts DO exist but only on a certain level... This is something I've wrestled with over the years, the existential hollowing that comes with recognising that on any number of levels our lives, our identities, our societies, etc. 'mean' NOTHING. Actually my 'insight' on acid was that human meaning is the only meaning that can mean anything to us, and there's nothing really wrong with that, so long as we recognise the limitations in that.

But this thread recalled to me an article in the gruniad about the difference between what people think is true vs what is true, and the damage that can be doing. For example, the percentage of the UK that is immigrant is wildly overestimated by general opinion.
 
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