Corpsey

bandz ahoy
On the other hand, I do think people have achieved great things inspired by only half known influences. A misunderstanding can be as fruitful as an understanding.

Nietzsche is actually a good example of this because I believe his understanding of Greek culture and religion (the basis of his "birth of tragedy" has been shown to be pretty iffy by scholars.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Thought, I love thought.
But not the jiggling and twisting of already existent ideas
I despise that self-important game.
Thought is the welling up of unknown life into consciousness,
Thought is the testing of statements on the touchstone of the conscience,
Thought is gazing on to the face of life, and reading what can be read,
Thought is pondering over experience, and coming to a conclusion.
Thought is not a trick, or an exercise, or a set of dodges,
Thought is a man in his wholeness wholly attending.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Not sure I rate it as a poem, but he makes a good point.

Who has the time to think AND do the homework though? Or to do either, in fact?
 

version

Well-known member
What I keep using ted talks as a shorthand for is the notion that there are shortcuts to being informed. This is a delusional belief monetised by ted talks. Pure wishful thinking. A scam.

catalog said they knew someone who had an app which condensed audiobooks so you could blitz through a huge amount on daily commutes etc.
 
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Corpsey

bandz ahoy
The funny thing is I tie myself in knots about this constantly and then occasionally when I bring up some philosopher or poet to a normal person they don't have a single clue what I'm on about. They always seem much happier.
 

version

Well-known member
The gamification of reading. You get people setting targets and whatnot like you do in the gym, the reading equivalent of "power" naps and "power" walking, logging how many books they've read/listened to in apps.
 

luka

Well-known member
I think it was Danny who said he knew someone who had an app which condensed audiobooks so you could blitz through a huge amount on daily commutes etc. All these 'brainy' books.

What your'e investing in is an ability to blag. To appear to be someone you're not. You borrow someone else opinion. You borrow someone else's reading.
 

luka

Well-known member
The gamification of reading. You get people setting targets and whatnot like you do in the gym, the reading equivalent of "power" naps and "power" walking, logging how many books they've read/listened to in apps.

Right exactly. Your 5 a day. See this exhibition. Read this book.
 

luka

Well-known member
Received opinion being just these kind of recycled regurgitated memes. Words which you reproduce without understanding.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I was reading about Elizabethan England, when translations of Ovid and Castiglione changed the way English gentlemen (and women?) behaved, changed their model of what a cultivated person should know.

And wondered what the modern equivalent is. What should every cultivated person have read, or watched, in 2020? There must still be this ideal, more widely disseminated through society than it was then but still a demarcation - I am cultured, I have read Sapiens.
 

version

Well-known member
That's something that strikes me about podcasts. They're almost like the millennial equivalent of Fox News' "infotainment". How much are you actually learning from them? Do you actually retain and make use of any of it? Or are you just being duped into thinking you aren't wasting your time because it's about something that seems productive like science?
 

Leo

Well-known member
How much are you actually learning from them? Do you actually retain and make use of any of it? Or are you just being duped into thinking you aren't wasting your time because it's about something that seems productive like science?

same could be asked about time spent on dissensus.
 

luka

Well-known member
Lol. I don't think we are here to learn though. It's conviviality isn't it. And sometimes, when we are feeling high minded, a way to think through things with other people. Chance to articulate ideas which otherwise would remain sub verbal and inchoate.
 
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