What's new
Fantasy Football - Footballguys Forums

This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

Wikkidpissah - Life Manual Thread (1 Viewer)

wikkidpissah said:
You've reminded me of a perfect example of how one's talents can work against them.

My best pal for 50 years is a hella photographer. Not only has a great eye, great sense of light & the frame and a great passion for it, but is a master of the darkroom. He more or less followed me out to New Mexico and he & his wife & i moved to Reno together when i finally gave up on NY & showbiz and his work (B&W mostly) in the desert and Rockies and Sierras and Pacific coastline was close to the level of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston.

Unfortunately, making a living in photography is mostly about self-promotion and/or taking ####. And the reason my pal is my pal is that he doesn't have a disingenuous bone in his body (being ten pounds of #### in a five-pound bag myself, i need someone like that) and, therefore, can do neither. He spent decades trying to get shows, burning out the flaws in inferior but more successful "artist"'s photos and an awful lot of time printing commercially for short dough. He don't shoot no more, don't print no more, can't drink no more so and, especially once digital took over and threw the last shovel of dirt on his career, he just sits and seethes. His wife feared he was gonna off himself, so i worked hard on him to go back to playing the bass (in college, he was bassist-of-choice for this guitarist) and did sessions w him to get him caring again. Now, he sits & seethes with a bass in his hands, which is apparently enough to keep him from quitting this orb, but just barely

For all my pal's skill in photography, he NEVER did it for pure reasons. He saw his talent for it and assumed it would carry him to high places. It was obvious to anyone that he didn't have the personality to make his way in the art world, the patience to climb ladders or the undeniability of a great artist. His stubbornness in tying his hopes to his talents against all evidence ruined him and soured his talent.
Click to expand...
I feel bad for your friend.  It's my opinion that my photography, while decent enough to impress friends, family, and the occasional pro, will never get to that super elite upper tier level that's required...and I'm ok with that. I do it for me.  I look to guys like Dave Sandford for inspiration and tips on how to shoot things. I'm comfortable not trying to compete because I can't but still be good. This is a lesson I learned many years ago when I put myself in a company golf tournament with the three best golfers in the company. There was no pressure to compete - because I couldn't - and it allowed me to play my game with no stress.

About a year or so ago, I bought Turn Your Pain Into Art  so I could channel the pain I have from growing up lacking love and acceptance into something beneficial. While the book isn't quite what I was looking for, it nonetheless inspired me to go out and create things for my own enjoyment first, and for others second.  When I'm photographing waterfalls, historic buildings, odd stuff, whatever, I'm in a zone that's even more focused than when I was a USCF Cat 4 cyclist back in the day.  Editing the photos and then  posting them on IG, twitter, FB, Counter Social, etc. gives me multiple platforms to spread the images of my world far and wide.

 
Tom Servo said:
The Zeno of wikkidpissah
Click to expand...
FYP

In many ways, the eastern philosophies are as much hysterical confabulations as western holy texts. I've read as many of the credos as i could find, from the Upanishads to Dianetics and see them mostly as little more than abiding illusions.

I have nothing against abiding illusions. In fact, i recommend them - they are part of my program (and getting to pick one's own is a big part of using abiding illusions to propel one's existence, btw). We can't know why we're here, but us being here and being capable of what we are is exceptional enough to conclude that there is a reason. I know that all the sweat, worry & care makes us seek the purpose of life. I have guesses, too, some pretty weird, all very meaningful to me, but i am uncomfortable considering them to be more than guesses and i feel better about what i do without any of my guesses as the motive.

And that's my biggest guess of all - that, if there is anything to be revealed, what better time to do so than once we are free of the need for revelation?! Maybe, once we show God we don't need him, she'll show her ugly mug.

That is stoicism. That is why i fixed your post, Tom, to reflect the name of the founder of stoicism, Zeno of Citium. Only for the pun, though - i don't know all that much about Zeno. I've heard stoicism described, read a few texts, said, "yeah, that matches up". It would be very unstoic for me to make a deep comprehensive study of all that stoicism is about. That's my Zen(o) koan. I know that the best way to enjoy every aspect of life is to want pleasure/reward instead of need pleasure/reward and the best way to do that is to be able to do without that pleasure/reward or, in fact, any pleasure/reward.

We are here to give. We are not here to prove, we are here to improve and provide. Proving is not bad, it is a major factor in improvement. Proving as the prime motive of life is ruinous. We are given an extraordinary and immeasurable gift in being ourselves on this day. I must therefore conclude that we are here to return equal value. We gotta throw out a LOT of traditional, rancid #### to get to the point where we can do that. And i can assure you that is the happiest way of life. To quote Coach John Wooden "Happiness begins where selfishness ends". My system is an attempt to show how that can be achieved.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
I believe there is a limit to the amount of "manual building" we can do for others simply because of the most prevalent, aggravating, inscrutability problem of the human condition: the denoting problem.  Russell probably described it best.  Wittgenstein spent a great deal of time working on it.  Everyone knows it's there intuitively.  The problem is this: you don't mean what I mean when we use the same words.  We have a general sense of what we mean, but "definitions" aren't definite.   The manual needs to start with a dictionary. 

The closer we come to meaning the same thing, the closer we come to moving the human race forward.  In my opinion.  And once we all know what we mean, humanity is going to move forward at a pace that makes today look like the Dark Ages.  Unfortunately, as noted by the original post, we're moving in the wrong direction.

 
Henry Ford said:
I believe there is a limit to the amount of "manual building" we can do for others simply because of the most prevalent, aggravating, inscrutability problem of the human condition: the denoting problem.  Russell probably described it best.  Wittgenstein spent a great deal of time working on it.  Everyone knows it's there intuitively.  The problem is this: you don't mean what I mean when we use the same words.  We have a general sense of what we mean, but "definitions" aren't definite.   The manual needs to start with a dictionary. 

The closer we come to meaning the same thing, the closer we come to moving the human race forward.  In my opinion.  And once we all know what we mean, humanity is going to move forward at a pace that makes today look like the Dark Ages.  Unfortunately, as noted by the original post, we're moving in the wrong direction.
Click to expand...
okeydokey

 
Henry Ford said:
It's a lot of what you're already doing.  You're defining important terms, explaining them in ways people understand, and trying to bring a shared meaning to the concepts you're using by which one should improve human life.  Go you.
Click to expand...
You're probably the most respected person on these boards and there's a reason for that. Your capacity and care is unmatched around here.

You are an "art of the possible" guy and i am an "art of the necessary" guy. A revolutionary. I am trying to be the first careful revolutionary and it's not easy. My favorite reading growing up was Sherlock Holmes, but i never understood why his talent for deduction never brought him to the conclusion that he was a ####. I am trying to be that bold, that piercing without being a richard about it. I hope as many persons such as you temper my vision as others might embrace it.

I started writing songs a few years ago, the only reason being that i had a project which would be improved by adding songs, so i gave it a try. I been around the music biz, at some high levels occasionally, for almost 50 years, but i can't play a musical instrument well enough to play what i write. Every time i've brought the songs to musician friends, they've been "You wrote this?! You don't even play anythi....you wrote this?!?!" Then they sit me down and explain to me what i done here or there and how weird and borderline wonderful that is. That's who i am - i come up with stuff. If i actually knew what i was doing, i probably wouldn't, but i don't know the rules, so.....The only reason i can keep trying is that i know there are guys like you around to refine what i come up with. I hope you'll think about being one of those guys.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
wikkidpissah said:
You're probably the most respected person on these boards and there's a reason for that. Your capacity and care is unmatched around here.

You are an "art of the possible" guy and i am an "art of the necessary" guy. A revolutionary. I am trying to be the first careful revolutionary and it's not easy. My favorite reading growing up was Sherlock Holmes, but i never understood why his talent for deduction never brought him to the conclusion that he was a ####. I am trying to be that bold, that piercing without being a richard about it. I hope as many persons such as you temper my vision as others might embrace it.

I started writing songs a few years ago, the only reason being that i had a project which would be improved by adding songs, so i gave it a try. I been around the music biz, at some high levels occasionally, for almost 50 years, but i can't play a musical instrument well enough to play what i write. Every time i've brought the songs to musician friends, they've been "You wrote this?! You don't even play anythi....you wrote this?!?!" Then they sit me down and explain to me what i done here or there and how weird and borderline wonderful that is. That's who i am - i come up with stuff. If i actually knew what i was doing, i probably wouldn't, but i don't know the rules, so.....The only reason i can keep trying is that i know there are guys like you around to refine what i come up with. I hope you'll think about being one of those guys.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure how to be "one of those guys" but my tendency is to think "how is some idiot going to misunderstand me here" when writing, and then try to make sure I explain whatever that is.  I recommend it.

"Abbot Terrasson tells us that if the size of a book were measured not by the number of its pages but by the time required to understand it, then we could say about many books that they would be much shorter were they not so short." - Immanuel Kant

 
Henry Ford said:
I'm not sure how to be "one of those guys" but my tendency is to think "how is some idiot going to misunderstand me here" when writing, and then try to make sure I explain whatever that is.  I recommend it.

"Abbot Terrasson tells us that if the size of a book were measured not by the number of its pages but by the time required to understand it, then we could say about many books that they would be much shorter were they not so short." - Immanuel Kant
Click to expand...
One of the blessings of the first stuff i ever wrote being jokes for other people is that i never have any trouble finding the voice in which i want people to "hear" my words. One can make the most abstruse observation and, if it's written with comic timing, have it mean something to somebody - most bodies, actually. An FFA member once observed "I rarely understand anything wikkid says, but somehow feel better for having read it". @Eephus has said something to the effect that Cecil Taylor is the appropriate accompaniment for my rants (how could he know that this synchs up to my thought processes like Dark Side of the Moon does to Wizard of Oz).

But in the case of my "manual", my role is that of a popularizer, not an entertainer or even a teacher really and certainly not a philosopher. This is not conjecture, this is formula. First & foremost, i want people to try anticipating and conducting their rage, animal instincts and personal weather, and the yield of my usual Wrath-of-God-on-Acid style can't possibly be optimal for that. This is an owner's manual. An inviting & orderly entry to technical writing of procedures. I can write tight cuz jokes are 93% tight, but..... Maybe Vol. 2 i can cut loose.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Man of Constant Sorrow said:
That's why I'm here. 

Nice. 
Click to expand...
I used to tell students the difference between what something means and something's meaning by using the following example (which changed with the telling every time - like a philosophical "Aristocrats!" but somehow more boring than that sounds.)

"I placed my hand upon the desk."  What does that sentence mean? 

And then some enterprising student would explain, in rather technical language, that someone put his extreme upper extremity on the surface of a wooden blah blah blah.  And everyone was very impressed and giggly.

And then I would explain that the desk was a wooden, handcrafted desk from the Revolutionary War time that had been in the family for generations.  It was passed from father to son in a family of lawyers and writers, of politicians and teachers, for over two hundred years.  Since the dawn of the country.  The family always imagined that some part of the founding documents had been written there.  The Declaration.  The Bill of Rights.  They weren't, obviously, but it was a sort of fantasy in the back of everyone's minds - like finding a Van Gogh at a garage sale or something, maybe our desk had been in just the right place at just the right moment and maybe that's how greatness comes to a family.  It was that desk. 

It was the same desk where my father took his life.  Where he had sat, alone, a single lamp burning on a dark night, placed a single cartridge into the cylinder of a snub nosed .38 special and blown the back of his head across the room.  Where his head had fallen forward, and struck the edge of the wood, his nose breaking after he'd already put a bullet in his head.  There was a spot in wood, over the center drawer. A dark, brown spot that just looked like a slight imperfection in the staining, but it wasn't.  It was my father.  

That night he had found out about my mother and his own brother.  Apparently years in the making.  And when he confronted her she pushed him to it - berated him, eviscerated him.  Crushed anything that was left.  Asked him why he even bothered to live anymore.  And I suppose he couldn't think of an answer.  

I was young, then.  Ten.  Maybe eleven.  It wasn't until years later that I really understood what had happened.  Years after I'd seen my uncle, sitting in my father's study.  At my father's desk.  In my father's home.  But one day I did find out.  My aunt.. my ex-aunt I guess? ... she explained to me on my twenty-first birthday, half drunk, at a bar in Mid City, why things were the way they were.  And when I came home to confront him, there he was - my uncle, in my father's house, at my father's desk.  I don't know exactly what was in my head - I was half drunk, half enraged, and half detached from my body, and that's a lot of halves to have.  But it was all too much for me and I pulled my uncle out of that chair and I beat him half to death.  All the way unconscious.  

I stopped seeing red eventually - the world turned back to the colors I was used to, my heart stopped pounding, the blood stopped rushing in my ears.  And there he was, my uncle, bruised and bloody on the floor of my father's office.  The whole story finally out in the open in the family.  The reason my father was gone.

I placed my hand upon the desk.

And then I asked them the meaning.  And told them that's what denoting is about.  And it's why the entirety of humanity is unable to effectively communicate with one another.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Henry Ford said:
I used to tell students the difference between what something means and something's meaning by using the following example (which changed with the telling every time - like a philosophical "Aristocrats!" but somehow more boring than that sounds.)

"I placed my hand upon the desk."  What does that sentence mean? 

And then some enterprising student would explain, in rather technical language, that someone put his extreme upper extremity on the surface of a wooden blah blah blah.  And everyone was very impressed and giggly.

And then I would explain that the desk was a wooden, handcrafted desk from the Revolutionary War time that had been in the family for generations.  It was passed from father to son in a family of lawyers and writers, of politicians and teachers, for over two hundred years.  Since the dawn of the country.  The family always imagined that some part of the founding documents had been written there.  The Declaration.  The Bill of Rights.  They weren't, obviously, but it was a sort of fantasy in the back of everyone's minds - like finding a Van Gogh at a garage sale or something, maybe our desk had been in just the right place at just the right moment and maybe that's how greatness comes to a family.  It was that desk. 

It was the same desk where my father took his life.  Where he had sat, alone, a single lamp burning on a dark night, placed a single cartridge into the cylinder of a snub nosed .38 special and blown the back of his head across the room.  Where his head had fallen forward, and struck the edge of the wood, his nose breaking after he'd already put a bullet in his head.  There was a sport in wood, over the center drawer. A dark, brown spot that just looked like a slight imperfection in the staining, but it wasn't.  It was my father.  

That night he had found out about my mother and his own brother.  Apparently years in the making.  And when he confronted her she pushed him to it - berated him, eviscerated him.  Crushed anything that was left.  Asked him why he even bothered to live anymore.  And I suppose he couldn't think of an answer.  

I was young, then.  Ten.  Maybe eleven.  It wasn't until years later that I really understood what had happened.  Years after I'd seen my uncle, sitting in my father's study.  At my father's desk.  In my father's home.  But one day I did find out.  My aunt.. my ex-aunt I guess? ... she explained to me on my twenty-first birthday, half drunk, at a bar in Mid City, why things were the way they were.  And when I came home to confront him, there he was - my uncle, in my father's house, at my father's desk.  I don't know exactly what was in my head - I was half drunk, half enraged, and half detached from my body, and that's a lot of halves to have.  But it was all too much for me and I pulled my uncle out of that chair and I beat him half to death.  All the way unconscious.  

I stopped seeing red eventually - the world turned back to the colors I was used to, my heart stopped pounding, the blood stopped rushing in my ears.  And there he was, my uncle, bruised and bloody on the floor of my father's office.  The whole story finally out in the open in the family.  The reason my father was gone.

I placed my hand upon the desk.

And then I asked them the meaning.  And told them that's what denoting is about.  And it's why the entirety of humanity is unable to effectively communicate with one another.
Click to expand...
Thanks for sharing this Henry. 

I greatly missed you and your perspective during my absence. 

I'll think a lot about everything in this thread; it's been awesome so far. 

Pretty soon, I'll have something to say. 

For now; I believe I understand a major portion of your point. 👍

 
Henry Ford said:
I'm not sure how to be "one of those guys" but my tendency is to think "how is some idiot going to misunderstand me here" when writing, and then try to make sure I explain whatever that is.  I recommend it.

"Abbot Terrasson tells us that if the size of a book were measured not by the number of its pages but by the time required to understand it, then we could say about many books that they would be much shorter were they not so short." - Immanuel Kant
Click to expand...
ABSOLUTELY. 

The one thing I'm constantly disappointed in is how many people disagree with me on the idea that it's the responsibility of the speaker to be understood. I see lots of super smart people absolve themselves of that responsibility... While they are misunderstood. 

 
wikkidpissah said:
One of the blessings of the first stuff i ever wrote being jokes for other people is that i never have any trouble finding the voice in which i want people to "hear" my words. 

... 
Click to expand...
And, this point is perfectly wikkid. 👍

I believe it is essential to the formula; at least the one I'm in line for. 🙂

 
Joe Bryant said:
ABSOLUTELY. 

The one thing I'm constantly disappointed in is how many people disagree with me on the idea that it's the responsibility of the speaker to be understood. I see lots of super smart people absolve themselves of that responsibility... While they are misunderstood. 
Click to expand...
Can you unpack this?

 
wikkidpissah said:
One of the blessings of the first stuff i ever wrote being jokes for other people is that i never have any trouble finding the voice in which i want people to "hear" my words. One can make the most abstruse observation and, if it's written with comic timing, have it mean something to somebody, most bodies, actually.
Click to expand...
That's it... I'm starting a Wikkid dictionary today of his colorful words:

1. Abstruse - Abstract/Obtuse

 
wikkidpissah said:
The job of human parenthood is to get offspring to the third instinct as quickly and completely as possible. The only effective way to do so is to continually and consistently frustrate the dominance and fight-to-the-death instincts of their children. The product of the frustration of dominance is rage.
Click to expand...


wikkidpissah said:
Maybe, once we show God we don't need him, she'll show her ugly mug.
Click to expand...
This #### should be on a poster or a shirt or something, just saying.

 
Man of Constant Sorrow said:
Thanks for sharing this Henry. 

I greatly missed you and your perspective during my absence. 

I'll think a lot about everything in this thread; it's been awesome so far. 

Pretty soon, I'll have something to say. 

For now; I believe I understand a major portion of your point. 👍
Click to expand...
The point is only this:

When we speak, we do not know what others mean.  Really ever.  Not really.  If you use the word mother and I use the word mother, we mean different things.  Because "mother" has bound up in it all of the meaning I ascribe to my mother.  And the mothers I've known.  And the different definitions I allow to bleed into "mother" - mother-in-law, adoptive mother, nuns, etc.  They evoke other feelings than the word "mother" does in you.  There's really nothing we can do about that, and probably shouldn't try. 

I wrote a paper about denoting language in the field of mathematics in college, basically explaining that we don't even agree on what we mean in (or even by) Euclidean Geometry.  It's gotten worse, not better.

 
Henry Ford said:
The point is only this:

When we speak, we do not know what others mean.  Really ever.  Not really.  If you use the word mother and I use the word mother, we mean different things.  Because "mother" has bound up in it all of the meaning I ascribe to my mother.  And the mothers I've known.  And the different definitions I allow to bleed into "mother" - mother-in-law, adoptive mother, nuns, etc.  They evoke other feelings than the word "mother" does in you.  There's really nothing we can do about that, and probably shouldn't try. 

I wrote a paper about denoting language in the field of mathematics in college, basically explaining that we don't even agree on what we mean in (or even by) Euclidean Geometry.  It's gotten worse, not better.
Click to expand...
That paper sounds interesting. What you write here jibes with my groove too. 

I recall some good convos we had before that danced around this pole. 

If you recall, I am a skeptic in epistemology, and language (as you touch on here) has always been one of the legs under that rock. 

I like it. 

However, to avoid solipsism, I mostly live day-to-day, less skeptically than I used to. 

Now, how this relates to the future of humanity... I'm still reading... 

 
NotSmart said:
Can you unpack this?
Click to expand...
I see a lot of smart people make their point in a way that the listener doesn't understand. And then :shrug:  when the listener doesn't understand. Or worse, say something along the lines of "that's their problem if they're not smart enough to understand". 

Because the reality is the net effect is the smart person still failed to convey his point. That's on you as the speaker. But I see smart people who don't want to own that. 

 
Henry Ford said:
The point is only this:

When we speak, we do not know what others mean.  Really ever.  Not really.  If you use the word mother and I use the word mother, we mean different things.  Because "mother" has bound up in it all of the meaning I ascribe to my mother.  And the mothers I've known.  And the different definitions I allow to bleed into "mother" - mother-in-law, adoptive mother, nuns, etc.  They evoke other feelings than the word "mother" does in you.  There's really nothing we can do about that, and probably shouldn't try. 

I wrote a paper about denoting language in the field of mathematics in college, basically explaining that we don't even agree on what we mean in (or even by) Euclidean Geometry.  It's gotten worse, not better.
Click to expand...
My favorite thing about life is that we can't ask, never find out for sure.

Me 94yo Ma don't remember what she said yesterday anymore. The thing about me to me she barks out most often is that i told her, when i first came up here to take care of her that, If i ever wrote my autobiography, i would title it "Why Is That House Brown?" after the kind of questions i'd ask her as a toddler. "So many questions. Remember him in the stroller, Woody? What about this? What about that?" My father always grunts and goes back to blaming gays for hurricanes.

I wanna know. I always wanna know. I could list 47 things i've done to put myself into position to understand more, but i aint blowing that many stories in one post. Becoming, next to the guy who taught me and my Mary, the best psych-unit crisis worker i ever seen. Having one of the greatest gamblers who ever lived, WSOP champ Jack Straus, call me the best psych player of my gen. Years of putting myself in jackpots, up against deadlines, sitches i couldn't get out of (even betting on em in my gambler days) just to keep sharp.

Cuz you can't ask, you just can't ask. And it's its own Uncertainty Principle - if you were to ask, you'd be guaranteeing you wouldn't get the truth. So we chase and we chase and we chase. Cuz that's how we get better, doncha think? Not hardly. It makes us meaner, crazier, ruins trust, creates perversions as diversions, makes us wanna get loaded so we just don't care for a while.

Orrrr. Orrrrrrrrrrrrrr, we could make our peace with it. Best decision i ever made, because i'd never have learned the meaning of the word "kind" if i hadn't. I'll have a piece about the meaning of kindness on here soon. Of all the things i haven't been able to live without, that may have the strongest hold on me. Who knows?

 
Last edited by a moderator:
wikkidpissah said:
My favorite thing about life is that we can't ask, never find out for sure.

Me 94yo Ma don't remember what she said yesterday anymore. The thing about me to me she barks out most often is that i told her, when i first came up here to take care of her that, If i ever wrote my autobiography, i would title it "Why Is That House Brown?" after the kind of questions i'd ask her as a toddler. "So many questions. Remember him in the stroller, Woody? What about this? What about that?" My father always grunts and goes back to blaming gays for hurricanes.

I wanna know. I always wanna know. I could list 47 things i've done to put myself into position to understand more, but i aint blowing that many stories in one post. Becoming, next to the guy who taught me and my Mary, the best psych-unit crisis worker i ever seen. Having one of the greatest gamblers who ever lived, WSOP champ Jack Straus, call me the best psych player of my gen. Years of putting myself in jackpots, up against deadlines, sitches i couldn't get out of (even betting on em in my gambler days) just to keep sharp.

Cuz you can't ask, you just can't ask. And it's its own Uncertainty Principle - if you were to ask, you'd be guaranteeing you wouldn't get the truth. So we chase and we chase and we chase. Cuz that's how we get better, doncha think? Not hardly. It makes us meaner, crazier, ruins trust, creates perversions as diversions, makes us wanna get loaded so we just don't care for a while.

Orrrr. Orrrrrrrrrrrrrr, we could make our peace with it. Best decision i ever made, because i'd never have learned the meaning of the word "kind" if i hadn't. I'll have a piece about the meaning of kindness on here soon. Of all the things i haven't been able to live without, that may have the strongest hold on me. Who knows?
Click to expand...
I’ll tell you why a manual is most important in my opinion: because it gives a definition - a real, live, definition by a person - of what a life well lived is. 

Can you imagine if we all agreed on the definition of that?

 
Last edited by a moderator:
I don’t know if you guys remember the tv show “Head of the Class” from the 80s. It was about a gifted high school class. 

There was an episode where they were returning from winning a trivia meet and broke down in a small town. They (their teacher after watching them treat the locals like yokels) decided to pass the time by doing a trivia competition with the residents. And it was basically a dead heat.  Nobody knew the answers to each other’s questions.

One guy popped up who had gone to college and lived in a city and then came home to live where he loved and he answered them all in a row.

”Barns are red because red is the cheapest color of paint.”

And I said to myself, “I want to be that guy.”

 
Henry Ford said:
I don’t know if you guys remember the tv show “Head of the Class” from the 80s. It was about a gifted high school class. 

There was an episode where they were returning from winning a trivia meet and broke down in a small town. They (their teacher after watching them treat the locals like yokels) decided to pass the time by doing a trivia competition with the residents. And it was basically a dead heat.  Nobody knew the answers to each other’s questions.

One guy popped up who had gone to college and lived in a city and then came home to live where he loved and he answered them all in a row.

”Barns are red because red is the cheapest color of paint.”

And I said to myself, “I want to be that guy.”
Click to expand...
I remember the show, but not the episode. 

However, I disagree with the red barn answer.

Not impling I'm right, but I'd always been taught it was because of the inherent redness of the most common lead pigments and red oxides and chromiums, etc. 

But I get the gist. 

 
Man of Constant Sorrow said:
I remember the show, but not the episode. 

However, I disagree with the red barn answer.

Not impling I'm right, but I'd always been taught it was because of the inherent redness of the most common lead pigments and red oxides and chromiums, etc. 

But I get the gist. 
Click to expand...
Yes.  Precisely.  So it was cheap to make paint that color back in the day. 

 
otello said:
So, if I don’t understand what’s going on in this thread, is it my fault or yours?
Click to expand...
Yours.......

Kidding, of course. Are you getting anything from it, though, even if you don't understand it all? Crazy people like myself who think about their insides all the time do get off on some tangents, but we come up with good stuff sometimes.

If you're in, keep your eye out for a post i'll be putting out in the next couple days headed THIS IS IMPORTANT. Of all the stuff that will be in this thread - from me intentionally, from others, from me responding to others - it is the part i most want everyone to understand. It's complicated, so ask me questions about it, y'all - it's a vital part of the Human Owner's Manual, but among the most difficult to explain clearly and i want to get it right when i do it f'realsies. Stay with it, my friend.

 
It was part tongue in cheek, W, but we’re far from the shallow now...

 
Last edited by a moderator:
wikkidpissah said:
We can't know why we're here, but us being here and being capable of what we are is exceptional enough to conclude that there is a reason.
Click to expand...
I've been approaching life a bit differently than this. I don't think there is "a reason" in terms of some universal, objective reason for being, with the notion of reason implying some sort of purpose or plan (rather than just the physical mechanisms that arrange matter, etc.). I think the only reasons are the ones we provide for ourselves. We come to them in different ways (many of us indoctrinated since birth with a particular reason set), but ultimately they're of our making whether subconsciously avoiding questioning the reasons we've inherited or consciously defining out our own reasons. I find that assumption both liberating and frightening.

 
Gr00vus said:
I've been approaching life a bit differently than this. I don't think there is "a reason" in terms of some universal, objective reason for being, with the notion of reason implying some sort of purpose or plan (rather than just the physical mechanisms that arrange matter, etc.). I think the only reasons are the ones we provide for ourselves. We come to them in different ways (many of us indoctrinated since birth with a particular reason set), but ultimately they're of our making whether subconsciously avoiding questioning the reasons we've inherited or consciously defining out our own reasons. I find that assumption both liberating and frightening.
Click to expand...
We're pretty much on the same page, and i'll go so far to say that we'd be on the same very different page if it took 12 hours a day of physical labor for us to scratch existence from the land, working without any kind of net, deprivation a daily threat, prey to weather, pain without relief, etc etc. I understand the need for a reason because our kind of ease has only been the rule for about 0.1% of human history and it is that for which we are wired (i'll get into that down the line). If i was born in County Galway in 1830, there damned well better have been a reason. I hope that everything i think remembers that.

 
Henry Ford said:
I believe there is a limit to the amount of "manual building" we can do for others simply because of the most prevalent, aggravating, inscrutability problem of the human condition: the denoting problem.  Russell probably described it best.  Wittgenstein spent a great deal of time working on it.  Everyone knows it's there intuitively.  The problem is this: you don't mean what I mean when we use the same words.  We have a general sense of what we mean, but "definitions" aren't definite.   The manual needs to start with a dictionary. 

The closer we come to meaning the same thing, the closer we come to moving the human race forward.  In my opinion.  And once we all know what we mean, humanity is going to move forward at a pace that makes today look like the Dark Ages.  Unfortunately, as noted by the original post, we're moving in the wrong direction.
Click to expand...
I promised you earlier that I would think. 

I went back to this and am rereading and rethinking. 

👍

 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Kiddnets
How did you become a fan of your favorite team(s)?
2 3
Replies
108
Views
2K
ConstruxBoy
ConstruxBoy
Todem
Official Rush “Fifty Something Tour” Thread
2
Replies
93
Views
2K
Ghost Rider
Ghost Rider
Joe Bryant
Big Idea And A Brand New Footballguys Tool - The Assistant Coach
Replies
4
Views
754
Mr.Pack
Mr.Pack

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 1 (members: 0, guests: 1)
Back
Top