Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

It's curious to me that everything we can know and think about the universe can be put into words. What a remarkably fortuitous set of circumstances! How will we ever get outside language, to encounter a reality that presumably goes on totally without it? Do we even want to?

Some people just weren't meant to grow old. Can you imagine an old Kurt Cobain, or an old James Dean, or an old Marilyn Monroe? Janis Joplin in a Buick? Jim Morrison with a walker?

I've spent all my life getting ready for a future that never comes. I've now reached the age that there's not much future left. And all I want now is permission to breathe.

---

19 lies that society tried to foist on me:

1) The lie of wealth--that the purpose of life is to make money.

2) The lie of materialism--that your worth is equal to the things you own.

3) The lie of patriotism--that my country is the best and the greatest and always right.

4) The lie of religion---that an itinerate Jewish carpenter who was also God died for my sins 2000 years and demands my loyalty and love for it.

5) The lie of career--that your purpose in life is whatever you do to make money.

6) The lie of science--that everything is just atoms of randomly interacting matter and energy.

7) The lie of romantic love--that there is one person you are meant to fall in love with and live with for your whole life.

8) The lie of machismo--that to be a man is to be unfeeling and stoic and into beer and sports.

9) The lie of "there's no place like home"--that you should remain in the place you were born and raised for your whole life.

10) The lie of technology--that new technologies always make our lives better and more free.

11) The lie of "no pain no gain"--that there is some inherent value in suffering and misery.

12)The lie of consumerism--that you need everything commercials tell you you need.

13) The lie of politics--that your vote makes one iota of difference in the scheme of things.

14) The lie of fame---that the more famous you are and more friends you have the more important you are as a person.

15)The lie of expertise---that so-called "experts" are reliable authorities on knowledge in other subjects besides their field of learning.

16)The lie of nihilism--that this is all there is.

17) The lie of sex---that if you're not interested in having sex there's something wrong with you.

18) The lie of stoicism---that being unhappy is a weakness or character flaw.

19) The lie of moral properties---that people can be inherently good or evil.

The "Universe is a hologram" theory becomes much more plausible when you realize that space is part of the projected hologram and time is the running of the hologram itself.

(May 21, 2026 06:13 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: [ -> ]18 lies that society tried to foist on me:

1) The lie of wealth--that the purpose of life is to make money.

2) The lie of materialism--that your worth is equal to the things you own.

I thought you were raised a Christian. Didn't they teach you both those were wrong?
Or did you forget, as an adult? @_@

Quote:3) The lie of patriotism--that my country is the best and the greatest and always right.

Shame you couldn't learn that on your own... aside from the "always right" part (absolutes like "always" are lazy thinking).

Quote:4) The lie of religion---that an itinerate Jewish carpenter who was also God died for my sins 2000 years and demands my loyalty and love for it.

Demands? Seems you had a choice all along.

Quote:5) The lie of career--that your purpose in life is whatever you do to make money.

As if your experience with nepotism could ever lead you to a fulfilling career.

Quote:6) The lie of science--that everything is just atoms of randomly interacting matter and energy.

Again, you were raised a Christian, right?

Quote:7) The lie of romantic love--that there is one person you are meant to fall in love with and live with for your whole life.

Well, you sure showed them.

Quote:8) The lie of machismo--that to be a man is to be unfeeling and stoic and into beer and sports.

My Christian family didn't drink and my dad wasn't into sports.
But stoicism is a useful trait as a man, especially when dealing with more emotional women or children. When people rely on you, it helps to be their rock.

Quote:9) The lie of "there's no place like home"--that you should remain in the place you were born and raised for your whole life.

Depends on where you were born, I guess. After living on both coasts, I ended up back in my home state. But my home state is free, low cost of living, lower crime, etc..

Quote:10) The lie of technology--that new technologies always make our lives better and more free.
...
12)The lie of consumerism--that you need everything commercials tell you you need.

Some people are more susceptible to commercials, I guess.

Quote:11) The lie of "no pain no gain"--that there is some inherent value in suffering and misery.

The idiom "no pain, no gain" suggests there is value in suffering, but it specifically refers to productive, purposeful struggle rather than pointless agony. The phrase implies that worthwhile rewards require hard work, and that overcoming discomfort is necessary for meaningful growth or success.
- Gemini

The "gain" part refers to worthwhile goals.
When there's things like pills to help keep the weight off, maybe nothing seems worthwhile enough to put in the work.
Might have something to do with that career fulfillment too.

Quote:13) The lie of politics--that your vote makes one iota of difference in the scheme of things.

Yeah, if you live where everyone always votes Democrat, it's no wonder you never see a difference. They just keep promising to fix things they never do.

Quote:14) The lie of fame---that the more famous you are and more friends you have the more important you are as a person.

Has fame, itself, ever really been equated to importance?
I certainly wouldn't call someone like Adan Sandler as "important."

Quote:15)The lie of expertise---that so-called "experts" are reliable authorities on knowledge in other subjects besides their field of learning.

Ah, ultracrepidarianism, like people like Neil deGrasse Tyson are fond of.

Quote:16)The lie of nihilism--that this is all there is.

Again, Christianity... or any religion, really.

Quote:17) The lie of sex---that if you're not interested in having sex there's something wrong with you.

No, that part is true.

A complete lack of interest in sex does not automatically denote a mental problem. It can simply be a normal variation in human sexuality, a medical side effect, or a temporary reaction to stress, provided it does not cause you personal distress or relationship issues.
- Gemini

Quote:18) The lie of stoicism---that being unhappy is a weakness or character flaw.

The idea that being unhappy is a personal failure is a modern distortion of Stoic philosophy. True Stoicism does not demand the suppression of emotions, nor does it view sadness as a character flaw. Instead, it teaches that emotions are natural, but how we respond to and judge them is within our control.
- Gemini

"Readiness to answer all questions is the infallible sign of stupidity.

Saul Bellow, Herzog

One visualizes a sweaty lecturer, his waistcoat strained by the pressure of self-importance, stepping up to a mahogany podium to offer a skeleton key to the cosmos. He has a neatly typed index card for God, a footnote for grief, and a vulgar little diagram to explain the exact mechanics of human longing. To such a mind, the universe is not a tapestry of shimmering, microscopic details, but a poorly packed suitcase waiting to be jammed shut.

True intellect loiters. It prefers the dappled shade of ambiguity. To possess an answer for everything is to suffer from a dreadful blindness. It is to look at a canvas of masterfully blended indigo and mauve and see only a bucket of blue paint.

The man who knows everything has already stopped looking. He has traded the delicious, tingling shiver of the unknown for the cold comfort of a catalog. He sits in the dark, suffocating room of his own certainty, deaf to the exquisite, polyphonic whisperings of a world that refuses to be categorized.

Let us leave the final, heavy periods to the schoolmasters and the autocrats. Let us instead cherish the comma, the ellipsis, the breathless comma-splice of an ongoing discovery. For the only truth worth pursuing is the one that slips through our fingers just as we think we have caught it, leaving behind nothing but a smudge of iridescent dust.

And so, my patient, clear-eyed companion, as the shadows lengthen across the page, tell me: which of your own neatly arranged certainties are you most afraid to lose to the beautiful, chaotic wind of doubt?"

@top fans
Olesia Alexandrovna Manakova
Mosaic of Text NG

Saul Bellow underwent a significant political shift from left-wing Trotskyism to neoconservatism after the 1964 publication of Herzog. Disillusioned by the cultural changes and radical movements of the 1960s, he became an outspoken critic of political correctness, multiculturalism, and liberal policies.
- Gemini

This makes sense in light of the fact that preferring "the dappled shade of ambiguity" and refusing to answer questions has become the SOP of the left.

---

When the gods put man into the world, they had some bad news: "My son, enjoy your days and your seasons, for everything passes away, and in the end nothing remains." Man bowed his head in sadness, but the gods had a surprise. "Here my son is a gift. This gift is called the future. Every day you may open the box, and find out what is inside. Somedays there will be nothing at all. Other days there will be only noxious and unpleasant things. But once and a while, you will find inside the most amazing thing you could ever imagine. Live your life now, my son, and never give up hope."

---

Have you ever been so scared that you slept with the lights on? I've only done that two times in my life. Once after I finished reading "The Amityville Horror" and another time when I stayed at a haunted hotel on the Oregon coast. Not that light necessarily keeps the spooks away. They just become harder to notice.

The essence of consciousness is continuous and free mobility of our attention--flitting about from our senses to our bodily sensations to our thoughts to our memories to our feelings. Constantly roaming around and shifting and scanning. Thus is it continuously building and updating its vivid sense of what is really happening. It is a vigilance evolved millions ago as always being prey to stalking and hungry predators.


But the System knows this, which is why it is always vying to capture and immobilize our attention. By halting the natural play of our attention it seeks to program us and brainwash us. To entrance us with its propaganda by bypassing our consciousness.

So how long does it take for our fixed attention to no longer count as consciousness I wonder? How long is a soundbite? How long is a political ad on TV? How long is a sermon at church? How long is a college lecture? How long before the butterfly suffocates inside the jar?

We just can't help ourselves. We are always sending messages out to the world. Even when we do nothing. So what message are we sending when we pretend not to notice? When we bite our tongues. And when we just go thru the motions of daily mechanical life afraid of creating a disturbance? Every life is an invisible conduit for some idea and some truth. What idea is your life making more real and more true?