It’s not at all ironic. I was told (by someone who understood neither the function of koans, nor the philosophy of Nietzsche nor the art of Picasso) that if I didn’t like psuedo-science masquerading as valid epistemology, then I must believe that koans were woo.
Koans aren’t woo. Someone using such an argument, while comparing their own posting to the beauty of a koan, is a fucking cock. If some pretentious idiot claims that opposition to their pseudo-scientific blabbering is the same as calling koans woo, then damn straight I’ll point out that they’re full of shit.
It wasn’t like I was behaving like our idiot, name-dropping, quote-dropping dilettantes and posted something like “Oh yah, lol? I are so clever because you don’t even understand koans, rofl!”
Unless, of course, you meant that the original claim was ironic… in which case I misunderstood you and I’d still posit that it wasn’t so much ironic as it was fucking stupid. “If you dismiss the claim that there’s no such thing as mental illness because you refuse to ‘unpackage’ my transcendent wisdom then you must hate koans!” is pretty stupid, I hope you’d agree.
What in all of that makes it not ironic? That the beauty and simplicity of a zen koan is being used as a projectile in an online pissing contest strikes me as rather funny.
I didn’t say you were. I was commenting on the irony of the statement, that is all.
No, I just imagined you yelling across the table and pounding your fist, “You pretentious git, your and Smashy’s babbling is nowhere near the elegant simplicity of koan!”, yes his part in the whole interplay led to the irony, but calling someone a git and lecturing them about the utility of a zen koan is rather funny. What makes it ironic is that the pissing match, whoever is right or wrong, is pretty far from the elegant simplicity of a zen koan.
And yes to be fair his reference to zen koans was some kind of appeal to authority, which is in and of itself a logical fallacy.
In all fairness it made me wonder how many times Picasso was told he was a fool and compared to someone who was considered a luminary of his day. I’m not saying Kimmy_Gibbler is today’s Picasso, he might not even paint for all I know.
And to put an even finer point on it. Neither of you is of the stature of Friedrich Nietzche. I doubt either of you has kissed a horse lately!
“You’re not as wise as I am! Why, my posts are like koans, and if you don’t agree with my posts, you probably also don’t like koans!”
“Your posts are nothing like koans, your writing is sloppy and stupid.”
There’s no irony there.
If it’s brought up koans out of the blue, you might have a point. But it was in direct response to the claim that by failing to appreciate the brilliance of Smashy and Co, that I must also be unable to appreciate Nietzsche, koans, or Picasso.
It’s not ironic and it’d be no different if it was anything else of the same sort.
“My posting is as deep and logically coherent as quantum math, if you don’t agree with me you must be an uncultured philistine stuck in a Newtonian universe.”
“Your thoughts are neither coherent nor deep and bear no relationship to the shockingly novel mathematical beauty of quantum mechanics.”
I lectured nobody. I pointed out that someone who was rather arrogantly claiming that their wooism had any relation to the philosophy of Neitzche or the art of Picasso or the elegant simplicity of a koan was full of shit. It wasn’t an appeal to authority, either. It was a false analogy whereby Kimmy compared his own posting to to Zen koans and alleged that opposing him was tantamount to being a boorish lout who didn’t appreciate philosophy or art.
Oh, and you shouldn’t picture me smashing the table. More like sneering across it.
My point is that Zen Koans purpose are to make you calm and at peace, and help you to avoid measuring your dick next to someone else’s.
To put it bluntly.
The rightness or wrongness of each side is irrelevant to that.
What is ironic is that two people who are not being particularly Zen are bludgeoning each other with Zen koans.
If either of you had been availing yourselves of the simplicity of a Zen Koan, neither of you would be in the mood to argue.
I’m not insulting you, just commenting on something that struck me as funny. I saw the irony encapsulated best by a sentence that included, “stupid git”, and “the simplicity of a zen koan”.
In response to the OP, yeah, there are a lot of really stupid, ignorant people here. This forum is deceptive because the average English composition level is much higher here than many communities on the Internet, but there are plenty of people here who can write a fine paragraph but otherwise don’t have two brain cells to rub together.
I was impressed when I first read the SDMB, and I don’t know if I’ve changed or its membership has, but now I spend most of my time here rolling my eyes. There are definitely some interesting, smart people here with good things to say but they’re outliers as far as I can tell.
This has become annoying and unnecessary, FinnAgain. It is clear that Kimmy and Smashy(Is this the name you prefer?) merely wish for a majority of the posters to leave(or become more “open-minded”*).
It isn’t the board they detest, it is the people. They appreciate what SDMB stands for, but they don’t agree with how the members are operating here.
I think. This might be another Hunter Hawk scenario I’ve found myself in.
And while I understand that this is the pit, do we really need to throw insults at people simply because we disagree with them?
~S.P.I.~
*By open-minded I mean their definition of open-minded, which includes the various theories already brought up by more interested parties.
“Nobody listens to me when I do [perfectly reasonable thing]! All they do is yell!”
“Well, then do [perfectly reasonable thing].”
“No, you’re a bunch of mean meany-heads!”
If I remember correctly, studies of both identical twins raised together and identical twins raised apart showed higher correlations of the development of homosexual interests than the correlations in fraternal twins raised together and fraternal twins raised apart. The implication was that the source of homosexuality was genetic.
I think this was one major influence in changing the thinking in psychiatry which had previously considered homosexuality a perversion.
Monstro, I hope that you are not making the mistake of diagnosing yourself. Sometimes the more informed you become, the more likely you are to do that. But if you have been diagnosed by a doctor, my heart goes out to you. It would explain some of the fear reaction you have described.
Your posts have been spot on!
Some schizophrenics can be very articulate and perceptive. Others can be more like Colibri’s father. They are not all alike. When we stop thinking of them as individuals or deserving of our contempt, we’ve shown a shallowness in ourselves. But when Boxcar Willie and Elizabeth II are conspiring lizards, it’s time to come in out of the rain.
I saw Monarch butterflies playing football one time, but I was having a fever dream.
Kimmy, I think you are just stringing folks along for a laugh this time – especially considering the mocking wording on your responses.
Funny that, I was just playing with the book title Grapes of Wrath and got Vineyard Redemption out of it. I thought that would make a pretty cool band name or something…
For what it’s worth, the purpose of the zen koan is to do quite the reverse. A properly contemplated koan should create a burning lead ball in your gut. I doubt that Kimmy really understands them, either.
Finn Again, without addressing the merit of your position on the underlying subject at hand (“science”), your approach here is nothing but absurd. Of course, it is Teh Pit, so perhaps you think that insulting someone repeatedly without truly addressing the points they are making is what the place is all about (and I’d be hard pressed to disagree, based on what I read here). But it just makes you look stupid.
Indeed, it scores points for the opposition. :smack:
