Philosophers

Profound, indeed. Perhaps you should make more mistakes, in that they become such rich, rewarding experiences, much to the delight of those so privileged to share in the awe and splendor in the blessing of your willingness to share, bestowed upon us this spectacular endeavor of peeping the unseeable. What shall the future behold?

I'm sure I fail philosophistication but at least I do so herein crack myself up.

Really though, that was cool Mountain Valley Wolf. I enjoyed reading it.

 

lol

 

Thank you ginalee---I'm still trying to peep the unseeable...

Oh man!! I wanted those!!! I still can't see through girl's clothes and stuff...

 

Sorry to derail, but do you other "oldies but goodies remember the Johnson Smith catalog?? X-ray glasses, itching powder, dribbling glasses that had a little hole right under where your bottom lip would touch the glass--VIOLA--water down your front. Cigarette loads that exploded a smoke when lit and all kinds of other stuff. That catalog was almost 2 inches think with joke type stuff and other stuff I don't remember. Oh yeah--got my first 'hand buzzer' from them. Still love those things.

 

Those aren't like the original--but I'll still be damned!! Thanks-------been needin' some itchin' powder!!

 

I forgot all about that. I think my sister and I bought a device to throw your voice from that catalog. It never worked quite like they said it would...

 

i'm not sure the question has an answer. but i'm sure there are many people who may have something like one. perhaps a phylosopher is a practicioner of the science of phylosophy. but what is that? perhaps it is to question everything in a way that avoids all preconceptions. so then, perhaps, a phylosopher is simply anyone and everyone who does, or even attempts, to do that.

 

OK----here's a serious answer. It's quite simple:

First of all you have to have a philosophy that is yours. It could be based on someone else's, or it could be all yours. It could be very complex and explain all of life (such as my own which states that all of living existence is based on sex--yes revolutionary I know---but I have done extensive research--first through various family interviews I have come to realize that even I came to be because of sexual contact, apparently at a drive-in theatre, but possibly up on Lookout point. Then I video taped a couple having relations after locking them in a room with a bed. Over the course of a month, this happened numerous times, in fact it seems that when a couple has nothing else to do, and in between struggling to free themselves, or begging to be let out, they will resort to sex to while away the time. After a period of a little over a month, the girl's near lifeless body was found to be pregnant. (It turns out that humans also need a little more than one helping of bread and water per day.) Lately I have oddly become so fascinated and obsessed with this subject that I spend all my time researching it. Apparently, for example, prostitutes have a way of thwarting the reproductive process. But this deserves much more research. I soon hope to publish my results that declare the answer to, 'which came first, the chicken or the egg?' And the answer is, sex). Or it could be fairly simple and explain only a small segment of life (such as the Republican Party who's philosophy is that world domination will achieve the Utopian Ideal that man has sought all through civilized history, but only after a great World War has been started and we use all of America's might to overcome the forces of evil, and put a strange shady, but oddly mesmerizing, character into power (who they have been protecting) and who promises to finally put into full effect all of the teachings of Jesus, lovingly enforced through ultra-modern technologically-based totalitarian control----see? it is simplistic and deals only with a small segment of life: politics, ethics, morality, freedom, justice, life...). But the key is that you make this philosophy your own.

Second, you have to be deemed a philosopher. This can happen by deeming yourself a philosopher, i.e. selling yourself as a philosopher (making name cards helps). Certainly if you have a doctorate in philosophy it is not as hard to deem yourself a philosopher. It is a little more difficult if you barely graduated from high school and, even after years of service at the nearby fast-food joint that only employs a hand full of people, you have yet to make Employee of the Month. It is even harder if you are currently undergoing therapy which includes a weekly regimen of electroshock therapy, and daily medication.

Or you can be deemed a philosopher by others, which should be others who have some form of social, or at least media, influence. For example, if your fellow inmates at the State Penitentiary call you, 'The Philosopher,' you probably won't get very far with that. On the other hand, if the Dean of the Philosophy Department of the University of Alabama (using a non-crayon media) deems you as a philosopher, that is something. If John Stewart introduces you as a philosopher and interviews you in person in the last segment of his show then that is really something. If on the other hand you are introduced in a 'report' on the show before any but the second to the last commercial break, and the audience laughs, then you had better focus more on your career as a hamburger cook at your employer's fast food joint. Therefore numerous novelists, especially the great ones, have been recognized, at least within philosophical circles, as philosophers.

Third you need to express your philosophy, and get it out there. It has to have some kind of consistency in that expression, and it helps if it actually makes a statement. If you write a book and sell it from your son's Kool-Aid stand (and the only one who bought the book demands his money back) then you are probably not going to go very far. On the other hand, if your book was picked up by a publisher and you can find it in the Philosophy section of at least one major bookstore, then you know you have made it. Alternative means would be getting a nationally syndicated Radio Show, or having your own pirate radio show broadcasting from a surplus Libyan Tanker in international waters that you managed to purchase days before it was scheduled to be scuttled. It helps that people find your philosophy interesting, but only in the sense that it is philosophy (For example, I find my philosophy of Sexism to be largely misunderstood---people have no interest in the philosophy itself, but instead want to focus on the weeks worth of research data that I have assembled for it: particularly the video and photo portions of it which includes both amateur and professional explorations of the sexual act (though surprisingly very very little of it deals with the actual end result of birth of a child), and women oddly take offense to my philosophy of Sexism, many of them declaring that it degrades women and that Sexism itself is a philosophy of male dominance, as if they completely misunderstand that sexism requires both sexes to engage in the sexual act, and that it is the woman who carries the child; and then they bring up some kind of argument about sexist inequality of wages in the work place, and I'm like 'What? I never stated anything about that in my Sexism philosophy...’)

There was a time when you could get your philosophy out there by nailing it to the doors of a church. Apparently those days are gone. (Yes, today it apparently involves a subsequent meeting with the local police, extensive questioning on the reason behind the attached sexually explicit video, what turns out to be unwanted media news coverage, community service, and threats of jail time… a huge misunderstanding…)

Fourth, you have to be able to defend it from criticism. Yes it is a world of sharks out there. No one will let you have anything. But if your published manifesto is shot down within days of its being published, and it is immediately taken off the shelves, and people find out that the whole thing was written while under heavy medication during incarceration in a Mental Ward, it will be difficult for you to ever be recognized as a philosopher. On the other hand, if you are Professor of Philosophy at Oxford, and you publish an overly complex book declaring nothing more than, ‘existence simply is, and we can conclude no more than that,’ then you have a good chance of being recognized for philosophical genius, as long as you can use hyperbolic arguments with plenty of big and seldom used words, to confound and demean your opponents and thereby defend your position. Or you could have a truly sound philosophy that provides a new perspective on life and brings value to the human experience, which is so genuine, that you have no problem defending it against such insincere opponents as the Professor of Philosophy at Oxford.

That is how you become a philosopher. So now what? Probably the best way to capitalize on this is to live in France, especially if you are French. My understanding is that France takes great pride in its philosophers. If you can get the French patrons of the coffee shops around Montmartre interested in your philosophy, and be able to hold your own, then apparently you can gather a following that will pay your way through life, providing a very happy lifestyle of wealth. However, having said that, I must add that it was only the neighborhood of Montmartre that we were warned to stay out of when I visited Paris. Everywhere else is safe, but Montmartre is filled with pickpockets and thieves. So there you have it---philosophy and crime go together. Pickpocket by day, coffee shop philosopher by night… No wonder Marx and Engels had so much popularity among the downtrodden and laboring classes of the world. (You see what I did? I have now related to you, through insinuation, the philosophical position that all people of such lower classes, as the downtrodden and laboring classes of the world, are of criminal ilk and unworthy of any trust…)

Hmmmm… Since I have undeniably, and apparently irretrievably,* completely, and absolutely, proven that a life of crime and philosophy go together, like birds of a feather, this then begs the question, why do you want to be a philosopher?


* Yes, once you are an established philosopher, you can use words in ways that they were never intended to be.

 

:rofl:

:xmasnut:

 

you expressed your terrible darkness here once before and then
suddenly quit writing to us - for a time , and until now .

 

LOL!

Yes---it seems others do not appreciate the value of true empirical research in its purest of forms----that of the 18th and 19th Centuries. I was forced to abandon my laboratories and head off to parts unknown--the jungles and deserts of distant lands until a new identity could be secured through which I returned to America to once again persevere in my quest for truth and knowledge...

Now I've got my shovel, but I need someone to head off with me tonight around midnight to a nearby graveyard in search of fresh cadavers.

 

Employing the philosophy of bones .. bring jars.

 

(I APOLOGIZE IN ADVANCE TO ALL THOSE I AM ABOUT TO OFFEND...)


This is very strange----ginalee14 has received two dislikes of her post. Meanwhile no one has even bothered to like or dislike my post. Yet her post is nothing more than a quote of my entire post, to which she has contributed two emoticons. Let’s use a philosophical dialectic to explore this strange turn of events.

There are two opposite possibilities here: 1.) Some people hate ginalee14 and are out to get her. Or, 2.) Some people were offended by my post but were not smart enough to actually go to my post and dislike it.

We can rule out the first proposition because if people disliked ginalee14 enough to dislike a post where she contributed nothing more than two emoticons, then surely they would have disliked her posts where she actually stated something. But that is not the case.

This leaves us with the second proposition, which begs the question who could be offended and why?

The post consists of satire—which means that at least portions of it are fictional and designed to attempt to make people laugh. There is sexual content and that can be offensive to some—but I did not post this in the online forum, Christianstoriesfortoddlers&prepubescentchildren.com. I tried but it was immediately taken down. Nor is it in the forum, christianvaluesforaprudent&perfectsociety.com, or returntovictorianvaluesforachristianamerica.com, it was immediately removed from both of those forums too. No---this is hipforums, and there is all sorts of sexual content on this forum, so I doubt anyone would be offended by a level of sexual graphics that goes no further than a Saturday Night Live sketch.

No, but we are on the right track, because surely someone who would be offended by this kind of humor and take the time to dislike a post, is clearly dealing with repressed feelings of some sort. We have touched a nerve.

There was a jab at philosophy as a whole, stating that I proved beyond a doubt that philosophy and crime go hand in hand. But any student of philosophy should immediately recognize the humor in the fact that I did not prove any such thing, yet merely inferred a connection simply because this neighborhood of coffee shops where philosophers hang out is ridden with crime. And coincidentally it is also the neighborhood where artists hang out and everyone knows you can’t trust an artist one bit… (No---I am not serious that is satire) It is also the neighborhood of the Moulin Rouge and everyone knows you can’t trust topless dancers…

Seriously, any student of philosophy should first of all, recognize satire, and second of all be concerned with the genuine nature of things enough to go to the original post to state their dislike---if the jokes were that bad.

I also poked a jab at Marxists. But any Marxist who knows who Engels is should be sophisticated enough to understand the Colbertesque humor here as I pretended to take on a conservative bourgeoisie position by stating that all lower class people are unworthy of trust. When in fact the reductionist nature of the position (e.g. all lower classes) clearly pointed to its ridiculousness and thus the fallacy of such bourgeoisie attitudes.

Could it have been my stab at Martin Luther and his nailing his objections to the doors of a church? No, I never mentioned him by name, and certainly anyone who would have caught the reference, would not have been so stupid to think that ginalee14 wrote it. They also would have surely understood that it was not Martin Luther, but myself, who I was making fun of for even attempting such a thing in this Modern Age.

No, it has to be someone even more repressed, conservative, and stupid, who takes things too seriously. Who else did I poke fun of…?

Republicans! Of course—yes it makes sense—I suggested that they were harboring the AntiChrist and had great designs of an apocalyptic World War that would give totalitarian control to their archvillain, all in the name of Christian goodness… Of course, it makes sense—they would certainly be offended because all of the conservative right wing dynamic that makes up their psyche surely creates an almost oppressive shadow complex within their psyches where they are easily offended, unable to take a joke, and have a hard time seeing the obvious. Clearly we touched a nerve, and by that I mean a shadow element within the few Republicans that dared venture beyond their hollowed forums—bastions of conservatism—and into a forum that explores philosophy and free thinking… And of course, they would not be bright enough to understand that ginalee14 is merely quoting my post, not actually writing it.

…But wait, this brings us to a new realization, a sinister scary one: The shadow element is not simply repressed feelings, it is repressed feelings that represent true aspects of the psyche but which are denied by the ego. The shadow is filled with the truth that the ego has deemed too sinister, evil, or wrong to face. The ego secretly knows these repressed feelings and realities are true, but it is ashamed, and rather than face them, it cops out and represses them. Therefore, whenever you touch upon a shadow element, there is immediate and definite denial manifested as an angry response.

OH MY GOD! IT’S TRUE! THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IS HARBORING THE ANTICHRIST! It was just a joke—I never intended to offend anyone by attacking their shadow complex. But now that I have, the truth is out! Who is it?! Boehner?! Christie?! Ted Cruz? Rand Paul? Or----Ron Paul-----yes it makes so much sense now!!!!!! Oh, the horrors of it all!!!

 

I totally blame the santa hate. I mean, santa hat. I love them smiliey icons .. the whirly face was simply irresistible.

fwiw, my stats: ginalee14's Posts have been rated good 90 out of 256 times. They ARE out to get me! Either that or I really am a misfit, a misfit .. out of season, out of place .. a misfit, a misfit .. get back in your cage and stay there! Hmph!

On account of being both an oddity and a curiosity... well, perhaps.

Say, this is a big place (500+ Free Speech Forums) .. 269,357 members ..

Some look like :reddevil: to me and a few like :elf: but lots look like :sunny: and I can't complain about that.


Mountain Valley Wolf .. you write some interesting, fun stuff. I'm a fan.

 

Why thank you ginalee14, I'm glad you enjoy it----and thank you for the good rep!

 

yw yw

I found out that I can use only 4 in one post (tried to use 8 of them). Bummer.

I typed a story half as long as your quite simple serious answer but couldn't post it on account of too many :xmasnut:

To be continued. Possibly.

Perhaps.

 

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