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I think there are more subtleties to the question than your post there covered, but this seems like the best option. Looks like you and I are the ones who shouldn’t discuss politics at the dinner table
I’ll just say one more thing: On another thread I talked about the importance of Plato, on Plato’s inescapability in western thinking. Someone on this thread is arguing philosophy is unnecessary in magic while also saying that mathematical concepts are eternally valid and real even if no creaturely minds were around to apprehend them. That’s what I’m talking about- Plato’s influence is so pervasive that even people who haven’t read him are throwing his ideas around like they’re simple common sense. Now Plato’s brilliant, don’t get me wrong, and his ideas are beautifully developed in the dialogues. But other brilliant people- such as, say, his pupil Aristotle- had different ideas. A lot of things taken for granted, as obvious verities, really emerged from a cauldron of dispute and contradiction. Accepting ideas- even really good ones- without examining them and their objections in history- is a liability to bamboozlement. So that’s why philosophy is important, in magic and in other areas.
If the people who have never read Plato's writings are stating an idea, why would you think them stating it has anything to do with Plato's influence?
I'd say it is simply common sense. Plato was simply a man who was at the right place and time to put forth the idea and have it stamped as "his ideas". But there have likely been people way before him that thought of these ideas, and there will likely be many after that think of these same ideas (and they won't know who Plato is).
Which reminds me of an interesting and unrelated question I've asked myself before:
At what point will history become "too large" to be taught as a subject at schools?
Think about it, at some point we'll have so much history as a species, that they'll have to start breaking down history into even more sub categories and there'll be so many specializations that will ultimately be useless.
I think at that point, history will be done away with as a "field of study" and information will simply be stored in archives, with only a few niche researchers.
I don't think 100,000 years from now there will be any "history students", it will be a complete waste of time.
The field of law will also face the same problem because there will be too many precedents and cases for lawyers to memorize. At that point there will probably be AI lawyers. Thanks to Chat GPT I'm seeing a lot of talk about lawyers being replaced by AI soon too.
All fields of study that basically amount to memorization of events and people will become obsolete because at some point there will literally just be too much to remember.
words are philosophy, the very act of identifying form gives rise to philosophical concern, it is a judgement to set apart one thing from another, leading to interpretation of reality and inevitable arguement
words are the foundation of magic, the energy forms they produce in the consciousness are individual rituals, performed in concert with many other rituals they become a powerful tool to alter conscious expression, and when applied to the emotional body they will move people, even against their will
without words, without language, the mind is directly connected to reality, the environment is energy: light, warmth, hunger, pleasure, and exists without contemplation, the tabula rasa does not exist but instead is the experience of life, the perfect observer, absorbing information without category or analysis, the magic life lived without reason or purpose, without force or will, without conscious imposition
If every human on the planet ceases to exist, the concept of 1+1=2 will still exist, the reality that 2 of the same things can be "added" together will still be accurate. Philosophizing about math is a separate thing from math itself.
It's like when people say if a tree falls in the forest with nobody around did it make a sound?
Yes it did, there was simply nobody there to hear it. The sun exists even if blind people can't see it. Math exists whether even if humans aren't around to philosophize about it. Even some animals have to employ math in their everyday life, and they clearly don't have the intelligence or self awareness required to philosophize about it.
I sincerly have my doubts here. But we can not prove it. Yet schizophrene tells it all. See things hear things that are not there.
Yet looks that way. Life is an illusion.
So it is philosophy that counts.
The numbers teach us reality is most important to life existing itself or else it disapears.
No noticing is like no love it disapears. So love makes things apear. Love people are romantic and create life.
You feel it as real. BE happy and suffer. Like a casting or an act. We need experience to know what to choose.
Like do you want to be jealous or not?
You can look at it from all kinds of directions as camara's do on stages when things are staged.
If you are boring and not interesting it simply gets no attention and everybody is walking away. That will change your mind about what is interesting.
Like a man change his cloth if he would be more impressive when he wants to be impressive.
Yet we are hired to say if things are good or bad and then it is not honest. So pay no attention to our opinion.
So to cut to the chase, magic does indeed need philosophy and not individual monologues?
Who then, is the dispenser of this philosophy that needs an update?
In my opinion, and Im sure can be backed by statistical fact, that whites are becoming extinct. Like the ancient Celtic peoples Im reading about, who came close to extinction but endured - this is a note on the history angle. If whites do not endure, they will become extinct, as less and less whites are rearing children.
Therefore, history does indeed count, unless your agenda is to sweep humans under the rug. Without history, we would not have discovered things in the field of anthropology and archaeology, we would have no idea where computers or phones came from, who the hell Musk is, and so on. History and ancestry are essentially gold others are trying to steal.
Race aside, human race aside, it seems philosophy would cease if the world contained no humans, although AI leftovers if animals could chat it up, might still hold philosophy in virtue.
So to cut to the chase, magic does indeed need philosophy and not individual monologues?
Who then, is the dispenser of this philosophy that needs an update?
In my opinion, and Im sure can be backed by statistical fact, that whites are becoming extinct. Like the ancient Celtic peoples Im reading about, who came close to extinction but endured - this is a note on the history angle. If whites do not endure, they will become extinct, as less and less whites are rearing children.
Therefore, history does indeed count, unless your agenda is to sweep humans under the rug. Without history, we would not have discovered things in the field of anthropology and archaeology, we would have no idea where computers or phones came from, who the hell Musk is, and so on. History and ancestry are essentially gold others are trying to steal.
Race aside, human race aside, it seems philosophy would cease if the world contained no humans, although AI leftovers if animals could chat it up, might still hold philosophy in virtue.
Individual means courage. I think you mean personal as selfish. Yet we need people with guts to be personal burt for the whole.
Like social beings.
I mean old ideas when they start as communist are no more of need. As they did in the beginning. Now it is corrupt for benefits.
But the first were rejected by the corrupt rich because communism always existed and goes that way since if you do well after benefits you go back normaly to the rich world you came from and fight back your rights. Admit you were week. Not stupid. And not to be bullied. Yet admit in glory.
It makes you strangely feel much better. So why not. Try it. If that is your case. I have it sometimes. I am a bit half on any amout. But I am playfull.
I know the dance in circles.
I've been reading an interesting book by a Jungian psychologist, Marie-Louise von Franz. It's a series of lectures, really, that take a look at the usage of numbers throughout history and how they are not as "rational" as the materialists among us would have us believe. It's not what I would call a book on magic, though it proposes a philosophical & mathematical basis for divination. I found a poorly formatted but readable download here:
What modern humans call the Scientific Method is a sequence of steps by which 'reality' is tested in order to answer questions, hypothesize, theorize, and ultimately propose "laws" that we believe govern existence. We learned that our senses are inadequate to the task of perceiving 'reality' and have ingeniously created tools that attempt to measure known energies, converting them into mathematical data that represent abstractions of the things which are tested. It is a Method which requires and rewards the isolation of very particular things. Known "causes" must be "controlled" so that the variable in question is not subjected to unwanted effects. Furthermore, the number of times which an experiment can be repeated and reproduce the desired outcome increases the probability that the right answer has been found for the very specific question, scientifically speaking. If the Scientific Method is a hammer, modern humans seem to think everything is a nail. It is amazingly useful for what it does, but the abstract models it produces still aren't reality.
On the other pole of the continuum of human knowledge, we find divination. A question is asked, and some random technique like shuffling cards or throwing coins is used to get an answer. The simple forms involve a binary result, and many forms are based on integers (counting beans, sticks). The I Ching uses a matrix of numbers. The "answer" is seemingly chaotic. Regardless of the method used, so far as I understand it, the knowledge comes from within the human mind. But occultists and Jungian psychologists will tell you that the human mind is more than matter. Computers can perform billions of mathematical operations per second, but does an algorithm feel lucky? Has your Windows computer ever apologized after a BSOD? That little bit of chaos doesn't fill your RAM with shades of regret, does it? The caveat of divination (and intuition) is that it is always a one-off event. As von Franz puts it, each divination is a "just so story." Unlike the Scientific Method, doing more divination reduces the likelihood of a useful answer. Furthermore, the energy behind the answer comes from the emotional tension involved. Casting the dice or throwing the sticks, that's like the spark that lights the fire, and by the light of this fire one "sees" intuitively the answer.
The important thing to remember is that neither extreme is useful on its own to the effective magician. Find a balance between scientific materialism and psychic intuition. Let both methods inform your decisions.
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On numerical philosophy, by von Franz:
"In measuring we use numbers of some kind, and by them we define physical intensity. Number measures quantity, or number is a quantity; for instance, the number five indicates that there are five apples here. For us that is an absolutely ingrained self-evident fact. If we go back to the origin of the use of number, we see that this is a completely one-sided development. Self-evidently and naturally number indicates a quantity but in its original form it also indicated the quality or the pattern of a structure, and not a quantity; that aspect has been lost and slowly left behind in the development of number theory in the West, until in modern mathematics number is only a quantity. Therefore, naturally, if we use a quantitative number to measure physical quantities we cannot use it to measure psychic energy, because psychic energy in its essence expresses itself in quality. It is a qualitative factor, which is why Jung says we can only measure psychological intensity with the feeling function."
