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By ZenMaintenance, 12 Nov 09 21:37

There are many, many ideas in the realm of metaphysical reality and/or unreality (Depending on your views past physics).

And if we take any of these ideas, there are many which are seemingly interpreted past their original meaning, or seem to be misinterpreted, even to extremes. Some such arguments are: Capitalism versus socialism (And Communism), abortion versus choice, atheism versus Christianity, evolution versus God, etc.

Now, this is the one thing I hate about metaphysics: That two contradictory ideas can come to the exactly same conclusion through contradictory methods. I hate it because this means that there are several ways to reach the same conclusion. And they don’t make sense within the same universe.

Upon reading Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance, I was able to sorely relate to a French philosopher by the name of Henry Poincare. He, according to the nonfiction account, believed that two ideas can be present as a means toward one end, as long as they are not used interchangeably. Here, I thought that, maybe, these ideas may work; they ma be able to be used in order to find a certain means.

But a balanced world would not be able to find this as a solution; crossed ideas would mean a forced compromise. But, as we know, there are always crossed ideas, and not always a possible solution to compromise, but oftentimes there isn’t even a practical one that is possible. So, I have come to the conclusion, for now, that Earth is chaotic in the realm of ideas. I’m really tired. Tell me what you’re thinking on this.
~ZM~

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By ZenMaintenance, 12 Nov 09 21:01

There have been many literary phenomena; people learning to write, for example. It has become a way to express simple thoughts, then more and more serious and more complicated ones, until, at last, literacy had evolved to be something more than a couple of sentences or a reason to stay inside and have a quiet afternoon. After thousands of years of evolution, literature became a reason to think; to believe; to wonder. At the forefront of this thinking mass have been two very deep novel genres: Transcendentalism and Existentialism.

Transcendentalism, the first to appear, was really less of a genre but a branch of thought in itself. German transcendentalism was one of the more prominent types of transcendence; made famous by novelists such as Herman Hesse. It then went on to form a new idea in New England, appropriately called New England Transcendentalism. This variation of it, being one of the more prevalent, thought that the way to transcend one’s environment was to move closer to the natural world and slowly make your way to God, through this method. This style has been around for hundreds of years, in one form or another, and was commonly linked to Eastern Spirituality. Another write who was not necessarily considered Transcendental, but can easily be oinked to this style, was Jack Kerouac. One of the leaders of the Beat Generation, Kerouac’s novel On The Road was a loud, ringing voice calling people to trace their roots and find the nature within themselves, in order to truly transcend and find a God in everyday life.

Existentialism was like transcendentalism, but it explored, in a meaningful mixture of humanity and unsolvable problems, the inability for humans to truly transcend while living in an absurd world. It is closely linked to a separate philosophy, called absurdism, which pulls around the idea that the universe, and, ultimately, humanity’s attempts to understand it, is completely absurd in actions and does not follow a specific idea. Fyodor Dostoevsky is commonly linked to thsi philosophy, as a founding father, with such novels as Crime And Punishment (A novel in which the protagonist tries to justify an entirely pointless crime, but cannot). This type of inquiry stretched through the decades, and was used, most prominently, by Jean Paul Sartre, Franz Kafka, and Albert Camus, respectively. Albert Camus helped to truly expand existentialist ideals; he threw out inquiry after inquiry, while still staying entirely closed off, within the realm of a specific philosophy. Kafka was also a very important literary figure in this aspect; his novels expressed a hope that humanity could overcome its problems, but showed that, oftentimes, he cannot, and must simply look forward to survival, because this is his ultimate goal, until death.

Existentialism and Transcendentalism are two very important types of literature. They are inquisitive, daring, and, most of all, truly familiar with the ideals that make us human. The fact that it took us thousands of years to reach this point of writing only goes to help prove the level of inquisition that this type of thinking has brought about.

~ZM~

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By ZenMaintenance, 4 Nov 09 20:56

Life a beauty, new veranda
Stalking lips of Satan sweet
Man hath for sweet the sugar tongue;
And yet, in time, before time long
He sees, I see the life is gone…

Leaves dark amorous soften light
Canopies as I walk I brush aside
Spying her with forests’ gaze
Never to return again;
Eye a gaze the black’ning gloom
Lightning mind, it blinds, it dooms.

She follows bloody sun to Earth’s lovely ends
Its violence fueling her adventure
To the world upon worlds
What is found is not to like
What is liked will not be found
In a world which empowered
In direction flowing down.

Frosty white, the sparkling snow,
Plays softly on her lips;
Its cold dark depths are heightened to their fame, and
As I see her lying there in comfort made of snow
Falling all around her it is there I must not go…

And in the forests she remains again.
I cannot find her to these sultry ends:
Darkness is enchanted touch
As fingers grasp the want, the need,
A falling, growing, feeling seed,
The love will grow there like a weed.

Water dripping stone finds her again in God’s great grasp.
The morning sun is left us now,
Left us for to ask: Can we,
In a great mind, find sight for us to give;
Or will we soon discover
There is nothing for to live?

Alien symbols in your touch
And sitting in a crutch,
The mind is great in passage as,
As you and I are here
And see what our love has…
It seems to make me glad…
Although I still feel bad…
For what we could have had…

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By ZenMaintenance, 27 Oct 09 19:19

Okay, so I know that Albert Einstein already used the title. But I really didn’t have any other thing by which to call it without using a three mile title.

So, anyway, this is a very metaphysical observation of different physical forces corresponding with a mental force. It was some off site pondering between Malice and I which led to the conclusion.

So, my information on the general formations of gravity and friction may be a little off balance, and I would appreciate it if you would correct me if it is, but I do believe I have most of it down correctly.

Gravity is a necessity. We are surrounded by it all of our lives on Earth. Yet, it is a force we cannot directly feel; we don’t feel gravity, but its effect upon our bodies. We can tell that we are not about to suddenly float away from the Earth, because it has a gravitational pull toward us and us a gravitational pull toward it.
Yet, it is possible for a world to not have gravity. If a world were composed of a single unit, a single item of space, and no boundaries, this item would have no gravitational pull, having no opposite mass by which to create the force. And, this object could have no different pieces. It could not be a molecule, for an atom would have gravity toward another atom. It would have to be the smallest possible denomination of anything in an infinite space; thus, nothing by which to pull itself.

Friction is, nearly, the same idea. In a frictionful world, we do not feel friction. We may feel heat because of friction or have a scrape and pain because of it, but the force of friction is not able to be sensed by a human because it is an invisible, inexhaustible force (While friction may only hold a certain amount of force in the opposite direction, it is termed “inexhaustible” because it is always acting upon that object with some amount of force). And, friction only exists in a world in which two objects, touching, can rub against each other; thus, a frictionless universe could only have the smallest denomination of one object.

So, by these two arguments, it is impossible to have gravity without friction, and friction without gravity, simply because they follow the same basic rules of existence and are both created by interactions between objects.

There is one more force I would like to talk about; the aforementioned metaphysical force. It is the force of remembrance, and the ability to locate places, items, etc. through their relative distance between each other. So, let us think about this for a second.
I consider it a metaphysical force only because it cannot be measured as a physical force, yet it still exists.

So, what I am talking about has to do with this: Let’s say that you live three blocks away from… How about, the Statue of Liberty. It’s a big tall statue,; you can obviously recognize it. And since you know where you live according to the position of that statue, you don’t even have to be within eye distance of your house, you can use the statue to find your way home.

So, imagine the statue was not there, but a large black hole of nothingness in the shape of a rectangle. And all the similarities are gone from the area. Could you find your way home then? I would think not; you could eventually, through the trial and error system of checking houses, but you would not be able to use the landmark anymore to find your house. Lastly, this is comparable to the other two forces in this way: That we do not feel our relation of one object to the next, but rather we experience the knowledge that comes to us through this process of the brain.

Using this method and comparing it to the above stated forces, I have come up with two laws I believe are followed by both the conscious and the subconscious,

First:
Any object one is looking for has to be either in eyesight or must be able to be found through the use of a landmark. If it can be found through the use of another object, this means that there must be, in this universe, more than one object; one to find and one by which to find the wanted object.

Two:
The object used as a landmark cannot be moving. If there are more than one object being used to look for the destination object, then there must be two still objects; one by which you are able to judge the distance from your destination, and another by which you can determine your landmark object to be still (For if your landmark object were constantly moving, then it would be impossible to determine how far away from the destination you are).

Now, the Metaphysics of Relativity are just that: Relative. Friction and gravity relate to each other through the rules applied to them, and the world in which one cannot exist also cannot have the other.
In the same way, if there is friction and gravity, then you can have ideas of relativity in your mind. If there is no gravity or friction, and you were a single observer looking into the infinite universe, it would be impossible to determine what was what; not only because there would be infinite space, but also because there would be no way by which you could determine where you are in relation to what you are looking for.
This shows (If my logic is correct, which I do believe it is), then, that gravity cannot exist without friction, friction cannot exist without gravity, and humans, without either of these forces, cannot relate separate objects to each other.
I hope you enjoyed my attempt at useless logic.

~ZM~

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By ZenMaintenance, 24 Oct 09 18:03

Okay, so, the French philosopher Voltaire wrote a short novella called Candide. I’ve never read it, but I understand the novel to run something like this:

A man believes that the world is the best it could possibly be, and looks to the positive side of life, although life really gave him the short end of the stick. So, even as he begins to lose limbs, he keeps his belief. It’s a comedy, and is very philosophical.

I believe that in a way, also. In my opinion, the Earth is going to run its course, whether we affect it or not. This course is why we are here; so that we can make our imprints on this beautiful place.

A lot of people wish that something would happen or want certain things to be different. I [philosophically] am against this idea.
While a lot of people would be much happier if we could just make wishes and have needs satisfied by a single whim, it would not be the same world we live in. If we even wished a single ant gone, we would be living in a different world; a world without that ant.

So, I believe that the Earth was made for us to change it, not for it to be wished better. I believe that the Earth is the best it could be, because if it were a different world or it magically changed, it would not be our world.

The thing that makes it the best place it could possibly be, the thing that really finishes this point, is that we are able to make it better.

“Judge a man not by his answers, but by his questions.”

“God is a comedian performing to people who are too afraid to laugh.”
Quotes from philosophers.

~ZM~

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By ZenMaintenance, 22 Oct 09 19:39

So, really, I believe that this country needs to get its epistemological roots back. There are people upon people upon people who get a free education and a home for the first eighteen years of their lives, and these people hate school.

I’m not saying that every person hates school, but that people need to learn that their education, while it may not be extremely important to them, expands the brain. It helps them to contemplate things which may be of a help to them; and even gives them better employment opportunities. So, why wouldn’t people just learn for the crapping of it, since they have to anyway? Boring stuff, maybe?

Hmmm… Interesting thought, ZenMaintenance. Very interesting, and I have to say that that is a problem among some.
So, let’s address another point: To those of you who have read the Aldous Huxley novel, Brave New World. I remember, form this novel, a specific point, in which the main characters are meeting with the World Controller, Mustafa Mond. In this meeting, the characters are told that modern humans are treated to have a predetermined intelligence for one reason: That if everybody were geniuses (Paraphrased, obviously), then there would be disaster.

I do not agree with this. I believe there would be arguments, but not disaster. Especially not if people were reasonable and logical enough to use the Socratic Method or to listen to each other reasonably, like humans begins should.

Ahhhhhhhhh……. Socrates. I knew nothing about him until last summer, when I was reading the nonfiction book Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert M. Pirsig. He told us (The readers) that nobody had really tested the formerly accepted ideas of society and religion/metaphysical ideas before the Sophists. He said that these people were, basically, the first organized school of thought. Then, the Socratic and post-Socratic philosophers began to use thought. I really think that the most important influence on our government should be considered Socrates, not John Locke. Simply because of the Declaration of Independence. It states that we are all created equal, and he government is there to provide for use the freedoms we need and want, and that if the government becomes destructive to the aforesaid means, that we are to abolish it and start again. Socrates demonstrated this tenfold; he tried to have every person believe in equality, and, when persecuted for his beliefs, kept his stance, doing everything he could to change the government so that it wasn’t destructive to these means, and, when he failed, he accepted death. Although it is true that because he didn’t have a ridiculously large following, he wasn’t able to do a very large amount of persuasion, and he, being a peace monger, would not want to try and revolt.

Also by way of argument comes a piece of literature known as Catch 22, written by Joseph Heller. It’s a good book, according to most people, but some people don’t understand the humor, don’t like the humor, etc. I think people have to be able to understand the book more to be able to really enjoy it. The book, obviously anti war, was truly about the government’s conquest into different people, and the craziness of the subordination of some of those people, and the beliefs of those who, although they are not truly crazy, are labeled crazy by the government and treated as such. It uses humor (a lot of it pretty dark) in order to show the ridiculousness of the System. And, although it becomes gravely serious at different points, it really holds true to its comedy almost the entire time. But the reason it uses comedy is that the author is writing it so that he expresses the craziness not only in its characters and its form of logic, but also in the writing. The insanity of the whole situation is shown simply through the use of a cut storyline, jumping back and forth, with no real logical order to follow, until the storyline has been pieced together.

Another interesting work of political fiction is Orwell’s 1984. Very good. It’s a classic, well known piece about an oppressive government. It was written in 1948, and uses a very closed in mood and personality to achieve its main message: The impossibility of truly functioning in such a government. The governmental entity, known simply as Big Brother, is not even truly existing within the story. We never learn if he’s real. It’s a pretty good concept, though, the idea of only hearing the story through one point of view.

Solipsism- that’s one of the philosophies mentioned when the government is being explained. It is the idea that nothing exists outside the mind of every person. And it’s a very personal idea; if I can’t see you, you do not exist at the moment. This is close to subjective philosophy. It has the same basic idea, except that it was never developed metaphysically. It’s also close to existentialism; the study of the existence of man and his place within his universe. Most existentialists would argue that man is in charge of his own destiny and that the only thing he is sure to do on earth is to exist; whether it be one day or three hundred years. A good book on this is L’Etranger (The Stranger in English), about a man who commits a pointless murder and is condemned to death. The man believes throughout the novel that there is no force bringing humans together, and that it is absurd to even believe that. This branches out into absurdism; the very belief described in the last sentence through the idea of existentialism.

Another philosophy-Objectivism-was brought out through Ayn Rand’s novel, The Fountainhead. It shows the idea that things exist outside of the realm of thought.

Metaphysics. Can’t get enough.

So, if you were to ask me, people should remain to follow school, if only epistemologically, for the sake of learning,, through earlier years. I think that people should contemplate the metaphysics that they are aware of, in order to breach their understanding of the relam outside our own.

~ZM~

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By Firebrand, 14 Feb 09 14:30

This is something I wrote for my WR 121 class that I took this year. It was my Final, and I was finally allowed to develop my own agrument. (All the papers before that we were not) Out of the topics we were allowed to write about, I chose this one. Unfortunately, I did not know my teacher was a feminist. Lol. But I tried to keep as much of my opinion in their as possible. I hope you read/enjoy? =]

The greatly debated issue of the gender pay gap has existed for decades. Before women acquired suffrage and achieved the right to vote, there was turmoil over the disparity in wages between female and male workers. Women were earning far less than men doing the same job. This gap became more apparent as women established their role in society. No longer were they exclusively in the home, for they had entered the work force. Now, the pay gap has been decreasing, but their still is not parity.

In an attempt to uncover and resolve the mystery surrounding the cause of the gender pay gap, there have been many studies done. The General Accounting Office, American Association of University Women Educational Foundation, U.S. Department of Labor, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and various other organizations and individuals have contributed funding, time, and effort into trying to uncover the cause of the gender pay gap. Maria Karamessini and Elias Ioakimoglou tried to create the perfect equation using hundred of variables for determining the gender pay gap in their paper “Wage determination and the gender pay gap: A feminist political economy analysis and decomposition”. Many statistical and economic analyses have brought a few conflicting outcomes: the cause is because of gender discrimination, or the cause is inconclusive with the data that was found. Neither assessment is entirely accurate. The data provided from the studies made by those organizations is inconclusive simply because it cannot be measured. The reasons for the gender pay gap cannot be accurately calculated because of unknown variables, individual choices, and qualitative variables.

Statistical analysis has shown that there is an inexplicable difference in pay between men and women in the most controlled of studies. In 2003, the GOA was asked to examine and discover why these differences existed. They did an in-depth study over the disparity in pay between men and women. The GAO concluded in their general summary of Women’s Earnings: “Work Patterns Partially Explain Difference between Men’s and Women’s Earnings”:  “While we were able to account for much of the difference in earnings between men and women, we were not able to explain the remaining earnings difference. It is difficult to evaluate this remaining portion without a full understanding of what contributes to this difference” (3). Basically, they cannot make an accurate conclusion from the variables they tested.

Other organizations do not look at this data as purely inexplicable data. They see it as something with more meaning: proof of discrimination against women. The AAUW also did a study in 2007, and they found “An extensive body of research also finds that some gap in pay between women and men is unexplained … Many have attributed the unexplained portion to gender discrimination” (33). There is little statistical evidence to support this claim. What evidence has been found is simply what it is: unexplained.

            The fact that it is inexplicable does not prove there is discrimination, unlike what the AAUW affirmed. In their study they stated that bigotry could not be diametrically calculated, and the only way to determine it was to eradicate all other reasons: “Discrimination cannot be measured directly. One way to discover discrimination is to eliminate other explanations” (27). What percentage that is found leftover is inexplicable, not evidence of discrimination. It also does not-prove not there is not discrimination.

The calculations that determine disproportion in wages are analyzing a varied group of women and men: mothers, bachelors, college graduates, high school dropouts, musicians, and vice presidents of major companies. They are all individuals who make unique individual choices. A woman can make a personal choice to stay home with children, or to move if her partner received a better job in another location, same as a man can.  While it requires personal sacrifice in their careers, it is not discrimination against the person making that decision. They chose to give up their career for something else. Feminists, psychologists, and sociologists argue that this is due to the way society is set up, and the mind set that comes from this. Even if that is the case, it does not prove that women are being forced to make the kind of choices they are making. The GAO stated in their analysis, “An earnings difference that results from individuals’ decisions about how to manage work and family responsibilities may not necessarily indicate a problem unless these decisions are not freely made” (3).

The AAUW does disagree with that statement, saying that often men and women do not recognize the pay gap and end up discrediting the idea (AAUW 3). In the study the AAUW published, they found that women would leave for longer periods of time than the men:

Women were more than twice as likely to take leave and [were] paid leave for child care, regardless of employment status. Among those who took leave for child care, women stayed out more than three months longer than men did. Full-time employed women were more likely than men to leave the labor force entirely (16 percent of women and 6 percent of men) or spend more time working part time. (26)

Women left work for their children, making the personal decision to leave. They felt it was in their best interest to leave work, while the men did not. They valued staying with their children and taking care of them, while the men valued working more. Even if it was because of social expectations, the woman made the choice to go and fulfill those obligations.

            Finally, many of the variables that go into calculating the gender pay differentiation are qualitative. There is no numeric value that can accurately calculate a woman’s choice to stay home with her children, or difference in education, or even in skill levels. The GAO even stated that it was very complicated and often unfeasible to “precisely measure and quantify individual decisions and possible discrimination” and it became convoluted to try to elucidate those disparities (GAO 3). These factors that are dependent upon individual choice, skill level, and any other unknown variables are not measurable. That does not mean these factors do not exist or are not driving forces in the gender pay gap. What it does mean is that without those numbers, there cannot be any calculating of the gender pay gap, and no percentage can be formulated to equalize the disparity between men and women. An individual choice can not be assigned a numeric value, especially not to the person who made it. Those choices have much more meaning than what a number could dictate.

This differentiation in pay cannot be fixed with simply adjusting a rate or passing legislation to force companies to have a certain percentage of women in their office. The issue is too complex and has a vast number of components in it. If there is a way to get rid of the pay gap, it is to provide equal opportunity to men and women and to let the most qualified individual make the best decision. Whether or not they take the opportunity or make career-advancing decisions is left up entirely to the individual.

There is no fixed rate that can be legislated to make the gender pay gap disappear. The gender pay gap depends too greatly upon facts and statistics that simply do not have quantitative values. Unknown variables, individual choices, and factors such as education and skill levels cannot be judged with a rate. There are too many variables unknown, studies with inconclusive results, and too many men and women making very unique and personal decisions that affect their career choices.

Works Cited

Goldberg, Judy, and Catherine Hill. “Behind the Gap”. AAUW Educational Foundation. 2007. < http://www.aauw.org/research/upload/behindPayGap.pdf>

 “Women’s Earnings: Work Patterns Partially Explain Difference between Men’s and Woman’s Earnings”. The General Accounting Office. 2003.

< http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d0435.pdf>.

Karamessini, Maria, and Elias Ioakimoglou. “Wage determination and the gender pay gap: A feminist political economy analysis and decomposition.” Feminist Economics 13.1 (Jan. 2007): 31-66. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 21 Nov. 2008 <http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=24404394&loginpage=login.asp&site=ehost-live>.

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By anomaly, 14 Feb 09 8:17

Cybernations is a wonderful game, and I would suggest it to anyone who enjoys a statistical type simulation game. I have provided an adress here to take you directly to the main page. From there, it’s pretty easy to fix up.