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Jacques's post is one of the most useful things i've read on a forum, you should be given a medal or something. I wonder what a child which is brought up in a magician filled environment would see of life. Maybe people who experience false realities early on are the imaginitive folk. This is one reason why this forum needs a Philosophy board.
I think magic is also so appealing because of the challenge it gives the intellectual specs, ir trying to figure out the method.

"Life is the future, not the past" Wizard Rule seventh..

I don't agree with this. Life is in the present...

J

They make sense in the context of the books, and after you have read them, you understand them better.

They're a bloomin' good read mate, and if you can't afford them, get down the library.

Are you familar with the teachings of J Krishnamurti or the Buddha, blah?

J

A bit like the War on Terrorism....

'You are used to seeing things fall down, so when someone lets go of something you expect to see it do so. When it does not, you are astounded because what you are seeing is something that is contrary to past experience.

I think this is the major reason why people can be decieved by magic. If you don`t expect anything, magic would mean nothing. So if you want to capitalise on this, find an assumption which most people will probably hold true and design a way to break that assumption (or at least make them doubt its validity). You would have then performed a bit of magic

(Obviously your own ethics are key here, most people agree that you cannot communicate with the dead. So don`t find a way to cheat them into thinking that you can, that would be wrong (cough cough John Edwards cough cough charlatan)'

Erm... I'm kind of lost on your likening of 'the war on terror' to Jacques' answer to why the human mind can be deceived by magic.
I agree with Jacques though since we do learn from past experiences and form expectations based on that so it seems obvious that anything contrary to expectation is going to create a sense of wonder.

Why does the human mind make false assumptions about what it perceives? We obviously filter information and only SEE a section because of the screen of the past...

In perceiving something surely the mind is already making an assumption!? I mean, surely you can perceive something completely incorrectly!? So really you're asking why our perceptions are sometimes flawed?
I guess in a sense we do ONLY learn from the past but we can make the past happen. eg. scientific experiments take place and discoveries are made from them. They are then repeated and eventually some finding or other is released. That's learning from the past too but it's a past which someone made happen in order that they could learn something new.
The point I'm trying to make is that you use the word "screen" as though we are blinded by the past (what if all the experiments were flawed to begin with...surely then the findings are invalid!?!?). Like, somehow we guide ourselves into the uncertainty of the future using knowledge which itself is uncertain.
Well, I guess you could be right but is it really worth getting hung up on that sort of thing?
I realise this seems like a lame thing to say in response to such a deep and seemingly spiritual question but I honestly think it to be a valid point. I do have other points of view regarding this but they are contrary to your own and it is not my wish to offend anyone.
Hope this contributes to the thread in some way.

Norm.

Yep it was a bit out of the blue..

Without getting into politics as this is a magic site. The false assumption is that ‘The War on Terrorism (twot)’ is to defeat evil people.

The truth is dropping cluster bombs on innocent people causes the same amount of suffering and death as those people who die due to suicide bombers... I think Noam Chomsky said "War on Terrorism is terrorism"

But if one BELIEVES in the binary opposite delusion that there is an 'us against them' then one can be easily fooled and controlled by deception through fear.... As what magic does in a smaller and more jocular way...

J Krishnamurti is a great humanist philosopher who goes into how the past and conditioning distorts and changes perception... Mentalism is moving in these circles at the moment, it stimulating times and a great tool to express oneself...


J

As this thread is developing into something more than is normally catered for by 'Miscellaneous', I've moved it into the Dove's Head.

JP - I respect your opinions, but I can't abide to you making a comment like that and passing it off as truth. I would just like to point out that both you and Chomsky have forgotten one very important aspect:

Those who are fighting the war on terror are not INTENTIONALLY dropping these cluster bombs on innocent people. Death to civilians is not something that is sought after.

In the case of suicide bombers, civilians are the targets, not an unfortunate mistake.

While it doesn't make the loss of life less severe, it certainly wasn't done with malicious intent. Does it excuse it? No... but it certainly doesn't make it terrorism. You can disagree with the war on terror, and you can protest it all you want - but the comparison to US/British troops to suicide bombers is erroneous

jokerdan wrote:Jacques's post is one of the most useful things i've read on a forum, you should be given a medal or something. I wonder what a child which is brought up in a magician filled environment would see of life. Maybe people who experience false realities early on are the imaginitive folk. This is one reason why this forum needs a Philosophy board.
I think magic is also so appealing because of the challenge it gives the intellectual specs, ir trying to figure out the method.

Thank you That was very kind of you.

I sort of agree with Demitri since it isn't the intention of "the coalition" to kill innocent people but it is the intention of those dreaded terrorists to do just that. It's also worth pointing out that the word terrorism is defined as meaning

"The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons."

and since the war on terror seems to be more about revenge and/or oil ( ) than about intimidation for political or ideological reasons, it surely can't be defined as terrorism even though it may not be justified...

I also think that "seeing something happen against what would be expected" and "being fooled and controlled by deception through fear" are entirely distinct but I see where you're coming from since deception is involved in magic and magic was what Jacques was talking about...

Philosophy often confuses and irritates though, sometimes, intrigues me. J Krishnamurtis thought that we are enslaved to the past is very interesting and I think it makes alot of sense. Most philosophy is in my oppinion good "thought material" but does anyone else think that sometimes it goes too far?

In my limited experience, most philosophers are, one way or another, concerned with a search for "the truth". That is something I cannot understand. Thinking about the idea that we are being deceived in one way or other by our minds and/or whatever, if someone is going to write an article, essay or book about this, how can they then seriously talk about a search for "the truth"? Dont you think that, if they are indeed being constantly deceived, they'll struggle to know if and when they ever find it? So you see my point... "why bother".

Hehe. Philosphy's not my bag... I'll stick to the magic.

Norm.

Philosophy is the precursor to science. So as such, it has a very useful nature, that of the inquiring mind.


In essence, the best we can do is an approximation to the truth. That does not stop us from trying to reach it though So humanity chips away at the underlying order of things, hoping that one day we will see it all. Although, that will be sad day as we will have nothing left to do

I do think that if truth were a function it would be a hyperbola, in that no matter how close we get to it, we never quite reach it