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Mark Goldblatt elaborates on infinity with the ideas of Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464). To understand the "infinite nature of God" Cusa uses a geometric metaphor. Imagine a square inside a circle. While it doesn't quite fit, the more sides you add to the square (from pentagon to octagon to dodecagon), the more it resembles the circle:
The act of adding sides to a plane figure brings you closer to both an infinite number of sides and to zero sides. Infinity, therefore, is the unachievable, inconceivable moment at which contradictory extremes are unified. The moment at which the greatest number and the least number become one and the same. That’s also, according to Cusa, how the finite human mind glimpses, but does not grasp, the infinite nature of God. Rational thought and language fail at infinity because contradictories become identities. |
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Jonah Lehrer explains how we rationalize:
"Human reason has nothing to do with finding the truth, or locating the best alternative. Instead, it’s all about argumentation...So here’s my new metaphor for human reason: our rationality isn’t a scientist – it’s a talk radio host. That voice in your head spewing out eloquent reasons to do this or do that doesn’t actually know what’s going on, and it’s not particularly adept at getting you nearer to reality. Instead, it only cares about finding reasons that sound good, even if the reasons are actually irrelevant or false."
You think you get it, but do you? Your brain is just a machine, it's designed to do what you tell it to do. Don't let it run your life. |
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Obit
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May. 28th, 2009 @ 07:01 pm
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May 28, 1982 - Dec. 7, 2003
Nathan Delevan of Seattle died Sunday in an automobile accident. He was 21.
A celebration of life service will be held at 11 a.m. Friday, Dec. 12 at Deschutes Christian Fellowship, followed by a graveside service at Pilot Butte Cemetery.
Mr. Delevan was born May 28, 1982, in Palo Alto, Calif. He was a graduate of Bend High School and was attending the University of Puget Sound.
Mr. Delevan was a musician and worked as a recording engineer.
Autumn Funerals is in charge of arrangements. |
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The soul is no traveller; the wise man stays at home, and when his necessities, his duties, on any occasion call him from his house, or into foreign lands, he is at home still, and shall make men sensible by the expression of his countenance, that he goes the missionary of wisdom and virtue, and visits cities and men like a sovereign, and not like an interloper or a valet.
I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe, for the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the man is first domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding somewhat greater than he knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth among old things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind have become old and dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to ruins.
Travelling is a fool's paradise.
Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.
But the rage of travelling is a symptom of a deeper unsoundness affecting the whole intellectual action. The intellect is vagabond, and our system of education fosters restlessness. Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. |
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Sow Flowers by Rahman Baba
Sow flowers so your surroundings become a garden
Don’t sow thorns; for they will prick your feet
If you shoot arrows at others,
Know that the same arrow will come back to hit you.
Don’t dig a well in another’s path,
In case you come to the well’s edge
You look at everyone with hungry eyes
But you will be first to become mere dirt.
Humans are all one body,
Whoever tortures another, wounds himself. |
| » Tere Bina |
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Railroad, family and friends
Night
Your life is about to vanish under another
You go off searching for two last minutes of freedom
I go off too, searching for my own freedom
(I can't watch this)
And get chased by dogs
And step in cow shit
Which is what this whole thing is
Shit, shit
My life already vanished
Under, inside another life, wedded and tied
And home has become those two minutes of smoke
J.
Apr. 5th, 2008 @ 03:38 am
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| » Silence is Golden. Gold is Selfish. The Selfish are Bitter. Hence, Silence is Bitter. |
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"Some things you can feel coming. You don't fall in love because you fall in love; you fall in love because of the need, desperate, to fall in love. When you feel that need, you have to watch your step; like having drunk a philter, the kind that makes you fall in love with the first thing you meet. It could be a duck-billed platypus."
-Foucault's Pendulum
Sep. 9th, 2007 @ 04:25 pm
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| » Spontaneous poem about nothing. |
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I loved a woman, once,
She was every woman who ever was
Her hair was black, her eyes brown,
Nondescript, but striking, and her face unique.
I loved a girl, once,
Cherry lips curled in domestic furlings
"I've known you too long," she said
and kissed my cheek.
I loved a lady, once,
Legs crossed in another direction, away
When she spoke, she had authority,
But her answer was still "no."
I loved you, once,
You knew I was going to say that
You always seem to know what I'm going to say
And never what I want to say.
Love hurts, right? Satisfaction is for the dead and the very young. The rest of us suffer through love and want to.
END OF RANT
Aug. 12th, 2007 @ 01:22 am
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| » (No Subject) |
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"Temples and cities were also reconstructed by later Sumerians and Akkadians who never claimed to build from their dreams or their own inspiration. They always noted that their works were restorations, and when they could not finish something they left a plea for the next king to do so. They made careful records of their restoration plans, inscribed on tablets, to be found by those who would follow. In most cases, these records were buried in the foundation of the restoration or built into the wall itself, made purposely invisible. Addressed to an unknown king of the future, they would only be found if the temple or edifice had once again been destroyed. This it the profound sense of history with which Abraham was imbued: loss and restoration were its substance, built into the literal bricks of the city."
Abraham, The First Historical Biography - David Rosenberg
...could be taken personally, no?
J.
Apr. 26th, 2007 @ 11:41 pm
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| » Interesting Take On Religion |
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"You and I lead comfortable existences, full of pleasure and interest, and generally so heavily regulated that we do not face that many moral challenges. We may feel that we do not have much of a spiritual void to fill...But look at these creeps...It's not so much that they have been deprived of love, but that they have been deprived of authority of any kind...However ludicrous it may seem, religion sets boundaries; it suggests to bad and loveless people that they are loved. It provides a framework."
Mar. 8th, 2007 @ 12:05 pm
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| » Some lyrics I like. |
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( Read more... )
The Shins, Wincing the Night Away, A Comet Appears
Feb. 17th, 2007 @ 12:57 am
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| » A quote from emusic... |
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"Inspired by the desire to replace feelings of desperation with feelings of hope "The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place" (written over and over on the cover as if someone is trying to convince themselves...) is an empathetic companion to anyone who's felt the same."
Feb. 9th, 2007 @ 11:20 pm
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| » The Little Boy Blue |
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I dreamt about the apocalypse again... here's how it went:
( Read more... )
Interpret as you like.
Feb. 1st, 2007 @ 01:04 pm
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| » A poem I promised to memorize |
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Under One Small Star
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My apologies to chance for calling it necessity.
My apologies to necessity if I'm mistaken, after all.
Please, don't be angry, happiness, that I take you as my due.
May my dead be patient with the way my memories fade.
My apologies to time for all the world I overlook each second.
My apologies to past loves for thinking that the latest is the first.
Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.
I apologize for my record of minutes to those who cry from
the depths.
I apologize to those who wait in railway stations for being asleep
today at five a.m.
Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing from time to time.
Pardon me, deserts, that I don't rush to you bearing a spoonful
of water.
And you, falcon, unchanging year after year, always in the
same cage,
your gaze always fixed on the same point in space,
forgive me, even if it turns out you were stuffed.
My apologies to the felled tree for the table's four legs.
My apologies to great questions for small answers.
Truth, please don't pay me much attention.
Dignity, please be magnanimous.
Bear with me, O mystery of existence, as I pluck the occasional
thread from your train.
Soul, don't take offense that I've only got you now and then.
My apologies to everything that I can't be everywhere at once.
My apologies to everyone that I can't be each woman and
each man.
I know I won't be justfied as long as I live,
since I myself stand in my own way.
Don't bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words,
then labor heavily so that they may seem light.
- Wislawa Symborska
Jan. 31st, 2007 @ 10:46 am
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| » Mothers and Kids |
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Who teaches a mother to separate the sugar cubes from the aniseed to give to her son because that's the part he likes best? These simple things contain the mysticism life exists for, somehow...
Dec. 17th, 2006 @ 09:51 am
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| » On an airplane I was thinking... |
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Life always works out for the best? Who makes that happen? Certainly not God; his work is more subtle. We are the ones responsible for the end result, and we so often pull toward the direction which comforts and heals us. It's a style of self-preservation, only we are so unaware of our own instincts that we mistake it for divine blessing, often even to the point that we feel our original wrong act is justified and hence acceptable.
Forgiveness isn't wrapped up in the ultimate consequences of an action, but in the moment of the act itself. Kierkegaard is right; we live at all times in the eleventh hour, one stroke before midnight, and always we must repent and be forgiven, because the entire meaning of our actions is contained solely in the act itself, not beforehand or afterward.
Dec. 17th, 2006 @ 09:49 am
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| » In my mind |
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In my mind there is a very large, dark room
and in the back, on a wall that isn't a wall,
an observer watches. The watcher, I call him.
And in this room my consciousness cavorts around
creating possibilities and chattering.
And the room's depth is another part of my mind, the space itself
some places thicker and darker than others, some places open areas with the hint of a floor,
and endless space.
These are the parts of my mind that I can see with my conscious mind
as it flirts and flickers with the darkness, forming shapes and ideas,
as it knows the watcher is observing but cannot go past it,
cannot fathom it or its purpose.
And the room is dark and wide,
endlessly open and yet guiding in ways the watcher does not.
My consciousness a river, the darkness a path,
the watcher watches. This is all in my mind.
The rest I make for myself.
Nov. 18th, 2006 @ 05:02 am
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| » Funerals |
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I'm sorry, D., that I couldn't be there to give you more hugs and let you cry and talk. If it were me I would've wanted me to be there to hold me and give me support - I know you need it, and you have it from all the other great friends and family there. I'm sorry that your dad's funeral turned itself on me and made me grieve all over again for Nay, and I'm sorry that I couldn't hold it together. Love you.
Sep. 30th, 2006 @ 07:20 pm
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| » Role Model |
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A role model is someone you look up to, identify with. It's someone you aspire to be like, and you emulate him because he has some quality you want for yourself. Or, alternatively, you emulate him because you're me, and VERY susceptible to emulation and identification with someone else.
( Read more... )( Read more... )
Sep. 14th, 2006 @ 11:47 pm
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| » The meaning of the title |
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"And life unscales its rusty weathered pelt, and earth wells out in tender exhaustless strength, and the cup of a man's heart runs over with dateless expectancy, tongueless promise, indefinable desire. Something gathers in the throat, something blinds him in the eyes, and faint and valorous horns sound through the earth. The little girls trot pigtailed primly on their dutiful way to school; but the young gods loiter: they hear the reed, the oatenstop, the running goat-hoofs in the spongy wood, here, there, everywhere: they dawdle, listen, fleetest when they wait, go vaguely on to their one fixed home, because the earth is full of ancient rumor and they cannot find the way. All of the gods have lost the way." ~Thomas Wolfe, "Look Homeward, Angel"
Sep. 12th, 2006 @ 09:08 pm
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