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Unofficial fan channel for Existential Comics official website existentialcomics.com I'm NOT the author of the webcomic, I just forward it on telegram
Bulking phase: life affirming, meaningful pursuit, the will to power in the most literal possible sense.
Cutting phase: life denying, elevates the aesthetic to the realm of the serious, has you eating things like salads for some reason.
William James took many different drugs in his life, leading him to have mind altering and even mystical experiences. Most of this was pretty normal stoner stuff, he found the unity of all things, blah blah blah. Strangely though, he claimed he was only able to understand Hegel while under the influence of nitrous oxide. So, I don't know, if you are a student who is struggling...something to consider.
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Philosopher News Network: Doping Scandal - Existential Comics
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"And then Zarathustra made the classic mistake of starting a cult that wasn't a weird sex cult. If you are going to start a cult, you should at the very least be doing weird sex stuff or you aren't going to have a good time..."
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Sort of incredibly, as of the writing of this comic, it seems like the Trump shooter basically had no real motive in the normal sense (i.e. a political goal to achieve). Sartre thought that human freedom could always transcend itself, in that you can have free acts without a prior chain of events that led it. The way we talk about freedom and motives often makes it seem like our actions are wholly cause by our prior beliefs. For example, if someone hated Charles de Gaulle their entire life, and wanted France to be a communist country, and then they shot him, their hatred and political ideals would have "caused" them to shoot him. But since we are free creatures, someone could equally wake up in the morning and decide to shoot him for "no reason".
Camus had similar ideas, taking it even further in that he thought most of the stories and narratives that we tell ourselves are often lies and fabrications to impose a narrative on our lives that might not exist. We want our lives to be like novels that we author, but most of the time it is more like we are just bouncing around more or less at random like anything else in the universe.
As a side note, I can almost gaurentee that both of them thought about shooting de Gaulle at least one, especially Sartre. Existentialists love dramatic shit like that.
Some people have called Plato the first totalitarian thinker, but if you look at what Democracy is producing these days it's hard to not think he had a bit of a point...
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Also, my Dad is trying to raise some money for a surgery, I already posted this before and we met the goal, but then he contracted dengue fever so the surgury had to get delayed, so we are trying to raise a little more money to cover those expenses. if you could spare a few dollars it would really help.
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The Bertrand Russell Paradox - Existential Comics
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AI and the Meaning of Life - Existential Comics
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Seriously though, what was Galadriel's economic policy? Seems to be a mostly leaf based economy, which is bound to fail in the long run.
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Seriously though, the fact that they had to go get the "real" Excalibur from the Lady in the Lake means that the Sword in the Stone was a sort of magician's trick set up by Merlin to put his puppet on the throne, right?
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Academic Skepticism was a school of ancient Greek philosophy that believe all things were inapprehensible, and criticized the dogmas of other schools of thought, such as the Stoics, for believing that they could come to truth by the senses or other means. They thought that judgment should always be suspended at least a little.
The comic is describing something called the Paradox of Dogma, which says that if you actually achieve true 100% knowledge of something, it can never be undo, because you would logically be required to discard all evidence against it as misleading. Take something that we believe we know 100%, that 1 does not equal 2. Below we see a demonstration that 1 DOES equal 2:
x = y
x^2 = xy
x^2 - y^2 = xy - y^2
(x - y)(x + y) = y(x - y)
(x - y)(x + y)/(x - y) = y(x - y)/(x - y)
x + y = y
y + y = y
2y = y
2 = 1
Now, even if we can't spot the flaw in this argument, we basically know it is misleading because we just know that 1 does not equal 2. Something must be wrong with it, so we just discard it (the flaw is that it divides by zero sneakily). Does this mean we discard all evidence forever though? What if there were proofs that no one could find the flaw in? Is our certainty infinite? A lot of people might say yes.
Take an empirical example though. Say we know with 100% certain that there is no tiger in the room. Using the same reasoning, we would have to discard any evidence in the same way. Even if a god damn tiger showed up, seemingly. This one seems more wrong.
The fourth little piggy built his out of leftist infighting, and the wolf was finally defeated.
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Edmund Burke Runs For Re-election - Existential Comics
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The Vastness of the Universe and the Meaning of Life - Existential Comics
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Also, William James was later found to have chromosomes in a DNA test, and an social media mob believes this is clearly cheating.
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Socrates more or less believed that progress towards the truth would come from discussions and cooperation between people, as long as they are earnestly seeking the truth. Nietzsche focused more on how individuals must be able to break free from the culture around him. In reality of course, scientific and cultural progress is made in the much more Socratic way. If you were able to simply seek the truth by sitting in a mountain for 10 years in solitude, then a genius from a hunter gatherer society would have come up with the Theory of Relativity long ago. In reality, it took thousands and thousands of scientists in discussions with each other to set up Einstein to even able to have those thoughts.
Of course, Nietzsche knew this I'm sure, and stories like Zarathustra aren't about making small contributions to mankind's cumulative knowledge, but re-writing values in society. I'm still not sure why you have to be in the mountains for so long, but each to his own I suppose.
Should I have a cup of coffee, or shoot the president?
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Also, my Dad is trying to raise some money for a surgery, I already posted this before and we met the goal, but then he contracted dengue fever so the surgury had to get delayed, so we are trying to raise a little more money to cover those expenses. If you could spare a few dollars it would really help.
As for Plato, he criticized democracy heavily, claiming that it gave people too much freedom, and if anyone could be elected by the ignorant masses, it would be too possible for selfish people who only wanted power and wealth to get into power. Democracy, ironically, would inevitably lead to tyranny and demagogues. He thought a better system would be for the wisest, most virtuous, and most selfless people to govern society, which of course would be philosophers like himself. How this system was immune to corruption is a little unclear to me, but given what's going on with democracies lately you can probably at least say he has some good points.
Actually I believe, using only logic, that I can prove once and for all that it is impossible to not waste your life...
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AI is cool because they just renamed "intelligence" to "predicted what other people might say without really understand any of it".
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Sauron is often portrayed as a force of pure domination and destruction, but that was more Morgoth's deal, Sauron was originally a student of Aule, the Smith God, and was interested in a perfectly ordered world that progressed through industry and craft. In a way Sauron was the world that came to be, organized advanced industrial capitalism (or the Soviet system, I doubt Tolkien saw too much difference) which globalizes the economy and destroys local traditions.
For more on Tolkien's political ideas you can see this excellent Ink and Fantasy youtube video on why he hated democracy.
Also, my Dad is trying to raise some money for a surgery, if you could spare a few dollars it would really help.
One way you can know for SURE that you are dealing with a skeptic is if they think you don't know something that for sure you know, on account of the fact that you are you, and therefore have unique access to the truth.
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