The Spider's Web

Satyr said this in another thread:

Satyr wrote:

  But, I am older now.
I just can't deal with that level of stupidity for long - not like I used to.
Can't waste my time as I once did.

My weakness is in this area: stamina.
Adapting to the other is fatiguing for long periods of time.
I cannot do it.

What perplexes me more than anything is the fact that one could spend such a great deal of time in the interest of promoting the affirmation of life through a means which denies it.  What I refer to is this medium, the World Wide Web, the forum format in particular.   Here everyone is escaping life, here everything is an artifice, everything is a product of the consciousness.  Everyone is playing a part in a show and that show takes place primarily in the mind and so a deliberate falseness prevails.    

How does one come to know the other without the senses?  Here, one is limited to the mind, to reasoning out the facts from the apparent.  The sensual is cut off by the virtual screen and the world of language.  In contrast, when I meet a person, I immediately become caught up in their appearance.  I study their facial structure, their eyes especially.  I notice the colors in the eye, the texture, the shape of the pupil, whether they are bloodshot or clear.  I notice their hair, it's colors and texture, the state of their clothing, their scent and hygiene, whether they work with their hands or not, whether they are confident or shy and many other characteristics, which even if I miss, the subconscious picks up and gives me some basis for judgement.  I become immersed in what they are, what they appear to me as.  I discriminate as a means to know the person as they appear before me and as the senses behold them before they even speak and indeed, I seldom hear them because of this.  To me the spoken word has worth only in the tone, the texture and the clarity of the voice, the words they speak are too often superfluous.   

But, here, I am blind, I am deaf and I am senseless.  There is only speech and all is superfluous.  The pictures which appear before me are lifeless, the words are detached and even though they may have substance, they exist in a world that I can not feel unlike the pages of a book.  Nor do they affect me like a book does, for their author remains anonymous, a name that appears under an avatar, that only reveals what they think themselves to be.

 There is no inter activity, the other person which communicates on the other side, I can not see, hear or touch with the senses.  The chain of connection is broken by a mouse and a flat screen and who knows how many miles or seas.  If I am insulted or provoked, I can not avenge myself with anything but words.  Words are all I have here, if angry or elated I have no way to make that known other than through hyperbole.  One must become a wordsmith.  

I hate with a passion this medium more than any other for it leaves me cut off from nature and the outer world of activity.  I escape into this nothingness called the World Wide Web and into a deep void of inter activity.  Thought flows out in torrents and I try to catch them. Yet all along I feel as if a spider is sucking the life and vitality from me and this blood sucker is my own mind my own thought.  Sheer will pulls me away, to the world of sense, the world away from mind and towards that of life, to activity.

There my children are, there my loving wife awaits, my brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, friends and companions.  There is my community, those which interact with me on a daily basis, the ones I love and hate, admire and detest.  They have nourished my soul and I theirs.  What is it that I seek here that I have not in myself and my community?  I do not know, but the hold over me is immense, it is something.    

The intellectual and the man of action are opposed, the former is active in mind only but the man of action, whose virtue is pure activity, lives entirely outside the mind.  He knows only pure remorseless activity.  The life which never knows contrition, never knows regret never knows apology or contemplation or introspection can never be that of the intellect.  The world appears to him as opportunity, every moment is spent as a means to a goal and that goal is shattered by the mind enflamed by spirit.  To dwell in the mind, to analyze life, to try to solve life’s riddles with reason and rational thought, to philosophize, these can all become roads to inactivity if the goal is lost and the means instead becomes the end.

Ephemeron wrote:

What perplexes me more than anything is the fact that one could spend such a great deal of time in the interest of promoting the affirmation of life through a means which denies it.  What I refer to is this medium, the World Wide Web, the forum format in particular.   Here everyone is escaping life, here everything is an artifice, everything is a product of the consciousness.  Everyone is playing a part in a show and that show takes place primarily in the mind and so a deliberate falseness prevails.  

The internet is the perfect arena to spread a meme, an idea, and to engage others intellectually without having ll the physical stuff get in the way.

I am fighting against a dis-ease, and what better place to fight it than on-line. This dis-ease, being what it is - Nihilistic - spreads with words.
It has no reference to anything real, and so it depends on abstractions detached from reality to infect.

To fight such a mental dis-ease you must use its methods - A War Like no Other.

My goal is not to heal these turds, these zombies, but only to find that one who is still healthy and place in his mind a seed, an antidote.
I do it for selfish reasons, of course.
I am forced to live in this man-made world, there are no frontiers to escape into, and so I am forced to confront the dis-eased, the zombies, daily.
If there were a frontier I would not give a shit about these brain-dead imbeciles.

Ephemeron wrote:

How does one come to know the other without the senses?

 True, on-line there is less data to go by, but the data is more than enough.
The senses are in play. How one uses words, what he repeats, how he expresses himself, the tempo (phrases have a beat to them), the frequency of his posting, what ideas he defends, all this, and more, expose the mind.
Whether he calls himself Jack, or Billy, or then changes it to Tom, trying to hide, is irrelevant, since I do not give a shit about the person, but about ideas.
The mind can only fake downwards, not upwards - it cannot pretend to be smarter than it is to someone who is smarter than it is.

Ephemeron wrote:

Here, one is limited to the mind, to reasoning out the facts from the apparent.  The sensual is cut off by the virtual screen and the world of language.

This fact is limiting but also liberating. On-Line people expose themselves much more honestly than they would if they were face-to-face.
The fact that here only the mind is present, makes it expose itself clearly.

Ephemeron wrote:

In contrast, when I meet a person, I immediately become caught up in their appearance.  I study their facial structure, their eyes especially.  I notice the colors in the eye, the texture, the shape of the pupil, whether they are bloodshot or clear.  I notice their hair, it's colors and texture, the state of their clothing, their scent and hygiene, whether they work with their hands or not, whether they are confident or shy and many other characteristics, which even if I miss, the subconscious picks up and gives me some basis for judgement.  I become immersed in what they are, what they appear to me as.  I discriminate as a means to know the person as they appear before me and as the senses behold them before they even speak and indeed, I seldom hear them because of this.  To me the spoken word has worth only in the tone, the texture and the clarity of the voice, the words they speak are too often superfluous.

  And this is the reason why here it is all about the mind.
Nothing else matters but one's intellect, his ideas, his ideals, his artistry with concepts and the words used to express them.
Here nobody can impress, distract, seduce, redirect with anything other than with the mind.

Ephemeron wrote:

But, here, I am blind, I am deaf and I am senseless.  There is only speech and all is superfluous.  The pictures which appear before me are lifeless, the words are detached and even though they may have substance, they exist in a world that I can not feel unlike the pages of a book.  Nor do they affect me like a book does, for their author remains anonymous, a name that appears under an avatar, that only reveals what they think themselves to be.

Then you are too dependent on visuals, and you fail to appreciate the verbal cues people exchange daily.


I hate with a passion this medium more than any other for it leaves me cut off from nature and the outer world of activity.  I escape into this nothingness called the World Wide Web and into a deep void of inter activity.  Thought flows out in torrents and I try to catch them. Yet all along I feel as if a spider is sucking the life and vitality from me and this blood sucker is my own mind my own thought.  Sheer will pulls me away, to the world of sense, the world away from mind and towards that of life, to activity.

Ephemeron wrote:

The intellectual and the man of action are opposed, the former is active in mind only but the man of action, whose virtue is pure activity, lives entirely outside the mind.

Somewhat, but not entirely.
Napoleon or Goethe?

Thinking is an action.
If it is powerful enough it determines what actions others performs.
Every action is based no a thought.

Satyr wrote:

The internet is the perfect arena to spread a meme, an idea, and to engage others intellectually without having ll the physical stuff get in the way.  

I understand, but I don’t see a positive end or an advantage from the reduction of physical relations to that of mental ones.  

Quote :

I am fighting against a dis-ease, and what better place to fight it than on-line. This dis-ease, being what it is - Nihilistic - spreads with words.

Nihilism is innate, it follows from the fear of death, thus I have little expectation that it will be defeated by words.  

Quote :

It has no reference to anything real, and so it depends on abstractions detached from reality to infect.

Ideas do not have a life of their own, they are not self replicating like genes can be.  They spread through human interaction and are either accepted or denied to the degree they help one to avoid pain.  An idea can prosper if the immediate effect is less pain, even when its long term effect promises more.  

Quote :

To fight such a mental dis-ease you must use its methods - A War Like no Other.

It’s methods are propaganda and rhetoric, which it objectifies as ideal via a powerful and skillful media system. Nihilism rejects the cycle of life as a continuance, death is final, the ultimate end.  Therefore, the path of least resistance provides the least amount of pain and is less likely to lead to death.

To fight the fear of death, death must be defeated.  The ideal of eternity must blossom in the soul and there must be some belief that we endure beyond death.  Only then are we capable of a more noble existence, only then is a moral basis possible.  Reason and Objectivity are the very parents of Nihilism.  For ultimately it was these which defeated the heroic ideal.  

The heroic ideal is irrational, unreasonable, it is purely emotional, purely passionate and this is why it alone is the antidote.  But Heroism is not taught by words, but deeds and example, epic tales of man standing against all odds, chaos pressing in around him from all sides, yet there the hero stands, defiant, self ordered, his own authority, his own master.  How shall words, especially the cold calculated words of reason, rekindle this?  A religion is needed that makes the hero aspect the most worthy end attainable.  

Quote :

I am forced to live in this man-made world, there are no frontiers to escape into, and so I am forced to confront the dis-eased, the zombies, daily.
If there were a frontier I would not give a shit about these brain-dead imbeciles.

Perhaps you have found a source of self-movement but once you were dependent on some influence which gave to you sight.  

The world today lacks leaders but not men who could lead.  Where are they to be found?  Those which have smashed the illusions and falsifications?  Why, in the new frontier, which is the new prison.  

There they revel and pontificate and critique.  Each day a new revelation and indictment of the modern dystopia, meanwhile the world still spirals toward an order-less state.  

It is most fortunate, we have seen past the veil but to what end have we this power of vision? Is it merely to escape to a new “virtual” frontier?  Merely to surround ourselves with like minded?  And what is this common thread?  The want to escape, to  run away to a new frontier, which is as broad and wide as the Earth?  Chains are no less restricting my friend, though they be invisible.  

Quote :

True, on-line there is less data to go by, but the data is more than enough.
The senses are in play. How one uses words, what he repeats, how he expresses himself, the tempo (phrases have a beat to them), the frequency of his posting, what ideas he defends, all this, and more, expose the mind.

I understand,  but still find it an inferior method for what I seek to know, the qualities which determine behavior,

"In the beginning was the deed".  

I can not know the idea, the seed until I know from whence it sprang.  I see the emerging stalk arise but I can not see the seed, it is buried.  It is only when the leaf unfolds and the flower opens before me that the inner seed is to be found.  Once I have the whole before me, then I may know the object as it is in its entirety.  Not just the seed, nor the stalk but all parts of the organism are of interest to me.

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Whether he calls himself Jack, or Billy, or then changes it to Tom, trying to hide, is irrelevant, since I do not give a shit about the person, but about ideas.

There is an relationship between persons and ideas, to try to comprehend one without the context of the other is to leave the object before you incomplete.  

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 This fact is limiting but also liberating. On-Line people expose themselves much more honestly than they would if they were face-to-face.
The fact that here only the mind is present, makes it expose itself clearly.

That is a condition of anonymity.  When there is no immediate cost, one can afford to be more daring, less cautious, this fact has not escaped me.

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Here nobody can impress, distract, seduce, redirect with anything other than with the mind

I get this, but my interest is not in mind alone but the whole, the behavior and mind together, the thought and the deed.  If I start with behavior and move Up, I can work my way through the maze to know the mind, but where I start with mind, I must begin at the top and work down and there are too many unknowns. 

Quote :

Then you are too dependent on visuals, and you fail to appreciate the verbal cues people exchange daily.

To an extent, this is an inadequacy of mine, the aesthetic quality in me reigns above the verbal.  I am more cued into the verbal than what appears before me on screen though.  Conversation happens in the immediate, a person speaks but is not entirely conscious of their words.  This is not the case in the written word.  Here words are intentional and cherry picked.  They are consciously thought out and arranged and rearranged.  What appears more often than not is the ego, the presentation and of course the Ego is the top layer, so we have to think from the top down to penetrate the lower layers.

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Thinking is an action.

Yes, thought is a prerequisite to action, and action is behavior, and there are many degrees to both.  No one is all thinking, and no one is all action.  There is a constant flow from one to the other and the exchange occurs as a progression from one state to the other, similar to the way ice is never steam, nor steam never ice.  Between thought and bodily activity there is a median state of equilibrium, like the calm that comes before the storm.

Ephemeron wrote:

Conversation happens in the immediate, a person speaks but is not entirely conscious of their words.  This is not the case in the written word.  Here words are intentional and cherry picked.  They are consciously thought out and arranged and rearranged.  What appears more often than not is the ego, the presentation and of course the Ego is the top layer, so we have to think from the top down to penetrate the lower layers.

I would not trust anyone's words 'cherry picked' as they're influenced by constant editing and rephrasing so as they drift further and further away from ones own true intentions and ideas and further towards what they feel as desirable. As you say conversation happens in the immediate. It is unconscious. Body language and tone of voice is unconscious.
I agree with you Ephemeron, that using an online medium is not a particularly legitimate means to communication in this sense. But then this poses the question: why do you bother to interact and post online if it doesn't suit you?

Memes are extensions of genes...and they replicate using similar methods.
Language evolves as a method of grooming. It's added advantage is its abstractive nature. It can be used to groom millions, simultaneously, and over time/space boundaries, losing its physical touch.

When we debate, we compete.
When we converse, we copulate.
When we convince, we impregnate.
When we think, mull an idea over, we gestate.

The idea(l) is the sperm. What comes out of its gestation in different minds, with different genes, is what creates the multiplicity of ideologies.

On-line this process can play itself out at its most purest form.
All exchanges are intellectual, and the other's mind, beyond his appearance, is revealed.
One cannot fake it here, with image, grand gestures, intimidation and so on.
The mind's essence is revealed.

Take Shit-Smears and his Rockn'Roll lifestyle, his declarations of being a "genius", his word droppings, his name droppings, and so on.
How relevant and effective are they when his entire posting history exposes him perfectly?

Take Imbe-Sil...with his "MENSA" credentials, his eloquent linguistics, his declarative statements...and then find one instance where he actually says something interesting, or outside the modern mimetic box.
The rest is washed away by his on-line performance, and the evidence that lies around in text.
The pretence is exposed, and his true essence is revealed.

SuperfluousMass wrote:

I agree with you Ephemeron, that using an online medium is not a particularly legitimate means to communication in this sense. But then this poses the question: why do you bother to interact and post online if it doesn't suit you?

I think the answer is that it does and it does not suit me.  One part of my nature it agrees with and another part it does not.  

Continuing with this train of thought:

Satyr mentions action and inter (action) and how they relate to knowing. He undoubtedly wants to know the mind, this too I want.  Our means and our ends though may be different.  Without the physical interaction, I can feel no sense of community.  The substance of life is completely absent for me in the virtual world.  This that we call mind, the bearer of ideals, to me is the phantom which lurks within.  It eats away the sensual existence of life by forming a mental image that takes on its own character, one that is complete artifice.  Some here worship through their tired devotion this sense of community.  I would rather worship at the alter of Nature, but I can not be in that world all the time.    

Even while I sit here typing, my life activity has diminished just as yours must as you read it.  Mind you, this is not the same as writing a letter, where pen is put to paper and reveals much of the character of a man through its style and script.  That motion among men today is all but a lost art, replaced with the modern message boards and instantaneous proliferation of ideals.  Even where men do still write, their writing today becomes indistinguishable from others and merges into a common script and likewise their ideals do the same.  Even here, each actor takes on the tone and rhythm of the dominate tone and rhythm and lose themselves in the crowd.    

I am yet also aware that even as I type this, the world is torn from my field of vision by the glare of a screen and a plastic keyboard.  These objects have a very flat character and uniform quality.  All the keys feel the same the screen has no undulations, and no defining form.  It is only image bathed in a warm, soothing glow.  As I type, the plucking of keys is a monotone click and clacking.  Even the words and letter display a uniformity that merges each letter and word into the other so that if one looks from afar, one line of text is indistinguishable from the next.  I become aware that I have entered into a universal and senseless world that is grey and colorless.   

In elemental nature, I find life.  All around me are the forested hills, an ever flowing symphony of beauty and harmony that reveals an order that is near perfect in its entirety.  The wind pulses and throbs through the evergreens and the trees bow to its majesty.  The fog covers the valley and drapes over the bubbling springs early in the morning.  The Earth lives and breathes with me and I with it.  Throughout the seasons, my senses are enlivened with the landscapes momentous dance.  In every crevice and expanse, no matter what direction my eyes turn, I find inspiration and the invincibility of life and color.  Whether marshy meadows or rocky cliffs life is everywhere, always changing and adapting taking on new forms and preserving old ones.  This is so no matter what season or time of day, whether in the light or in the shadows, whether coming to or passing. The forest never rests but is a scene of pure unlimited activity.

The world of sense, I hold over the mental domain to be the actual, the contrived world of the mind is the veil.  Words, numbers, ideals, these have a contrived existence that tries to freeze the ever changing world and trap it in its definitions.  What wells up inside as feeling and sensation, springs from a source that seems to me unlimited and never ceasing.  It is a poetry which volume after volume could be written upon and still we could never reach any certainty.  This fills me up with reverence and awe. Happiness is to be in the world, to exist with it as the day unfolds, to look forward to its joys and its rewards as well as its struggles and sufferings.  

I have no doubts that this Web is anything but a prison that destroys the religious reverence for nature and the past.  Through its bars the life image is torn from me.  Its walls close in from all sides and it reduces life to a systemic existence which separates me from life and the wild unknown.  It chains one to a mechanical function which serves its own purpose and has its own ends. Certainty rules and doubt, the actual, recedes before the abstraction of word and number.  Knowledge of the object becomes analytical rather than sensual.  Definitions are broken down into their elements.   Everything becomes an artifice.  In this domain nothing is real because everything is word.  This to me is the dead world of the “known” which clutches for being in its mechanic order and its precepts and concepts.    

I admit, the poison is certainly sweet and the pleasure is not without its reward.  Here in the recess of the mind is a serenity, which calms the storm which accompanies activity.  It relieves me from my own activity which often bubbles out from an unknown brook to exhaustion.   After physical exertion, the mind is a haven which drowns out all other voices and impressions and plunges one into a restful state of thought.   So I find that after long periods of labor, the ecstasy of activity diminishes and the mental domain opens up to me and the same type of stream that found me so active, elicits great currents of thought in the exchange.   And this rest is enjoyable and more enticing than the pain of work, and that is the trap.  The world requires that we flee from pain.  That is why this Web’s seduction appeals so much to me.  It offers a source of inactivity that my slothful nature and desire to escape pain leaps for. This is why I am so easily snared by its hook and only through great exertion can tear free from its web.

Don't words represent a type of life? All words aren't the same. Can't the words of some people stir you to new activity? And isn't the effect of all beautiful things(even the words of some) to instigate competition(life)? This division between the dead artificial world and the "real" world you're trying to paint seems to indicate a need to justify a type of "living in the moment" where the task of interpreting life with code(words or otherwise) always takes a backseat to just existing in the "awe" and "religious reverence" for an "unlimited" nature... like you're trying to justify a passive stance to being overwhelmed.

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And this rest is enjoyable and more enticing than the pain of work, and that is the trap. The world requires that we flee from pain. That is why this Web’s seduction appeals so much to me. It offers a source of inactivity that my slothful nature and desire to escape pain leaps for. This is why I am so easily snared by its hook and only through great exertion can tear free from its web.

Only through great exertion can you tear away a moving picture of nature...and maybe put it on the web.

perpetualburn wrote:

Don't words represent a type of life?  All words aren't the same.  Can't the words of some people stir you to new activity?  And isn't the effect of all beautiful things(even the words of some) to instigate competition(life)?  This division between the dead artificial world and the "real" world you're trying to paint seems to indicate a need to justify a type of "living in the moment" where the task of interpreting life with code(words or otherwise) always takes a backseat to just existing in the "awe" and "religious reverence" for an "unlimited" nature... like you're trying to justify a passive stance to being overwhelmed.

Of course.  The experience has both a mechanical existence through words and an organic existence through the senses.  You can try to explain to someone what fire is, but until they experience it they can not know it unless they can draw upon a comparison to what they do know.  Knowing words may help them avoid or pursue an object but to mean something they have to be linked to the senses.  

As far as life goes and living here in the now, experience of the object provides more knowledge of the world than all its categorized attributes.  Of course there are limitations.  No one wants to know what getting devoured by a shark or by fire feels like.  

perpetualburn wrote:

Only through great exertion can you tear away a moving picture of nature...and maybe put it on the web.

Exactly, it is all a contrivance.  To erect an artifice requires effort yet what is created from that exertion is inferior to the actual..  A painting of a landscape is not the equivalent to being there in that moment.  The artist can never overcome that limitation.  A painting or picture may instigate one to go forth into the world, and this is the best it can hope to do but the actual, may instigate something entirely different and beyond itself as an open space.  

In the same way, this "web" entangles us in a picture that provides the appearance of an open space but this is an illusion.  It is a confined space that has very real limitations.  If we mistake it for something more than that this, it is a tragedy.  Once we are trapped by it, physical activity diminishes.

The ideals which exist in the world must be necessary, even those which are degrading and degenerate.  For every high, a corresponding low, every note comes to find its fullest expression in a harmonious chord.  This world, as mad seeming as it is, must appear to increase in its madness as ones sanity and lucidity does.  To the worse, the world image always appears better than it is and to the better, worse the image must appear.

Many love this mental domain as a tool to fulfill their need of power which they hope to expand outward into limitless space.   They are out to leave their mark on the world and to set it right by spreading their idea(l)s  which they believe to be correct and right but which is only ever their personal view.  The universality of thought simply does not exist, man is a creature constructed out of contradicting forces, imbued with more than one nature.  For as much as they believe their own concepts right, there are just as many which oppose them.  Driven by the need to make the world other than it is, to find some fault in the way things are, they think it could be better if only the right people were in power.  These are the sociologists who really hate the world and life but hide behind the cover of their "secular humanism."  In the suffering of the world they see despair and hopelessness and this makes them optimists. Seeing the world as bad as it is, they think it can only improve.  

Really, what they are saying is that they can not accept reality for what it is.  The fault obviously lies not with the world but with these types of men which are always complaining.  They can not bear pain or misfortune in silence but must, like a squeaky hinge, petition constantly for the grease.  They call out for more justice, to ease the very pain their previous attempts at justice caused.   The better they appear to become, the worse must the world appear to them and so all their efforts toward improving the world, must always end in them chasing after their own tails like a mad dog as they helplessly see it become worse.  This is their perpetual motion, going forward in circles without any spiraling ascent.

That there is a measure of darkness as well as that of light in the world does not seem right to some.  Light and good they want only.  “Why isn’t this world filled with light and goodness?” they ask.  Were they ever to succeed and fill the world with more light than darkness we can not expect anything but a coming darkness just as terrible and long as the light.  Not “Mehr Licht” should Goethe have cried on his deathbed, but Mehr Dunkelheit!

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