"A Little Less Conversation" encapsulates everything I hate about British "culture" in 2002

Alison hates a lot of things abt this country. The fact that Blair is Thatcher reborn, for one. Just like me. Also, the fact that we live with the shittiest transport system in Europe, the fact that there's no clear policy on Education and that ppl are left to rot, the class issue, blind patriotism, etc. And she seems to think that a pop record encapsulates some of this because pop music (most of the time) is product and doesn't ask questions. If there was a pop record that took the piss out of football and their fans and it got #1 then I think things would get interesting to say the least.

''And, of course, the football ad context, the shoving it down your throat of the "ethic" be a lad, be a MAN, if you don't like football you're a saddo loser, if you're not patriotic, if you do not subscribe to the superstitious Dark Ages peasantry which compels blind obeisance to a patch of land where you happened by accident to be born, without ever asking to be born there, then you are a pariah, an antisocial abnormality who should be taken away and terminated painfully as an exemplar of anyone who dares to be a fucking individual in this fucking dead, useless, bankrupt country.''

Maybe the ad was a load of shit. But i have met a lot of ppl who don't care too much abt football but to say they are castrated from society is quite hard to prove isn't it. Let's put some facts into this discussion (accusations are easy but how abt a bit of proof)? Football, cricket, sport in general, being a star trek fan, music is another activity to get into and meet other ppl with the same interest, that's all. If you hate all music and posted into a music forum then what is the point exactly (unless you Tanya but she likes music, of course, she just looks at it from the angle of a music hater, which is great) of doing that?

Mr Greenspun, rm -rf ilm

Nazi-worshipping? There's nothing more fascistic than racism, which you clearly indulge in, you hypocritical bitch! Misogyny? Yeah, we're the ones who are prejiduced! We don't slag you off 'cos you're a woman, it's because you're an ignorant, narrow-minded cunt! Anyone who disagrees with you is "nit-picking". Anyone who wants to take your boring, state-the-obvious threads to somewhere more interesting is slated for "avoiding the issue". Fuck off please, we hate you.

p.s., I hate Elvis, hate the remix too.

Actually we have divorce here now. Get your facts right, bitch

(see what i've done there?)

Trolling means posting opinions which are NOT your own, under FALSE names, to AGGRAVATE people.

It is widely believed that not responding is the best response.

Wolves used to be managed by someone called Sammy Chung, I think. Is that the Macclesfield bloke?

David H- there's a disproportionate number of British Asians in cricket, it doesn't mean that cricket discriminates against whites though, does it?

Doesn't a respect for cultural diversity assume that different traditions lead to different capabilities?

There's a hugely disproportionate number of black players in the English team - so wouldn't it be fair to say that Afro-Carribean traditions in England are more conducive to producing good footballers than current 'indigenous English' tradition?

There's an even more hugely disproportionate number of Asian chefs working in Indian restaurants. Again, wouldn't it be fair to say that Asian tradition favours (among many other things of course) the making of great curries?

So why should a relative lack of Asian footballers in England be presumed without evidence to be the result of discrimination, when there's no great tradition of football on the Indian subcontinent?

Football is ace because starving third-world nations get to kick some highly developed capitalist nation ass. The whole "this symbolises everything I hate about my country" shebang is an age old literary staple, always fun to do because of the melodrama and sweeping statements it encourages one to make, and (if done correctly) always relevant because the history, present and future of just about every country is pretty damn fucked up (a good thing because if it wasn't, we'd get bored).

The first letter of condolence to Admiral Doenitz following Hitler's death was written and signed by ... who? Remind me again? Chap called De Valera, wasn't it? Kindly twin up with select Kabul caves, forming a reverse letter "s" - you might learn something about evolution.

What is this "Goodwin's law" Mr Blair? Enlighten me, if you would be so kind, sir.

This thread lacks freeform input. It is stale and requires corticosteroids to control hitherto wanton inflammation.

That's one out of three, smartass.

What's your excuse?

Yes, it's MY thread and it's MY point you're avoiding. Comprendez?

This is like having to teach English to a remedial class, having to spell out E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G.

2: Er, did you start this thread? Did you post the original post? Again, who is this "our"? Be specific.

3: On the contrary, my windmill tilter, it amuses me enormously.

What Alison is saying is that the song represents all that is bad about British culture because it's not British. Asylum seekers and pinkoes come to our shores and bastardise our good old British culture. Alison's advocating a return to proper English values, such as Earl Gray and public school buggery.

Apropos 2U: why the hell is "No Limit" on "Pete Waterman's Greatest Hits" when, apart from coming out on PWL International in the UK, said Waterman had absolutely nothing to do with the writing or production of 2U's works?

And as for said compilation; very lopsided. Should have got rid of all the recent stuff ("Thank Abba For The Music" is unworthy even of Momus) and replaced it by proper SAW classics, e.g. Happening All Over Again by Lonnie Gordon, far and away their artistic peak, and their best Bananarama track, I Heard A Rumour.

http://www.stevienixed.com/archives/00000223.shtml#comments

I'd much rather have your head in a noose, actually, you racist bitch. I'm not being laddish, I'd hate you just as much if you were male.

"The first letter of condolence to Admiral Doenitz following Hitler's death was written and signed by ... who? Remind me again? Chap called De Valera, wasn't it?"

Twas Eamonn alright. But I, and the rest of the Irish population, am not responsible for his actions. A calamitous error, made by one man, in the 1940's, does not reflect on the nation in its entirety. I , for one, was always a greater admirer of the W.T Cosgrave government. We're a freedom-loving republic, and the Nazi count is low. I mean, I don't criticise the British nation because it produced Oswald Mosley, do I?

Who is Alison Houston? Seriously.

Another prime example, readers, of the wit and wisdom (particularly the latter) of Mr Kilburn Morphine who, lest we forget, has the right to vote. He is allowed to father and raise children.

Isn't democracy terribly overrated when you think about it?

But here's another level that's hitherto been neglected. Who directed this Nike football extravaganza? Terry Gilliam. The same Terry Gilliam who directed the classic "Brazil"? S'right.

And, to paraphrase Alison, the beauty of Brazil was its breathtaking and heartfelt portrayal of *exactly* what it feels like to be.... "a pariah, an antisocial abnormality who should be taken away and terminated painfully as an exemplar of anyone who dares to be a fucking individual"

Do you want a side-dish of irony with that irony??

God help those poor kiddies, being raised by a man who discourages racism, and defends himself from accusations of being a Nazi- worshipper, which were based on an idiot's narrow-minded generalisations. Please don't take my noose remark too literally. A mere flogging would be ample.

"Isn't democracy terribly overrated when you think about it?"

I agree, I would like to have you as our supreme lord and master. You could ban football because you don't like it, and those who disagree with you could be hung, drawn, quartered and fed to the canaries.

"But pray do carry on, you leaking curragh of a man. Your ire fuels my fire."

Why thank you, you over-gravied yorkshire pudding of a woman.

I'm sorry but that's one of those eternal questions which doesn't have an answer, at least not at this time. We get new shipments of the dispossessed from time to time. Check back again at regular intervals.

SINCE EVERY POSTER LIVES IN THEIR OWN, PERSONALISED "SUBURB," ARE THERE EVER ANY COMPATIBILITY ISSUES BETWEEN THE VARIOUS SUBURBAN GROUPS?

Sometimes, but that is one of the consequences of ownership or rather the illusion of ownership. You see, no one actually OWNS anything. "Ownership" is just another level of renting when your stay is limited and can expire at any instant.

DOES EMOTION EXIST HERE?

Only if you want it to, but don't expect others to cooperate. That is to say, if one chooses to have a particular feeling, that feeling may or may not be independent of other people and their choice to have the same or a different feeling at that particular time.

WHAT IS THE BIGGEST PROBLEM FACING POSTERS TODAY?

Linear thinking. Oh yes. Even though the rules of time do not dominate, the residual conditioning of perceived lengths of time continue to influence. It's the perception of widths of time and lateral thinking which should be given equal consideration so that none is emphasised.

Also, dead people are often given more respect than living people who need it the most and dead people don't really care. And if they could, what good would it do them?

NOW SEE HERE, JUST EXACTLY WHAT IS "I LOVE MUSIC"?

Hmm...well..that's a hard one. You see...it can't actually be defined in the usual sense of definition. So, let me give you, say...3 or 4 possible definitions, each equally as valid as the next depending on one's mood at the time.

First, if you have to ask what I Love Music is you'll never know. The answer is right in front of you or perhaps you are in the answer but you never see it because you're looking elsewhere. So, to talk about this is futile and we should all go home.

Second, ILM is a way of life or rather coexistence, perhaps even a sort of appendage to the various dimensions of consciousness. Allow me to illustrate with an analogy. It's like everyone THINKS they all live together as one in one, big universal city. But acually we all live in our own, seperate, personalised suburbs, each with a bi- hemisphere garage, a white picket conditioning fence and a swimming pool of desires/fear.

And third, ILM is a zone or space where the "Banal" and the "Sublime" superimpose, juxtapose and morph into one another and TIME as we know it does not exist. Not that time does not exist. It may or may not, but it does not rule or govern one's perceptions and conceptions each instant of one's existence. We all live in this space but because time does not rule, we are tourists and our residency is temporary. If you are unlucky enough to know when you'll be leaving, be sure to visit the gift shop on your way out.

AREN'T MOST POSTERS BASIC IDEALS MORALLY ATTUNED TO TRUTH?

If given the choice, truth or entertainment, most people would choose to be entertained. At least 4 out of 5 would and you can't please everybody. Look at the pervasive power of Pop Culture and its consciousness, THE MEDIA. The "truth" is giving people what they want. And most of the time it isn't the truth, but it is entertaining. That's why they want it. They are confident in thinking it is the truth. And confidence equals value.

DO POSTERS HAVE A DOMINANT WORK ETHIC?

No. Work hard and try to be the best at being totally and completely mediocre. Nothing more, nothing less, only what is required. Perfectly average, excellently ordinary, this is the way of true happiness.

BUT IS THAT NOT A CONTRADICTION?

No. That's impossible. Contradiction does not exist here. I might add though, that there are a group of lawmakers voting on a bill that would introduce, distribute and legislate contradiction. No one thinks it will pass though.

SO THERE IS A GOVERNMENT OR RULING BODY OF INDIVIDUALS WITHIN ILM

Yes. They think they're making a difference for us all and everyone else thinks so too. Sometimes they actually do but that's not important because they're like actors and we're like the studio audience. Government is just another level of entertainment. That's important. And as a result, a new system of organisation has evolved.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

A comment by one TV reporter - that the image of the planes crashing into the towers "repeated in the memory like a nightmare loop" - was strange. You didn’t need to repeat the images in your head, TV did nothing else for days on end. As usual, the mass media materially create the psychic conditions they moralise. But what should artists do when reality outdoes them? Stay quiet? Admit anti-art destructivism was just a tease? Confess that these tumultous, apocalyptical events we call "radical" were really just conjury with lutes and viols, a luxury product ornamented with frissons of phony danger?

Such evasions smack of the brittle repression of married couples who put away their teenage albums, and call their yen for music a "passing phase". For us, giving up on extreme music can’t be the answer. Quite the opposite: it’s by paying closer attention to the internal structure of radical music - "violence" and all - that its historical and social meaning might be decoded. Stockhausen’s equation of art and terror - "this leap from security, from what’s ordinary, from life" - may be poor consolation for inhabitants of Manhattan who have lost loved ones, or now feel desperately insecure. However, his weird outburst touches on something deep. Why is it that, since the modernist revolts of the early twentieth century, composers and improvisors have continually shouted noise, crisis and violence?

Two thoughts spring to mind:

1. Not all of them have. Look at Copeland, Bernstein, Sondheim, Britten, Schoenberg, Howells, Stravinsky, Thompson, Howells, Menotti, Gillespie, Brubeck, Armstrong, Ellington, etc, etc.
2. See Dave Q's answer. Art without craft is meaningless.

so what kind of abstraction does that make "bullshit" then?

anyway he only said he wanted a "little" less conversation. what's all the fuss about?

Such evasions smack of the brittle repression of married couples who put away their teenage albums, and call their yen for music a "passing phase". For us, giving up on extreme music can’t be the answer. Quite the opposite: it’s by paying closer attention to the internal structure of radical music - "violence" and all - that its historical and social meaning might be decoded. Stockhausen’s equation of art and terror - "this leap from security, from what’s ordinary, from life" - may be poor consolation for inhabitants of Manhattan who have lost loved ones, or now feel desperately insecure. However, his weird outburst touches on something deep. Why is it that, since the modernist revolts of the early twentieth century, composers and improvisors have continually shouted noise, crisis and violence''

Are you Ben watson or esther leslie or are you quoting Ben without his permission. here's the link:

http://www.militantesthetix.co.uk/violence.html

Romanticism is often used as a pejorative term for wishful thinking and the anthropomorphisation of Nature; it is set in opposition to hard-headed scientific thinking. I would suggest that such an opposition is useful only if one term is not privileged over the other. Science and reductionism can be useful tools; so can imagination and spirit. But as Einstein says:

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift."

Bardic values sentimentally place imagination and intuition first, as the great gifts of the "Creator," and keep reason and technology in their improper place as the servants of that great gift. Poetry has become marginalised in our modern culture of mathematics and science, television and movies: poetry is the stuff of East End book dealers and ageing Improv fans. It might still be fashionable in Walthamstow and a few other cultural centres to attend poetry readings and rub elbows with living poets, but in much of our world, poets have been driven to the oak grove and the attic and their works are considered strange and difficult, the stuff inflicted on poor unsuspecting college students by sadistic English professors. They are hard to understand, unlike the highly valued "clarity" and "factuality" of scientific writing or journalism.

Of course, the latter qualities - that beloved "clarity" and "objectivity" - are largely myths, seldom really achieved. But when we realise this, we complain that journalists are all corrupt and politicians self-serving, and scientists simply obscure in their ultra-specialisation. The truth is that our modern love of clear, scientific discourse is our current Myth of Truth. We equate "objective" discourse with truth. In the ancient Bardic tradition, nearly the reverse was the case. The Bards recognized (as many contemporary literary and psychological theorists of the last generation have recognized anew) that all language is metaphorical. Indeed even the metaphor of "clarity" is a metaphor: words that are transparent as glass, allowing a view into "reality."

The root of all culture lies in these metaphors and the myths that are spun out of them into webs of words. The myth of objective science and technological power to set the world in order is our modern myth, just as old stories of the Olympians or the Tuatha de Danann served as the myths of order to earlier ages. We want to make sense of the world and all its apparent chaos and caprice. We can do so with the poetic language of gods and spirits, or the mathematical poetry of chaos theory. Without any poetry, without any "gods," there is no sense of order, no meaning to the world around us.

So, this realisation of the "deep heart's core," to quote Yeats, should be our starting point for future ILM discourses. Not to say that there is no truth, or that all things are relative - not at all. Rather, we embrace the power of our language to make reality, to discover truth, to unfold meaning from the world of things. We breathe in the world; we breathe out poetry.

The second realisation we realise, is that poetry is not dead at all. It just takes different forms. The public recitation of spoken verse doesn't occupy the centre of our culture, but certainly music and songs are more widely disseminated and ubiquitous now than they ever have been in human history. The CD player and the movie score may seem impersonal compared to the old Bardic tradition of the single visionary minstrel and his harp, but these new technologies nevertheless partake of that ancient mystery. Music and songs evoke stories, and movies, television, and death metal, free jazz, or IMO bands on the radio are all conduits for the mythical flux of story that permeates our culture. What is missing from this culture of techno-bards is the understanding that went along with the ancient traditions. What is too often missing, or concealed, is Northern Soul. And the opposite of Northern Soul is Stax/Atlantic commodification.

And they're all SHIT! Never heard late-period Igor or my '76 Mingus- quoting whup the Langley Schools outta the ballpark production of Noye's Fludde?

Art without craft is meaningless.

Why does art have to have a meaning?

I disagree. I will admit that I'm not up on the entirety of Stravinsky's output, but his "Symphony Of Psalms" is outstanding. And I gave you an opening to actually refute me on the violence angle with Britten's "War Requiem" and you didn't take it.

Why does art have to have a meaning?

If art doesn't have to have meaning, why should I take it seriously? What inherent worth does it have if it has no meaning? Why should people care about it if it has no meaning? How can it be applied to something as catastrophic as the 9/11 attacks if it has no meaning?

What's your central point, anyway? It started out as "I HATE FOOTBALL AND EVERYONE WHO LIKES IT!" and has now morphed into "Everything is art, which is above meaning."

Therefore it's naughty to say that it started out in a way in which it didn't.

Isn't it?

Spank spank spank. Keep up, lad. At the moment you're about 50 posts behind the rest of us.

Mark, no one knows what you were talking about in your article. All i got from reading the tangents article is that you hate Attali and that noise is not noise but signal. Director's cut needed soon!

Funny how she started off w/ an ad to attack the whole of society and now its just a rehash of Ben (who just rehashes adorno really). The only difference is ben likes jazz!

You mean there's a difference?

*yawn, for the 978th time, not what I was doing, read-the-title-of- the-thread-DUH!

Yeah, there is. An ad is made by marketing men. Members of society can ignore it by switching off the TV.

As I said in my very first post, its a mistake to say that this ad tells you what society in general is saying (that ppl are castrated from society just because they don't like footie).

My stance? Leonidas at Thermopylae.

Consequently, whether one uses the verb "to read" or the verb "to reread" is not really so important.

I disagree w/this.

''My stance? Leonidas at Thermopylae.''

Sorry I am not educated enough in your cobblers to understand this. Can you explain this?

"Now the name of Linus or Osiris, as the 'husband of his mother,' in Egypt, was Kamut.

"When Gregory the great introduced into the church of Rome what are not called the Gregorian Chants, he got them from the Chaldean mysteries, which had long been established in Rome; for the Roman Catholic priest, Eustace, admits that these chants were largely composed of 'Lydian and Phrygian tunes.' Lydia and Phrygia being among the chief seats in later times of those mysteries of which the Egyptian mysteries were only a branch. Thes tunes were sacred--the music of the great god, and in introducing them Gregory introduced the music of Kamut. And thus, to all appearance, has it come to pass, that the name of Osiris or Kamut, 'the husband of the mother,' is in every day use among ourselves as the name of the musical scale; for what is the melody of Osiris, consisting of the 'seven vowels' formed into a jymn, but--the Gamut?" (Hislop, Alexander, The Two Babylons, p. 22, Loizeaux Brothers)

Under Justification by Works Hislop connects the boy singer with the soprano style of singing which dominated the choirs in which boys were male and could therefore perform the clergy function but looked and sounded like women. To that end they were at times castrated.

Why don't you try reading the responses? You bitched about how this song represented things you hate in British culture and further posited that laddism was the main thing that defined British culture. People responded that the thing you're getting your panties intp a bunch over are artefacts of how human beings act that everyone across the globe has to deal with. Just because people didn't give you the answers you wanted (ie, ranting screeds against British culture) doesn't mean that they didn't answer your question.

I agree with Mark. After reading the Director's Cut while also reading up on Benjamin for work, the article makes perfect sense.

Want to come with us Alison - meet you at Gatwick on Friday afternoon?

ah. (i might have spotted that if it hadn't been 1:30 in the morning - and if i hadn't been pissed.)

so something good might come out of this very ENTERTAINING thread yet!

But mark's article about noise was not about volume but (crudely) about the (perceived) boundary between music and non-music.

he needed to pay more attention to its economic base.

'Marx'-ists can be so fucking dull.

Noise organised for extraction of surplus value isn’t noise, but silence at high volume: rock as spectacle blocks its liberating essence, its democratic release and insurrectionary energy

ie noise = liberation; rock = constraint. Mark's point was that (again, I put it crudely) this contrast is flawed. In doing so he shows up liberation at work within constraint; but also supposed liberation turning again and again into constraint. Or something like that. This seems to me a far more successfully dialectical point, and potentially takes us somewhere beyond dialectic.

Tom- Ban mark from ILM so that he can finish his re-write.

Ha Ha Ha Resistance is futile. You will be deterritorialized.

worth isn't dependent on meaning - meaning is dependent on worth. and the failure to understand this is the reason why all post- structuralist theory is a crock of shit.

Purpose is how we act because we have a future and intentions. A purpose is something in the future that we intend to realise. We intend to realise it because it is a good, but goods can be both instrumental and intrinsic. Most goods are instrumental. Money is nearly worthless as an end in itself, for most people, but is extremely valuable as a good-for something else, an instrumental good. We get so used to instrumental goods that our habit is true treat all goods as instrumental, as good-for-something - a common reproach of disappointed parents used to be "you're good for nothing!" - but this would produce an infinite regress. Any instrumental good is really worthless without the ultimate justification of an intrinsic good.

So what are the intrinsic goods in life? Well, there is pleasure, which we would hope to have with any worthy activity; but the true worth of any activity consists of its being right and good, and the true worth of any end consists of its being good and beautiful. Although it is not always obvious what is right and what is good, and "there is no disputing taste" when it comes to beauty, these are the kinds of things that we "need to know" in order to live, indeed, the "good life." These categories of value are descibed in The Polynomic Theory of Value" and "Six Domains of the Polynomic System of Value." It is difficult enough in life to deal with the uncertainties in our knowledge about the right and the good, and with the dilemmas that arise from the independence of these categories of value from each other. We do not always know what we need to know to deal with life, though the basics of morality are, as it happens, simple enough to be understood by most competent adults, and even by most children. This is curious enough in itself, but is not my main concern here: For even when we know the right, the good, and the beautiful, this still does not answer the really ultimate questions about the meaning of life, where we do have this urge to ask the purposive question, "What is it all for?"

The category of value that is listed on the linked pages but that has not yet been mentioned here, of course, is the sacred or holy. In the Bible, God demands that the Jews be a holy people by obeying his Law. Jesus requires that his disciples follow his moral instruction, but the purpose or meaning of it all follows simply from believing in him - though the impression from this is that the purpose of that belief is to achieve eternal life. The purpose of the Buddha's teaching, on the other hand, is not eternal life, but clearly the end of suffering, or, as the Buddha says:

...aversion, absence of passion, cessation, quiescence, knowledge, supreme wisdom, and Nirvana. [Buddhism in Translations, Henry Clarke Warren, Atheneum, 1987, p. 122] Unlike Western religions, Buddhism does not necessarily envision salvation or liberation as a recognizeable continuation of life. Nirvana is incomprehensible and inexpressible. Exactly what purposes are fulfilled, or even exist, in Nirvana is thus an open, or unaskable, question.

If we rule out using purposes to explain the ultimate meaning of life or existence, then we are restricted to intrinsic goods. Plato, after all, made "The Good" the ultimate reality. But it is not clear how the bare "Good" is more satisfying than pleasure, since we want to ask, "What Good?" We do not find "good" just floating off in insolation, but some thing, some meaning, which is good. It is not clear how upgrading the "Good" to the holy or the sacred is any more satisfying. We still want the reference or the conceptual content. Supreme conceptions of the experience of the ultimately holy object don't seem to help. The essence of the delights of Heaven in Christianity, or of union with Brahman in Hinduism, can be expressed in one word: Bliss - the "beatific vision" of God, or the Bliss (ânanda) which is the essence of Brahman. "Bliss," however, just sounds like an extreme enraptured state of happiness ("blissed out"), and so of a kind of pleasure, afterall. Perhaps a kind of eternal, cosmic orgasm sounds nice, but intellectually it seems rather deficient. We want to know what the deal is. That is going to be the only satisfying answer to the meaning of life.

This makes it sound like neither purposes nor intrinsic goods are going to quite do the job. As with purposes themselves, the nature of our understanding itself seems to preclude the sort of answer that would actually satisfy our understanding. What would help, then, would be at least to understand how our understanding defeats itself. The infinite regress that explanations of purpose lead to is one problem. The disappointment of intrisic goods of the presumably most satisfying character, like pleasure or beauty or the sacred, is their lack of intellectual content: We don't have to understand anything about what things cause the most intense physical pleasures to have them, and the causes are pretty mundane anyway; beauty is not wholly comprehensible and tends to be denatured with analysis; and the sacred depends on paradoxical religious doctrines or mysteries that are explicitly posited beyond human understanding.

One thing that the sacred does, in its obscurity or mystery as an intrinsic good, is stand as a placeholder for the understanding that we would like to have of ultimate things. We might even say that our inability to have that understanding is displayed in the very plurality and incoherence of the world's religions. If there were one true religion, then clearly we would know what the deal is in terms of the doctrine of that religion. As it is, not all religions even agree on whether there is a personal God, or an individual afterlife, at all. Religions don't even agree on whether the practice of religion aims only at this life or beyond it. Thus, while Christianity and Islâm clearly aim at the afterlife, Judaism, although always containing popular beliefs about the hereafter, makes no explicit promises of eternal life as the fruit of religious practice. Most curiously, Buddhism, which begins with monastic practices of renunciation and the clear project of avoiding rebirth, gives rises to permutations, at least in East Asia, where liberation valorizes life itself and even Nirvana does not preclude rebirith and continued individual existence.

This paradoxical situation is explicitly addressed, in the first instance by Buddhism itself, and, more recently in Western philosophy, by Immanuel Kant, for whom speculation about "things-in- themselves" produces "dialectical illusion" and the system of contradictions he calls the "Antinomies of Reason." Kant does think that some questions about transcendent objects can be settled on the basis of morality, that "God, freedom, and immorality" are required as postulates of the Moral Law, but his arguments for all of these (except freedom, perhaps) seem to require assumptions whose own credibility is suspect. What would be more striking, and perhaps revealing, is if morality required that we don't know the answers to questions about ultimate purposes and transcendent objects. This, I suspect, is actually the case. For our task in life, our "need to know," as in any military or intelligence operation, may involve things that we need to not know.

What is the reward of virtue? This has always been one of the fundamental questions of philosophy and religion. Is there divine retribution and justice? That the wicked often prosper and the good suffer is what has persuaded many that the universe is actually random, pointless, and meaningless. But the very essence of morality may depend on not knowing whether there is a reward for virtue or divine retribution and justice. This is because of the fundamental difference between morality and prudence. Morality, as understood from Confucius to Kant, is to do what is right, regardless of consequences or return. Prudence, on the other hand, is simply to govern one's affairs so as to satisfy an interest. This may be merely self-interest, or the interest of something of which one has charge (a family, company, state, etc.), but it is still an intention to obtain some particular goods. Morality may require the denial of an interest, for the sake of justice and righteousness.

Now, if one is good and righteous and holy in life merely because of the promise of divine reward or the threat of divine retribution, this simply converts morality into prudence. Our interest is to obtain salvation and bliss and to avoid damnation and punishment, so we use the means to that end. Interestingly, this approach is harshly condemned in the Bhagavad Gita, and its futility asserted:

[2:43] Their soul is warped with selfish desires, and their heaven is a selfish desire. They have prayers for pleasures and power, the reward of which is earthly rebirth. Thus, when it comes to salvation, that is an end that prudence, by its nature, cannot attain. The very pursuit of self-interest effects rebirth.

Even Plato's great examination of the benefit of virtue and justice in the Republic merely concluded, like the Stoics later, that the just person is happier. Justice, therefore, is merely recommended to the prudent, who aim at happiness. Plato's uneasiness with this perhaps led to the inclusion of the "Myth of Er" at the end of the Republic, where the promise of divine reward and the threat of divine punishment is introduced - adding another layer of the appeal to self- interest. The most dignity that can be attrituted to this approach is that it is one of "enlightened" self-interest.

If the divine reward of virtue and the punishment of vice were certain, then, just as in human affairs, it would merely be foolish, not wicked, to behave improperly. When, however, divine justice is problematic, and human justice limited and imperfect, the merely calculating person may find evil and injustice to offer the promise of greater rewards. The moral person, however, abstains from wrong merely because it is wrong, and shameful. As Confucius says, "The superior man understands right (yì), the mean man understands profit (lì)" [Analects IV:16]. Our lack of knoweldge of the ultimate purpose, meaning, or justice of life therefore separates the proper motive of moral action, as Kant says, the consciousness of duty, from the motive of prudent action, which is to find the means sufficient to satisfy our interests. As noted in the Gita, the latter may earn karmic reward, but not salvation. Christianity, on the other hand, appears to allow salvation by belief and repentance, even if merely prudent, with the qualification, as we see in Dante's Divine Comedy, that some, the truly moral and saintly, end up closer to God in Heaven than those whose belief was less pure. In other words, those who believe and act because of their desire for Heaven and their fear of damnation will attain Heaven, but will have a rather poor seat, the equivalent of the bleachers, in the cosmic ball park, with the Elect seated around God behind home plate.

If the human condition is one where we do not know the ultimate meaning and purpose of life, or whether there is divine justice, reward, and retribution, then the temptation or tendency is to say that there is no meaning and no justice, divine or otherwise. If all is but atoms and the void, and pleasure, in fact my pleasure, is all that really counts in life, since it feels good, then there is no barrier to agreeing with Thrasymachus or Nietzsche that self-interest and power are all that count. The person who restrains their self- interest out of just consideration of others is merely a fool, following a non-existent standard to no real purpose. There are always, of course, people who are virtuous and just, despite believing in no substantial existence for these things, or any non- immediate benefit for practicing them, simply out of self-respect. This is a precarious position, however, for being good merely to respect oneself requires that the good, rather than self-interest, is what is truly worthy of respect, and this is what their scepticism or unbelief has fundamentally unsettled. These are people who, in Plato's terms, are good merely out of habit. One need merely draw the obvious conclusion to adopt the position that the only self- respecting person abandons worry about goodness or justice and simple seizes as much power and pleasure as possible.

What we truly need to know, then, is not the ultimate meaning or purpose of life, but just that there is meaning and purpose, as found in the reality of the right, the good, and the beautiful. Any good person, in a sense, knows this implicitly. The philosopher, sceptic, or too clever sophisticate, however, requires more. Hence, we should hope to have a demonstrable metaphysical theory of value. As I have argued elsewhere, we can construct such a theory and have some confidence that matters of value are as real as matters of empirical fact, because value is merely an artifact of our existence as conscious beings, which severs the connection, let alone the identity, between our existence and existence as such. While we exist in a way that does not seem to benefit from the principle ex nihilo nihil fit ("out of nothing comes nothing"), or, as it appeas in physics, the conservation of mass-energy, i.e. we appear to become unconscious, and die, value is what remains within consciousness as the ghost or after-image of existence as such, which does benefit from the principle. It is what our existence is like apart from consciousness, which means apart from subject and object, that defeats the understanding, which can only grasp things in terms of representation and intention. But the substitute that we possess for such an understanding is indeed the end-in-itself of the good and the beautiful, however differentiated and specifically they appear in life.

As Plato thought that the love of wisdom began with the love of the kind of value we can see, beauty, now we can say that beauty most concretely contains the promise of what is not merely of this life and this, phenomenal, world. This is ironic, since mere beauty can be regarded as one of the most superficial and trival things in life, with no necessary connection to virtue or morality. Indeed, beauty sometimes seem positively adverse to virtue and morality. When the Greeks, of course, said "good and beautiful," they meant nobility as well as good looks, or even, as with Socrates, nobility without good looks. At best, beauty often seems inert and dormant. On the other hand, beauty has other permutations. The sublimely beautiful displays active and even fearful power. While one tends to think of wind and lightning in this respect, erotic beauty is just as much an expression of it, with a fearful power that disturbs and unsettles, even frightens, many, even as it drives a great deal of fashion, entertainment, and daily life, often threatening loss of control, both personal and public. The sublime and the erotic bespeak hidden power that is only latent in the merely beautiful.

While the numinosity of the sacred and holy is sometimes said to merely be a form of the sublime, there is considerably more to it than that. Where the sublime is powerful and even fearful, the numimous is positively uncanny and Other - supernatural rather than natural. No longer an inert and dormant beauty, numinosity seems to have broken free from objects altogether, feeling like an intrusion from reality beyond phenomena, whether of divinities, spirits, or any other kinds of paranormal powers. This can still have its erotic aspect, as we see in the divine sexuality of Babylonian temple prostitution, or the pornographic sculptures on Indian temples. This certainly gives us another case of the difficulty of pinning down a construction of transcendent objects, since a religion like Christianity seems to construe the hereafter as devoid of sexuality. It is India that ironically combines the most austere ascesticism with the most explicit eroticism.

Of all the forms of value, then, the holy is at once the most promising, for the meaning it bespeaks, and the most frustrating, for the lack of postive information and understanding that we derive from its manifestations. Given the limitations of the human condition, or of human understanding, however, this is rather what we should expect. The ultimate meanings, understandings, values, and conditions are closed to us. The immediate meanings, understandings, values, and conditions are available, but as something over and above the mundane factual phenomena which the too clever sophisticate takes to be all that there is. That it is not all that there is at once gives us the reality of meaning and value, but only in relation to the phenomenal world. The form of value that contains no relation to the world, and so is in itself devoid of coherent conceptual content, is the holy. Trying to identify the holy with a form of value with positive content led Kant himself to construe the holy as the faultlessly moral (the angelic "holy will"). However, although we would like, in some ultimate construction of things, for the moral and the holy to be identical, as we find them they are not, and we even see them diverge in the moral ambivalence, not only of the pagan gods, who are positively human in their immorality, but even of the Biblical God, whose moral difficulties Jung explored in his Answer to Job.

It appears, then, that what we need to know are the values of the phenomenal world. Since we are not now living or operating beyond that, our doctrines and speculations about it end up being paradoxical and self-contradictory. Yet the values of the phenomenal world are themselves not truly of it, and present us a clue that there is more to things than what we see. The ultimate clue, though also the most tantalising, is the sense of the numinous, in which we seem to glimpse an unaccountable majestas in the transcendent, whether we think that this is the God of Abraham and Isaac, the Existence, Consciousness, and Bliss of Brahman, the overrated, cosmic Buddha-dharma, or even the Form of the Good. Whether we credit that or not may not make that much difference in our mundane tasks or enjoyment of life. As Confucius said, "I have long been offering my prayers" [Analects VII:35], just by being good. It is only a matter of concern when we want more, when the undeniable randomness, senselessness, and unfairness of events moves us to yearn for some way in which it will all make sense - when the shortness and imperfection of life means that we want reunion with our loved ones, to enjoy moments that in fact were all too brief or that in our folly we did not appreciate enough at the time. We cannot know if this will ever be explained or made good. All we have is what Kant said, the sublime beauty of the starry heavens above and the sublime nobility and justice of the Moral Law within, and the question "What can we hope?" These are the meaning of life, and all that we need to know, even as they represent a flame of hope for more.

Confucianism: Confucius say, "Crap happens."

Buddhism: If crap happens, it is really not crap.

Zen Buddhism: What is the sound of crap happening?

Hinduism: This crap happened before.

Islam: If crap happens, it is the will of Allah.

Protestantism: Let crap happen to someone else.

Catholicism: If crap happens, then you deserve it.

Judaism: Why does crap always happen to us?

New Age: Affirm crap does not happen to me.

Atheist: I don't believe this crap.

Rastafarian: Let's roll that crap up and smoke it.

What I would ask you, Nathalie, is how have you dealt with the conflict at times when you felt requiring of comfort and solace? Will talk more about this with you privately if you prefer.

From a personal point of view, I certainly count myself still on Spinoza's side, probably magnified rather than diminished by events over the last 12 months. Nothing did more to arrest my "progress" from initial grieving than well-meaning people saying, "God meant it to be; He didn't want her to suffer; she's in Paradise now" blah blah it was GENETIC you fools it does NOT help.

The evolution of this thread seems to me to represent a splendid exemplar of Wilson's law.

And how does religion overlap (if it does) with the concept of "caring"? Is the latter naturally possible or can a context only be provided for it by the pre-existing one of religion/faith?

Finally, of course, art isn't a parallel strand to religion; it arose directly from it, so of course without religion there would be no music, thus no ILM.

And who needs art or music? I think we all do. Is that our "religion"? Again, on a personal basis, I feel that for someone unsettled (geographically and emotionally), having books, CDs, pictures, etc. gives you something concrete to hang on to; a sense of place, and a sense of being. If you forsook all that and continued to live a necessarily unsettled life, I think life would be very difficult to cope with (monkhood notwithstanding).

Because without any of these, and without other direct, regular human interaction, one is forced back on one's own meagre resources - and the emptiness becomes even more apparent.

Not all of us do or need it. By telling us what is 'good' you're becoming as bad as a bloody priest.

And I hate most 'art'. I can't fucking stand what comes with it as well. the 'best' music is the one that makes you forget that it is 'art'.

Is that our "religion"? Again, on a personal basis, I feel that for someone unsettled (geographically and emotionally), having books, CDs, pictures, etc.''

books, CDs can be of comfort. But that person would need help and support from family/friends as well. Listening to books and Cds is a lonely thing.

And then you've got ask, which CDs? It could the 'art' music you so truly love but in most cases it would prob. be 'definetely maybe' by the wonderful (back in the day) Oasis.

Me? I listen to whatever music makes me feel better at any given time. Could be "Definitely Maybe," could be Derek Bailey - depends on the time, mood and circumstances. I like it all.

Lonely activity? Support of family/friends? Well, if you've worked out who I really am, Julio (I would say everyone else has by now!), then there's a whole story into which I've gone countless times on these boards and which everyone else here is pretty sick of hearing, I would have thought.

So that's enough for now, I think. That's pretty much as far as I can go with this thread. If anyone wants to continue taking it somewhere else/developing other trains of thought, then please feel free to do so.

Thanks to everyone who contributed, especially Nathalie, but also Julio, Dave Q, Mr Swygart, Gareth, Kilian Murphy, Mark S, Alex B, Alex T, Dan P, Dr C, and anyone else I may have forgotten.

MC still does not feel psychologically able to come back on here as "himself" but may do so in the future. He is trying his best.

Aren't there books on CD?

I hope you get ''psychologically able'' to come up with a that guide to Radu mafalti that you promised?

If art raises questions, why don't we just stick to the answers?

Oh there she is...