Shopping is ok, but I hate crowds. I hate even more pushy crowds. I have managed to completely avoid any shopping mall on two of the most [IMHO] gawd-awful days of the year to be anywhere near a store with a ONEDAYDOORBUSTERS! sign out front: The day after Christmas and today, Black Friday.
However, over the past month I’ve been been keeping out an eye for a good deal on bikes for the twins. The boys are 50 inches tall and have outgrown the two-wheeler kiddie bikes.
Yesterday at Thanksgiving dinner, #2 daughter, their mom, clued me in on a doorbuster deal this morning I just couldn’t pass up and, God forgive me, hubby and I woke up at 4 am and rolled out to Sports Chalet (opened at 5 am) picked up two 20″ freestyle bikes at less than 1/2 price.
The huge crowds hanging outside Target and Kohls in the same mall location greatly encouraged us to beat a hasty retreat from the area after we manuevered the bikes into my car.
A nap later is on the agenda. Before or after getting up the Christmas lights is still an open question.
Do these kind of bargains get you out to the stores? Are you spending less this year? How do you think retail sales will end up this Christmas season?
Comment by Dan Collins on 11/27 @ 9:17 am #
Darleen, some years ago, my wife and I imposed the 12 Days of Christmas on our children. So, most of our shopping happens after Christmas, when the deals are better, though you appear to have found one worth the trouble.
Christmas shopping in meat space depresses me, so I do almost all of it online.
Comment by Gulermo on 11/27 @ 9:27 am #
Best wishes to you and yours. I live in Costa Rica and even though Christmas is a huge holiday, I am often asked by the in-laws and friends to explain the history of Thanksgiving.
Re: the retail economics, who can tell, with 10.2% (nominal) unemployment. I hate shopping as well, but today and the day after Christmas are uniquely American. There are no discounted sale days for retail merchandise here, that I am aware of.
Comment by Danger on 11/27 @ 9:30 am #
If you can go as a team it is helpful. My wife and I did it together a few years back. I was the blocking back/muscle for the mission. We set up a base in the check-out line and then took turns going downrange for things on the list while maintaining our place in line.
Comment by Danger on 11/27 @ 9:32 am #
Speaking of missions, it’s time for chow.
See ya later
Comment by Darleen on 11/27 @ 9:42 am #
Hi Danger! Best thought to you and yours…stay safe!
My grandsons’ uncle will be deploying to Afghanistan just after the New Year.
Comment by Blake on 11/27 @ 9:50 am #
Let’s see, put up with rude people, both behind and in front of the cash register..or, Amazon, click the mouse, choose “gift wrap” and have it delivered (usually free, as I’m an Amazon Prime member) wow, tough choice….hmmmm….I’ll take the mouse click for $500, Darleen.
Comment by Bob Reed on 11/27 @ 9:50 am #
Black Friday? Not a shot for me…Besides, we’re still enjoying a visit to my parents house. Although I will admit, my wife has spoken of going to a ginormous mall in Rehobeth Delaware later-maybe…
As much as I love her, I ain’t going…
BeerDuty calls…Comment by BJTexs on 11/27 @ 9:51 am #
Looks like you scored, Darleen.
I would like to point out that there is one thing worse than shopping on Black Friday … that would be working on Black Friday. Shortly, I’ll be making my way to a certain national office supply chain to explain to desperate people why the $89.99 Hi-Def Digital Camcorder is sold out. My wife will be leaving at the same time to a tamer and saner “range” to hobnob with the Philly Main Liners at a certain national, ridiculously expensive kitchen supply store.
Both of us would rather drill holes in our skulls with an 18 volt portable drill.
Happy holidays all and JD in Park City, Utah? Man I hate his guts.
Comment by TmjUtah on 11/27 @ 9:52 am #
I bought a hundred dollar rifle yesterday. It’s not for Christmas; I believe there is a reasonable chance it will substantially increase in value over the next few years.
Picked up a plumb bob and Gammon reel to gift my coworker. I am tooling the belt carrier for this from on-hand supplies.
Mom Utah gets a new pair of slippers. The girls get gift cards. The inlaws get cards.
Nope, we aren’t doing the door buster thing. Not this year.
Comment by Joe on 11/27 @ 10:02 am #
Knowing some Black Friday “shoppers” I swear it is no different than fishing or hunting. You get up in the middle of the night, it is cold, you wait for hours to bag your “game”
The only difference is most hunters do not face stampedes anymore as a regular danger of their sport.
Comment by geoffb on 11/27 @ 10:03 am #
Working second shift most of my life the getting up at 4am thing to stand in line isn’t feasible so I have never participated in the RW. Last year however we decided it was time to retire the 31 inch TV that I’d bought in 1994.
Looked at the flyers and was prepared to go out but I looked at Amazon first. Got a 50 inch main brand plasma for $890 shipping included. Good deal and so I got to sleep normally too. This year, nah, sleep is better than any deal.
Comment by B Moe on 11/27 @ 10:14 am #
Black Friday is why God invented gift cards.
Comment by Joe on 11/27 @ 10:19 am #
The WaPo carries water for the Global Warming supporters.
If you keept saying the ice caps are melting long enough, eventually it will be true!
Comment by Cowboy on 11/27 @ 10:26 am #
Mrs. Cowboy is out with her girlfriends doing the Black Friday thing–only at a much saner hour than most.
All four kids are at the ex’s homes this weekend, so it’s just me, the dogs, a fridge full of leftover food and booze, and three pretty good football games…oh, what will I do?
Comment by Joe on 11/27 @ 10:26 am #
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/295180.php
Howard Dean says health care reform is worse than the status quo (of course he wants a single payer plan, but he hates the current plan).
That is a free Christmas/Channakah/Kwanza/Sostice gift for us all.
Comment by Pablo on 11/27 @ 11:04 am #
Screw the stores. I’ll be visiting my new favorite website.
I just lurvs me some science.
Comment by Jim in KC on 11/27 @ 11:19 am #
I already have the better half’s tactical shotgun on layaway, so the fact that I had to work today didn’t screw up my shopping plans. She did head to Nebraska Furniture Mart to try to score a cheap Dyson, but she estimated 1,000 people in line for 100 vouchers for the price, so she bailed on that one.
Comment by sdferr on 11/27 @ 11:28 am #
Pablo, do you reckon some of these climate scientists read P. Feyerabend’s Against Method and took him dead seriously, i.e. failed to understand him at all?
Comment by Rusty on 11/27 @ 12:02 pm #
Do these kind of bargains get you out to the stores?
Hardly at all anymore. Most of our christmas shopping is done online.
Are you spending less this year?
Most definitely.
How do you think retail sales will end up this Christmas season?
Down.
Comment by JD on 11/27 @ 12:11 pm #
Teaching my 8 year old to ski has been soooooo much fun. However, skiing backwards for hours on end is fairly exhausting. But, now she can turn, stop, and do the lifts without assistance, so today I get to ski facing downhill.
Comment by Pablo on 11/27 @ 12:11 pm #
sdferr, I haven’t read Feyerabend, though I suppose I should if it means I’m in for more of this:
As for your very interesting question, I hope Feyerabend can’t be read to say “Just make some shit up, if you want.” And I don’t suspect that science places any higher than second or third on the quasi-scientific alarmist CRU, er…crew’s agenda.
Meanwhile…
Comment by geoffb on 11/27 @ 12:16 pm #
Now we know where the Obama credit card fund raising method came from.
Comment by geoffb on 11/27 @ 12:21 pm #
Belmont Club has a post about what happened to a couple of Harvard scientists who dared publish a paper that did not follow the AGW line.
To see what the CRU people had to say about that paper and their reactions, do a search of the emails for “Baliunas
“. Interesting reading.
Comment by 11B40 on 11/27 @ 12:42 pm #
Greetings:
I’ve never been susceptible to the Black Friday hysteria (What welcome a Christmas season better than a Black Friday?) but this year I was annoyed even more by stores opening on Thanksgiving day, most notably Best Buy, the electronics purveyor. Being old enough to remember the “Blue Laws” which required most commercial establishment to close on Sundays, I see this as another nail in the cultural coffin that reduces us to mindless debt-burdened consumers. On yesterday’s TV news, it seemed that all the talking (and somewhat empty) heads were exuberant about this advance of our (crumbling) civilization. Not one clip that I saw mentioned that employees would be away from their families and their thanksgiving in order to sate the consumption needs of their fellow citizens and the revenue aspiration of their employers. Happy Thanksgiving, indeed.
Comment by sdferr on 11/27 @ 1:06 pm #
“I hope Feyerabend can’t be read to say ‘Just make some shit up, if you want.’”
No, he shouldn’t be. But despite my lame joke at the warmists expense, he can be read describing bad science and the effective means it uses to push its crap on the world. Which, if taken up malevolently can be used as an outline for propaganda purposes.
Here’s some Feyerabend himself:
Comment by Carin on 11/27 @ 1:10 pm #
n. However, skiing backwards for hours on end is fairly exhausting. But, now she can turn, stop, and do the lifts without assistance, so today I get to ski facing downhill.
JD, last year (and the year before) my youngest refused to listen to anything i had to say regarding turning and stopping (he had his own method, you know) so finally I had to just give up and enroll him in a class.
Worked like a charm. He spent a morning (and an afternoon – I think) in class, and after that he could go down anything but the black hills.
Of course, this is michigan not Utah. Blue hills here are prolly a tad easier.
Comment by JD on 11/27 @ 1:17 pm #
Carin – Day 4 of skiing and she is doing Blue runs here. She does not have nearly as far to fall, no fear. I hate snowboarders.
Comment by Silver Whistle on 11/27 @ 1:18 pm #
Don’t ask me – I took the day off work to go hunting. Many, many pheasants, woodcock and partridges. Much better than schlepping around some God forsaken retail palace. I love the autumn.
Comment by Danger on 11/27 @ 1:24 pm #
“Hi Danger! Best thoughts to you and yours…stay safe!”
Thanks Darleen and back atchya 8^)
Since the topic is related to gifts I thought I would share a couple.
This one made me think of sdferr (since I have unintentionally thrown a few darts his way recently I thought I should throw him a bone ;) http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/11/sarah_palin_and_the_bard.html.
The second one is for Happyfeet because he needs a reason to Love Sarah Palin again:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/11/the_competing_narratives_of_ba.html
Being the opposite of Obama should bring out the happy in Happy feet.
Comment by sdferr on 11/27 @ 1:28 pm #
A discussion of the probable good news in the political offing, though that offing may take a few years yet. Still, a reasonably compelling picture.
Comment by geoffb on 11/27 @ 1:30 pm #
Thank you for the “Feyerabend”. What I’ve read so far goes to the assertion I made but failed to backup yesterday.
Comment by sdferr on 11/27 @ 1:37 pm #
You’re quite welcome geoffb, though I must say, I find him interesting in much the same way I imagine I’d find an actual lump of plutonium to be interesting: something to be handled very cautiously, behind a lead shield, with mechanical tongs only — not something to be tossed up and down in amazement at its density to the bare hand.
Comment by happyfeet on 11/27 @ 1:49 pm #
hey! I will read.
Comment by sdferr on 11/27 @ 1:49 pm #
Don’t like the look of this early report on Tiger Woods. It has the tenor of a medical condition present prior to the car crash, that is — speculating here — perhaps a small stroke or the like brain anomaly causing the crash, rather than resulting from it. However, time will tell.
Comment by happyfeet on 11/27 @ 2:00 pm #
hrm. it bothers me that Sarah Palin is portrayed as a conservative “answer” to Barack Obama. Barack Obama was a low point in American politics. I think we should just find a solid boring unmavericky nice guy this next time around.
Comment by Danger on 11/27 @ 2:24 pm #
I hear ya feets. I am not promoting a draft Sarah Palin movement. I just thinks she deserves better treatment, especially from those of us that are of the conservative persuasion.
Afterall, we are supposed to stick up for our friends, even when they stumble.
Comment by geoffb on 11/27 @ 2:30 pm #
I don’t plan on eating, only examining as a specimen.
Comment by sdferr on 11/27 @ 2:44 pm #
;-) , geoffb. Did you happen to listen to yesterday’s Unc.Knowledge and hear the contrary of your very suggestions here put forward as the turning point toward institutionalized progressivism by Rahe (min 5:50 on)? In effect, repeal the 16th and 17th amendments, says he. Seems to me you’ve fingered something key.
Comment by Leo Durocher on 11/27 @ 2:59 pm #
The nice guys are all over there, in seventh place, not in this dugout.
Comment by happyfeet on 11/27 @ 3:04 pm #
it’ll work out… she’ll find a niche for herself where she can play to her considerable strengths… probably.
Comment by Danger on 11/27 @ 3:16 pm #
Agreed, I’d just like to leverage some of those strengths to help smack down the far left. I’m pretty sure she is a team player and I am certain that she drives the left crazy.
Comment by Danger on 11/27 @ 3:18 pm #
G’night all
Keep firing
Comment by sdferr on 11/27 @ 3:22 pm #
Bibi calls the bluff, Abbas folds, agreeing to lose Obama’s stakes.
Comment by happyfeet on 11/27 @ 3:28 pm #
g’night there
Comment by Matt on 11/27 @ 3:44 pm #
Sigh. Met hot hippie chick. Invited her for Tgiving. Turns out she’s in favor of “turkey rights” and my “turkey eating ways” were “incompatible with her lifestyle.”
I offered to give up yams but apparently thats not a fair trade. Sometimes you’re the turkey, sometimes you’re stuff the turkey…
Comment by Matt on 11/27 @ 3:45 pm #
Sigh. I mean “sometimes you’re stuffing the turkey.” I fail english 101.
Comment by geoffb on 11/27 @ 3:50 pm #
Thank you again sdferr. I will watch it after I get home.
Comment by Hvy Mtl Hntr on 11/27 @ 4:19 pm #
Awesome global warming parody at iowahawk, I need a new keyboard for Christmas.
Comment by Jeffersonian on 11/27 @ 4:53 pm #
Will national health care cover turkey-Americans?
Comment by doodlz-KS on 11/27 @ 5:00 pm #
Darleen, I’m with you. I try like hell to avoid any kind of “Black Friday” malarchy, and any place that even resembles a shopping mall is strictly off limits (boy I luvs me the internet shopping), but this morning the deals on electronics were just too hot to pass up. We set off at 5 AM-ish and scored a really sweet deal on a notebook for my mom before I needed to be at work. As for how much we’re gonna spend? A lot, lot less this year. But I will be putting the lights on the house on Sunday.
Comment by Schwag-grabbin' Steve on 11/27 @ 5:10 pm #
Here in Texas where everything’s a helluva lot bigger than whatever y’all got, we get us some BIG crowds of BIGig people with BIG families, so it makes the aisles fell a helluva lot smaller than what y’all got. That’s why we carry air horns – the shopper’s friend. Works in traffic too, they think you’re a boat.
When’s the last time anyone of y’all someone at the mall this time look like they were happy to be there? The closer to Christmas, the grumpier folks get.
Maybe it’s all the air horns, but how about them Cowboys?
Did ya’ll know there’s a Wal-Mart right across the street from the new stadium? Damn, now that’s good thinking. America’s team and America’s mart, side-by-side and right next to the ballpark, where they play America’s Pastime.
We’re finnin’ to get embassies, you watch. Big embassies.
Comment by guinsPen on 11/27 @ 8:24 pm #
You’re missing something, Schteve.
Comment by Schwag-grabbin' Steve on 11/27 @ 8:36 pm #
I hit the tequila.
Comment by Pablo on 11/27 @ 9:02 pm #
LEAVE TIGER ALONE!!!!
That is all.
Comment by pdbuttons on 11/27 @ 9:32 pm #
paula creamer owes me ten bucks
Comment by happyfeet on 11/27 @ 9:59 pm #
mr. buttons! happy thanksgiving
Comment by B Moe on 11/27 @ 10:55 pm #
Let me know when the Ambassador from Pittsburgh shows up.
Comment by JD on 11/27 @ 10:55 pm #
Amen, Pablo. Amen. They should leave Thierry alone too.
Comment by guinsPen on 11/27 @ 11:01 pm #
the Ambassador from Pittsburgh
One Mr. Stanley Cup.
Comment by pdbuttons on 11/27 @ 11:18 pm #
i wear a cup when i wonder/wander
i have a something mart so close…
Comment by guinsPen on 11/27 @ 11:21 pm #
a fish called wander bread
Comment by pdbuttons on 11/27 @ 11:23 pm #
clean-up on sisle 2…
denis potvin just shook
Comment by pdbuttons on 11/27 @ 11:29 pm #
burt reyondls stilkskin
Comment by pdbuttons on 11/27 @ 11:34 pm #
to kiss the stanley
my name next to the flower
i get all jiggy
Comment by LTC John on 11/27 @ 11:34 pm #
Ducks…bah, just you wait until my beloved Blackhawks get to the playoffs!11!1
It is good to see Danger and pdbuttons and guinsPen.
I went to a mall on an unrelated to Christmas shopping mission – crowds did not impress, but it was later in the day. I was the only customer in line at Sears that spoke English as a primary language…
Comment by pdbuttons on 11/27 @ 11:34 pm #
booby orr
Comment by geoffb on 11/28 @ 1:07 am #
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi spoke today and showed her caring side.
The first Trillion just didn’t get the “jobs” done right so they will have to double down and keep spending till the American public finally get those darn hard to come up with, ever so elusive, we know that D*** Booossshhh hid them somewhere, jobs
Comment by B Moe on 11/28 @ 6:08 am #
So the evil bitch knows exactly what she is doing.
Comment by donald on 11/28 @ 7:13 am #
I just finished reading a blow job piece on Bruce Springsteen by David Brooks. I despise Bruce Springsteen at a level that I guess makes me an American hater. To me, he’s a hack. A hack at a level that Tommy Caffey could never understand. I can’t stand him. His last good song was Ramrod, and before that Crush on You. Both of which you will note were on the same album. I wonder how a guy can preach this little man bullshit while sitting in his mansions, flying his private jets, well, you get the picture.
Not that I’m all for the mansions and private jets. I want a few of my own. Course I won’t hate the guys who built the mansions, or private jets. I think they’re the heros. I think that Bruce Springsteen and his poorly educated, overly worshipped ilk are slime.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Comment by donald on 11/28 @ 7:14 am #
That should be “Not that I’m against mansions and private jets”.
Comment by KingShamus on 11/28 @ 7:40 am #
I have studiously avoided the stores the last two days. I’m gonna do a lot of my shopping online. And yes, I’m spending less.
A shakey economy will do that to a man.
Comment by serr8d on 11/28 @ 8:55 am #
I worked yesterday, didn’t spend any monies on Christmas gifts. That’s for later, say, December 23.
I am the anti-Black Friday.
Comment by serr8d on 11/28 @ 9:16 am #
As Sarah Palin represents the anti-Obama. As least for now, Sarah is the only political voice that has captured the essence of the anti-Obama movement, that has any steam. She has Celebrity (R) to counter Obama’s populism. She has some nascent Community Organizing (R) to counter the ACORNholes.
Will Sarah’s influence carry enough swagger to win her a nomination for VP or President? Too early to tell. But I guarantee a Palin vs. Obama race would be an exciting race to watch, and probably come closer to winning for (R) than a Romney or a Huckholio.
Comment by serr8d on 11/28 @ 9:17 am #
Oh! and BLACK Friday, raaaaaacist!
Comment by serr8d on 11/28 @ 9:18 am #
(Hmmmm…I could do my Viagra shopping without leaving this page, it seems… (
Comment by serr8d on 11/28 @ 9:19 am #
(Not that I would need any of that, of course~!)
Comment by donald on 11/28 @ 9:38 am #
I wanna thank Ms. Woods for Saving Tiger’s ass by whacking out the rear window of his Escalade (No Buick?).
Comment by geoffb on 11/29 @ 8:14 am #
sdferr, on the off chance that you see this…
Reading Feyerabend I didn’t find to be toxic but more like looking for Nessie. A mist of illusion formed of words. Then suddenly an appearance of lucidity where I could hope that it would finally all fall into place. Only to have the mist come again obscuring all again in a mental state so foreign that I might as well be reading some other language that only looks like english.
I will try it again soon after some more thought.
Comment by sdferr on 11/29 @ 9:13 am #
Fog is a good metaphor geoffb. If only because it may induce us to awaken to an awful confusion running rampant across the breadth of our scientific pursuits. Since Hobbes time at the latest, science was intended to bring certainty into our dealings in the world. Roughly speaking, the argument went, “look to the great success Mr Newton has had in explaining the actions of bodies mathematically! Let’s do the same with politics, with human action! Yay! Scientific politics is born! Yay, and all will be well with us!”
Oops.
Comment by geoffb on 11/29 @ 9:19 am #
Church then back to reply.
Comment by B Moe on 11/29 @ 9:27 am #
The word everybody misses is attempt. As in, “let’s attempt to do the same with politics”. And you also have to accept the results, even if you don’t like them, which doesn’t set well with politicians at all.
Comment by sdferr on 11/29 @ 9:33 am #
Attempt B Moe? As in “let’s attempt health care reform NOW!”
Comment by geoffb on 11/29 @ 1:44 pm #
A few things.
I see Feyerabend as wanting to separate science from the State/politics because science is corrupting/polluting the State. This is opposite of what I believe to be true.
The Progressives adopted, from science, the words without the meaning, the forms without the substance. Cargo cult science. They are always behind the curve because they need the public’s popular, of the day, take on science. This is always anywhere from a decade to several decades behind what is taking place.
In the original Progressive era they partook of the Newtonian clockwork universe even though it had already been superseded by the work which foreshadowed Einstein. In my own 60s they came to use “relativity”, the everything’s relative, formulation. Words to make it sound “scientific”.
In science you observe something which doesn’t fit any prevailing theory. You then propose a hypothesis to explain the observation, perhaps several. These hypothesis’ must have some predictive value. Then design experiment(s) to test the predictions against reality, repeat against reality, that is the base that determines whether you have a good hypothesis, or experiment. The hypothesis is adjusted by the results of the experiment until it matches reality or is dropped because it is faulty.
In politicized science the experiment is adjusted until “reality” can be made to agree with the hypothesis. Cart first, horse later. Science is used to “prove” the theory that the politics demands to be true. Computerized modeling makes this process easier as long as you can keep the details of the program and the actual raw data secret. Using GIGO to adjust reality to fit the garbage.
To bring back what I mentioned in another thread. The concept of “winning” is different in politics, science, and religion. In science you “win” by finding a better description of the real world that can be confirmed by others. In religion you “win” by having the revelation experience of the existence and essence of God in your life. In politics a win is defined by you having the ability/right to use force to make others bend to your will.
It is politics use of force that can corrupt the others which see it as the “easy” way to win. What they get though in something other than a “win” in their area.
Comment by Danger on 11/29 @ 1:53 pm #
Geoffb,
What makes the current administration particularly dangerous is that they have combined peverted elements from all three of of those categories.
Comment by geoffb on 11/29 @ 2:09 pm #
Danger, way back in #31 I linked to a comment/assertation I made similar to yours. That was the previous thread I meant. And I agree with you completely.
Comment by SBP on 11/29 @ 2:11 pm #
They are always behind the curve because they need the public’s popular, of the day, take on science.
I call these people “sciencists”. It’s a form of religion, really.
Comment by Danger on 11/29 @ 2:18 pm #
Geoffb,
For some reason when I click on someones pw comment link I get directed to the right thread but not the right comment.
I tried to find it by looking at the comment #s but it did not match one of your posts. Their may have been a deletion of another comment that jacked up the #s
Comment by sdferr on 11/29 @ 2:20 pm #
Here’s the tricky bit that has been glossed over in the main, I think, according to Feyerabend’s position, though geoffb — and I hope you don’t think I’m wrenching too hard at your actual words, because there isn’t, it seems to me, any better means to get at the problem — so again, the tricky bit: “…against reality…” or narrowing further “…reality…”. Reality how, Feyerabend wants to ask? Isn’t a search for reality what this is about to begin with? And if not, what are we after? And if so, isn’t reality precisely the thing we are missing? So we might instead be said to compare the results of the experiment back against the “observable phenomena”, so to speak circumlocutionally. But what is that or what are they, these observable phenomena, save yet another theoretical construct already planted and carried along for the ride, even though we have no full account of them or ourselves, insofar as we are observers ignorant of the very processes we engage in as we observe? So much, I believe, from Feyerabend’s point of view.
Comment by sdferr on 11/29 @ 2:25 pm #
Danger, here is the comment geoffb meant, I think:
Comment by Danger on 11/29 @ 2:38 pm #
Thanks sdferr,
Geoffb,
I would use Global Warming as the perfect example backing up that assertion. The AGW cause has combined elements of political, religious and scientific approaches.
Comment by geoffb on 11/29 @ 2:48 pm #
Re: #89 Yes that is the one.
Re: #88 That sounds to be on the solipsistic side. I am no expert on Philosophy however so I may have that wrong.
Comment by sdferr on 11/29 @ 2:51 pm #
“solipsistic”
How so? Can you fill out that thought?
Comment by Danger on 11/29 @ 2:59 pm #
For the benefit of our Caveman commenters (like me;)
Solipsism
1. Philosophy. the theory that only the self exists, or can be proved to exist.
2. extreme preoccupation with and indulgence of one’s feelings, desires, etc.; egoistic self-absorption.
——————————————————————————–
Comment by geoffb on 11/29 @ 3:19 pm #
This, to me, sounds as if the “out-there” exists only as a part of the mind. I am most likely useing the wrong term. Let me quote from your #25.
This seems to be that freedom is that the mind chooses the reality it will live in. That mind can bend reality to be as it desires it to be and that “science” is arrogating to itself the right to choose reality for all by it’s rational investigation of the world. Left alone we could have magic be real if that is our desired world.
Comment by sdferr on 11/29 @ 3:45 pm #
I’m thinking that Feyerabend and before him Quine and Sellars are saying something to this effect: “No amount of choosing is going to extricate us from the position in which we find ourselves. We are stuck, in our accounts of whateveritmaybe we wish to account for, with theoretical whirligigs we can’t escape.” Yet isn’t there something of the nature of truth in “stuckedness”? Seems so to me, anyhow.
This isn’t to say that there is some sort of non-being absolutely in the world. It is to say, that when we attempt to account for our positions (or whatever other object to be accounted for) we’ve no choice but to reach for a theory. To borrow our old friend for yet another go-round, it’s theory-turtles all the way down.
Horton seems to think that science is “special” in a way that F. does not. From F.’s pov there is no escape from our condition as human beings, no matter the claims we may make for science or voodoo magic or political organization. Dennett and Rorty had a similar argument, I recall, though Dennett was in the position of agreeing with Rorty that Science — capital S style — wasn’t special but that science does have the best toys: e.g. Hubble Telescopes and CERN accelerators and so-on, tooly toys that extend our otherwise limited sense perceiving organs and the toys are special. Ah well.
Comment by happyfeet on 11/29 @ 3:55 pm #
Danger – when you click on comment links make sure you wait long enough – sometimes it takes you to the thread, pauses an oddly long time while the page finishes loading, and then takes you to the comment…
Comment by geoffb on 11/29 @ 5:19 pm #
Thank you sdferr.
Comment by geoffb on 11/29 @ 6:27 pm #
Since I worked on Thanksgiving, turkey was today. So this may be tryptophan related.
Politics, Science, and Religion are all agents of change.
Politics changes behavior, actions. It works through law, which is to say force. It is the fastest acting, easiest and most superficial of the three.
Science changes minds, thoughts, and in so doing also changes behavior. It is harder to do and less certain to in any way affect a change. When it does so it makes major changes in the world. It is limited by rationality and the natural world.
Religion changes hearts, feelings, and in so doing changes minds and behavior too. It is the hardest of the three and the most uncertain to achieve a change but the changes when they happen are profound and deep.
The Progressive movement tries to harness all three under the roof of the political. They take on the words and credentials of Science without the rigor and openness to error. They take from Religion the ritual of worshiping together, bonding in a cause of good. They just side line, or leave out entirely, God and the idea of there being something higher than humanity in the universe. In so doing they corrupt all three, which may be considered a good thing by some on that side.
Comment by sdferr on 11/29 @ 9:08 pm #
Mind if I quibble a little, geoffb? Hopefully, they’ll be productive quibbles, but for that judgment we’ll have to wait and see.
So, none of the starring triumvirate are agents, nor can they be agents as I understand the term.
They are the products of agency perhaps. They are all human things specifically, that is, we don’t see other animals acting to create such products. We don’t see animals engaged in scientific researches, nor in worship of deities nor in writing political philosophy.
But! Big but: We do see other animals engaged in what we call (but I assume they do not) acts of social organization or pertaining to social organization. Like ants colonies workers tending to a queen or replacing a queen. Or monkey troops in hierarchical status contests. Or members of chimp gangs picking allies for a coming fight or gorilla families pushing young males out to fend for themselves in finding or establishing a new family of their own.
Comment by geoffb on 11/30 @ 12:07 am #
I’m going to go with this off the top of my head so to speak. “agent: 3 : a means or instrument by which a guiding intelligence achieves a result”, or “2 a : something that produces or is capable of producing an effect : an active or efficient cause “.
I know however that in this type of situation I am most likely in over my head against you. Also that we shall disagree but I do not see religion as a human thing but a thing that humans are involved in with something greater than they themselves. Probably a circular definition. I certainly don’t want to get into the idea that I hold that science is one way that God has set out in the world for man to discover God, as that is just personal to me.
Comment by geoffb on 11/30 @ 12:13 am #
Which pertains to it being the easiest, simplest, fastest, most superficial of the three. Rooted in the old reptilian brain.
Comment by geoffb on 11/30 @ 12:16 am #
Strike reptilian, as merely meant something that was there before we became human.
Comment by sdferr on 11/30 @ 8:56 am #
“I am most likely in over my head against you”
First off, that is hardly the case as it just isn’t true and certainly not something I think. Not least because I don’t see us as against one another at all. And not most because there simply isn’t anything special about me that isn’t equally the case with you. Seems to me, rather, that we’re both in the same boat (or fog, to pull on your metaphor from above) trying to find our way to shore, hopefully in concert.
Perhaps I should re-examine my certainty on the question of agency in light of your definitional citation, geoffb. And in order to do so, use an example somewhat afield from our principle three concerns. Let me suggest a choir, a group of singers singing as an example. So let the choir stand in for one of the three, politics, religion, science in this instance as an agent.
So I ask myself, does the choir as choir and not as the atomized individual members of it, have an intention in sound (and does another choir have yet another set of intentions?) Does the choir have the characteristics of one having a mind, which mind will determine its purpose, chart its course to achieving that purpose, judge when the purpose has been achieved, when to start, when to stop, when to continue, in synchrony that is? I’ve been in many many a choir as singer and haven’t ever noticed the thing thinking. I’ve seen that very small choirs — taking the term somewhat loosely — on the order of 8 to 16 singers, can work effectively together without the addition of a director or conductor, but generally speaking, as the number of members grow upward from 16 the sound becomes inevitably more disjoint in the absence of a single purposive director beating time and maintaining discipline. Scatter-shot entrances and sputtering caesura abound. If the choir had a mind of its own, and with it, a purpose of its own — apart from the intentions of its constituent parts — surely it could easily achieve simple synchrony. On the other hand, the choir does begin to take on something of the color of an instrument in the hands of its director.
Still, it seems to me that the agency is in the director and not in the choir, no more than the agency would be said to be in the clarinet and not Benny Goodman.
On the question of the deity’s participation in human religious practice as agent, I have to acknowledge straightaway my own sense of uncertainty. It seems obvious that the deity stands in the relation of “that without which there would be no religion” to the existence of the religion as such, since it also seems to have that same relation to everything that is, at least in some accounts of deity, though perhaps not others. Religious practice is to some extent, it seems to me, dictated, instructed to men in the origin accounts of the various western religions anyhow, either by God directly or a man speaking, as he claims, on behalf of God. So I see no reason to deny God’s participation in a religion as an independent actor or agent in addition to the many agents we know as worshipers. So at least tacitly, I’m on board with you there, at least so long as we can revisit the question should it arise again in some context or other.
It’s interesting that looking back at religion and God’s relation to it, the argument that God stands as the necessary efficient cause of religion might serve too with regard to human beings in science, or politics. That is, without human beings making the things, we’re left with nothing in their place.
Comment by geoffb on 11/30 @ 11:45 am #
“Against” is not quite the right word, my mistake. You have read and thought more extensively than I in the realm of Philosophy. This discussion being “about” the role, use/abuse of Politics, Science, and Religion has to take place outside of them, in a “meta” arena. Philosophy would be that arena. Your knowledge of it allows you to “stand on the shoulders of giants” by having already read the thoughts of those who have devoted their lives to thinking and writing on ideas which touch upon what we are discussing. So not “against” as a contest, that implies winning and losing, more like free trade in which I wish to gain more knowledge and hope to possibly give something back in return.
What if I change the word “agent” to “method”. In the definition I gave I was leaning on “instrument” a tool which is used to effect change, That Politics, Science and Religion are methods of change. Politics is a method which can be used to change behavior, actions. Science is a method which can be used to change minds, thoughts, and in so doing also changes behavior. Religion is a method which can be used to change hearts, feelings, and in so doing changes minds and behavior too. Would that be better? I see all three as having their origins rooted in basic instincts that seem to be part of the structure of our brains.
Politics the oldest, a method using the basic urge to survive as it’s origin. Survival being to win out over other being to get the best/most resources to continue the individual’s gene line.
Science, a method which channels the basic instinctive curiosity. A trait which seems inborn especially in the primate line though there are others that have it too.
Religion also seems to have a basic origin. There is a seemingly basic sense/need in humans to see ourselves as part of something larger than ourselves. Who am I? Why am I an I? It may come out of the fact that we, humans, are aware of time, past, present and future and of individuality. Philosophy also seems to have it’s roots in the same structures of the brain.
That I see this as a gift from God, to give us a yearning to search for and connect in some form with God, I set aside in the realization that other things, gods, can take that role in ones life.