Cliché Reality

Ah. That makes much more sense. ;)

2012-05-21T18:22:51.113-06:00

Ah. That makes much more sense. ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shingon_Buddhism#Prac...

2012-05-21T00:20:04.221-06:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shingon_Buddhism#Practices_and_features is good too:

``A core meditative practice of Shingon is Ajikan (阿字觀), "Meditating on the Letter 'A'", which uses the Siddham letter representing the sound "Ah."``

The letter A is a big deal in Sanskrit and by exte...

2012-05-21T00:18:20.200-06:00

The letter A is a big deal in Sanskrit and by extension in Shingon. The sound ah is considered to be the root of every other sound. Obviously, it's not the Roman letter A, but the Siddham alphabet's A. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Siddham_a.svg

can somebody help me with the interpretation of th...

2012-05-03T05:48:33.706-06:00

can somebody help me with the interpretation of this Lord Byron's poem?
My mother-tongue is not English, that's why I could use a little help here.
Thanks!

Good to see that your blog is still active... Its ...

2012-04-27T09:44:03.964-06:00

Good to see that your blog is still active... Its been quite sometime since I made an appearance here on Blogger yet I do find comments like these interesting. Perhaps though the mask is something that many people wear... its an intricate part of the feeling of greatness that comes with the territory, we are after all 'Earth worm Gods who shit' (Ernest Becker).

Definitely start with his short stories, the short...

2012-03-03T10:37:37.106-07:00

Definitely start with his short stories, the shorter the better (Dreamtigers, Toenails, etc.), and then move onto his longer and longer pieces. Finally, you may skip his very longest story altogether (you'll figure out which it is) because it was his only attempt in life at a novel, and after too much editing and not enough progress it's just wonky and dense. Plus you'll be more than sated by all the work leading up to there.

This is really late, but here is my impression - s...

2012-02-13T23:10:53.191-07:00

This is really late, but here is my impression - sad that all of these are merely our impressions, although I think this may be part of what Nietzsche was saying:

To wear the mask is deliberate for someone who has discovered something profound, who is on a dark path to greatness - a place where no one else dares to go - that very few will ever understand. Isolation, resulting from one's own rigorous thought experiments (genealogy - discovering truth and uprooting "truths"), from one's actual living of these experiments, is central to Nietzsche.

The mask is that which allows the profound individual to walk in public. It allows him / her to remain sane while standing within the herd. One must journey there masked if one is profound.

The mask also serves as a filter for the proper audience to greatness. When one masks their greatness (i.e., great thoughts, concepts, discoveries), one weeds out the stupid (to put it bluntly) - those literally undeserving of profundity.

Good that many should confuse your greatness with something horrible. Good that they should mistake it for something else entirely. For they are not your audience, they are not your equals. Insofar as your thought is akin to something utterly beautiful, there are some (in fact, there are many) who deserve only what is proper for their rank: mediocrity.

I've been thinking about confirmation bias in ...

2011-03-15T00:49:00.518-06:00

I've been thinking about confirmation bias in relation to media coverage of Japan's nuclear disaster. On the one hand, the coverage is naturally overblown, since even if things go completely worst case, the number of people who lose their lives will be dwarfed by the quake/tsunami. On the other hand, I find the "everything is fine; the media is dumb; they don't know about SCIENCE" posts off putting as well, since they seem overly sanguine about the possibility of a worst case scenario and don't take into account the fact that a) not everything always goes according to plan and b) the government/industry is almost certainly lying to us about the nature of the incident, because that's what people in authority *do* in this sort of situation. (In old Japan, a doctor wouldn't tell you if you had a terminal illness, because why worry your pretty little head about that in your final hours?)

Anyway, I don't know if there's a way to read the reports about the reactor without falling prey to confirmation bias from one side or the other. :-/

Hey, I am checking this blog using the phone and t...

2011-01-29T13:25:52.208-07:00

Hey, I am checking this blog using the phone and this appears to be kind of odd. Thought you'd wish to know. This is a great write-up nevertheless, did not mess that up.

- David

umm, that's the title of the blog, that doesn&...

2011-01-23T13:15:23.783-07:00

umm, that's the title of the blog, that doesn't thereby mean every post is a cliche. Perhaps this will help clarify what this blog is about.

So what exactly is the cliche?

2011-01-23T12:08:03.890-07:00

So what exactly is the cliche?

Il semble que vous soyez un expert dans ce domaine...

2011-01-05T04:36:31.591-07:00

Il semble que vous soyez un expert dans ce domaine, vos remarques sont tres interessantes, merci.

- Daniel

Based on his second inaugural address (on the wall...

2010-10-31T02:14:09.470-06:00

Based on his second inaugural address (on the wall at the Lincoln Memorial), it's pretty clear that Lincoln thought that the high body count of the Civil War was caused by God judging the US as evil for allowing slavery, and so God was pouring out some OT wrath on us about it. Not the sort of thing a present day politician would ever say, but clearly what Lincoln was claiming in the inaugural.

Those young, male internet users will become old e...

2010-10-16T10:19:26.075-06:00

Those young, male internet users will become old eventually.

I was thinking particularly of things I dislike about reddit about programming Q&A and how they seem better on StackOverflow. But that won't necessarily carry over.

To be valuable it would need a good number of academic philosophers contributing to it I'd think or people with that level of commitment and education. I don't actually think it would need to be real philosophy though, just a place to get better direction on very particular questions. That seems to be what the on-topic sample questions are like so far.

I'm not really sure what I think about this. D...

2010-10-16T03:22:35.290-06:00

I'm not really sure what I think about this. Does philosophy need voting and karma and short pithy answers? I guess such a forum would be helpful for some people, but I also think it would tend to attract trolls. Plato was probably right when he said it was bad that nowadays young people are attracted to philosophy and old people ignore it. The young (and especially the young, male internet user) have the wrong moral dispositions for doing real philosophy.

Feel free Peter. Glad to have readers.

2010-10-15T09:26:16.149-06:00

Feel free Peter. Glad to have readers.

Hello there, This is a message for the webmaste...

2010-10-15T03:44:39.417-06:00

Hello there,

This is a message for the webmaster/admin here at clichereality.blogspot.com.

Can I use part of the information from your post above if I provide a backlink back to your site?

Thanks,
Peter

good points and the details are more specific than...

2010-09-20T10:54:57.663-06:00

good points and the details are more specific than elsewhere, thanks.

- Norman

Brilliant site, I had not come across clicherealit...

2010-09-18T01:00:42.070-06:00

Brilliant site, I had not come across clichereality.blogspot.com previously during my searches!
Keep up the good work!

"But the time of awakening is beautiful, too,...

2010-08-28T12:51:55.890-06:00

"But the time of awakening is beautiful, too, if only we are not wakened unseasonably."

Thanks. I'm glad to hear that some people got ...

2010-08-11T20:42:27.384-06:00

Thanks. I'm glad to hear that some people got what I was trying to get at with that one. I was a bit nervous about how it would be received.

To turn Socrates into a Christian or merge Buddha ...

2010-08-08T12:33:38.479-06:00

To turn Socrates into a Christian or merge Buddha with Christ is a failure to approach either on their own terms. It's not clear to me that they should be appropriated in that way.

Yeah, I don't mean that there aren't Chris...

2010-08-07T16:01:56.361-06:00

Yeah, I don't mean that there aren't Christians who have followed that path. What I mean is I don't see how they could get it from Christianity itself. In other words, Christianity isn't sufficient by itself in my view. Lots has been brought into it though, and that's great.

I meant homogeny as in sameness, not sure if that&...

2010-08-07T15:56:04.124-06:00

I meant homogeny as in sameness, not sure if that's a proper use in this context. Hegemony probably applies as well.

There are many (several) in Christian history that...

2010-08-07T15:44:16.141-06:00

There are many (several) in Christian history that acknowledge that "all truth is God's truth". Thus, they legitimize trying to understand other cultures. If not, then there would be no Justin Martyr to recognize that Socrates is a Christian before Christ. There would be no Aquinas to merge Aristotle with Augustine and no Thomas Merton to merge Buddha with Christ.

It is important to criticize and to commend.