Trickle-down Metaphysics with Gary Lachman | Parallax Views

[@grasse77]

Brilliant talk.

[@TheExceptionalState]

Great video. Lachman mentions his book The Secret Teachers of the Western World. Digging around in there may lead you to a 3rd way 1:07:00. It goes by the name of Ethical Individualism".

[@Eriugena8]

ha, Lachman's takedown of the Big Bang keeps getting better. 32:45-33:50

[@blackplague-x3y]

Yes, Gary you are not a scientist nor a philosopher. What a pseudo intellectual he appears to be.

[@bornatona3954]

Bulshiter is he

[@rebeccaaldrich3396]

As I watch this current political theater about Trump, I believe this guy. Trump keeps beating the odds over and over again. It's actually scary.

[@TooLooseLeTrek]

The screen flickers and there appears to be an image flashing. Slowing down the speed does no good as it is still too fast. Reminds me of the advertising schemes of madison ave, flashing coke images on the screen during the ads on the silver screen before the film starts.

[@geoffreynhill2833]

Amor Vincit Omnia. A long way but the only way... ❤ (Green Fire, UK) 🌈🦉

[@charlescawley9923]

Although erudite, this sort of stuff was exactly why I fell out with academic philosophers (an oxymoron) at Manchester. Interestingly Wittgenstein, if he is mentioned, is shunted off into the usual obscurity of denial. His remark as if summarising The Tractatus : "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" is the most censorious and destructive in the history of philosophy. Yet this man is treated by modern day academics like some kind of god In the supposedly change of mind posthumously published, The Investigations, Wittgenstein laid down the foundation argument for the relativity of language and referred to evidence that all language is culturally relative and reality. Based on the idea (a word loathed by Wittgenstein and his acolytes) that humans perceive without physiology, he concluded that naming things was purely a cultural activity. He hypothesised humans as they are not, to prove what he wanted to be true. In this disgraceful simplistic device the modern view that reality is what you say it is, 'the triumph of the will' of Solipsism if you will, flourishes But following academic tradition, Lachman steers clear of speaking the truth. Like many intellectuals, he dare not say the King has got no clothes. Wittgenstein made humans subject to inhumanity which is much the way the modern day consequences of his wretchedly flawed philosophy are going.

[@GaryLachman]

How strange that you think I follow "academic tradition." Quite the contrary. I am no academic and my talk is precisely about the deterioration of academic philosophy, under the auspices of deconstructionism and postmodernism.

[@charlescawley9923]

@@GaryLachman Then why little or no mention of Wittgenstein? A strange, special status appears to attach to him despite his obviously flawed argument about the way language is learnt. You are, as you say, no academic, one up to you there but appear to act, in this respect, as many of them do. It appears important to address his arguments.

[@GaryLachman]

@@charlescawley9923 He's simply not involved in the story I tell. Although I should have mentioned him when I remarked that the language question had already been a hot topic in early 20th century Vienna. Alas, you can't talk about everything. Even Wittgenstein knew that...

[@charlescawley9923]

@@GaryLachman At University in the 1970s he was repeatedly trotted out to silence undergraduates. His theory of how language was learnt clearly establishes a cultural and relativist viewpoint. Perhaps you were unaware. Meanwhile virtually no one picks up on fatal and obvious flaws in his work. The point is that he provided what others saw as a definitive argument backing the idea of a solely relative / cultural base to language. Modern day (strange) claims such as people from some cultures can't see certain colours because they don't have a word for them derive from this approach. He was promoted/tolerated post WW2 by a political establishment after they saw what depths of inhumanity and depravity ideology caused. This prolonged his star status after the impact of Russell's approval began to wear thin. As an 'apostle' he was far from universally popular. It's a pity he did not stick to jet rotors at Manchester where he even had a patent on them. They were later used on the Fairey Rotodine after his death, in the 1950s

[@Eriugena8]

If Nietsche were alive he might say, "word diarrhea". Is not an armchair expert in the comments section saying he is oppressed by some amorphous elite, an example of the advent of Nihilism in action? His disillusionment with one authority is parlayed into existential arrow throwing at anyone who has tried to build anything, to connect ideas. Lachman doesn't get paid by institutions, writes cool books, and gets lobbed a mouthful of blah blah about Wittgenstein in one of his only three youtube interviews in the last two years? C'mon. just stop dude, hit up your journal first.

[@tomburroughes9834]

I'd be interested to know if someone could challenge the idea, which the speaker said was endorsed by Plato and Kant, that humans are born with certain "categories" or "forms" embedded in their heads. A more nuanced view is that consciousness has a certain identity but that ideas don't just exist already; they have to be grasped, and that involves effort. We introspectively know that we are making this effort from our earliest selves in thinking about maths or painting a picture of our parents, pet dog, or whatever.

[@GaryLachman]

Plato believed we came equipped with what he called "forms" that allow us to grasp our experience. Kant spoke of categories, Jung of archetypes. They are not inherited ideas, but the means by which we can grasp them.

[@Revolver1701]

Mister Potatohead: I think therefore I yam.

[@blackplague-x3y]

That was the worst attempt at explaining a disconnected theory, and ended on Pepe the frog. He is trying to pack too much into a little box, or is just lost in his connections. He should have streamlined his thougts a little more.

[@bos3259]

Midwhitery

[@bornatona3954]

Whan I heard jd trump Iknew it has nothing with philosophy Bs political agenda