I'm 16 and I've never had cable or the like. I never miss it. I do have a TV, but it's solely for home video use. I don't think not having a TV has adversely affected me much. When people find out I don't watch TV, they do generally think I'm weird. Of course, they do that anyway, seeing as how I'm your typical unattractive, self-esteemless book and computer nerd, but I think I'd rather be that than a couch potato. How many people become philosophy and religion majors in college at my age (or any age) anyway? =)
While I'm on the subject, does anyone else here have problems with DVD's video quality? I've seen a couple, and they had flagrantly bad artifacts like a poor quality JPEG or PC video. I don't know about you, but I think it's a good idea to stick with VHS/SVHS and LD. Analog noise is a lot less obtrusive than video noise. Not to mention DVD has national lockout, and a lot of the videos I watch tend to be international-only releases.
Well, it's pretty obvious that the Matrix was writen by geeks or nerds or whatever you want to call them. From the references to pop culture through the influences from role-playing games (already been briefly touched in earlier comments) and Hong Kong action theatre to Japanese animation (anime).
I, personally, caught a lot of similarities to various anime in the movie. The spidery way the agents moved reminded me of something by Shirow Masamune (is it Masamune Shirow or the other way around in the English name order? I can never tell.) The slow-motion firing of the guns with the sliders moving and the ammunition being ejected reminded me a lot of Kenichi Sonoda's Gunsmith Cats. When Neo was running down the hallway by the columns with full-auto weapons fire blowing chips off the stone around him, it looked a lot like a scene in Ghost in the Shell. When the lead female character was about to say something to Neo and the subway train drove by, it reminded me of a gadget often used in anime, from the new Kimagure Orange Road movie, to the Here is Greenwood OVA series. When Agent Smith died, little cracks appeared and light started shooting out of him like almost every fantasy anime ever made when they kill the big nasty thing. Even the freeze and pan effect is used a lot in anime, especially the older ones, I've just not seen it in an action sequence before. The list goes on and on.
Actually, you could probably do it either way. I haven't had much experience with modern Indian languages, but I'm guessing that they use a different alphabet than the Roman one we employ. From my limited experience with Vedic Sanskrit, I would imagine that modern Indian languages use a variety of different letters for sounds that would have the same letter in our alphabet, if we even use them. There's almost never only one way to transliterate words and names from one alphabet to another. Hence Japanese "konbanha," "kombanha," "kombanwa," "kombanha," and the like, or Chinese "Mao Tse-Tung," "Mao Zedong," and so on.
Why would god (the creator of everything) design all the logic and reasoning on this planet and then lead our reasoning to conclude that he's nuts?
God doesn't have to be the creator of everything. God made the world and humans, among other things, according to the Judaeo-Christian tradition, but nowhere, to my knowledge, is it said in any particularly authoritative scipture that the makings of humans are the makings of God. Quite the contrary, in fact. In the Bible, humankind was punished for building the Tower of Babel, for instance, and I think it gave the reason that humankind was trying to rival God's creation.
Well, the worst part of Plato's system wasn't entirely his fault. Parmenides, I believe, was the first Greek philosopher to come up with the idea of the single, passive God who is not emotional but pure logic. No doubt his ideas influenced the Stoics or vice versa.
I personally entertain the idea that if there is a single God, he is probably (hopefully) the pathetic God of the Hebrews instead of the cold, emotionless God of the Eleatic school. The ones that believed in a God that matched their world view, anyway.
BTW, anyone who's interested in reading more on this should check out the two-volume series by Abraham J. Heschel called "The Prophets," particularly the second book. It's fun, well-written, and easy to understand.
At any rate, no matter how misguided Plato was, those thoughts are still pretty much dominant in conventional Western thought. Pure order (reason) is thought of as being the ultimate good, and people as being unable to fit that. Therefore, according to that view, people are inheritantly evil. Needless to say, I disagree with that. I also technically disagree with the Hebrew pathetic God, but I would be much more willing to believe in it than the Platonic God.
Back to Plato's idea of the Good. There is one Good, one Truth, one Sun, one God, whatever you want to call it. Anything less is tainted by that which is not good, effectively evil. So if evil is eliminated, there is only one path that is pure good, so there is only one path that can be taken. In other words, no free choice and no free will.
Or at least I think that'll work. I'm not much into arguments for or against God, and I don't think much of Plato so I may have gotten his ideas confused in my reluctance to get them straight.
Well, there are many ways at looking at this. Here are a few.
Perhaps it is evil to abolish evil, since doing so would effectively remove free will.
Perhaps, as has been said in previous postings, good cannot exist without evil. Perhaps the more Taoist way of looking at these things holds true, and there isn't really good and evil but rather positive and negative, and these things are (or should be) always in equality.
Perhaps the Zen Buddhists are right, and this whole human perception of reality is fundamentally flawed.
Then again, it's pretty clear that the Greek dualistic/logical view and the Hebrew God don't mix well. The pathetic God view of the Hebrews accepted such things as emotion and morality as being as true as logic and reason. They really didn't much separate them from a theological point of view. The dualistic body/soul emotion/reason view of Plato and his fellow philosophers viewed pure reason as Truth and God, free from emotion. Obviously, when the two mix, as they often do in Christianity, there is going to be some sort of confusion. There's got to be a compromise somewhere. It's pretty obvious that the Hebrew God is not logical if much of the Bible is anywhere near accurate, as it is full of his fatherly love and jealous wrath. Logic, after all, is a human invention. It's not necissarily true when applied to God, or even to reality.
However it works out, you can't really prove something like whether God exists or not using logic, even if the attempted proof is logically sound.
For what it matters, I'm an atheist existentialist. But I hold that my belief is just that, a belief. It's arguably not truth, if there even is one absolute thing we call truth. So I guess I border somewhat on agnosticism.
Yes, I know my spelling and editting sucks, and my opinion may not agree with yours. Surprise.
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I'm 16 and I've never had cable or the like. I never miss it. I do have a TV, but it's solely for home video use. I don't think not having a TV has adversely affected me much. When people find out I don't watch TV, they do generally think I'm weird. Of course, they do that anyway, seeing as how I'm your typical unattractive, self-esteemless book and computer nerd, but I think I'd rather be that than a couch potato. How many people become philosophy and religion majors in college at my age (or any age) anyway? =)
While I'm on the subject, does anyone else here have problems with DVD's video quality? I've seen a couple, and they had flagrantly bad artifacts like a poor quality JPEG or PC video. I don't know about you, but I think it's a good idea to stick with VHS/SVHS and LD. Analog noise is a lot less obtrusive than video noise. Not to mention DVD has national lockout, and a lot of the videos I watch tend to be international-only releases.
Well, it's pretty obvious that the Matrix was writen by geeks or nerds or whatever you want to call them. From the references to pop culture through the influences from role-playing games (already been briefly touched in earlier comments) and Hong Kong action theatre to Japanese animation (anime).
I, personally, caught a lot of similarities to various anime in the movie. The spidery way the agents moved reminded me of something by Shirow Masamune (is it Masamune Shirow or the other way around in the English name order? I can never tell.) The slow-motion firing of the guns with the sliders moving and the ammunition being ejected reminded me a lot of Kenichi Sonoda's Gunsmith Cats. When Neo was running down the hallway by the columns with full-auto weapons fire blowing chips off the stone around him, it looked a lot like a scene in Ghost in the Shell. When the lead female character was about to say something to Neo and the subway train drove by, it reminded me of a gadget often used in anime, from the new Kimagure Orange Road movie, to the Here is Greenwood OVA series. When Agent Smith died, little cracks appeared and light started shooting out of him like almost every fantasy anime ever made when they kill the big nasty thing. Even the freeze and pan effect is used a lot in anime, especially the older ones, I've just not seen it in an action sequence before. The list goes on and on.
Take a look at http://www.white- wolf.com/Games/Pages/Sig%20Characters/Dante.html.
Is it just me or does Morpheus heavily resemble Dante?
Actually, you could probably do it either way. I haven't had much experience with modern Indian languages, but I'm guessing that they use a different alphabet than the Roman one we employ. From my limited experience with Vedic Sanskrit, I would imagine that modern Indian languages use a variety of different letters for sounds that would have the same letter in our alphabet, if we even use them. There's almost never only one way to transliterate words and names from one alphabet to another. Hence Japanese "konbanha," "kombanha," "kombanwa," "kombanha," and the like, or Chinese "Mao Tse-Tung," "Mao Zedong," and so on.
Why would god (the creator of everything) design all the logic and reasoning on this planet and then lead our reasoning to conclude that he's nuts?
God doesn't have to be the creator of everything. God made the world and humans, among other things, according to the Judaeo-Christian tradition, but nowhere, to my knowledge, is it said in any particularly authoritative scipture that the makings of humans are the makings of God. Quite the contrary, in fact. In the Bible, humankind was punished for building the Tower of Babel, for instance, and I think it gave the reason that humankind was trying to rival God's creation.
Well, the worst part of Plato's system wasn't entirely his fault. Parmenides, I believe, was the first Greek philosopher to come up with the idea of the single, passive God who is not emotional but pure logic. No doubt his ideas influenced the Stoics or vice versa.
I personally entertain the idea that if there is a single God, he is probably (hopefully) the pathetic God of the Hebrews instead of the cold, emotionless God of the Eleatic school. The ones that believed in a God that matched their world view, anyway.
BTW, anyone who's interested in reading more on this should check out the two-volume series by Abraham J. Heschel called "The Prophets," particularly the second book. It's fun, well-written, and easy to understand.
At any rate, no matter how misguided Plato was, those thoughts are still pretty much dominant in conventional Western thought. Pure order (reason) is thought of as being the ultimate good, and people as being unable to fit that. Therefore, according to that view, people are inheritantly evil. Needless to say, I disagree with that. I also technically disagree with the Hebrew pathetic God, but I would be much more willing to believe in it than the Platonic God.
Back to Plato's idea of the Good. There is one Good, one Truth, one Sun, one God, whatever you want to call it. Anything less is tainted by that which is not good, effectively evil. So if evil is eliminated, there is only one path that is pure good, so there is only one path that can be taken. In other words, no free choice and no free will.
Or at least I think that'll work. I'm not much into arguments for or against God, and I don't think much of Plato so I may have gotten his ideas confused in my reluctance to get them straight.
Well, there are many ways at looking at this. Here are a few.
Perhaps it is evil to abolish evil, since doing so would effectively remove free will.
Perhaps, as has been said in previous postings, good cannot exist without evil. Perhaps the more Taoist way of looking at these things holds true, and there isn't really good and evil but rather positive and negative, and these things are (or should be) always in equality.
Perhaps the Zen Buddhists are right, and this whole human perception of reality is fundamentally flawed.
Then again, it's pretty clear that the Greek dualistic/logical view and the Hebrew God don't mix well. The pathetic God view of the Hebrews accepted such things as emotion and morality as being as true as logic and reason. They really didn't much separate them from a theological point of view. The dualistic body/soul emotion/reason view of Plato and his fellow philosophers viewed pure reason as Truth and God, free from emotion. Obviously, when the two mix, as they often do in Christianity, there is going to be some sort of confusion. There's got to be a compromise somewhere. It's pretty obvious that the Hebrew God is not logical if much of the Bible is anywhere near accurate, as it is full of his fatherly love and jealous wrath. Logic, after all, is a human invention. It's not necissarily true when applied to God, or even to reality.
However it works out, you can't really prove something like whether God exists or not using logic, even if the attempted proof is logically sound.
For what it matters, I'm an atheist existentialist. But I hold that my belief is just that, a belief. It's arguably not truth, if there even is one absolute thing we call truth. So I guess I border somewhat on agnosticism.
Yes, I know my spelling and editting sucks, and my opinion may not agree with yours. Surprise.