2018.05.11 - Day 58

Zen, you need to back up to day 52 to see the photo edited 23:18, 10 May 2018

WB Eliza :)

Ha Riddle. Somebody beat me to it again :) I usually check day-before posts so don't know how I missed that one.

Storm - wow you are getting into huge areas of political philosophy here. Social contract theory for one. Your idea sounds a bit like this?
'In the early Platonic dialogue, Crito, Socrates makes a compelling argument as to why he must stay in prison and accept the death penalty, rather than escape and go into exile in another Greek city. He personifies the Laws of Athens, and, speaking in their voice, explains that he has acquired an overwhelming obligation to obey the Laws because they have made his entire way of life, and even the fact of his very existence, possible.'
http://www.iep.utm.edu/soc-cont/

Religious moral ideas posit an isolated individual making their way through life making moral choices between good and bad actions (and being punished for making 'bad' decisions.) Lately I find non-
dualist memes of 'no-choice' creeping into our society - the idea that choices are dictated by our cultural indoctrination, education, upbringing, genetic traits, interests, abilities, and so on. Some, like the neuroscientist David Eagleman, say we should redesign our law systems to reflect this new understanding.

Attached a little pastel cow sketch I did years ago but not much colour in it :)

A sunlit pasture is such a lovely place to be.
I imagine the feeling of the sun, the warm smell of the cow, the grass, the earth,the birds nearby.
It is all familiar.Maybe the sensory experience for unfamiar places is harder to imagine for me.
Not as natural.
There was a Dream this morning.
With children, playing on vacation, perhaps extended families joining together.

I have been trying to follow along here.Appreciating all.

No real work done/effort made regarding unlearning isolation today, but if I consider how peaceful the cow sketch is, it is the spaciousness it implies, and the cow just doing what it does. :)

Love children dreams. I've had a string of them since 99 Days began for some reason.

Zen - Yes huge areas and deep waters. But I have no illusions: I'm just reading - childlike - letting my imagination run, brainstorming and spouting ideas. :) There are many minds far abler than mine who have long studied, analyzed, categorized and refuted these ideas and many more, and built whole structures of thought.

I'm sometimes sad, even regretful, that there are many such thought structures that I shall scarcely touch in my lifetime, and many more for which I'm not equipped to contribute to or even understand properly if I did touch. (This is the downside of my "Joy of being Second" philosophy I mentioned on Day 33.) So I love to read and associate - if I can - with these intellectuals whom I respect so highly, but I'm conscious of being transparently superficial to them. (Yes, classic Impostor Syndrome, but, I think, with good reason!)

That said, thank you for the Social Contract Theory link! It's fascinating, though I'm not yet convinced anything like my hypothesis is in there (though I've not read it all yet!).

David Eagleman is also interesting, if nothing else for his work on Synesthesia. I think I may have mentioned that I was profoundly synesthesic as a child and was quite surprised to find that it was unusual. It faded in my teens but I still retain small vestiges.

Eliza - amazing news on the paralegal course! I don't know yet if I will follow up that thesis. If I do it will be after completing Homo Ludens, which I want to complete in the 99 days.

I had the same impression as you with Ello. I liked its emphasis on the arts. But I like even more the decentralized philosophy of Mastodon. It's refreshing to be able to browse through the posts on an instance (as I'm sure I used to enjoy doing once on Twitter), or through someone's posting history, and not come across the ego and toxicity that has infected so much social media nowadays (or the comment sections of Youtube, or newspapers, or pretty much anything else). For more info initially, I suggest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software) After that I can advise.
Edit: I've now tried Mastodon on a PC browser, iPad browser and as an iPad app, and I'd rank the experience in that order best to worst.

Home Ludens: I heard back on Mastodon from that Finnish postdoc researcher who had commented they'd recently read it as a group. I had asked him for further reading list suggestions. He said that, after Homo Ludens, the next classic on the reading list would definitely be:
* Man, Play and Games by Roger Caillois (1958, tr from French 1961) "builds on Huizinga's thinking"
and if I want something a bit different:
* The Grasshopper - Games, Life and Utopia by Bernard Suits (3rd ed. 2014) "just a delightful book"
Those can be next. :) edited 04:56, 12 May 2018