The Cyrenaics

[Scourge of God]

Oh lord, take a joke.

I can take a decent joke, but this one wasn't original. Or funny. It's yet another variation on "I bet you never get laid, hur hur." What's next? "Hur hur, I bet you live in your mom's basement!" Is Living Colour your favorite black metal band, per chance?

The bigger problem was that you chose to evade a legitimate question (and, given your inability to answer it so far, apparently a tough one as well) by resorting to a humor-challenged 'joke' and letting the peanut gallery carry you to a self-declared 'victory.' Again, you're better than that, and, consequently, we expect more from you.

 

[Seditious]

this is what I was askin' another fella about in one of the other threads, the point on pleasure---if it's the highest good then you'd pursue it with your concern for the present, not some abstract 'better to be happy and slim when I'm 65 than enjoying a cake now' calculus. Seems like those fellas got the point back then


I can't say I saw anything I agreed with in what I skimmed through though.

 

[derbeder]

Do you enjoy being a giant fucking hypocrite?

Yes, indeed...

 

[speed]

I can take a decent joke, but this one wasn't original. Or funny. It's yet another variation on "I bet you never get laid, hur hur." What's next? "Hur hur, I bet you live in your mom's basement!" Is Living Colour your favorite black metal band, per chance?

The bigger problem was that you chose to evade a legitimate question (and, given your inability to answer it so far, apparently a tough one as well) by resorting to a humor-challenged 'joke' and letting the peanut gallery carry you to a self-declared 'victory.' Again, you're better than that, and, consequently, we expect more from you.

I dont get it. I love (in a non-gay way) infoterror. We joke around all the time. There was no ill-will involved. And besides, you make your own little jokes at others expense all the time (and I laugh at them and enjoy them), so I dont get it.

Anyhoo, to answer the substantive point infoterror has made, yes, making love with another one is in love with, is a transcendent experience not only due to the pleasure one receives during this process, but I suppose through the acceptance and understanding of the other, the desire to have the other. Its much like Aristophanes' statements about men and women being two halves of a whole in the Symposium.

And even if one is not in love with said fraulein (or herr) one is copulating with, I still find sex to be a transcendent experience. One forgets the outside world, and experiences true pleasure--and its transcendent while the act is being done.

 

[speed]

I thought it was a pretty funny joke. But then I'm English.

I guess I've come to associate Infoterror with the guy in his sig to the point where they are one and the same in my mind. The thought of that vaguely psychotic, yet not unalluring, smugly obese gentleman heading to the woods with a sweetheart for wistful, lugubrious necrophilia and forays into holocausting and cruel mustard gas will forever haunt my dreams. Look at his glasses: the flames of genocide flicker in their tint.

 

[Έρεβος]

And even if one is not in love with said fraulein (or herr) one is copulating with, I still find sex to be a transcendent experience.

How is it transcendent? Experiences, like sex, that do not go beyond the physical in any manner, mean nothing in themselves. That sounds all too much like the far too typical modern ignorance, sex being the greatest experience possible, or close to it. That is not transcendence; that is blinding yourself by immersing in shallow indulgences.

 

[speed]

How is it transcendent? Experiences, like sex, that do not go beyond the physical in any manner, mean nothing in themselves. That sounds all too much like the far too typical modern ignorance, sex being the greatest experience possible, or close to it. That is not transcendence; that is blinding yourself by immersing in shallow indulgences.

Jesus, you guys sound like puritanical Descartes' or something. There is a direct transcendent and egalitarian pleasure in sex. WHy does it only have to be physical? Why do you guys keep going back to the physical nature? Its more than just physical--its two bodies, two minds, two emotions coming together as one; there is nothing more transcendent than that (and if there is something else, I sure the hell havent found it). One can find the glories of this transcendence in every religion and culture. And the final product of this transcendence is life itself.

I've noticed a certain prudishness; a certain social awkwardness in many philosophically minded people--an awkwardness that manifests itself in a desire to turn away from the body and life, and to turn toward pure ideas and thought. This is obviously one of my biggest complaints of modernism and the last 300 years of philosophy since Descartes. Enjoy and try to understand the world for fucksakes. The mind and the body truly are one.

 

[derbeder]

sex while on speed or coke is supposedly one of the most intensely pleasurable experiences one can have

 

[Έρεβος]

Yes, lets all buy a bunch of coke and speed, have sex, and "enjoy" life. Sounds great, incredibly fulfilling and meaningful - transcendental! But why even sex? That is too much effort! Let's just buy a bunch of pornos and masturbate for the rest of our lives! Why not throw in some acid, too? Yeah! Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy.

If sex is "transcendental" than so is tripping on drugs or any sort of moronic pleasure.

 

[derbeder]

i suppose my lame pun on "speed" has been missed

oh boy...

one would think i would not be promoting drugs on this board. so that should have been a giveaway. i do not wish to create a drugs thread after seeing the former ones. it would not be a good idea to encourage someone (or even put the idea in his head) to try things out.

 

[Scourge of God]

Speed, the problem I see is that you seem to essentially agree with infoterror's assessment: transcendence lies not in the physical act of sex, but in the emotional consonance of those involved (i.e. 'love'), so where does that leave pleasure for pleasure's sake as a transcendent act?

 

[Έρεβος]

i suppose my lame pun on "speed" has been missed

oh boy...

one would think i would not be promoting drugs on this board. so that should have been a giveaway. i do not wish to create a drugs thread after seeing the former ones. it would not be a good idea to encourage someone (or even put the idea in his head) to try things out.

Yes, I noticed. I was just further using drugs as part of my point, not really addressing you.

 

[speed]

Speed, the problem I see is that you seem to essentially agree with infoterror's assessment: transcendence lies not in the physical act of sex, but in the emotional consonance of those involved (i.e. 'love'), so where does that leave pleasure for pleasure's sake as a transcendent act?

I do, and I dont. Contradiction I suppose. It can be more transcendent when infoterror's assessment is correct, yet frankly this is not always the case. Im sorry, Im a debauched, debauched man.

 

[Demiurge]

Is anyone going to explain just what is being transcended or is it better to argue about a floating signifier?

 

[Demiurge]

I will offer my own take. Make of it what you will...

Sex is 'transcendent' in the sense that it eradicates individuality. When one is in the thralls of pleasure, a certain conceptual vacuity takes hold. One becomes lost to the world of things and abstract ideas with which he is normally concerned. The thoughts that one usually uses to individuate himself are ephemerally lost, then when it is over, he sinks back into his persona. Perhaps, another way of saying it is that orgasm cuts away the pretensions with which we shroud ourselves.

 

[Demiurge]

Yes, lets all buy a bunch of coke and speed, have sex, and "enjoy" life. Sounds great, incredibly fulfilling and meaningful - transcendental! But why even sex? That is too much effort! Let's just buy a bunch of pornos and masturbate for the rest of our lives! Why not throw in some acid, too? Yeah! Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy.

If sex is "transcendental" than so is tripping on drugs or any sort of moronic pleasure.

Drugs produce experiences which are phenomenally indistinguishable from so-called mystical transcendence, if subjective reports are anything to go by, not to mention that psychedelic substances have been used by mystics since the dawn of time.

 

[Demiurge]

Edited double post. Why are my messages taking 60 seconds to go through? Nothing wrong w/ my connection.

 

[Έρεβος]

Drugs produce experiences which are phenomenally indistinguishable from so-called mystical transcendence, if subjective reports are anything to go by, not to mention that psychedelic substances have been used by mystics since the dawn of time.

Psychedelic drugs cause a shift in how one views reality, nothing transcendental.

 

[speed]

I will offer my own take. Make of it what you will...

Sex is 'transcendent' in the sense that it eradicates individuality. When one is in the thralls of pleasure, a certain conceptual vacuity takes hold. One becomes lost to the world of things and abstract ideas with which he is normally concerned. The thoughts that one usually uses to individuate himself are ephemerally lost, then when it is over, he sinks back into his persona. Perhaps, another way of saying it is that orgasm cuts away the pretensions with which we shroud ourselves.

I totally concur.

 

[speed]

Psychedelic drugs cause a shift in how one views reality, nothing transcendental.

Jesus, then define transcendent. Is anything transcendent? Is transcendence perhaps a personal thing (as the Cyrenaics postulate with pleasure, morals, etc)? Some may find transcendence in sex, some in drugs, some in art, some in math, etc.