Thomas Sowell: Herman Cain More Black Than Barack Obama

[Kramer]

Good memory. You are correct. He called Richpo WeWe. I don't know why he's throwing around the N-word, though.

don't forget if you are black you can use the word without any repercussions.

[BSB]

XO: >> "Mu" means that the question cannot be answered either way.<<

No. "Mu" cannot be defined intellectually. You can't say Mu is this or that, or that it means this or that. You have to live with a koan. Some monks will use one koan for an entire lifetime.

What is it getting at? If you say that so and so is an Uncle Tom for example, you'll miss the target. It will lead your mind astray. You will be making something that isn't really there. If you want to see that person for who he is more directly you have to use "don't know" mind.  The "Does a dog have Buddha nature?"...... "Mu", koan, will lead you to don't know mind. But if you define Mu, you'll get nowhere.

You can't define life intellectually. You can't control it. You can however know it, but only if your mind is set on "don't know".

The We We mystery. No, We We wasn't Richpo. It was/is a poster who used to say, We this, and We that all the time instead of I this and I that.  I took to calling him We We. As for the use of the word nigger? "Mu".

[Xavier_Onassis]

Okay, how about this: 'Mu means"unask the question."

[BSB]

Yeah, but your mind is still moving.


BSB

[Kramer]

Yeah, but your mind is still moving.


BSB

nobody cares about your childish riddles.

[Plane]

Yeah, but your mind is still moving.


BSB

nobody cares about your childish riddles.

Don't speak for me , Mu seems very interesting, if interesting doesn't ruin it.

[BSB]

"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing"   Socrates

Socrates understood don't know mind. He found his own Mu to get there.



BSB

[BSB]

Kramer "Nobody cares about......"

That's why I call him "We We". He thinks he speaks for everyone.


BSB

[Michael Tee]

<<"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing"   Socrates

<<Socrates understood don't know mind. He found his own Mu to get there. >>

That's just bullshit.  Socrates considered himself the wisest man in Athens because he alone knew that he knew nothing.   But he used that one essential precept as a jumping-off point to examine the question "What is knowledge?" and establish the study of how we know what we know, starting from zero, which eventually led to the formulation of the scientific method.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Socrates was clearly not telling the truth when he claimed he knew nothing. I suppose what he meant is that all truth must be derived personally, from life experience, and then be evaluated methodically.

It is rather like Descartes saying that he knew nothing at the start, EXCEPT that he was thinking and later saying that God must exist and the entire Roman Catholic religion was true because he had a belief in God and the entire Christian religion in his mind, and God was the only thing that have put it there. The actual fact is that Descartes was brainwashed as a child (which is how most people come to be believers) and that had he been born and raised in Mongolia by Mongolians or in Tasmania by Aborigines, there is NO WAY he would have had Roman Catholic beliefs.

I suspect that both Socrates and Descartes were clever enough to know what they were saying, and assuming that their interlocutors did not, or would not challenge them. Descartes, of course, published posthumously, and Socrates published nothing.

[BSB]

Approaching life's situations aware that you know nothing is not at all the same as not learning. In fact the only way you can get close to the truth of a situation is to approaching it not knowing.

Snowblower>> "That's bullshit......"

See, that's how you react when you think you know. That's the real bullshit. Just read Blowers posts on the Gaddafi killing. Pure bullshit. 


BSB

[Michael Tee]

<<See, that's how you react when you think you know. That's the real bullshit. >>

No, that's how you react when you see bullshit and you know it's bullshit.  Sorry, but that is just how it is.  The statement about Socrates was a perfect example of a well-known statement taken totally out of context.  So I called you on it.  NBD.

[BSB]

Your words blower "which eventually lead to the scientific method."

The scientific method starts with observing things as they are/occur not from a position of "knowing" but from a position of not knowing. That's the whole point of "don't know mind". Socrates understood that.  Viewing the world from a position of not knowing doesn't mean you don't know anything. Duh. You're proving my point all over the place.

[Michael Tee]

I think we're both in agreement on Socrates although failing to communicate it to one another.  As far as inductive reasoning was concerned, yes, you start with no preconceptions, or as you put it, from a position of knowing nothing.

I might have missed the Eastern position of knowing nothing.  I took it to be the alpha and the omega position, i.e., we start off knowing nothing and don't bother trying to learn about the physical world because it's all an illusion anyway, so you'll never really know it no matter what you try to do to grasp it.  THAT was where I saw the fundamental gap between Socrates' admission that he knew nothing (which he took as the jumping-off point to real knowledge) and the Eastern position on knowing nothing, which I interpret as "We don't know and we CAN'T know, so don't bother."

[BSB]

Yeah, you're off on the Buddhist position.

Korean Zen uses "don't know mind." so I'll use that. And by the way I went over this in my first post to XO's definition of "Mu".

If you want to get to the "suchness" of something, racism, the universe, whatever,  you have to come at it from "don't know mind". If you start right up using concepts, labels, notions, etc., your mind is building something that isn't there. You'll never get to the truth of it. Don't know mind is used to get to the reality of life, the suchness of things, it's not for thinking, oh fuck it, who knows? Its the same as Socrates wisdom of not knowing and serves in many ways the same purpose.

Now, did Socrates cultivate his mind using a more intellectual method than the Buddhists use? Maybe, but that would be tough to prove. I do know someone who is pretty knowledgeable on Socrates maybe I'll run it by him. He'd have an opinion no doubt, it's up his alley. I know how the Buddhists get there, and so does he.

BSB