koolherc

Could you please expand?

We have strong disagreements in terms of what counts as evidence, the significance of evidence in these contexts, its significance in history-making in general, the relationship between "objectivity" and "subjectivity," and other things. And, indeed, we're not even in the same field, and that fact obviously has manifested itself in our positions---not only in what our positions are but how we take them, why, and what we see as the end of taking them. The matter of expertise is disempowering in this context, for us both (this phenomenon is part of what I study). Just a note: I never disagreed with the prominence of Egyptian sources as an influence... but, come on... you're doing Egyptian history---of course you're gonna think that! Glad to have the discussion.

yeah, leave of absence, like everyone else said. and, if you need to, withdraw from the classes you're in currently. it happens. don't suffer for some sense of social shame and responsibility. good luck

if your advisor directly asks you, you shouldn't lie about it to protect another professor's ignorance. i mean, give the whole picture ("prof Bob covers this other area well..."), but don't not be honest. what if your advisor learns from elsewhere how the class is really going? is the point of academia to fluff egos or to push at the boundaries of knowledge?

sounds like a 3rd grader who has a crush on you

Tiglath-Pileser III: I understand that, as an archeo/historian, you're going to look to physical evidence rather than conceptual, but you seem willing to appeal to ontology in your comments on Ma'at and Logos, while rejecting it in the other discussions. Concerning Taoism, the tradition has oral origins, so its textual limits to the 4th century should be understood in that light. A bit of insight into the historical motivations for recording is useful: lords/emperors often had philosophical traditions and their basic premises written down in order to sell scholars on the prestige of their personal libraries. The Warring States Period consisted of not only military competition but academic as well. The sayings were written down in the 4th century not because the ideas were formulated then but because certain lords thought it politically beneficial to have written copies on hand. Also, the form of the DaoDeJing, essentially composed like a list of short aphorisms, belies the fact that a single or couple of aphorisms would serve as the basis for extensive oral explication. That tradition as Daoist goes back considerably farther back than the earliest text. All that said, the DaoDeJing it was already being cited by the mid 4th century in other texts, so there's that. I think you're underestimating the similarity between the DaoDeJing and Heraclitus's fragments. "Heraclitus intended the ideas of "logos" and "panta rhei" to be converse ideas, i.e., there is a static monostasis that is beneath all reality, the "logos," to which change must be subject to while the appearances of those ideas are subject to constant change." The distinction between The Tao and The Ten Thousand Things is extremely similar. DaoDeJing - 77: "The way (Tao) of heaven is like the bending of a bow. The high is lowered and the low is raised." Heraclitus fragment 51: "Men do not know how what is at variance agrees with itself. It is an attunement of opposite tension, like that of the bow and the lyre." A major problem in trying to understand our human past using only the material or textual realities left behind is that we ignore the inextricable relatonship between the wealthy/powerful and their ability and eagerness to commodify their experiences. That is, we're only going be to able to find the history of those that could/would write down their histories or surround themselves with objects that would outlast their bones. Accordingly, I do think it not only useful but indeed valid to extrapolate conceptuality in and across history; if two ideas seem similar and there was the possibility of interaction, why not posit it? I see nothing wrong with constructing "history" in this way*---it's no less constructed than the rest of history-making. Of course, we're likely to inject our own cultures into the interpretations... but we do that with the material evidence, too. *Exaggerated/extremist statement for the sake of dialectic shift, Nietzsche style.

^you've had quite the case of the double-posts, recently, oseirus. The Greek logos informed the Christian one, but I meant the Greek (pre-socratic) one.

congrats, man! you earned it!

From what I understand, the Thomasine Christians in Southern India (1st century) had some kind of connections with the Therapeutea/Essenes. You're right that origins are pretty much the Egyptian-Greco Pythagorean cults, but the pre-Socratics were influenced by Taoism themselves. Some of Heraclitus' language seems taken straight from the Dao de Jing, specifically his bow metaphor and river/water metaphor. The Ionians had a lot of contact with the East. Question: What do you think of the relationship between logos and ma'at?

:lol:

As a fellow linguist, I am empathetic to your complaints, but I'm sure you know there's a difference between learning spoken language and learning written language. Mfsafiri's points (albeit clumsily made) about written language requiring effort are correct. He is conflating, however, the natural(spoken) portion and the synthetic (written) portion of "written language," thus assuming that the natural portion (and how it applies to written language) is also learnable through mere effort. There he is mistaken. He doesn't realize that writing requires a combination of two skills, only one of which he has had to apply effort to learn (spelling, orthography, some aspects of style); the other portion (syntax, semantics, other aspects of style) he learned automatically, as an L1 learner, and is thus unable to recognize the difficulty of. That is your point, I believe, and you are correct on that point. I hope msafiri understands what I'm saying.

dope!! I used to be be really into that stuff. Therapeutae and Essenes and stuff (especially those w/ taoist/buddhist/presocratic influences).

Gotcha. The bolded really got your idea across. Can't you just cite the matter of translation and historical context and stuff and reasons why there'd be... less than "absolute" understanding? I dunno what the religion of the people you're talking to is, but I figure Protestants in general are cognizant that interpretation is the name of the game (at least that's how their history is told). If they're Catholics, citing the fact that the Church spent centuries re/de/selecting which books to include in the bible and how to translate 'em is something a lot of 'em can process and are cognizant of... ...eh?? Maybe?? But then again, maybe I don't understand what you're studying either, lol.

I dunno... I think we could do a better job of trying to explain our studies to people. Name-dropping Derrida does not count as really trying (no offense jdharrison). If one seriously can't explain even the basic ideas, then I think that should be a sign to oneself that one should take the opportunity to ruminate on that fact. Terminology makes a good shortcut but it shouldn't be the path (to communication that is). Even if one is studying some very specific math topic (good example, given the abstraction), there's no reason one couldn't come up with a metaphor, at least... That kind of thinking usually serves us well in the longterm anyways, as we think about the edges of our field and aim to push at them.

anyone else looking to visit SC?

Sound of Da Police* other suggestions for Frostfire, among his more didactic songs. If you're looking for something more light, he has plenty of that, too... newer (post 1996 or so): HipHop Lives 9 Elements HipHop Knowledge 5% (oseirus, you're gonna wanna check this one out if you haven't heard it already) older (86-96): Why Is That You Must Learn Black Cop Also, MC's Act Like They Don't Know is one of my personal favs He's had a stylistic revival of late, I feel.

have you heard KRS-One's recent "Aztechnical" track? WOW. Paradigm shift-inducing: when my wife (not a hiphophead but knows a lot thru me) heard it first and told me "you have to hear this!!"

there are other forums?

Tiglath-Pileser III: I appreciate both your X-files signature and your avatar.

brush up on my foreign langs. do some taiqi or gongfu. hopefully find a non-profit teaching type job. read books. paint

After a perusal of your situation described above, I suggest the following: Go where you think you'll have the most fun and feel most fulfilled. What if you do this program and then die right after you get your PhD? You wouldnt want your last years to have been wasted in a misguided attempt to 'reach happiness' later, am I right? Of course, if you are the type of person who will be miserable because of a gripping concern about your future, then pick the one that'll most likely relieve that concern. In other words, go where you think you'll have the most fun and feel most fulfilled.

my mom wasn't able to go to school past 8th grade, but the moment I explained that the school will actually pay me to study/research/TA/etc (free tuition and stipends), she gets that it's a hell of a deal. and for 5 years! I don't get how people can ask "what'll you do with that?" as if they know what the status of their own job will be in 5 years.

this * 100. After I got over the initial lovestruck phase (You really love me!) I did some sober cost of living calculations and realized that the most friendly schools were also the ones offering the least money.

I'm missing a lot of jokes these days. *recedes into the shadows*