Re: Belief - I'd like to share this item with you.

Mark Isaak <specimenNOSPAM@curioustaxon.omy.net> writes:

On 3/25/24 1:13 PM, Richmond wrote:

Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@gmail.com> writes:
 

On 11/03/2024 17:14, Richmond wrote:

Ernest Major <{$to$}@meden.demon.co.uk> writes: > [Origin of "The
Matrix"] > I interpreted wiktionary as saying the sense 11 was a new

sense inspired by the film - so clearly not the meaning that

inspired > the choice of the title for the film.  Maybe, but it
cites 1984, William Gibson, Neuromancer, for sense 11, so such a
sense must have existed before 1999.

>
It may have been mentioned, possibly by me, that _Doctor Who_ story
"The Deadly Assassin" in 1976 presented "The Matrix", a computer
which contains memories of the Doctor's people, "Time Lords".  It's
experienced as a rather dangerous "virtual reality".
>
William Gibson used "matrix" for - what being inside the internet
looks like, basically.  A space in which most online resources have
a visual representation, and you fly around (virtually) like
Superman to get to the data that you want to deal with.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer> mentions that Gibson's
short story "Burning Chrome" used the term in 1982.  "Burning" is
story slang for hacking, and Chrome is a person in the story whose
money, not personality, is under attack.  >> Another example of
Gnostic ideas resurfacing in popular culture is >> 'Forbidden
Planet'. The surface of the planet has a small settlement >> with
only two people, some animals, and a robot. This surface settlement

represents consciousness. But hidden beneath it is something

vast, and >> from which the powers of creation come (the
unconscious). And demons >> which lurk there are projected onto the
outside world, the planet >> surface outside the settlement.  >> If
the settlement corresponds to the island in The Tempest, then the >>
vast space under the planet surface represents the ocean around the

island. Water is the symbol of the unconscious in mythology.  >>

Why is it necessary to have mythology to understand things? Because

mythology points to things which cannot be described in

words. All words >> have opposites and so cause division. This is
shown by this newsgroup >> which is doomed to polarised arguments
for all eternity.

>
Nitpick: Not all words have opposites; probably most do not. (E.g.,
what is the opposite of "broccoli"?, of "modem"?, of "scissors"?) What
words do, which I think supports your point at least as well, is
corral ideas into discrete categories.

The opposite of broccoli is not broccoli, or the absence of broccoli. It
is from the idea of absence that we conceive the idea of non-existence,
and then puzzle over why anything exists. But we don't know if there is
any other option. We leap from the idea of an absent object, to an
absent universe, but the universe is not an object in the way every day
objects like broccoli are.