Distinction between actuality and imagination/concepts

[Juns]

11 hours ago, LastThursday said:

@Juns Everything is real because, as you say, it's all consciousness. But. Imagine you walk past a restaurant, and displayed on a table outside is a beautiful huge freshly made pizza. It looks so good with the cheese perfectly melted on the tomato base. You go up to it and then realise it's made of plastic (this has happened to me in Japan, but there it was noodles).

Was the pizza real?

This shows that a "pizza" is a thing of the imagination, a concept. The direct experience of a pizza is actually the red of the tomato, the yellow of the cheese, the smell of the bread - and you choose to call that combination of experiences a pizza.

thanks for your insights. 

 

[Juns]

6 hours ago, Aaron p said:

one massive trap when contemplating this topic is disregarding the mind/imagination or worse, rejecting the mind/imagination. This is big big trap. I fell into it for years thinking i was avoiding delusion. Trying to be some rigorous spiritual elite refusing to even use my mind like a buddhist. This is of course a valid method but for starters its weak (just use psycs) and secondly [when done correctly] its entire purpose is to be used sparingly as a launch pad for the mind to be used in ever greater capacities! 

The buddhist idea that all you should do is just clear the mind at ever increasing rates of crystalline clarity and just keep it there until you die...could be comparable to someone cleaning a blank canvas over and over and over again....the point of the canvas is to make something beautiful on it. and thats where the imagination comes in...the diverse and colourful force of beauty and expression of love, grace and freedom...fragrant and elegant. Breaking free from spiritual strictness and dogmatic rigidity. Aw. fucking beautiful

interesting. 

[Juns]

3 hours ago, Breakingthewall said:

They are different, they come from a different source, perception comes from the senses and the brain creates the images and sounds, ideas are created by the brain independent of the perception, then they are not solid, are just waves without any real base, just appearances that the human mind creates due it's movement. Human mind is a crazy machine, it scape from the solidity of the 3 dimensions and open itself to another dimension, then it can look inside. 

If you believe there is no self, then surely it is all just "stuff"—perceptions and qualia. Whether it comes from within or from out there shouldn't matter, right?

[Juns]

55 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

*queue spiritually sanctioned absolute insanity rebuttal: "everything is the same as everything else"*

Yeah, it’s not something I necessarily believe, but it’s interesting to think about. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’ve heard Leo say things similar to what you’ve mentioned here. I mean, isn’t that the nature of non-duality in some sense? Everything being equal and the same, the dissolution of all categories and distinctions, etc. But, as I said, I could be wrong.

[Aaron p]

1 hour ago, Davino said:

 @Aaron p who is the artist? I would like to watch more of his/her art. Thanks

actually Leonardo Da Vinci made it 

[Carl-Richard]

37 minutes ago, Juns said:

Yeah, it’s not something I necessarily believe, but it’s interesting to think about. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’ve heard Leo say things similar to what you’ve mentioned here. I mean, isn’t that the nature of non-duality in some sense? Everything being equal and the same, the dissolution of all categories and distinctions, etc. But, as I said, I could be wrong.

No, it was a poorly presented inside joke where I was caricaturing a way of communicating that I find rather not useful. I prefer to describe non-duality as the lack of separation rather than things being the same. It's not that the identity of a concept is the same as another concept (e.g. "apple = banana"). It's that there is fundamentally One identity beyond concepts, the Absolute.

Edited Sunday at 01:25 AM by Carl-Richard

[lostingenosmaze]

6 hours ago, Davino said:

 @Aaron p who is the artist? I would like to watch more of his/her art. Thanks

Reverse image search says F. Abderrahim. A well competent artist, by the way. They're not always Jason Pollock slop

 

[Leo Gura]

It's obvious to anyone with taste that that is a masterful painting, assuming it isn't an AI rehash.

[AION]

@lostingenosmaze looks like it is made on pc and not actual painting 

[Breakingthewall]

13 hours ago, The Crocodile said:

Nope, I mean the colors and shapes themselves are actually pretty ugly, and yet I can still see everything you see if I tune into it or the positivity of the colors as the colors and the shapes as the shapes. I just prefer my perspective, otherwise I would have to value other values like "openness" or "positivity" or "beingness" over beauty.

Yeah I could understand your perspective. About artistic taste, it is something that evolves. For example, I don't have a fucking clue about painting, so maybe if I became a serious fan and started spending time looking at art, in two years I would see what I now think is fantastic and think, well, now it seems vulgar. Although that is probably not the case 100%, because when you perceive something authentic, you continue to perceive it later, even you can recognize that it's basic, not evolved or immature 

 

[Nilsi]

13 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

It's obvious to anyone with taste that that is a masterful painting, assuming it isn't an AI rehash.

I find the painting painfully dull - leaning on tired clichés and surface-level emotions without offering anything deeper. I get that this can be a tricky thing to talk about, but it feels like our tastes couldn’t be more opposite. Because of that, I can’t help but dismiss it. That’s not to say my taste is “better” by any means - art is subjective - but I can say that I love diving into the history and theory behind it, which gives me a lot of context and a bigger sample size to work with when I’m forming an opinion.

For example, one habit I’ve picked up is going through all my Tidal recommendations every morning - 10 songs a day that are close to what I’ve been into, with a few unexpected ones thrown in. I’ll listen, then look up the artists, the albums, and even read discussions about each song on RateYourMusic. It’s a way for me to dig deeper and understand where things come from, not just what they sound or look like on the surface.

Maybe we just approach art differently. I’m all about exploring how things connect to bigger ideas, history, or other works, and that shapes how I see it. But I’d never go as far as to say, “This is obviously a masterpiece, and if you don’t like it, you’re just wrong.” That kind of thinking doesn’t leave room for the different ways people experience art, and that’s part of what makes it so interesting.

[cle103]

22 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Making that painting takes crazy taste.

Art is more about taste than it is about skill.

Great taste is very rare. Which is why great art is very rare.

That painting is perfectly balanced.

This is something I've recently noticed in my art as well. Some, maybe most of my works are hiding behind depicting objects accurately rather than doing something truly unique, fluid and rhythmic. 

Don't want to derail this thread, but have you found ways to develop and improve taste? 

Personally, I'm trying to curate my inputs the best I can and I try to make them as high quality as possible (everything from food to media).

[Leo Gura]

18 minutes ago, cle103 said:

Don't want to derail this thread, but have you found ways to develop and improve taste?

I want to make a video about taste.

Yes, I think you can develop taste. You can do it by spending a lot of time contemplating the difference between examples of good taste and poor taste. If you do that for years you will build a neural network in your head, or an "eye", for this vast abstraction called taste. This is what good artists do.

You should spend a lot time contemplating: What is taste? The more consciousness you apply to it the better your taste will get.

There is probably also a genetic component to good taste because most people are simply tasteless and I'm unsure whether its possible to train them to have it. I don't know since I've always had good taste. But I've also spent a lot of time training it. I can look at a piece of art, or music, or a logo, and immediately tell if it was made with good taste.

In a sense it is a consciousness of beauty.

Edited Sunday at 08:18 PM by Leo Gura

[Nilsi]

12 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

There is probably also a genetic component to good taste because most people are simply tasteless and I'm unsure whether its possible to train them to have it. I don't know since I've always had good taste. But I've also spent a lot of time training it. I can look at a piece of art, or music, or a logo, and immediately tell if it was made with good taste.

You've got to be kidding. 

You sound exactly like Trump, where everything he touches or is associated with is automatically deemed "the best" simply by virtue of his involvement.

Edited Sunday at 08:28 PM by Nilsi

[AION]

Taste is just what our body is use to. No need to over-complicate it.

 

Edited Sunday at 08:51 PM by AION

[James123]

@Juns actuality is directly being conscious of what You are (not knowing).

Concepts are comes from beliefs (knowing). 

[Leo Gura]

20 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

You've got to be kidding. 

You sound exactly like Trump, where everything he touches or is associated with is automatically deemed "the best" simply by virtue of his involvement.

What I said went completely over your head.

Taste is not about me.

And just because I have taste does not mean it's perfect. I could develop it even more.

Edited Sunday at 08:46 PM by Leo Gura

[Nilsi]

2 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

What I said went completely over your head.

Taste is not about me.

No, what I said went completely over your head.

I know the games you’re playing - trying to claim that taste is some universal feature of consciousness or whatever, and pretending you’ve somehow magically cleansed yourself of all human influences to apprehend taste in its purest form, yada yada yada.

My point is, no - you haven’t. You’ve managed to delude yourself, and this isn’t the first time. You’re doing it with philosophy, you’re doing it with politics, and now you’re doing it with art.

You’re basically a walking, talking embodiment of the Dunning-Kruger effect - a person so convinced they’ve unlocked some absolute perspective on everything that they’ve blinded themselves to reality. Honestly, you’re much closer to Trump than to whatever it is you think you are.

[The Crocodile]

6 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

What I said went completely over your head.

Taste is not about me.

And just because I have taste does not mean it's perfect. I could develop it even more.

He likes Nietzsche and so based his writing style on that, polemical.

Trump also has "taste". He considers his golden hair, orange skin, blue suit and red tie, golden-and-white rooms in his mansion, big signs everywhere to be good taste. You consider your rainbow splatter and electronic music using factory patches to be good taste. Obviously you're a lot better than him at this and other things, but the principle remains the same that trump's falsehoods could have an underlying structuration of truth to it, but it's so false that he doesn't understand how false it is using the basic truths to twist around back on itself.

[Vynce]

5 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

No, what I said went completely over your head.

I know the games you’re playing - trying to claim that taste is some universal feature of consciousness or whatever, and pretending you’ve somehow magically cleansed yourself of all human influences to apprehend taste in its purest form, yada yada yada.

My point is, no - you haven’t. You’ve managed to delude yourself, and this isn’t the first time. You’re doing it with philosophy, you’re doing it with politics, and now you’re doing it with art.

You’re basically a walking, talking embodiment of the Dunning-Kruger effect - a person so convinced they’ve unlocked some absolute perspective on everything that they’ve blinded themselves to reality. Honestly, you’re much closer to Trump than to whatever it is you think you are.

Why are you so dense Bro?

No need to be attacking like this.