(July 19, 2019 at 8:30 pm)arewethereyet Wrote: If I thought it wouldn't turn into a shit storm I would like to have a conversation with momzilla to find out what the hell she was thinking when she was doing stuff like taping our mouths shut when we (my siblings and me) were young.  I am sure her reasons for unreasonable behavior would be fascinating.

Jesus! I'm betting she'd struggle to answer that question.

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(July 19, 2019 at 9:52 pm)Macoleco Wrote: Maybe Miguel de Cervantes.

Who dat?

The author of Don Quijote de La Mancha. My native tongue is Spanish so I read the original text.

(July 19, 2019 at 5:17 pm)Cod Wrote: This could be someone from the past or present.. Who would it be? What would you ask them?

Mine would be with Donald Trump.. I would ask two questions. "Who does your hair?" and "Do you think it looks good?"

I am still kicking myself for acting like a school girl throwing their panties at Elvis, when I ran into Hitchens at the 07 convention and got tongue tied. 

There is lots however, that I would say to that fuckface orange bully if I met him face to face. Hitchens would hate him.

I would have a chinwag with the people responsible for the Remembrance Day Bombing in 1987.  I would sit them down, try to suss out their motivations, see if they had any regrets, and so on.

Then I would skin each and every one of them alive with a rusty file.

Boru

(July 20, 2019 at 4:20 am)vulcanlogician Wrote: I think I'd pick Thoreau, too.

I don't think his religious ideas were all that vague. He was a mystic. But unlike most mystics (who have extraordinary experiences of God or divine spirits) he had extraordinary experiences of nature. To Thoreau, the natural world was the divine object... just like (to the theist) God is the divine object. I actually like Thoreau's choice of divine object. Mainly because (unlike the aforementioned divine object) the natural world demonstrably exists. You just can't put a price tag on something like that.

Like many 19th century nature worshipers, Thoreau was an idealist who only slowly learned that nature wasn't exactly what he expected it to be. Although he was an early supporter of the book in America, he only read Darwin's Origin of Species after it came out late in 1859, only a few years before he died of tuberculosis at the age of 44.

I have watched David Attenborough nature videos which would likely make Thoreau reconsider his views. Nature is both remarkably intricate and remarkably brutal. I would be very interested to know what Thoreau thought about the opportunism of the natural world. Perhaps I will find some answer in his late journals, which I haven't read in full yet.

(July 20, 2019 at 6:30 am)Alan V Wrote: I have watched David Attenborough nature videos which would likely make Thoreau reconsider his views.  Nature is both remarkably intricate and remarkably brutal.  I would be very interested to know what Thoreau thought about the opportunism of the natural world.  Perhaps I will find some answer in his late journals, which I haven't read in full yet.

Is nature brutal though? Or are we mere mortals prejudiced against a natural world that contains intense pain and suffering?

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I'd love to read Thoreau's late journals with you. I've always found it useful to bounce ideas of others when reading a deep work. You might even start a thread in the journal subforum (or better yet, philosophy subforum) so other interested members could read along and discuss Thoreau's points. Just an idea.

WHAT DID YOU THINK OF THE POEM?

Cleopatra.

Pontius Pilate : “Don’t crucify Jesus. Have a really big Roman sodomise him to death. Trust me on this!!”

(July 20, 2019 at 7:17 am)The Valkyrie Wrote: Pontius Pilate :  “Don’t crucify Jesus.  Have a really big Roman sodomise him to death.  Trust me on this!!”

That would certainly make church décor more interesting.

Boru