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When I take psychedelics I spontaneously see similar patterns. There is something about the geometry in the patterns that catches the eye in a certain way.

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Arden said:

Thanks, Lakefingers. I'll start reading up on those terms.

"Neo-postmodern academic vocabulary" -- a cynical reference I assume? I wonder how they can begin to pigeon-hole those of us who have already moved to criticizing post-modernism? I once read somewhere--and agreed--that post-modernism is just a tabula rasa buzz word that lacks any real context.

Assuming that ideologies and trends can be captured and expressed in cultural movements is becoming out-dated, but with language being the primary tool for academic discourse (hopefully advanced multimedia will emerge,) silly terms are the only set of references we have. Words have always been flimsy, but they are increasingly becoming ineffectual altogether as we move towards communicating more complex phenomena. I'm ready to burn the libraries, but alas, here I am using what I despise.

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This isn't outdated and probably won't be our lifetime. Should we go from silly terms to silly visual references? Either way we're making representations, condensing, shifting, playing with semiotics.

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Lakefingers said:

Arden said:

yeah its funny when people attack what they think as post modern, they are often actually attacking ideas that are thousands of years old.

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I think the point is to focus on what postmodernism describes.
Such as when you say "Look. The flower!" And it's one particular flower that looks right in the light and refers not to the thousands of other flowers of the same and different on the meadow, nor historical relations to this flower.

But at undergrad level most people have a hard time grasping induction - deduction difference. Why would postmodernism be easy to grasp, when it requires so much overview 19 year old social science students utterly lack?

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You're mistaken. We live in the greatest age of compound words and bloated terminology.

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I got your point. What I'm wondering is how this would overall be superior to spoken and written language? And overcome the inherent misrepresentations of spoken and written language.

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Arden said:

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I got your point. What I'm wondering is how this would overall be superior to spoken and written language? And overcome the inherent misrepresentations of spoken and written language.

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I would say its utility could be measured by how efficacious it is in communicating an idea, along with the speed of transmission; as with the lengthy process of describing what a circle is with language, versus the almost instantaneous effect of encountering a circle visually (e.g. applied to representations of abstract ideas). I think perhaps another point here is the advantage in stimulating various areas of the brain to facilitate better learning and understanding. If different individuals respond better to the activation of certain sense modalities, hitherto unapproachable ideas like quantum mechanics can be better elucidated to more people. What comes to mind is freeze frame cinema (and the others you mentioned earlier), macro photography slides, or even animation--coupled with lectures and mathematical formulas. There are a few physics videos on Youtube that have incorporated this to better explain an idea.

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Sounds like bollocks to me.

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