Disconnected Philosophical Musings on Modernity

[Nerdologist]

Reality: who knows it?
Truth seems so elusive, no matter what assumptions seem conducive
To our objectives
We perceive, but should we believe?
We try to wrap our minds around what we can’t verbally expound
Skepticism creeps into the minds of genuine seekers
There's more room for doubt than you want to admit
Isn’t there?

Morality: who needs it?
No one desires to have their actions restrained by a formula
Everyone has their own agenda
Propriety cannot be made a science
Since human nature is plagued by defiance
Intuition will dictate our conduct
Without reference to moral constructs

Spirituality: who practices it?
Empirical validity has trumped “superstitious stupidity”
Esoteric terminology used by professors of mundane-ology
Deals the death blow to the soul
Yet we yearn for something more than prosaic factuality
To taste the divine, or get wasted with wine
Something that makes us happy
Or a reason to prolong our misery

Technology: who avoids it?
Humanity is now permanently engulfed in a fundamentally binary existence
Controlled by meaningful yet seemingly random sequences of two digits
Detached from the physical world and its primitive face-to-face social interaction
Attached to the World Wide Ebb
Drawn to the instant gratification provided by flashing lights of variable coloration
Arranged in aesthetically pleasing patterns
No wonder life's value has diminished
Is an organism more sacred than a machine
When genetics can be reduced to mere combinations of letters?

Identity: who maintains it?
You are not composed of the cells
Your mother expelled at your birth
Your community is a melting pot of cultures and lifestyles
Constantly blurring the distinction between individuals
Mimicry abounds, the creed of eclecticism resounds
Physical boundaries are broken as two proximate bodies merge into one
United by love and mutual interest
Naming conventions are established to facilitate the mental separation
Of a continuous whole’s components
For the purpose of compartmentalization and comprehension
But resulting in discrimination and reprehension
Based on an unfortunate misconception

Creativity: who possesses it?
Ostensibly novel ideas are inspired by the words of past thinkers
Conveyed to us via compulsory education
Articulated in books for our examination
Written by intellectual giants who were praised for their borrowed genius
Creating an endless chain of virtuous plagiarism
Unpunished and unnoticed by enforcers of legalism

[Lovers Never Tell]

Poetry: ******** it?

[2pound]

Lovers Never Tell

Poetry: ******** it?

dude u got burned.

nerdologist, dude u sound pretentious.

Nerdologist

Disconnected Philosophical Musings on Modernity = long words to a title that doesn't add anything to the stanzas that follow

Quote:

We try to wrap our minds around what we can’t verbally expound

i'm not a philosopher but what's your point? reality is or is not; what's your point? if you can't "verbally expound" anything evocative, maybe it's not "us" that has a problem with showing what reality is. maybe it's you who has a problem showing what reality could be.

tl:dr
show us what you think reality is.

Quote:

Morality: who needs it?

civilization; without rules, we wouldn't survive or better yet thrive. however, my point is this: what's your argument that supports it? what are you comparing morality to? better yet, here's a list of how you can make your.... musings more interesting (and maybe even poetic):

Quote:

Everyone has their own agenda like....
Propriety cannot be made a science like....
Since human nature is plagued by defiance like....
Intuition will dictate our conduct like....
Without reference to moral constructs like....

you could practically do this to almost every line and "prove" your musings aren't poetic. there's philosophy and there are ideas and concepts; what it lacks is imagery. for example:

Quote:

Spirituality: who believes it?
Empirical validity has trumped “superstitious stupidity”

the same way my mother-in-law trumps my every rigidity

get it? because my mother-in-law is such a witchy hag that i can't get it up whenever i try to get some? leaving the smut aside, at least you get a (nasty) image you (probably didn't) need to compare one thing to another and make your "empirical validity" less superstitiously stupid.

the entire poem feels the same way. there's a lot of ideas that could use some metaphor or imagery but instead you opt out of that and just tell us entire lines of statements (without punctuation no less) and make a very boring and pretentious collection of.... musings.

i do it a lot, too. i think that my philosophical questions are all clever and that my questioning abstract ideas (such as spirituality, reality, morality) and trying to come up with s**t that's already been thought of.... but what i do after that is i try to connect an image to the idea. Emily Dickinson said (about hope):

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.

the extended metaphor gives "hope" a very powerful sentiment by the end of the poem. it gives you an idea that hope is as persistent as a bird during troubling times (which are compared to a bashing storm) and is very sweet (like the noise a Nightingale makes, here shortened to Gale for conciseness) and it "never asks for crumbs" (meaning it never takes away your value if you have hope).

you don't do that. you just state things as if they were facts or worse; you make ideas that are universal and try to take possession of them by borrowing the meaning from the dictionary instead of coming up with your own meaning.


oh whoops; i didn't mean for this to go for too long. i hope you can make sense of what i typed. hopefully you'll come back and edit your.... musings and make them a little more poetic.

[Nerdologist]

2pound

Thank you for the thoughtful critique. I realize my poem does not contain much imagery (but I would say there is some, though it may be subtle), and maybe it could use a bit more. I'm not sure if I really need to give support for my statements, seeing as this is not an essay or anything like that. But I will admit that I don't have much experience with writing poetry, so perhaps it is somewhat lackluster in the stylistic department. I'm more accustomed to philosophizing.

[Lovers Never Tell]

2pound

Lovers Never Tell

Poetry: ******** it?

dude u got burned.

nerdologist, dude u sound pretentious.

Blah, blah, blah, stuff. Great crit and expands on mine.

I have missed you. smile

[Lovers Never Tell]

Nerdologist

2pound

Thank you for the thoughtful critique. I realize my poem does not contain much imagery (but I would say there is some, though it may be subtle), and maybe it could use a bit more. I'm not sure if I really need to give support for my statements, seeing as this is not an essay or anything like that. But I will admit that I don't have much experience with writing poetry, so perhaps it is somewhat lackluster in the stylistic department. I'm more accustomed to philosophizing.

The thing with poetry is that it basically is only imagery... your grammar is also off. You can do the whole philosophizing thing, but in order to write poetry, you must learn the guidelines. I know, who knew there was so much to rhyming, or the lack there of.

[2pound]

Lovers Never Tell

Blah, blah, blah, stuff. Great crit and expands on mine.

I have missed you. smile

yes pls take credit for my hard work. xp

long time, huh?

Nerdologist

2pound

Thank you for the thoughtful critique. I realize my poem does not contain much imagery (but I would say there is some, though it may be subtle), and maybe it could use a bit more. I'm not sure if I really need to give support for my statements, seeing as this is not an essay or anything like that. But I will admit that I don't have much experience with writing poetry, so perhaps it is somewhat lackluster in the stylistic department. I'm more accustomed to philosophizing.

the thing is, your philosophizing isn't expanding on what previous philosophers have thought of (or at least that's what it seems; i'm not too big on philosophy myself so i don't know much about any philosophy in particular but i do know that philosophers like Plato and Socrates did what you were doing..... just in a more clever, imaginative, and profound sort of way).

pretty much LNT nailed it: "poetry is basically only imagery." now that's not 100% true but it's a basic foundation of poetry that can be used to great effect. in your musings, you can use imagery to make a clear and concise point by painting a picture and having the reader decide whether they agree or at least force them to show us why they disagree because it would put the burden of "proof" (can anyone actually "prove" any philosophy?) on them to prove your musings relatively wrong.

we're talking about philosophy so people on the other fence who doubt you should be your biggest priority for your musings and so you show them some profound philosophy that is consistent (with imagery, metaphors, and wit) and try to convince them that you're not forcing an agenda; you either found a philosophy to be an undeniable truth or you found that "established" philosophies could be wrong or at least conflict with others or within themselves.

but hey i'm just glad we can talk about your musings as if they were poems and if you truly wanted to make them poems (with imagery, wit, metaphors) that's great. i just hope i helped you out enough for you to decide what you want to do (edit or philosophize?) "Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you." -- Neo, The Matrix (1999)

[rumirumirumirumi]

Nerdologist

2pound

Thank you for the thoughtful critique. I realize my poem does not contain much imagery (but I would say there is some, though it may be subtle), and maybe it could use a bit more. I'm not sure if I really need to give support for my statements, seeing as this is not an essay or anything like that. But I will admit that I don't have much experience with writing poetry, so perhaps it is somewhat lackluster in the stylistic department. I'm more accustomed to philosophizing.

"Give support" is kind of tricky in poetry of this kind. I would rather start by pointing out that your poems here are pieces of rhetoric, that you are putting forth ideas in a manner that to some degree are meant to be convincing to your reader. Your poems each follow a progression of though that are logically linked, one part to the next, but there are some things with the way you have them written now that makes them difficult to engage with in the way you seem to be intending.

For one thing, the statements you make in each of the poems are more the conclusion of a line of inquiry than the actual process by which you've come to these conclusions. This is how I see 2pound's issue about your poems needing support: that you've gone through the work of arriving at these metaphysical conclusions but decided only to write the conclusions and not the working through toward them. It makes your poetry (and philosophy) seem hollow because (1) they come off as unfounded declarations and (2) it ignores the process of writing as a process of thinking> Point number 1 is not totally bad because if you were to build the poem out from those unfounded declarations there are some interesting things you could arrive at in the form of the poem. Point number 2, however, is a pretty crucial component that you're missing because that's essentially where the poetry comes from in poetry of this kind.

LNT and 2pound have brought up imagery, and I think there's a lot that can be done with imagery, analogy, allegory, and the like that can improve your poems here. But I think more crucial to the kind of poetic practice that you're starting here is using the act and the process of writing as a process of thinking, working through the arrangement of words as a vehicle for working through the ideas that you have or have yet to have as a result of the writing of your poetry. Imagery can be a great place to start this working through the writing to work through your thinking, using images both to convey your thoughts to others while also using them to organize your thoughts to yourself.

If I can make a weird suggestion for playing around with your poem:

Start by writing 53 declarative statements of banal facts. Things like "The air conditioner is ON" or "It's hot outside" or "the sky is blue." The more banal the better, and the more they deal in a specific concrete thing the better.

Now put them in a random order and add them one-at-a-time to your poem after a line you've already written. You can choose where they go or you can do it randomly. Then, reread your poem, looking for ways in which your banal statement and your philosophical poem line up. Maybe they tell a weird story. Maybe they contradict each other. Just look for ways you think the two lines might be related.

Finally, rewrite your poem, trying to preserve an equal mixture of philosophy and banal statement.

What I would hope an exercise like this could do is give you an opportunity to work through the process of thinking through the processes of reading and writing. You'd hopefully be able to find connections between things that wouldn't, at first blush, seem to be connected, and then use the process of writing to develop that connection more fully. This is essentially the work that i think poetry does, placing things into relationship with each other in such a way that the processes of reading and writing create and develop new relationships. Even if you don't end up writing more poetry, what I would suggest for any writing practice is to use that writing as a way of thinking rather than simply a way to convey the things you've already thought.

[2pound]

rumirumirumirumi

Nerdologist

2pound

Thank you for the thoughtful critique. I realize my poem does not contain much imagery (but I would say there is some, though it may be subtle), and maybe it could use a bit more. I'm not sure if I really need to give support for my statements, seeing as this is not an essay or anything like that. But I will admit that I don't have much experience with writing poetry, so perhaps it is somewhat lackluster in the stylistic department. I'm more accustomed to philosophizing.

"Give support" is kind of tricky in poetry of this kind. I would rather start by pointing out that your poems here are pieces of rhetoric, that you are putting forth ideas in a manner that to some degree are meant to be convincing to your reader. Your poems each follow a progression of though that are logically linked, one part to the next, but there are some things with the way you have them written now that makes them difficult to engage with in the way you seem to be intending.

For one thing, the statements you make in each of the poems are more the conclusion of a line of inquiry than the actual process by which you've come to these conclusions. This is how I see 2pound's issue about your poems needing support: that you've gone through the work of arriving at these metaphysical conclusions but decided only to write the conclusions and not the working through toward them. It makes your poetry (and philosophy) seem hollow because (1) they come off as unfounded declarations and (2) it ignores the process of writing as a process of thinking> Point number 1 is not totally bad because if you were to build the poem out from those unfounded declarations there are some interesting things you could arrive at in the form of the poem. Point number 2, however, is a pretty crucial component that you're missing because that's essentially where the poetry comes from in poetry of this kind.

LNT and 2pound have brought up imagery, and I think there's a lot that can be done with imagery, analogy, allegory, and the like that can improve your poems here. But I think more crucial to the kind of poetic practice that you're starting here is using the act and the process of writing as a process of thinking, working through the arrangement of words as a vehicle for working through the ideas that you have or have yet to have as a result of the writing of your poetry. Imagery can be a great place to start this working through the writing to work through your thinking, using images both to convey your thoughts to others while also using them to organize your thoughts to yourself.

If I can make a weird suggestion for playing around with your poem:

Start by writing 53 declarative statements of banal facts. Things like "The air conditioner is ON" or "It's hot outside" or "the sky is blue." The more banal the better, and the more they deal in a specific concrete thing the better.

Now put them in a random order and add them one-at-a-time to your poem after a line you've already written. You can choose where they go or you can do it randomly. Then, reread your poem, looking for ways in which your banal statement and your philosophical poem line up. Maybe they tell a weird story. Maybe they contradict each other. Just look for ways you think the two lines might be related.

Finally, rewrite your poem, trying to preserve an equal mixture of philosophy and banal statement.

What I would hope an exercise like this could do is give you an opportunity to work through the process of thinking through the processes of reading and writing. You'd hopefully be able to find connections between things that wouldn't, at first blush, seem to be connected, and then use the process of writing to develop that connection more fully. This is essentially the work that i think poetry does, placing things into relationship with each other in such a way that the processes of reading and writing create and develop new relationships. Even if you don't end up writing more poetry, what I would suggest for any writing practice is to use that writing as a way of thinking rather than simply a way to convey the things you've already thought.

hey rumi; remember that collab we did? where you misspelled a bunch of words on purpose but i never asked why and the judge from the contest we entered it into said it had too many misspelled words and we didn't even bother to clarify that those words are mispelled (i assume) because a French person can't really write English perfectly, especially not during the age before (or during?) the Industrialized Age?

tl:dr
long time since we collabed; how u been?

[rumirumirumirumi]

I think those were real-life spelling mistakes. I'm a terrible speller.

But it was fun to write with you (what I wrote kindof seems gross to me now, tbh, but still fun at the time). I'm currently an animal cremator writing on the bus. And you?

[Lovers Never Tell]

Yea I'm not good at this anymore. I'm just here to be an as and write something occasionally.

[2pound]

rumirumirumirumi

I think those were real-life spelling mistakes. I'm a terrible speller.

But it was fun to write with you (what I wrote kindof seems gross to me now, tbh, but still fun at the time). I'm currently an animal cremator writing on the bus. And you?

been doin' ok. i have an inconsistent job as a sewage and flood water extractor (inconsistent because there's not that many flooded residences).

i was going to tell Zylo (the judge) that it was a "period" piece because French people didn't have spell-checkers back in the day and travelling people wouldn't carry around a dictionary, especially the first time they'd see Des Moines and so it would be uncharacteristic of the poem to be spelled correctly.... just to see if this would push the right buttons. i dont even know if this is a legitimate reason to misspell on "purpose" but if it's good enough for me, it might be good enough for him lol.

Lovers Never Tell

Yea I'm not good at this anymore. I'm just here to be an as and write something occasionally.

write something occasionally with me? 3nodding