Apropos our recent discussion of the Deepakity, reader Pliny the in Between pointed me to a cartoon on his/her website Evolving Perspectives:
A reader’s cartoon
January 31, 2015 • 10:57 am
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Lol.
Excellent. Is that Cyrus who gets the last word?
That’s what I thought too!
“Special guest appearance by Cyrus”
A human bug zapper. Perfect.
Lucky thing, for Deepak then that he is wrong about this. Put another way, the continuing existence of Deepak is proof that Deepak is wrong.
“Your body corresponds to an expression of timelessness” — Deepak
Indeed.
“Death unfolds through subtle brightness” –
The generator is really on-point today.
“Interdependence illuminates infinite timelessness”
Yep, pretty much.
zot
Haha! I love the dog.
I did too. And the cats.
There – I’ve admitted it – I’m bimammalian.
So you have something against other mammals like Homo sapiens sapiens? 🙂
Not me, I’m an equal opportunity misanthrope.
Ley’s face it, it was a mistake coming down from the trees!
There’s no shame in that!
Awesome timely cartooning, PTE!
Very amusing!
I have friends who ascribe to the idea that “Reality is a creation of our collective consciousness.” They’ve evolved all sorts of “useful” philosophy out of it (or think they have.) I have, on more than one occasion, asked “if that is wrong, what would show that?” Or “if you are mistaken about that, what would change your mind?”
At long, long last someone finally came right out and said “Nothing.” The view is completely unfalsifiable.
Be warned, though. Before you can get that kind of clarity you will experience an elaborate world class song-and-dance routine of misdirection. For years, possibly. The positive side of the process is that you might begin to develop an appreciation for what goes in to those moves.
Most of the people I’ve encountered who buy into this sort of thing end up using the same evasive arguments to those used by sophisticated theologians. I’ve yet to have anyone admit that when pressed.
For one thing, they usually seem to think there is a big giant hysterically significant difference between “religion” (all the bad stuff) and Spirituality. They are nothing like the religious! They are the opposite of ‘religious!’
No.
They don’t seem to realize (or want to realize) that from the outside standpoint of an atheist the similarities between spirituality and religion are more important than the things which make them different. Just as there’s nothing wrong with lumping “Catholics” and “Protestants” together into “Christianity,” despite the fact that books have been written on the divide, different versions of supernaturalism share uniting characteristics.
Many Spiritual-but-NOT-religious New Agey believers are presuppers, same as Calvinists. They believe that our knowledge of Spirit is shared universally but blocked by whatever they’ve decided to designate as the “sin” (which can mean “the belief in sin.”)
Brilliant as always! 🙂
He hasn’t of course been zapped out of existence since he lives on in the collective consciousness. In my case as a really bad toothache. Your results may vary.
Well, except for the occasional post here, I almost never think of him. Now if we all just stop thinking about him…who knows? Worth a shot.
But whatever you do, keep your eye on the moon!
OMG that’s right!
Who do you want to shoot?
😀
Hmm, this is a toughie…
Not a toughie for a real Murrican who has stockpiled enough ammo for everyone he hates….which is pretty much everyone.
‘Reality is that which, when you stop thinking about it, doesn’t go away’ – old tagline.
So that would be a good test for the existnece of Deepak.
I see one practical problem – how do we ensure that, at some given moment, there is _nobody_ thinking about Deepak?
Well, first we’d have to anesthetize Deepak…
Okay, you get the cloth and I’ll try to find that stuff I used on fruit flies in high school when I accidentally killed them….it’s fine Deepak is bigger than a fly so it won’t hurt him.
What do you mean that’s a bad idea?
Ha, ha, fun times!
And we won’t have to worry about blowing him off the table if we sneeze at the wrong time, either.
Deepak is always thinking about Deepak. There’s no way out!
Good one!
What is the significance of the crucifix as Deepak gets “ZOT” dematerialized? An additional symbol of quackery I presume. Or perhaps Jeebus approves…heehee
It could have deep meaning – it could be an oversight in the image cobbling process, or perhaps it was the work of Freemasons.
In any case, thanks for all the cobbling you do. Can you do anything about the worn heels on these boots?
Possibly – I do try to take Alec Baldwin’s advise to heart – always be cobbling.
Laughing out loud, PtiB!
Lol, that’s great!
This brings back good times. “Reality is a creation of our collective consciousness.” is the basic paradigm of the role-playing game Mage:The Ascension http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mage:_The_Ascension
I always had the impression that many of these people are playing this game for real life. The similarities are striking. (Probably because the authors of the game used existing cultural elements.)
In the Flemish part of Belgium ‘zot’ means ‘foolish/crazy’ , lso used as substantive ‘a fool’ (well, approximately).
I noted your site has a .be address, was this ‘zot’ intentional, or am I seeing things that aren’t there?
I had no idea that Deepak was here in New Orleans at the Cafe Du Monde. I never noticed him around when I was enjoying my cafe au lait & beignets but we do get a lot of tourists here.