Philosophy, Metaphysics & Mysticism Subforum

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A couple months ago we were having a conversation and the possibility of starting something like a Philosophy, Metaphysics, and Mysticism folder as a solution to communication caveats that were brought up:

viewtopic.php?t=321940

Is there a possibility that we might still be able to add some of the folder divisions considered in the thread? It seemed there was some agreement that packing the totality of Politics, Philosophy, Religion, and all other related topics was a bit forced. An example of the results of that: I've noticed that the quantity of political threads comes in so hot and heavy that there really isn't much space for anything else to be discussed and that anything religion or philosophy related seems to also get jammed through a political filter.

Someone did bring up the concern that we don't want to tar the Forum Index with too many subfolders. At the same time, for as big as this community has gotten, I'm wondering if the more important issue might just be cleaner/neater indexing and with drilldowns (such as Politics, Philosophy and Religion as a high-level folder containing four or five relevant lower level folders). If I see any problem with the Forum Index page it's that the individual folder headings offer too much information up front and that the question of additional folders wouldn't need to be considered at the removal of other folders if the folder information was reduced up front and placed elsewhere such as within the folder itself.

Would make sense and solve the need to have megathreads (which seemed to not have caught on).

I would be very interested in a new and separate sub-forum of Philosophy, Metaphysics and Mysticism.

While I realize that the existing "Politics, Philosophy & Religion" allows heated debate and debunking and disagreement or rejection of others' politics, philosophies and religious stances, I feel that if there were to be a more specifically "Metaphysics/mysticism" sub-forum, that it might be best to operate under a more "Haven" like rule of not attacking or rejecting or denying someone's belief or experiences?

It would be nice to discuss things without fear of "There IS no afterlife, the spirit world isn't real, superstition etc etc". I know of a paranormal forum on a completely different website which is so overrun by naysayers and skeptics that it has stifled all courage to post regarding metaphysical experiences or viewpoints.

PPR has actually gotten better at not jumping up and down on people who humbly come out as devout Catholics or Protestants who are questioning particular angles of their faith.

My guess is, if a Philosophy, Metaphysics, and Mysticism folder did come about and experiences were brought up the guiding impulse would probably be to ask the following two questions 1) What did it mean to you? 2) Have you found the experience helpful or useful? Or, if applicable, 3) Did it match the results you were expecting for the particular operation you performed?

With mysticism and the occult I tend to feel like the question of whether or not its 'real' and the question of whether or not it works are rather different things. The power of the neurolinguistic programming component, the extent to which the subconscious mind loves games of symbol, the extent to which you can shift the functioning of your endocrine system by what you chose to think about - I don't think any of that is particularly controversial, although culturally it's still seen as a bit odd or taboo to consciously and deliberately pursue it.

As for the brain itself and whether experiences could be brought on by higher powers, perhaps electromagnetic entities of their own existence interacting with consciousness, etc.. that gets controversial and debate on that might be better left somewhere that functions more like PPR does now - ie. 'prove it'. IMHO it seems like, with the degree that we have medical and scientific penetration into the brain (or really our lack thereof) any attempt to bunk or debunk whether these experiences are just neurological or something more seems like it would devolve into dogmatism vs dogmatism. I've noticed that, due to our lack of clear understandings of the limits of the human brain, it's memory capacity, what kinds of things a person can experience without having had some kind of external input, most people with a strong opinion one way or another simply project onto it what their personal beliefs demand. Really the only evidence or proof anyone has is in their own experiences and as such its not transferable to other people (at least until such a time when we're able to in some way objectively qualify/quantify experience) . With that in mind, personally, I'd have no interest in debating it with anyone because no one has evidence spanning across both objective and subjective realms that moves the state of that debate any closer to conclusion. The other part of course, until we reach a point where we can point out the root substance of consciousness (which may or may never happen), most beliefs either material or metaphysical will remain unfalsifiable.

Last edited by techstepgenr8tion on 28 Aug 2016, 8:53 am, edited 1 time in total.

Yes, very much my general feeling too, especially this:

I was just thinking about this. I definitely support it.

I do think that "religion" should figure in there, maybe at the expense of Philosophy. Currently, anyone who posted in PPR saying "hey, are there any other members of the Church of Latter Day Saints here?", reasonably thinking that it was the religion forum, would get torn to shreds.

LOL I was actually thinking about starting a Christian thread on there but I stay out of PPR. I see going there as a road to being banned. Somethings are best not mentioned and sex, religion and politics and never good topics to bring up in the context of a debate.

When these types of changes are suggested....AND even apparently accepted....nothing ever comes of it.

Exhibit A:

"beneficii wrote:
Could we get a designated History and Books forum or forums? I think it would be really helpful to have a dedicated forum to these topics, which are special interests of many an autistic.

(I said)
He will not add more sections...many have asked....he refuses.

Even really obvious things like separating Phil. which is gentile and erudite from Politics and Religion which are adversarial has been suggested many times....but NOPE.

Many well-considered suggestions are made....but NADA.

I like your idea, but it won't matter."


and the response....."11 Aug 2016, 7:38 pm

beneficii wrote:
Could we get a designated History and Books forum or forums? I think it would be really helpful to have a dedicated forum to these topics, which are special interests of many an autistic.

(Alex replied)
Sounds like an interesting idea. If anything we could expand another forum to also include it."

.......AND since Aug 11 2016 what has been done??

Answer: of course...nothing

The bottom line is that I have seen many well-considered suggestions (over the last 4 years) like the one you are making in THIS thread and they receive no response(99% of the time)

-or-

(b/c of what I said(imo)) there IS a response but it is a platitude, nothing more....as evidenced by the fact that no addition of a History and Books forum has been made since Aug 11 2016. Nor do I expect any action to take place.

C'est la vie.

Sounds like a good reason to return these threads back to the front page periodically as a reminder. If the original requests were quite good enough a bump might be a better policy than rewriting them from scratch.

The really interesting thing to me in this case - the whole conversation started off with me wondering if rules on handling touchy/speculative subjects could be delineated better and the moderation team's response was lets make new folders.

Fair enough

With your and The_Walrus's support perhaps some changes can be, at least, trialled. I understand that WP is not a democracy and that Alex is the final arbiter on this issue. That being said, where do we go from here?

As an aside, there are other topics like Economics, Linguistics and History which are not PPR material and wouldn't fit it the CMST section either.

Ty

Agreed, and I think it goes back to what Alex is willing to do with the front page with respect to ergonomics.

As I mentioned he could add a lot more folders if he either lightened the folder descriptions to one sentence or pulled all description detail into each folder. Ideally I think he wants people to be able to get from top to bottom of the index page with a few scrolls of the mouse and we could still have a lot more breakout, even less scrolling on the front page if we're lucky.

I know there's a marketing balance that has to be struck, otherwise the upfront appeal of the site gets tampered with in the wrong ways. I'd at least like to think he'd be okay with saying that even if he's too engaged in PR and event planning he'd be glad to have someone draw up a proposal and show him the resulting idea to see whether it's something he'd be okay with, what he'd add, what he'd subtract, whether the structure's too tight for his taste and needs some degree of visual/spatial slack, etc. etc. To have at least some tacit approval on taking that step would get the ball rolling.

Very well articulated.
I concur.

I certainly get that He doesn't want hundred of folders and who would? I have seen Forums that have that and it can become absurd and unfocused. I think all we are advocating is a balanced slightly improved set of categories....not a free-for-all.

Thankfully the elections are over and we'll see a little less of the political demagoguing and populist spam.

Regardless I still don't think the lack of campaign posts will be yielding much more in the way of either philosophy or religion topics, or any more sense of 'place' for those topics.

I'm sorry I never got around to responding to your detailed message, techstep. I found it interesting, it's just that sometimes I get so overwhelmed by what's happening IRL, the slightest thing and I get stressed out. I'd like to talk to you more about this topic.

As for a subforum, I don't know if there's enough interest for it. TBH I don't see why it can't be discussed in PPR alongside the political discussions.

The political threads account for at least 80% if not more and they come through hot and cheap, not much else stays on the front page very long. You really can't establish and in-depth discussion on anything that isn't the flavor of the week in the news; that seems to go for almost any of the PPR components outside of a rather narrow strata of politics.