October 25, 2009

Incubus - Wish You Were Here



I dig my toes into the sand.
The ocean looks like a thousand diamonds strewn across a blue blanket.
I lean against the wind, pretend that i am weightless and in this moment i am happy.
I wish you were here
I wish you were here
I wish you were here
I wish you were here.
I lay my head onto the sand.
The sky resembles a backlit canopy with holes punched in it.
I'm counting ufo's.
I signal them with my lighter and in this moment i am happy, happy.
I wish you were here
I wish you were here
I wish you were here
I wish you were here.
The world's a roller coaster and I am not strapped in.
Maybe I should hold with care,but my hands are busy in the air.
I wish you were here
I wish you were here
I wish you were here
I wish you were here.

June 21, 2009

The Art and Psychology of Love Explained (Part-2)

Once a form has been reached in this way, division begins. This is a matter of “cutting the form up again, by relation to [sub-]forms, by relation to its natural joints”. As an example, Socrates cites the case of love itself:
“just as a single body naturally has its parts in pairs, with both members of each pair having the same name, and labeled respectively left and right, so the two speeches regarded madness as naturally a single form in us. The one (Socrates' reorganized version of Lysias' attack on love) cut off the part on the left side, then cutting it again, and not giving up until it had found among the parts a love which is, as we say, “left-handed,” and abused it with full justice, while the other speech (Socrates' own defense of love) led us to the parts of madness on the right-hand side, and discovering and exhibiting a love which shares the same name as the other, but is divine, it praised it as a cause of our greatest goods”.

Philosophy aims at true definitions and true stories based on them. But it also aims at persuasion, since the philosophical lover wants to persuade his boy to follow him on the path to the forms. Philosophy and rhetoric must thus go together, which means that rhetoric, too, must be developed as a technĂȘ. It must, first, distinguish and give definitions of the various kinds of souls and kinds of speeches, revealing their respective capacities and susceptibilities, and, second, “coordinate each kind of soul with the kind of speech appropriate to it, explaining why one kind of soul is necessarily convinced by one kind of speech, while another is not”.

Mastery of such a science, however, requires one further thing: “the student must observe these things as they are in real life, and actually being put into practice, and be able to follow them with keen perception”. It isn't enough, in other words, to know what kinds of speeches affect what kinds of soul, the philosophical rhetorician must also know that this man in front of him is of such and such a kind, and be able to talk in the kind of way that will prove convincing to him.

End...