Fiction vs History?

[Otto]

> > At 5:45 PM -0700 10/22/04, aleach67 at mac.com wrote:
> > Just because the line between black and white is blurred by a
> > whole lot of grey does not mean there is no black or white.
> > Eliminating defined distinctions is regressing to pre-cognition
> > not moving toward metacognition.
> > > >
> > > A nice example of logocentrism. Nice binary oppositions.
>
> > > You are so intent on seeing binary opposition that you ignore
> > > what is being said.
> >
> >Well, looking for the binary oppositions in every logocentric statement
> > is the technique.
>
> I suggest that your technique is getting in the way of understanding and
> communication, not enhancing it.
>
> > > She recognized the greys, but wanted to point out that black & white
> >still exist:
> >
> >If there's black & white somewhere "out there" you should be able to tell
> >me where, but you're not, because colours, as we all know, are just in
> > your head, generated by your nerves. It's just light in different
wavelengths.
>
> Wait a minute. Are they just in my head, or is it lightwaves?  BTW, my
> nerves don't generate anything, but they do register stimuli.  Also,
> haven't
> you just made a logocentric binary opposition?  "Out there" vs "In my
> head?"
>   A very ancient binary.  I know which side of that scale I tend toward.
>
> I any case, there are differences in the quality of different light waves,
> thus some appear white and some appear black.  They're not all equal.
> Some
> are good to read by.  Others are required for your psychidelic posters to
> glow.  Take it from THIS psychidelic poster!  :)
>
> >>History does not equal fiction.
> >
> >Structurally it does. Both are mostly put down in books.
>
> That's a structure created by you.  It's not necesarily a very useful one.
> In fact it's rather blunt and without nuance.  No matter how many times
> you
> say it you cannot reduce the cosmos to text.  And even then texts have
> different porposes and different validities.
>
> > > "Truth" is in the realm of God.  And it is the strawman that you
> >constantly prop up.
>
> >Sorry to tell you but GOD is the biggest strawman of 'em all. Truth,
> >History, God -- these are the entities that you cannot rely on anymore. I
> >don't use strawmen in arguments against other people -- I've noted the
> > high frequency of the term "strawman" in posts on this list when people
> > have no arguments.
>
> I don't know if you are even TRYING to understand what I'm saying above.
> I'm not arguing in favor of GOD.  What I'm saying is that "T"ruth is
> beyond
> human reach (something I'm sure you agree with), and it is a strawman
> because you keep insisting that I am arguing for history as "T"ruth,
> which I am not.

I do agree that truth is beyond human reach. Think that's been my initial
point. But please leave "God" out of the game 'cause he's just a human
concept too. Since we cannot have any knowledge of non-human perception
(otherwise it would become human perception at once) there cannot be truth
in human affairs. It's an easy way to tell real religious/political leaders
from crooks to listen to the way they speak about truth and these kind of
things.

> All we can do is reach approximations of that something called
> Truth.  But cognition is not enhanced by blurring or eliminating
> distinctions, as bekah was saying.
>

And so all we can do is to reach "approximations of that something called"
History, isn't it? Insofar Histories are histories.

>>Historical narration is dying
> >because the sign of History from now on is no longer the real,
> >but the intelligible.
> >http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/pcraddoc/barthes.htm
>
> OK, but who is to judge what is "intelligible?"
>
> Ghetta
>

Humans!

Otto