Can people change?

[Dennis Mahar]

Aside from all your name-calling which is water off a duck's back.

So, while it is true that 'nihilism' is intimately bound to concepts, those concepts are similarly bound or perhaps one would say 'embedded', in our physical selves.

so,
nihilism is a concept.
embedded in our 'physical selves'?
where would that be?
under the pancreas?
It exists in our semantic web.
geddit?
It has no substance until you give it substance.

Your access to ultimate reality is complicated by your predisposition for falling for scams.
You run with jokes without getting the punch-line.
A fish on a hook.

Nietzsche understood,
'it's empty and meaningless,
that it's empty and meaningless.

He declared from that philosophy is literary.
We are creative philosophers.
Meaning Makers.
Story tellers.

He looked around the margins for an ogre (nihilism).
He invented a Hero.
He played them up against each other and made a few bucks.
He ran a duality into your capacity for hypnotic spells.
Geddit?
semantic web.

Try and focus on 'how things exist' laddie.

You only provide graffiti (radio ga ga).

[Bob Michael]

Can you find that quote by Freud? I think I read it second hand in Jung's essay on Freud. But since you are the quote-maven I thought you might be able to locate it.

For as Freud said of Nietzsche “he had a more penetrating knowledge of himself than any other man who ever lived or was likely to live.”

http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/dbru ... nietzsche/

[Bob Michael]

Can you find that quote by Freud? I think I read it second hand in Jung's essay on Freud. But since you are the quote-maven I thought you might be able to locate it.

In a letter written at the end of his life to Michael Fordham, Carl Jung wrote that nobody understood him and his work had been a failure. His mission in life was to preserve peace by presenting the world with a new combination of Christianity and depth psychology.

Jung had thought himself as the man who could shoulder the same strain as Nietzsche without going crazy. "Others have gone to pieces. Nietzsche, and Holderlin too, and many others. But there was a demonic strength in me, and from the start, it held firm."

(Excerpts from 'A Life of Jung' by Ronald Hayman)

[Talking Ass]

Dennis, I'll try one more time, but just one!

"It has no substance until you give it substance."

Where exactly, then, is your pancreas, Dennis?

There is substance all around me. I am substance. We are in substance. It seems to me this is an irrefutable, common-sense truth.

If you are saying to me that this substance, of which I am and in which I occur, has no substance until I give it its substance, I think you are embarking on a strange path and I cannot go there with you. I do not do anything to make this world that surrounds me, it is. Just as that 'base' is real and tangible, for all intents and purposes, so too epiphenomena have tangible existence. In fact, epiphenomena have in many ways a far more potent and determining existence than inert, solid 'stuff'.

This is what I said, and it is different than your paraphrase of what you said:

• "So, while it is true that 'nihilism' is intimately bound to concepts, those concepts are similarly bound or perhaps one would say 'embedded', in our physical selves. They arise within those (real) structures. In this way, we do not get anywhere or progress anywhere except (I assume) with our whole being, and that includes the base-physical and many different levels of epiphenomena. And by this I believe that we don't 'mystically escape' from the facts of our existence, or where our ideas have led us. I aslo do not believe that the 'Zen Manoeuvre ' is a valid one. I also mean that I don't think it is a beautiful and a good one..."

If you engage with these ideas, and present cogent thoughts of your own, I will (reservedly) respond to you. If you make one more mis-step I will, for the first time in all my time on this forum, put you on ignore.

Respond to what I write, not what you think I have written.

[Talking Ass]

Jung: "Others have gone to pieces. Nietzsche, and Holderlin too, and many others. But there was a demonic strength in me, and from the start, it held firm."

Kind of cool his choice of the word 'demonic' when it sort of should been 'divine'. So, you have to be a little 'demonic' to hold it together? And Holderlin and Nietzsche were then too angelic? ;-)

Still, Jung commented that Freud was terribly deficient in so many (necessary) intellectual and practical areas, e.g. had almost no background in philosophy. He compared Nietzsche and Freud actually. Both came out of repressed Victorian culture, both used a certain kind of shock and violence to communicate their ideas. Though it may well indeed be true that Nietzsche had such insights, who's to say what exactly Freud could make of them?

[Dennis Mahar]

You're dying Alex.
You will die.
You as form lacks inherent existence.

What substance?

You have been 'in ignore' in perpetuity,
being put 'on ignore' changes nothing.

take all your nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs,
list them on paper,
set fire to the paper,
throw the burning paper into your House of Language,
watch it burn down,
to ashes.

You might discover all your rubbish depends on you.
Meaning maker.

[oxytocinNA]

The original question: Yes - in real terms.
How much depends on specific things. Will not discuss further. Choose wisely - Odds are not good.
Good luck.

[Trevor Salyzyn]

I am substance. We are in substance. It seems to me this is an irrefutable, common-sense truth.

The theologians raped the word "substance" and impregnated it with more bizarre connotations than the word "God". Honestly, you'd be better off saying "the world is made up of stuff", as I'm sure that's a lot closer to your meaning.

[Dennis Mahar]

The original question: Yes - in real terms.
How much depends on specific things. Will not discuss further. Choose wisely - Odds are not good.
Good luck.

People don't exist in a way choice is possible.
Actually, there's no one here.

[Dennis Mahar]

the world is made up of stuff

all he does with stuff is theorise madly.

stuff lacks inherent existence.
depends for existence.
does not run under its own steam.
is not self-established.
no real substance.
vapour.

[Bob Michael]

Kind of cool his (Jung's) choice of the word 'demonic' when it sort of should been 'divine'. So, you have to be a little 'demonic' to hold it together? And Holderlin and Nietzsche were then too angelic? ;-)

How about a perfect balance of both the demonic and the angelic? I think here of Nietzsche's man of the future. The man of "great love and contempt."

Still, Jung commented that Freud was terribly deficient in so many (necessary) intellectual and practical areas, e.g. had almost no background in philosophy. He compared Nietzsche and Freud actually. Both came out of repressed Victorian culture, both used a certain kind of shock and violence to communicate their ideas.

All three lacked the necessary balance to attain to the goal of being Pure Spirit. They were also short on down-to-earth living experiences.

Though it may well indeed be true that Nietzsche had such insights, who's to say what exactly Freud could make of them?

People of all calibers very often make accurate appraisals of their fellows. Though they usually fail miserably in their own self appraisals and thereby their own total self-overcoming. Supersensitivity and courage of soul along with 'rigorous self-honesty and action' are absolute musts in this business of self-overcoming.

[Talking Ass]

Substance and 'stuff' are identical in my use of the word, and I was not making a reference to theological arguments necessarily. It may be that my use of the sense of the word is more Aristotelian than anything else.

Against this formulation:

• stuff lacks inherent existence.
  depends for existence.
  does not run under its own steam.
  is not self-established.
  no real substance.
  vapour

• I generally take the tack that it has truth-elements, and so does not appear completely irrational.
• That it is a terrible reductive statement which, I feel, must have implications for the individual who holds to it (and I sense these implications are not 'good' or desirable).
• That those 'implications' tie into a confusion about the nature, location, course and meaning of our existing, and that I suspect that this formulation is not an 'answer' to 'nihilism' but an expression of it.
• I also sense that it is terribly easy---a sort of seduction---to fall under the spell of such a forumulation, and that under such a spell the 'doctrine' that appears to flow from it will likely be a destructive one. But it could also be a neutral one too: it would depend on what sort of forces and will functions in the person who wields it.
• That is the other observation: one senses a peculiar kind of 'will' in operation. The man who forumulates it (holds it, wields it) most certainly arises from a context that came to be through radically different predicates. So, the use of the idea (formulation) seems to become a kind of 'weapon' to strike out at what has been created around that man. In the hands of a gentle, impotent person, for example, little damage could come out of it. But in the hands of another sort of person---more Machiavellian, more devious, and perhaps even 'bad-intentioned' (I am not saying that this is how Dennis is, yet Dennis does seem to have a very definite 'will' and insitance which, to me, seems very un-Zen-like)(whatever that means)---such a view-structure, such a simplistic and reductive tool COULD become very destructive.
• I suggest that as it is formulated and presented it may have a certain commonality with 'cult thinking', which would mean a pocket or a hole of thinking into which an individual or individuals get down inside of (the 'burrow' again) and try to carve out a home 'in-reaction-to'. They come together under the 'agreement' of a reductive idea which enables them to construct a sort of 'shelter' as-against a larger, perhaps more complete 'world-view', and they spend a great deal of time there underground, working out their agreements. Doing this becomes a 'team effort'.
• Obviously, I think we have to do better than that. I am also aware that, given the stakes, the fight over definitions and meaning becomes almost life-and-death. It becomes very, very important and necessary to defeat and topple the assertions that attack or challenge the Formulation.

___________________________________________________________

A lovely little poem by Juan Ramon Jimenez:

• The Coming Star
  
  The star in the orange tree.
  Let us see who can capture it!
  
  Come quickly with pearls,
  Fetch nets made of silk!
  
  What an odor of springtime
  From its flask of eternal life!
  
  The star is in all the eyes.
  Let us see who can capture it!
  
  In the air, in the grass,
  Take care, do not lose it!
  
  The star is in love!
  Let us see who can capture it!

[Dennis Mahar]

forget all your soft shoe shuffle crap.

Are you as form self established? No.
Do you exist inherently? No.
Do you run under your own steam independently? No.
Are you dependant for your existence? Yes.
Do you live? Yes.
Do you die? Yes.

Whatever depends for existence and whatever dies is not Real.

That it is a terrible reductive statement which, I feel, must have implications for the individual who holds to it (and I sense these implications are not 'good' or desirable).

Of course it's a shock to the ego.
frightening, terrifying.
Not being in control freaks the ego out.

It's not a denial of existence.
It's how existence is.

Recognising it is akin to getting out of prison.
a sense of freedom, release.
You still have to live 'til your time's up,
except you are now correctly orientated in your situation,
life now is what happens,
and what happens is for the most part welcomed,
celebrated quietly,
deeply pleasurable,
with a tinge of sadness.

[Talking Ass]

These questions are irrelevant to my concerns. You set it up so that, answering your spurious questions, one ascents to your perception and value system. I would never claim to be 'self-established' or to exist 'inherently'. To me, the greater part of my 'opposition' to your forumulations arises as I resist the power-element in them: your (apparent) desire to insist, to wield a particular metaphysic that you seem to call 'absolutely real' ("It's how existence is") I don't presume to assert, in any such terms, 'how existence is'. That is the stuff of a religiously-derived standpoint. To make claims about how a perception-set will lead to 'getting out of prison' is not in any sense different from the truth-claims of a Hindu, or an Evangelical Christian. I think you are making 'value-choices'.

And then you go on to elucidate that, having 'correctly orientated in your situation' what occurs is 'welcomed, celebrated quietly, deeply pleasurable, with a tinge of sadness', you are revealing an aesthetic position, even an emotional---a sentimental!---position. And this is perhaps where your 'truth-claims' originate, in sentimentalism?

I could see many ways in which this emotional platform of aesthetic and emotional orientation could very well lead an individual to stasis, to a non-activity, to resignation. I would also mention that all of this:

• Recognising it is akin to getting out of prison.
  a sense of freedom, release.
  You still have to live 'til your time's up,
  except you are now correctly orientated in your situation,
  life now is what happens,
  and what happens is for the most part welcomed,
  celebrated quietly,
  deeply pleasurable,
  with a tinge of sadness.

...is 'attainable' through many different perception-systems. In fact, what you wrote reminded me of a summation of much of Hermann Hesse's literary work (esp. Narcissus and Goldmund, or of the German romantics generally, or the Trascendentalists).

Or take a song out of the Sixties neo-Christian tradition:

• Love is but the song we sing,
  And fear's the way we die
  You can make the mountains ring
  Or make the angels cry
  Know the dove is on the wing
  And you need not know why
  C'mon people now,
  Smile on your brother
  Ev'rybody get together
  Try and love one another right now
  
  Some will come and some will go
  We shall surely pass
  When the one that left us here
  Returns for us at last
  We are but a moments sunlight
  Fading in the grass
  C'mon people now,
  Smile on your brother
  Ev'rybody get together
  Try and love one another right now
  
  If you hear the song I sing,
  You must understand
  You hold the key to love and fear
  All in your trembling hand
  Just one key unlocks them both
  It's there at your command
  C'mon people now,
  Smile on your brother
  Ev'rybody get together
  Try and love one another right now

So, I don't think you have any basis at all to 'accuse' me of soft-shoeing. It is pretty evident that you have your own rehearsal and performance. I have to say I don't have an problem with that, in se, as long as it holds itself to a certain humility. But you are very, very clearly defining values. If you assert that 'there are no values' and 'no inherant values', I would take issue with you: values arise out of our context with a great deal of predictability. They are as perennial as the grass. And in this sense are 'real'. I am not sure if I would attempt to define 'transcendental' values, nor would I ever say that anything (except the result of epiphenomena) approaches permanence in the world we appear in (and an argument for permanence was never a part of my assertions), but I am not at all convinced that your 'arguments' really present an argument against values being 'real'. And again the formula 'It is empty and meaningless' simply does not appear right, to me. The very oppostite is true: it is meaningful.

You indeed prove and demonstrate this with your sentimental claims, your general attitude, your assertiveness and your reductive choices.

[cousinbasil]

Are you as form self established? No.
Do you exist inherently? No.
Do you run under your own steam independently? No.
Are you dependant for your existence? Yes.

You are the proverbial bull in the China shop of philosophy.

Name something that is self established.
Name something that does exist inherently. Etc.

Do you live? Yes.
Do you die? Yes.
Whatever depends for existence and whatever dies is not Real

Is one to assume there are things that do not depend for existence? Name something that is Real then, in this sense.

"Whatever dies is not Real" means precisely "If it is Real it does not die."
Like what? According to you, nothing that lives can be real because all living things die.

[Dennis Mahar]

It isn't feasible Basil,
to hold that something that depends for existence and dies is Real.

[Dennis Mahar]

Alex,

I resist the power-element in them

That's your Power.
resistance.
The power of No.
No! has you in Power.
Power base.
You hold me and GF away with your No!
Good for you.

When we chat you hold the power, I get it, it's OK.

What do you hold as a Yes?
From reading your stuff it looks like you admire passivity, angels with cherub faces, giving, yielding, accommodating.

except that in your No!
your strategy is anything but yielding.
Your No! is very strong and aggressive, quite the thing of resistance.

You look like a Traffic Light.
Red for No!
Amber for proceed with caution.
Green for Yes.

A very stern traffic light I might add that makes it hard to get thru' the intersection.
There's a lot of traffic banked up at the red light.

In asking the questions,

Are you self-established?
Do you exist inherently?
Do you run under your own steam independently?
Are you dependant for your existence?
Do you live?
Do you die?

I'm asking,
where or what or who is the Real Power.

[oxytocinNA]

The original question: Yes - in real terms.
How much depends on specific things. Will not discuss further. Choose wisely - Odds are not good.
Good luck.

People don't exist in a way choice is possible.
Actually, there's no one here.

You should not waste your time engaging me.

[Dennis Mahar]

You should not waste your time engaging me.

How is it possible to waste time?
There's not a blade of grass nor a hair on a head out of place.
You don't do anything.
The I thought is there and claims I chose or I choose deludedly.
There's no one here.

[cousinbasil]

It isn't feasible Basil,
to hold that something that depends for existence and dies is Real.

In that case, please name something that is Real. (Israel?)

You don't do anything.
The I thought is there and claims I chose or I choose deludedly.
There's no one here.

There has to be a reason why you choose to believe this instead of coming to grips with the way the world actually works.

For instance, I make many choices each day at work. They have consequences. I judge the consequences of my actions and choose the actions that produce the best possible consequences. If I take a day off, many of those choices do not get made. Some get made by others, which may or may not have been the ones I would have made.

I am held accountable. At what precise juncture am I supposed to believe "it doesn't matter" if I go to work or not, that there is no one making choices? Wouldn't a pink slip in the mail be evidence to the contrary?

There may be no one there, but I am pretty sure there is someone here.

[Dennis Mahar]

You might be walking late at night and suddenly,inexplicably the hair stands up on the back of your neck and a mood of dread/fear engulfs you.
later you say I had a scary experience.

you see a girl one day and desire erupts and you follow her around like a puppy
you say I love her

sometimes you walk in to a room of people and suddenly you feel weak and unconfident

someone calls out stop thief! and a flash of guilt arises perhaps and a sudden, slight reddening of the face

hunger arises and you go to the fridge

tiredness sets in and you fall asleep

A techie on an MRI machine can scan your brain
and ask you to choose between several things,
from looking at the screen he can tell what you'll pick between 3-9 seconds before the choice becomes conscious for you.

You're a machine plugged into its environment
tracking pleasure/avoiding pain.
like an electric toaster making toast.

The reaction has been and gone before the 'I' turns up to claim it.

[Talking Ass]

You see me taking a stand against certain ideas and the way those ideas function in certain people and, I gather, you think I am simply reacting, as if (as you say) my ego is having a reaction, and by extension as if I am this 'machine' of which you speak, the human machine ('I') that 'isn't there', etc. As I see things, you recurr to certain basic predicates and these ideas drive your perception and your conclusions. It might be a wise idea to ask who indeed is behaving like a machine and why? In any case, I am not at all convinced by your pseudo-Buddhism and I don't mean that term as an insult (I have insulted you so many times I am rather bored to keep on with it), but more as an exact definition.

Fake Buddhism. Farse-Buddhism. ('Geddit'?) ;-)

I react in similar ways to the formulations of GF but it is not at all that it is a reactive ‘No!’ since, all the time, I offer many different ways to consider things and many different possibilities of 'organizing perception'. With your recent contributions it seems to me that you are revealing just what sort of tree you have climbed and, it would seem, how you are unable to get out of it. Such is the manner in which ideas possess us. I would suggest the possibility that you could examine causation and follow back those lines to see how it is you came to make these idea- and perception-choices. It seems to me that it is you who are in reaction, in fact. I also have the sense that you are seeking solutions to those questions and problems that haunt us all: those of our incarnation in this fleshy body, our lack of ability to get clear about where we are, what is this 'stuff', all of that. We come out of a historical episode in which all those questions and the angst around them were *answered* (to some degree) and we had, at least, a certain, limited security (the Medieval era). Now it seems we have almost none. So we seem to end up contriving them, latching on to them in desperation. If I react to anything---but I have said this many times---I react to desperate solutions to problems that cannot be solved so easily. You are just one more voice whose enunciations are little more than expressions of your angst, your anguish. The way I operate is to zero-in on a certain timbre in the voice (as it were) and pay exclusive attention to that, over against what specifically is said, but it also seems accurate that, with your words, you just tie yourself up in a knot.

The way I see it (I may be wrong) you are more than anything perhaps merely testing your 'ideas'. You pretend to a solidity inside yourself that you have in no sense attained. From the beginning (your beginning here) you literally followed me around---sensing me to be the outlaw, the unconfessing rebel of the GF forum---imagining that you were going to show me up, to teach me a lesson. I was fair game for your semi-mindless poetical games (which I don't even believe you believe, to be truthful). How is it that I have this certainty? you might ask indignantly. It is quite simple: in many ways, and among many who write here, their expressions, these very tentative 'conclusions' about things, are just boyish assertions, a sort of game of appearances played in a theatre of words. Man may propose but it is only the living of life that ultimately 'disposes'. I don't know your age (I'd guess 37)(?) but in terms of your intellectual grasp, your existential grasp, you are a sputtering baby. I don't really need to go any further since it is your discourse that reveals all this.

Still, you are in the perfect place to carry on your charades: the Great Minds who formulated this neo-Buddhist blend of Taoist sage, Weininger Romantic, and Nietzschean overman, have each in their own way solidified a group of idea-tactics and are out there in cyberspace hawking their products. I guess their reach is tremendously extended in the youtube video-realm so the written forum has become less attractive a place for their wares. But please don't kid yourself with this 'stoplight' theory of red or green: I concluded, because I saw clearly, that these arguments for this interpretation of life and life's value had about as much worthwhile content as a wad of a boy's bubble gum stuck onto the lampstand. The reason I put things in such stark terms is in the hope that these words will penetrate *someone* or *anyone* around here and at least cause them to consider things with a little more depth and seriousness.

You're tricking yourself and you're fucking yourself, Dennis.

Okay, I'm ready for the next cycle of really bad, pseudo-Buddhist 'poetry'... ;-)

[jufa]

Man marches to the drum beat of his own thoughts.

I'd just like to say, from my own perspective, we have seen how a disagreement escalate from mole hills to mountains because others do not respect others opinions and styles of expression. We have seen all this to be good until ones own judgments and percepts are challenged, then little wars break out on different fronts. Why? because we did not step up to the plate and challenge such prejudice when we should have. And so the old Angela Davis saying comes true.

"If they come for me in the morning and you do nothing, they will come for you in the evening."

I'd also like to say - Who can teach another the ways of life when life is unconditional and all man's beliefs, acknowledgments, and laws for and of living came to him from the same source of those he sees his reflection in?

One can, and always has the ability to change their personal interpretations of thinking concerning people, places and things. But to change ones past experience is impossible, unless yesterday can be relived in the exactness today as it was lived yesterday. And although one can transcend their attitude of thinking, what they have sat in motion yesterday shows up in the consequences of their lives today, in the continuum of thoughts. How those consequences manifest cannot be known until exposed.

Man marches to the drum beat of his own thoughts. And all who, by relativism, joins this parade are of like mind. And so a standard is born and lived from to the detriment of those who are on the outside looking in.

PEACE BE STILL!

"What if there is no such thing as uniformity? What if each and every event and being in the universe is unique and specific to their particular locale at their particular time? What if all of this dot connecting we do is just our way of creating synaptic shortcuts and has no basis outside of our collective perceptions? What if order and regularity are little more than the brain's way of coping with an overwhelmingly complex and irregular universe?"

We have been dealing with effects of spiritual reasoning thus far. What we have not dealt with is uniformity. If there is no uniformity, there can be no order. There is an order to the way the above quoted was presented. There was an order of thoughts which brought about the structural manifestation of the words presented above. So what has been presented as "what if" moves upwards to deal with principles and patterns which even consciousness and free will must obey. Whether we will admit it or not, there is an order in the universe. Our birth bears witness to this order of uniformity; to the principles and patterns which even pro-creation follows.

From here to there this conversation has gone, and finally thought has raised our eyebrows. But thoughts have no power religiously nor secular. Everything in the known universe, whether consciousness, free will thought, or man himself is a solid mass without inertia until the vibration of movement give purpose to intent. This vibration of movement is the cataclysm which launches acts of purpose. Without the vibrating waves of movement, time stands still, and no thoughts move to carry out an act..

Does the mind entertain a multiplicity of options in the moment now, or is the mind limited to one option at a time in the moment now?

Does not ones perception stem from a cause? If not, what is the platform of perception for perceiving anything? If it does, has not that perception been cemented in a predetermined pattern which void free will when that pattern is stepped into?

Never give power to anything a person believes is their source of strength - jufa

[oxytocinNA]

I don't think so.

The 150 IQ guy probably wouldn't get bored easily and he'd probably finish faster (at moving a stack of bricks) than the 100 IQ guy. But keep in mind, we're talking about a task which is new to both. If, let's say, the 100 IQ guy was a professional brick stacker and the 150 IQ guy was a newbie, then we can guess what would happen. But at the same time, the 150 IQ guy would probably learn faster and eventually be able to stack bricks better than the 100 IQ guy. That's just my take on it.

How many scenarios would you need to run to prove, or disprove me?

My point was of a holistic and abstract nature, in that Mr 150 IQ would find the task exceedingly 'boring' (read; unsatisfactory for the intellect) and would devote far more energy into devising ways to lessen the task of toil and monotony for oneself, or if philanthropically inclined, everyone.

Context is needed to make points valid.
If you tell a very intelligent person that their time is their's to do what they want after the mindless labor they probably will beat the person of lower intelligence.
If you tell the person of higher intelligence - you will simply be doing more mindless labor - then he will see it as torture, and long term performance will not be as good as the lesser intellect. He has no motivation to finish rapidly.

Simple - a persons ability needs to be met with an acceptable challenge.
So a greater context of the scenario is needed to ad motivational insight.

For the author of this thread - higher intellectual ability produces more satisfaction, in the form of the knowledge that let's you appreciate the nature of things. In terms of society - it is a different story (politics. power games etc.).

[Talking Ass]

Nice piece of writing, Jufa. Very lucid. Other writing of yours is sometimes opaque to me but this one I understood in its entirety.

The core of it seems to hinge on this:

We have seen how a disagreement escalate from mole hills to mountains because others do not respect others opinions and styles of expression.

I certainly agree with what you say, and it is certainly true that differences in view are the cause of conflict, but I am not at all sure if that can be avoided. Yet, because there is a multiplicity of view, there is also not a monopoly of view, which would be a sort of intellectual fascism, wouldn't it?

There is another potential ramification of 'not stepping up to the plate' and CONFRONTING what we (you, me, anyone) perceives as a badly formulated idea, and that is that our complacency may allow certain ideas and views to spread, like a virus. With this, and sincerely and without reservations, I say in direct terms and without mincing words: I believe the neo-Buddhist formulations I critique are destructive ideas and they can and will do harm in the persons they infect. I have, in truth, very little negative animus against anyone here and a great part of my shtick is feined anger.

The interesting thing is how an idea-set that once we believed and defended, at another period, is one we no longer accept---we have outgrown it. It is therefore wise to hold to a little humility. One might have to 'eat one's words'.

"If they come for me in the morning and you do nothing, they will come for you in the evening." ---Angela Davis

They will come for her in the morning, and they may come for you in the evening...if both of you are preaching, and inciting, a violent, 'revolutionary' confrontation with the state, and if you desire to unite your urban army with that of other urban armies peopled by romantic, resentful, sons and daughters of the very same structures one is fighting, rather blindly, against. With your example, I would *simply mention* that ideas have consequences in our world, and that sometimes, at least for the sake of an exercise, we have to take a side. In fact, we really do have to take a side. We have to define our values and we have to live those values in the world. And we may even have to fight for our values, even if we are very imperfect people.

Jufa wrote: "Who can teach another the ways of life when life is unconditional and all man's beliefs, acknowledgments, and laws for and of living came to him from the same source of those he sees his reflection in?"

I see this as a sophistry, to be quite honest. You have begun from an idealistic position, almost of a Platonic Absolute, and with that assertion seem to go on to define all possible ideas and choices as relative to your ideal. At least that is what I read. But in actual fact, there may very well be very concrete and real things worth fighting for, and even dying for. If it is true, and I am not saying I believe it true or accept the source from whense it came, that "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends", what might this mean in our world? What *value* in fact is being talked about? True, this is a mystical quote from a mystical, Christian document and refers, more than anything to the (supposed) Christian sacrifice, but does it have any other, general value? What solid and concrete values do we live for? Or does it all become indistinct and hazy ['valueless, meaningless'] in a relativistic and dim (fading) light?

With a great deal of (attempted) humor (in the form of a cartoon character I might add, with an 21 inch pecker, yellowing teeth and a messianic mission) I am suggesting that there is a great deal more to be thought about. That 'our traditions' and the intellectual and spiritual work of uncountable generations of men (I mean 'the Occidental Opus') is not to be simply dismissed with an imperious, arrogant gesture by some young Vandals high on Zen fumes. I have made many different attempts to explain this, indeed all my posts are filled with references to ways that truth, beauty and value have been, can be, and are expressed in our highly perishable world.

I find these 'conversations' facinating when they RISE to be actual, bona fide, consequential debates and arguments. Unfortunately for me, Dennis doesn't rise...he sinks! ;-)

Jufa wrote: Everything in the known universe, whether consciousness, free will thought, or man himself is a solid mass without inertia until the vibration of movement give purpose to intent.

Shouldn't you have written "Everything in the known universe, whether consciousness, free will thought, or man himself is a solid mass with inertia [a solid, inert mass] until the vibration of movement give purpose to intent"?

Aren't you trying to say that it is the Idea (whatever in truth this is) that sets in motion?