Christians and me, Part II:

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Personally I like to turn the game against itself, as to bend a conversation back onto itself, creating literary self-awareness of some kind. Well, as an ice skating figure of speech.

I am interested in using another's perspective - that includes other writing, poems, many things - and weaving perspectives around it. This one comes from a 'scholarly article' on Nabokov:

• "Nabokov’s contention that an author “clashes with readerdom because he is his own ideal reader and those other readers are so very often mere lip-moving ghosts and amnesiacs. On the other hand, a good reader is bound to make fierce efforts when wrestling with a difficult author, but those efforts can be most rewarding after the bright dust has settled”.
  
  "I understand this to mean that the writer is always trying to perpetuate his own discourse while the reader tries to appropriate it, evade it, ignore it, forget it, or deny it, thus creating “the bright dust,” the excitement and the pathos of the reader’s and writer’s simultaneous pursuit and evasion of the other’s narrative. But, despite that pathos, as Nabokov guardedly observed of Pushkin, “As so often happens with well-studied lives, an artistically satisfying pattern appears”.

One of my strong impressions about the domain of 'spiritual raps' and, as for example, a forum dedicated to 'Absolute Truth', is that it is completely wrong to extract anything away from it, to negate certain epistemological approaches; I mean 'spirituality' ('enlightenment') as project, as undertaking, as discussion.

So, in this project - the one that touches on 'the most important things one can talk about' - I have the sense it requires a reader's skill, and to be a reader requires literacy of the first order. There are numerous things that can be said about this, and one of them is that, as with nature, it is all a game of appearances, and mimicry and deception is a part of the strangeness of it all. Thus, 'to read' nature, and by extension to 'read' anything and anyone, is really all reading between the lines. If you have captured the surface, you haven't captured. Not getting caught up in what is presented, or not exactly, but holding back from 'giving over' to the communicator too much interpretive power.

I think this suggests that in all communication that deals on meaning, we will always be dealing with something that is, in the sense I use the term, metaphysical. And when one begins to speak in these ways, and to or toward these topics, I think that the real medium of communication is art.

The parable is, of course, at the core of it.

'Lip-moving ghosts and amnesiacs' is an interesting way to put it. And it implies that the writer has or holds - and uses - a certain power. For me, and in what I tend to be drawn to, I am still inclined to see communication as a sacred art. But I think we need to recognise that we have become surrounded by superficial narratives, and superficial readers of narratives. So, communication becomes tricky, and trickery, and a sort of game of by-passing the 'ghost' and the 'amnesiac'.

I also like the term 'bright dust'. Much better a bright dust - given all the possibilities - than a dull, predictable dust.
__________________________________________

I like the ring of this, by and large:

The only relevant adulthood, even in common human life cycles around us, boils down to recognizing emptiness of existence and the indefinability of causality. This means for the average man taking responsibilities, stop the rebelling, drop the egotism and take care of the need of others as ones own and extent ones concern to the community one is part of. This can only be done when feeling "empty" and less of a raging individual. The understandings are now based on commonalities and universalities -- less so on differences and unique paths.

The adult of adults just takes that one step further: realizing emptiness, causality and grasping the deepest commonalities and universal truths known to man. Of course It's understood we live in an infantilizing worlds where self and individualism are still being worshipped even at the stages when they are expired. Modernity worshipped "youth" for that reason, because it's tied with the whole eternally childish ideology, a holding on to death as much as to life.

It reminds me of Christopher Dawson! By no means is that an insult!

I do think though that the phrase 'recognising emptiness of existence and the indefinability of causality' is (I don't imagine you attempted anything especially elegant) rather artless. It really doesn't mean anything but I do not mean that you don't have some meaning to share. I am inclined (naturally!) to come at it from a radically different angle. Well for example, instead of 'emptiness of existence' why not 'bright existential dust of existence'? Or:

"You can get nearer and nearer, so to speak, to reality; but you can never get near enough because reality is an infinite succession of steps, levels of perception, false bottoms, and hence unquenchable, unattainable".

One comes to a stone cold stop having recognised 'emptiness of existence and the indefinability of causality' (it could be given a Latin rendering and sound like a disease!) But a coming closer and closer to 'reality' (meaning, life, being) holds so many more possibilities it seems to me.

Oh, well, such is a narcissist's prattle! Too much Shakespeare and not enough philosopher gear.

[Maximiliano Vignaga]

Today someone said about making ice cream: "making ice cream is an art. Ice cream makers are artists." Ice cream isn't necessary for people, it's just a frivolity. The same with art.

Buon natale everyone.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

And you killed him instantly for saying such a stupid thing, an evil thing, right?

But I should warn you: the barbarians are on the rise, there is no avoiding such run-ins.

Many fly in here, lured I guess by the scent of genius. Something in the sheen of absoluteness I suppose.

You'll have to learn how to hide your true sentiments and dissemble.

[SeekerOfWisdom]

My mistake, so much switching between quoting I took that paragraph as your own.

Nevertheless, my point and prediction still stands. You're basically a dancer with your language.

Seeker, what do you make of this?

V. Nabokov wrote:
"You can get nearer and nearer, so to speak, to reality; but you can never get near enough because reality is an infinite succession of steps, levels of perception, false bottoms, and hence unquenchable, unattainable".

Firstly, when you quote, you should be honest and state your take on the quote clearly. What you do is dance, avoiding clarity and substance at all costs it seems. For example you quoted the above, but avoided any kind of clear association to it. You've done the same thing repeatedly.

The quote by Nabokov seems to be a beginners point of view. It may seem unattainable and confusing initially, when one is experiencing new kinds of perception, (or really just believing he is), or varying realizations, but eventually if one comes to wisdom one stops lying to himself, as you seem to be doing.

It's amazing how you manage to type so much and say so little. It's difficult dealing with people like you. I'm going to have to ask you some clear questions, as otherwise you would continue saying nothing and risking nothing. Hopefully we can get you to reveal the beliefs that you're hiding so that any delusions become clear. We'll start with the few topics which are actually related to philosophy that you've mentioned already.

You've used the words "emptiness", "causality", and "self". Yet you have not elaborated on your take of these. If you have half a mind you would understand that saying these words without elaborating is basically useless around here, since your take on them may vary a lot from mine, and so on. Am I just supposed to assume you mean the same thing as Diebert, or a forum founder, how am I to know? So I'll ask you, what do you mean when you say the word "emptiness"? What do you mean when you say the word "causality"? What do you mean when you say the word "Self"? (You pointed out that some members of GF are in denial of self, which I agree with so far)

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

::: yawn :::

It is more amazing how much can be said but how little of it is understood. This seems to be because of illiteracy. It is imperative, from my angle and perspective, to gain literacy so to engage in higher thought, in philosophy, as well as morality, art, culture, civilisation and then, last but not least, spirituality and the pondering or confronting life's higher dimensions. Make sense?

The structure within which you place yourself, where you arrogatingly define 'delusion' and assume you understand error or delusion, is so reduced, so limiting and limited, that you become the subject who requires help, not the giver of it. You don't offer clarity, though you hallucinate that you do, and structure your forum personality around a false clarity which seems merely impish. Thus, your mistakenly assumed role is reversed, and the 'conversation' goes in a very different direction.

The 'lying' we may do, or are capable of, thus becomes an interesting topic. Yet again the question is turned around. Not likely what you were expecting. Safe to say you will not ever get from me an 'answer' that satisfies your sense of justice.

'Lip-moving ghosts and amnesiacs' is an interesting way to put it. And it implies that the writer has or holds - and uses - a certain power. For me, and in what I tend to be drawn to, I am still inclined to see communication as a sacred art. But I think we need to recognise that we have become surrounded by superficial narratives, and superficial readers of narratives. So, communication becomes tricky, and trickery, and a sort of game of by-passing the 'ghost' and the 'amnesiac'.

[SeekerOfWisdom]

And done is done, proven is proven, undeniable. You won't even explain your use of the words emptiness or causality, to me or to anyone I assume, and instead resort only to ad hominem. < That's a fact, not something I made up, not a metaphor, not a poem, a fact that you can't and won't explain your use of these words or elaborate upon them. Let the simple fact that you're refusing to do so be clear. The conversation hasn't even started, so what are you talking about? Already you've resorted to dismissing (ignore, ignorance). It's really ridiculous how stupid a person would have to be to say they're going to "re-write genius forum" and then just ad hominem their way out of the first direct question posed to them. Feel free to ask me any questions that are actually related to metaphysics and not Shakespeare. But only after you elaborate upon your use of these words. Otherwise you'll just be further proving your self-deception, because you won't answer out of fear, not because of your assumptions about me. Please show that my assumption is wrong, I'm excited and eager.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

But if you want a conversation about it with real human beings, in the sense of rational actors, it needs rationality and logic.

You have presented me with a bit of a puzzle. It is not easy of solution. You propose something which requires a turning-back, a revision in a real sense, a retracing of steps, in order to then make a statement about what such conversation should be about; how it should be conducted; but then - and critically - by whom?

But with this I have to reveal my cards, at least to the degree that revealing is wise and possible among dishonest folk (but I do not necessarily mean wilfully dishonest and I mean, of course, ignorant folk: folk who require so much more work! Folks who have to get to work and who have so much more work to do!)

We have our work set out for us insofar as generations of men have laid a foundation for the work we must undertake. Your own view, I gather, is that we have to step back and allow everything to die. With the hope that something new, some New Man, will then appear and be born. I suppose this is why you seem comfortable (if that is the word) ensconcing yourself within (what I think is a) superficial Baudrillardian irony. But this is where I would critique your position: I think you 'do' this (insofar as you 'do' anything) not through strength and not through weakness ... but through complacency. Is it personal exhaustian and a form of fatigue? Or can it genuinely be said to be a reaching out for new frontiers? Our conversations always become circular: I will always refer to the idea of The Well (in Chinese thought) as the 'inexhaustable spring of being' which we can - and must - imbibe (in all the different senses). You seem to prefer a philosophising that arises from a charred postwar cityscape. How fitting!

So, and this must be abvious and must be made even obvious and explicit: I think we can do so much more by returning to the sources that exist and revitalising them than in imagining (erroneously and also destructively) that we can bypass it all and attain to some 'absolute truth'. This is so very much a stance that is a part of this forum - it is written into it, it is part of the texture of the text - that to come into this environment is - automatically - to take one side or the other. Thus, we slopply and carelessly destroy a relationship to our self and to value (the historical font as it were, and the outer emblem of what the 'water' of The Well means), and succumb to acidic processes which destroy foundations; or we work to rebuild a relationship with Our Traditions. But carefully and very thoughtfully.

I feel that the conversation I desire to have - and the one I am capable of at least to some extent - is one that has to be fought for. This is where I would bring in the notion of 'blood, battle and bloodiness'.

Never - ever! - have I been off-topic. In fact I have remained on-topic to all that Jup brought up in his OP. There are many many subjects, ideas, entry points to (what you call) conversation and exchange, and sadly ... no one home to have that conversation.

Amnesiacs and ghosts indeed! I hope this makes things much clearer.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Seeker:

The only way to honestly speak about metaphysics is to speak about Shakespeare! If you knew more about Shakesepear you'd know so much more about metaphysics and also 'self'.

I'd suggest that conversation is on-going and in the sense I mean is eternal. It is more a question of entering into it, becoming a participant in it.

What you are taking (erroneously and deludedly) as ad hominem is in no sense at all meant in that spirit. I hope that you will internalise this before you go on. Yet, we are dealing with some crucial cores about man, and so 'man' as subject is always - for me - right at the centre of the questions. If I speak of 'defects' of man, or man's approaches to things (for example 'manliness') it is not to attack 'the man', that is you, but to get hold of a larger element which, in my view, must be part-and-parcel of the conversation.

All 'elaborations' occur in various ways in what I write. Nothing will be restated so to be intelligible to you. You will have to rise up and do so much more work to grasp meanings. Sorry, but that is how it is.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Christians and Me

It is good every once in a while to bring in one of the main elements that inspired the present (veering) trend in discussion. I came across this quote by TS Eliot:

• If Christianity goes, the whole of our culture goes. Then you must start painfully again, and you cannot put on a new culture ready made. You must wait for the grass to grow to feed the sheep to give the wool out of which your new coat will be made. You must pass through many centuries of barbarism. We should not live to see the new culture, nor would our great-great-great-grandchildren: and if we did, not one of us would be happy in it.

See, I'd suggest that 'you-all' (to speak quite generally but not unfairly) are intellectually and philosophically connected with acid processes of thought. But 'processes of thought' is an exterior manifestation of internal processes. I am really curious to locate and to talk about what this in fact 'is'.

Is it too easy, too much of a grab-shot, to imagine it has a relationship to Marxian undermining? Or, is Marxian undermining (of structure) a symptom of trends that can be traced to a more anterior base? Where and in what has the Idea shifted? How does one speak of this 'metaphysically'? If Kierkegaard is a topic, how does he stand in relation to the dire situation Eliot speaks of? Is he part of dissolving processes? Or is he part of coalescing processes? Or both?

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

PS: I did not and do not use these terms: emptiness or causality. You have read badly. These are Diebert's terms and to get clarity about them you'll have to refer to him. I only made a comment in relation to something he said. If you read badly - carelessly - you do not have a mind that I much want to interact with as it would be - do you agree? - a waste of time. Is any of this making sense to you?

[SeekerOfWisdom]

Seeker:

The only way to honestly speak about metaphysics is to speak about Shakespeare! If you knew more about Shakesepear you'd know so much more about metaphysics and also 'self'.

I'd suggest that conversation is on-going and in the sense I mean is eternal. It is more a question of entering into it, becoming a participant in it.

What you are taking (erroneously and deludedly) as ad hominem is in no sense at all meant in that spirit. I hope that you will internalise this before you go on. Yet, we are dealing with some crucial cores about man, and so 'man' as subject is always - for me - right at the centre of the questions. If I speak of 'defects' of man, or man's approaches to things (for example 'manliness') it is not to attack 'the man', that is you, but to get hold of a larger element which, in my view, must be part-and-parcel of the conversation.

All 'elaborations' occur in various ways in what I write. Nothing will be restated so to be intelligible to you. You will have to rise up and do so much more work to grasp meanings. Sorry, but that is how it is.

I guess a lot of what I've written doesn't make sense without some context. Some logic which is obvious to me but apparently not to you, which I'll list now:
Firstly, those philosophers, such as yourself, who so often refer to and quote other philosophers are, just like most everyone else, leaning on an intellectual crutch. Idolizing, believing in the words of others. This is not philosophy at all, but speculation and regurgitation. The question is, what would you write if you had to leave all that behind? What is your personal understanding? These questions should be obvious and fundamental. Right now I don't know whether you believe in a god, are a Buddhist, or have some hidden and strange world view. So how could you say you are seeking truth, while not even being able to present whatever truth you already think you've found.

Secondly, most everyone exists under the pretense that they know so much. Whichever views are agreeable to their prejudices, they agree with. Whichever challenge their prejudices, they reject. Yet most everyone is deluded and has spent barely half an hour in solitary contemplation. They don't have the intention to be honest with others because they do not even know how to be honest with themselves. The fact is that the large majority of humanity is uneducated or deluded, and literacy skills have almost nothing to do with it. In fact, just last month I was listening to a fella on this forum explain to me my ignorance, this same fella believed he had communicated with the mind of the universe through a wall while literally on acid (we concluded). So I tend to enter conversations without giving any "benefit of the doubt", as it seems you also do.

So the question becomes, in what ways do you determine the 'level' another is on? (As you put it when you mentioned 'higher levels of thought'. Hopefully you didn't mean more complex levels, but rather more fundamental 'levels' which are more closely connected with logic and truth.) There is really only one answer to this question, and that is to hear what the person has to say, what they believe, what their understanding of fundamental philosophical concepts are. You can't determine it by one's current interest, laziness, carelessness, effort or caution, but only by philosophy itself. This is why, despite your use of language (which is boring, unclear, imprecise, needlessly extensive, generally filled with metaphors, endless references to the works of other people, and some odd humor) which I find indicative of stupidity- and I admit I can barely bother to read it- I still have the sense to wait around long enough and see whether you're just another deluded fella or not. By way of philosophy, not based on how well read you are.

I hope that's enough context for you to understand why some questions are necessary. I'll be very basic, very general, and very clear so as to avoid any confusion with what you've previously written.

What do you expect will happen in regards to your consciousness, mind, awareness, or being, at bodily death? (Feel free to skip any particular question, but if you would answer even one, that would mean the world to me, really.)

It's a thread in relation to Christianity so I may as well ask, do you believe in any God or higher power? Do you pray?

Have you ever engaged in meditation? Do you find any value in it, and if so, what does it mean to you? In what way is it useful?

How relevant do you think science and scientific inquiry is to philosophy? Do you have any beliefs regarding the nature of the universe to point out?

Do you believe that consciousness is dependent upon the body? Do you believe that consciousness is a product of the brain? Do you believe that you have a soul of any kind? When you refer to 'the self', to what do you refer? Do you think that there are any 'absolute truths', do you know of any?

I look forward to your reply, and seriously, short of going back reading your 100 or so comments, I have no clue whether you're a hindu, a jew, or an athiest. No worthwhile philosophical conversation can happen without some context.










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[Gustav Bjornstrand]

I guess a lot of what I've written doesn't make sense without some context. Some logic which is obvious to me but apparently not to you, which I'll list now: Firstly, those philosophers, such as yourself, who so often refer to and quote other philosophers are, just like most everyone else, leaning on an intellectual crutch. Idolizing, believing in the words of others. This is not philosophy at all, but speculation and regurgitation. The question is, what would you write if you had to leave all that behind? What is your personal understanding? These questions should be obvious and fundamental. Right now I don't know whether you believe in a god, are a Buddhist, or have some hidden and strange world view. So how could you say you are seeking truth, while not even being able to present whatever truth you already think you've found.

Your error - which I suggest is serious indeed - stems from this mistaken base. It is not possible to 'philosophise', nor to employ language, nor to communicate between ourselves, without recurring to knowledge bases that have already been established. (You give evidence of this when you ask for my context). An easy example is mathematical language. One gathers that you suppose it possible to do away with all that has been established in mathematics, and geometry and such, and start from some new, fresh POV. Just as this is not really possible - and to engage with mathematical exploration one has to cover the ground already covered - so it is in most relevant senses in philosophy. There is, I reckon, a point in mysticism where complete breaks with tradition, and possibly history, are possible, yet I doubt if much good comes from them.

The question indeed is What would you write (think, say, feel, understand) if you had zero history in this world, within our world, within civilisation, and within the persons and personalities that have been constructed? But this is your offering, essentially. Vacuous, impish, useless.

You resort to a simplistically asinine tack of supposing that you operate from a platform in ideas that is removed or perhaps 'independent' is the word, from the matrix of which we are a part. I suggest that this is a dangerous trick you have played on yourself, or one that has been played on you. You have suckered yourself into believing that you have some special stance or capacity - you do not, I suggest, really have one - that is unique and distinct nor do you have one that is substantial in any sense. Thus, you are a poser, a fake, a sham philosopher. Yet you pretend to something very different and in this way engage in an astounding - a literally fantastic - 'pretence'.

I'd suggest (and I have read your barf for some years now) that you have no idea what you are talking about. Zero. None. You took some strange acid and saw god-knows-what and this has set you on a path which - I speculate - will unwind you finally. Yet I really don't care to speculate. Nevertheless I see you as an emblem of a dangerous and destructive process whereby that undermines so many different things, attainments; things hard-won and genuinely sacrificed for. You let them fall. You have no understanding of them. You represent, therefor, the 'barbarian' and barbarism.

To begin to name these things (values, attainments) is a work in itself and requires discipline and effort. You have internalised a self-deception that is really large, and this self-deception (delusion defined) is one that, in different ways, is engaged and indulged in by a vulgar mass man with no comprehension of what he does. In this sense you are ignorance embodied. But ignorance with a chip on its shoulder. Arrogant ignorance. I suggest that this verges into willed ignorance and I further suggest, with qualifications, that it could also easily become evil ignorance.

You think that I wish to understand your platform? To spend any time at all gaining insight into it? When the product of your thought is the end of the possibility of rational activity? I suggest - as politely as it is possible to say - that I'm very little interested. You have nothing to *teach* and everything to learn. You need, therefor, to be stopped. (You do recognise, I hope, that I am not only speaking to you but to a whole trend in thinking; a whole behaviour of our present). Although I do not deny that you can take the intellectual tack you do, I very much question the value of it, the purpose and sense of it, the productivity of it, as well as the long-range benefit to 'our world', to people, to civilisation. It seems to me a serious affair.

The rest of what you write requires no more energy, at least if what I say about your platform is correct. You deconstruct yourself. Now, it is true that you may not agree with my analysis of 'you' and others here may not either (I suspect that many here are attracted to similar acidic ointment). But this is my position. And it is a studied one and one that has taken a good deal of time to define.

Now, this does not mean that it is not possible to look freshly at 'the world', or at knowledge and knowing, but that is something quite different from what you are on about.

This is why, despite your use of language (which is boring, unclear, imprecise, needlessly extensive, generally filled with metaphors, endless references to the works of other people, and some odd humor) which I find indicative of stupidity- and I admit I can barely bother to read it- I still have the sense to wait around long enough and see whether you're just another deluded fella or not. By way of philosophy, not based on how well read you are.

I've heard all this before, and certainly here on GF! I have come to understand that I am not intelligible to you for other reasons, not imprecision or anything else. It is par for the course therefor that you say what you say, and similarly it is par for the course that I organise an oppositional stance. And note that this is what I do. I oppose your position as well as your predicates.

I do not suggest that you 'wait around' and I'd simply suggest that you move right to the foregone conclusion. It was built in to your predicates!

[Pam Seeback]

Christians and Me

It is good every once in a while to bring in one of the main elements that inspired the present (veering) trend in discussion. I came across this quote by TS Eliot:

• If Christianity goes, the whole of our culture goes. Then you must start painfully again, and you cannot put on a new culture ready made. You must wait for the grass to grow to feed the sheep to give the wool out of which your new coat will be made. You must pass through many centuries of barbarism. We should not live to see the new culture, nor would our great-great-great-grandchildren: and if we did, not one of us would be happy in it.

See, I'd suggest that 'you-all' (to speak quite generally but not unfairly) are intellectually and philosophically connected with acid processes of thought. But 'processes of thought' is an exterior manifestation of internal processes. I am really curious to locate and to talk about what this in fact 'is'.

Is it too easy, too much of a grab-shot, to imagine it has a relationship to Marxian undermining? Or, is Marxian undermining (of structure) a symptom of trends that can be traced to a more anterior base? Where and in what has the Idea shifted? How does one speak of this 'metaphysically'? If Kierkegaard is a topic, how does he stand in relation to the dire situation Eliot speaks of? Is he part of dissolving processes? Or is he part of coalescing processes? Or both?

What are the internal processes of thought? Depends on whether you are internalizing ignorance or wisdom. Let's look at T. S. Eliot's quote and your interpretation of its "direness" in light of this thought:

If Christianity goes, the whole of our culture goes. Then you must start painfully again, and you cannot put on a new culture ready made. You must wait for the grass to grow to feed the sheep to give the wool out of which your new coat will be made. You must pass through many centuries of barbarism. We should not live to see the new culture, nor would our great-great-great-grandchildren: and if we did, not one of us would be happy in it.

If Eliot's quote is taken at face value he is making absolute statements about the passing of Christianity when in truth, he is opining about its passing. And because you identified his opining as a "dire situation" (implying it will happen) it would seem you have fallen into the same metaphysical darkness (ignorance). In relation to the internal-into-external thought processes you mentioned, ignorance externalizes ignorance (confusion) and clarity externalizes clarity (wisdom).

You speak often of communication. Can you see how two people ignorantly mistaking their "I thinks" for "I knows" can never enter into a truthful communication (communion)? Likewise, if one person has wisdom of the difference and one does not, how this too is not a truthful communion? What is the nature of the communion of two who know the difference between "I think" and "I know"? Just that, they know the difference.

Alex, what you do know?

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

I don't understand you, Pam.

It is that I do not grasp the *predicates* you operate from. I assume you have a developed vocabulary and too that one could inquire into its terms. You assign a special value to 'wisdom' obviously. You seem to have a particular epistemological position. 'Ignorance' means something particular to you, your discourse. You have, apparently, some developed ideas about 'suppositions' as opposed to 'knowledge'. I don't have the enrgy to guess where you go with these things. Yet I have read enough of what you write to have, at least, some sense. Here goes:

With your knowledge and understanding you go to death's doorway. You do not define a life in this platform. You define something entirely else. You seem to me to desire to disincarnate. I am aware too that some schools of yoga, in essence, define such a platform and endeavour. Paramahansa Yogananda wrote a long commentary on the Gita from this perspective: Just as we came into this world through certain choices and acts, to exit this world we have to reverse the process. I suspect that you are involved in a process where these *things* (insofar as they can be said to be things) are what you *value*. It is certainly what you wish to talk about.

There is a place in my concept-structure for such a transcendental option. I do not negate it. But I do think that the whole continuum of possibility has to be developed and understood.

You'd be better off, I think, simply lunging forward into the conclusive statements you wish to make!

To understand what Eliot is saying, one would have to be interested in it first off. And then one would have to retrace so many of the steps that led him to his understanding. It is not outlandish by any means.

The topic of this thread - though it has never been engaged by anyone except me - based itself in some comments about Christians and Christianity. Kierkegaard was mentioned. I refer to Eliot. I seem to have a very different view of all of this.

[SeekerOfWisdom]

Your error - which I suggest is serious indeed - stems from this mistaken base. It is not possible to 'philosophise', nor to employ language, nor to communicate between ourselves, without recurring to knowledge bases that have already been established. (You give evidence of this when you ask for my context). An easy example is mathematical language. One gathers that you suppose it possible to do away with all that has been established in mathematics, and geometry and such, and start from some new, fresh POV. Just as this is not really possible - and to engage with mathematical exploration one has to cover the ground already covered - so it is in most relevant senses in philosophy.

Did you just compare mathematics to philosophy? How on earth can you declare that the best way to go about philosophy is to stand on the shoulders of historical philosophers? You have provided no reasoning whatsoever to suggest that is a good idea, rather than an idiotic idea. (Which logic very clearly suggests it is idiotic, for so many reasons, some of which have been stated.) You literally said that you can't be a philosopher without your whole journey being founded on an intellectual crutch and second-hand writings. Please explain, since so far that seems like the worst advice I've ever heard.

Again, you have already proven your ignorance by resorting only to ad hominem and not being able to answer a single question in regards to the most basic subjects of metaphysics. You won't even tell me if you're a Christian, a Buddhist, or neither, seriously, what's wrong with you? Introduce yourself Gustav! Otherwise, what on earth are you doing on this forum? This is "Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment", when you have said absolutely nothing about the nature of Ultimate Reality, and absolutely nothing about enlightenment. Or do you just simply deny these ideas in general?

Stop with the repeated ad hominem, which is a logical fallacy, (it's mind blowing how ignorant a 'philosopher' would have to be to write 100 comments filled with ad hominem and refuse any discussion regarding the basic topics of the forum) and actually talk in terms of philosophy. I don't do drugs of any sort, so why is your guessing and your claims of my 'barbarism' at all valuable? We haven't even started a discussion. We aren't here to talk about peoples feelings and poems unless it is in relation to philosophy. Do you know how many times in this thread alone you've quoted texts only to say that you find them "marvelous" or interesting in some sense? Try actually saying something of substance about metaphysics. Answer one of the questions I asked you, say something about the nature of reality, knowledge, emptiness, causality, anything at all! Whatever it is, just something, or no one here is going to take you seriously and you'll probably just be banned as Alex was (If I remember correctly).

You think that I wish to understand your platform?

What has been established: "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." Aristotle

The whole point is to understand exactly the 'platform' of each person you communicate with, stop wasting time. As movingalways said, what is the point of talking about 'what you think', I want to hear what you 'know' regarding metaphysics, not that you enjoy reading Shakespeare. This isn't a study of the past, I want to hear what Gustav knows. Also, please refer to the forum introduction:

" First and foremost, genius does not necessarily relate to talent. Being exceptionally good at some particular task does not automatically make one a genius. In light of this, people like Albert Einstein and Johann Sebastian Bach were not geniuses, but simply very talented people. Indeed, a genius need not be very talented in any area of life at all. Or if he does have some talent, it would necessarily find its most concentrated expression in the realm of wisdom. Genius is a function of one's relationship with Ultimate Reality and thus is a function of consciousness. The more one is conscious of the true nature of Reality, the more one is a genius."

Do you disagree with the fundamental point being made here? And if not, you need to explain how you are 'conscious of the true nature of Reality', since you yourself said you were seeking truth.

[SeekerOfWisdom]

Also, movingalways, I rephrased what I had previously written on the thread 'The necessary context of'.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Please explain, since so far that seems like the worst advice I've ever heard.

I think as it pertains to my ideas and my writing, that you'll have to glean answers to your questions through a closer reading.

...what on earth are you doing on this forum?

In this case, responding to some statements made about Christianity, and some references to Kierkegaard. The forum interests me, as I have been saying, insofar as the position it takes is one I find necessary to oppose. And so, my presence is largely oppositional, as you have noted. But, when I speak of 'rewriting the forum' (not meant literally of course) I mean, I think, that some of the strength or intensity or perhaps 'focus' is very valuable, but if restructured or rearranged. So, to rewrite is to incorporate and reincorporate other material. I used an archaic term clinamen ('swerve') to speak about what interests me. What I write, and why I write, is a clinamen from the intention of the forum (if it can be said to have an intention and I think by some of your statements about it, it can be said to have one). I think you may have to take it or leave it, like so much encountered in life, on the Internet, etc. And I am interested in pursuing my approach and not having my approach structured by you. Make sense?

Since it is - to me anyway and I think it should be to you, too - pretty obvious that our orientations and our bases can be said to be nearly diametrically opposed, that agreeing to be engaged in your preferred structure of debate would certainly be futile. That approach really does bore me to tears. There is an ultimatum in what you demand and the way you demand it that so much reminds me of the way that Quinn & Co. structure their presentations. I see that as being part of a 'game', and I simply prefer not to play the game in that way. Still, I have registered your 'questions' and would say 1) read and reread what I have written in these last pages, and 2) read other of my writings. I have read a good deal of yours, and I remember very clearly when and how you began here. So, I have done my part. (To the degree I am interested in what you write and, truthfully, I am very little interested in your position and where your position leads).

I find it more interesting to back away from that, and examine that. To take that as the topic. You seem to feel this is ad hominem. I see ad hominem argumentation as being different insofar as the intention in classical ad hominem is base or perhaps devious is the word. Here, I make a very clear statement about what I sense to be your position. I may not get it right in specifics, but I have a strong sense that I do in a general sense. By stating what I have stated I have, I think pretty clearly, spoken to and about a division that cannot, not in a mere moment, be bridged. It is only possible to present a position to you (to you and to anyone) 'for your consideration'. To enter into a debate with you is contrary both to my purposes and would exhaust what energy I have at my disposal. However, you are welcome to write out your rebuttal to any aspect, or claim, or judgment, that I make. And in this you will serve the forum, as I serve the forum. From time to time I am reminded how the 'absolutisms' that get swung into use on the forum seem to function similarly to Marxian political and economic absolutisms. I see this as a grave danger.

An oppositional position, on this forum, has never been well received. Long ago I came to realise that it could not be received because, by the structure of the tenets that inform the ideology that informs the Forum, such an oppositional stance is ipso facto 'delusion'. I have and I do again suggest paying attention to one of the results of dealing in 'absolutisms' in life and in philosophy.

Finally, to continue with the 'what am I doing' question: I decided years back to use this forum to a maximal extent. But I use it climanenally. You know the saying 'The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone'? (Psalm 118) I came to understand that everything that was carelessly pushed aside, everything that was rejected (as you reject certain things for example as 'illogical' and otherwise untenable), dismissed, ridiculed, vilified, slandered, and trashed, I would come along behind and pick them all up and look more closely into them. You asked me 'What are you doing here' and this is part of my answer. I have dedicated 5-6 years to a reading project in order to do what it is I set myself to. So, when you speak, for example, I am keen to pay attention to exactly what you reject and dismiss, and instead of rejecting it with you, to take it and to hold it up for examination. What I have done then is to creatively employ a 'negative' in the service of a 'positive': the positive that I define.

It may help to think of me as a comet: I come flying by, an unwelcome stain upon the sky, spreading invisible dust or perhaps wicked seeds of ill-omen. But then I keep on flying ... and my orbiting is less frequent ... and a day may come when I simply do not appear again. Don't cry for me Argentina...

"Don't cry for me, the truth is I never left you!"

[SeekerOfWisdom]

Reading what you have to write reminds me of going to a play. This forum isn't a stage with an audience, it's a 'graveyard' as people like to call it, and the ideas which you imagine come hand in hand with it, don't. So far as I can see very few remain posting here, and those that do might agree on relatively little. There are a few things of course which are agreed upon, one main topic is in relation to the prevalence of delusion, as you know. So you've made it clear, you're in opposition to the forum, but to what specifically? You mentioned something regarding opposition to the 'denial of self', which I'd agree with if you could elaborate any further.

The point of what I have to say to you is this: how do you know you're not simply wrong to be in -and so far you've only made a blanket statement- 'opposition'? The core agreement is that people are delusional and egotistical, and cling to all sorts of crazy beliefs, so perhaps you're in opposition to a position much closer to truth than you believe. Another core agreement of the forum is that 'realization', 'insight' or 'awareness' regarding the nature of reality is not equally bestowed upon each person, either because conditions have not lead to it or it hasn't been pursued. So, how do you know you're not just in need of less reading from other people and more independent contemplation? Perhaps you'd come to realize a few things which might change your perspective, whatever that perspective is, I can't know, since you refuse to elaborate on what alternatives you have to offer, or even what it is specifically that you're opposed to.

Also, try not to be prejudicial regarding past posts, not only can things change so rapidly or simply not be revealed, but more importantly I should add the context I've almost never engaged in any in-depth conversation regarding philosophy on this forum, I haven't had the chance to! Oddly, perhaps without realizing it, people manage to repeatedly avoid actually speaking about their beliefs, as if honesty were a phobia, which I think you are also doing, and I'd bet you are hiding some beliefs, some world view, some ideas, in relation to all of those simple questions I asked earlier. In fact, you must have some views on these things, so why do you hide them? It's the same plot hole you'll see time and time again on the forum. What did Shakespeare say, 'Be true to thine own self'? Be honest, for once, you have some view regarding death, the nature of reality, materialism, idealism, and so on, you must, yet you won't talk about it, try to actually think for a moment and see if that's true. The only other alternative is that you don't have any views on these topics and are essentially brain-dead or just take the position "I don't know". Which is it? Stop hiding your views, imagine a future in which you just stated them boldly.

[Pam Seeback]

Gustav: You'd be better off, I think, simply lunging forward into the conclusive statements you wish to make!

See below.

Gustav: To understand what Eliot is saying, one would have to be interested in it first off. And then one would have to retrace so many of the steps that led him to his understanding. It is not outlandish by any means.

But it is indeed outlandish to suggest that anyone can retrace any of Eliot's or anyone's steps, or even their own steps for that matter. You mentioned that I use the term “ignorance”: here it is, revealed in the light of the darkness of your words above, laid open for close examination if you care to do so. Are you willing to reason with me my conclusion (what I know) that retracing causal patterns is not only impossible, but that to believe one can do so is at the heart of all of man's suffering?

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

But it is indeed outlandish to suggest that anyone can retrace any of Eliot's or anyone's steps, or even their own steps for that matter. You mentioned that I use the term “ignorance”: here it is, revealed in the light of the darkness of your words above, laid open for close examination if you care to do so. Are you willing to reason with me my conclusion (what I know) that retracing causal patterns is not only impossible, but that to believe one can do so is at the heart of all of man's suffering?

Well, to be truthful I have looked at your paragraph for a few minutes and I believe I can sense/feel where you desire to go with it, and I do not want to go there. That means not that I do not respect your reasoning, or your conclusion, but that it represents in my understanding not an opening to knowledge, or understanding, or decisive power, or anything that can be considered useful; but away from that to a zone of dead intellectualisation.

Still, I can understand in a topical sense, that you are concerned about 'ending suffering' and that this is a large part of your desired discourse. I imagine that, for you, this dovetails into your ideas about certain aspects of Christianity and Buddhism (you refer to these often), and again I can respect that, yet it holds little interest for me, that is, stated in that way, or with that focus. And although I do not like to suffer, neither do I like to set up ideational anaesthetics. It is for this reason that I say that your philosophy, perhaps taken to its extreme of application, is one with a focus on death's door. I do not dis-invalidate this though.

To hold it, to develop it, is in all the senses I mean and which are important to me, to die. We can then debate if it is better to be dead and unsuffering, or alive and sufferful, but this would not really serve either of us.

So, I restate what I have said over and over again: I am interested in defining very different ideas, and for very different uses, within the plane of the present, in real time, among real persons, with real concerns and needs. Really, and overall, my interest is in 'civilisation' and the ideas and attitudes and projects that support it.

What you are interested in I leave for you to define. And I certainly hope that you will.

Use my position, my articulation, as a take-off point for your own discourse. Such a glorious opportunity, no?

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Reading what you have to write reminds me of going to a play. This forum isn't a stage with an audience, it's a 'graveyard' as people like to call it, and the ideas which you imagine come hand in hand with it, don't.

That is a curious statement, from my angle of view. However, if you were to be more accurate and true to life I think you'd have to say that a forum is exactly a stage with an audience. In any case, it is as much that as it is what you seem to suppose it is.

Also, 'the play', the enactment, the ritual, the recitation, the poem, the prayer, and so much that men do and have done and which holds and expresses their understanding of things, holds some of the best insights into our world, life, our human world, our struggle, our problem, our situation. So - and true to form - I'd pick up and investigate the piece that you have just carelessly discarded. All of it. I'd haul it back round and I'd re-stage it. I am not trying to tweak your nose. I am trying to reveal alternative takes on things. I situate myself there.

Graveyard did you say? Oh but don't die yet! To polish your metaphor (I'd have busted you if you'd not put it in quotes!) I think that you'd better have said a moribundary. A place for people to go and die, or a place for those in processes of dying.

The core agreement is that people are delusional and egotistical, and cling to all sorts of crazy beliefs, so perhaps you're in opposition to a position much closer to truth than you believe. Another core agreement of the forum is that 'realization', 'insight' or 'awareness' regarding the nature of reality is not equally bestowed upon each person, either because conditions have not lead to it or it hasn't been pursued. So, how do you know you're not just in need of less reading from other people and more independent contemplation? Perhaps you'd come to realize a few things which might change your perspective, whatever that perspective is, I can't know, since you refuse to elaborate on what alternatives you have to offer, or even what it is specifically that you're opposed to.

I'd say, and I have said it often, that this is an interesting assertion insofar as the one who makes this statement is, rather obviously, situating himself in the position of 'knower'. So, you know what is delusional and crazy and you are in a position to relieve that suffering. But I say the following: I have looked into these truth-claims and I see them as claims. However, and in keeping with my strategies, I take it as 'provisionally true' that delusion and locura may indeed exist, and be considered 'real things', but that I do not accept what it is that 'you-plural' have defined as delusional and crazy. Make sense? Again, I come behind collecting the bits and pieces, and I carefully dust them off, iron out the creases, put them in glassine envelopes, catalogue them, and then pore over them long into the dreary night.

But may I then say the following? Based on what you write, and your focus, I'd say (tentatively) that you might be crazy as a loon and more deluded than the most deluded in the bin of loonies.

A bold statement, n'est-ce pas? Yet - yet! - it is a possibility that extends from 'your' own predicates. If you can label, you can be labeled. I have come, seen and labeled.

Now, I came to realise that it is possible to seek out insights and realisations that function as antidotes to the madness of your raging minds, bitten by vast self-importance and upheld by chips on shoulders which are preposterously ridiculous.

Are you beginning to get where I am coming from? I am agreeing with an aspect of what is presented, but instead of seeing 'them' as the 'problem', I am seeing 'you' as the problem incarnate. When I realised this, I understood that I would have to cover all the ground in all those areas where 'your' dismissals were most, how shall I say, virulent.

Oddly, perhaps without realizing it, people manage to repeatedly avoid actually speaking about their beliefs, as if honesty were a phobia, which I think you are also doing, and I'd bet you are hiding some beliefs, some world view, some ideas, in relation to all of those simple questions I asked earlier. In fact, you must have some views on these things, so why do you hide them? It's the same plot hole you'll see time and time again on the forum.

In my view, one is better off expressing one's sense of things in non-direct terms. I have the strong sense that the really valuable things about life cannot be expressed directly, they can be alluded to though. I'd also say that this has been an important lesson learned on or through this forum, and again because allusion and artistic representation is shunned here. More, it is reviled, hated, despised. How utterly mistaken 'you' are! How tragic the error.

So, how do you know you're not just in need of less reading from other people and more independent contemplation?

Oh that's easy. I take a long hard look at the one who makes the statement about 'independent contemplation', noting that he has little 'real understanding' of anything at all, so as to appear a buffoon, and then in one lightening-bolt revelation that burns a hole in my sock I understand that I have to become something very different.

The next question is How?

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

...try to actually think for a moment and see if that's true.

"You can get nearer and nearer, so to speak, to reality; but you can never get near enough because reality is an infinite succession of steps, levels of perception, false bottoms, and hence unquenchable, unattainable."

Note that I am 'making a statement' through a borrowing, yet it is still a statement.

Here is a picture of the Adored Master:

[SeekerOfWisdom]

I asked:

Be honest, for once, you have some view regarding death, the nature of reality, materialism, idealism, and so on, you must, yet you won't talk about it, try to actually think for a moment and see if that's true. The only other alternative is that you don't have any views on these topics and are essentially brain-dead or just take the position "I don't know". Which is it? Stop hiding your views,

You replied:

In my view, one is better off expressing one's sense of things in non-direct terms. I have the strong sense that the really valuable things about life cannot be expressed directly, they can be alluded to though.

I completely and utterly reject this incredibly ignorant statement, which is primarily a mode of deflection, in which you admit you won't say anything directly. Seriously, I say you're an idiot, you say I'm an idiot, who is correct? On the one hand a person asks basic questions in regards to philosophy, on the other hand a person refuses to answer any of them and instead says that the only valuable philosophy is found through indirect allusions! < Fact. You must be very blind indeed, to know this fact, and still not see the logical answer. You're clearly the one to be ignored. We're supposed to listen to your allusions as you pretend you're talking about philosophy? No one is falling for it.

It's been added to the list of undeniable proofs of wrongness, to be referred to at a later date when hopefully logic reigns surpreme:
Beingof1- "I had a conversation with the meta mind of the universe, which spoke to me through a wall."
Cahoot- "Empirical evidence suggests that the death of the body is the end, finish, end of the line."
Gustav- "one is better off expressing one's sense of things in non-direct terms. I have the strong sense that the really valuable things about life cannot be expressed directly, they can be alluded to though." (In reply to the demand for any kind of direct statement about the basic questions of metaphysics.)

Immortalized stoopidity.

[SeekerOfWisdom]

You quoting a guy is not a statement. In ten seconds I found Nabokov making an actual statement:

"Common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness."
Nabokov

See how he clearly displayed a belief or view in regards to the basic questions of philosophy? Oh my, how did he do that if you can only get nearer and nearer, and can only allude? He had a view, and you have a view, you're just hiding yours because you're now a coward and you know it will be disected here.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Sure, and what did he say? What do you take that to mean?

You misunderstand: I am not interested, right now, in submitting to your interrogation. You do get this, don't you? So, what I am saying is (in regard to those giant questions such as death, afterlife, etc): we can get closer and closer to these questions, and closer and closer to an answer to them, but that they cannot be definitively answered.

Similarly, I have a strong sense that the same is true for the life we have to live here.

I'd also suggest reading Nabokov with a bit of irony. Common sense may indeed tell us such a thing, yet it is possible that another sort of sense altogether is needed ... and implied.