Christians and me, Part II:

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

I'd agree that this is the case for most perceived truths or truth-claims, that they are matters of perspective, context, situation, or even pure imagination. What you are recognizing and pointing out in this regards is completely accurate, even fundamental, and I think everyone here recognizes the same, which is really why we are concerned with terms like 'delusion' and 'absolute truth'. What I'm suggesting is that because of your exposure to so many differing views and 'theologies', you have seemingly 'given up' on the possibility of certainty in regard to metaphysics, especially in regard to any certainty which challenges your particular theology. I think partly you just want that to be the case, perhaps you just fear the loss of the world or system you've created for yourself? For this path would involve the near-literal destruction of the world as you know it.

All I will say here is that when 'you' begin to talk about 'delusion' (which of course is the opposite of the 'absolute truth' which you posit), 'you' lose your way terribly. You may have lost the ground under your feet, or destroyed the 'delusion' of it, but the 'world' that you wake up in, and your voice as it rings out, is a voice of meaninglessness. All that you are saying is 'I have destroyed myself. There is noting left to say or to defend'. You further say: I have no values to defend, no interests, no projects, and no activities. If you are going to privelage death and the dead, why can't you really lie down and DIE? (I used to suggest that to Dennis: Why among the dead and dying is there so much voice, so much assertion and insistence?)

I can only suggest to you that you are not really seeing the consequences of the choices of the tenets of the philosophy you hold dear. You desire me to die along with you, but I don't desire to die. I desire to live. So, I seek ways to nourish myself.

So, who's the 'ghost'?

[Diebert van Rhijn]

A person who haunts graveyards where there are only old reflections of truths, secondary light: The Pale Fire of the moon's reflected and stolen light. (But not the sun).

But we are all that person, haunting graveyards! You have a problem with this particular one, accusing it to be too lively, now or in the past? It's unclear what your challenge is really. Perhaps to come here to die? And yet so unwilling to. Perhaps it's an interesting demonstration of the "Will to an End", the deathwish hidden behind any desire to live. Or you seek the dead corpses, to love, to hate, to experience life a bit more?

The reason for this is the obvious non-intellectual and non-selfish nature of enlightenment and spirituality.

*foaming at the mouth*

Calm down. This forum was created to talk about the nature of "ultimate reality" and the path to enlightenment. As for the nature of enlightenment itself, obviously it cannot be contained in any construct or formula. Or limited to some personal affair. And if it was (lets entertain the possibility) there wasn't much discussion needed (just prove the formula with "fact") and there wouldn't be much of a path: just visit so-and-so since that person "has it".

There you sit in a postmodern quandary with a Baudrillard text: a convoluted puzzle which, really, makes no 'sense'.

There's a need for some to intellectually understand more of the world. If you were really interested and open to study something that goes against your sentimental, mostly conservative beliefs, you'd not call it a convoluted puzzle. The texts are very relevant, modern, and insightful. But not needed to understand the nature of self or existence. Perhaps they can help discarding some baggage? Some illusion? Maybe I just quote it to irritate you, to make it seem you're now having another grand old man to hide from?

I think you're in need for a different direction!

[Diebert van Rhijn]

You desire me to die along with you, but I don't desire to die. I desire to live. So, I seek ways to nourish myself.

Why don't you try it? Just lie down, just give it up. It's all complete, it's perfect, nothing to add, nothing to change, nothing to run from, to prove or to uncover. Of course a lot of things will still continue but you know now it has nothing to do with you. You were just kidding your self before. The problem is that you can't even try for the same reason you cannot read one sentence straight when you do not agree with it, when it doesn't fit your idea about your self and its world, its bags of sentiments and grievances.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Or you seek the dead corpses, to love, to hate, to experience life a bit more?

See here.

Why don't you try it? Just lie down, just give it up.

Ok. But next week. Just terribly busy these days.

[Leyla Shen]

Maximiliano Vignaga quoted:

Certainty and uncertainty are no more applicable to empirical models than the terms true and false are applicable to the definitions we create. Like definitions, the empirical models we create are either useful or not; they either have utility for some purpose or other or they do not; if not, we can categorise them as bad models, but they are never true or false, certain or uncertain. When we grant these creations of the mind the quality of uncertainty, we imply the existence of an objective reality, one which we are attempting to accurately model or reflect, but no such objective reality exists. We are merely creatively carving up an infinitely carvable Reality according to the whims of the qualities of our consciousness. That's the real problem: the belief that such an objective reality exists and that we are somehow reflecting it more and more accurately with our theories and models of causal relation. We think we are discovering the world, when all we are really doing is creating it; what we are doing is modeling our own consciousness - projecting it out into the cosmos and deluding ourselves that we are unraveling the mysteries of existence.

“Objective reality” is that utility in “Reality”. If a model of "Reality" is “good”, it’s objective to that degree. If it’s “bad” it’s subjective to that degree.

[Leyla Shen]

I could state the same thing like this, too:

“Objective reality” is that utility in the cosmos. If a model of the cosmos is “good”, it’s objective to that degree. If it’s “bad” it’s subjective to that degree.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

I would suppose, Diebert, that this is similar to what you'd expressed earlier:

• "Then it is possible to take up a position directly opposed to the foregoing, and to maintain that, in principle at least, thought can penetrate all things, and no limits can be set to reason".

The part that interests me here is where he suggests that:

• "The religious consciousness does not primarily make its postulates in obedience to the demands of rational thinking: it is not impelled to make them by stress of pure logic. No doubt it may proceed to justify its postulates by reflective thinking, but they were already made before they became the object of conscious reflection. In brief, these postulates are not rational deductions but values: they are values which are posited in response to the demands of the inner life, and correspond to its needs."

So young, so fresh, so new, so incomplete is our self-undermining of unreflective religiosity, and yet how connected to religious origins are the various philosophical avenues that opened out of religious concerns.

It's unclear what your challenge is really.

It is possible that, in essence and stated simply, my concern is the same as many philosophical 'conservatives', as for example Spengler or Carlyle. But I would suggest too that, as it is suggested above, we come at things because at some point or level inside us we have a sense or feeling that we pursue, and then we proceed to construct rationalisations. I suppose that every person who comes into a space like this, which is one designed and established to confront, is forced to defend themselves at this basic level. Defence requires self-understanding and so, in the best scenarios, one would be forced to go back through oneself and locate and define exactly what I have suggested: one's values.

Historically - less now because I have worked out a great deal - it was necessary to locate and confront what, symbolically because I don't have the energy to explain all over again, what Becker refers to as the negative side of 'Zen'. Quite likely then, what I am ultimately interested in is a full and detailed defence of Western religious and philosophical traditions and what is a whole line of development. As TS Eliot said, and I am pretty sure it is true:

• "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."

'Christianity' is really so very much more than what most take it to mean: a faith in the figure of Jesus (a brainless, childish 'faith' which is death in its own way). It is not. It is a whole process and a project which touches all domains and dimensions. It is civilisation. I did not fully understand this, or I understood it in a shadowy way. Now I understand much much better what is at stake.

You, like Jupi and numerous others, simply do not grasp what is at stake. (Jupi as a 'victim' of the West would have no need or reason to defend it, even though, oddly enough, he establishes himself through Occidental categories: a paradox really). Or, at least in your case, are given over to a resignation in regard to *all this*. It crumbled in you, you crumbled with it, you are crumbled and have limited means to remake yourself. You of course as a post-Christian and a tired, dying European whose final psychological eggs have been carefully located in a semi-Buddhist basket but who has resigned himself to 'inevitable death'.

My ideal is to forge a conceptual path - perhaps in that Johannine way I have referred to - where the 'living water' I have spoken of is 'real' to me not just in the zone of faith or idealism, but in a more unified sense: spiritually, intellectually: in the body.

Bowden in other talks speaks about our 'core being', or things we know and feel (and desire) at a pre-conceptual level. Acknowledgment of this, awakening of this, leads I think to the desire to self-actualise. I suppose part of my answer to you is to say that I desire and I want (I am speaking ideally here) is clear paths to self-actualisation for me and mine. For example the mood in this, which you have noticed as 'semi-fascistic', I emulate and admire. Power is fascistic. Using power is fascistic. Recovery of self and use of self is the opposite of cowering in loss of self or wounded self. It is also masculine recovery.

You are really big on that theme, right?

All of this, all that I have been doing (reading, considering, thinking) has nothing to do with 'checking out' of the world as y'all are interested in. I see that as pathological in numerous ways. My confrontation with GF has pushed me back into myself and has demanded that I 'answer' and 'respond' to the invitation to die. You likely do not understand this but all that I do is 'offering back' and it is, really, a way of offering thanks. (Strange as that sounds).

You asked ...

[SeekerOfWisdom]

You desire me to die along with you, but I don't desire to die. I desire to live. So, I seek ways to nourish myself.

You're saying this from a position of naivety. Perhaps the forum founders along with others propose that you should give up your life or go through some radical abandonment, as a Buddhist monk might, but I'd say such actions aren't even related to this topic at all, except perhaps as a case of delusion to learn from. I agree with you about life and rejuvenation, and as I see it, philosophy is all about life, about benefiting, and for you that should be primarily about becoming free. You might not know it now, but you are likely bound up in all sorts of chains that you should seek to be rid of.

A relevant quote:
"If you want to be reborn,
let yourself die.
If you want to be given everything,
give everything up."
-Tao Te Ching

If it is a death, then it is only a temporary one which leads to a 'truer' rejuvenation of life.

Diebert:
Why don't you try it? Just lie down, just give it up.

Gustav:
Ok. But next week. Just terribly busy these days.

I look forward to next week! Really this whole discussion is a bit of a waste of time until you actually 'try it'. Again a relevant quote comes to mind:

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." - Aristotle

No one is asking you to become 'indoctrinated', but the best way to understand any view is to accept it completely as if it were true and explore it first hand. To be able to do so is indeed the mark of an educated mind. For example, to better understand the world view of someone with a strong faith in God, I would act as if that view were correct, I would even pray, and by doing so I would gain insight into how such a person believes what he believes.

[jupiviv]

You desire me to die along with you, but I don't desire to die. I desire to live.

And yet, apparently, you kept posting here at a time when you should've been out celebrating. I don't know about anyone else, but that gives me the impression that you're a sad unemployable twat who likes to invoke wet (metaphysical) dreams about Western culture and berate others who you think don't care for it. That's no way to live, nor a sign of desiring to do so.

It's pretty clear you don't care for philosophy, at least the way we pursue it. You're interested in - and correct me if I am wrong - the academic humanities. So why don't you get off your genius forum pseudo-intellectual show pony and get yourself a real ejewmacation? Despite what you think about us QRSyrians, some of us *have* lives. Sure, we may not "like" them much, but we do have them. What have you got besides your tousle-haired soi-disant Occidentological bibliography?

[Diebert van Rhijn]

G. Alex Bjornstrand Yaʿakov a.k.a. "the Usurper".

Since 'human personality is the crown of world-evolution', as too is developed ethical life and logical thinking, you'd certainly better understand why I can see no good reason to undermine and kill off self. I would not propose 'graveyards' therefore. But what would I propose? Universities! Centres of remodelling. Purification centres. A cure for 'amnesiacs' and 'lip-moving ghosts'. I suggest a fuller incarnation in this world, not disincarnation from it.

Human personality is a manifestation of something for sure. Like climate is or social mood inside a larger grouping. Perhaps the suggestion of death is more akin of addressing global warming or insane human consumption levels. Nobody is suggesting blowing up the whole planet or destroy all civilization to get there. But something has to fundamentally change rather quick since a gradual, evolutionary approach does not always work. If anything the human psychological development of the last 10000 year is not evolutionary in terms of biology or any other known, described process ("world-evolution" is your term). It seems more a radical, rapid flux, a lightning bold of some kind. You need to adjust your scales a bit in your thinking. Sometimes your thoughts seem so small that I need a microscope to recognize them :)

So young, so fresh, so new, so incomplete is our self-undermining of unreflective religiosity, and yet how connected to religious origins are the various philosophical avenues that opened out of religious concerns.

But the origins of all major religions are all pointing to addressing death or after-life and the rituals surrounding it. The focus on being alive here and now, in a "life time", in "historical time" is really a modern, recent thing. Religion invoked cyclical time, not ticking on any personal watch.

Or, at least in your case, are given over to a resignation in regard to *all this*. It crumbled in you, you crumbled with it, you are crumbled and have limited means to remake yourself. You of course as a post-Christian and a tired, dying European whose final psychological eggs have been carefully located in a semi-Buddhist basket but who has resigned himself to 'inevitable death'.

But I'm not even claiming I'm alive in the sense you seem to talk about, which is not the same. It's unclear of course why you'd call anything I say "resignation" since most of my writing here is challenging you and others. While I cannot deny the various post-christian and European sentiments running through me or the environment I'm soaked in, it's not crumbled at all. Generally I like to believe that I've reached a life peak of mental capabilities, increased sensitive ranges and understanding of subtleties and complexities I did not experience before to this degree. If the price to that was to let one or two things "crumble" and go to waste: good riddance!

Of course the reason I put some work in answering you is that I can see you're examining material the way I'd do myself if I had not stumbled upon the truths of existence, being and ignorance -- the problem of seduction -- which can help tremendously in your journey of trying to "make sense" intellectually, if that's what you desire. And I think you do. But you don't seem to be even aware where that desire comes from, what is fuelling it. That doesn't mean I'm belittling or rejecting the activity. But it might just go better if a bit more self-awareness would be added to the mix. You're swinging hurt around, like a wounded animal. People respond with offerings and suggestions, that's in the nature of people to do.

My ideal is to forge a conceptual path - perhaps in that Johannine way I have referred to - where the 'living water' I have spoken of is 'real' to me not just in the zone of faith or idealism, but in a more unified sense: spiritually, intellectually: in the body.

The modern Freudian "body as destiny" and yet such rebelling against the modern! That's just your stupidity "in a nut shell". You found what you really want somewhere "hiding" within the discussions or people dwelling around this forum but you don't like it. And then we have to witness this ever-repeating ritual of ingestion and spitting it out. It's not the first time people stumble over the truth and decide it's another stone to grind down in their search for "the stone".

Power is fascistic. Using power is fascistic. Recovery of self and use of self is the opposite of cowering in loss of self or wounded self. It is also masculine recovery.

Masculinity is all about production. You wanting to produce and "own" your self, your woman, your child. Still better than being someone's woman or child, trying to be a man, I suppose.

My confrontation with GF has pushed me back into myself and has demanded that I 'answer' and 'respond' to the invitation to die.

But you don't know yet what is supposed to "die". You're looking at some unemployed dude and believe it's about ending participation in life, intellectual thought and avoiding all social struggle and sexual power games you might enjoy. Now even the smallest spiritual reorientation might change people's evaluation of how important the material or social achievements are, or how compatible they are with a thinking life. But that's not what was being addressed. Although it's not a secret that most of society is depending on buying into an emotional, sentimental scheme before participation is even possible. A thinking person needs to "stand apart" first and that takes a price. This is not yet "death" though and I think you might confuse these things.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Masculinity is all about production.

Sorry for not engaging with much else in your post. This interests me though. In the Galloway snips he wrote:

• "Religion for the religious can never be a subjective experience merely. In religion man's spirit goes forth in faith, and makes demands on the larger world of which he is a part. He claims to know, and to relate himself to a Being above himself; to find his goal in a sphere which transcends the present form of existence."

As I read it I was reminded that, essentially, that is a definition of 'masculinity' as I understand it. It is interesting to me that you claim that 'religion' is female or feminine, but that some other action or activity is 'masculine' or more masculine. In any case, I would suggest that 'masculinity' is not solely 'production' but is rather a capability that arises in man - I refer to this generally as the 'metaphysical' - through which 'the world' is moulded. I realise that with your term 'production' you are, I think, attempting to say the same thing, but I think it needs to be pushed back a bit farther. I link the idea of the conception of metaphysics to 'imposition' and it is clear in what Galloway says: "He claims to know, and to relate himself to a Being above himself; to find his goal in a sphere which transcends the present form of existence".

As I define 'life', which is indeed different from merely being alive in a body (Freudian or other), I am attempting to speak to a 'religiousness' which is unified within itself and also active in the sense referred to. As I have said I see 'religiousness' as an inevitable feature of man's response to life and not something that can be eliminated or superseded. A man's religion is the totality of his grasp of life and is his 'metaphysical response'.

Further, and though I admit it is fun in a way, some part of the recent exchanges are more linked to joshing than to more serious consideration of the questions. Without wishing to sound sententious I would say that philosophy must be about defining important questions and issues, developing a response to them, and actualising that response within the life one leads. How one responds to the eventuality of physical demise is an important question, I suppose, and it is true indeed that mortality looms over all that lives and may influence us at unrecognised levels. But to be clear: When I speak of 'death' or think of 'you-plural' as a moribindary I am only taking advantage of a possibility to speak toward polarities, or to take advantage of a polarity to energise my discourse. Because you asked, I responded in saying that the challenge of the forum is to define oneself. Obviously, my larger interests, have to do with things that extend well beyond the specific concerns of this forum (path to enlightenment) but in my way of seeing I cannot conceive of an 'enlightenment' that is not engaged in life as I define it. That is: a honing in on the 'most important questions'.

You speak of 'seduction', and I'd say that, as a statement and a challenge, that it is possible to be seduced away from 'duty', that the demands of philosophy are in essence a duty (imperatives), and that this is according to the larger definition masculinity-in-operation.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

You're interested in - and correct me if I am wrong - the academic humanities.

Consider yourself corrected. I tremendously value libraries is perhaps a way to speak to what you seem to notice. Should I defend this? As far as 'Occidental wetdreams' and such, I would confess that a fine collection of books, for me, is a source of 'pleasure' (I guess one would have to describe it like that). If this is a failing, and if I can offer to you some material that can help you better to condemn my 'sad unemployable' self, I'd like to offer this one to you: I collect books. What has made my presence on GF (and other fora) even more irksome is the App 'TinyScan' which I have on my iPhone which enables photos to be turned into PDFs and, with UploadEdit.com to be 'shared' with people who might rather have received toilet paper.

It's pretty clear you don't care for philosophy, at least the way we pursue it.

What if you were to speak solely for yourself? "It's pretty clear you don't care for philosophy, at least the way I pursue it." It makes it easier to respond to. I think that my concerns and interests in philosophy, and much else, are much larger and wider than yours. To be truthful I have little understanding of what you are up to in philosophy, and I have read a good portion of your posts, if not all, that you post when I am active here. Your philosophical concerns seem to me 'remotely personal', that is intensely personalised and remote to social concerns of any sort.

So why don't you get off your genius forum pseudo-intellectual show pony and get yourself a real ejewmacation?

I had to google 'ejewmacation'. That's a can of worms, no? I am not closed to hearing more of what you mean. What are you proposing?

Your statements - nearly all of them in fact - are knotty and complex and you packed with barbs and double-meanings. I only say this because to speak to you - this has often been the case - is to speak to someone who seems impelled by a certain anger and hostility. It looks from my angle to be a protection of sorts. I certainly baited you with the Little Brown Hindu comment but it was, of course, all in fun.

Shall we speak about what each of us does for a living? Or who we live with? You first?

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Perhaps the forum founders along with others propose that you should give up your life or go through some radical abandonment, as a Buddhist monk might, but I'd say such actions aren't even related to this topic at all, except perhaps as a case of delusion to learn from. I agree with you about life and rejuvenation, and as I see it, philosophy is all about life, about benefiting, and for you that should be primarily about becoming free. You might not know it now, but you are likely bound up in all sorts of chains that you should seek to be rid of.

Well, I am interested in what 'abandonment' means, but less in a Buddhist context because Buddhist contexts are not 'ours'. I don't deal in those terms and I don't see it as a very good idea (to abandon our context for other contexts). However, I say this because I have done it, and as I mentioned here on this forum my parents went pretty strongly in that direction and we lived in South Asia for a certain amount of time.

This is a philosophy forum, and philosophy is about (isn't it?) defining terms. What is 'abandonment'? And what is the opposite of 'abandonment'? (Engagement?)

I have noticed what I think are some shifts in some of your tenets. Now you can say "I agree with you about life and rejuvenation, and as I see it, philosophy is all about life, about benefiting, and for you that should be primarily about becoming free". I don't remember noticing that strain. Next you'll say you have a pregnant girlfriend and make David sad! ;-) But why the little tweak of advice at the end? Can you really say what I 'should' do? What if I am doing what I 'should' be doing? How would you know?

The opportunity is to speak about what you do and 'should' do. What exactly is that? I know that within your 2100+ posts you have likely spelled it out and if so link me.

What is freedom?

[jupiviv]

Consider yourself corrected. I tremendously value libraries is perhaps a way to speak to what you seem to notice.

OK then, you're interested in collecting and reading books about the humanities. Since you use this forum as a scratching-post, you would have written articles about other fields (like molecular geometry, microtonal music or test automation) had you been equally as interested in them. But you haven't, so unless you tell me what else you're interested in that's my best guess.

Your philosophical concerns seem to me 'remotely personal', that is intensely personalised and remote to social concerns of any sort.

Individuals need to become more rational before cultures or societies can do the same.

Your statements - nearly all of them in fact - are knotty and complex and you packed with barbs and double-meanings. I only say this because to speak to you - this has often been the case - is to speak to someone who seems impelled by a certain anger and hostility. It looks from my angle to be a protection of sorts.

You suffer from projection to the degree that you only tell the truth about yourself when speaking of others. Anyone can see who the hostile and angry one is in this thread. I was certainly impelled by anger in the past when I was trying to make sense of life, but not anymore - at least not by the "a certain" variety of anger.

I certainly baited you with the Little Brown Hindu comment but it was, of course, all in fun.

It revealed different motivations than race baiting. To be clear, I don't think you're racist for saying that, just a poor thinker who confuses argumentum ad hominem with dialectic.

Shall we speak about what each of us does for a living? Or who we live with? You first?

Cisco Kid. My parents. You?

[SeekerOfWisdom]

What is 'abandonment'?

I just gave an example of it, and it is a term that has been used on here in relation to the example I gave of the Buddhist monk, you'll have to ask them what they think they're abandoning! Desire or something most probably? The forum founders also mentioned something along the lines of 'abandonment' saying that one must live in 'relative poverty', not have a wife, "despise the world", and so on (if my memory serves me correctly). To be honest, I don't really care! I don't even think it's worth talking about, if you'll re-read I mentioned that such actions aren't even related to wisdom at all. Like you, I completely eschew whatever 'path' dictates that one should give up on life, so to speak.

Now you can say "I agree with you about life and rejuvenation, and as I see it, philosophy is all about life, about benefiting, and for you that should be primarily about becoming free". I don't remember noticing that strain.

What you have noticed isn't of much concern now is it? I've written similar things before.

But why the little tweak of advice at the end? Can you really say what I 'should' do? What if I am doing what I 'should' be doing? How would you know?

The opportunity is to speak about what you do and 'should' do. What exactly is that? I know that within your 2100+ posts you have likely spelled it out and if so link me.

What is freedom?

Yes I can say exactly what you should do, at least from the 'perspective' of basic logic, and the answer is to attain wisdom. You might be doing so behind the scenes, but your writing doesn't portray much recognition of that 'path' if you are.

What you should do is become free of delusion, bondage, ignorance and suffering. You should also seek to attain a 'greater' insight into the nature of reality and self, which occurs in conjunction with the eradication of delusion. What I've mentioned so far regards a whole range of topics, such as ignorance in relation to anger, jealousy, resentment, fear, anxiety, insecurity, hate, stress, sadness, loneliness, purposelessness, and so on. It is also relates to a very long list of unwise propensities. Including idolization of others, attachment to knowledge which is based on hearsay, clinging and attachment to various beliefs or imaginations, a lack of awareness of your own actions and thoughts, self-dishonesty, the existence of "mental" barriers, the avoidance of independent contemplation, belief in so much duty, and so on.

When I use the word freedom I'm talking primarily about freedom from ignorance, I used such a broad term as otherwise I'd be writing another list. That might not sound so much like the 'freedom' you might imagine, but wisdom is indeed the greatest liberation, it is your fully realized potential for freedom, and it's what you should seek. You'll notice that, unlike other people on here, I actually respond to questions. I mention this because hopefully one day you'll come to a full realization of what I mean when I use terms like ''intellectual crutch'', ''dancer'', and ''coward''.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

He is speaking here directly about the tenets of religious assumption and presumption, and naturally his position is that a philosophy of religion must articulate just what a religious order of definition proposes and assumes:

Yes I can say exactly what you should do, at least from the 'perspective' of basic logic, and the answer is to attain wisdom. You might be doing so behind the scenes, but your writing doesn't portray much recognition of that 'path' if you are.

I find the root of your statement, its predicate, in the assertion about 'the perspective of basic logic', to be the area that we'd both have to focus on. There are a number of levels where this statement can be - should be - disassembled and examined.

One is that 'logic' is what is in the final analysis needed in making determinations. As I have been suggesting - suggesting only - I tend to think that we arrive at a sense of what is right, correct and good prior to arming ourselves with its defence or rationalisation. It is not so much that we visualise a group of rational predicates that, spread on the table before us, are mulled over and selected from (and put into service), but rather that our metaphysical position determines this, or a significant part of it. Or some part anyway.

Our metaphysical position is not wholly determined by either our conscious choice nor our conscious selection. In any case, I would suggest that a great deal about our structures of perception (metaphysics) are received. But with this I do not mean to say that this is 'bad' or even as a result of weakness or powerlessness or lack of reasoning. By saying this, I will suggest that I am not at all convinced, necessarily, that you are actually employing 'logic' (in the sense that you imply it is possible), but are revealing your preferences, prejudices, and quite possibly your limitations in understanding. I have no good reason to accept anything you say, and I find (therefor) your logical path to be not very logical at all! But what I most note about it is that it is declarative. That it makes huge judgments. That it appears and acts final and also authoritative. I do not recognise your authority. But I mean this in no sense as an insult to you. Why should I or anyone else believe you?

What you should do is become free of delusion, bondage, ignorance and suffering. You should also seek to attain a 'greater' insight into the nature of reality and self, which occurs in conjunction with the eradication of delusion.

I regard this as 'blah blah blah'. It is thoroughly meaningless, and also useless, if each of those terms - they are declarations of meaning and value - are not carefully defined. What I have determined to be delusion or bondage, and what other people have determined, might not coincide at all with your pet group of choices. In fact the opposite may be the case. How do you account for that? You'd have to say 'By logic of course!' and then we'd circle back to you having to reveal and demonstrate this usage of 'logic', which as I say is little more than a set of preferences and idealistic statements.

'The nature of reality and self' is from my perspective rather funny! I do not mean to laugh at the selection of an area, but I do laugh at the fact that you make declarations about these things. You may well speak from within your metaphysical selections (choices, values, or determinations), and you may assume that your metaphysic is universal and will be agreed on by all when you run through your logical proofs, but I chuckle at your presumption. This is, in numerous senses, philosophical immaturity. You've set yourself up within a system where you will always appear 'right', at least to yourself.

As you may guess, I don't think you have a handle on what delusion is nor how to get our from under it.

When I use the word freedom I'm talking primarily about freedom from ignorance, I used such a broad term as otherwise I'd be writing another list. That might not sound so much like the 'freedom' you might imagine, but wisdom is indeed the greatest liberation, it is your fully realized potential for freedom, and it's what you should seek. You'll notice that, unlike other people on here, I actually respond to questions. I mention this because hopefully one day you'll come to a full realization of what I mean when I use terms like ''intellectual crutch'', ''dancer'', and ''coward''.

Perhaps that day will come. Right now though I will suggest that your notion of 'freedom' is a selection, a choice, a valuation you are making and which you seem to desire to impose. I have suggested that your valuation is not my valuation, and in fact I notice that with this group of choices you are making, and confusing with declarations about 'absolute reality and truth', that you could very well be sliding into error and untruth.

This all turns back on and toward such a statement as 'A justification can only be given, if it is to be given at all, by speculative thought'.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Jupi, you said 'academic humanities'. I say I am more interested in the library, which means a repository of idea, attainments and also disciplines. My background is in classical liberal arts which, for you, may indeed be the same as 'humanities'. But I do not make these hard separations, and that is because they are not to be made. I think the Greek world of intellect largely contains all the domains that we might refer to, and so perhaps it is best if I describe myself as hellenist of hellenistic idealist?

I would like to be able to define a 'racism' but I just don't feel capable of pulling it off. Cultural chauvinism? Eurocentrism?

You suffer from projection to the degree that you only tell the truth about yourself when speaking of others. Anyone can see who the hostile and angry one is in this thread. I was certainly impelled by anger in the past when I was trying to make sense of life, but not anymore - at least not by the "a certain" variety of anger.

Hostile and angry? Me? You've got to be joking. Ideas have a certain importance to me but I do not get invested in personal or emotional sentiments on these fora.

Cisco Kid. My parents. You?

You are a desperado? and a killer? Or like this here? And yet you still live at home?

Or, you parents are of the Indian IT class and you will soon follow?

I took some risks, invested a bit of money at an opportune moment, it paid off. The free-time I have I devote (basically) to reading. The rest to my relationship (girlfriend/wife finishing a law degree, kid 7 attending Catholic academy).

[Pam Seeback]

Gustav, I do realize what is at stake but this realization does not change the reality of the path to end what you desire to keep alive. For me, it is not a matter of choice, I am called to do what I am called to do. Just as I perceive that in trying to keep culture in general and Christianity specifically alive in the world, you are called to do what you are called to do.

This is interesting, is it not? That whatever "it" is that forms the world does so apparently in two directions, one of desire for life and one of the extinguishing of desire for life. Your spirit moves of the first, mine of the second. Is one right and the other wrong? To me, because both directions of spirit are of "God" or existence, these terms of good and evil do not apply. They are what they are.

What we do share is that ideas are important, yours being directed toward keeping things bustling and mine toward ending the bustling.

[jupiviv]

When I use the word freedom I'm talking primarily about freedom from ignorance, I used such a broad term as otherwise I'd be writing another list. That might not sound so much like the 'freedom' you might imagine, but wisdom is indeed the greatest liberation, it is your fully realized potential for freedom, and it's what you should seek. You'll notice that, unlike other people on here, I actually respond to questions. I mention this because hopefully one day you'll come to a full realization of what I mean when I use terms like ''intellectual crutch'', ''dancer'', and ''coward''.

Perhaps that day will come. Right now though I will suggest that your notion of 'freedom' is a selection, a choice, a valuation you are making and which you seem to desire to impose. I have suggested that your valuation is not my valuation, and in fact I notice that with this group of choices you are making, and confusing with declarations about 'absolute reality and truth', that you could very well be sliding into error and untruth.

This all turns back on and toward such a statement as 'A justification can only be given, if it is to be given at all, by speculative thought'.

See this is why you irritate people. There was nothing in that paragraph that could be faulted. One could respond to it with an aggressive skepticism about his use of the terms to blow out any false premises or prejudices that might be lurking beneath visibility, but in itself his point is solid.

However, you circumvented his point and got right to projecting your own controlling nature upon his words, or rather him personally. How is he trying to impose his valuation upon you? Clearly he isn't, and neither is anyone else here because it would be *impossible* to do so short of blackmail with the results of a successful dox. Then, as usual, you say "your wrong" in a circumlocutory way. And of course this is all done seriously (I assume). This perennial routine of "play victim, disqualify, psychoanalyse, self-aggrandise" (not necessarily in that order) will prevent you from having a real discussion with anyone either online or irl. People will either mock you, criticise you or think you're a troll and consequently join you or ban you. But they won't communicate.

My background is in classical liberal arts which, for you, may indeed be the same as 'humanities'. But I do not make these hard separations, and that is because they are not to be made.

I just used humanities as a blanket term including anything not included in the STEM field and also excluding philosophy in general. I think you lack the temperament even for academic philosophy. Your ideal place seems to be in sociology or comparative literature.

Or, you parents are of the Indian IT class and you will soon follow?

Yes, I'm in IT. Have you tried turning it off and on again?

I took some risks, invested a bit of money at an opportune moment, it paid off. The free-time I have I devote (basically) to reading. The rest to my relationship (girlfriend/wife finishing a law degree, kid 7 attending Catholic academy).

Figured as much, except for the wife and kid. Your writing style screams "dilettante".

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

This is interesting, is it not? That whatever "it" is that forms the world does so apparently in two directions, one of desire for life and one of the extinguishing of desire for life. Your spirit moves of the first, mine of the second. Is one right and the other wrong? To me, because both directions of spirit are of "God" or existence, these terms of good and evil do not apply. They are what they are.

Just off the cuff I'd have to say that you seem to me to be involved in some glaring 'logical inconsistancies'. I do not think it rationally possible to promote 'extinguishing the desire for life'. Life has given you life. You'd have to promote a destruction of the possibility of the rise of your own self. I suspect that you have some language in order to defend what it is that you mean, but you cannot really mean what you say.

As you might guess, I tend to refer to the Catholic-European cultural model, and so I translate what you propose back into and through the forms I have some familiarity with. But I do not want you or anyone to suppose I am defending or advocating Catholic theology. Yet the Church, as the central institution of European culture, understood and allowed for (accomodated) the different 'estates' of material life, as well as the various branches within the estates. So in this you would correspond to a monastic branch, and you would live in a monastary, and you would dedicate yourself, as monks have, to a path of renunciation. Yet you would be supported in this by 1) productive fields (I mean this literally), 2) by productive work (you would be engaged in some productive work at the monastary), and 3) by donations by those who are not 'extinguishing desire to live'.

In any of the so-called 'higher manifestations of religion' this model is universal.

But I think we have to hone in on one essential difference, and it is not a small one: In Christian religious philosophy, and this stems from Judaic choices and definitions, 'life' is understood not as a curse and something to be overcome, but as a gift. It is (I speak accurately here) a sin to regard life as a curse. It is tantamount to cursing the Creator. So, Christian philosophy simply cannot produce the deep pessimism and world-rejection that motivates some religions and religious philosophies. A caveat - there are always caveats - is that there is a very real 'world-rejection' in Catholic thought, but it is focussed in rejecting 'Satan and his pomps'. It is a clandestine world-rejection in my view. It produces a dualism and a polarity which, though the source of creative conflict, is still a deep conflict in, if you will, 'the European soul'. This 'soul' has a hard time living in its body for this reason. When I have used the phrase 'return to the body' and 'the body' generally, it is that I am referring to. A pornographic culture, for example, expresses a 'return to the body' and with a certain vengeance. You can notice it in many ways but I noticed it reading Andre Gide. A profound Protestantism, nearly Calvinistic, reversing itself (inverting itself, ha ha) and diving into 'the body' and the body's reality.

In point of fact, my spirit does not move either strictly in one direction nor in the other. Don't you see? We are in processes of 'return to the body' and these are vast shifts which are larger than any of us. 'Return to the body' is a process we cannot avoid and so we have to 'spiritualize' or 're-spiritualize' embodiedness.

Possibly it is this I am referring to: a synthesizing project.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Jupi, don't get 'irritated'.

I start from the notion that 'all speech is sermonic'. All speech is the articulation of - in essence - philosophical declarations which are embellished with rhetorical flourish. In this sense all the declarations that you and I make are indeed 'impositions of value'. Additionally, Seeker is making very specific and not general pronouncements about what I 'should' do and 'need to do'.

You are wrong indeed when you say 'nothing in that paragraph can be faulted'. I understand that you mean 'logically' and 'structurally' and, largely, I agree with you. It has virtue. But since I know more about his position, its 'underpinning' as I call it, I know more of what he is, in fact, trying to say, and I speak to that and also against that. This is up-front and not devious.

Developing a religious philosophy, or speaking in terms of religious philosophy, is required and is not evidence of my 'controlling nature'. But each of us, still, holds and manages a perspective and in this sense (your sense) we all 'control'. So what? You can send up your own take on things. I don´t merely say he´s wrong, I suggest he may be wrong and I describe how that may be. Your characterisation is off the mark. Inaccurate.

Dilettantism can be taken in a number of ways though I acknowledge that you wish it to be taken negatively, as a criticism or (gasp) an insult. I don't think it can really fly, at least not from you. The root of the word is 'delight' and so a dilettante is one who delights in or it delighted by an art. As 'dabbler' I'd have no amunition against the claim. I am not a professional academic or philosopher so, of course, my interest in religious philosophy is dabbling. I fit in though if that is the case: Quinn & Co. Invested in the welfare programs of their state and became dedicated philosophical flaneurs. I made my own money and became one.

Yet if the truth were told, and if you don't mind me saying so, I do not see your overall philosophical work as really being so hot. Are you sure that you are qualified to critique?

Correct me if I am wrong, but can I assume this a scene from your household? Do your sisters play tennis?

Far more troubling things happened in my natal household. See here.

[Leyla Shen]

The man who lacks the inner life, values culture above all. Only through that can he forge some semblance of meaning for his own existence; as a servant of a greater God.

The essence of slave morality.

“The very word 'Christianity' is a misunderstanding. At bottom, there was only one Christian—and he died on the cross.”

Who then is prepared to die that Good death?

[Pam Seeback]

Gustav: Just off the cuff I'd have to say that you seem to me to be involved in some glaring 'logical inconsistancies'. I do not think it rationally possible to promote 'extinguishing the desire for life'. Life has given you life. You'd have to promote a destruction of the possibility of the rise of your own self. I suspect that you have some language in order to defend what it is that you mean, but you cannot really mean what you say.

You dismiss the possibility of a valid language to express the extinguishing of the desire for life based on your premise that life gives us life assuming that you and I have the same definition of "life." I suggest we do not. Life to me is sentience, desire, the appearance, attachment and although is a part of the totality of God, is not THE totality of God. A totality of which I (and you) are not separate, God's totality = the Son's totality. Which means I do not view suffering the illogic of sentience/desire as being a curse or a gift, rather, as being but one of an infinite possible worlds of God.

Up until today I was not aware you are Catholic which does help me understand your attachment to the religious model rather than the spiritual one. If truly you are ensconced in the religious model that negates the spiritual model to the point of denying it is capable of meaningful language, how do you expect to have a meaningful conversation with a Son of this model? The only reason I replied to you this time was your statement that you don't think people of the spiritual view realize what it is at stake. My response to you about knowing what is at stake regarding ending life as we know it (the appearance) was not meant to be one of destruction and annihilation but instead one of intuition AND logic of "the Son moving on" "within" God or Existence.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Masculinity is all about production.

It is interesting to me that you claim that 'religion' is female or feminine, but that some other action or activity is 'masculine' or more masculine.

There you go again, making up what you want someone else to have claimed and making a "case" that way. You have no idea how many times you do that, don't you? Confusing your own ideas of what people might think with what is actually being told.

Anyway, masculinity is indeed about production, making things visible, creating appearances by force, in full view: objects, numbers, ideas and ultimately order. Production is transcribing everything into relations of force, into systems of concepts. It that sense most what is usually called religion can be seen as mostly production and therefore masculine. Perhaps it's the masculine project to construct something against the endless power of seduction, to escape the gravity of the singularity, the cause of our spin?!

I would say that there isn't any feminine opponent at that stage. The masculine defines the whole dualism, itself and the other. If religion would be "female" then it's just a product of the overall masculine project. If you want to put something in opposition here it would be seduction which, historically, has been used or embodied by women, or before that: satan, because it's essentially the control knob, the "power behind the throne" that can undo the project. It could be any appearance though, technically, but for men it has been his creation "woman" too many times!

As I have said I see 'religiousness' as an inevitable feature of man's response to life and not something that can be eliminated or superseded. A man's religion is the totality of his grasp of life and is his 'metaphysical response'.

That's very broad and perhaps not that useful although I've used it as well that way in the past. It makes way more sense to call it also "philosophy" just to prevent confusion with the large majority who uses the term religion quite differently. And then there are the usual philosophical terms: "ethics" and "metaphysics". Personally I don't see why philosophy would not be a splendid word for the "totality of ones grasp of life and his metaphysical responses". One great advantage with using "philosophy" is that there's a way bigger chance some communication is possible. Talking about "metaphysical responses" of some inner deeper "religiousness" will just result in people thinking you're involved in some kind of verbal autofellatio. Really!

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Up until today I was not aware you are Catholic which does help me understand your attachment to the religious model rather than the spiritual one.

Psst Pam, he isn't Catholic like he isn't a Jew or Christian or conservative even. Alex just fits on some stuff once in a year which then appears as something he's attached to. But he's more attached to the conversation and the shopping around than anything else. His dream is to belong! He knows the curse of Cain, the one we all feel. His mission is to discover a way back to the "family", to some origination. Most try to fly away from the things he's trying to piece together. At times it's fascinating.