the more entrenched injustices of the world...

[Unidian]

Philo, have you come here to hold my hand? Let's hope so. There is much femininity to be be spread while the night is young.

[Alex Jacob]

I have always found the Magic Missile too...crude...and also too final. Mostly---at least these days---I stick to Scrying, TimeStop, and---if it were not for a severe wound I've yet to overcome which so inhibits its effective use---Wish.
_______________________________________

I had some sort of attack, Carl, which for a while this afternoon caused me to equate you with them....I washed the floors with herbal infusions and ammonia and it helped clear it.

[Unidian]

If you're using Wish frequently with good success, you might have a bad DM. Wish is supposed to be a very tricky spell, often having major unintended consequences for the caster. A DM who allows too much Wish-using is promoting min-maxing and munchkinism.

Where's the Cheetos?!?!?!?

[Carl G]

That's interesting how when a thread gets into deeper subject matter Philo is liable to come along and poop in it, and kick it up, like a fat little dog.

[Unidian]

It's not because he's incapable of contributing more substantively. Rather, it's because he's more sensible than I am and he generally refuses to put substantive efforts into threads which are for the most part prima facie ridiculous. For him, that most likely includes a majority of threads on Genius Forum, simply because it's Genius Forum.

And, for the record, pooping on him in response to his poop is just more poop.

[Philosophaster]

Philo, have you come here to hold my hand? Let's hope so. There is much femininity to be be spread while the night is young.

Indeed!

[Dan Rowden]

It's not because he's incapable of contributing more substantively. Rather, it's because he's more sensible than I am and he generally refuses to put substantive efforts into threads which are for the most part prima facie ridiculous. For him, that most likely includes a majority of threads on Genius Forum, simply because it's Genius Forum.

So, what you're actually saying is that Philo is just trolling.

[Philosophaster]

That's interesting how when a thread gets into deeper subject matter Philo is liable to come along and poop in it, and kick it up, like a fat little dog.

Well, it interests me that whenever I inject some levity into this poker-faced den of philosophy and lofty navel-gazing, a "deeper than thou" response inevitably springs forth from a QRSling.

[Unidian]

So, what you're actually saying is that Philo is just trolling.

No, because he's not trying to provoke responses. That's an essential element of trolling. He isn't trying to get anyone embroiled in anything. He's just adding some humor, presumably because it amuses him and potentially others.

[Dan Rowden]

What is the point, exactly, in injecting "humour" into a serious discussion (and one that you haven't contributed to)? Please explain; I'm interested in what you perceive as the qualitative benefit of such an activity.

[Unidian]

I think it lightens the mood and helps prevent people from taking themselves too seriously, which tends to deflate the ego-dynamics that can get established in exclusively "serious" discussions.

It's also funny, at least to some of us. Isn't a laugh an end in itself?

[Dan Rowden]

Hmm, one might reasonably suggest that those who see fit to adjudge others in need of mood lightening and a dose of humility are perhaps the ones taking themselves too seriously.

[Unidian]

It could be suggested, yes. Then again, merely suggesting something wouldn't establish it.

I know Philo pretty well and intellectual arrogance of any kind is one thing I've always found totally absent in his personality - so much so that it bugs me sometimes. In his company, I often look (to myself anyway) like a pompous, elitist, egotistical ass who is prone to opinionated bloviation.

It's perhaps that same effect that leads certain others to compulsively criticize his injections of dismissive humor.

[Philosophaster]

I do it because it's fun, not because I think anyone necessarily "needs" humor. If you would like to go without it, I suppose that's your choice. But I'm not trying to "cure" Genius Forum by dosing it with silliness as a "medicine" or something. :-P

[Unidian]

P,

People can generally only interpret the motivations of others in terms of their own motivations, for the most part. In that light, the fact that many GF members (and to a certain extent myself) have a "fix the world" thing going on often means that any analysis they/we offer in regard to your motivations will probably say as much or more about them/us than you. Of course, you're well aware of this. I'm just saying it for the audience, I guess.

[Sue Hindmarsh]

brokenhead wrote:

Sue wrote:
Kierkegaard wrote: In eternity you will not be asked how large a fortune you are leaving behind – the survivors ask about that. Nor will you be asked about how many battles you won, about how sagacious you were, how powerful your influence – that, after all, becomes your reputation for posterity. No, eternity will not ask about what worldly goods remain behind you, but about what riches you have gathered in heaven. It will ask you about how often you have conquered your own thought, about what control you have exercised over yourself or whether you have been a slave, about how often you have mastered yourself in self-denial or whether you have never done so .......

No matter how much all the earth’s gold hidden in covetousness may amount to, it is infinitely less than the smallest mite hidden in the contentment of the poor!

Sue, could you please use quotation marks or the "Quote" BBCode so we can tell when the quote ends and when you are commenting?

I began that post with this introduction:

Sue: Here are the writings of some men that have their attention on God:

What followed were the writings of three men: Diogenes, Kierkegaard, and Chuang Tzu.

I usually colour such texts, but this time I thought, with the intro, it would be clear. I'll remember to colour them in the future.

I take it the part in blue is your thought?

No, that’s the work of Kierkegaard.

Please don't answer me by telling me how I am obviously incapable of rational thought,

If it is true, then it may one day come up in one of our discussions - and when it does, you can at that time refute it as rationally as you are able. But, at present, your being "incapable of rational thought" isn't the matter in question.

but why is the "contentment of the poor" suddenly so valuable as to be priceless?

I take it that Kierkegaard is speaking about the spiritual wealth present in those that are poor in coveting money, status, love and 'the self'.

Jesus also spoke about spiritual wealth in this way:

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:
But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. Matt 6:19-22

Weren't you the one in another thread that condemned Christainity for causing the poor to be poor, the helpless to be helpless? You blamed Mother Teresa for the squalor she tried in her own way to do something about. Is it that Kierkegaard is a philosopher and therefore inerrant, while MT was a mere woman and a slave to sentimental rot about feeding the hungry?

Mother Teresa’s actions were consistent with her desire to build credit points with her Grandfather and Husband in the Sky. But obviously that wasn’t enough - for she also allowed herself to be applauded - even though she did say she was doing it all for her Guys in the Sky.

Such behaviour as displayed by MT is the complete antithesis of spirituality.

Kierkegaard, on the otherhand, was a philosopher of very high quality. His work shows that he was consistently, and untiringly dedicated to Truth. His work and his life clearly expresses these words of Jesus:

The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

I'd rather not get into a discussion about MT, I'm talking about you here. You seem to say that if one decides to be poor or is content with it, it is wonderful. And I'm not arguing against that. But as soon as someone feels compassion for people who are worse than poor, who are actually starving, and are clearly not that way by choice, right away it is anathema, or at best distracting from this abstract quest for "truth"?

People are egotists - and therefore they cannot act without loss or gain. So every helping hand takes as much as it gives. And the only way this doesn’t happen, is if you live by the truthful understanding of the non-inherent nature of the self. Then, and only then, can you act without loss or gain.

[Sue Hindmarsh]

brokenhead wrote:

Sue: You can't possibly have mistaken me for a Christian, or any of those other feeble minded fools that are slaves to their own foolishness believing in the Grandfather in the Sky, Santa Claus, Buddha's belly, the Tooth-Fairy, a madcap prophet, Baby Jesus, Angels, unconditional love, Nostradamus' notions, or any other insane notion. If you did, it would surely be a huge stretch of the imagination knowing my thoughts on such matters.

Wait a minute while I shove my finger down my throat and puke into the wastebasket...aaaaack!!!... ah. There. That's better. How old are you? Seven? "The Grandfather in the Sky?" You consider yourself a thinker - a philosopher, no less! - and that's the best you can do?

Most people have the mental and emotional age of a three year old. Christians, for example, are obsessed with their fantasy heroes: "Grandfather in the Sky", and his son, "Husband". "Mrs Mum" is also a popular character, but at Christmas and Easter, the star characters are "Baby Husband" laying amongst bits of straw in a box, and "Husband" hanging off two planks of wood.

If any of my suggestions about evidence for the existence of God (as opposed to a neat, tidy little proof, with some Powerpoint thrown in for effect) sounds naive and childish and moronic, how do you think this stuff sounds?

Children have to be given time to grow. They need their toys to help them feel safe. But once they have grown out of childhood, they no longer need their toys.

Christians are people who haven’t grown up. They continue to need to hold tightly to their "toys": their fantasies - for without them, they feel they’ll have nothing left to support them. And this may well be true - but it is far better to live free from such lies.

It is so easy to reject things, and horribly more difficult to ponder them, don't you agree?

I agree. Most people reject things because of some emotional whim or another. Hardly a person ever spends the time necessary for deep reflection.

The list of the things you reject goes on and on, I'm quite certain.

If you mean that I consistently reject lies - that’s true. If lies persist, then I too will hopefully persist in rejecting them. We’ll just have to wait and see.

[Alex Jacob]

Dan asks:

"What is the point, exactly, in injecting "humour" into a serious discussion (and one that you haven't contributed to)? Please explain; I'm interested in what you perceive as the qualitative benefit of such an activity."

Might we generally say that the QRS-H is virtually without sense of humor? In the land of your writings, recommended activities, the 'Calvinist' thrust of 'wisdom-seeking' as it is represented here is completely devoid of humor. Or maybe it is more accurate to say that, generally, here, there is an 'afflicted sense of humor'?

You set up your 'wisdom school' with a whole list of things to avoid, and equate those who don't exclude such things with folly. However, now that the question comes out, I do have a feeling that at the core it may indeed be that you have lost the ability to laugh at life and at yourself: your project, the absurdity of thinking you will turn the tide of the world, the crusade against 'woman', 'wife', etc. Each of these negations offers a whole world of possibilities for humor, yet it completely escapes you, it seems.

[Alex Jacob]

Diebert wrote:

"Calvinism in the end was a double-edged sword and it splintered itself into irrelevancies. But it brought forward free-thinkers in the 19th century that shaped all things to come. We're all reformers now..."

Trying to categorize what these people (QRS-H) are up to, and what they hope to achieve, and criticising them, does not necessarily mean that I separate myself from them (though they must surely wish to see themselves as separate from me). One of the things that I have discovered about myself is that I am essentially a 'religious' person, and by that I mean that in vision and dream, in a more sub- or un-conscious realm, I find essentially religious structures forming a sort of bedrock. So, as an example, I once read The Man Who Died by DH Lawrence---which story is filled and overflows with potent symbolism, I think pretty alchemical symbolism---and the effect of this work was obviously dual: on the one hand, there was what I thought of it on a mental and intellectual level, and on the other the way that these symbols and images resonated and interchanged with unconscious potencies within myself, leading to a whole chain of charged dreams, powerful 'synchronicities' and omens. The symbols initiated 'movement' on an inner level. It was only after my 'soul', if you will, made it clear to me that these symbols and potentials were deeply relevant to 'it' that I---that is my conscious self, my logocentric self---took another look at the material, and saw it differently.

"It's quite easy to spot errors and lacks in words and action of any 'men of the infinite' though; in the end we're dealing with a different approach that could never become perfectly factual or knowledgeable, since the very things needed to achieve anything close to it would probably flush out the baby with the water."

The people who really seem to get 'captured' by their holy spirits, their guiding angel, their genius (thinking of the mystic schools or the yogic schools), never seem to operate through the pure medium of words, and it is never a logo-centric activity. It is also pretty obvious that the really 'gifted' religious and spiritual visionaries (say, Ramakrishna) also step out of socially dictated morality. When you refer to 'men of the infinite' I am not sure who you are referring to, but I don't think I'd put Kierkegaard or Nietzsche in that category. It seems to me that though they might have covered a great deal of ground mentally and intellectually, on other levels they remained incomplete and dwarf-like. To be truthful, I tend to react against purely intellectual formulations that seem to produce this dwarfism.

"What you call QRSH philosophy seems to go for 'eternal' types of wisdom or truth, in other words elements that are so universal, so married with the very workings of consciousness and mind that they shine through in words no matter which age or tradition they're embedded in, as long it's not too alien to us. It can shine through despite upbringing, culture, language, style or mental problems."

To be truthful, what I get mostly from QRS-H is nothing that reminds me or impels me toward anything very eternal at all, though I am aware of their respect and interest in certain men who have probed these directions. What I see and feel in QRS-H-ism is a limited, closed loop that can only circle in on itself, getting tighter and tighter, more restricting and limiting as time passes. This is, of course why in humorous terms I refer to being the agent of their salvation...the little drop of mercurial fluid that upsets the whole boring equation, the event that cures. The forum is filled with various 'little devils' that they themselves call forth, and with whom they engage in endless 'conversation', trying to prove their points.

This closed loop of thinking will produce mental ill-health and therefor it calls forth its opposite, something bigger and wider than itself. This is just basic psychology, I think: what we repress will always find a way to manifest itself. If it knocks at the door and we don't answer, it will knock again in a more insistant manner, and finally can actually knock down the door and charge in...

"This is an interesting paragraph for several reasons. My interest in this forum started when I first arrived at this board in 2004 because I already reached the conclusion myself that Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and also Diogenes, Jesus and Siddhartha all expressed a rare depth and unique clarity standing out from the strangling stronghold of traditions that gave form to these geniuses and then tried to destroy their work by assimilating it into a popular version over the following centuries. But one cannot hide the lamp, only misinterpret the shadows.

"Is it then all a philosophical Rorschach inkblot test or is there truly a wisdom tradition in Hermetic sense, seen by those who are 'initiated'? Here is where it indeed turns into a religion but one without specific scripture, figureheads or language. It's the leaping faith of a Kierkegaard I suppose after consistent thought brought one that far. It's a pure individual process and any thought of a Genius group or enlightened society missed the point bigtime."

I think it is tremendous fun to be involved, even peripherally, with the great intellectual and philosophical traditions. I am pretty sure that no part of that at all can 'solve' or explain or even guide one to the core of oneself, the Divine.

There are a group of very interesting questions in those two paragraphs and I guess I think that 'questions' are a way of opening ourselves up to possibilities. A question is an evocation.

[Shahrazad]

Alex,

However, now that the question comes out, I do have a feeling that at the core it may indeed be that you have lost the ability to laugh at life and at yourself: your project, the absurdity of thinking you will turn the tide of the world, the crusade against 'woman', 'wife', etc. Each of these negations offers a whole world of possibilities for humor, yet it completely escapes you, it seems.

This is the first time I've heard Dan accused of not having a sense of humor.

-

[Alex Jacob]

Seventeen words, and it's only Monday! ;-)

I said 'afflicted sense of humor'.

[brokenhead]

Christians are people who haven’t grown up. They continue to need to hold tightly to their "toys": their fantasies - for without them, they feel they’ll have nothing left to support them. And this may well be true - but it is far better to live free from such lies.

That's just silly, Sue. If you had said "Some Christians...," It wouldn't be silly, it would be true, because some of any sect, creed, race, ethnic group, gender, etc... are people who haven't grown up. You are implying the words most or all there, which is utter nonsense, since you don't know most or all Christians. I'd have to say, speak for yourelf, but I think that's what you are doing. You are describing the upbringing in yourself which you have consciously rejected. That is fair. Or it would be, if that's what you said you were doing. I guess if you phrase it this way, you can tell yourself you have actually accomplished something, you have been brave enough and wise enough to tell the truth where others would not. It's pretty easy to belittle a group of people who turn the other cheek, right?

I'll be the first to admit that many Christians never examine what they have been taught about Christ and his life and work. They may go to services and have it be like dropping their clothes off at the cleaners once a week, let the pros handle it. Yet I stop short of saying what all or most of them think or have in their hearts. It is presumptuous of you to go on about the baby-husband thing, as if most women haven't outgrown their dollies. And to go on about the man-in-the-sky cartoonish concept. If I don't trust myself to know how other people relate to god, I certainly can't trust your take on it. You are good at pooh-poohing easy stereotypes. Do you have anything constructive to say about Jesus teaching? You seem to drop in the cut-and-pastes from the NT, but then you go on about shadow-boxing with your stymied notions of how people understand those same quotes.

[Dan Rowden]

Dan asks:

"What is the point, exactly, in injecting "humour" into a serious discussion (and one that you haven't contributed to)? Please explain; I'm interested in what you perceive as the qualitative benefit of such an activity."

Might we generally say that the QRS-H is virtually without sense of humor?

Might we say: "Can you spell 'non sequiter'?" Why do so many people here think the best way to answer a question from QSR is to turn it around and make it about them? Why can't people just answer the question. It's not about whether I have a sense of humour, it's about why those who inject "humour" into an otherwise serious and, to the participants, important discourse feel the need to do so; it's about the psychological drives they bring to such an act. There's a qualitative difference between ironic wit that might add something meaningful to such a discourse and what is effectively walking up to two people having a serious discussion and blowing one of those extending party whistles in their face. I would also like to know why humour is considered so sacrosanct, so inviolate that if one objects to it one is automatically seen as possessed of some sort of psychological failing. Perhaps you could attempt to explain that as well.

In the land of your writings, recommended activities, the 'Calvinist' thrust of 'wisdom-seeking' as it is represented here is completely devoid of humor. Or maybe it is more accurate to say that, generally, here, there is an 'afflicted sense of humor'?

I don't have the psychological need for humour that I had in previous lives, though I still have a head for ironic and sometimes sarcastic wit. But there's a world of difference between those things and party whistle behaviour designed to do no more than put one's stamp on a situation. What I'm asking if for some psychological analysis of the need to blow that whistle in people's faces. Care to venture a relevant thought?

You set up your 'wisdom school' with a whole list of things to avoid,

We generally don't advocate avoidance; we advocate understanding and sanity. But even then there are some things that ought be avoided, don't you think?

and equate those who don't exclude such things with folly.

The nature of humour has been explained here at considerable length. Whether you chose to accept that explanation or subsequently perceive it as "folly" is up to you. I'm entitled to my own view on that, am I not?

However, now that the question comes out, I do have a feeling that at the core it may indeed be that you have lost the ability to laugh at life and at yourself: your project, the absurdity of thinking you will turn the tide of the world,

Why is that idea absurd, and more to the point, when the hell did any of us say this was our goal?

the crusade against 'woman', 'wife', etc.

Oh, you mean the crusade for sanity. Yes, I apologise for that; can't imagine what came over me.

Each of these negations offers a whole world of possibilities for humor, yet it completely escapes you, it seems.

Alex, from my perspective, you're the humourless one.

[Unidian]

There's a qualitative difference between ironic wit that might add something meaningful to such a discourse and what is effectively walking up to two people having a serious discussion and blowing one of those extending party whistles in their face.

True, but need it be a big deal? Isn't it possible to just laugh, shrug, and carry on?

[Dan Rowden]

I don't think I'm suggesting it's a "big" deal, necessarily. I still think it's worth asking what psychological force motivates us to do it. It often looks like a sort of egotistical Tourette's to me. And it seems to me that if one is going to be a successful thinker/philosopher one ought strive to understand one's motives and actions in all things. If I was writing a "how to" on being a philosopher I think that's one thing I'd stipulate as a requisite.