Diebert wrote:
"But for me, truth is learned from everyone and everything, It lies on the street and it's often spoken by undesirable, shady characters. If this forum is the absolute philosophical gutter of the Internet, where the 'low lives', the whores and money changers are hanging out, then that's exactly the place where some fruit might be found. I seek deserts and desperation, complete infertile wastelands, the opposite what you seem to look for. It's only here that sanity might be restored, now and again. It's all very imperfect, to say the least."
No one here is acting a role comparable to that, or living out a wastrel's life as 'whores' and 'money-changers'. First, I respect QRS (and I won't, of course, include the tired jab that I do even though 'I suspect they might be gay') their seriousness, their constant focus, their willingness to take a stand for what they believe, and to take steps---concrete, earthly steps---to put their material out there so that people will grapple with it. I emulate those things, and I as a religionist also strongly believe that it is important to contribute to, to sponsor, to contribute time, energy and money to what one believes in. No matter how 'pure' or 'perfect' the teaching, when it is handled by people it will always get sullied, muddied, infused and will show some warts, but still you simply have to do
something now don't you? For a 'simple Christian', someone who feels he has received some grace that has improved his life, the next step is service. What has been given to you, give to others. If a burden has been taken off of you, help to take the burden off of someone else. If you received some help, give some help. The better part of the human spirit is often expressed in this way, a receiving and a giving. I can only assume that the 'enlightenment' that David speaks about is so valuable to him that he will stake his life---in the sense of
dedicate his life---in service to the possibility of bringing that realization to other people.
I don't have any problem with that, and 'birds of a feather flock together', so you can see how their 'idea-structures' attract various mirror-images of themselves, likenesses anyway, and some who are diametrically opposed. And if you mean to imply that they are like 'philosophical gutters' or 'whores' or 'money-changers' (money-changers doesn't apply since no one is out to make a buck, I would rather imagine 'Pharisees' and 'Scribes', and no one here is
sophisticated enough to operate as a Sadducee, but we have a few Essenes and a Gnostic or two), like dregs of the Earth who even still can utter truths, some of the truths are uttered
despite themselves, if you know what I mean.
"But the challenge is to play it well, to find the story that in the context of the age, the people, the illusions is the most illuminating. For you this story doesn't seem to hit home anywhere and that's fair enough. Still you're driven to make sense of it."
Now what's this? This cannot situate itself within the QRS canon, you yourself are toying with post-modernism. Tut tut old boy. Truth is a single thing! There is truth and there is non-truth! You must decide, son!
It is not at all that their 'story' does not sit well with me, it is that tendentious aspects of it do not strike me as
true. Some of this is a gross as a slug sitting on the end of a nose, and some of it is fine and requires a special comb, like mother removing lice from the fine hair of her dearly beloved child: something she must do
right away,
now, and certainly can't wait till tomorrow. (Did I tell you I have sewed three little blue suits for the QRS? Their
Sunday Best, when they promise not to burn their churches).
"I'm afraid it's you who has clearly the superior intellect and not allowing much of another interface, although you're
hinting at other modes - they are in my view not other-worldly enough, meaning: they are plain
worldly. Of course there is no other world, I hasten to add. That's only a figure of speech, it means just "non-worldly" in the ancient dualism world-spirit."
You always, I repeat
always, interpose yourself between me and the QRS, have you ever wondered why you do that? You cause me to argue with
you, who is not QRS and doesn't at all seem to function like them, who does not close himself off so definitively, and it is as if you actually think that you are presenting arguments that
they would,
or even could ever, formulate. Then, I have to remember that I don't have an argument with you, one because you so rarely reveal any definite, bold thing you actually believe, and two because you so rarely reveal any definite, bold thing you actually believe...
But then there is always this rehearsal of a complex spirit-dance that you weave in your posts, a
danse de la fée, all very delightful of course.