Why I want to participate in this forum

[larrykueneman]

I'll be off the Hill for at least most of the next couple of days. Will talk again soon.

[cousinbasil]

Basically, human beings have evolved to breed and not be geniuses, and that is the reason there are no geniuses. If this situation is to change, then it would probably do so over quite a long period of time, and there would have to be a lot of geniuses around. But I don't think there's much chance of that happening.

The way you have worded this it seems like you see breeding and genius as mutually exclusive. That may very well be if your view of genius is in line with Quinn's, which is understandable since you are a self-proclaimed Weinigerian. But Otto was unable to survive the onslaught of truth he let into his world; let's assume that is not also a requirement of this type of genius. Remember, he perished in that vortex, so we do not know what his life would have been like in later years. It is not unfeasible he would have resolved his issues of sexual identity, at least to the extent that made it possible for him to enter into a marriage if only in name and proceed along the socially expected route of child-rearing.

It is difficult, I'll admit, to reconcile child rearing (or "breeding" as you put it) with any substantial level of non-attachment. But Weiniger himself was a victim of attachment - to ideas and theoretical concepts, attempting a metasynthesis which a subsequent century of more workmanlike progress may have shown to be unrealistic.

I guess my point is that breeding itself may not be an obstacle to genius, even in the sense of this forum. One may do one's dharma without attachment. In fact, it could be argued that in order to perform one's dharma properly at all, it must be done while minimizing the emotional pitfalls of attachment. Bearing in mind that attachment and attention are obviously not the same thing.

[jupiviv]

The way you have worded this it seems like you see breeding and genius as mutually exclusive.

Sexual reproduction in and of itself can't lead to consciousness. That's pretty obvious. If reproducing sexually helps to create consciousness, then there's no problem with it. But I don't think any human has ever achieved coitus with the intention of creating an enlightened sage.

But Otto was unable to survive the onslaught of truth he let into his world

I'm sorry to disappoint you, but no one is immortal. Even a person who has sex with all the women in the world will die. But such a person will have done nothing of value, as opposed to a person who dedicates his life to reason, like Weininger.

But Weiniger himself was a victim of attachment - to ideas and theoretical concepts

His suicide was certainly the result of his attachments. But at least he tried to understand and overcome them, which is more than you can say for 99.99% of humanity.

[Bob Michael]

If there's no self.
how does the task get done?
how does right leadership happen?
how is a sane setting set?

Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.

[Dennis Mahar]

Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.

Here's this pattern (me),
floating in a most peculiar way,
wondrous and astonished,
that there is something and not nothing,

staring adoringly at no-thing, infinite, not-finite,
experiencing a sense of amazing freedom and pleasure.

What are you saying Bob?

That there's a God on the prowl,
gonna hunt me down,
throw me in the Sulphur Lake,
because this pattern's useless to requirements?

[Bob Michael]

Due to the severely desensitized state of the human species at large, most people are in the 'lake' without even realizing it.

[Bob Michael]

On occassion, parents do things differently and the kid grows up with his or her fearless curiosity intact. Generally, under these conditions we think the kid is exceptional, when with a closer look it may prove that it is the parents who had establish an exceptional experience for the child, who then grows as he or she was intended in the first place.

This may be so, but an exceptional child is not necessarily an enlightened child, nor will he necessarily become one. Nor will he necessarily become an enlightened adult either. And unless a person is genuinely and fully enlightened he'll most likely serve the world (and himself) far more than the Infinite, his fellows, and the evolutionary scheme of things.

[Dennis Mahar]

Due to the severely desensitized state of the human species at large, most people are in the 'lake' without even realizing it.

Spot on Bob.
eerie isn't it?
amazing.

[Bob Michael]

Due to the severely desensitized state of the human species at large, most people are in the 'lake' without even realizing it.

Spot on Bob.
eerie isn't it?
amazing.

It's no longer eerie, though it's depressing at times. But what is - is.

[Dennis Mahar]

though it's depressing at times

clouds roll by on sunny days.

But what is - is

it is what it is.

love ya' bobby.

[Anders Schlander]

Psychologists have implied that genius is the term describing people who have extraordinary capabilities, and originally, it seemed that was the situation. However, more recent findings indicate that genius would be the normal case if we didn't screw up our children. This damage isn't intentional, it is the way we were taught by our parents back hundreds of generations.

I was unintentionally damaged by my parents, and I didn't do a good job with my child, but it was that experience that pushed me to investigate what goes on in a childs experience that make the difference in their life from age six onward.

On occassion, parents do things differently and the kid grows up with his or her fearless curiousity intact. Generally, under these conditions we think the kid is exceptional, when with a closer look it may prove that it is the parents who had establish an exceptional experience for the child, who then grows as he or she was intended in the first place.

No, I don't exactly buy that, not all factors that make up a well-functioning child is something parents can take into account, they after all aren't 'omniscient', they don't know every single cause in the universe. Parents and children influence each other in good and bad ways, parents have no way of knowing exactly what children their children will meet, and they also know that by isolating their child, it is also damaging. Essentially, sometimes the child will have some bad experiences with other children, other people, out of the parents control, because they cannot know everything nor can they be around their children for everything, no matter how good the parent is.

The main human problem could be solved by having each parent worthy by knowing how to raise a child, and that would make most children act non-damaging to other children and make most humans well off being around each other, in which case, there is yet still a range of other problems left, like neurological issues, or accidents in the nature around them, or whatever.

Note that we havn't really defined Genius in this thread properly, which kinda makes my post a bit boring, as we can't really go into details of what a parent might have to do to 'being worthy' and doing their job properly....

[larrykueneman]

It would be difficult by my question to understand that I have been working with computers since 1962, but I can't figure out how to select something to quote from another message and then include that quote in my reply message---I'm missing the manual, and I don't see it on the website.

[Bob Michael]

Clouds roll by on sunny days.

Not yet irreparably botched children and the hope that I can develop an effective approach to help awaken some gems in the rough who are drowning in the cesspool of a fallen humanity makes it worth going on.

It is what it is. Love ya' bobby.

As does encouragement like this. Thanks Dennis!

"You may have love in your heart, because to love is a natural thing when one is young; but it is soon destroyed by the parents, by the educator, by the social environment." (J. Krishnamurti - 'Think On These Things')

As are a child's feelings and intuitive mechanism. And in most of us never to be recaptured and fully developed again in the whole of a lifetime. And without these things being redeveloped to the fullest there can be no true genius. Given that there is such a thing as genius in the first place.

[Dennis Mahar]

As does encouragement like this. Thanks Dennis!

Thankyou Bob.
It's something you bring that awakens the warmth.
It's the warmth of being that makes it worth it.
You know, makes it worth going beyond saying 'good morning' and leaving it at that.

Pam brings warmth to the hearth.

[Bob Michael]

"The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency they are not really alive unless they are creating." (Pearl S. Buck)

[Bob Michael]

Bob Michael's writing is that of a very bright guy who is probably not an academic, but may well be self-trained. The reason I say this is that I spent my working years in technical publications, and quickly learned that good writers write for all, while academics write only for other academics.
I started as a tech writer ending up as manager of tech pubs departments for various organizations. I was also fortunate to have written in about twenty different disciplines, something that is not done in today's world. Such experience allows me to read much in good writing, and say that Bob should consider writing poetry.

By the way, while I was born in Los Angeles and raised in Southern California, where I now live, I did spend seven years in Shillington, where I owned a microfilm service bureau.

Thanks for sharing your observations and credentials, Larry. Bob's a reluctant (by the skin of his teeth) high school graduate, who, once loving electromechanical things far more than people, spent most of his life in the trades industry. Though his innate flame of curiosity and love for his fellows were never totally snuffed out by the wall-to-wall, dog-eat-dog human violence, darkness, and brutality. Whereupon undergoing a revolutionary awakening experience some 35 years ago he's since been passionately involved in extensive change, autopsychotheraphy, and autolearning. The latter two terms, which I find quite interesting and vital, I just recently acquired from Kazimierz Dabrowski. Bob was born and raised in Berks Co., PA and has lived for 13 months in Ojai, CA and visited there on several other occasions solely to investigate the life and works of his most notable mentor, J. Krishnamurti. He feels there's enough poetry in the world which at best serves only to give people temporary warm fuzzies. Rather he feels he must spent the rest of his days here on the planet earth forming a body of people who are capable of radical transformation and reversion to the natural human state who will then propagate a sample of the finally finished and perfected human species safely forward while the "abomination that maketh desolate" finally takes place.

[larrykueneman]

As I suspected Bob. You provide a couple of terms and names I had to look up (and will look further).

I attended a talk by Krishnamurti (very astute guy) in about 1970 in Santa Monica. I believe it was in the same auditorium where some years earlier I had been to a concert by Andres Segovia. But why speak of yourself in the third person. The Jews thought for thousands of years that Moses had written the main books of their Torah, but one would be hard pressed to describe their own death in the third person as in the Torah (just a thought your third person writing brought up).

[Bob Michael]

I attended a talk by Krishnamurti (very astute guy) in about 1970 in Santa Monica. I believe it was in the same auditorium where some years earlier I had been to a concert by Andres Segovia.

"Very astute guy." Perhaps. But when the curtain closed he was but another name on a long list of failed messiahs. I attended two of his talks the last year he spoke in the Oak Grove (1985).

But why speak of yourself in the third person.

Just for the novelty of it. Krishnamurti had a habit of doing the same thing.