cousinbasil wrote:Bob, forgive me if I have made this point before, but you seem to lack a frame of reference. For you to view humanity as fallen, you must first establish in your own mind where it has fallen from. I contend that you might have taken off your rose-colored glasses but you clearly have not mislaid them. Mankind cannot be in a tragic condition unless it was at one time in a relatively exalted or sublime condition from which it has descended. When might that have been? When men painted caves at Altimara? At the height of the Roman Empire? Maybe during the Dark Ages, or when the Yellow Man chased the Red Man across the intercontinental land bridge between Asia and the New World, or in deepest, darkest Africa before the White Man came.
The past is dead and gone, c/b. And unfortunately man has not learned much from it. However, the
'present and ongoing' human tragedy remains that the species has deteriorated (devolved) to the point that man everywhere lives a state of dehumanized, joyless robotism. Though on the other hand it could be said that he's joyful in his robotic state, such is the terribly botched or
'fallen' condition of the human species.
cousinbasil wrote:If there ever was a Garden of Eden, it came at a time when the world was already populated with brutes and savages; having served its purpose, it then disappeared. Humanity has been seeded with the essence of its full flowering, which has yet to come. You cannot compare humanity with a senescent culture on a Petri dish. Bacteria cultures eat the agar, they do not invent new food sources. Humanity has evolved to the point where it is exhausting natural energy resources at the same time it is harnessing solar, wind, atomic, and geothermal energies.
Yes, and with it all this so-called
'progress' man continues to devolve humanly, morally, and spiritually. Which is to also say he's harnessed or is harnessing everything but himself, his own ass. And payback day is soon approaching.
cousinbasil wrote:I agree with Alex in that your take on the state of mankind as expressed here reflects a cynicism of yours, and if his point is that the cynicism is not entirely warranted by observable facts, then I agree with that as well.
Cynicism? No, just realism or clearly seeing what-is. Which requires having an exceptional mind. A mind that has managed to make the return to its
'natural state'.
"The sick are the greatest danger for the well. The weaker, not the stronger, are the strong's undoing. It is not fear of our fellow-man, which we should wish to see diminished; for fear rouses those who are strong to become terrible in turn themselves, and preserves the hard-earned and successful type of humanity. What is to be dreaded by us more than any other doom is not fear, but rather the great disgust, not fear, but rather the great pity - disgust and pity for our human fellows.....The morbid are our greatest peril - not the 'bad' men, not the predatory beings. Those born wrong, the miscarried, the broken - they it is, the weakest, who are undermining the vitality of the race, poisoning our trust in life, and putting humanity in question. Every look of them is a sigh, - 'Would I were something other! I am sick and tired of what I am.' In this swamp soil of self-contempt, every poisonous weed flourishes, and all so small, so secret, so dishonest, and so sweetly rotten. Here swarm the worms of sensitiveness and resentment; here the air smells odious with secrecy, with what is not to be acknowledged; here is woven endlessly the net of the meanest of conspiracies, the conspiracy of those who suffer against those who succeed and are victorious; here the very aspect of the victorious is hated - as if health, success, strength, pride, and the sense of power were in themselves things vicious, for which one ought eventually to make bitter expiation. Oh, how these people would themselves like to inflict the expiation, how they thirst to be the hangmen! And all the while their duplicity never confesses their hatred to be hatred." (Nietzsche)
cousinbasil wrote:You can't pull the "years-under-the-belt" seniority or that would that would make Tomas more "organismally sensitive" than any of us. Ahem.
I think I said keen organismal sensitivity and having enough years of living experiences under one's belt were necessary. And years of living have nothing to do with one's organismal sensitivity. And even Christ in his time (while he was indeed very highly sensitive) didn't have enough years and living experiences under his belt to be a Master and thereby be effectively instrumental in the genuine liberation of anyone.
cousinbasil wrote:One cannot reject all theories of morality and at the same time assume the mantle of Ultimate Moral Arbiter as you do so consistently. And you do not appear to "advocate" anarchism (as in to promote it as a practice), but rather "sit understandingly restlessly-content" (whatever that means) anticipating anarchy for the masses as well as your own inexplicable personal physical salvation.
True morality must be self-determined, not imposed on us by others. Including myself. And anarchism is a dead end street. It's but a vain assertion of a blind and egoic self. One must get away from the blind, ignorant, and violent masses if he's to ever create something revolutionarily new, shining, and above all, everlastingly bright. So it must definitely be an esoteric adventure, since only a very few are fit for successful self-overcoming. And among these few even fewer are willing to take the necessary leap into the unknown. Or undergoing a total death and rebirth experience.
cousinbasil wrote:IMO, you display a classic personality disorder that is based in extreme ego-centrism. Because you believe the world to be a shit-hole, it will suffer physical calamity. Because you see your fellow humans as monstrosities, most of them will perish in this Armageddon.
Yes, a grand cleansing of the all-too-many "weak and the botched" is definitely necessary and will soon take place. And many were there that thought Christ and Nietzsche had
"personality disorders". Making me sort of pleased that I'm given such a label too, along with
"extreme ego-centricism", which is also quite understandable. And I'll be nice here and say no more in this regard.
"The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of our charity. And one should help them to it. What is more harmful than any vice? - Practical sympathy for the botched and the weak - Christianity." (Nietzsche)
cousinbasil wrote:Let me just postulate a random historical example. Let's take the Industrial Revolution in its heyday, before modern wasn't new enough and some genius coined the dubious term "post-modern." Are you, Bob, saying that there was no one who felt the same "organismal" disenfranchisement that you do now? I believe the opposite to be the case. The world that produced Nietzsche must have spawned countless souls who felt population accelerating beyond acceptable bounds, who felt the pace of life becoming increasingly unfriendly to the human soul.
Many have seen the problem but they never got to the root of it. Nor did they find the right approach that's necessary to fix it. That is what can be fixed. Which isn't all that much, that many, I should say. Along with the fact that it's only in the last half century or so that man has developed the means to successfully (and of necessity) destroy most of himself.
"Just as cosmic law controls the devastation man can wreak upon the earth at any time, so cosmic restraint has so far prevented him from unleashing the nuclear force now at his disposal. The balance is so fine that nuclear devastation is a possibility at any moment even though it subsides periodically as a perceived threat. The only certainy - guaranteed by man's current state of self-knowledge - is that he will survive in sufficient numbers to perpetuate the race. This is hardly a comforting thought for the billions who will be destroyed; nor for them to know that the holocaust will have been absolutely necessary for the inevitable progress of westernized culture towards the enlightened race man must someday become.....Man, in spite of his nuclear might and biological villainy, still does not possess the power to wipe out the human race. But he can destroy most of it. And, as I have said, this will be necessary for his evolutionary advancement." (Barry Long)
cousinbasil wrote:I suggest that even at that point in history, such apprehension of impending Armageddon was nothing new. I would have to be convinced otherwise - all I have are your assurances that everyone else was lacking, Jesus himself, and you, Bob of Reading, are uniquely competent to ascertain this. Can you explain why previous people who believed just as sincerely as you do that the Big Purge would occur in their lifetimes proved to be deluded, and why you will not ultimately be likewise regarded by those who may remember you after you die?
Yes, those who fully, or near-fully, transcended their humanness clearly realized that they lived in a world of dead and joyless human robots. And that their only hope for experiencing genuinely joyful, unselfish, and harmonious living with their fellow human beings was that a
"Big Purge" took place in their lifetime. Which of course never happened for them. Hence they were doomed to live out their days surrounded by unhuman or sub-human human beings. Which is not a very pleasant destiny. One which I continue to suffer first-hand myself.
cousinbasil wrote:Just as surely as we are all born to die, every single prediction about the End of Days has so far not come to pass. Might the Big Kahuna not have something else entirely up His sleeve than making the fate of Mankind responsive to one man's disillusionment?
Time alone will tell. Though I remain hopeful and above all
sane and selfless through it all. The latter being a feat which many enlightened beings weren't able to do.
cousinbasil wrote:Again, people speak of spiritual things without coming to grips with what a Spirit actually is.
Indeed
'spiritual materialism' runs rampant everywhere in these last days.
"Walking the spiritual path properly is a very subtle process, it is not something to jump into naively. There are numerous sidetracks which lead to a disturbed, ego-centered version of spiritually; we can deceive ourselves into thinking we are developing spiritually when instead we are strengthening our egocentricity through spiritual techniques. This fundamental distortion may be referred to as 'spiritual materialism'." (Chogyam Trungpa)