Colin Wilson

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
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Tomas
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Re: Colin Wilson

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Talking Ass wrote: My mother was indeed a Jew, yet rather unconventional. Here, you can see for yourself. I snapped this just as she was saying 'But you look so thin!'
You're too fuckin' weird ;-)
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cousinbasil
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Re: Colin Wilson

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Bob, quoting George Leonard, wrote:And so I walk the streets, aware of the pervasive ugliness of the people in this most fortunate nation (USA), the lines of hurt and anxiety and greed around their eyes and mouths, the imbalance of their walk, the deformation of their bodies. Oh no it is not genetic. Civilization has twisted and scarred those bodies as surely as it has damaged and tortured the face of the planet.
I will have to admit thinking along these lines when I walked around Manhattan in my twenties. At the time emotionally unscarred, I had the insouciance to look people in the eye as they passed without the courtesy of wearing sunglasses. At first, I was certain that the tonic of that symphony was pain, was a feeling of being trapped, of incomprehension. It was not much different from looking across the courtyard into the window with the blinds left open.

I have never heard of George Leonard, but I see how Bob is drawn to him.
Alex wrote: What is interesting (since I know very little about him) is the memory of my impression of him. Recalling that, I remember a man who seemed to me to 'oppress with the heaviness of his spirit'. He is a tall man, lanky and unattractive, and he seemed to give off a vibe of superiority, perhaps something of extreme arrogance. I decidedly did not like him.
This is remarkably like my reaction to the quote which Bob presented.

At a later stage of my life, I found myself walking the streets of Reading, PA. No longer insouciant, I didn't see much of what Leonard sees, and I wonder why Bob sees what he does.

Not surprising that Aikido has suitable kata for our four-legged brethren...
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Re: Colin Wilson

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Alex,
Essentially, the mood is one of pure contempt for 'reality', for the female and the feminine, for humankind. It is a mood born from intense (self-) dissatisfaction which is projected outward. It is not so much that Bob differs from any of this from QRS generally. There is at some inner point a desire to annihilate it all, which links it to Christian apocalyticism (as I have often said), and they seem to be 'birds of a feather' and they squawk to similar tunes. I suggest this is linked to a deep and abiding Nihilism and in a sense a pure hatred of life. Naturally, one who hates life must desire death: suicide. So, I again suggest that, here, there are some really rather dark, unprocessed, deeply unconscious forces at work in people. Death-drive I suppose.

I think that one must at this point broach the subject of 'thinking disorders'. As everyone knows I have often insisted (and gotten lots of resistance for it) that there are currents of pathology and 'mental illness' in this place. Perhaps a more accurate term is Thinking Disorder? And perhaps the lesson for 'all of us' is to become aware of what possesses us and how we are possessed by ideas, and that under ideas there exist strange forces, strange spirits?
It's your persistent hostility and desire to cause harm that is interesting.
What happened?
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Re: Colin Wilson

Post by cousinbasil »

TA wrote: It would of course be sort of absurd if you could be sent to a camp because of a Jewish grandparent...but not be able to return to Israel.
It would be absurd if you could be sent to a camp because of a Jewish grandparent, period. (We aren't talking about summer camp in the Catskills, I take it...)

What's with the "returning" thing, anyway? You are speaking of Jews who have never been to Israel. The goyim hear this propaganda and justifiably bristle. We jess takin' what we owed...
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Talking Ass
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Re: Colin Wilson

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I am not sure I completely understand your comment, CB. I don't have any problem discussing it though. Everything about Jews in history is very complex and hard to sort through. I was thinking to myself this evening: If God promised Israel to the Jews, but God has died, then it should folllw that all bets are off. In the US at least, the main non-Jewish supporters of Israel are the Evangelical Christians, but (obviously) under all the basic Biblical premises. The status of world Jewry vis-a-vis Israel is difficult and problematic, to say the very least. What in your opinion do non-Jews bristle at?

Dennis, despite appearances I don't hold anger or desire to harm toward you, them, or anyone. Essentially, like an assy Don Quixote, I battle 'ideas'. If you could understand this you will have understood a great deal.
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Dennis Mahar
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Re: Colin Wilson

Post by Dennis Mahar »

Dennis, despite appearances I don't hold anger or desire to harm toward you, them, or anyone
Well then you agree that you present the appearance of holding anger and the desire to inflict harm on the forum.

Battle this idea.

There is no such thing as a Jew except by mental imputation.
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Talking Ass
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Re: Colin Wilson

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I agree that you are compelled to see it that way. It is a reflex that arises in you. But is it 'accurate perception'? And do you REALLY think I'd give you a straight answer about that? If you examine the paragraphs you quoted, you will not find in them desire to harm, nor is desire to harm part of my 'mood'. In fact, quite the opposite.

It does not surprise me that you would necessarily regard Jewishness as deriving from 'mental imputation'. And you are not the first one to work that angle: attacking that very identification as false. It follows from your ideas. So, all identification is contrived. And we are making up as we go along every aspect of this story and all Story. Yet, story drives the world and, in the grand scheme, inventing story is now and will always be one of man's primary creative acts. The role of Jews and Judaism in the world is kne of those fabulous stories, then, and one of the strangest, but also most fruitful. To think all that through, to know it, to understand it, is no easy feat. And after all we all are the products of and the outcomes of story, history and identification. It is indeed an interesting subject of conversation. Yet I reckon it is one you will never have?
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Dennis Mahar
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Re: Colin Wilson

Post by Dennis Mahar »

It does not surprise me that you would necessarily regard Jewishness as deriving from 'mental imputation'. And you are not the first one to work that angle: attacking that very identification as false
Is 'Jew' mental imputation?

Yes or No.
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Blair
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Re: Colin Wilson

Post by Blair »

Dennis Mahar wrote: There is no such thing as a Jew except by mental imputation.
And genital amputation.
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Talking Ass
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Re: Colin Wilson

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It is your mind that functions in binaries. This is why you become, in your way, a machine. You imitate a mechanism. Then, you demand with innocent insistance that others act, see and respond as you force yourself or have been forced to act, see and respond. Curious, isn't it? Now, you are the predictable rodent who functions in his comfortable and safe little burrow. A Buddhist rodent! I chose another model of behavior.

There, is that the answer you sought? I'm making every effort to cooperate, but I seem to be limited by my own nature... :-(

The real question is Am I an ass by mental imputation? Now THAT is my kind a question!
Last edited by Talking Ass on Mon Oct 10, 2011 3:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Dennis Mahar
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Re: Colin Wilson

Post by Dennis Mahar »

OK, can we get past the insults and the personal choices.

Is 'Jew' mental imputation?
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Talking Ass
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Re: Colin Wilson

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Name things that are not 'mentally imputed', so I have an idea of what the 'base" is.

Also, I am not insulting you but rather using colorful language and rich metaphors to describe you, map you as it were. Its a pas de deux, mon cher.
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Dennis Mahar
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Re: Colin Wilson

Post by Dennis Mahar »

Is 'Jew' mental imputation?

yes or no.
please answer.
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Talking Ass
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Re: Colin Wilson

Post by Talking Ass »

It's the wrong question, so it will not be answered. Yet you have answered it. So, the actual question is How is that working for you? Which is to say, Does thinking in mechanical terms WORK for you? Does it get you where you want to go?

Answer or I'll kick your teeth in...
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Dennis Mahar
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Re: Colin Wilson

Post by Dennis Mahar »

I can't see a problem with the question.
Why can't you answer it?
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Re: Colin Wilson

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Carl Jung was deeply impressed by a Pueblo chief he met on a vsit to New Mexico in 1924-5. The chief described the alarm that white Americans inspired in him; "See how cruel the whites look", he said. "Their lips are thin, their noses sharp, their faces furrowed and distorted by folds. Their eyes have a staring expression; they are always seeking something. What are they seeking? The whites always want something; they are always uneasy and restless. We do not not understand them. We think they are mad." Jung asked him why he thought they were mad. "They say that they think with their heads," the chief replied. "Why of course. What do you think with?" Jung asked him in surprise. "We think here", the chief said, indicating his heart.
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Re: Colin Wilson

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Talking Ass wrote:I am not sure I completely understand your comment, CB. I don't have any problem discussing it though. Everything about Jews in history is very complex and hard to sort through. I was thinking to myself this evening: If God promised Israel to the Jews, but God has died, then it should follow that all bets are off. In the US at least, the main non-Jewish supporters of Israel are the Evangelical Christians, but (obviously) under all the basic Biblical premises. The status of world Jewry vis-a-vis Israel is difficult and problematic, to say the very least. What in your opinion do non-Jews bristle at?

Dennis, despite appearances I don't hold anger or desire to harm toward you, them, or anyone. Essentially, like an assy Don Quixote, I battle 'ideas'. If you could understand this you will have understood a great deal.
Just a question of semitic semantics. Let's say God hasn't died. Let's say an American Jew, who supports Israel, is married to an Evangelical Christan, who also supports Israel. Say the couple has never been to Israel but decides to live out their retirement there. Why would one of them - the Jew - be returning to Israel? God didn't promise Israel to the Jews or anyone else, including the Palestinians - and he didn't give it to the Allies to slice up and mete out. If a Jew who has never been to Israel can speak of "returning" to Israel, why should a Palestinian from whom the Israelis confiscated property and kicked out of his home not dream of returning?

Hey listen, non-Jews bristle at a lot of things Jewish - this can't be news. For instance, in school, you ruin the curve...
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Re: Colin Wilson

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cousinbasil wrote:At a later stage of my life, I found myself walking the streets of Reading, PA. No longer insouciant, I didn't see much of what Leonard sees, and I wonder why Bob sees what he does.
Only a highly-refined and courageous human organism can clearly see the awfully unpretty picture of the reality of the fallen human condition. The rest, the multitude, see only what they 'wish' to see. They also miss seeing and dwelling in the Kingdom of the Infinite.
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Re: Colin Wilson

Post by cousinbasil »

Dennis Mahar wrote:I can't see a problem with the question.
Why can't you answer it?
Dennis, repeating the question sounds blokheaded. You are being boorish even by your standards. There are insulting connotations to using the word imputation the way you are using it:
noun: a statement attributing something dishonest (especially a criminal offense) ("He denied the imputation")
Is 'Jew' mental imputation?

Isn't all imputation mental? If this question really meant anything, you should be able to put it in other words, since repeating it is obviously going nowhere. What do you mean by 'Jew" in quotes? A Jew? Jewishness? The word Jew? Any Jew? All Jews? Christ I am offended, and I'm as goy as they come.

BTW - Good one, Blair!
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Re: Colin Wilson

Post by cousinbasil »

Bob Michael wrote:
cousinbasil wrote:At a later stage of my life, I found myself walking the streets of Reading, PA. No longer insouciant, I didn't see much of what Leonard sees, and I wonder why Bob sees what he does.
Only a highly-refined and courageous human organism can clearly see the awfully unpretty picture of the reality of the fallen human condition. The rest, the multitude, see only what they 'wish' to see. They also miss seeing and dwelling in the Kingdom of the Infinite.
Again, you have not once come close to demonstrating that humanity has "fallen" from anything.
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Re: Colin Wilson

Post by Dennis Mahar »

Is 'Jew' a mental imputation?

very simple.
what's the fuss.

can we establish the yes or no of it?
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Re: Colin Wilson

Post by Dennis Mahar »

Alex wrote,
It does not surprise me that you would necessarily regard Jewishness as deriving from 'mental imputation'. And you are not the first one to work that angle: attacking that very identification as false. It follows from your ideas. So, all identification is contrived. And we are making up as we go along every aspect of this story and all Story. Yet, story drives the world and, in the grand scheme, inventing story is now and will always be one of man's primary creative acts. The role of Jews and Judaism in the world is kne of those fabulous stories, then, and one of the strangest, but also most fruitful. To think all that through, to know it, to understand it, is no easy feat. And after all we all are the products of and the outcomes of story, history and identification. It is indeed an interesting subject of conversation. Yet I reckon it is one you will never have?
Looks like that's as much as you'll give.
So, it's a Story.
Like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.
Wouldn't you think human being would be mature enough at this stage to 'get the story straight' about Stories.
These DEEPLY FLAWED...thought disorders.
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Re: Colin Wilson

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Talking Ass wrote:So, what is more interesting to me than the specific facts as brought forward by Pinker (and I would ask you Diebert why you would focus on the smallest detail when the context is so much more interesting and potentially thought-provoking) is the issue or the question of how we relate to the present, to ourselves in the present, to this very platform in which we are living, to material existence.
Aha, but I don't think it was just a detail - why nitpick over those after all? We've all got better things to do (right??)

The basic flaw, so lightly stepped over by you, might point to a more fundamental error in dealing with the whole subject matter. An error replicated by our culture in many instances - and didn't Pinker call himself a serious cultural Jew, ironically at the very least? As far as Cliffnotes can go: Pinker quantifies violence by attaching numerical values ('impact points', biased quantification) to suffering and then goes out to make his thesis. Naturally he then also makes countless of assumptions on total violence rates and population rates as having some actual proven correlation, but it's already yet another symptom from the same numerical disease, no matter if he might have technically a point.
his ideas and opinions are based not in any sense on Reality, but rather on deeply psychological manifestations of contempt, fear, violence, and even a sort of hatred of humanity, which is to say super-misanthropy.
Even if you could make this case, you forget to explain why this would be a bad or at least a thing in need of fixing, correcting or revealing so it can be "liberated". Actually you can find the same negative attitude and self-suffering in the personal writings of many who are perceived as great human beings of history. Why do you propose driving such "demonized demons" out?

Perhaps all progress, all growth with roots expanding into the depth will need to embrace darkness, needing to explore, not as distant observer but as hands-on actor, where lighter beings cannot exist.
What possesses them? (And by extension what possesses us). This for me is the crux of the question, the most interesting question that can be asked, and it is the question (a group of questions really) that I ask as a result of spiritually entering into this 'sphere', of swimming in these bodies of intellectual water here.
Forces of change will never appear pleasant of leading anywhere good. And why not, they often don't lead to anything good. Hatred I've come to known as what blooms when forces of change (or any drive forward) keeps getting blocked. The more overwhelming and overpowering the block, the higher the hate, the violent reaction can rise. It seems beyond the moral and the ethical really. It's more like physics perhaps.
Essentially, the mood is one of pure contempt for 'reality', for the female and the feminine, for humankind.
The tragedy of all junks: hating life, hating the drugs but in most cases it's not enough initiate change. Actually, the despair causes aching for more of the very thing being hated. Until oblivion sets in, one stops caring altogether now, the unbearable demand of despise deeply buried and forgotten. Blessed are the junks who still feel the venom of despise!
Naturally, one who hates life must desire death: suicide. So, I again suggest that, here, there are some really rather dark, unprocessed, deeply unconscious forces at work in people. Death-drive I suppose.
Don't just suppose, know yourself first! Then you can see your own desires and hates for the most horrible bad and wonderful good. It's all there including this "will to an end". Perhaps many of the mental diseases as defined around us are about measure of exposure to a more raw, temporary uncloaked set of drives, but with the lack of power to deal with it: lack of egos structure, lack of dreams, lack of confidence and unrestrained optimism, etc. They're then not delusional as such, although mind-boggling delusions might get invoked as ultimate emergency strategy.
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Re: Colin Wilson

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cousin basil wrote:Just a question of semitic semantics. Let's say God hasn't died. Let's say an American Jew, who supports Israel, is married to an Evangelical Christan, who also supports Israel. Say the couple has never been to Israel but decides to live out their retirement there. Why would one of them - the Jew - be returning to Israel? God didn't promise Israel to the Jews or anyone else, including the Palestinians - and he didn't give it to the Allies to slice up and mete out. If a Jew who has never been to Israel can speak of "returning" to Israel, why should a Palestinian from whom the Israelis confiscated property and kicked out of his home not dream of returning?
I think you might have taken an even more tenuous case: say a woman who had a Jewish grandparent on her father's side. She marries a non-Jew who really couldn't care less about Judaism or Christianity or anything at all. They decide (perhaps reading these posts) that there exists an option of taking up residence in Israel, and they work to make it happen. Wouldn't that point all the more to the absurdity? So, our charming couple goes through all the right channels, get their papers in order, and land in Israel. But hold on! An official did some research and found that this grandfather had actually voluntarily converted to Catholicism. What now?

To understand any of this, one has to understand what a Jew is. And to know this one has to examine the issue historico-culturally. As you may or may not know, 'believing Jews' believe that God intervened in history and pulled this proto-Jewish nation (the Hebrews) out of bondage in Egypt. 'God', then, forced a 'pact' on this group of people, a specific group of people. They got something (freedom) but in return there was a very large price to pay. Technically, there was no re-nogotiating the deal. The deal made (forced) was inviolable. Those people who became 'the Jews' remained within the structure of the Deal as long as they remained in that cohesion. And in that cohesion (according to the story, the narrative structure, the belief, the perception, the understanding) there were all sorts of rules and regulations. Read any of the Prophets to understand the general outline. As far as I know, there is no similar group of people who have established this identification, or had it established 'on them'. In almost any light it is one of the strangest 'trips' of self-identity.

So, that is the historical base, which extends back into time and back into labyrinthian structures of belief. All people---you and me and everyone---come from, are the products of, absolutely bizarre structures of belief about our origin, about the nature of this sphere and 'world' where we live. We all arise from some order of cosmogenisis, some strange group of metaphors to describe how we arrived here and where we are going. So too these Hebrews understood themselves as having a certain (and unique) origin.

To understand the historical Israel upon which the present actual Israel is founded, you have to understand all that 'old metaphysic', all that old history and the mythologems that support it. All people, in all times, use a metaphorical structure (though they may not see it is 'metaphor') to describe who they are, how they got here, and where they are going. Because Israel is such an ancient place, and because the 'archaeology' of belief, identification, self-definition, and historical placement and event, goes so far back in time, and continues in the present, everything about Israel and Jewishness is tremendously complex. The question you have asked cannot be answered as simply as you might suppose and hope.

Though I might, today, say with you: "There is no God who gives land or countries to a certain people!" I could say such a thing because I now 'live' within a mental structure, an apperception, that is quite different from one that, just a few years ago, was nearly universal in Christendom. And still, today, there are millions and millions (if not billions) who 'believe' that there IS a God who indeed gave that land to that people. If you and I were to talk about it, we would likely only be able to speak in metaphorical terms. But we would also have to trace back along all those ancient routes by which we have arrived in our present. Now, taking all that into consideration, should we (can we?) retro-fit history as it were? Revise history, perception, understanding, the organization of perception, on the basis of our present understanding?

When Nietzsche said God has died...and we killed him! he said a great deal. There are quite a number of levels of irony encapsulated in it, and Nietzsche, the true mercurial spirit of our age, felt them all, registered them all. An old, Titanic God has died, or rather IS dying a long, terrible, twilight death. A dramatic and drawn-out death, a death well suited to such a god. But death in that context implies resurrection. This Titanic God, then, should resurrect. But alas, He just continues to die.

In my view, the hatred and contempt for Israel and for Jews, is one of the most deliciously intricate kinds of hatred and contempt there is. It offers to those who desire it, who relish all the subtle and not-so-subtle nuances of flavor, everlasting fun, sport, amusement and most interestingly, and most relevantly, an opportunity to act as Judge. What is it exactly that causes such a Judge to arise in diverse persons, both high and low? Who feel that they, right here and now, shall pronounce Judgment on Israel, on Jews, on Jews in history, and Jews in our present? I suggest that if you go into that (and you would have no good reason to do so) you will enter into what verily seems to be a sort of Kingdom of scorn, of contempt, of desire to see history enact judgment, to get even, to get revenge. But on who exactly? On what? I suggest there is a great mystery here. Nevertheless, for the sake of this conversation, one can only allude the fact of extreme complexity, and deep psychological layers hard to fathom.

In the most simple terms, to answer your question, the answer is this: a State has determined that becoming a citizen of Israel depends on certain requisites. Those requisites stem from, originate in, an 'old metaphysic' but have become a fact of law in the present. What supports that determination, and what prohibits a diaspora Palestinian from 'return' is, simply, power. Power makes that determination. Not righteousness, not his or her (studied or unstudied, fair or unfair, friendly or antagonistic) personal sense of the True and the Correct, but raw, basic, root power. And that power derives from the State of Israel. The beauty in declaring it in that way is that it gives to everyone and to anyone the opportunity to DEFEAT Israel's decision, correct or spurious, on exactly the same terms: through root and brute power. And it may indeed happen. Jewish history has not ended though we may have come to 'history's end'. The difference now, as opposed to within the period of Jewish diaspora in Europe is precisely that of power. And you heard it from an Ass Who Talks® right here on the Genius Forum...

As to the really touchy part of your post, about [the] "Palestinian from whom the Israelis confiscated property and kicked out of his home", you have indeed entered an area in which many people 'bristle'. But I would suggest that the entire issue, if examined in its fullness, has many more layers of complexity and that it cannot be decided with a simple judgment. Because, on those terms and expressed in that way, there is no other way to decide it. There is no doubt in my mind that Israel arising again in modernity is the cause of displacement of people, of that there is no doubt. But I have learned to see and understand (if not 'appreciate') the levels of complexity in that situation, in Jewish history, and in Jewish identification.
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Re: Colin Wilson

Post by Talking Ass »

I have no knowledge of Piker's methodology in regard to developing his thesis. I don't have too much interest in it, per se. What I am interested in is the question of optimism (to put it simply) and deep pessimism---as a psychic force that drives us. My view? There are so many good reasons to feel optimistic, if not grateful, about the present and what it offers us, so many of us. And much of this (advances in medicine, social organization, etc.) has occurred in the last couple of hundred years. Even if it is an abberation, still 'we' have been offered a tremendous advantage. I am beginning to think that the Great Crime is not to have taken advantage of it. I was thinking this afternoon: Even the lowliest worker, with a little self-discipline, could in the course of ten years master ancient Greek and read Aeschylus in the original. Instead, lamentably (to introduce here the notion of mediocrity) 'we' squander our opportunities. On one hand through mindless distractions, but on another through drinking deeply from such dark and dreary views as Bob's. (Though I would guess saccharine, falsely-sunny optimism is also as much of a mistake). Maybe his whole life has been spent in searching out, uniting, and then presenting all these quotes to CONVINCE that everything is wrong with the present! It just seems to me that, with that, so much is lost.
  • Ode To Enchanted Light

    Under the trees light
    has dropped from the top of the sky,
    light
    like a green
    latticework of branches,
    shining
    on every leaf,
    drifting down like clean
    white sand.

    A cicada sends
    its sawing song
    high into the empty air.

    The world is
    a glass overflowing
    with water.

    ---Pablo Neruda
Diebert wrote:Even if you could make this case, you forget to explain why this would be a bad or at least a thing in need of fixing, correcting or revealing so it can be "liberated". Actually you can find the same negative attitude and self-suffering in the personal writings of many who are perceived as great human beings of history. Why do you propose driving such "demonized demons" out?
I am not too interested in fixing it, nor could I. But I think it is very useful to point out that, up to a certain point, we have a great range of freedom in choosing what sorts of attitudes we shall 'install' within ourselves. I certainly cannot and do not disagree with you in respect to the critical nature of many great souls. It does indeed take a great soul to see how deeply 'we' are failing. But it seems to me that with that knowledge we would indeed need to set our sights on some level of grand achievement. I think there must be some concommitant *something* that we could present. Truthfully, I do not perceive that in Bob (though I have nothing against him and appreciate very often his selected quotes). The issue for me is bigger: Okay, if the present is so terrible and those who surround us zombies, what am I doing within my own person? I think it hinges on what a person decides to DO with all that critical material. And as you know I have some pretty deep criticisms of just WHAT is done, and proposed to be done, by the founders of this forum. It is all up for conversation in any case...
Forces of change will never appear pleasant of leading anywhere good. And why not, they often don't lead to anything good. Hatred I've come to known as what blooms when forces of change (or any drive forward) keeps getting blocked. The more overwhelming and overpowering the block, the higher the hate, the violent reaction can rise. It seems beyond the moral and the ethical really. It's more like physics perhaps.
A critical position and stance is usually arrived at through genuine reaction and through a suffering experience. As I understand it, David and Kevin and Dan all suffered as men. Their suffering in relation to led them to their path, and David describes his path as his 'life work'. That is pretty serious, I mean serious as a commitment and as self-definition (it just occurred to me to point to David's 'life work' through his identification, however he defines it, and Jewish identification as they define it. It is essentially a group of choices one makes, we all make, based on certain assembled 'facts'). I have no argument there. I think we have no choice but to work with 'the facts' as they have come to us.

But, it is possibly an error if one is essentially mistaken, or perhaps it is an error to misinterpret? In that sense, Bob will (say) spend his life constructing his Ark, but perhaps there was in truth a better way of going about it? Still, it is not mine to judge, exactly. Just to compare. It would be a 'shame' to expend one's energy in vain reaction (against:-----) when the real question was about excelling in some excellence...or in perceiving beauty...or in expressing it. With that, I would say that QRS and Bob seem to have no organ for expressing beauty. I have a strong feeling that that might be a 'mistake'. But life is composed of mistakes.
Don't just suppose, know yourself first! Then you can see your own desires and hates for the most horrible bad and wonderful good. It's all there including this "will to an end". Perhaps many of the mental diseases as defined around us are about measure of exposure to a more raw, temporary uncloaked set of drives, but with the lack of power to deal with it: lack of egos structure, lack of dreams, lack of confidence and unrestrained optimism, etc. They're then not delusional as such, although mind-boggling delusions might get invoked as ultimate emergency strategy.
Insofar as I do know myself, my comments and feelings and ideas come from that 'place'. I am in that sense 'in reaction to' QRS and Bob and you and everyone and anyyone. I would place that within a creative will, despite Dennis's hallucinations and projections to the contrary.

The 'lack of egos structure, lack of dreams, lack of confidence and unrestrained optimism' is what I am concerned about, as it pertains to some/many who appear (and disappear) here. And I do not at all exclude myself from this 'problem'. I live within it as I think we all do. I think we need a full palette of tools with which to 'dream'...express beauty...feel the female and the feminine, and define relatedness. I have the feeling that some percentage of the advice offered [by QRS and this neo- pseudo-Buddhism] destroys the link or the path to that. And the lack of a 'pathway' out of Dreary Definitions may indeed lead to "many of the mental diseases as defined around us".

Great! Now for more poems!
fiat mihi
Locked