- As a man is, so he sees. As the eye is formed, such are its powers. ---William Blake
It was obvious that I posted a blurb about an optimistic book on the market to contrast with Bob's deeply dreary and negative view of the present. I haven't read the book myself and don't think I will. I will assume that such a book takes its place among a plethora of books that are contrived and sold (to earn money) in an environment of entertaining intellectualism. Authors meet with their agents and come up with book-ideas that, when actualized, are sold in the market. One reads those materials in which shine the colors of one's own being, one's own 'spirit'. I would imagine that based on the tendentiousness and bias and avarice in the pubishing world it is very difficult to arrive at an accurate view or interpretation of 'reality'. (I would refer to all the mad-hatter opinions about Pres. Obama as an example. I've seen essays---long, serious essays---that described in amazing detail how Obama was a mass hypnotist! How with intonation and gesture he enchanted the innocent mass of Americans and like a devilish pied-piper leads them down a trail to a Soviet socialism.)
There is a kind of hysteria afoot in the 'intellectual' world and my impression is that it is hard to resist it, hard to build defenses against it.
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. Cutting to the chase, allow me to present dear Bob as Exhibit 1. I will attempt to suggest (since proof is impossible) that 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. But it seems clear to me, or at least highly likely, that this 'mood' has nothing to do with exterior reality and everything to do with an inner reality that is 'projected' outward. In this a man is possessed and dominated by dark spirits who rule him, who drive him along. One asks, Where is the exorcist or the magician who can, with superior skill in handling spirits, come along side him and drive the demons out?
Now, it should be made clear that ascribing 'demon possession' (and I mean this in a more Jungian sense as 'possession by unconscious complexes', etc.) to Bob is in fact a statement about all of us. We all are possessed by idea-structures, by unconscious factors (complexes that need to become conscious), and by 'moods'. I would also like to suggest and by suggestion propose that, in its way, the Genius Forum has much to do with 'possession', and that the men who founded it are indeed 'possessed'. 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.
- It is a sign of creeping inner death when we can no longer praise the living. ---Eric Hoffer
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?
Now, it seems to me that Bob with his George Leonard quote more or less proves my point (or some part of it). What is curious for me is that I met George Leonard once and I remember it quite well, I don't know why. I think I was 17 or so and it was at an Aikido class. 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.
It is interesting to pick apart his deeply cynical view of 'man' which is linked to a very popular, post-war, Sixties acid freak-out about the state of the world, the spiritual state of man. Now the question here is very, very interesting, since we so very much live in the intellectual aftermath of a huge upsurge of dynamic 'spiritual' energy which indeed represented a valid and even 'healthy' freak-out about the state of things. And not only was there a freak-out, a meditation while high on peyote and looking down over oneself, one's origin, one's social structure, one's family, one's relationships, there were also whole new patterns of living that were proposed, whole 'new' ways to connect and reconnect with Life. Well, there is a great deal about 'all that' that is relevant to such a conversation that can't be gone into here, except to suggest the mood that comes through a song wich, I suggest, suggests so much:
Woodstock. With its connection to Blake and to American Transcendentalism---if to some it appears ridiculous---I don't think such a suggestion of both profound confusion, a personal sense of being deeply lost, as well as the (blind?) hope and wish that a truer road and reality manifest itself, is at all out of place here. I would ask once again: What are the spirits that possess us? Where do we place our love and our hope?
Finally I suggest (once again) that
OVERALL the moods and spirits and suggestions and ideas that are fundamental to this Forum...are ones that are
DEEPLY FLAWED. But, I don't see 'deep flaw' as a hopeless condition but rather a necessary place to go and one that is unavoidable. But I do suggest that, after going through the dying, one
HAS to come back to life again. The Eternal Return should not be (only) a vision of Hell and a recognition of what is hellish, but an awakening to what is heavenly. (I would also suggest, perhaps 'alchemically', that such a Heaven is only accessible (even if it is 'merely' an imagined, 'psychological' heaven) through levels of unity with the female and the feminine, which does not necessarily mean 'woman', but of course that is another subject).
- For everything that lives is holy, life delights in life. ---William Blake
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My personal, late-teenage impressions of George Leonard have no relevancy to his influence as a philosopher. I grew up in a place that was crawling with people who became quite influencial in the 'human potential movement', Esalen, etc. I used to think they were all half-baked, pretentious snots, and as kids we used to ridicule them all. Here is a page that described his links to the Souther Dissident Tradition.
George Leonard. (A couple of posts down on the blog).
- "As one of the pioneering journalists of the Civil Rights Movement of the 50's and 60's, George was very mindful of the reach and influence of Southern progressives through journalism into the hearts and consciousness of Americans. Hodding Carter and his opposition to Japanese internment in WWII as well as the outrageous racial injustice all around him, Ralph McGill and the Atlanta Constitution, Ronnie Dugger and the Texas Observer, Willie Morris and others, right down to one of our personal favorites, the late lamented Molly Ivins, who we agreed made “bush-whacking” into an art form. George was a proud player on this Southern team, with his early feature coverage of the renascent Civil Rights Movement for Look (the largest of the photojournalism magazines, in an era when the rich documentary text and imagery on current events affected the national consciousness, often in a deeper, more thoughtful way than some of today's fleeting bombardment of web and tv coverage). And of course along the way he was also the first to take an early pulse of the 60's generation and find that it was very different indeed from “PTSD” trance of the post-War, Eisenhower, red-menace years. Which is what led him to Esalen, where, as they say, the rest is history."
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I didn't see this until recently.
Tomas wrote: "Was/is your Mother Jewish? .. well then, you qualify for Israeli citizenship..."
Actually, if you have
one Jewish parent or a grandparent who is/was Jewish, you qualify for Israeli citizenship. I think they use the same criterion as did the Nazis. 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.
"The rights of a Jew under this Law and the rights of an oleh under the Nationality Law... are also vested in a child and a grandchild of a Jew, the spouse of a Jew, the spouse of a child of a Jew and the spouse of a grandchild of a Jew [...] [But] the Law of Return ... excludes any "person who has been a Jew and has voluntarily changed his religion."
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!'