What is reality, what is a 2x4?

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
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guest_of_logic
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Re: What is reality, what is a 2x4?

Post by guest_of_logic »

And so, Alex, you've introduced me to The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. It's powerful writing and imagery. There's probably much to it that my first readings tonight completely miss, but here are some musings. You describe these poems as 'mystical', and then ask parenthetically "or what are.they?!". I would answer that they are fundamentally a work of atheism: firstly, they assert that there is no literal God/gods - instead, deities are merely the properties of objects (as identified by poets) - secondly, they criticise religions founded on the notion that there is a literal God as "enslaving" "the vulgar" by reifying those properties, and, thirdly, they reject the existence of a soul independent of the body. Having rejected a literal deity(ies), Blake seems committed to rejecting, too, a literal heaven and hell, and the religious conceptions of good and evil. Instead, he redefines evil and hell with the active (over-)indulgence of passions ("Energy"), and good and heaven with the passive obedience to reason. In this new scheme, he sides with evil (passion), quoting one of the proverbs of hell as: "He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence".

Aesthetically, he couches his message of atheistic passion in the symbolism of the very religious metaphysic that he rejects, which is quite a clever trick. For example, on at least one level, angels/heaven/good and devils/hell/evil seem to represent (respectively) the religious and the irreligious [people and viewpoints].

Is that a shallow reading? I hope not.

I appreciate a message of passionate living up to the point of living life fully so that you have no regrets - even if I don't live my life that way, I respect people who do; perhaps it's a lesson I need to learn - but a message, unqualified, of indulging passions limitlessly seems dangerous to me, and evil in the traditional, negative, sense, too. In fairness to Blake, he doesn't seem to suggest anything like, "Quench without restraint your desire to torture and maim those who offend you". Nor, though, does he qualify that what he means by indulgence of the passions excludes this, and, given that such things occur in the world, he does seem to be tacitly justifying them: sometimes, "he who desires but acts not" breeds not "pestilence" but harmony. Absent a literal deity and metaphysic under whose auspices such acts might be occurring for some higher purpose, this seems to amount to - well, not a very positive conception of how to live under an atheistic world-view.

Or is that a misguided analysis?

Even though I sympathise with this work as a reaction to the evils of organised religion, my view of reality is in serious ways opposed to Blake's here: I subscribe to the reality of traditionally good and evil, literal spiritual realms and entities. I suspect that I'd find more to agree with in the work Heaven and Hell by Swedenborg, of which Blake is critical in this book. I've read a few pages of it, and so far it seems reasonable or at least readable. I think I understand Blake's view that Swedenborg's book is "analytical" and "restrained" in the negative senses of those words, but, then, Blake's approach could be characterised as "indulgent" and "unrestrained" in the negative senses of those words, too.

I'm curious to explore GF as "a branch of radical Christianity, undertaken by radical post-Christians". Radical it is, because there are some serious departures from traditional Christianity: no belief in a literal God and no belief in Christ's resurrection. On the other side of the ledger: it is salvationist, it rejects the comforts of life for the sake of spirituality, and its determinism is compatible with Calvinism. That list would also qualify it as a neo-Buddhist project - I'm interested to understand why you focus on its Christian aspect.
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Re: What is reality, what is a 2x4?

Post by Whatshappening »

Dennis Mahar wrote:A house is built to avoid the suffering of exposure to the elements.
It's called Shelter.
The builder's ego trip is incidental to that and must be suffered as well I suppose.
Causes/conditions.
No comment Dennis, just respect.

Respect
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Re: What is reality, what is a 2x4?

Post by David Quinn »

guest_of_logic wrote:I'm curious to explore GF as "a branch of radical Christianity, undertaken by radical post-Christians". Radical it is, because there are some serious departures from traditional Christianity: no belief in a literal God and no belief in Christ's resurrection. On the other side of the ledger: it is salvationist, it rejects the comforts of life for the sake of spirituality, and its determinism is compatible with Calvinism. That list would also qualify it as a neo-Buddhist project - I'm interested to understand why you focus on its Christian aspect.
It's because he has an uncontrollable urge to place things he doesn't understand into conventional boxes. It's his way of dealing with his own confusion.

What is a poet? Someone who can't keep his confusion to himself.

The labeling above is rubbish and completely misses the mark of what Genius Forum is all about.

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Re: What is reality, what is a 2x4?

Post by Kunga »

David Quinn wrote:What is a poet? Someone who can't keep his confusion to himself.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/tao/taote.htm
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Re: What is reality, what is a 2x4?

Post by David Quinn »

That isn't poetry. That is pure rationality, expressed deftly and succinctly.

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Re: What is reality, what is a 2x4?

Post by Dan Rowden »

That is a horrible translation.
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Re: What is reality, what is a 2x4?

Post by Kunga »

po·et·ry   /ˈpoʊɪtri/ Show Spelled[poh-i-tree] Show IPA
noun
1. the art of rhythmical composition, written or spoken, for exciting pleasure by beautiful, imaginative, or elevated thoughts.
2. literary work in metrical form; verse.
3. prose with poetic qualities.
4. poetic qualities however manifested: the poetry of simple acts and things.
5. poetic spirit or feeling: The pianist played the prelude with poetry.


Yeah Dan, i know there are better ones, but i was trying to make a point, that;s the point.
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Re: What is reality, what is a 2x4?

Post by Dan Rowden »

guest_of_logic wrote:
Dan Rowden wrote:Translation: I don't care much about people's suffering so long as they entertain me with it.
Really, Dan?
Yes, really.
You want to paint Alex as some kind of monster, entertained by other people's suffering, and yourself implicitly in contrast as a caring human being?
That work of art is already hanging.
Whilst the obvious subtext of your "translation" is that, in contrast to Alex, you care about DonaldJ's suffering,
I perceive the nature of the suffering whereas others choose to largely ignore it.
I think it's plausible
Those words ring hollow given the absurdities you think plausible.
given the context of this forum and your position in it to read the further subtext: "and I, Dan Rowden, have the tools to alleviate his suffering".
There is no such subtext. If you can't see what tools are necessary and that I (or GF) can't supply them you're as doltish as Alex.
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Re: What is reality, what is a 2x4?

Post by Dan Rowden »

Kunga wrote:po·et·ry   /ˈpoʊɪtri/ Show Spelled[poh-i-tree] Show IPA
noun
1. the art of rhythmical composition, written or spoken, for exciting pleasure by beautiful, imaginative, or elevated thoughts.
2. literary work in metrical form; verse.
3. prose with poetic qualities.
4. poetic qualities however manifested: the poetry of simple acts and things.
5. poetic spirit or feeling: The pianist played the prelude with poetry.


Yeah Dan, i know there are better ones, but i was trying to make a point, that;s the point.
Then I will point you to the difference between writing poetically and being what is commonly understood to be a "poet". It's essentially the difference between definitions 1 and 2.
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Re: What is reality, what is a 2x4?

Post by Kunga »

The Tao te Ching was written poetically, has elevated thoughts, rhyhmic compostiton, is a literary form of verse also,prose with poetic qualities, the poetry of simple acts and things, and has a poetic spirit or feeling to it....besides being rational .....it covers all the definitions (1-5).

Although Lao-tzu was known as a Sage.....he wrote beautiful poetic philosophical verse-poetry :)

No ?
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Re: What is reality, what is a 2x4?

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Re: What is reality, what is a 2x4?

Post by David Quinn »

Kunga wrote:The Tao te Ching was written poetically, has elevated thoughts, rhyhmic compostiton, is a literary form of verse also,prose with poetic qualities, the poetry of simple acts and things, and has a poetic spirit or feeling to it....besides being rational .....it covers all the definitions (1-5).

Although Lao-tzu was known as a Sage.....he wrote beautiful poetic philosophical verse-poetry :)

No ?
The "being rational" part makes all the difference. It is what separates it as a work of utter clarity and supreme depth, making it completely unlike what normally passes for poetry.

Yes, the writing seems evocative, enabling irrational people to gain a slight hint of higher things, but that is really a side-show to the main event. An accidental spill-over from the deep rationality contained within.

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Re: What is reality, what is a 2x4?

Post by Kunga »

David Quinn wrote:what normally passes for poetry.
Not all that write poetry are poets :)
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Re: What is reality, what is a 2x4?

Post by David Quinn »

Fair enough. :)

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Re: What is reality, what is a 2x4?

Post by Jamesh »

There are some who say that, ultimately, all evil will be reconciled with divinity, and that even those who now practice evil are of divine origin. It would be comforting to know that this were true, but even if it is, it leaves open the question of how and why the demonic originated, and why divinity permits it. It seems that Donald takes the position that evil is intrinsic and irreconcilable - perhaps he knows something that I don't; I'd be interested to hear more from him on this.
Neitzsche
The Teachers of the Object of Existence
I look with a good or an evil eye upon men, I find them always at one problem, each and all of them : to do that which conduces to the conservation of the human species. And certainly not out of any sentiment of love for this species, but simply because nothing in them is older, stronger, more inexorable and more unconquerable than that instinct — because it is precisely the essence of our race and herd. Although we are accustomed readily enough, with our usual short-sightedness, to separate our neighbours precisely into useful and hurtful, into good and evil men, yet when we make a general calculation, and reflect longer on the whole question, we become distrustful of this defining and separating, and finally leave it alone.

Even the most hurtful man is still perhaps, in respect to the conservation of the race, the most useful of all ; for he conserves in himself, or by his effect on others, impulses without which mankind might long ago have languished or decayed. Hatred, delight in mischief, rapacity and ambition, and whatever else is called evil — belong to the marvellous economy of the conservation of the race ; to be sure a costly, lavish, and on the whole very foolish economy : — which has, however, hitherto preserved our race, as is demonstrated to us. I no longer know, my dear fellow-man and neighbour, if thou canst at all live to the disadvantage of the race, and therefore, " un- reasonably " and "badly"; that which could have injured the race has perhaps died out many millenniums ago, and now belongs to the things which are no longer possible even to God.

Indulge thy best or thy worst desires, and above all, go to wreck ! — in either case thou art still probably the furtherer and benefactor of mankind in some way or other, and in that respect thou mayest have thy panegyrists — and similarly thy mockers ! But thou wilt never find him who would be quite qualified to mock at thee, the individual, at thy best, who could bring home to thy conscience its limitless, buzzing and croaking wretchedness so as to be in accord with truth ! To laugh at oneself as one would have to laugh in order to laugh out of the veriest truth, — to do this, the best have not hitherto had enough of the sense of truth, and the most endowed have had far too little genius! There is perhaps still a future even for laughter ! When the maxim, " The race is all, the individual is nothing," — has incorporated itself in humanity, and when access stands open to every one at all times to this ultimate emancipation and irresponsibility — Perhaps then laughter will have united with wisdom, perhaps then there will be only "joyful wisdom." Meanwhile, however, it is quite otherwise, meanwhile the comedy of existence has not yet " become conscious" of itself, meanwhile it is still the period of tragedy, the period of morals and religions. What does the ever new appearing of founders of morals and religions, of instigators of struggles for moral valuations, of teachers of remorse of conscience and religious war, imply? What do these heroes on this stage imply? For they have hitherto been the heroes of it, and all else, though solely visible for the time being, and too close to one, has served only as preparation for these heroes, whether as machinery and coulisse, or in the role of confidants and valets. (The poets, for example, have always been the valets of some morality or other) — It is obvious of itself that these tragedians also work in the interest of the race, though they may believe that they work in the interest of God, and as emissaries of God. They also further the life of the species, in that they further the belief in life. " It is worth while to live " — each of them calls out, — "there is something of importance in this life ; life has something behind it and under it ; take care!" That impulse, which rules equally in the noblest and the ignoblest, the impulse to the conservation of the species, breaks forth from time to time as reason and passion of spirit ; it has then a brilliant train of motives about it, and tries with all its power to make us forget that fundamentally it is just impulse, instinct, folly and baselessness. Life ought to be loved ! Man ought to benefit himself and his neighbour, because.....

And whatever all these shoulds and fors imply, and may imply in future! In order that that which necessarily and always happens of itself and without design, may henceforth appear to be done by design, and may appeal to men as reason and ultimate command, — for that purpose the ethi-culturist comes forward as the teacher of design in existence ; for that purpose he devises a second and different existence, and by means of this new mechanism he lifts the old common existence off its old common hinges. No! he does not at all want us to laugh at existence, nor even at ourselves — nor at himself; to him an individual is always an individual, something first and last and immense, to him there are no species, no sums, no noughts. However foolish and fanatical his inventions and valuations may be, however much he may misunderstand the course of nature and deny its conditions — and all systems of ethics hitherto have been foolish and anti-natural to such a degree that mankind would have been ruined by any one of them had it got the upper hand, — at any rate, every time that " the hero " came upon the stage some- thing new was attained : the frightful counterpart of laughter, the profound convulsion of many individuals at the thought, " Yes, it is worth while to live ! yes, I am worthy to live ! " — life, and thou, and I, and all of us together became for a while interesting to ourselves once more. — It is not to be denied that hitherto laughter and reason and nature have in the long run got the upper hand of all the great teachers of design : in the end the short tragedy always passed over once more into the eternal comedy of existence ; and the " waves of innumerable laughters " — to use the expression of Eschylus — must also in the end beat over the greatest of these tragedies. But with all this corrective laughter, human nature has on the whole been changed by the ever new appearance of those teachers of the design of existence, — human nature has now an additional requirement, the very requirement of the ever new appearance of such teachers and doctrines of " design." Man has gradually be- come a visionary animal, who has to fulfil one more condition of existence than the other animals : man must from time to time believe that he knows why he exists; his species cannot flourish without periodically confiding in life ! Without the belief in reason in life ! And always from time to time will the human race decree anew that "there is something which really may not be laughed at." And the most clairvoyant philanthropist will add that " not only laughing and joyful wisdom, but also the tragic with all its sublime irrationality, counts among the means and necessities for the conservation of the race ! " — And consequently ! Consequently ! Consequently ! Do you understand me, oh my brothers? Do you understand this new law of ebb and flow? We also shall have our time !

That which Preserves the Species.

The strongest and most evil spirits have to date advanced mankind the most: they always rekindled the sleeping passions - all orderly arranged society lulls the passions to sleep; they always reawakened the sense of comparison, of contradiction, of delight in the new, the adventurous, the untried; they compelled men to set opinion against opinion, ideal plan against ideal plan. By means of arms, by upsetting boundary stones, by violations of piety most of all: but also by new religions and morals! In every teacher and preacher of we encounter the same kind of "wickedness" which makes a conqueror infamous, although it expresses itself more refinedly, and does not immediately set the muscles in motion (and just on that account does not make so in famous!) The new, however, is under all circumstances the evil, as that which wants to conquer, which tries to upset the old boundary-stones and the old piety; only the old is the good! The good men of every age are those who go to the roots of the old thoughts and bear fruit with them, the agriculturists of the spirit. But every soil becomes finally exhausted, and the ploughshare of evil must always come once more. There is at present a fundamentally erroneous theory of morals which is much celebrated, especially in England: according to it the judgments "good" and "evil" are the accumulation of the experiences of that which is "expedient "and "inexpedient "; according to this theory, that which is called good is conservative of the species, what is called evil, however, is detrimental to it. But in reality the evil impulses are just in as high a degree expedient, indispensable, and conservative of the species as the good: only, their function is different.
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Re: What is reality, what is a 2x4?

Post by Talking Ass »

I don't think David you'd know about what passes for poetry because you'd never have read it. There is some poems that 'pass' as poetry that can certainly approach scripture, and certainly Taoist poetry. There is very definite link between thought of that sort (mystical, metaphysical, existential, taoist, etc.) and much poetry. To know about that, you'd have to have done some of that work.

As to 'radical Christianity', I would say that category for Kierkegaard is a good one. Possibly the only one. Too for.Nietzsche. Definitely for Blake. And even if you don't understand your own situation, heritage and influence, you are closer to 'radical Christian' then to anything else. It is more about causation I think.
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Re: What is reality, what is a 2x4?

Post by David Quinn »

Talking Ass wrote:I don't think David you'd know about what passes for poetry because you'd never have read it. There is some poems that 'pass' as poetry that can certainly approach scripture, and certainly Taoist poetry. There is very definite link between thought of that sort (mystical, metaphysical, existential, taoist, etc.) and much poetry. To know about that, you'd have to have done some of that work.

Sorry, I've got better things to do.

As to 'radical Christianity', I would say that category for Kierkegaard is a good one. Possibly the only one. Too for.Nietzsche. Definitely for Blake. And even if you don't understand your own situation, heritage and influence, you are closer to 'radical Christian' then to anything else. It is more about causation I think.
When a snake lands on your lap, is there a Christian way of getting rid of it? Or a Buddhist? Or a Taoist?

All these labels are meaningless - a person either strives with great passion to uncover the truth or he remains asleep. They are the only two labels that matter.

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Re: What is reality, what is a 2x4?

Post by Talking Ass »

Each of them would deal with existential issues quite differently. They represent very different ways of being in this reality. Not of course that there are not connecting points. To explain why this is so takes a certain amount of time and effort.

But in the case you have cited [startlement] I would.assume each would act reflexively. People also generally flinch similarly. But how they respond to existence and being, the answer is: quite differently. But there are certainly connecting points.

People strive with 'great passion' to uncover truth and act very, very differently in respect to the uncovered truth. This is elemental. It works in your disfavor that you don't understand more about these differences.
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Re: What is reality, what is a 2x4?

Post by Dennis Mahar »

They represent very different ways of being in this reality.
No they don't.
Each are encumbered by fiction.
geddit?

You and Laird think you have some kind of outstanding ability or command of language.
This vanity gets paraded.
Labels get tossed about like 10 dollar bills at a casino.

The Tao can't be spoken.
It's direct experience.
GF is trying to trigger a direct experience for you.

Until you learn discrimination it'll drag out unnecessarily.
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Re: What is reality, what is a 2x4?

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If what you say were true, every man in every place, always and forever, would perceive and relate to the same 'thing' or 'tao'.

If perception is what we 'do', much of what we do is to organize perception. And this organization depends.on many different factors. Knowing something of those factors has a definite.importance in understanding. The revelations of the Rishis of ancient India do not correspond with a modern subject. In a real sense they live in different worlds.

The perceptions and the perceptual organizations of those who forumulated Tao and all the organizations that proceed from that, are organizations like any other though it seems to me true that they hang on a direct relationship to the natural world, or attempt to.

And what you, Dennis, do with this Tao is to turn it into your personal mission, a Truth you can really get behind, a kind of evangelizing mission, and from this position call all others false. In this way you give evidence not to a link to Tao but to a sublimated Christian or post-Christian zealousness. Because you will likely.never be able to modify your thinking, installed as it is at a pretty fundamental level, it is a waste of my time to engage with you or you to engage with me. Since you never say anything different (E & M is all) I am going to now put you on ignore. I have made substantial efforts but they are all in vain.
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Re: What is reality, what is a 2x4?

Post by Talking Ass »

[I never would have imagined anything so marvellous! Dennis Mahar has just---poof!---vanished! I guess he got tired of Genius Forum! ;-) ]
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Re: What is reality, what is a 2x4?

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guest_of_logic: You want to paint Alex as some kind of monster, entertained by other people's suffering, and yourself implicitly in contrast as a caring human being?

Dan: That work of art is already hanging.
Only on the wall of your imagination. Alex simply expressed appreciation for Donald's themes and denied that he had any "therapeutic" intentions towards Donald; he didn't at all express enjoyment that Donald suffers, and, speaking from what I know of Alex personally, it would have been totally out of character if he had.
guest_of_logic: Whilst the obvious subtext of your "translation" is that, in contrast to Alex, you care about DonaldJ's suffering,

Dan: I perceive the nature of the suffering whereas others choose to largely ignore it.
You're backpedalling. The actual words that you used were "concerned" and "care":

So, you're entertained rarther than concerned.

and

Translation: I don't care much about people's suffering so long as they entertain me with it.

Sometimes, an expression of concern for another person's suffering serves to delegitimise what they have to say, as in, "Come, you're just unwell. None of this is real. Here, take this pill and it will all be gone in the morning (and we can go back to pretending that reality is nice and simple)".

Jamesh,

Thanks for the Neitzsche quote. Its essence seems to be that evil "conserves" the human race by rekindling dormant "passions" and "impulses", although it also acknowledges this as a "costly, lavish, and on the whole very foolish economy". That acknowledgement is important: the costliness of the "economy" of evil doesn't seem to be justified, even by Neitzsche in this quote. So, for me, the question of why and how evil exists and why it is permitted to exist is still an unanswered one. For an atheist, the answer is easy, albeit (in my opinion) lacking: no explanation is required, evil is simply a human interpretation of an aspect of "the way things are".
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Re: What is reality, what is a 2x4?

Post by Dennis Mahar »

And what you, Dennis, do with this Tao is to turn it into your personal mission, a Truth you can really get behind, a kind of evangelizing mission, and from this position call all others false. In this way you give evidence not to a link to Tao but to a sublimated Christian or post-Christian zealousness. Because you will likely.never be able to modify your thinking, installed as it is at a pretty fundamental level, it is a waste of my time to engage with you or you to engage with me. Since you never say anything different (E & M is all) I am going to now put you on ignore. I have made substantial efforts but they are all in vain.
Christ consciousness, Tao, Emptiness are direct experience.
That's all.

Your prima donna ballerina reponses are empty and meaningless.
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Re: What is reality, what is a 2x4?

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This 'ignore function' is sort of cool. I can see that Dennis posted something, but to see it I'd have to click it. But, I don't need to: he wrote BTDT or E&M.

Deep! Very deep!

I feel like dancing and clicking my heels together!
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Re: What is reality, what is a 2x4?

Post by Dennis Mahar »

I feel like dancing and clicking my heels together!
That's what I said.
Ballerina.
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