Otto Weininger on MTV

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
Dennis Mahar
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Re: Otto Weininger on MTV

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Who are you?
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Kunga
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Re: Otto Weininger on MTV

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Dennis Mahar wrote:Who are you?
Lady Gaga
Dennis Mahar
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Re: Otto Weininger on MTV

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OK
Liberty Sea
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Re: Otto Weininger on MTV

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David Quinn wrote: Of course, in that piece I am assuming that the Buddha was a rare guru who lied with the best of intentions.
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Interesting.
John. E. Coleman asked Jiddu Krishnamurti: ''Which of the great religious leaders came closest to teaching and realizing the ultimate truth ?''
Krishnamurti replied:
''Oh! the Buddha ..... the Buddha comes closer to the basic truths and facts of life than any other. Although I am not myself a buddhist, of course''.

"Nobody listened to Him (The Buddha), that is why there is Buddhism."

"The so-called enlightened people are not enlightened, for the moment they say, "I am enlightened", they are not. That is their vanity. It is like a man saying, "I am really humble" - when a man says that you know what he is. Real humility is not the opposite of vanity. When vanity ends the other is."
-J. Krishnamurti.

If people listened to Christ, there would have been no Christianity as well.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Otto Weininger on MTV

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David Quinn wrote:(Taken from The Role of Lying in the Life of Truth)

The key issue for the wisdom-valuer, then, is not whether he can refrain from lying at all times - which, as I have just articulated, is impossible due to the value he places on wisdom - but whether the lies he creates are wise in nature and lack any trace of ego
The example of the stated dilemma demonstrates that truth-values are at the core not to be applied to descriptive statements like "there is a man hiding in my house" or "sheepish folks never become wise" (or the epistemological). Truth becomes only truth when acting on ones value (being true to oneself). While "the sky is blue" can appear like a true statement on a cloudless day, its truth-value is actually not derived from the sky or its color but from the value the observer places in those circumstances on consistency, communication of that consistency and defining a difference between blue and gray in the first place. This value can be overruled by other concerns like valuing someone hiding in the house or making some kind of absurd joke like "the sky is pink today". In all cases the importance is shifted and something is said what for someone else would be a lie, or in other words for that person's value system and hierarchy of importance, the statement could be now false. This is the relativity of good and evil, of truth and false. It's easy to see why wise men could be "caught" lying since they might evaluate the situation completely differently. From their perspective they don't even lie at all; they follow truth.
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jupiviv
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Re: Otto Weininger on MTV

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Diebert van Rhijn wrote:It's easy to see why wise men could be "caught" lying since they might evaluate the situation completely differently.
I think only wise people can truly be said to lie perfectly, because only they would know what the truth is. Wer nicht lügen kann, weiss nicht, was Wahrheit ist(and vice versa.)

Also Weininger: It is quite incorrect to say that women lie. That would presuppose that sometimes they tell the truth. As if sincerity, pro foro interno et externo, were not precisely the virtue of which women are absolutely incapable, which they find utterly impossible.
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Re: Otto Weininger on MTV

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cousinbasil: Everything may be connected, but the A in A=A is not everything. If it were, the meaning would suddenly vanish. A=A implies and not something else. Which of course acknowledges that there is something else.

Well let A equal oneself; in other words, there may be reasons aplenty for one's actions, but if they are entirely caused by ~A, then there can be no heroism or courage.

David: This is like saying that since all things are caused, there is no difference between a healthy tree and a diseased tree.

Yes, in one sense, there is no difference, since both trees are equally determined by Nature's causal processes. Yet this doesn't change the reality that only one of the trees will produce healthy fruit.

Likewise, courage and cowardice are both equally caused, yet each of them can trigger very different outcomes.


You are missing the essence of my objection by likening people to trees and then talking about trees. Let me restate what I see as contradictory in your point of view. You extol the courage of one who ruthlessly and at great self expense pursues the truth. But courage and cowardice must be equally entirely meaningless if they are equally entirely caused.

When a person makes a decisions, upon what does he do so? He often uses past experience to be his guide. You may then say this past experience is the cause of the action. In reality what the person is doing is trying to predict future outcomes based on what he decides. This act of deciding is completely negated if one is always going to say later "Well, he had no choice." In fact, if a man wanted to cover his ass, he would choose the action he makes based on how effectively he can justify it later. That is, he may wish others always to say he had no choice and that he was caused to act as he did. That person fails more often than not.

You, David, simply can't believe that no one can be responsible for any action. And you seem to get this when you use terms like courage and cowardice. But then you obfuscate because you do not have a firm concept of what the human spirit is. This is why you often - as do many posters here - misuse the term "spiritual." This leads to those suspect distinctions which abound here. "I'm not religious, but I am spiritual." And "Love is the enemy - try compassion instead."
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Otto Weininger on MTV

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jupiviv wrote:
Diebert van Rhijn wrote:When are you going to publish your book? Or are you going to remain forever "advanced reader"?

I don't have a knack for writing at the length of what would be considered to be a book. I sometimes write down thoughts in a diary as aphorisms. I may decide to publish them some day, if they get bulky enough.
A book is not defined by its length but by some type of "bundling" creating a "volume". And in contemporary times publishing ongoing short aphoristic ideas is pretty normal. One could say writing has become decentralized and fractioned with often emphasis on interaction by the readers or other contributors. In that way, you're publishing already! But to counter myself I'd have to add that there's wisdom in pulling it all together in one coherent flow as to make some additional overarching unifying point easier to stand out.
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jupiviv
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Re: Otto Weininger on MTV

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Diebert van Rhijn wrote:And in contemporary times publishing ongoing short aphoristic ideas is pretty normal.
On a small scale, yes, but I'm not into that sort of post-modern stream of consciousness stuff. I've a "poison for the heart" type book in mind, where aphorisms relating to a specific subject are expanded and developed into a chapter about it. It'll be hard work though. I'm extremely lazy when it comes to writing anything.
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Kunga
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Re: Otto Weininger on MTV

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jupiviv wrote: I'm extremely lazy when it comes to writing anything.


What do you love to do ? What energizes you ? Maybe your "Poison" idea doesn't get your juices flowing ? Get off your lazy ass and fall in love !
[Maybe you'll have something to write about then :) ]

Fall in love with a grasshopper, if you hate women.....ANYTHING !


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vp7TIcOE ... re=related
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David Quinn
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Re: Otto Weininger on MTV

Post by David Quinn »

Kunga wrote:How about people that think they don't need a teacher, in essence they are too arrogant to be subservient to anyone . It's much easier to be your own boss. A challenge to have your ego busted by someone else.
That could be a problem as well. It depends on the quality of the individual involved. If he has enough quality, he can find all sorts of ways to have his ego challenged. He doesn't need to attach himself to a particular individual for this to occur.

As always, the best guru is Nature itself.

It's much easier to be your own boss.
Only entrenched slaves believe that being a boss is easier, for they know they will never be one. For most people, it is the primary reason for bowing down to a guru in the first place - to avoid taking control of one's life.

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David Quinn
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Re: Otto Weininger on MTV

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jupiviv wrote:
David Quinn wrote: It may well be that the religion of Buddhism is little more than a giant lie concocted by Gautama Siddharta (the original Buddha) for the purpose of preserving his highest wisdom. In other words, he created a religious community in which everyone was required to wear the same robes and the same haircut, and flooded it with reams of simplistic dogma and superficial rules, knowing that it would attract sheep-like individuals in droves. Although sheep-like individuals have no potential for wisdom, they tend to be very good at mundane things like building temples, copying texts, organizing lectures, administrating communities and so on. The Buddha saw, perhaps, that they could be harnessed to create a vehicle in which his deepest truths would be preserved for the sake of those few advanced thinkers in future generations.

The process is a bit like a bird eating a tasty seed and flying away to defecate the seed in another spot. What attracts the bird is the taste and smell of the seed, while the most valuble part of the seed is the genetic material contained within it, which the bird knows nothing about. Similarly, the rituals, rules and dogmas of the Buddhist religion are the "tasty" elements which attact multitudes of witless monks, and it is through their mundane, sheep-like activity that they unwittingly preserve the genuine wisdom which exists deep within Buddhism. In other words, the Buddha created a lie for the sake of truth.

I don't know if this is what really happened, but I cannot think of any other (wise) reason why Buddhism was created in the first place. There is no other way that its existence can be justified from the point of view of wisdom. Unless, of course, the Buddha was really a Rashneesh-type charlatan. (But if that were the case, then the presence of the genuine wisdom which does exist in certain parts of Buddhism would still need to be explained.)
A conspiracy theory about Buddhism - that's a new one!

Firstly, as I said, this is a conspiracy theory.

It isn't a conspiracy theory. It is simply a different take on a commonly-told story, one that holds the Buddha up in a better light. It is the sort of thing I would consider doing if I had no internet or printing press to preserve my thoughts. In modern parlance, it would be considered "smart practice".

Just because 9/11 helped the US government to do what they wanted(wage war on Iraq), it doesn't mean they were behind it. Similarly, just because mainstream Buddhism is crass, it doesn't mean the Buddha intended it to be that way.
Let me ask you this: Would you ever consider joining an organization that required you to dress the same, obey the same rules and address the leader as "Lord"?

Secondly, this strategy would have resulted in his teachings getting even more distorted. People with genuine potential would have been regarded as the same as the blind followers and academic types, in order to keep up the lie. Because of this, the teachings would have been distorted right after his death, since most of the people passing them on wouldn't understand them.
And so they were. But fortunately, there was enough wisdom preserved within the dross. As I say, the intended audience for his teachings wasn't the actual people who joined his organization, but the likes of you and me - intelligent outsiders who come into contact with the wiser teachings and have the freedom to do something with them.

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David Quinn
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Re: Otto Weininger on MTV

Post by David Quinn »

cousinbasil wrote:
cousinbasil: Everything may be connected, but the A in A=A is not everything. If it were, the meaning would suddenly vanish. A=A implies and not something else. Which of course acknowledges that there is something else.

Well let A equal oneself; in other words, there may be reasons aplenty for one's actions, but if they are entirely caused by ~A, then there can be no heroism or courage.

David: This is like saying that since all things are caused, there is no difference between a healthy tree and a diseased tree.

Yes, in one sense, there is no difference, since both trees are equally determined by Nature's causal processes. Yet this doesn't change the reality that only one of the trees will produce healthy fruit.

Likewise, courage and cowardice are both equally caused, yet each of them can trigger very different outcomes.

You are missing the essence of my objection by likening people to trees and then talking about trees. Let me restate what I see as contradictory in your point of view. You extol the courage of one who ruthlessly and at great self expense pursues the truth. But courage and cowardice must be equally entirely meaningless if they are equally entirely caused.

Okay, so basically you are having difficulty reconciling free will with causality. You believe they conflict with one another. To my mind, they don't conflict at all - but then again, I don't have a deep-seate desire to believe that my free will is absolutely real. I have no trouble seeing my choices, and the choices of everyone else, as being part of the larger flow of causality.

You view causality as a Borg-like threat to your identity as a person. I view it as the marvelous play of God, the very stuff of life!

What did Miester Eckhart say? "I must become less, so that God can become more." Very few people like that sort of thinking. They are too busy trying to protect mirages within themselves. That is what constitutes "life" for them. Life thus becomes a form of insanity.

On a practical level, there is no question that free will is a reality in our lives. We are constantly making choices. It is what our brains are designed to do. And it is on this practical level that things like courage and cowardice have meaning.

cousinbasil wrote:You, David, simply can't believe that no one can be responsible for any action. And you seem to get this when you use terms like courage and cowardice. But then you obfuscate because you do not have a firm concept of what the human spirit is.
I have a very clear idea of what human spirit is, but you don't like it because it conflicts with certain cherished ideas you have about yourself. You are still part of the mirage-protecting endeavour that humans call "life".

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Liberty Sea
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Re: Otto Weininger on MTV

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David Quinn wrote: It seems paradoxical, but it isn't really. Enlightenment itself is one of the delusions that needs to be abandoned. It is in fact the very last delusion to be abandoned.

As soon as you think you have found or experienced enlightenment, you have been snared by delusion. You have been taken in by the delusion of self and other, and your mind is no longer enlightened.

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That is a very profound observation, I must say. Have you considered writing a book on the art of living (maybe like Poison of the Heart but more systematical), David? I would be interested to see more schemed works from you.
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Re: Otto Weininger on MTV

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First of all, David - thanks for taking the time to see what I'm on about. I see you understand my problem:
Okay, so basically you are having difficulty reconciling free will with causality. You believe they conflict with one another. To my mind, they don't conflict at all - but then again, I don't have a deep-seated desire to believe that my free will is absolutely real.
Actually, I share that lack of deep seated desire to believe my free Will is absolutely real. This is because I see little motivation to have this question answered. When I say little motivation, I mean it would solve nothing, change nothing. Yet there is that annoying place I keep returning to like a moth to a light bulb, where free will and causality do conflict with one another. Logically, they have to, don't they? Or is this an example of different "levels of reality"? Like a moebius strip being traversed - one minute one thing is right, the next moment the contradictory thing is right, and so on. I somehow intrinsically resist the notion that I cannot cause something, without that having been predetermined. I resist it because I do not think it is the truth.
What did Meister Elkhart say? "I must become less, so that God can become more." Very few people like that sort of thinking.
Exactly! I am actually attracted to that way of thinking - and have lived considerable periods of my life doing just that, far more than anyone else I know, just attending to my duties and abandoning material ambition. Because the world keeps saying to you, you could have become this, you could have become that, and you end up just another cog in the machine.
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Re: Otto Weininger on MTV

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cousinbasil wrote: I somehow intrinsically resist the notion that I cannot cause something, without that having been predetermined. I resist it because I do not think it is the truth.
It's not so much that you cannot cause anything. You are caused to experience free will, as we all are. The key is to know that your experience of free will is just that.. an experience. It is the ego that "intrinsically resists" this truth.
Exactly! I am actually attracted to that way of thinking - and have lived considerable periods of my life doing just that, far more than anyone else I know, just attending to my duties and abandoning material ambition. Because the world keeps saying to you, you could have become this, you could have become that, and you end up just another cog in the machine.
It gets old, doesn't it? Living in the bible belt, I've seen this type of blind stubbornness all my life. My whole family is religious, and it's just so odd for me to see them not one time in their lives question whether or not their beliefs really reflect reality. It makes me think that the "herd mentality" in humans is extremely hard to break for most people, mostly because their ignorance utterly blinds them from ever getting close to seeing the bigger picture.
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David Quinn
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Re: Otto Weininger on MTV

Post by David Quinn »

Liberty Sea wrote:
David Quinn wrote: It seems paradoxical, but it isn't really. Enlightenment itself is one of the delusions that needs to be abandoned. It is in fact the very last delusion to be abandoned.

As soon as you think you have found or experienced enlightenment, you have been snared by delusion. You have been taken in by the delusion of self and other, and your mind is no longer enlightened.
That is a very profound observation, I must say. Have you considered writing a book on the art of living (maybe like Poison of the Heart but more systematical), David? I would be interested to see more schemed works from you.
I'm about to start a regular blog which will feature a higher level of writing than what I do here. More detailed and more schematic. I believe it will comprise my best writing yet.

On a technical level, the construction of the site is finished and all set to go. It's just a matter of me being ready to begin the actual writing, and that's not too far away.

I'll let the forum know when it is up and running.

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David Quinn
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Re: Otto Weininger on MTV

Post by David Quinn »

cousinbasil wrote: Yet there is that annoying place I keep returning to like a moth to a light bulb, where free will and causality do conflict with one another. Logically, they have to, don't they? Or is this an example of different "levels of reality"?

Different levels of reality, yes. One should think of free will as being entirely composed of causality and thus part of the life of God. The functioning of our will, its appearance, its power, its reality in our daily lives - none of this diminished by the acceptance of this underlying reality.

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Kunga
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Re: Otto Weininger on MTV

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David Quinn wrote:It depends on the quality of the individual involved. If he has enough quality, he can find all sorts of ways to have his ego challenged. He doesn't need to attach himself to a particular individual for this to occur.
Or, he could just be fooling himself.
David Quinn wrote: the primary reason for bowing down to a guru
Westerners have a real issue with this, not so in the East, where teachers are revered..and considered Buddhas.
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jupiviv
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Re: Otto Weininger on MTV

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David Quinn wrote:
jupiviv wrote:A conspiracy theory about Buddhism - that's a new one!

Firstly, as I said, this is a conspiracy theory.
It is the sort of thing I would consider doing if I had no internet or printing press to preserve my thoughts.

Elitism is almost never a good idea. You have to spread a wide net even if you want to catch only one fish. The Buddha understood fully well that foolish people would be attracted to him, identify with his teachings and distort those teachings. That can never be prevented. But intelligent people were attracted too, otherwise those teachings wouldn't have survived his death. If he purposefully attracted morons then they would probably become like the zen monks Hakuin talks about and do nothing at all except sit around.
Let me ask you this: Would you ever consider joining an organization that required you to dress the same, obey the same rules and address the leader as "Lord"?

Like school, university, the fashion industry, the army or a company? I would, if it seems like a reasonable thing to do. The government may decide to kill me if I don't join become a fashion model for example. Like I said, the Buddha didn't think it was very important to challenge the social customs of his day(he may have changed his mind if he lived in our time!), and instead just delved right into the heart of wisdom. In the sutras, whenever people address the Buddha as "the holy one" or "lord" or whatever, he just ignores it and goes on teaching or responding to their arguments.
And so they were. But fortunately, there was enough wisdom preserved within the dross.
If it were only foolish people who passed them on then there wouldn't have been any wisdom preserved. However, it's obvious that a certain method of thought was preserved, and that couldn't have been done without wise people.
As I say, the intended audience for his teachings wasn't the actual people who joined his organization, but the likes of you and me - intelligent outsiders who come into contact with the wiser teachings and have the freedom to do something with them.
Well, Nagarjuna, Hakuin etc. were Buddhists, and they also more-or-less followed the dress-code and rules of their organizations from what I can see. Asian people aren't as fashion-conscious as westerners are. :-)

I don't know why you think joining the 'organization' is such a big hindrance to understanding his teachings, while at the same time the people within that organization were meant to preserve his teachings.
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Re: Otto Weininger on MTV

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Possibly because, in some important senses, David is [and QRS represents] a Radical Christian. A Radical Protestant. "Nothing but the essence is relevant, and I will deal on this as I choose and as I decide!"
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David Quinn
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Re: Otto Weininger on MTV

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Kunga wrote:
David Quinn wrote: the primary reason for bowing down to a guru
Westerners have a real issue with this, not so in the East, where teachers are revered..and considered Buddhas.
Yes, it is one of the definciencies of Eastern culture, that of everyone dissipating their minds away - to the collective, to the family, to a guru. It is the reason why Asian cultures rank among the most oppressive in the world.

A few days ago, Kunga, you expressed an urgent need to know the truth for yourself. It sounded sincere. Indeed, you almost sounded human. But now that seems to have vanished. You've slipped back into devotee mode and gone back to sleep again.

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Re: Otto Weininger on MTV

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jupiviv wrote:
David Quinn wrote:Let me ask you this: Would you ever consider joining an organization that required you to dress the same, obey the same rules and address the leader as "Lord"?
Like school, university, the fashion industry, the army or a company?

I mean in the context of spirituality. Do you think that passive acquiescence and social conformity is the path that an individual thinker should take?

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Re: Otto Weininger on MTV

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Talking Ass wrote:Possibly because, in some important senses, David is [and QRS represents] a Radical Christian. A Radical Protestant. "Nothing but the essence is relevant, and I will deal on this as I choose and as I decide!"
I'm not saying that nothing but the essence is relevent, but rather that the essence needs to be understood first before anything else is considered. "Seek first the Kingdom of God", as Jesus urged. First go to the root and then deal with the branches in the light of its clarity and understanding.

You can box me in your silly categories all you want, but it is the only sane way to go about things.

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Re: Otto Weininger on MTV

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Categories are not unuseful. Categories are necessary. Even to isolate an 'essence' requires application of categories. Still, if you knew a little more about 'your own traditions' and your link to them, you would understand my commentary a.bit more, and you'd maybe also understand that I am not antithetical to 'locating essences' (and values and meanings and so much more).

Generations of men have 'gone into the essence' and responded quite differently than you do. On one hand, you are evangelical in the worst sense (close-minded, unreasonable, etc.) even as you perfoem this 'essence-valuation project'.

I do.a.few things here: One is to use your own rigidity and lack of understanding of the present to force myself to.articulate 'essences' I consider more.relevant, i.e. more.essential; and too attempt to build a.bridge to your tendentious belief-system. One.of.the main reasons you likely resist this attempt is that, according to you, YOU.are.the one who.sets.the standard, YOU are.the one who defines 'most important essences', YOU are.the one whose teaching is more.relevant, more essential. Naturally, I oppose you but as a symbiote of sorts: I.am.only interested in locating what is most essential to myself.

There's ego'
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