Commentary Thread: Feminine and Enlightenment (Dan V Sam)

[Dan Rowden]

Posts comments pertaining to the debate here.

[David Quinn]

Two good posts to open up with. It sets up the debate nicely. Will be fascinating to see how it unfolds from here.

I notice that Sam's post is exactly 1500 words. Nicely engineered!

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[maestro]

I think Dan's post is well reasoned, but Samadhi has chosen four qualities of all of which are problematic at the get go

Nurturing: Sample your neighborhood for the modern woman, she is not nurturing by any means, she uses sex as a tool to advance her aims and is competitive and egoistic and incredibly shallow.

Receptive: Again few are receptive, and it is a hard work to be receptive. Is woman receptive by default? A big no? Again sample the women around you for proof.

Sensitive: This is a quality that a person develops with great practice. It requires peeling of layers of conditioning. To say that women are sensitive by default is very disingenuous.

Intuition: By which you mean acting without thinking, or decide on a whim. This quality is of course present in the modern woman in dollops. But isn't it a big hindrance to enlightenment?

[Jamesh]

Intuition: By which you mean acting without thinking, or decide on a whim. This quality is of course present in the modern woman in dollops. But isn't it a big hindrance to enlightenment?

I don't view intuition like that. I just view it as accepting subconscious feelings of what is true, as being the major guide to conscious thinking.

To me both a woman and a sage use intuition to formulate responses to the environment, however, the outcome is quite different. As women are genetically and socially aligned to create or deal with emotional situations, they have a great deal more such experiences and memes stored in their brains. There is no guarantee their intuition will be the most rational solution to something that requires attention. It may appear to be so, because they will tend to come up with intuitional ideas that have previously been found to be successful (in the short term at least), with regard some past personal emotional experience, or are they the sort of herdish ideas the herd itself has accepted as a prevailing meme - and as such they don't often involve the sort of conflict or suffering that a sage might intuit as a solution to some issue.

The subconscious and intuitions of a sage are completely different, but even to a sage, the feeling that what they are thinking is true, is similar. As a sageling learns knew truths, by reflection and non-emotional consideration, the memory of the sageling becomes significantly altered. New truths the sageling learns changes the manner in which the sageling values all things. The sages subconscious learns to logically assess experiences. This does not occur with feminine intuition that simply reacts with emotional based ideas that are caused by the prevailing herd memes, and this repeated action tends to strengthen the emotional value systems a women already has developed, rather than alter them.

[Kevin Solway]

I think the problem with sam's "nurturing, receptivity, sensitivity and intuition" is that they are not enough to distinguish women from, say, cows.

Cows are nurturing, receptive, sensitive, and intuitive. And they have no hope of becoming enlightened.

[Kevin Solway]

If a person were 100% feminine they would have no ego at all. They would be like a rock, or a tree. Ego, and all other lies, and all other thought, arise from consciousness, which is the masculine element.

[Shahrazad]

Kevin, please give an example of how a cow is intuitive.

[divine focus]

I think the problem here is equating women with the feminine as if women were her representatives. Women with narrow awareness represent the unbalanced feminine, just as narrow-mined men represent the unbalanced masculine. Men and women with more expansive awareness represent both principles in their ideal, unified state. To say the feminine is an impediment to enlightenment is to be unclear as to what the feminine actually is. The feminine is essential for all life. To not recognize the feminine within oneself is to live robotically. Without the feminine, there would be only oblivion--a state of mental nothingness and meaninglessness. This may have been Nietzsche's downfall.

The feminine without the masculine may be considered an "unconscious" consciousness, but as there is no such thing--similarly to oblivion--it is unwise to discuss it as anything more than a mental extrapolation. People may be more or less "unconscious," but as they are consciousness itself there can be no complete unconsciousness. Complete oblivion is only possible as an experience because of the feminine--i.e., life--and then only by being oblivious to that life. It is a mental oddity caused by the narrowing of awareness on only the masculine, which has no basis without the feminine. It is obliviousness of the truth, which is life, which you are.

[skipair]

The feminine/masculine scale in my view is a child/adult scale. It is a range of maturity based in how reasonable one is overall. If the majority of an individual's time is spent gaining or enjoying political skill in the social/sexual matrix, and distracting themselves with art, leisure, or whatever emotional stimulation they can find, as most seem to do, I think it will be very difficult to "grow up".

Most people think they're adults when they can financially support themselves with a job and have found a comfortable and workable niche in society. If this is so why do they throw tantrums, get defensive, and continually loop themselves into a anxious frenzies? Very childlike. I'm sure I'm not the only one who sees this.

As for getting in the way of "enlightenment", I don't exactly know what that means, but if it invovles maturity, I think it's pretty obvious.

[Carl G]

I think the problem with sam's "nurturing, receptivity, sensitivity and intuition" is that they are not enough to distinguish women from, say, cows.

Cows are nurturing, receptive, sensitive, and intuitive. And they have no hope of becoming enlightened.

I don't think this is an applicable argument. It is like saying ants are industrious, cooperative, and strong, yet they have no chance of becoming carpenters and building a house, therefore there is no use for industry, cooperativeness, and strength for the purpose of housebuilding, in the context of humans.

[Kevin Solway]

Kevin, please give an example of how a cow is intuitive.

Cows intuitively know which kind of grasses are better food than others. They intuitively know if there is something wrong with their calf. They intuitively know when the weather is about to take a turn for the worse, etc.

[Ryan Rudolph]

Shahrazad,

Kevin, please give an example of how a cow is intuitive.

Expanding on what Kevin said,

Just examine a drunk group of American red necks trying to tip cows, they usually to do it at night because the cows cannot sense what direction they are running in from, but they are usually still able to sense something dangerous. All organisms have some sense of this type of intuition, and it is deeply related to survival in my opinion, the organism is able to feel or anticipate incoming danger or negative emotion, and respond to it effectively. I read an article that stated how elephants are able to sense the vibrations of storms, tidal waves and human activity from miles away, and move out an area long before the threat is near.

Moreover, Many women are masters at diplomatically diffusing emotional conflict through compromise and adaptation to the other. However, this type of behavior is more motivated by a desire to keep the family unit functioning smoothly, rather than a destructive urge to give birth to higher forms of rationality in others. It is very rare for women to sacrifice their emotional need to keep the family unit cohesive in favor of spreading rationality because the affects are quite divisive and destructive. And that is the last thing she wants because she interprets it as an threat her immediate survival, and the survival of her offspri1ng.

[Kevin Solway]

I think the problem with sam's "nurturing, receptivity, sensitivity and intuition" is that they are not enough to distinguish women from, say, cows.

Cows are nurturing, receptive, sensitive, and intuitive. And they have no hope of becoming enlightened.

I don't think this is an applicable argument. It is like saying ants are industrious, cooperative, and strong, yet they have no chance of becoming carpenters and building a house, therefore there is no use for industry, cooperativeness, and strength for the purpose of housebuilding, in the context of humans.

The thing is, we are talking about enlightenment. All the animal qualities of cows and ants are fine for doing the sorts of things that cows and ants need to do.

That which is necessary for enlightenment is primarily consciousness. And while a certain amount of unconscious activity, such as the beating of the heart, or breathing, is useful so as not to overload the brain with having to consciously direct such activities, the primary tool required for enlightenment is consciousness.

It is not our animal unconsciousness that tells us to submit ourselves to truth, but rather it is our consciousness.

[RobertGreenSky]

I've enjoyed the debate so far. Dan began with a well-written exposition which showed courage in making women the 'template' when it was safer simply to refer to feminine characteristics without trying to necessarily relate them to women. Commentators here have however viewed the debate in that light although it does not appear to me Sam necessarily operates under that liability. Sam has argued the arbitariness of Dan's 'assignments' and we'll see who will better hold that aspect of it.

I was impressed with Sam's response, intelligently presenting what would seem to be four reasonably necessary characteristics yet which we consider feminine, including going so far with 'intuition' as to relate it to prajña. I might have preferred that when Sam discussed sensitivity he include 'empathy' in its characteristics - surely empathy is implied in compassion - but armchair debating is not the real thing. We men are free to sit in the commentary thread and talk about cows, at least until a woman shows up and begins discussing pigs; Sher was kind enough not to do so but how could we have argued with her if she had? We would have to wait for Solway to point out that pigs are by far the superior of cows.

Dan had an aggressive second post which not only had the funniest line so far -Know any women like that? No, me neither. - but which pointedly put the question to Sam, 'If nurturing, receptivity, sensitivity and intuition have any relationship to wisdom, and women have these features in abundance, one might be tempted to ask: where are all the female sages?'

Victor Danilchenko could have answered, 'Where are any sages?' but Sam does not have that luxury. Instead he responded on arbitrariness and he even asserted that Dan's masculine ego can prove problematic. This has been so far an interesting and a very well written debate.

I see that as I was writing we have added cow intuition and drunken rednecks to our enlightened commentary.

[Kevin Solway]

I actually disagree that women have any capacity for sympathy. Rather, I agree with Florence Nightingale when she says:

Women have no sympathy . . . And my experience of women is almost as large as Europe. And it is so intimate too. Women crave for being loved, not for loving. They scream at you for sympathy all day long, they are incapable of giving any in return for they cannot remember your affairs long enough to do so.

What is commonly mistaken for sympathy in women is a kind of animal reaction that exists purely in the moment, and nowhere beyond that moment.

[Ataraxia]

Interesting debate thus far.Sam doesn't seem to expand on why intuition is important to enlightenment nearly enough in my view.Perhaps the word limits have precluded him really pressing home this point to date.

It would seem to me that theme has the most potential to land some decent blows upon Dan's argument.

[RobertGreenSky]

I actually disagree that women have any capacity for sympathy. Rather, I agree with Florence Nightingale when she says:

Women have no sympathy . . . And my experience of women is almost as large as Europe. And it is so intimate too. Women crave for being loved, not for loving. They scream at you for sympathy all day long, they are incapable of giving any in return for they cannot remember your affairs long enough to do so.

What is commonly mistaken for sympathy in women is a kind of animal reaction that exists purely in the moment, and nowhere beyond that moment.

Kevin,

I am glad I do not know the women you know. While no one can always be sympathetic, I find women are the superior gender in respect of sympathy.

The Nightingale quote was so interesting that I googled it. A number of returns gave the first sentence of the quote but not the rest of it, and one page suggested that with that sentence she was defending her work from the charge that women had been more sympathetic to it - it is just a tad overstated I think.

Wikiquote included it in the unattributed area (of Nightingale's quotes) and included these quotes attributed to her work Cassandra:

Why have women passion, intellect, moral activity — these three — and a place in society where no one of the three can be exercised? Men say that God punishes for complaining. No, but men are angry with misery. They are irritated with women for not being happy. They take it as a personal offence. To God alone may women complain without insulting Him!

Passion, intellect, moral activity — these three have never been satisfied in a woman. In this cold and oppressive conventional atmosphere, they cannot be satisfied. To say more on this subject would be to enter into the whole history of society, of the present state of civilisation.

Women are never supposed to have any occupation of sufficient importance not to be interrupted, except "suckling their fools "; and women themselves have accepted this, have written books to support it, and have trained themselves so as to consider whatever they do as not of such value to the world or to others, but that they can throw it up at the first "claim of social life." They have accustomed themselves to consider intellectual occupation as a merely selfish amusement, which it is their " duty " to give up for every trifler more selfish than themselves.

Jesus Christ raised women above the condition of mere slaves, mere ministers to the passions of the man, raised them by His sympathy, to be Ministers of God. He gave them moral activity. But the Age, the World, Humanity, must give them the means to exercise this moral activity, must give them intellectual cultivation, spheres of action.

- Wikiquote, Florence Nightingale.

Ms. Nightingale complained for the conditions in which her culture placed women and things are insufficiently changed since her time.

[RobertGreenSky]

Interesting debate thus far.Sam doesn't seem to expand on why intuition is important to enlightenment nearly enough in my view.Perhaps the word limits have precluded him really pressing home this point to date.

It would seem to me that theme has the most potential to land some decent blows upon Dan's argument.

I think Sam does well to question the arbitrariness of Dan assigning all those qualities to women, like 'unconsciousness'. It wouldn't matter much if that was only labeled 'feminine', since we all possess feminine qualities and god knows we're all unconscious from time to time. It was the specific risk of insisting that unconsciousness is typical of women particularly that gives Sam some opportunity, although noting that he is debating as the Away Team, the Home crowd might take Dan's argument for granted.

Although I have not yet read anything I find compelling reason to accept Dan's various assignments of qualities to the feminine and hence to women I thought Dan's most recent post was a strong one. I hope Sam will clarify issues Dan brought up, like Sam's statement Approaching wisdom by reflection alone leaves one in the trap of thinking of liberation as liberation itself. It seems more likely to me that the statement will be necessarily true only for some people, and that if Sam meant something like 'if thought is all one has then one will only have thoughts about liberation', it perhaps should have been expressed differently.

It's late at night here and I do hope that makes sense to me tomorrow morning.

[Steven Coyle]

For the type of woman whom sympathy is lacking, as both a man and a woman may be said to be lacking in virtue, the presence of purpose, and the will to purpose are largely excluded. The constitution of a woman in its lowest form, is one of treating each person as a means to an end, as consciousness of a will is non-existent. That is to say, a woman at this stage is merely masquerading as an individual, for where consciousness is lacking, there also is want of an externalized will. The relationship of will and consciousness in the individual, is in direct proportion, as the higher the degree of consciousness, the greater the potential for the types of behavior where will is seen to be most evident. Here is where purpose is a true dynamic factor and related in inverse proportion. For when an individual's will and consciousness are heightened, a feeling of lack is most intensified where purpose itself is lacking. Sympathy, as a virtue, is the culmination of consciousness, will, and exercised purpose; as all three act upon each other as a synergy, and allow for the true extension of the whole of the individual.

Is it any wonder why a woman is often said to be lacking in earnest?

[Ryan Rudolph]

Kevin,

What is commonly mistaken for sympathy in women is a kind of animal reaction that exists purely in the moment, and nowhere beyond that moment.

And I would add that a woman’s sympathy is usually only done to out of self-preservation or the desire to be useful to her immediate community. For instance: A nurturing wife who tends to her husbands physical ailments when he gets home from work is motivated by self-preservation because if her husband isn’t in better spirits by morning, no food will be on the table. A women’s sympathy is a symbiotic survival adaptation to increase the chances of her family surviving. However they play a useful role in society because easing the physical/psychological pain of children, injured men and elderly is a service someone needs to provide, but lets not pretend these types of women have any potential for enlightenment.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

The Nightingale quote was so interesting that I googled it. A number of returns gave the first sentence of the quote but not the rest of it, and one page suggested that with that sentence she was defending her work from the charge that women had been more sympathetic to it - it is just a tad overstated I think.

Wikiquote included it in the unattributed area (of Nightingale's quotes) and included these quotes attributed to her work Cassandra:

Next time just use books.google.com for these kinds of searches, Robert. You'd have seen right away that the full quote comes out of a letter to her friend Clarkey, as stated in the introduction of Myra Stark to Cassandra. You can read the context in the fragment Google supplies.

[RobertGreenSky]

Next time just use books.google.com for these kinds of searches, Robert. You'd have seen right away that the full quote comes out of a letter to her friend Clarkey, as stated in the introduction of Myra Stark to Cassandra. You can read the context in the fragment Google supplies.

Diebert,

I didn't doubt its legitimacy; apologies if anyone thought I was doubting it. What I was doing was suggesting Florence Nightingale's opinions on women weren't characteristic of what Kevin quoted. Those opinions, critical of her culture, seem critical of this thread as well.

Thanks though for books.g.c which I've put in the 'reference' bookmarks.

[Kevin Solway]

There's no contradiction between those views of Nightingale that you have presented. On the one hand it is true that "women have no sympathy", or love. This is true as a generalization.

On the other hand it is true that all women have at least some moral activity - though not much. I don't know where you see there is any contradiction.

Imagine a field in which there is no life except for a single bacterium. In the context where the single bacterium doesn't do much for you, you might say, "The field is devoid of life". But in the case where it does, you might say "Life exists in that field". There is no real contradiction between these statements since they have a different context.

[Nick Treklis]

Dan finally asks the naive question, where are the feminine sages? Do you know your history, my forgetful friend? Do I need to tell you women were burned at the stake not too long ago for displaying any sort of religious independence? Do I need to tell you how Buddhism, that most enlightened of religions, made no space for women in their religious order? Do I need to tell you how Islam treats women today? And if I pointed to someone today, your own prejudice makes clear she would have a considerably harder time passing your review than a similar man. So don't play dumb, Dan. Women have been and continue to be oppressed. You yourself spread the propoganda of their inferiority.

Either this is one of the most obvious straw men I've ever seen, or Sam's definition of a sage is vastly different than the one used on this forum. Dan was arguing that there are no women sages, not that women aren't oppressed, and being oppressed for whatever reason certainly doesn't make one a sage. I don't know if you are deliberately trying to misrepresent Dan's position because you can't legitimately counter his argument, or if you are too arrogant to make an honest attempt at understanding his and other's positions.

[Kevin Solway]

With Samadhi's last post, he once again fails to distinguish women from cows, which is really quite insulting to women.

He says "the feminine quality of nurturing others is an embodiment of a path of surrender." Cows are nurturing, so cows are on the "path of surrender."

Samadhi says, "Receptivity is about openness to experience." So cows, being receptive, are open to experience. They are open to being bred for certain characteristics by their owners, and are open to being slaughtered for their meat.

What's new?

Samadhi then claims that "Religious fundamentalists trust their thinking, not feelings." Yet all the fundamentalists I know claim to have felt the presence of God. They feel the Bible is literally true because of their experience and because of what God has personally told them.

Does Samadhi simply reject all of their personal religious experiences - which they feel to be a direct experience of being in the presence of God? It would seem so. Samadhi seems to think that such blissful and profoundly life-changing experiences are the result of mere thinking.

Samadhi continues, "Women were burned at the stake not too long ago for displaying any sort of religious independence". But men too were burned at the stake. In the part of the UK where I was raised just as many men were burned as women. Very often entire families were put to death.

In France, more than 50% of those accused were male. In Iceland, 90% of those accused were male, 60% percent in Estonia and nearly 50% per cent in Finland.

In some parts of Europe more women were put to death than men, but 99.9% of women were left alone, and that was only for a relatively short period of history.

There are many reasons why women lack consciousness, but the fact we need to face is that they lack it. Only once we recognize a problem can solutions be formulated.