Christian apology by a non-Christian

[marjoramblues]

Skip:

As dark, mechanistic universes go, it could be worse.

Lovin' it...lovin it...lovin' it!

and snapped in 5-7-5 time?

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Interesting!

It is curious to see how a structure of view of 'our reality' has been, if you'll permit me, 'reduced' to a description of natural mechanics. Our 'imagined world' is a description based in a strict scientific narrative. But oddly, in that world, the 'human' begins to disappear. In this vision, which is a now common and also highly transmittable vision of 'the world', one is fully submerged in the 'sub-lunary' world and one can no longer conceive of higher or more subtle dimensions, nor does one have access to the language or the metaphor, even, to refer to 'that'. In this sense one is cut off down there in the sublunary world. It has unforeseen consequences. When one is thusly reduced to a pure naturalistic and mechanical vision of life it is true that any sort of 'Bible-thumping' cannot be conceived of, and it also includes---fortunately or unfortunately, depending on one's perspective---every metaphysical description of reality and all that comes to us from that 'higher world'. A god-force that permeates all creation, some underpinning of divinity even from a subatomic level, a divinity that one can know, respond to, feel---consciousness as a miracle, as the impossible, as much more than reduction to a mechanistic computer language and electrical impulses in the brain's cells.

"As soon as the world loses the Father of the world, as soon as it is deprived of God, it must necessarily be stripped of the invisible. And among invisibles, naturally, are norms such as justice and also the ethical laws of value that determine good and evil." (CG Jung)

What is happening in such a sublunary world cut off from 'higher dimensions' is that, indeed, our value-system becomes one quite akin to natural systems, it begins to mirror those mechanistic systems. Man is stripped of his higher value and is reduced to just a biological particle. Now, the really interesting question is: Who gets to rule the production and distribution system? Who will gain ascendency and determine to what ends it functions? What will be included and what eliminated? How will 'higher values' be understood and defended? And who will do this? For after all there can be no 'higher' ethical or moral lawgiver, no 'invisible' standard that provides a guideline. If 'naturalism' defines ethics, and morality, then we really and truly have paved the way for absolute mechanical systems to administer the planet and all beings in it. If the administrator sees fit, say, to eliminate a sector or an individual or group who is not functioning properly within the System, what possible argument could one put forth to oppose it?

When man begins to see his own self mechanistically and no longer has the language or the metaphor to refer to himself except in such mechanical terms, he participates in the construction of a rigid structure, as we see evolving around us. Language is adapted to express not humanistic values but mechanical values. 'The World' is then reduced to a mechanical System and man's systems are seen merely as systems of production and distribution of natural resources. In truth there is no need any longer for any specific unit of biology, in the long distribution chain of existence, to do any thinking at all. The system of State and those industries dedicated to making the system function have need only of properly functioning units, and really that means obeying orders. The process is slow but quite regular. Man is dehumanized and mechanized.

The curious thing is what our world will look like when the naturalistic production and distribution model is really entrenched, and naturally when vast computer systems are established to monitor the behavior of the small particle of biology known as man. This is indeed what is happening, and the multitudes don't have enough understanding of what is lost to even react. We could be said to live on the edge of a long encroaching dusk.

To refer to those who respond, let us say, to religious callings or to the inner sense of a Divinity operating in this world in absolute negative terms is a mistake, yet so is it a mistake not to acknowledge to what degree man's understanding of his world has been influenced by the natural sciences---and greatly to the good in many ways---and how man is, in a very real sense, in his physical being, part and parcel of organic chemical processes. But that is not all he is and that is why it is imperative to understand man's 'psyche' and to try to do the very difficult: use psyche to look at, and try to understand, psyche. This is metaphysical work in the most poignant sense!

What I have tried to do in these various pages is to take a sort of stand against the virulent 'atheistic' narrative that overruns the intellectual countryside and does so with, as I see it, a great deal of arrogance and (false) certainty. It reacts to the low-end of religious zealotry, and despises it (rightfully in many senses), without being able to understand how religious motive and sentiment functions at the upper end. And also what stands to be lost if it happens that a purely mechanistic view of life and humanity gains ascendency within culture generally.

A great deal of work has been done in the post-Darwinian and post-Freudian and post-Nietzschean (and post-Marxian) world(s) to discover the ways that the world might be 're-enchanted' religiously and spiritually and humanly but while avoiding dogmatic dictates. CG Jung, M. Eliade, J. Campbell, Amos Wilder, Thomas Altizer, David Miller and many others have written on these themes.

A couple of fairly radical refigurations from David L. Miller (In 'The New Polytheism'):

• "A polytheistic theology will be radical (Thomas J.J. Altizer and William Hamilton), but in the manner of the Furies, whose bloody, radical feminineness is transformed by every Athena into gracious Goddesses, the Eumenidies."
  
  'A polytheistic theology will be a theology of story and narrative (Michael Novak, Stephen Crites, John Donne), which means that the first task of a polytheistic theology is to learn the stories, all of them."
  
  "A polytheistic theology, because it makes contact with the immediacy of life our of the depths, is itself a religion with no scripture, but with many stories."
  
  "A polytheistic theology will be a theology of the word (Karl Barth), but in the manner of Hermes, who is appointed messenger of the gods because he promises never to lie, but adds that it may be necessary for him not to tell the truth in order that he may not lie. Hermes was a trickster."
  
  "Our life is polytheistic: it is a many-splendored thing, down deep, if we only knew it. Perhaps this is the meaning of the plea that Symmachus addressed to St Ambrose when defending the heresy of polytheism against the latter's orthodoxy of monotheism: 'The things of heaven and earth are of such a wide realm that the organs of all being together can only provide comprehension'.

[uwot]

Our 'imagined world' is a description based in a strict scientific narrative.

You need to clarify this. What do you mean by 'imagined world'?

But oddly, in that world, the 'human' begins to disappear.

Difficult to argue with given the above. Everything you say subsequent to this implies that by 'human' you mean 'human that accepts Gustav's metaphysics'.

In this vision, which is a now common and also highly transmittable vision of 'the world',

Yes, because it is one we humans that question Gustav's metaphysics can all share.

one is fully submerged in the 'sub-lunary' world

Ever since Plato attributed to Socrates (Phaedo) the claim that if a man could stick his head above the sub-lunary world

"and if his nature were able to bear the sight, he would recognise that that is the true heaven and the true light and the true earth. For this earth and its stones and all the regions in which we live are marred and corroded, just as in the sea everything is corroded by the brine, and there is no vegetation worth mentioning, and scarcely any degree of perfect formation, but only caverns and sand and measureless mud, and tracts of slime wherever there is earth as well; and nothing is in the least worthy to be judged beautiful by our standards. But the things above excel those of our world to a degree far greater still."

people have tried to use the idea that there is a heaven and an Earth to the same reactionary ends that Plato did. That is the vision that medieval scholars wedded to essentially Stoic ethics and the cult figure Jesus Christ to create the blight upon humanity that is christianity.

and one can no longer conceive of higher or more subtle dimensions, nor does one have access to the language or the metaphor, even, to refer to 'that'.

One can conceive higher and more subtle dimensions, but unless one chooses an off the peg one, one is unlikely to connect with other people's conceptions; as I suspect you are finding.

In this sense one is cut off down there in the sublunary world. It has unforeseen consequences. When one is thusly reduced to a pure naturalistic and mechanical vision of life it is true that any sort of 'Bible-thumping' cannot be conceived of, and it also includes---fortunately or unfortunately, depending on one's perspective---every metaphysical description of reality and all that comes to us from that 'higher world'.

You have a conception of a 'higher world' that is entirely your own, and you regard people who don't share it, the multitudes, with contempt. The only evidence you have for this 'higher world' is your vanity

A god-force that permeates all creation, some underpinning of divinity even from a subatomic level, a divinity that one can know, respond to, feel---consciousness as a miracle, as the impossible, as much more than reduction to a mechanistic computer language and electrical impulses in the brain's cells.

Science cannot yet explain consciousness, even if it succeeds in accounting for it, science will never produce a theory the understanding of which generates sensation in the way that light, sounds, touch, taste and smell do. In that sense, consciousness is beyond science, but it is not therefore a miracle.

"As soon as the world loses the Father of the world, as soon as it is deprived of God, it must necessarily be stripped of the invisible. And among invisibles, naturally, are norms such as justice and also the ethical laws of value that determine good and evil." (CG Jung)

This presupposes that a concept of good and evil is necessary for ethics, it is a belief that only a moron could seriously subscribe to.

What is happening in such a sublunary world cut off from 'higher dimensions' is that, indeed, our value-system becomes one quite akin to natural systems, it begins to mirror those mechanistic systems. Man is stripped of his higher value and is reduced to just a biological particle.

This would be offensive if it weren't so laughable. Most people have a value system that is based on respect and empathy regardless of their attachment to any higher dimensions.

Now, the really interesting question is: Who gets to rule the production and distribution system? Who will gain ascendency and determine to what ends it functions?

Have a peek at history and see who gains from peddling this 'higher dimensions' guff and the ends to which they have used it.

What will be included and what eliminated? How will 'higher values' be understood and defended? And who will do this? For after all there can be no 'higher' ethical or moral lawgiver, no 'invisible' standard that provides a guideline. If 'naturalism' defines ethics, and morality, then we really and truly have paved the way for absolute mechanical systems to administer the planet and all beings in it. If the administrator sees fit, say, to eliminate a sector or an individual or group who is not functioning properly within the System, what possible argument could one put forth to oppose it?

This is paranoia or crass, apocalyptic doom-mongering.

When man begins to see his own self mechanistically and no longer has the language or the metaphor to refer to himself except in such mechanical terms, he participates in the construction of a rigid structure, as we see evolving around us.

On the contrary, it is the idea of the immutable that constructs a rigid structure. Churches everywhere have had to recant in the face of change.

This is indeed what is happening, and the multitudes don't have enough understanding of what is lost to even react.

This is offensive. Worse, it is the product of a 'value system' that condones the dismissing of the 'multitudes'. It is elitist, Platonist nonsense that anyone with a scrap of human decency should resist.

We could be said to live on the edge of a long encroaching dusk.

There are all sorts of sects that have predicted imminent disaster. So far they have all been wrong.

To refer to those who respond, let us say, to religious callings or to the inner sense of a Divinity operating in this world in absolute negative terms is a mistake, yet so is it a mistake not to acknowledge to what degree man's understanding of his world has been influenced by the natural sciences---and greatly to the good in many ways---and how man is, in a very real sense, in his physical being, part and parcel of organic chemical processes. But that is not all he is and that is why it is imperative to understand man's 'psyche' and to try to do the very difficult: use psyche to look at, and try to understand, psyche. This is metaphysical work in the most poignant sense!

Depending on how you intend to do that, it is psychoanalysis, psychology or psychiatry none of which would claim to be an exact science, with the possible exception of psychoanalysis, which ironically is the least scientific.

What I have tried to do in these various pages is to take a sort of stand against the virulent 'atheistic' narrative that overruns the intellectual countryside and does so with, as I see it, a great deal of arrogance and (false) certainty.

The point about science is that it doesn't claim certainty; that's what religion does, arrogantly.

It reacts to the low-end of religious zealotry, and despises it (rightfully in many senses), without being able to understand how religious motive and sentiment functions at the upper end. And also what stands to be lost if it happens that a purely mechanistic view of life and humanity gains ascendency within culture generally.

It is your view, it's part of life's rich tapestry. Thank you for sharing it, but I agree with marjoramblues, I thought what skip wrote was absolutely beautiful.

[marjoramblues]

uwot:

It is your view, it's part of life's rich tapestry. Thank you for sharing it, but I agree with marjoramblues, I thought what skip wrote was absolutely beautiful.

I wish there was a special place in this forum where I could place all the beautiful texts and arguments, not simply an 'Aesthetics' box...
Some are just too good and inspirational to be kept 'hidden' in a meandering or dense thread.

people have tried to use the idea that there is a heaven and an Earth to the same reactionary ends that Plato did. That is the vision that medieval scholars wedded to essentially Stoic ethics and the cult figure Jesus Christ to create the blight upon humanity that is christianity.

Enjoyed the above. Modern-day Stoicism has recently captured my attention...
For how long?
Heaven knows!

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

This is an 'imagined world':

• "...and if his nature were able to bear the sight, he would recognise that that is the true heaven and the true light and the true earth. For this earth and its stones and all the regions in which we live are marred and corroded, just as in the sea everything is corroded by the brine, and there is no vegetation worth mentioning, and scarcely any degree of perfect formation, but only caverns and sand and measureless mud, and tracts of slime wherever there is earth as well; and nothing is in the least worthy to be judged beautiful by our standards. But the things above excel those of our world to a degree far greater still."

This is another:

• "A big yellow ball of burning gas - around which the cooling mudball, to the surface of which my trillions of fellow creeping crawling swimming hopping flapping loping flopping groping fleeing soaring chasing stalking slithering burrowing sorrowing sighing bleeding dying fellow creatures and I so precariously cling, hurtles in the unimaginably vast darkness of space - sends radiation through an oxygen-rich refracting atmosphere to the photovoltaic array in my back yard, feeding the storage batteries, as it also ripens the last of my tomato seeds, bundled in delicious juicy pulp, and coaxes open the few remaining petunia corollas. The tiny feathered helicopters that dart about them all summer have gone, along with the purple Cessnas and red-winged Lears, but those Canada jet liners are still drilling their young in formation flight."

They are descriptions, arrived at and held in the mind and in this sense are 'imagined worlds'. This is what the strange apparatus called 'psyche' does. Psyche is a very odd entity, multidimensional and not transparent and simple. Obviously, in these pages, I have been borrowing rather heavily from CG Jung and, I also find, it is somewhat unavoidable at least in my case. I suppose that you---or someone---could say that I am attempting to salvage language ('conceptual pathways') and so to preserve a relationality with the value-content of old systems of viewing and understanding reality. If it is any consolation to you at all I am not absolutely comfortable with this project. It seems to revolve around the issue of defining value which is always problematic.

Everything you say subsequent to this implies that by 'human' you mean 'human that accepts Gustav's metaphysics'.

This is inaccurate. As I 'declared' at the opening post's subject line, I am a non-Christian apologist for Christianity. That is the bite that I bit off and have been chewing. Though I am myself quite convinced that 'the human self' is being attacked at every turn by all manner of different forces and entities, and for all manner of different reasons, and that this is a conversation that fascinates me, still I must be forthright and say that I am gaining a good deal of insight [on the destruction of the human self and 'the person'] from the work of Christopher Dawson (The Historic Reality of Christian Culture: A Way to the Renewal of Human Life) and from Helmut Thielicke (Nihilism: It's Origin and Nature---With a Christian Answer). Jung as I understand him makes a stark defense of Christianity as the heritage of the European soul, it is true, and some of what he says is quite compelling, and since he is literally a psychiatrist (psyche-iatrist = doctor of the soul) it is also true that he has written a prescription for the West that is none too promising. But I also find him at times a little opaque. This is NOT just my personal formulation in fact. I have referenced in my last post a group of people who have delved into this area. I mention these people because, as I have been saying, there is a common and virulent 'atheistic argument' that is stalking the land. I find that at the base of it is not so much 'good reasoning' as rather stark 'will' which also takes the form of emotionalism. I sense a whole area of barely submerged anger, almost an unconscious anger, and a desire to strike out, to do harm. I begin to have the sense that what I am noting is an 'unconscious' factor, but as Skip pointed out, indirectly perhaps, the angle of psychological analysis is problematic. But to be truthful with you I do not see how our psychology can be avoided, and since 'the psyche' as the strange entity that navigates this life and this world is a tremendous puzzle, and we have a hard time looking at it because 'it' is the eye doing the seeing, still I am wedded to the view that this cannot be avoided.

One can conceive higher and more subtle dimensions, but unless one chooses an off the peg one, one is unlikely to connect with other people's conceptions; as I suspect you are finding.

I think I do see what you mean. A couple of things: One is that to get through 'all this' and to understand it (if that is possible) is, as I have said, not a project that is accessible to just anyone. That surely smacks of elitism and heaven-knows what else for you and others. But in truth that is not my problem. I am trying to arrive at some basic facts, if this is possible. And I have already said this and repeat it here: I do not think that 'real understanding' of 'our world' is possible for 'the multitude' (Mass Man). And we have to see and understand all the points where our being and our understanding connects with 'the multitude' (I mean this in the negative sense). If there is a message to be preached, and the message I am interested in is uniquely sophisticated and non-accessible without a good deal of study and willingness, that message is that there are 'inner dimensions' to the symbols that surround us, and I most definitely place 'Christianity' in that camp. To speak in terms of symbols and to make semiotic references is necessary because of the nature of psyche (that does the analysis) and 'our condition' within limited psyches. I know that you have only contempt for it and can refer to it as 'the blight upon humanity that is christianity', and I understand so many of the reasons you have this position (a reading of Christopher Hitchens and others quite easily provides it), but I present another angle for viewing the problem.

You have a conception of a 'higher world' that is entirely your own, and you regard people who don't share it, the multitudes, with contempt. The only evidence you have for this 'higher world' is your vanity.

This is not an accurate assessment. I am fully willing to admit that in contentious conversations it is easy to jump to conclusions---I have done it on occasion---but if you hold to this view you will be making a mistake. True, I have my own sense of what 'higher world' means for me, but in many ways I am borrowing from already established philosophers-of-sorts such as CG Jung and Amos Wilder just for two examples. The question is really: are you familiar at all with those who have developed more progressive views on matters of 'metaphysics'?

Science cannot yet explain consciousness, even if it succeeds in accounting for it, science will never produce a theory the understanding of which generates sensation in the way that light, sounds, touch, taste and smell do. In that sense, consciousness is beyond science, but it is not therefore a miracle.

Science is not now and likely will not form the basis of a general philosophical-spiritual-religious grasp of existence and it does not seem capable to provide much real insight into ethics and morality. It is important to understand the limitation of 'science' and also 'rationality' (as we generally understand it) to provide insight or answers to these larger questions. This pushes us back into both religion and philosophy, and this is really one of my main points: we cannot abandon any part of what has gone before and through which we have 'constructed self' but need to look at it all over again. You make a supposition that I am proposing some 'reactionary project' but I don't think this is so. But I do acknowledge that there is a great deal of tension between 'progressive' viewpoints and 'conservative' viewpoints and that there is no such thing as an abstract conversation about all that is right at the center of Value itself.

This presupposes that a concept of good and evil is necessary for ethics, it is a belief that only a moron could seriously subscribe to.

This is a baiting statement and, at least I think so, you might modify it. I am certain that there are schools of philosophy that do not require a stark 'evil' to develop an ethics, but the issue of 'evil' in an especially human sense is not therefor done away with. To understand how Jung viewed the issue I suppose you'd have to read him! As I say I find him a little opaque on certain questions, myself. He gives with his right hand and snatches away with his left, the devil!

This would be offensive if it weren't so laughable. Most people have a value system that is based on respect and empathy regardless of their attachment to any higher dimensions.

I am happy then that you choose to laugh! Again, you are making baiting statements and this does nothing for conversation except to externalize anger or resentment. It is very true that 'people' have value-systems, but I would suggest that we all are living in the dusk and a falling-away from large and established systems of value---moral capital it has been called---and that what rises out of the presently developed systems are pseudo-value systems, and value-systems determined by mechanistic values, production and distribution systems, even corporate or busines-based value systems. The respect and empathy values that 'people' do have, especially in our cultures, are a product of the heritage of our culture and are linked to Christian and philosophic values derived from Christianity. The notion of empathy is changing, though, as is that of 'respect'. A mechanized and machine culture will produce mechanical and machine values in people. I suggest that it is a good idea to be aware of and preserve the notion of the human.

This is paranoia or crass, apocalyptic doom-mongering. [Gustav wrote: What will be included and what eliminated? How will 'higher values' be understood and defended? And who will do this? For after all there can be no 'higher' ethical or moral lawgiver, no 'invisible' standard that provides a guideline. If 'naturalism' defines ethics, and morality, then we really and truly have paved the way for absolute mechanical systems to administer the planet and all beings in it. If the administrator sees fit, say, to eliminate a sector or an individual or group who is not functioning properly within the System, what possible argument could one put forth to oppose it?]

I very much disagree with you. I do admit, certainly, that there is such a thing as 'doom-mongering' though. But what I am referring to is, I think, evident. Just recently as you are surely aware it has come to light how all Internet communications are monitored and stored. How advanced computer systems and programs can be used to track information, people, thoughts, movements. Multiply that by 2, then 4, then 10. This is one example amid a group os systemic examples to allude to a system of control and management that is taking shape. In that scenario 'the individual' and the 'person' are irrelevancies insofar as a machine cannot think about value or assign value. When mechanical culture gains ascendency it is 'the human person' who loses relevancy. It is important to understand how loss of value and the ability to define value in one area has wide effects in other areas.

And finally:

This is offensive. Worse, it is the product of a 'value system' that condones the dismissing of the 'multitudes'. It is elitist, Platonist nonsense that anyone with a scrap of human decency should resist.

Ilan Stavans, a Mexican writer, wrote an essay on the destructiveness of 'politically correct thinking'. His views influenced me a great deal. I have no interest at all in defending what I understand as the 'politically correct'. If we choose to be really free, intellectually and on any other level, I think we have to confront, within ourselves, the way that the politically correct infringes on our 'intellectual freedom'. I am convinced, myself, that the 'mass man' as Ortega y Gasset has defined him is part of a problem. The 'mass man' in this sense is 'unstructured will', or appetite, and perhaps a form of 'uncomprehending being-in-the-world'. He is a product of modern democracy and also of consumer culture. Myself, I do not refer to 'him' when I need answers or seek answers to Grand Questions. I look at him when I need to remind myself of what I am and what I need to avoid. The way to grow [away from 'him'] is to seek to deepen one's own understanding, if one can. To read, to think, to study, and also to listen. Way back at the beginning I spoke of respect for hierarchy and my position has not changed in this sense. It is really a question of who and what one values and who and what one desires to support. I want to value and support those who have done the best possible work in coming to understanding. I don't have any problem at all in defining that as an elite project. But that DOES NOT at all mean that I am defining an oppression for 'mass man', or a way to channel contempt. Quite the contrary. By defending the 'sovereignty of persons' and personalism generally, one has some conceptual tools to define just how 'mass man' should be educated, and I do not have a problem is making statements about that either!

The first Bjornstrandian edict: the TeeVee must be turned off!

[Skip]

When mechanical culture gains ascendency it is 'the human person' who loses relevancy. It is important to understand how loss of value and the ability to define value in one area has wide effects in other areas.

Controlling, coercive culture is not mechanical by it nature; these sophisticated machines are merely its latest tools to replace the cross and iron maiden. (Correction: not replace - augment, along with detainment centers and women's dress code.)
The present political and economic hierarchy is the end product of Roman-Christian-European-Capitalist tradition. We might have done better along a different path. We might still survive, could we but find an alternate route.

I do not reject Beauty, Justice and Black Forest Cake; I'm just not in awe of the self-adoring Rococo expression of what is really just another human mess.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

The present political and economic hierarchy is the end product of Roman-Christian-European-Capitalist tradition. We might have done better along a different path. We might still survive, could we but find an alternate route.

To speak in these terms is almost to engage in Fantasy. Because I am a member of 'our culture' I know these tendencies: self-contempt, self-criticism, and the sense (vague, really) that there might have been some other way. If I am not mistaken this critique is a by-product of post-Sixties radicalism and criticism. But it also has deeper roots. It could even trace its roots to the Jewish Prophets! It is very important to incorporate critical viewpoints and not to deny them, in my view. But there is something, again in my view, just too easy in investing in the critical view if one is not also engaged in some sort of work within the present. To work in the present means to work with the present, and since history has taken the course it has, what value can there be in mapping alternatives and proposing that things 'might have been different'?

[Skip]

Mapping alternatives, along with mitigating the damage of the past is a proper work of the present, if there is to be a future.

[marjoramblues]

Mapping alternatives, along with mitigating the damage of the past is a proper work of the present, if there is to be a future.

OMG
Sorry, but I think I love you
Not really, but...
wow...

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Mapping alternatives, along with mitigating the damage of the past is a proper work of the present, if there is to be a future.

Mapping alternatives can be a proper work of the present if it is carried out intelligently and carefully. Incorrectly carried out it could also result simply in other levels of catastrophe. One problem with critical positions, especially if they arise from unsettled feelings or even outright resentment, or immaturity and ignorance, is that a destructive impulse can take over. I suggest that there is a destructive impulse present, consciously and unconsciously, in many who express a desire or a will to do away or to eliminate either religion and specifically Christianity. That is the position I take toward so-called atheism. It will not happen that Christianity will be 'eliminated' in the sense of erased, so such that desire is simple fantasy and in that sense unreal. At best. At the worst it is a mask for a destructive impulse. And mitigation, I don't think, should not be equatable with elimination or destruction. Just as it is not now nor will it be possible to simply do away with 'Rome' in the sense of civic structure. Or even 'capitalism'.

And it is also to be noted that from within the Catholic and Christian tradition(s) a wide group of alternative and critical positions have been defined. See for example Peter Maurin. In my researches I have noted that most critical positions derive from positions and stances that have roots in 'our' religious-philosophical traditions. Maruin's reading list is pretty interesting in this sense.

[Skip]

I promise I'm neither immature nor impulsive. If the world gets broken, it won't be by me.




(mjb: )

[uwot]

You missed the point Plato is making, he is in fact talking about two different worlds.
Here:
"...and if his nature were able to bear the sight, he would recognise that that is the true heaven and the true light and the true earth."
he is talking about the world beyond Earth's atmosphere, heaven, the world we can only imagine is there.
Whereas here:
"For this earth and its stones and all the regions in which we live are marred and corroded..."
he is talking about the sublunary world, the one that Skip describes so well, the one that can be seen, heard, touched, smelled and tasted, the one that doesn't have to be imagined.
Just as you are, Plato was contemptuous of the "marred and corroded" world we find ourselves in, the world of bodies and their functions and just like you, Plato dreamed of a world of a higher dimension, a world in which the mind is unencumbered by sublunary matter. And just like you, he had contempt for the people who found joy and beauty in the things they could actually see and feel.
You say my assessment of your vanity is inaccurate. The evidence you provide for your musings, where there is any, is appeal to authority, others minds, people whose opinion matches yours. It is breathtaking vanity to delude yourself that you can know more about the world than people who actually engage it, no matter who agrees with you.
You say you sense an undercurrent of anger, then let me make it explicit: people's lives continue to be fucked up by self-righteous pricks who think like you.

[marjoramblues]

You missed the point Plato is making, he is in fact talking about two different worlds.
Here:
"...and if his nature were able to bear the sight, he would recognise that that is the true heaven and the true light and the true earth."
he is talking about the world beyond Earth's atmosphere, heaven, the world we can only imagine is there.
Whereas here:
"For this earth and its stones and all the regions in which we live are marred and corroded..."
he is talking about the sublunary world, the one that Skip describes so well, the one that can be seen, heard, touched, smelled and tasted, the one that doesn't have to be imagined.

M: Thanks, uwot, for this clear explanation of the differences; Plato I don't know well, at all...

You say my assessment of your vanity is inaccurate. The evidence you provide for your musings, where there is any, is appeal to authority, others minds, people whose opinion matches yours. It is breathtaking vanity to delude yourself that you can know more about the world than people who actually engage it, no matter who agrees with you.

You say you sense an undercurrent of anger, then let me make it explicit: people's lives continue to be fucked up by self-righteous pricks who think like you.

M: You say it so well; a piercing explicitness.

But all of this would not be possible without the Other side; so necessary to be aware of...and to which, happily, some can respond sensibly, with real, cool knowledge and wonderfully warm wisdom.

This forum is a rewarding place to be, right now. Hope it lasts...

[uwot]

But all of this would not be possible without the Other side; so necessary to be aware of...and to which, happily, some can respond sensibly, with real, cool knowledge and wonderfully warm wisdom.

This forum is a rewarding place to be, right now. Hope it lasts...

Don't worry m, there's plenty more where Gustav comes from, besides, he hasn't gone yet.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

• This is my life
  
  This is my life: what is high above,
  What exists in pure breeze,
  In the ultimate bird,
  In the golden summits of darkness!
  
  This is my liberty: smelling the rose,
  Cutting the cold water with my crazy hand,
  Plucking the grove bare,
  Snatching the sun's eternal light!

You missed the point Plato is making.

I think it stands as a possibility that you may have missed the point that I was making, Plato aside. What I have observed is that each person lives in, operates from, deals with 'the world' from, and processes the world from within his 'imagined world'. It is our 'psyche' that does this and this is one more reason, I think, to understand it better.

I have noted that if a person desires to fight that they will find a way to fight no matter what. Even the step of attempting to get them to cool down, if they really are bent on fighting, only provokes them more.

• I am like a distracted child
  Whom they drag by the hand
  Through the fiesta of the world.
  My eyes cling, sadly,
  To things ...
  And what misery when they tear me away from them!

...he is talking about the sublunary world, the one that Skip describes so well, the one that can be seen, heard, touched, smelled and tasted, the one that doesn't have to be imagined.

It certainly does seem to be true that the world in which we live is and remains a substantial world whether it is thought about---'imagined'---or not. But it is also true that, no matter what, men (and perhaps animals to some degree) also 'imagine' their world. My own position or orientation in these questions stand somewhere between a pure 'realistic' view and an understanding that, shall we say, incorporates both a higher and a lower metaphysic. I don't think it is a question of personal will or choice so much as it is a 'natural disposition of the soul'. I guess I think that it is always wise to orient oneself, and reorient oneself from time to time, within the 'tangible real' of physical body within physical existence. In any case, it is within a concrete physical existence that we demonstrate the sanity or insanity of whatever it is we hold to in our 'imagined world'. I suppose that one difference, perhaps between you and I (and others) is in what I will allow as far as tolerance, or perhaps understanding is the word, of the varieties of man's 'imagined worlds'.

• Song
  
  All of autumn, rose,
  Is this single one of your petals
  Falling
  
  Girl, all of sorrow
  Is this single drop
  Of your blood.

So, a number of times I have said that I don't think any of it can be dismissed or 'eliminated', in the sense of wiped away or erased, but that we may do better to think about it and 'deal with it' in other ways. If a person really devotes some time to discerning to what degree 'we' engage in thinking that expresses or symbolizes or metaphorizes 'imagined worlds' we can I think gain a sense of just how much such imagining is part of our make-up. I know there is a sort of 'movement' in certain factions in the 'intellectual world' toward a newer and ever more 'modern' realism just as there is toward a form of 'rationalism'. Because I am such a modern I know this is true because those viewpoints, or those tendencies and the will that is behind them, is part of my own make-up. It is just that I honestly think that we all actually engage with the world through a host of different ways, the rational being just one, and the 'realistic' another. We also imagine the world and we dream the world. So, as I see things, we need to pay attention to that and to work with that and within that. What helps me to understand better than almost anything else the sort of 'dualism' of our reality contrasted with our imagined sense of things, is poetry.

• The coming star
  
  The star is in the orange tree.
  Let us see who can capture it!
  
  Come quickly with pearls,
  Fetch nets made of silk!
  
  What an odor of springtime
  From its flask of eternal life!
  
  The star is in all eyes.
  Let us see who can capture it!
  
  In the air, in the grass,
  Take care, do not lose it!
  
  The star is in love!
  Let us see who can capture it!

The poems are those of Juan Ramon Jimenez. I think they give a very good sense about how our mind and spirit 'holds' the world of 'reality' and also imagination. It is wise I think to remember that all children live more or less openly and fully in such a 'world'. It is the world of existence of self, of relation to self, of self's relation to 'the world'. It is my contention that the Self of 'our selves' is a unique and also delicate creation and is 'strung virtually' between these poles. An imagination that holds to the beauty of the world, or the beauty of feelings, and opens up into a 'space' where 'the higher' is felt and expressed, is not a bad thing in my way of seeing things. I think it all depends on what is 'imagined', or perhaps it has to do with basic, inner, spiritual qualities of the person? Or quality of heart? It certainly in my view depends on the tangible ethics and morality that one develops and what rules and guidelines one holds oneself to. And that is indeed the point where 'the rubber meets the road'.

If I would define 'religion' I would attempt to define it in absolutely new ways, stripped of dogmatism, stripped of dead form or restrictive form. I don't think it would exclude naturalism and certainly not nature. But it would very strongly emphasize tangible ethics. Try to find some community of persons who devote themselves to such a way of life, it isn't easy! And then especially when you have children and their education to think about. How would you educate them? How would you teach them to understand man's religion, ethics, morality, existence, being, goal, objective, raison d'être? Who would you wish for them to hold as role models, as their 'heroes'? What sort of behavior? Literally what sort of persons to be? You seem to take issue with Gustav and his admiration of 'authorities' but when you think about it they are required. It all depends on who and what one chooses to value. It is as always a question of Values.

In the best sense, when the Christians speak of the movement of the 'Holy Spirit' and the transformation of persons, it is in this way that I take it, personally. ('Pneuma' really means 'wind' and movement in the air and atmosphere). If there is such a thing as a Holy Spirit we have to know it and hold to it and work with it in ever-new ways. For me, the people who do this always seem to be the poets.

Just as you are, Plato was contemptuous of the "marred and corroded" world we find ourselves in, the world of bodies and their functions and just like you, Plato dreamed of a world of a higher dimension, a world in which the mind is unencumbered by sublunary matter.

I appreciate your rhetorical parries, I hope you appreciate mine!

I think the message here is that in 'dreaming of a higher world' we might encourage ourselves to bring life in greater measure, or spirit in greater measure, down into the body of the world. We seem to understand that our world---the world of hard fact---is a rather painful and tragic one, and so to 'imagine' it in that way is not inaccurate. But I suppose I get the sense that in imagining a world much better we conceive of Ideals, and these ideals are 'spirits' that move in our world. Also, on the other side, we may imagine far more constrictive and painful worlds, the hell-worlds, and see ourselves as perhaps lucky.