Christian apology by a non-Christian

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

• New Vows
  
  The night was clean as the bone of a rabbit blown hollow.
  I cast my hood of dogskin
  away, and my shirt of nettles.
  Ten years had been enough. I left my darkened house.
  
  The trick was in living that death to its source.
  When it happened, I wandered toward more than I was.
  
  Widowed by men, I married the dark firs,
  as if I were walking in sleep toward their arms.
  I drank, without fear or desire,
  this odd fire.
  
  Now shadows move freely within me as words.
  These are eternal, these stunned, loosened verbs.
  And I can't tell you yet
  how truly I belong
  
  to the hiss and shift of the wind,
  these slow, variable mouths
  through which, at certain times, I speak in tongues.
  
  ---Louise Erdich

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

• Dervish
  
  Everything revolves:
  • the dreams of the body,
  the blood, the earth itself,
  • a man's coming from it
  and his return.
  • In their tombstone caps
  and flaring shroud skirts,
  • the dervishes spin
  toward that moment
  • when monotony and ecstasy,
  knowing and unknowing
  • are the same, planets
  wheeled around some
  • spindle disguised
  as the five-petalled rose
  • on a tile underfoot
  in a weightless self-regard
  • meant to worship the power
  that keeps them in motion.
  • From a corbelled balcony
  the choir's melisma
  • twists on a lost soul:
  oud and heartbeat,
  • the drummed air lifting.
  This one---so close
  • he brushes against
  the fanatic's prayer---
  • arms open to anything,
  right hand pointing up,
  • eyes caught by his left hand,
  which he turned downward
  • as if toward the rapture
  of, at last, submission ...
  • here is our world.
  It is time now to come back
  • to the world of creation.
  High over the planets
  • a golden whiplash script
  around the inmost rim
  • of today's great dome
  calls down: God
  • is the light of heavens,
  a niche wherein is a lamp.
  • The lamp is in glass.
  The glass is high,
  • brightening, constant
  star.
  
  ---J.D. McClatchy

[uwot]

Battle Hymn of the Multitude

There was once was a baboon
Who one afternoon
Said I think I will fly to the sun
So with two great palms
strapped to his arms
he started his takeoff run

Mile after mile
He galloped in style
But never once left the ground
You’re going too slow said a passing crow
Try reaching the speed of sound

So he put on a spurt
My God how it hurt
both the soles of his feet caught on fire
As he went through a stream
There were great clouds of steam
But he still never got any higher

On and on through the night
both his knees caught alight
clouds of smoke billowed out of his rear!!!
Quick to his aid
Came the fire brigade
who chased him for over a year

Many moons passed by
Did Baboon ever fly
Did he ever get to the sun?
I’ve just heard today,
he’s well on his way
He’ll be passing through Acton at one.

PS – well, what do you expect from a baboon


(Oh all right. It's Silly Old Baboon by Spike Milligan.)

[uwot]

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.

If what you mean is that people interpret the phenomenal data supplied by their senses in different ways, you only have to look at the example of you and I to prove that is true. Given which, it is entirely possible that I have missed your point.
I am not sure how your concept of 'psyche' differs from my concept of mind. I have no idea how it works, I accept that it might be 'mechanistic', but whatever the truth, it is an extraordinary and wonderful thing to be marvelled at rather than feared.

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.

That's very perspicacious of you. Have you also noted that when you say things like:

I do not think that 'real understanding' of 'our world' is possible for 'the multitude' (Mass Man).

mass man responds with derision?

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.

Yours is a very personal understanding of 'imagine'; I take mass mans view and believe that worlds you imagine are imaginary. True, people create metaphysical structures to nail their experiences to, and yes some of them are utter hokum, but then some people have enough philosophical sophistication to accept that their beliefs are provisional.

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.

So your position is somewhere between naïve realism and idealism; could you narrow it down?

I don't think it is a question of personal will or choice so much as it is a 'natural disposition of the soul'.

Which reduces to 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder'. I'm not convinced that's the whole, story, but I wouldn't disagree.

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.

Yes; it is probably wise to touch base with reality now and then.

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'.

You misunderstand; I have only a passing interest in your metaphysics; what I object to is the use to which you put it. As you intimate, it is your disposition to hold mass man in contempt; just as it is mine to hold you in contempt for doing so.

It is my contention that the Self of 'our selves' is a unique and also delicate creation and is 'strung virtually' between these poles.

I think you are ignoring mass man, who I don't imagine you would describe as delicate.

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?

What would you say about the spiritual qualities, or the quality of heart of one who dismisses most of human kind?

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'.

Tangible ethics, eh? So how should one such as you treat mass man?

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.

We're all waiting.

I don't think it would exclude naturalism and certainly not nature. But it would very strongly emphasize tangible ethics.

Well let's hear it.

Try to find some community of persons who devote themselves to such a way of life, it isn't easy!

No indeed, because you haven't said what I should be looking for.

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?

As it happens I do have children. I haven't made a point of choosing any particular individuals as role models for them; it's for them to choose their own. If they ask my opinion, I will give it, but I trust them to make wise choices and change them if they prove otherwise.

You seem to take issue with Gustav and his admiration of 'authorities' but when you think about it they are required.

Funnily enough, I think it is the less sophisticated person that needs role models, I think mass man is better at grasping abstract principles than you give him or her (I assume you are familiar with the other half of the human race) credit for. Things become authoritative when you stop thinking about them.

It all depends on who and what one chooses to value. It is as always a question of Values.

I think respect for your fellow man and woman is a good place to start. It is risible how poor some christians and their apologists are at loving thy neighbour.

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.

Creation myths attempt to solve three questions: How did the world come to be? What is it made of? How does it work? God the father. God the son. God the holy ghost. You've been sold a pup.

('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.

It's rather a big if.

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'm not actually parrying.

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.

I think you believe that the wonder felt by people with the luxury to indulge in philosophical contemplation is a thing in itself; the technical term is a category error. Your posts are vapid, being largely empty of content. What you do say is often offensive or self-congratulatory and frequently both. What have you to say other than that you are better than most people and like poetry? Do you have any thrust I might have to parry?

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

The concept of psyche does I think differ quite a bit from mind, at least insofar as I understand the distinction. Psyche as I use it is a Jungian term and Jung meant the conscious, ego-portion that we understand as 'ourself', and the unconscious portions in which as it were the ego 'floats'.

To understand psyche in this sense, as I understand it, is to probe how a living being orients themselves within 'being'. Not only is there a conscious attitude---the intellectual mind as it were---but also larger dimensions of our selves that participate in being. So, not only might we organize our conscious perception of 'the world' and find ways to explain it, but there is also a subconscious or unconscious relationship to being.

In the sense that I mean, we 'imagine' ourself in this world, but we do that from within 'psyche' which has both consciously derived elements but also other, perhaps unconscious, elements. The language that arises from within ourselves and communicates to us (in the sense of with our ego) is a language of dreams, and dreams also connect to imagination, and imagination in the childlike sense. It is also the world of symbols of which our world and our mind is filled to the brim. My understanding is that imagination is part-and-parcel of the human creature, and is something we have to accept, understand and work with. To suppress imagination, as I understand it, can lead to deleterious effects. I tend to think that man---any man, every man---actually exists and has being within and through an 'imagined reality'.

I have also said at times that we exist within our own 'novelesque' which is a way of saying that we exist and live within and through narratives of and about ourselves in this world. Our ideas about life, our relationship to psyche and being, as a sort of bubble from which we confront and deal with 'reality'. I understand 'spiritual life' as being a means by which a man has a relationship to life through the whole group of perceptive possibilities. Religion is a unique factor in all this too. His reasoning self, his emotional self, his sensational self and his intuitive self---all these are part of a totality. It seems to me that a man might say, when speaking through his reasoning self 'This is how it is'. But I have noted that his 'intuitive self', or you could say his 'unconscious self', also tends to have a say in the matter. And then one is back toward the question or the fact of living within an 'imagined world'. I guess you could say that an imagined world is a world modified by imagination.

Have you also noted that when you say things like: 'I do not think that 'real understanding' of 'our world' is possible for 'the multitude' (Mass Man)' [that] mass man responds with derision?

Without a doubt I acknowledge that saying such a thing and in the way I say it rankles you. I am not concerned with 'politically correct formulations', or your emotional reactions (to the degree they are 'emotional'), and so I make an effort to describe things truthfully and as I see them. My view of this issue is that it is larger and more important than your or anyone's emotional reaction and I get the sense that your reaction is largely emotional. Still, I have made the effort to describe as clearly as I can what I think, the conclusions I have come to, and why.

"I persist then, at the risk of boring the reader, in making the point that this man full of uncivilized tendencies, this newest of the barbarians, is an automatic product of modern civilization, especially in the form taken in the XIXth Century."

"This type which at present is to be found everywhere, and everywhere imposes his spiritual barbarism, is, in fact, the spoiled child of human history."

"If from the viewpoint of what what concerns public life, the psychological structure of this new type of mass-man be studied, what we find is as follows: (1) An inborn, root-impression that life is easy, plentiful, without any grave limitations; consequently, each average man finds within himself a sensation of power and triumph which, (2) invites him to stand up for himself as he is, to look upon his moral and intellectual endowment as excellent, complete. This contentment within himself leads him to shut himself off from any external court of appeal; not to listen, not to submit his opinion to judgment, not to consider other's existence. His intimate feeling of power urges him always to exercise predominance. He will act then as if he and his like were the only beings existing in this world; and, consequently, (3) will intervene in all matters, imposing his own vulgar views without respect or regard for others, without limit or reserve, that is to say, in accordance with a system of 'direct action'."

"I have never said that human society ought to be aristocratic, but a great deal more than that. What I have said, and still believe with ever-increasing conviction, is that human society is always, whether it will or no, aristocratic by its very essence, to the extreme that it is a society in the measure that it is aristocratic, and ceases to be such when it ceases to be aristocratic. Of course I am speaking now of society and not of the State."

"It is not a question of the mass-man being a fool. On the contrary, to-day he is more clever, has more capacity of understanding than his fellow of any previous period. But that capacity is of no use to him; in reality, the vague feeling that he possesses it seems only to shut him up more within himself and keep him from using it. Once for all, he accepts the stock of commonplaces, prejudices, fag-ends of ideas or simply empty words which chance has piled up within his mind, and with a boldness only explicable by his ingenuousness, is prepared to impose them everywhere.… Why should he listen if he has within him all that is necessary? There is no reason now for listening, but rather for judging, pronouncing, deciding. There is no question concerning public life, in which he does not intervene, blind and deaf as he is, imposing his 'opinions.' "

With certain reservation (reservations that must be noted) I tend to agree with his analysis in The Revolt of the Masses. It is a very worthwhile book to read. It is my understanding that the now-current willfulness to undermine 'civilized values', is part-and-parcel of the mass man's 'vertical ascent'. I say this with very definite reservations and all of this needs to be carefully qualified. That could happen in an intelligent conversation but if it happens that one's interlocutor is possessed by resentment, there is effectively no way to have such an 'intelligent conversation'. But that does not so much bother me. Or, to put it another way, I let it slip by without being bothered by it.

I feel that the most intelligent and 'sophisticated' platforms for understanding and acting in life are not easily accessible to the mentality of the mass man. I also am aware, very aware indeed, that this 'mass man' is a part of my own self that I need to be aware of. Just as we need to be aware of what is higher and 'best' in our own psychic structure, our mind and our being, so to do we need to be aware of what it connects to: appetite, unstructured will, unconscious desire, and a special form of 'revolt' and a disinclination, essentially, to submit to inner authority that also has an external component. (It also has to be said that these ideas (of O y G) could, with a certain inflection and will, be brought into service of authoritarian and even fascistic ideals.)

He ('mass man') is a historical development in this sense, and as O y G says he is a product of various trends that began in the XIXth Century. What is 'negative' about him needs to be looked into and sorted out; and what is positive in him (as a new platform for future developments) also needs to be carefully sorted out. In short, it is ALL a work of tremendous discretion and has to be undertaken carefully and thoughtfully. And obviously I am speaking now to the 'barbarian' tendency and activity of destroying what is not fully understood. And the 'barbarian' is actively operative in destroying those traditions, and those spiritual links, that connect us with 'higher worlds' and higher values. Our barbarian self, our barbarian 'ego', needs to submit itself to higher authority. But how could that happen when, for the mass man, there IS no 'higher authority'? Or when a notion of 'higher authority' is a distortion? Or very partial and incomplete? Or when it cannot even be conceived? It is a bit of a problem. We need to become aware that nothing and no part of 'all this' is easy---as easy as sitting in front of the Tele and absorbing some chatter and nonsense. It is a work that requires a serious inner attitude, sustained discipline, and the capacity to learn to listen. In my view, those qualities are in short supply.

I am more than happy to talk about any specific part of O y G's analysis, and my understanding of it, if you wish. I find it very interesting.

I think respect for your fellow man and woman is a good place to start. It is risible how poor some christians and their apologists are at loving thy neighbor.

The closest I get, personally, to love is care of the people in my immediate vicinity. The problem with the way you are taking some of my ideas, which do express a certain contempt, I do admit this, is that you think (I reckon) that loving someone means to accept their folly, their 'stupidity', their ignorance, or their 'evil'. My way of seeing things is far more 'strict' if you will. It seems to me that 'loving' people, or humanity, means in the first place to love oneself, and to me this means to take responsibility for oneself. To take oneself in hand. To be stern with oneself. To impose limits on oneself. To make demands on oneself.

Doing this, and developing that as a general ethic, would mean taking such an attitude toward other people to the degree that one could. It seems to me to all hinge on education. The best way to 'love' is to educate. And the only way to educate, in my own view, is through structure and also hierarchy. That means that one has to come to some decision about what one values and on the other side of the same coin to eliminate and not choose what one does not value. Then, to inculcate what one values is to 'love' someone in a greater than the merely emotional sense.

If I take a 'harsh' stand in regard to 'irresponsible' or 'willful' mass-man, it does not follow that I do so because I do not 'love' him in some sense, and perhaps specifically in the Christian sense (whatever that means). You naturally misunderstand me and I suspect, though I can't be sure, that you do so because for you 'love' is permissiveness toward yourself, or perhaps even license? That attitude, in my view, aids and abets 'the spoiled child of human history' and, I think, we see the result of this in careless, bold, loud, opinionated but unstructured and also 'immoral' people. A sort of man who indeed 'look[s] upon his moral and intellectual endowment as excellent, complete'. Who refuses to make strict demands on himself and others?

As it happens I do have children. I haven't made a point of choosing any particular individuals as role models for them; it's for them to choose their own. If they ask my opinion, I will give it, but I trust them to make wise choices and change them if they prove otherwise.

I do not have children, myself, but my GF has a child (6) and a younger brother (12) and, as it happens, I am taking a role in their education. I live in Colombia and, to say the least, the moral and ethical atmosphere is extremely confused. It is a complex subject in its own right. We opted for a private Jesuit-run institution, with the classical strict parameters, because public institutions are utterly in disarray. So, the choice is made to 'subject' these kids to a rigorous academic and also ethical education. I would not, I assure you, have been able to conceive of this in my younger and more radical years! But in thinking it through it seems like the better choice. But it means: accepting hierarchies and submitting to authority; defining rules and obeying them; dealing with the consequences when authority is disobeyed; defining values; discerning what is worthy of being chosen and what is not. The structure, and the attention, has the effect of allowing the children to flourish and to grow, and not the opposite, we find. In comparison to the surrounding culture---generally in disarray---the order and structure of the Jesuit institution is an oasis. The kids thrive.

[Arising_uk]

...
My interest in this thread? The same as Sagan's motive for CETI: the possibility of intelligent life in cyberspace. ...

But could not Fermi's Paradox apply?

[bobevenson]

...
My interest in this thread? The same as Sagan's motive for CETI: the possibility of intelligent life in cyberspace. ...

But could not Fermi's Paradox apply?

Fermi's paradox is as bogus as a $3 bill.

[Skip]

Both are moot, as my interest has long since waned.


The Walrus and the Carpenter
By Lewis Carroll 1832–1898 Lewis Carroll

The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright —
And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.


The moon was shining sulkily,
Because she thought the sun
Had got no business to be there
After the day was done —
"It's very rude of him," she said,
"To come and spoil the fun."


The sea was wet as wet could be,
The sands were dry as dry.
You could not see a cloud, because
No cloud was in the sky:
No birds were flying overhead —
There were no birds to fly.


The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand:
If this were only cleared away,'
They said, it would be grand!'


If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year,
Do you suppose,' the Walrus said,
That they could get it clear?'
I doubt it,' said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.


O Oysters, come and walk with us!'
The Walrus did beseech.
A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
Along the briny beach:
We cannot do with more than four,
To give a hand to each.'


The eldest Oyster looked at him,
But never a word he said:
The eldest Oyster winked his eye,
And shook his heavy head —
Meaning to say he did not choose
To leave the oyster-bed.


But four young Oysters hurried up,
All eager for the treat:
Their coats were brushed, their faces washed,
Their shoes were clean and neat —
And this was odd, because, you know,
They hadn't any feet.


Four other Oysters followed them,
And yet another four;
And thick and fast they came at last,
And more, and more, and more —
All hopping through the frothy waves,
And scrambling to the shore.


The Walrus and the Carpenter
Walked on a mile or so,
And then they rested on a rock
Conveniently low:
And all the little Oysters stood
And waited in a row.


The time has come,' the Walrus said,
To talk of many things:
Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax —
Of cabbages — and kings —
And why the sea is boiling hot —
And whether pigs have wings.'


But wait a bit,' the Oysters cried,
Before we have our chat;
For some of us are out of breath,
And all of us are fat!'
No hurry!' said the Carpenter.
They thanked him much for that.


A loaf of bread,' the Walrus said,
Is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides
Are very good indeed —
Now if you're ready, Oysters dear,
We can begin to feed.'


But not on us!' the Oysters cried,
Turning a little blue.
After such kindness, that would be
A dismal thing to do!'
The night is fine,' the Walrus said.
Do you admire the view?


It was so kind of you to come!
And you are very nice!'
The Carpenter said nothing but
Cut us another slice:
I wish you were not quite so deaf —
I've had to ask you twice!'


It seems a shame,' the Walrus said,
To play them such a trick,
After we've brought them out so far,
And made them trot so quick!'
The Carpenter said nothing but
The butter's spread too thick!'


I weep for you,' the Walrus said:
I deeply sympathize.'
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.


O Oysters,' said the Carpenter,
You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?'
But answer came there none —
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one."

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Ressentiment

• "It is a fundamental truth of human nature that man is incapable of remaining permanently on the heights, of continuing to admire anything. Human nature needs variety. Even in the most enthusiastic ages people have always liked to joke enviously about their superiors. That is perfectly in order and is entirely justifiable so long as after having laughed at the great they can once more look upon them with admiration; otherwise the game is not worth the candle. In that way ressentiment finds an outlet even in an enthusiastic age. And as long as an age, even though less enthusiastic, has the strength to give ressentiment its proper character and has made up its mind what its expression signifies, ressentiment has its own, though dangerous importance. …. the more reflection gets the upper hand and thus makes people indolent, the more dangerous ressentiment becomes, because it no longer has sufficient character to make it conscious of its significance. Bereft of that character reflection is a cowardly and vacillating, and according to circumstances interprets the same thing in a variety of way. It tries to treat it as a joke, and if that fails, to regard it as an insult, and when that fails, to dismiss it as nothing at all; or else it will treat the thing as a witticism, and if that fails then say that it was meant as a moral satire deserving attention, and if that does not succeed, add that it was not worth bothering about. …. ressentiment becomes the constituent principle of want of character, which from utter wretchedness tries to sneak itself a position, all the time safeguarding itself by conceding that it is less than nothing. The ressentiment which results from want of character can never understand that eminent distinction really is distinction. Neither does it understand itself by recognizing distinction negatively (as in the case of ostracism) but wants to drag it down, wants to belittle it so that it really ceases to be distinguished. And ressentiment not only defends itself against all existing forms of distinction but against that which is still to come. …. The ressentiment which is establishing itself is the process of leveling, and while a passionate age storms ahead setting up new things and tearing down old, raising and demolishing as it goes, a reflective and passionless age does exactly the contrary; it hinders and stifles all action; it levels. Leveling is a silent, mathematical, and abstract occupation which shuns upheavals. In a burst of momentary enthusiasm people might, in their despondency, even long for a misfortune in order to feel the powers of life, but the apathy which follows is no more helped by a disturbance than an engineer leveling a piece of land. At its most violent a rebellion is like a volcanic eruption and drowns every other sound. At its maximum the leveling process is a deathly silence in which one can hear one’s own heart beat, a silence which nothing can pierce, in which everything is engulfed, powerless to resist. One man can be head a rebellion, but no one can be at the head of the leveling process alone, for in that case he would be leader and would thus escape being leveled. Each individual within his own little circle can co-operate in the leveling, but it is an abstract power, and the leveling process is the victory of abstraction over the individual. The leveling process in modern times, corresponds, in reflection, to fate in antiquity. ... It must be obvious to everyone that the profound significance of the leveling process lies in the fact that it means the predominance of the category ‘generation’ over the category ‘individuality’.
  
  ---S. Kierkegaard in 'The Present Age'.

Ressentiment is a complex emotion and it is hard to turn ourselves around and see the degree that we are invested in it, or the degree our tactics reflect it. Although I haven't yet found a way to describe the relationship of ressentiment to the current 'atheism' and 'anti-Christianism', nevertheless one of the first thing one notes when one makes the effort to strike a more positive note in relation to the value of Christianity, is the anger and something like an underhandedness of ressentiment. If 'they' can't knock you down with argument---and it generally starts with reasonable argument---every other tool will be brought in progressively. Finally: silence!

Leveling

• M. Heidegger: '...by averageness and leveling down, everything gets obscured, and what has thus been covered up gets passed off as something familiar and accessible to everyone [...] by virtue of an insensitivity to all distinctions in level and genuineness, and in providing average intelligibility, opens up a standard world in which all distinctions between the unique and the general, the superior and the average, the important and the trivial have been leveled'.

[uwot]

The issue I raised in my last post Gustav, was that you don't address specific questions with specific answers. As I said:

Do you have any thrust I might have to parry?

What, for example, are your 'tangible ethics'?
In the spirit of fairness, as much as of investigation, I thought I might read the entire thread to see what it is you are actually saying. It didn't take long to decide it would be a waste of time; as you said (Fri Jul 19, 2013 1:51 pm):

I have noticed that once a polarized position has been established there is usually no possibility of conversation but only battles for ascendency.

We do have polarized positions. You think I am beneath you, I think you are a snob.
Then, after a load of self indulgent waffle we get to this in response to Skip, Fri Jul 19, 2013 5:21 pm:

I would accept your statement that 'magical thinking plays a large part in their serenity'. But your statement is made by one, apparently, outside of a comforting belief-system. Myself, I have lived and operated within far more literal 'magical belief systems' and so feel I know at least somewhat intimately what that can be about and so it induces me to approach these questions a little differently. I suppose this is one reason I can weave ambiguously in and out of the questions. I have the luxury of a somewhat fluid definition of psyche in the world.

Weaving in and out of the questions is failing to address them. Your definition of psyche is not therefore fluid, it is meaningless.
Again in response to Skip, who painstakingly responded to the issues you raise:

Well you seem to have caught up in any case! I appreciate your comments.

The 'fracturing method' of breaking up a post/statement into small parts with all sorts of ancillary questions/problems that open up can sometimes lead to the problem of endless conversation of related (but interesting!) issues, so I will try to keep my comments within the general lines I have outlined.

That is you reconciling yourself to your inability to engage in meaningful dialogue and instead continuing to spout your self righteous twaddle.

You seem to say, in so many words, 'there is no redeeming features'. Whether in fact this is what you think I cannot say exactly and I can only try to restate fairly what it seems to be.

That wasn't the sense I got, perhaps because I took the trouble to actually read what he had to say. I think I've seen enough. If you believe that there is somewhere I should look where you do in fact engage in a meaningful dialogue and answer your critics, please show me.
You have said on at least one occasion that you don't feel compelled to adhere to political correctness. Nor do I, nor do I think any of the other respondents who have had the courtesy to reply to your posts. Political correctness is a pejorative term used by people who lack the will or intellect to tackle challenging questions. Like I said, your posts are vapid. Your latest ends:

If 'they' can't knock you down with argument---and it generally starts with reasonable argument---every other tool will be brought in progressively. Finally, silence!

If 'you' could respond to a reasonable argument, by answering people's questions rather than weaving in and out of them, perhaps people wouldn't lose interest.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

We do have polarized positions. You think I am beneath you, I think you are a snob.

I suggest that an error occurs here. I can point it out to you but cannot make you see it or change it. I have very close to no opinion about you, personally. I am speaking about more general trends that are operating outside and around us. But in regard to the very little that I can extract about your views from what you write---and there is little revealed about your own views---my impression is that you got started on the wrong foot on this thread. But it is not my style to prove this to you, only to suggest it as a possibility.

If the question of 'tangible ethics' is interesting to you, write about it. I would suggest that you write full and revealing posts about your position in regard to the opening post and the general thrust offered up here so far. If you can avoid it, don't get hooked by what you believe is my 'snobbery' but select a specific idea or area and reveal your thinking.

What interests you in these questions? What do you read? What are your views on religion, spiritual life, metaphysics, ethics, etc.?

Have I mistakingly given you the impression that I am here to submit to answering your questions of me?

Also, I think it is a mistake on your part to interpose yourself between myself and Skip. Speak for yourself.

I am consciously making an effort to define and explore 'elite' questions. I am saying that, as I understand it, a depth understanding of Christianity and its symbols can only be grasped at a higher or more sophisticated level. By a prepared mind and spirit. My thrust here is, at least at this time, that a depth of understanding, and one that can be expressed either in art or in discourse, is not available to the common man, and especially to a man who is a by-product of populism or of vulgarism (in the precise sense of the word). I understand modernity as offering an incredible, an unprecedented, opportunity to this 'common man' but that 'he' does not know how to take advantage of it. I see the average man, in this sense, as a victim of both 'outside forces' that mould him, as well as of his own 'untempered will', or his ignorance, or his folly.

And 'snobbery' is not the word I would chose, myself. These are very difficult and contended issues, problems and questions. Much rides on them. I have explained that I see no alternative to hierarchies and certainly those that pertain to 'excellence' in accomplishment. We admire excellence and we respect it. In this sense I am personally interested in excellence of view and excellence of understanding. But too excellence means familiarity with the material, and by this I mean familiarity with the stuff of 'our traditions'. What I note is a general break with 'our traditions' in people, generally. And specifically in regard to our religious traditions. I find, and at the very least I state it openly, that the general argument against religion, Christianity, the construct of self in the West, is 'attacked' by a form of barbarian. A rough and tumble brute. A man without preparation but with a great deal of 'destructive will'. I did not invent this view. Here is one of my favorite allusions to the issue:

An Old Manuscript.

Kafka, now there's a devil!

• 'You can gesture at them till you dislocate your jaws and your wrists and still they will not have understood you and will never understand'.

Now that little fucker is a snob, don't you think? Can you imagine actually saying, directly, to someone that no matter what language is used, no matter how frequently you repeat yourself, that the poor brute does not have the inner spark (or what is it?!) to understand? And will never understand? How do you suppose they'd react? Why, they'd be justified in cutting him to pieces with their sharp sabers in my opinion!

I don't think any part of this is a laughing matter and this is why I take the time to write about it in depth. Losing our connection to our traditions is equivalent to losing our connection to our self. It is not a light issue. It has consequences.

Talk about your relationship to these issues, trace your thinking, your background with them. If you can do it, do it without rancor.

PS: Please also, if you can, excuse my rather wicked irony and sarcasm. We all have to face a pretty vile 'inner brute'. The degree that we understand 'him'---ourself---is in my view the first step toward fuller growth.

[Arising_uk]

... (The other is Descartes.)

Really, why? Dualism? Surely his other contributions weigh heavily against this.

[uwot]

We do have polarized positions. You think I am beneath you, I think you are a snob.

I suggest that an error occurs here. I can point it out to you but cannot make you see it or change it. I have very close to no opinion about you, personally. I am speaking about more general trends that are operating outside and around us. But in regard to the very little that I can extract about your views from what you write---and there is little revealed about your own views---my impression is that you got started on the wrong foot on this thread. But it is not my style to prove this to you, only to suggest it as a possibility.

It is not your style to prove anything; no matter, I think I understand you very well

If the question of 'tangible ethics' is interesting to you, write about it. I would suggest that you write full and revealing posts about your position in regard to the opening post and the general thrust offered up here so far. If you can avoid it, don't get hooked by what you believe is my 'snobbery' but select a specific idea or area and reveal your thinking.

Tangible ethics doesn't mean anything, it is not a phrase I would use except to ask what you mean by it. I have already told you that my basic ethical premise is that everyone should be treated with respect. If they express views that are counter to that, the gloves are off.

What interests you in these questions? What do you read? What are your views on religion, spiritual life, metaphysics, ethics, etc.?

Like I said, my interest in your metaphysics is only passing, it is the use you would put them to that interests me, but frankly, you don't appear to have given it much thought.

Have I mistakingly given you the impression that I am here to submit to answering your questions of me?

No, but the alternative is that you expect your readers to swallow your drivel without consideration. Is that what you advocate for your 'elite'?

Also, I think it is a mistake on your part to interpose yourself between myself and Skip. Speak for yourself.

Says the fool who constantly refers to 'authorities' and posts other people's poetry. Besides, I was only pointing out the context of what you said.

I am consciously making an effort to define and explore 'elite' questions. I am saying that, as I understand it, a depth understanding of Christianity and its symbols can only be grasped at a higher or more sophisticated level. By a prepared mind and spirit.

One point I am making is that you not only fail to define your own questions, you resolutely fail to answer anyone else's.

My thrust here is, at least at this time, that a depth of understanding, and one that can be expressed either in art or in discourse, is not available to the common man, and especially to a man who is a by-product of populism or of vulgarism (in the precise sense of the word).

Unless you can say what this understanding entails, there is no way of knowing whether the common man understands or not; you risk creating an elite of one.

I understand modernity as offering an incredible, an unprecedented, opportunity to this 'common man' but that 'he' does not know how to take advantage of it.

Is this 'common man' someone you actually interact with in any depth, or have you just seen him on the telly?

I see the average man, in this sense, as a victim of both 'outside forces' that mould him, as well as of his own 'untempered will', or his ignorance, or his folly.

You didn't invent christianity, it is therefore an 'outside force' that has evidently moulded you. No one's will is completely untempered, no one knows everything and everyone makes mistakes.

But 'snobbery' is not the word I would chose, myself.

Show me a snob who would.

These are very difficult and contended issues, problems and questions. Much rides on them.

Indeed, because history is littered by examples of regimes that thought very little of it's subjects and refused to brook challenges to their authority.

I have explained that I see no alternative to hierarchies and certainly those that pertain to 'excellence' in accomplishment.

I too believe in meritocracy.

We admire excellence and we respect it. In this sense I am personally interested in excellence of view and excellence of understanding. But too excellence means familiarity with the material, and by this I mean familiarity with the stuff of 'our traditions'.

I'm sorry, aren't you proposing an overhaul of those traditions?

What I note is a general break with 'our traditions' in people, generally. And specifically in regard to our religious traditions. I find, and at the very least I state it openly, that the general argument against religion, Christianity, the construct of self in the West, is 'attacked' by a form of barbarian. A rough and tumble brute.

You might wish to reconsider the above. Do you really mean that the argument against religion is christianity, or that 'the argument against religion' is attacked by a rough and tumble brute?

A man without preparation but with a great deal of 'destructive will'.

What exactly is this destructive will exercised on that makes it so apparent?

I did not invent this view. Here is one of my favorite allusions to the issue:
An Old Manuscript.

Kafka, now there's a devil!

• 'You can gesture at them till you dislocate your jaws and your wrists and still they will not have understood you and will never understand'.

Now that little fucker is a snob, don't you think? Can you imagine actually saying, directly, to someone that no matter what language is used, no matter how frequently you repeat yourself, that the poor brute does not have the inner spark (or what is it?!) to understand? And will never understand? How do you suppose they'd react? Why, they'd be justified in cutting him to pieces with their sharp sabers in my opinion!

I don't think any part of this is a laughing matter and this is why I take the time to write about it in depth. Losing our connection to our traditions is equivalent to losing our connection to our self.

In what way are our traditions equivalent to our self?

It is not a light issue. It has consequences.

Again you are attempting to overhaul those traditions. Have you considered the consequences of the changes you wish?

Talk about your relationship to these issues, trace your thinking, your background with them. If you can do it, do it without rancor.

Er,

Have I mistakingly given you the impression that I am here to submit to answering your questions of me?

PS: Please also, if you can, excuse my rather wicked irony and sarcasm. We all have to face a pretty vile 'inner brute'. The degree that we understand 'him'---ourself---is in my view the first step toward fuller growth.

It is a vile and brutish characteristic to fail to see the value in another human being, don't you think?

[Arising_uk]

Both are moot, as my interest has long since waned.

You may have lucked out Skip, as here you might find Fermi in question, might mind you, but if you are saying you've given-up all hope of sanity in the interweeb why still posting?

Anyhoo, at least admire the cleanness of the environment, the lack of adverts and distractions, class on the eyes, you don't get this much nowadays.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Tangible ethics doesn't mean anything.

'Tangible' means perceptible to touch and also: palpable, material, physical, real, substantial, corporeal, solid, concrete. Tangible ethics would be contrasted with abstract ethics, or undefined ethics, and so is indeed a term that means something. I observe around me, often, people who do not have a 'tangible ethics' and who, to put it quaintly, sort of float along. We used to have a 'tangible ethics' when we were more connected to our religious institutions. Certainly it has been necessary to challenge our connections to outmoded institutions, so this was all inevitable, but in my view we need to, say, repair the bridge, reestablish the connection. It is true this is my personal opinion and it likely will have little effect on the world at large. But it is my opinion. It is an area of pretty substantial concern to me. Establishing 'tangible ethics' is also part of this.

It is a vile and brutish characteristic to fail to see the value in another human being, don't you think?

Obviously it is. It very much is. So, first, I would say that nothing I have said indicates that in my personal case I do not 'see the value in other human beings'. This is a conclusion you have drawn yourself, without understanding what I am attempting to express. Yet I think that a kind of realism, and also honestly, would force one to see also how 'worth' is obscured by different layers of obstructing material. To respect a person does not mean, I don't think, to fail to see and to describe negative traits.

For example, Ortega y Gasset wrote:

• "It is not a question of the mass-man being a fool. On the contrary, to-day he is more clever, has more capacity of understanding than his fellow of any previous period. But that capacity is of no use to him; in reality, the vague feeling that he possesses it seems only to shut him up more within himself and keep him from using it. Once for all, he accepts the stock of commonplaces, prejudices, fag-ends of ideas or simply empty words which chance has piled up within his mind, and with a boldness only explicable by his ingenuousness, is prepared to impose them everywhere."

This is a fairly trenchant statement, among a whole book of trenchant statements. Do you see such statements as necessarily arising from 'lack of respect'? It seems almost elemental to me that the question of 'respect' is quite a bit more complicated. As I understand Christian ethics and the personalism that arises from it, respect for persons is a given because God is said to have personhood of sorts and to have invested man with personhood. But Judeo-Christianity, and say prophetic declarations, is filled to the brim with condemnations of man's bad behaviors. Take Amos for example, or Jeremiah, or Skip for Heaven's sake! It does not at all follow that 'respect' does not mean, or cannot also mean, condemnation or critique.

Like I said, my interest in your metaphysics is only passing, it is the use you would put them to that interests me, but frankly, you don't appear to have given it much thought.

You don't think? All the poetry I quoted was not because I wanted to share some pretty poems with the forum but as an illustration of how deeply involved man is with metaphor which as I see it has much to do with 'metaphysic'.

• Now shadows move freely within me as words.
  These are eternal, these stunned, loosened verbs.
  And I can't tell you yet
  how truly I belong

and

• The star is in the orange tree.
  Let us see who can capture it!
  
  The star is in all eyes.
  Let us see who can capture it!

and

• This is my life: what is high above,
  What exists in pure breeze,
  In the ultimate bird,
  In the golden summits of darkness!

I wrote:

• "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."

At the very least I have given it a little thought.

Unless you can say what this understanding entails, there is no way of knowing whether the common man understands or not.

No, it is not really needed or in any case I don't feel a need to undertake it as a project for your benefit. I think you could do that work on your own, and you should. It is fairly easy to intuitively grasp how many people do not rise out of their own limited circumstances. It is perhaps related to 'living lives of quiet desperation', or using entertainment or alcohol or TV or any number of things available to avoid confronting their own self, or the deeper questions about life generally. This is in a very real sense what you and I and all of us most struggle with. To get into specifics is not my interest. I would suggest, if the topic is interesting to you, a reading of The Revolt of the Masses or Thielicke's book on nihilism. Then you'd actually have some material to work with. Google it. Or Google some of the Ortega y Gasset quotes on Wiki.

Is this 'common man' someone you actually interact with in any depth, or have you just seen him on the telly?

Well now, that is an interesting question. When I critique this 'mass man' please note that I always include a critique of my own person and describe this 'mass man' as also having an existence in my own self. It really wouldn't be fair if this caveat were not included. This is important. My understanding is that to know our upbringing and our education, and to be members of an essentially middle-class culture, children of the Tele, etc., is to have an intimacy with that sort of man, that sort of person. We swim within that. It is like the air we breathe. You make the mistake of believing that this must mean that I walk around in smoldering contempt but in truth it is much more complex. In my neck of the woods (a city somewhere between Medellin and Bogota), and because of my proximity to the University, I am close to the incubator of just such 'mass men'. The XIXth Century set the stage for this man and he is among us now. It does not mean that I 'hate' him (or myself) but that I become aware of what he both is and isn't, and perhaps can't be. The most salient characteristic, though, and the one that troubles me personally, is that man's lack of 'spiritual depth', and again 'connection to his own traditions', which is a form of 'seriousness' toward himself and toward living.

O y G says it nicely, I think:

• "Once for all, he accepts the stock of commonplaces, prejudices, fag-ends of ideas or simply empty words which chance has piled up within his mind, and with a boldness only explicable by his ingenuousness, is prepared to impose them everywhere.… Why should he listen if he has within him all that is necessary? There is no reason now for listening, but rather for judging, pronouncing, deciding. There is no question concerning public life, in which he does not intervene, blind and deaf as he is, imposing his 'opinions.'

In a sense this is what the average university does to its victims: loads up their minds with 'fag-ends'. It is certainly not all that it does. But the point has to do with the creation of a giant secular culture which is strangely, and also tragically, disconnected from 'higher value'.

Show me a snob who would [describe himself as a snob].

Snobbery is normally understood as highbrow, etc. or perhaps forms of cultural sophistication. I am talking about nothing like that at all. And there are plenty of people who would love to describe themselves as snobs in these senses, and do, more or less.

GB: These are very difficult and contended issues, problems and questions. Much rides on them.

uwot: Indeed, because history is littered by examples of regimes that thought very little of it's subjects and refused to brook challenges to their authority.

Sure, that is true, but in the end what rectifies that is holding to higher values and insisting on them. Oppression is a real thing and there are certainly many levels of oppression. But defining or proposing 'oppression' is not what I am talking about. Quite the contrary. The loss of value, the ability to recognize it and hold to it, leads to having no tools with which to oppose oppression. A whole group of 'higher values' had to have been defined for anyone to take a stand against such 'regimes'.

I'm sorry, aren't you proposing an overhaul of those traditions?

I don't think I said such a thing. I think it is very important not to lose the thread that runs though 'our traditions', and quite specifically our traditions as Christianity which is part-and-parcel of them. Instead of breaking connection I would speak about reestablishing connection, but in new ways, with new power and relevance. Life has to be recharged and revivified and very definitely the currents of nihilism need to be opposed. In this sense, like anyone and like so many, such 'death' and deadness are part and parcel of myself so I know something of that.

Helmut Thielicke was a pastor or priest in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Nazi regime and links that deathly nihilism with the loss of connection, both to self, to persons and personalism, to losing connection with the 'living waters' of our own spirituality. Those arguments influence me. I am interested too in the preservation of the connection to those same 'living currents' although I am not exactly sure how to carry it out.

Do you really mean that the argument against religion is christianity, or that 'the argument against religion' is attacked by a rough and tumble brute?

I mean that a rough and tumble brute feels it is his calling or prerogative to attack things which he does not fully understand. You know, that 'spoiled child of human history'.

What exactly is this destructive will exercised on that makes it so apparent?

Again, you will have to do your own work here. I can point you toward sources where you can gain the answer you seek. A down and dirty answer might be: His inability to understand the meaning behind complex symbols. His breaking of connection with them resulting from incomprehension. What do you think?

In what way are our traditions equivalent to our self?

I didn't say that our traditions are equivalent to our self, I say that it is through processes of engagement with our traditions (Judaic, Greek, Roman to name the major ones) that our self has been constructed. We are products of these processes. But we are in this sense a fragile structure. The breaking down of connection to our traditions, or the breaking down of connection to our selves, is a now-occuring process, and the 'barbarian' who ascends into the present has a large role in that.

It is a different sort of statement.