Christian apology by a non-Christian

[Skip]

What a big refutation of nothing at all!

Why are there poor people? Why are there rich and powerful nations, while other nations are backward and hungry? Because the prosperous ones reduced the other ones to penury and brutality. How does that make sense? We have the capability to live well. We have the capability to limit our population to a size we can keep healthy, comfortable and safe. Why are the smartest animals on the planet mismanaging their affairs so badly?

Of-bloody-course my description of a sane humanity can't work in "the real world". That's what I said in the first place: the world is dominated by the most insane members of the most insane species. I'm not advocating anything, not philosophizing, not proposing, not advising, not trying to bring about any utopia.

I simply answered your direct questions.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

It really wasn't a 'refutation'. It is more an exploration by putting pressure on certain points with the purpose of seeing what comes of it. A while back we were speaking of 'salvation', an idea which you mock, and I suggested there is a duality in how that question can be approached.

One is the issue of dealing concretely and bodily with the work of 'salvation' in the social/economic world---your preferred domain, I note, and also why I note in you an essentially Marxian focus even if you can't discern it yourself, and might not even know much of Marx---and the other is the metaphysical notion of salvation, which points toward a world so polluted and so dominated by 'dark powers' (which for you become 'insane men') but oddly it amounts to the same.

Some say that the world is not perfectible. Some say that we do better to focus our eyes on better and more perfectible worlds beyond this one. If you (if 'one') has had any sort of intimation of realms of existence beyond this world, and I have, one is placed in a unique tension, if you will, between the necessity of developing one's 'bodily self' in this 'material world' while simultaneously being aware that, in fact, this world is essentially impossible! I find that awareness compelling. I also note that many people have not thought these things through to, or at least toward, a conclusion.

Some schools of Eastern thought refer to this world as 'the material entanglement', and the idea is that the more invested one is in the 'illusory' temptation to seek perfection and fulfillment in this world, the more 'entangled' one becomes, and according to that school, entanglement leads to loss of discernment, and with loss of discernment to nescience. What is the alternative? Disconnection from material entanglement through understanding the fundamental impossibility latent in the place itself, and holding to an internal vision of heaven (for want of a better description), and arranging one's life on that platform.

Now, I will wager that I am much closer than you have been or might ever be to real poor people. It is not that I am bragging or anything. In the face of the reality of poverty the leftist Weltanschauung, based as it largely is in the narrative of a group of persons locked within a Marxian-driven interpretation of history, the tenets fall to pieces. Not all the facts are incorrect, but what is questionable is the manner with which they are strung together. I ain't making this up! In this paragraph:

• Why are there poor people? Why are there rich and powerful nations, while other nations are backward and hungry? Because the prosperous ones reduced the other ones to penury and brutality. How does that make sense? We have the capability to live well. We have the capability to limit our population to a size we can keep healthy, comfortable and safe. Why are the smartest animals on the planet mismanaging their affairs so badly?

You provide a case-study of the group of errors of perception and of attitude that actually mire people in backwardness, poverty, misunderstanding, and an historical shooting oneself in the foot. However, by saying this to you, and you having a certain idea already about me, will immediately catalogue me, with other ideas I attempt to communicate or at least explore, over in the demonic camp. That was established right at the beginning.

Curiously, leftist demonization of the world has, in my view, a direct correlation with Christian narratives, but that very common and lower-level Christianity which lives in a rather simple, binary universe and with similarly binary grasp of ideas.

What I notice is that the 'solutions' you propose (and by 'you' I mean a whole school of thinking, a whole way of organizing perception) are not real solutions, because they don't really *see* the world, but rather a superimposition of a world on the world. To see the 'real world' is, I would like to suggest, not at all an easy task. I suppose too that we are all trying to *see* the world but have real difficulties doing so. A conversation about why that is is one of the best conversations---certainly the more interesting!---to have.

I suggest a reading of Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot. These reviews give a sense of its centrist location in the intellectual field. Latin America is being 'transformed' by a reorientation toward more realistic and productive views of 'the world' and also history.

Just one here:

• "It demonstrates how leftist "idiots" not only in Latin America, but those in the United States and Europe, have paralyzed the region in a culture of "victimization", creating deep resentments and distrust of market economies, private property, foreign investment, multinational corporations, globalization and the United States. It is these leftist-statist-mercantilist-corporatist attitudes that dominated many Latin Americans throughout the 20th century and continue even today, as so clearly demonstrated by Castro in Cuba, Chavez in Venezuela, Ortega in Nicaragua, Aristide in Haiti, Bucaram in Ecuador, Allan Garcia in Peru, Lula in Brazil among others. It is these, combined with dsyfunctional anti-democratic and anti-market cultural values, that have maintained the region in poverty and political instability. The Latin American poor owe a debt of gratitude to Apuleyo, Montaner and Vargas Llosa for so forcefully showing how these attitudes and populist leaders have contributed to their misery."

I imagine that would be a tough mirror to look in though...

:::devilish grin:::

(I am a former disciple of Noam Chomsky I should have you know. I could probably repeat, verbatim, On Power and Ideology.)

In any case and beyond these secondary issues, in my view, we are stuck in bizarre ways between 'spiritual' narratives and the nearly Machiavellian facts about actual management of affairs in this world. I want to say that 'we are all deeply complicit' too, which is also an interesting conversation.

To live in the world actually requires a sort of 'entente' or perhaps 'detente' (rapprochement?) with the Force of Evil, and that means directly with our own body. And along these lines I find it interesting that a 'mature Christianity' is able to take all this into consideration as it works, concretely and also 'realistically', in the world.

Not trying to diminish your views and understandings. It is a public conversation so I assume you are up for it.

[Skip]

What gave you the idea that you're so much smarter than everyone else that you can explain to them what they can't discern about themselves?

This is a very minor mystery and I can conceivably die happy without ever solving it.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

It is a good question, actually, but it is unfortunate that you are not burning inside to have it answered. (That is a joke, and I do acknowledge that you are none too happy with almost everything about this thread, the ideas expressed in it, certainly my approach, etc. It is only polite to offer that acknowledgement).

(Though you have certainly forgotten, or had never remembered, the recent topic has been 'salvation'. I am still on that topic, more or less, though I imagine that your mind has slipped away from it. It is I think one of the most relevant topics one can think about).

First, one has to step away and focus---refocus---on the medium: Internet forums. Questions such as: Why do we come to these spaces? What do we get from it? Offer? A visual: some persons enclosed in a darkened room communicating through a vent. They can't ever really see each other and the medium is 'blind'.

If I were to say 'ideas have consequences' you would likely have a very good sense that there is a strong truth in the statement. How we think and what we think, or don't think, has consequences. Duh. It seems not even to need explanation. And yet the work of going back over the precise idea-systems we have been exposed to, the ones given in school, that come through absorption from culture and enter us even by unlikely means: a gesture, the way a person moves---through all manner of different 'signs'. We receive from the people surrounding us a Weltanschauung through a vast array of different signs. Expression, movement, signal, attitude, motion, tone, timbre, timing, accord-discord, the tactile, even the olfactory. It is literally stuff that surrounds us but like a fish in the water it breathes we don't focus on it. Until we actually begin to focus on it.

You are smart enough to grasp, even if it is just a glimmer of the idea, merely a beginning, that there is much, much more to getting to the core of Ideas than you had imagined. [That is a generic 'you' that as I say includes 'Me' to become 'We']. One merely needs to allude to it, to point in the direction of 'it', and then the imagination goes to work and starts to make connections.

We live in a sensory world, in a flesh condition, mediated by symbols which come to us, rather dimly most often, through the medium of our consciousness. To understand how we are situated, to understand the mechanics of our presence in this world, is a very curious undertaking. Now, as I say, taking off the kid gloves as it were, 'the average man' has no skill at all, nor any real interest, in understanding himself. This could be described as the condition of the extremely vulgar (in the original sense of the word) in a vulgarized world, with vulgar intellectual [sic] tools, performing a vulgar theatre of living, in 'life' vulgarly apprehended. That is a fucking cruel statement, ain't it? Sure, you will react against it (at first), but then, thinking about it, I strongly feel, 'you' will begin to understand. And understanding is the beginning of knowledge, and knowledge often forms the base of profound change in the way we live and how we see. Indeed it determines what we see. You are not the sharpest knife in the drawer, that is true, but this is so carefully explained, so painstakingly explained and so thoroughly, that it will have to have some benefit.

The 'symbols' that float around us---I have quite carefully explained this, Skip---have various levels of meaning. Or, they have increasing levels of meaning the more that we penetrate them. Obviously, given the title of the thread, I am referring to Christian symbols but expanded to religious symbolism generally. They can almost be understood as being 'living creatures' of a sort. A dialectic is possible. But again: the average idiot, captured by a sense of his own vulgar 'power' and nay-saying, who uses ideas to close himself off really and not to expand himself, cannot avail himself of this dialectic.

So it is not so much that I am 'so smart' about any of this but is rather that I just take a stand in relation to the topic, and define the topic, that characterizes my approach and what I write. In comparison to you, on the other hand, and some others who have appeared here, all you do is to toss up platitudes, pre-fashioned notions: the vulgar trash that surrounds you. It is sort of like surviving on one's own vomit if I can put it so bluntly.

The essential message? We can and we must do much better.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Disclaimer: The above is a fairly outrageous post. It is perhaps an 'experiment' with a form of direct speech that aims to completely side-step 'political correctness'. To describe people who (intellectually) 'live on their own vomit' is accurate, I really feel that, but it is thoroughly outrageous to actually say such a thing. So, please understand that in really that post, and many of my posts, are not really aimed at any one person but to a 'general man'. True, it is that man we are becoming under so many different pressures. Yet I hold to the belief that, in life, still and perhaps always, a great deal depends on 'the quality of the heart' and less on 'the order of one's ideas', which of course are often disordered!

Too, I am all too aware that notions of contempt for 'mass men', for certain modern trend which take a position of rebellion against traditionalist and theistic schools of thought, and so much more, can, with certain inflections, dovetail into 'unwholesome' philosophies, political philosophies and even movements. Ortega y Gasset's ideas, along with DH Lawrence, for all their vivacity and 'truth', could also be bent over toward various forms of neo-fascism. And certain forms of Catholicism when rigidly traditionalist also seem to move in that direction.

I experiment with ideas often whilst I am reading and I allow myself to come under the influence of those I read, and then I exteriorize it and see how it flies. Possibly like many I have no established or defined way to organize a concrete political philosophy, and certainly spiritually, or religiously, I really don't know what precise position to take. So I take no one in particular. It might not be obvious but it would not be impossible to articulate an atheistic position and still defend much of what I attempt to defend.

Anyway, please don't take me too seriously. Ideas, perhaps yes, but not me, at least personally.

[Skip]

(Though you have certainly forgotten, or had never remembered, the recent topic has been 'salvation'. I am still on that topic, more or less, though I imagine that your mind has slipped away from it. It is I think one of the most relevant topics one can think about).

To my poor dimly-glimmering little mind, salvation does seem a slightly slithery sort of subject. Never having come to grips with original sin, I continue to resist a judgmental entity that condemns mortals for being... well, just for being. And maybe for having ideas.
I suspect the notion of "the fall" - and of any subsequent fall from an idyllic state, be it Grace or Harmony or Innocence or Nature - simply refers to civilization. Moving from hunter-gatherer bands to urban societies means giving up much of our spontaneous animal behaviour, having to curb our impulses, to think before we lash out, consider the consequences, defer pleasure, exercise discipline and observe protocol.
That simple necessity has been elaborated to intricate and intrusive systems of control.
Civilized life is a constant struggle between the demands of society and the desires of the individual.
I don't really think we need the curliques: just keep negotiating.

Just a brief word on "political correctness".
You seem to have got hold of the notion that I follow it blindly. In this - though not uniquely in this - you are mistaken. I helped invent political correctness. I fought damn hard for inclusive public policy and non-pejorative public discourse. I've taken a modicum of backlash from bigots lofty and low. My skin is as thick as my tongue.

I'll spare you any further sawing at your refined intellect with this rusty old knife.

[Skip]

Jabberwocky

By Lewis Carroll

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.


“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”


He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
And stood awhile in thought.


And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!


One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.


“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.


’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

[uwot]

So it is not so much that I am 'so smart' about any of this but is rather that I just take a stand in relation to the topic, and define the topic, that characterizes my approach and what I write. In comparison to you, on the other hand, and some others who have appeared here, all you do is to toss up platitudes, pre-fashioned notions: the vulgar trash that surrounds you. It is sort of like surviving on one's own vomit if I can put it so bluntly.

What is 'political correctness' if not a platitude? What about 'mass man'? We have been called the hoi polloi, plebeians, commoners, the unclean, the mob, untermensch. If I had to choose, I would take my own vomit over someone else's.

Anyway, please don't take me too seriously. Ideas, perhaps yes, but not me, at least personally.

On this forum, you are your ideas, Gustav Bjornstrand.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Hello there uwot! As I understand things, intellectual life, which is also religious and spiritual life in my book (existentialism), is about defining things. Defining is a peculiar and also a dangerous act. I think you note this because, again, you are reacting against my use of a defining term. But if you are going to establish some block---to define it---I think you will have to say just what about that block do you defend. Describe the value there. Please note that my 'position' is not one of attacking in the sense of desiring to do harm to the one I define as 'mass man', but quite the opposite it has to do with defining an alternative. This is what I have come to through a long period of study of many different subjects. As I see things it is not enough to express disfavor that some defining term has been used, I think you have to make definitions against it. This is a philosophy forum after all. And even if it doesn't rise quite to that it is a discussion forum.

'Political correctness', as I define it, is thinking that is pre-determined. Political correctness in large part might be ways of viewing the world, or life, or society, or 'reality', which are mediated (perhaps) by mercantile interests. Just one possibility. In the giant corporatism of our modern societies, run by huge mercantile interests, any divisions and distinctions are rendered irrelevant---harmful in a sense to the smooth operations of the mercantile system. Politically correct ideas, then, are 'lies' or 'distortions' of truths. I can see how politically correct ideas could be 'platitudes', but I take them as mechanisms by which perception is dulled, or perhaps as substitutes for incisive thinking.

As I have said, I use forums as a means to express ideas about the subjects I am investigating. I have mentioned that certain definitions about 'mass man' (of a negative sort) most certainly have a dangerous aspect. This must be acknowledged and spoken about. Aldous Huxely, if ever you were to read his earlier works, was quite decidedly favored an 'aristocratic' outlook. Well, up until the Second World War. After the war or as a result of it his positions were modified by the very destructive things that can occur when one group 'defines' as against another.

Europe, and the so-called Western World, have been in a process of dealing with and internalizing 'all this'. In a certain sense, at least I note this, people have 'surrendered the field' and have given up on coming to strong definitions about the specifics of life, culture, value and civilization because they have been 'terrorized' by man's terrible potentials. So, it is easier perhaps to entertain and accept 'politically correct' formulations or as you might say 'platitudes'. But this does not change the fact that many things about life, religion, 'spiritual values', etc., still have to be decided.

Indeed, despite any real involvement in any substantial sense by 'mass man', 'our world' is indeed being defined by powerful interests that control temporality. 'Mass man' in this sense is (as Jonathan Bowden says)(I recommend listening to this talk on Julius Evola) 'just a sack of potatoes' that is moved here and there as the need arises. I suggest that it is up to the individual---you---to arrive at concrete definitions and to test them on the world. I think you said, pages back, that you chose not to intervene (philosophically or ethically?) in the mental or spiritual life of your children. This idea impressed me. It is as if you imagine that you can simply leave them to themselves. And that somehow, someone or something, will fill in the void, will offer values. This is as I see it an example of having 'surrendered the field'.

I am trying to suggest that as we approach these Grand Questions there are very, very difficult questions that need to be confronted and 'thought through', but not with pre-fab political correctness. I admit that these are the most contentious issues that can be entertained and also that these are dangerous areas, literal mine-fields.

Right at this moment, through various sources, I am looking into the notion of 'Perennialism', and considering such metaphysical constants that may exist, potentially, and which are beyond manifested existence. Any religious definition, I suggest, requires some sort of constant as I imagine you and others here see fairly clearly, and this is of course why it becomes necessary to do away with the very idea! To surrender this act in the fire of apparent thermo-dynamic Truth (a la Skip).

To define such a constant is, of course, highly problematic to say the least. But similarly problematic is to do away with the possibility of a constant, or to have it taken away. The origins of nihilism come to us through having undermined such constants in our thinking. I have discovered this is both 'positive' and 'negative'. It is a good thing to apply an acid to our 'routines of thought' and to melt them down to a puddle. But only if they are resurrected again, only if they coalesce in some new, useful and productive form. If 'you' can't or won't do that, I assure you that someone else will do it for you.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

To my poor dimly-glimmering little mind, salvation does seem a slightly slithery sort of subject.

Indeed it is. Nevertheless, the idea or perhaps the 'meta-idea' is quite alive in your thinking and is indeed fundamental to it. I have made an effort to point this out to you.

I suspect the notion of "the fall" - and of any subsequent fall from an idyllic state, be it Grace or Harmony or Innocence or Nature - simply refers to civilization.

You may indeed come to such a conclusion, at which point your defined idea will take shape in a way that facilitates its use in this dusty old world. Your thinking is refracted through a Marxian lens with every expression, Skip. Yet you seem to be ignorant of this 'ocean' underlying the structure of your ideas. To gain an understanding of Marxism, which derives from aspects of supreme Occidentalism, will help you to grasp that which you grasp. The more we subject ourselves to our own inverted eye-ness, the more we are able to turn the lens around to examine the lens itself, the more personal power we gain (in my view). I suggest, Skip, that you lack the capacity to see yourself. In this, your ideas are routines of thinking and little more.

The metaphysical idea of 'fall', however, has far more dimension and relevance than you seem aware. To have and to hold to a definition of man as existing in a fallen state has a correlate: that of rising up to meet a higher and more demanding pattern or possibility.

I've taken a modicum of backlash from bigots lofty and low.

Sure, and note that you define yourself at some level as some sort of 'saint'. You are certainly not 'a bigot'. Les bigots sont les autres you might say. When we define ourselves as against someone else, but when we do not really know who or what we are and 'what informs us', it is quite easy to slip into a form of intellectual righteousness as against 'the bigots'. Generally, to engage at this unconscious level will result in polarized and non-productive conversation. In short, the end of the possibility of conversation.

[uwot]

Hello there uwot! As I understand things, intellectual life, which is also religious and spiritual life in my book (existentialism), is about defining things. Defining is a peculiar and also a dangerous act.

Dr Johnson wrote the first dictionary of English. To do so he travelled England to discover what people mean by different words, because he was astute enough to realise that defining words is not something that one person can do for a mature natural language.

People do make up words to fill a perceived need and if they write it down, they get to define it. One of my favourite examples is floccinaucinihilipilification, the act of estimating as worthless. The word is not commonly used, but the referent is what I generally do after reading your stuff.

If you define things to your own satisfaction, you end up with a private language, so that you are only speaking to yourself. Something your general unpleasantness should achieve anyway.

I think you note this because, again, you are reacting against my use of a defining term. But if you are going to establish some block---to define it---I think you will have to say just what about that block do you defend. Describe the value there. Please note that my 'position' is not one of attacking in the sense of desiring to do harm to the one I define as 'mass man', but quite the opposite it has to do with defining an alternative. This is what I have come to through a long period of study of many different subjects.

I suspect what you describe as study is what I would call having read a few books.

As I see things it is not enough to express disfavor that some defining term has been used, I think you have to make definitions against it. This is a philosophy forum after all.

Indeed. And if you ever study philosophy, you will discover it is more than semantics.

And even if it doesn't rise quite to that it is a discussion forum.

'Political correctness', as I define it, is thinking that is pre-determined.

Yes; to reiterate: it is your prerogative to define words as you wish. If no one concurs, you are talking to yourself.

Political correctness in large part might be ways of viewing the world, or life, or society, or 'reality', which are mediated (perhaps) by mercantile interests. Just one possibility. In the giant corporatism of our modern societies, run by huge mercantile interests, any divisions and distinctions are rendered irrelevant---harmful in a sense to the smooth operations of the mercantile system. Politically correct ideas, then, are 'lies' or 'distortions' of truths.

Oh, I see. You are a conspiracy nutter.

I can see how politically correct ideas could be 'platitudes', but I take them as mechanisms by which perception is dulled, or perhaps as substitutes for incisive thinking.

You misunderstand. It is your pejorative use of 'politically correct' that is platitudinous. I wouldn’t defend the term ‘politically correct’ for precisely that reason. Perhaps you could give some examples of the sort of ideas you are talking about.

As I have said, I use forums as a means to express ideas about the subjects I am investigating. I have mentioned that certain definitions about 'mass man' (of a negative sort) most certainly have a dangerous aspect. This must be acknowledged and spoken about. Aldous Huxely, if ever you were to read his earlier works, was quite decidedly favored an 'aristocratic' outlook. Well, up until the Second World War. After the war or as a result of it his positions were modified by the very destructive things that can occur when one group 'defines' as against another.

Europe, and the so-called Western World, have been in a process of dealing with and internalizing 'all this'. In a certain sense, at least I note this, people have 'surrendered the field' and have given up on coming to strong definitions about the specifics of life, culture, value and civilization because they have been 'terrorized' by man's terrible potentials. So, it is easier perhaps to entertain and accept 'politically correct' formulations or as you might say 'platitudes'. But this does not change the fact that many things about life, religion, 'spiritual values', etc., still have to be decided.

Only if you need idolatry to do your thinking for you. Have you no idea how religion works?

Indeed, despite any real involvement in any substantial sense by 'mass man', 'our world' is indeed being defined by powerful interests that control temporality. 'Mass man' in this sense is (as Jonathan Bowden says)(I recommend listening to this talk on Julius Evola) 'just a sack of potatoes' that is moved here and there as the need arises. I suggest that it is up to the individual---you---to arrive at concrete definitions and to test them on the world.

On the contrary, it is up to individuals to engage themselves with others' use of words to better understand. This involves not only a vocabulary of words that are used in common, but some appreciation of how context affects meaning.

I think you said, pages back, that you chose not to intervene (philosophically or ethically?) in the mental or spiritual life of your children. This idea impressed me. It is as if you imagine that you can simply leave them to themselves. And that somehow, someone or something, will fill in the void, will offer values. This is as I see it an example of having 'surrendered the field'.

Again you have misconstrued. I said I didn’t choose their idols for them; I don’t believe they are necessary for philosophical or ethical development. Many are harmless, some, such as you appear to advocate, are damaging.

I am trying to suggest that as we approach these Grand Questions there are very, very difficult questions that need to be confronted and 'thought through', but not with pre-fab political correctness. I admit that these are the most contentious issues that can be entertained and also that these are dangerous areas, literal mine-fields.

You do not mean literal.

Right at this moment, through various sources, I am looking into the notion of 'Perennialism', and considering such metaphysical constants that may exist, potentially, and which are beyond manifested existence. Any religious definition, I suggest, requires some sort of constant as I imagine you and others here see fairly clearly, and this is of course why it becomes necessary to do away with the very idea! To surrender this act in the fire of apparent thermo-dynamic Truth (a la Skip).

To define such a constant is, of course, highly problematic to say the least. But similarly problematic is to do away with the possibility of a constant, or to have it taken away. The origins of nihilism come to us through having undermined such constants in our thinking.

That I would suggest, is a platitude. The fact that fewer people believe constants does not mean they believe nothing. It just means they are sophisticated enough to appreciate that life is more complex than the dogmatic platitudes of religion and totalitarian politics insist.

I have discovered this is both 'positive' and 'negative'. It is a good thing to apply an acid to our 'routines of thought' and to melt them down to a puddle. But only if they are resurrected again, only if they coalesce in some new, useful and productive form. If 'you' can't or won't do that, I assure you that someone else will do it for you.

I don't think you understand language; it is much more democratic than suits you. It is my belief that in order to communicate effectively, you need to appreciate that meaning is fluid and contextual; I for instance have had to revise my understanding of complete and utter wanker.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Hello there uwot. Sorry to put it this way but this is how it is: If you wish to dialog with me you are going to have to put real work into defining your own ideas about things, and in complete posts independent of mine. In my view, the cut-and-respond method works against conversation, generally. I am going to extract from your post some potentially interesting parts and convert them into questions. If you engage with any of the questions, great. But if you don't or cannot I will not respond to your posts.

I say that defining things is crucial, and is the primary act of any man, in any context, except those who have given up or surrendered the field. Do you agree or disagree with this? How do your definitions, if you make them (and I assume you do), function. What are those definitions?

In the intellectual sphere, we deal in a world composed of words, a language-world. To become involved in intellect and ideas is to get involved with language, and meaning, and the history of thinking that lies behind it all. 'Books' are the receptacles of this, and we read books in order to familiarize ourselves, and to immerse ourselves, in the ideas of our fellows.

You wrote:

• 'I suspect what you describe as study is what I would call having read a few books'.

And yes, of course, that is part of study. But it is certainly not all. For example, I have lived in numerous countries in Latin America and so I have opinions about Latinos and Latin American issues. Not only from reading but through living in the place. Your statement, in my view, is loaded more with animus than with anything else, I sense. Do you mean that there is a source of knowing that is independent of 'books', i.e. of language? If so what is it? Speak about how you approach knowledge, or meaning, and how you think about these things.

'Indeed. And if you ever study philosophy, you will discover it is more than semantics.'

This is another loaded statement. It is the animus that shines out of it. That is not so much a problem if that animus can also begin to express itself. Do you mean to say that you suppose I have no contact with philosophy? And by philosophy that you mean those philosophies that are written in books? Do you mean to say that I have not read enough books, or just certain ones? Do you think I mean, when I speak about the value of metaphysics, or the effect of it, that I am referring solely to 'semantics'? But semantics (as in specific definitions of words) was your contribution here. When I speak of 'defining' I mean it in a larger sense: What sort of world we are in; What structures lie behind it or underneath it, etc. Please speak about how you approach and answer some of these questions.

Oh, I see. You are a conspiracy nutter.

Another merely baiting statement. You are up to three or four now and I find it tiresome if you don't simultaneously work to fill out your own ideas. I would say that Perception, generally, is a sort of 'conspiracy' between those who organize their perception. How we come to see our world is the working out of a series of agreements. In this sense it is a grand conspiracy we are all part of. To look at the cultural and social world that surrounds us and to see it as the sum of 'conspiration', influenced by propaganda (television and the studied use of communication), and largely or significantly determined by economic forces, is a rather obvious statement it seems to me. How do you see it? How do you think about it? How do you think about the way that you, as a person, have been informed? From whence came your values?

Only if you need idolatry to do your thinking for you. Have you no idea how religion works?

Talk about 'how religion works'. Talk about what it is and what it does. You are essentially saying: You do not see how religion works. So, go to work on speaking about that.

Again you have misconstrued. I said I didn’t choose their idols for them; I don’t believe they are necessary for philosophical or ethical development. Many are harmless, some, such as you appear to advocate, are damaging.

I think the work I used here was 'authority'. I accept authority and consider authorities as persons of tremendous and indispensable value and importance. In 'authority' I will use the stem which is to say 'author' (1250–1300; earlier auct(h)or, Middle English auto(u)r < Anglo-French < Latin auctor writer, progenitor <augēre to increase, augment], I mean 'originator' and 'definer'. This is a basic act of literary culture. It is how ideas come into our world. To hold to ideas is to have been exposed to ideas, and this happens by coming in contact with 'authority' in one form or another.

I have the sense that you do not, or did not, really share those ideas that you value with your children. I may be very wrong, but this is how I interpreted your previous statement. This is not so uncommon and so I am speaking less of you than of general trends. It is part I think of 'abandoning the field', which means really leaving it up to someone else, or to culture generally. Our definitions of the world, then, will be absorbed generally, they will flow in from around us through any number of different media. This is what I am speaking about. I think it is far better to go right to the sources and to select those sources. And this is an act of discrimination, of defining, of selection. It is a conscious and volitional act of valuation. And also I mean to limit the information to those sources that one feels contain 'real value', formative value. This means to discriminate against 'the world'. To keep certain things out.

Now, if you want to speak to this or about this please do. Talk about your relationship to education and how you approach or approached it.

The fact that fewer people believe constants does not mean they believe nothing.

Do people now believe less in 'constants'? Are you sure? Is it not possible that having no 'constants' as a referent may lead away from the capacity to define anything in reality? I mean if taken to its logical extreme? Have you really thought about this?

It seems quite true that even without 'constants', as I am speaking of them, people will still have thought and be able to think about 'something'. But this is sort of my point: thinking merely os something might really be thinking about 'nothing' as the term is used popularly: trash, irrelevancies, etc. And while it is true that millions of people thinking of irrelevancies is not the same as thinking, almost Buddha-like, of 'nothing', it is not at all the same as pointed or informed thought, which at its highest point, I say, is 'aristocratic'. In the original Greek sense!

This is a chance for you, uwot, at least with me, to begin to write out full paragraphs of what you think. If you are actually interested in conversation I think you owe to me, to readership and also to yourself. Again, I regret putting it to you in this way sensing that you will react against it. But if you don't fill out your own ideas you will get no more response from me.

[Harry Baird]

Hello again. I've been following this thread, and even though I'd dropped out, I thought now might be a good time to drop in again. I thought maybe I've got something half-way useful to contribute, but maybe not (at any rate, it sure is long! Sorry for bending your ears so much...). We'll see.

I have a friend who I discovered fairly recently is a Christian. He is a thoroughly intelligent fellow: to get into the degree he completed, you had to gain a tertiary entrance rank amongst the top 2% of the (competing) population. He also has a thoroughly rational mind: his degree was in engineering, and since graduating he has worked as a software developer, and very successfully at that. It surprised me, then, to learn that he defends his Christian faith in a very peculiar, and particularly (what seems to me to be) non-rational manner. His position is pretty much this: "It is impossible to know or even to reasonably judge what is true in ultimate matters, and so the best we can do is to pick the first faith that we encounter, and adhere to it". In line with this: his parents are Christian, he was brought up Christian, and so he has adopted the Christian faith, and defends it as best he can, admitting that had he been born to Hindu parents, he would be a Hindu, even though, from his current perspective, this would have been the wrong choice; just as, from that perspective, his current choice would have been wrong. He is not a fundamentalist Christian, and he leaves a lot of things open, but basically he believes that the Bible if not literally true is metaphorically true, and adheres to the typical Christian doctrine of salvation through Christ. The most curious thing to me about his faith is that he believes that predestination is likely: that God has chosen some people for heaven, and some for hell, and that this is/was their fate prior even to being born, but this curiosity is beside the commentary I want to make on my friend's position.

So, what is that commentary? Well, firstly, I want to acknowledge that my friend does have something of a point: it's interesting to contemplate how little we *truly* know, and how entirely possible it is that everything we *think* we know (especially about ultimate matters) could be turned on its head with one shocking revelation; how entirely *possible*, however unlikely it is, that the Bible is wholly divinely inspired. Nevertheless, and secondly, I think that my friend's approach is largely, but not wholly (see below) misguided. I believe in testing the plausibility of our beliefs, even if we cannot know anything for certain. This, then, is where I come to religion: with a set of experiences, both personal and second-hand, and with a logical mind, which, combined, allow me to test which of the tenets of religion hold water, which is to say, seem to be more plausible than any of the alternatives. I would imagine (hope) that this is the same way that everybody else in this thread approaches the subject (am I right?).

For various reasons, presumably mostly experience, I seem to find some of the Christian tenets more plausible than do many (but not all) of the participants in this thread. The topic of salvation has come up, and along with it the notion of sin. These seem to me to be amongst the more plausible of Christian ideas. I admit that I don't have anything very strong to "prove" them to anyone, but my (bitter) experience has been that we (possibly literally) really do have a devil in one ear and an angel in the other, and that our task is to navigate this world without succumbing to the former, and heeding the latter. I also believe that this task is so fiendishly difficult as to be effectively impossible, and that, potentially, the consequences of failure are not so pleasant: hence the possibility of salvation; salvation from the consequences of "listening through the wrong ear". My view of salvation then is perhaps a little different to Gustav's: I do not see it so much as a lifting up from ghastly circumstances (although it is that too) as a release from consequences.

Let me, though, acknowledge some potential problems with this perspective:

* It presumes that each person knows objective right and wrong, so as to allow him/her to make the right choice. Arguably, humanity does not possess such a consistent knowledge. On the other hand, arguably, people are imbued with a conscience so as to be intrinsically capable of making the right choices (or, in other words, to "listen through the right ear"). I feel that in this world we have been led and corrupted very far from our consciences though, so that this task becomes increasingly difficult.

* It presumes some sort of punishment for effectively unavoidable behaviour. How could this be just? Well, we don't have the background knowledge of how this whole state of affairs, this universe and all of its metaphysical rules, came to be. We don't know exactly what we might have done to have become incarnate in this universe. Thus, we have no real idea of whether such a requirement upon us truly is unjust (hearkening back to my friend's notion that we cannot know the truth of ultimate matters, as I foreshadowed above). Moreover, it might well be that it *is* unjust, but that that is neither our fault nor the fault of any higher power who has our best interests at heart, because that higher power might not be omnipotent, and might be fighting injustice just as we are - and, in fact, the possibility of salvation might very well be one of the *means* by which that higher power is fighting injustice.

* To a scientific-materialist-atheist, all of this might seem like a violation of Occam's Razor. "Why", s/he might ask, "posit these metaphysical rules and systems, when they are unnecessary to explain what we know about life?". Well, in my experience, purely materialist/mechanical explanations of life are *not* sufficient. I started seriously considering the notions of sin and salvation when I had experiences of non-physical entities which meant me harm (or at least spoke as though they did - they seem incapable of affecting me other than psychically, which is bad enough). Speaking strictly rationally, it is possible to posit all sorts of different explanations as to the origin and intent of these entities, but, coming back again to *plausibility*, in what seems to me to be the spirit of parsimony, and considering that such entities are described in most if not all of the world's religions, it seems to me most plausible that they are real spiritual beings who are seeking to deflect us from the honest, upright, moral and spiritual path. And if we can be deflected, then there must be a path from which we can be deflected to start with. This is pretty much where my view of the reality of salvation comes from: the experience of beings seeking to lead us away from it, and the testimony of those who have found it and been saved by spiritual beings on the opposite side of the spectrum, the holy and righteous side. I realise that to those without such experiences, it's all a bit, "Ho hum, well, I can't really judge without experiencing such things for myself", but, well, I feel it needs to be said anyhow.

Skip, I hope this goes some (perhaps small, but then, I really don't have any firm answers, I'm groping my way towards truth as much as any man) way towards answering (from my perspective) the questions you posed in the previous page of this thread: "But... what is salvation? From what do we need to be saved/salvaged? Where is the perdition coming from, and how is it distributed?".

You seem to see salvation in very material terms, as the salvaging of this planet's ecological systems from the damage we have done to them, presumably because you don't believe in a spiritual reality beyond material reality, as suggested by your (particularly eloquent) prose piece on the splendour of "mechanical" life. This, in my view, is certainly a meaningful "flavour" of salvation, and I would suggest that the fact of the world being in the state it is in now is precisely *because* of people "listening through the wrong ear". Perhaps salvation is possible not just individually but also communally, in line with your perspective.

You asked a follow-up question:

"Okay, what's it been since the onset of organized religion, +/-4000 years?
In that time, since the first oh-so-poetic awareness of good and bad stuff in the world and advice to turn our internal eyes heavenward/ Godward/ toward renunciation, are we ever farther removed from the possibility of self-annihilation? Have we been saved?"

This, again, is predicated on a "material" and "communal" salvation. What if, though, as I suggest, salvation is, instead, at least potentially, "spiritual" and "personal"? What if a person is saved based on finally "tuning in" to the right ear, and following that voice to a Source or Representative, with whom s/he (consciously or subconsciously) forges a "relationship of salvation", which, in its revolutionary effect, absolves the person of the consequences of his/her past sins forged out of "listening through the wrong ear"? And, as I have acknowledged in prior posts, I am speaking in theory here, having not experienced such a salvation myself, or at least, not in any permanent, ongoing sense.

You asked another follow-up question:

"No, I mean how many - what percent of the people who have lived and died on Earth in the past 4000 years - have actually been salvaged? Are the savings increasing over time? Are the odds of long-term species viability better now than in 2000BC?"

Aside from noting again the materialist-communal view you advance of salvation, in answer to your question: who knows how many have been saved, and whether or not the savings are increasing over time? I view this world as a spiritual battleground; the number of individual savings might well depend in part on which way the battle turns, and, at this juncture in history, and in my spiritual naiveté, I am not entirely sure where it has turned, nor where the balance lies.

Mike Strand, I have no idea whether Universal Salvation is true or not - it doesn't seem to me to be so much of a logical necessity though, because, as I said, we don't know how we came into this universe and what we did to deserve being here, nor whether our God is omnipotent, nor what this universe's metaphysical rules are and to what extent our God had a role in setting them up. It would be nice to believe in, and I certainly hope it is true, but what if God is fighting for us as much as we are, against forces over which neither he nor we are guaranteed victory or even power?

All of this is, in its own way, to suggest that, despite the bristles his approach raises, I think that Gustav is on track in raising the possibility that there are important ideas in Christianity that, even if we reject Christianity as a literal, prescriptive, doctrinal faith, require salvaging; ideas like that of salvation, being something real in this world that we need to come to terms with personally, whether we see it in the more literal terms in which I see it, or in the more symbolic terms that (perhaps) "theopoeticians" see it. Ideas, too, like "faith".

On the other hand, socio-politically and economically, I am more aligned with Skip in this thread. I am inclined, for example, to view "political correctness" as a pejorative term to describe what is, at least ideally, basic common courtesy; sure, there are times where "political correctness" becomes unhelpful dogma, and there it is appropriate to point this out directly, but this is/was not the original intent of the phenomenon, so far as I can tell. I am inclined, too, to view global capitalism as complicit in the creation of nations of poverty. Too, as seems to be the case for Skip, I do not consume animal products - in fact, I try as far as possible to go even further and not consume any products that require death or damage to plants. In that context, I want to respond to this:

I'm not advocating anything, not philosophizing, not proposing, not advising, not trying to bring about any utopia.

Good lord, man, why-ever not? Isn't such your duty as a thinking, reasoning, responsible adult?

[Skip]

Harry Baird:

Skip, I hope this goes some (perhaps small, but then, I really don't have any firm answers, I'm groping my way towards truth as much as any man) way towards answering (from my perspective) the questions you posed in the previous page of this thread: "But... what is salvation? From what do we need to be saved/salvaged? Where is the perdition coming from, and how is it distributed?".

You seem to see salvation in very material terms, as the salvaging of this planet's ecological systems from the damage we have done to them,

Not really. I used 'salvage' to put 'salvation' in philological perspective; to anchor the idea in reality. I do understand that it's about the individual soul. I'm not objecting to the idea of a soul or spirit (even though I don't believe in that as a separable portion of the human psyche, I can go along with it as metaphor.) What I reject is the notion that souls need saving. I don't think they're in peril, just from being in the world.
I think a soul is in danger of perdition (loss, going astray, a sense of being cut off from one's native ties) only when the individual succumbs to unwholesome influence; acts contrary to integrity, mental [spiritual] health, one's support structure.
Similarly, I have no objection to the concept of sin - which I translate as any act against self and or necessary relationships; damage to wholeness, wellness, balance, harmony.
What I reject is original sin: that we are born bad. (Of course we are born potentially good and bad in equal measure.) I understand that humans require a great deal of instruction and guidance to reach independent maturity; I accept that we can be helped to make sound judgments and that, when we have done wrong, we can perform acts of contrition and redemption to regain that desired state of harmony. I accept the altruism of a person in good standing with his society and his own conscience rescuing someone who has made many bad choices, even at some cost; giving of one's own wholeness (grace, if you like) to restore a fellow human's.

What I reject is the idea that the death and/or suffering of another person, even a volunteer, can save us from the consequences of our wrong decisions. I utterly and strenuously reject any deity that is persuaded or mollified by the sacrifice of an innocent. To me, this is the single most odious precept in religion - and it's so pervasive that I can't help but identify it as a symptom.

....I would suggest that the fact of the world being in the state it is in now is precisely *because* of people "listening through the wrong ear". Perhaps salvation is possible not just individually but also communally, in line with your perspective.

I used to believe that when I was younger; I have given it up. Collectively, we will always listen with the wrong ear, because the devils shouting there promise so many dark gratifications that my amazing, beautiful, tasty, hilarious material universe can't. Every Torquemada and Mao has many thousands of minions eager to do his vicious bidding.
Because we're crazy.

Perhaps that is the insight upon which the notion of original sin was based. Perhaps that is why worship had to be inserted into every civilization. Against species insanity, the gods themselves have been contending all this time in vain? No: the gods have been battling across the scorched fields of our settlements, hurling fiery balls of madness at one another.

I have often wondered why intelligent men - and even a few women - have expanded so much time and thought on theology. I know some very good religious people, but it's not their religion that makes them good; it is their goodness that drives them to choose the positive aspects of their religion. All belief systems are vast and varied, yet the good people draw the exact same rules of behaviour from these very different deep wells. I certainly do not begrudge them the confidence of certainty or the comfort of an immaterial protector.... and do not envy them (or you) the threat of malignant spirits. As you say , I can't speak directly to the experience, and I certainly won't try, a la Gustav Bjornstrand, to explain you to yourself.

What if, though, as I suggest, salvation is, instead, at least potentially, "spiritual" and "personal"?

Well, what if it is? Why, then, the cathedrals and pyramids? Why the robes and pomp and burnings at the stake?
If the saving is done each soul by himself (as I believe it is, and only ever can be, from long before the Buddha was invented to long after Muhammad is forgotten) then why the communal practice of religion or the one-size-fits-all canon?
It's most particularly the collective - inclusive/exclusive - nature of organized religion that I question. If the individuals saved do not accumulate over time - I mean, you'd expect the saved people to reach down and pull one each of their floundering brethren into their life-boat, wouldn't you? - and eventually make a better humanity, then what's the advantage of religion over non-religion? After all, I know some pretty good atheists, too, who behave exactly the same way as the good Christians, Jews and Hindus. If you also factor in the disadvantages of organized religion, what are we getting for all the strife and tithes?

(Yes, I know cost-effectiveness is a crass materialist concept, but an awful lot of highly placed Christians are familiar, not to say intimate, with it.)

I'm not advocating anything, not philosophizing, not proposing, not advising, not trying to bring about any utopia.

Good lord, man, why-ever not? Isn't such your duty as a thinking, reasoning, responsible adult?

That was addressed to a longish deflective Gustaving of my point-form response to his point-form questions on human insanity.
I have done all of those things - even here, where my mission is to deflate philosopher-balloons - and can't promise to refrain from them in perpetuity.

[Harry Baird]

What I reject is the notion that souls need saving. I don't think they're in peril, just from being in the world.
[...]
What I reject is original sin: that we are born bad.

Not to be tediously repetitive and obvious, but these views seem to me to be a consequence of your metaphysic, which (and correct me if I'm wrong) is a materialist one, rejecting anything spiritual - separable souls, immaterial spirit entities, deities, an afterlife, etc. I can readily understand how with such a metaphysic, there would (could) be nothing perilous to speak of from being in the world, since at death one simply decomposes - what could possibly be perilous about that? Similarly, it is if not impossible then at least very peculiar to imagine humans being born "bad" when their entire, actual existence literally starts with the gradual emergence of a brain-based consciousness in the womb.

If, though, you allow for the spiritual, then it is entirely possible (and even likely) that the soul survives physical death, and that what happens to it next is a consequence of how it has executed its existence in this world. Similarly, it is entirely possible (and again, likely) that the soul had some sort of existence prior to incarnating into this world - an existence either similar to this "flesh and bones" existence, or of some different, perhaps more immaterial, type - an existence during which it might have been judged "bad", and "in need of redemption", whereupon it entered this world with its task to seek such redemption. Another possibility that accounts for "original" sin is that along with genetic inheritance, there is moral inheritance, such that the sins of our (original) ancestors have been passed on to us - again, this does not seem fair, but again, we do not know how and why the rules of this place were created, or by whom (I don't think this is the most likely possibility, btw). Do I know any of this to be true? Not in any rigorous way, sure, it's to some extent my intuition and best guess, simply given that I have good reason to affirm the spiritual.

What I reject is the idea that the death and/or suffering of another person, even a volunteer, can save us from the consequences of our wrong decisions. I utterly and strenuously reject any deity that is persuaded or mollified by the sacrifice of an innocent.

Assuming you're alluding to the crucifixion of Christ, perhaps you could look at it in a different light: God (as/through Christ) made this sacrifice not to "persuade" or "mollify" *Himself*, but as an expression of love, of the lengths to which He is willing to go to offer salvation to His people. After all, don't we laud as heroes those men and women who die in the course of defending or saving others, e.g. firefighters? Can you see this as the same principle writ large? As for the practical point of the sacrifice (after all, firefighters don't just kill themselves as an expression of love - they die as a practical result of trying to put out fires), my view is that it is part of some interplay between the divine and the demonic, some sort of system by which divinity may choose to humble itself before the demonic, in order to acquire the "capital" by which it may then offer a lifeline to grace and salvation. I think this puts the sacrifice into a whole different perspective, where it is not merely understandable, but amazing and humbling too for us - that a deity would put itself in that position for us. Again, there are difficulties with this view. One of them is:

* If until the sacrifice, "capital" was lacking by which to offer salvation to mankind, then what of all of the many people who existed prior to Christ - is/was there no possibility that they can be / have been saved? I'm not entirely sure how to answer this. Perhaps one answer is that salvation was still possible, it was simply a lot more difficult - the capital had not yet been raised. Perhaps another is that reincarnation is true, and that they will get their (better) chance at salvation in later births. Perhaps, too, there have been other similar sacrifices in the past, which have over time been lost to memory, or "expired", and this latest sacrifice was not so much the start of the possibility of redemption, as a "renewal" of that possibility (this seems less likely to me, but I'm simply exploring possibilities). Or perhaps it's an answer I can't even begin to imagine.

I used to believe that [communal salvation was possible --HB] when I was younger; I have given it up.

I don't know whether or not it is possible, one thing I do know though is: we all have a duty to do our utmost to bring it about.

Collectively, we will always listen with the wrong ear, because the devils shouting there promise so many dark gratifications that my amazing, beautiful, tasty, hilarious material universe can't. Every Torquemada and Mao has many thousands of minions eager to do his vicious bidding.
Because we're crazy.

See, I connect the ideas of the first and third of those sentences in a different way than you seem to: you seem to think (unless I'm misreading you), "We listen through the wrong ear because we're crazy"; I think it's the other way around, I think "We're crazy because we listen through the wrong ear [and are crazed by what we hear]".

Well, what if it [salvation --HB] is [at least potentially, "spiritual" and "personal" --HB]? Why, then, the cathedrals and pyramids? Why the robes and pomp and burnings at the stake?

Perversion of the purity of the essence of the original redemptive message due to - again, forgive the repetition - "listening through the wrong ear".

If the saving is done each soul by himself (as I believe it is, and only ever can be, from long before the Buddha was invented to long after Muhammad is forgotten) then why the communal practice of religion or the one-size-fits-all canon?

Well, I'm not so sure I *entirely* share your view that "the saving is done each soul by himself" - as I've just explained, in my view man is saved by accepting the gift of salvation from the divine, by "connecting a lifeline" to divinity, which (the lifeline), has been made possible (or at least more feasible) through a redemptive sacrifice, a divine humbling of itself in the face of evil. I suppose I'd view it as a partnership, with the divine as the major partner.

Why, then, the communal practice? To make widely known the possibility of this lifeline, and to offer some mechanisms (I believe, for example, that there is spiritual power in the Eucharist) by which to connect to it.

If the individuals saved do not accumulate over time - I mean, you'd expect the saved people to reach down and pull one each of their floundering brethren into their life-boat, wouldn't you? - and eventually make a better humanity, then what's the advantage of religion over non-religion?

I suppose that as for the advantage of religion, I'd refer you to my previous paragraph, and as for the saved reaching down to the unsaved, don't you see that happening already in the world around you? The problem, it seems to me, is that we are as a group so prone to listening through the wrong ear (or, in your frame, "crazy") that progress is difficult. I know personally how much of a problem this is because I struggle with addictive behaviours, which I know are leading me down the wrong path, yet I can't seem to do anything about them. Even believing theoretically in the possibility of salvation, I struggle to connect the lifeline.