By doing so---you or perhaps 'someone'---has pinned a designation on those aptitudes and activities because they desire to accentuate other ones. I sense though I have no way to 'prove' it that this voluntary acceptance of a designation is related to a general feminization of certain masculine skills, aptitudes and responsibilities. If this is so the ramifications are extensive. It points to a recovery of certain 'masculine skills', it points to a reassessment of them and also possibly a new relationship to them. Again, this seems to be a personal issue to you.
I am open to your analysis here, as Felasco is my favorite topic.
I will admit to being baffled by your ongoing attempt to label my point of view as feminine. It's not that I'm offended, because I would take such a characterization as a complement. However, feminine is just not a word I would use to describe my writing here. I'll clarify...
The thrust of my argument is to use to relentless rhetorical violence to rip from you that which you most treasure, a flattering fantasy personal identity built out of your considerable analytical and rhetorical skills. Does that sound feminine to you? It sounds more like just another male ego asshole evangelist buttinsky pontificator to me.
Feminine would be much wiser. Feminine would realize that you and I are what we are, that we are never going to change or grow to any substantial degree, and to mostly accept us as we are, and offer us another piece of Christmas coffee cake, while winking to the other gals what needs not be stated among those in the know, that we are just clueless nerd men, but it's not our fault, and we're kinda at least a little bit lovable anyway. And hey, we can fix stuff around the house!
Do you not have a wife? Have you not met many women? What is the obstacle here anyway?
Possible solutions: become less 'compulsive' in regard to analysis.
Yes, let's analyze that extensively for the next 14 pages!
Choose to grow from being a ego-child to a responsible participant in existent and on-going conversations that touch on the most important questions and problems.
I am doing exactly that throughout this thread.
The "problem" as I see it is that you will accept no analysis which threatens the analysis process itself. Endlessly challenging the content of thought is welcomed by you, you are very open minded in that regard, but challenging thought itself is not welcomed, because that threatens the game.
From my perspective, you've created a defensive wall around that which you most cherish, intellectualizing, and have limited your inquiry to what lies within the cozy courtyard you have constructed. I'm not claiming that this is somehow wrong, as you certainly have the right to proceed however you wish with your own inquiry.
What I'm attempting to do is first have us be clear whether intellectual analysis is a means, or an end in itself. If the later, you are right to dismiss my points, as the end we seek has already been reached.
If intellectual analysis is a means to some other end, this is something else entirely. In this case, intellectual analysis can be discarded if it proves not to be the best method of moving towards the desired end.
Is philosophy a means, or an end itself? What say you?
And finally---if indeed you feel you seek 'little rhetorical triumphs over complete strangers' (although I understand this as a jab at my fine self)---
It's not in any way a jab at you, none whatsoever. It is simply a public admission of my own personal weakness, and nothing more.
I would suggest that your concept of your own writing become a means by which you clarify yourself to yourself, and that if out of that process you succeed in communicating to another or any other, that is merely a by-product.
Ok, I like this, fair enough. Yes, that seems an insightful way to describe the forum experience, and often human communication in general. We use other people to talk to ourselves. A promising theory.
All these recommendations substantially modify the rather defeatist platform you have established for yourself. And you get this free of charge!
I appreciate the discount rate
but adamantly decline my position as being defeatist. It's only defeatist if one first assumes that intellectualism is essential, a proposition easily defeated.
I do agree that the way I go about this can reasonably be read as negative in nature, as I am attempting to tear down cherished structures.
Solution to what?
An excellent question. Yes, what is the desired end result that all this activity is supposedly moving towards? Solution is too big a goal, but I would say, addressing the problems which arise out of the fundamental human condition. That's what makes religion interesting to me, the attempt to get to the heart of the matter, to the bottom line.
And so I've been raising the question, is intellectualism the most efficient and effective way to get to the heart of the human problem? And I answer no, because thought itself is what the fundamental human problem arises from.
And because I am oriented to attainable things, at least I think so, my focus is sharpened. But you, with your 'solution', who could ever know what you are on about?
A mediocre teacher spells everything out so that the students can memorize and repeat it, and then indulge in the fantasy that they thus understand it. A better teacher creates an environment where the student conducts their own investigation. It doesn't matter what I'm on about, it matters what the reader finds for themselves, because only that will be real.
I would state it differently. It seems to me that any level of experience---let us say one that is arational or visionary, even if you wish psychedelic---will have to be translated back into ideas or feelings that can be used and applied in life.
Do we have to explain, label or analyze food, water, sunlight, the night sky, sleep or sex for them to provide value to our life?
Far from being defeatist, I claim the experience of reality has it's own value which is not dependent upon our labels, analysis and interpretations etc. This is good news for the vast majority of human beings who are not compulsive philosophical types such as you and I.
In a Christian context (topic of this thread) this means that the Bible and it's many interpreters, the churches and self appointed holy experts, theology and all the arguments and wars it spawns, can all be safely be set aside, because as the Beatles would sing, "love is all you need".
Wow, you're really going to nail me for citing the Beatles as an authoritative source!
Such a proclamation is of course anathema to the intellectual elite who depend upon intellectualism being declared the highest achievement so that they may see themselves as leading the charge forward. Imho, they have confused science with religion.
Essentially 'ideas' are what makes humans human
Then how do you explain the many millions, or perhaps billions, of humans who are not philosophical or intellectual by nature, and yet they lead human lives as full and rich and flawed as any intellectual? I propose that in regards to the topic of this thread and forum section, religion, there is little evidence that intellectualism is required.
So, you make allusions to some 'solution' which is never explained,
Because it's better if the reader conducts their own investigation.
Yet you don't go silent.
Because it is, imho, at least somewhat possible to use noise to show the limits of noise. As example, we've both seen that our dialog will go round and round for endless pages, and nothing will likely be accomplished on the level of the intellectual content. This mimics a process that's been repeated on the larger level of our entire culture.
However, there may be an accomplishment in the sense that a friendship will be created. That is, a form of love may push a few green shoots up through the intellectual concrete, and that is worth applauding.
Reading you, I sense a man who has established or had established for him a group of restrictions which he establishes around him by certain dogmatics.
I see a man who is attempting to escape the restriction that says thought and philosophy is the only path we can consider taking forward.
You seem to demand of yourself that you become not-yourself.
Like all human beings, I am a variety of things which are often in argument with each other. You see only the noisy part of me here, not the part that spends many days wandering the woods quietly doing nothing at all.
I intuit that you have established a feminine ideal for your masculine self. I personally understand this as a mistake.
Let's upload photos of our penises, and get past this once and for all.
Ha, only a man would say a dumb thing like that in a public forum!
Again, this is Public Relations gunk for after all who could argue against Love?
Ah, but it is easy to argue against theology, for there are many huge piles of corpses to point to.
'The experience of love' is a rather meaningless phrase.
It's not meaningless, but you are right in the sense that it is not rich in complexities which can be endlessly analyzed.
In any give moment, we surrender ourselves a bit, or we don't. It's the simplicity of this choice which makes it so beautiful, and so threatening, as there is no where to hide. We do it, or we don't, and then the next moment comes, and the choice arrives again.
It cannot be referred to as a 'solid' thing. It is required that 'love' be predefined, and predefinition means a surgical cutting through all the gunky layers of BS and PC and trashy, facile sentimentalism that surround it. So, without that work having been done, your assertion simply falls flat on its face.
No such work is necessary. In this moment I will surrender my huge ego to a moment of actually hearing you, or I will continue to plow over your thoughts with my own. I will do one, or I will do the other. Simple. Clear. Ruthless.
Must I become a 'typoholic nerd' along with you?
I submit this one to a public vote.
You establish yourself as a problem. Surely there is a 12-Step Program for all three of you! The Compulsive, the Nerd, and the Typoholic!
Being a compulsive typoholic nerd is only a problem if one has experienced the life giving value of silence, and then, being compulsive in nature, gets greedy about having more, More, MORE of the silence....
Yes, I know this is ridiculous, that's my special talent, as my wife will be happy to confirm.
My view is that focussed, clarifying thought, as well as the establishment of a 'group of concerns' and necessities of thought, are immensely valuable.
Ok then, do it, roll with that. Do some focused clarifying disciplined thought which challenges thought itself. Raise the level of your gaze from the content of this or that idea, to the larger picture.
If you study an idea, you learn something about that particular idea. If you study thought itself, you learn something about all ideas. It's still an intellectual analysis, but imho, it's a more efficient and powerful one.
As you know I live in Latino culture.
I meant to ask you about that, given your obvious non-latin name. Details welcome as you wish.
One thing I have come to understand is that (to speak quite generally) 'Latinos cannot reason'. What I am finding is that they perform a facsimile of 'reasoning' which is more like emotional vapors percolating up through the cerebral center and producing sparks or shimmerings.
Hoo boy....
My GF is in law school and makes me aware of some of the 'argumentations' of her various professors on certain points of law and in other areas too.
If you don't mind my nosyness, are you roughly of law school age as well?
It is like listening to the discourse of drunks and I am embarrassed for them. Latin Culture is by and large in a terrible mess.
Any other cultures you'd like to insult and proclaim yourself superior to while we're on the subject? Blacks? Jews? Gays? Armenians? I could create a master list and you could just check off the boxes if you wish.
Everything that you are placing under the rubric of 'theology' I would place under the rubric of 'foundational skills to navigate material existence', and I would highlight them as being 'the most important'.
I completely agree that analytical thought is a requirement for meeting the needs of the body, we have no argument there. But this thread and section is about something else, religion, meeting the needs of the mind.
So many words you and I! Attention Rick Lewis! We demand to be paid by the word!!!
