Secular Intolerance

[Greta]

Like the many everyman types who trusted Trump, who embodied the most predatory and amoral aspects of of the wealthy who have ruined their lives, you are blaming the wrong people.

Again, the issue is not "secularists", it's the fact that multinational companies and billionaires are taking over the role of governance from the government - once supposedly the people's representative but now uncritical lackey of their new self-interested feudal lords.

When speaking or rights and responsibilities, do fossil fuel companies take their social responsibilities seriously - or consider them at all, outside of litigation risks?

I'm referring to the human condition. You want to create scapegoats. You want to blame others so as to avoid admitting the human condition. A human education gradually acknowledges the human condition inviting what is necessary to become normal. Politics and secular education will create scapegoats to blame.[/quote]

You talk about the pointlessness of blame due to intrinsic problems of the human condition while constantly apportioning it - now for about 60 pages in this thread alone. So if the major problem is the human condition - intrinsic and irredeemable - then why is your beef about education and secularists?

The answer is clear - politics and religion. This is clear from your support of Trump and the fact that your scapegoats are the usual ones associated with your political tribe - atheists and non-compliant women (noting that the teaching profession tends to be dominated by women).

Meanwhile All that you complain about has been the case since year dot but you try to give the impression that corruption and blinkered thinking is a new secular invention. Further, with your reference to "secularised religion" to include all modern (and seemingly ancient) religions as well as atheists and agnostics, it's hard to know if there is anything on the Earth capable of pleasing you.

[davidm]

More awesome sex ed from Norway.

This is broadcast on state TV, btw, and aimed at 8-year-olds.

Oh, to live in a civilized nation instead of the U.S.A.!

[Belinda]

Nick_A wrote:

You've listed topics. For example you mentioned sexual taboos. Suppose a student asks why we have sexual taboos and why should anyone pay attention to them. How will secular sex education reply?

I note that you are asking the right question. Please research sexual taboos and let me know what you have learned.

[Nick_A]

More awesome sex ed from Norway.

This is broadcast on state TV, btw, and aimed at 8-year-olds.

Oh, to live in a civilized nation instead of the U.S.A.!

If a kid in a class of eight year-olds participating in a secular sex education class in NY were to ask their educator if they like the video, how would they respond?

[Nick_A]

Nick_A wrote:

You've listed topics. For example you mentioned sexual taboos. Suppose a student asks why we have sexual taboos and why should anyone pay attention to them. How will secular sex education reply?

I note that you are asking the right question. Please research sexual taboos and let me know what you have learned.

As usual the teacher passes the buck and the kid soon learns that these people he once thought to be knowledgeable are really fools when it comes to sex. What else are they ignorant of?

[davidm]

More awesome sex ed from Norway.

This is broadcast on state TV, btw, and aimed at 8-year-olds.

Oh, to live in a civilized nation instead of the U.S.A.!

If a kid in a class of eight year-olds participating in a secular sex education class in NY were to ask their educator if they like the video, how would they respond?

First, I don't think there are any "secular sex education" classes in NY geared toward 8-year-olds. But even if there were, what is the point of your question? I ask again: How would you teach sex ed to kids? And what do you think of the Norway sex ed videos?

[Nick_A]

Greta

You talk about the pointlessness of blame due to intrinsic problems of the human condition while constantly apportioning it - now for about 60 pages in this thread alone. So if the major problem is the human condition - intrinsic and irredeemable - then why is your beef about education and secularists?

The answer is clear - politics and religion. This is clear from your support of Trump and the fact that your scapegoats are the usual ones associated with your political tribe - atheists and non-compliant women (noting that the teaching profession tends to be dominated by women).

Meanwhile All that you complain about has been the case since year dot but you try to give the impression that corruption and blinkered thinking is a new secular invention. Further, with your reference to "secularised religion" to include all modern (and seemingly ancient) religions as well as atheists and agnostics, it's hard to know if there is anything on the Earth capable of pleasing you.

We all suffer the human condition and some more than others. The question becomes what prevents awakening to it and the harm it causes both an individual and society in general? In terms of societal influences they are secular institutions and their expressions in secular intolerance, politics, education, and media.

Seekers of truth must discover the existing means furthering awakening to the human condition as well as forming new ones. Either way, the Great Beast is not their friend so cannot expect any cooperation though it is easy to imagine it will happen. It won't. Awakening to reality means the death of the dominance of the Beast whose life is maintained by imagination. it doesn't want to die.

[Greta]

Greta

You talk about the pointlessness of blame due to intrinsic problems of the human condition while constantly apportioning it - now for about 60 pages in this thread alone. So if the major problem is the human condition - intrinsic and irredeemable - then why is your beef about education and secularists?

The answer is clear - politics and religion. This is clear from your support of Trump and the fact that your scapegoats are the usual ones associated with your political tribe - atheists and non-compliant women (noting that the teaching profession tends to be dominated by women).

Meanwhile All that you complain about has been the case since year dot but you try to give the impression that corruption and blinkered thinking is a new secular invention. Further, with your reference to "secularised religion" to include all modern (and seemingly ancient) religions as well as atheists and agnostics, it's hard to know if there is anything on the Earth capable of pleasing you.

We all suffer the human condition and some more than others. The question becomes what prevents awakening to it and the harm it causes both an individual and society in general? In terms of societal influences they are secular institutions and their expressions in secular intolerance, politics, education, and media.

Seekers of truth must discover the existing means furthering awakening to the human condition as well as forming new ones. Either way, the Great Beast is not their friend so cannot expect any cooperation though it is easy to imagine it will happen. It won't. Awakening to reality means the death of the dominance of the Beast whose life is maintained by imagination. it doesn't want to die.

But if you are a seeker of truth, how could you have endorsed Trump, whose truth-to-lie ratio was shown to be far higher than any of his contemporaries?

The silly thing about all this is that we are both doing exactly the same thing - hoping to grow and develop while trying to fly under the radar of greater society and its tightening strictures.

The difference is that I accept that, as we age, this fast-changing world will always become ever less convenient for us, who were formed in a different time under different conditions. Sure, humanity as a whole acts with the consumption ethic and morality of a microbe, but that will change. It's not convenient for individuals as their societies are effectively going through torrid developmental stages, but I have hope for the ultimate future of humanity. Good things take time.

[davidm]

Ha-ha, this enlightened soul is also a Trump voter?

Heavens to Betsy, what a HUGE shock. BIGLY!

[Nick_A]

Greta

You talk about the pointlessness of blame due to intrinsic problems of the human condition while constantly apportioning it - now for about 60 pages in this thread alone. So if the major problem is the human condition - intrinsic and irredeemable - then why is your beef about education and secularists?

The answer is clear - politics and religion. This is clear from your support of Trump and the fact that your scapegoats are the usual ones associated with your political tribe - atheists and non-compliant women (noting that the teaching profession tends to be dominated by women).

Meanwhile All that you complain about has been the case since year dot but you try to give the impression that corruption and blinkered thinking is a new secular invention. Further, with your reference to "secularised religion" to include all modern (and seemingly ancient) religions as well as atheists and agnostics, it's hard to know if there is anything on the Earth capable of pleasing you.

We all suffer the human condition and some more than others. The question becomes what prevents awakening to it and the harm it causes both an individual and society in general? In terms of societal influences they are secular institutions and their expressions in secular intolerance, politics, education, and media.

Seekers of truth must discover the existing means furthering awakening to the human condition as well as forming new ones. Either way, the Great Beast is not their friend so cannot expect any cooperation though it is easy to imagine it will happen. It won't. Awakening to reality means the death of the dominance of the Beast whose life is maintained by imagination. it doesn't want to die.

But if you are a seeker of truth, how could you have endorsed Trump, whose truth-to-lie ratio was shown to be far higher than any of his contemporaries?

The silly thing about all this is that we are both doing exactly the same thing - hoping to grow and develop while trying to fly under the radar of greater society and its tightening strictures.

The difference is that I accept that, as we age, this fast-changing world will always become ever less convenient for us, who were formed in a different time under different conditions. Sure, humanity as a whole acts with the consumption ethic and morality of a microbe, but that will change. It's not convenient for individuals as their societies are effectively going through torrid developmental stages, but I have hope for the ultimate future of humanity. Good things take time.

Greta

The silly thing about all this is that we are both doing exactly the same thing - hoping to grow and develop while trying to fly under the radar of greater society and its tightening strictures.

The difference is that I accept that, as we age, this fast-changing world will always become ever less convenient for us, who were formed in a different time under different conditions. Sure, humanity as a whole acts with the consumption ethic and morality of a microbe, but that will change. It's not convenient for individuals as their societies are effectively going through torrid developmental stages, but I have hope for the ultimate future of humanity. Good things take time.

Our essential difference is that you deny the essential human need to pursue eros and the help of grace to make the collective acceptance of higher human values and conscious human evolution possible. Where I support the help necessary for the young to pursue eros, you and other secular intolerants prefer to crush the need in favor of indoctrination into the politically correct ways of the Beast.

From Jacob Needleman’s book: What is God

“To think about God is to the human soul what breathing is to the human body.

I say to think about God, not necessarily to believe in God–that may or may not come later.

I say: to think about God.” ~Jacob Needleman in What Is God? p. 3

More and more, as I see it now, this heartless way of thinking about God and ultimate reality dominates the mind of the contemporary world. For God or against God, “belief” or “atheism,” it makes no difference unless the inner yearning— or whatever we wish to call the cause and source of the “second breathing” — is there. And it can so easily be there, just as it can so easily be covered over and ignored, perhaps for the rest of one’s life. God or not God, “belief” or “science” — it also makes no real difference for my personal life unless the call of the Self and its need to “breathe” is heard and, ultimately, respected. Not only can thought about ultimate reality make no difference to the world or to my personal life unless we hear and respect the call of the Self, but such empty thought can bring down our personal and collective world, even our Earth itself. When thought races ahead of Being, a civilization is racing toward destruction.
Jacob Needleman in What Is God?

You would crush the impulse enabling second breathing and I encourage it. An essential difference.

[Greta]

The silly thing about all this is that we are both doing exactly the same thing - hoping to grow and develop while trying to fly under the radar of greater society and its tightening strictures.

The difference is that I accept that, as we age, this fast-changing world will always become ever less convenient for us, who were formed in a different time under different conditions. Sure, humanity as a whole acts with the consumption ethic and morality of a microbe, but that will change. It's not convenient for individuals as their societies are effectively going through torrid developmental stages, but I have hope for the ultimate future of humanity. Good things take time.

Our essential difference is that you deny the essential human need to pursue eros and the help of grace to make the collective acceptance of higher human values and conscious human evolution possible. Where I support the help necessary for the young to pursue eros, you and other secular intolerants prefer to crush the need in favor of indoctrination into the politically correct ways of the Beast.

What's with this claim that I deny the human need for eros? Are you nuts? Everyone enjoys loving and fucking when they are young.

Personally, though, I like agape more. In a sense everyone and everything is in the same boat and are either at the mercy of their surroundings or must struggle through. I see innocence in all beings, including myself and certainly you, very much you. The trait evokes sympathy in me because we are a fledgling modern global society and still inherently immature in many ways, as is evidenced by our politics and selfish institutions, both secular and religious. There is no precedent. There is much trial and error.

Whatever, objecting to the grabbing of people by their genitals by those with enough power to get away with it is not politically correct, just a bit civilised. Who wants some self entitled stranger groping at their private bits? Why should you think that is okay that your preferred political representative should do such things and not even express remorse?

Why would you believe that such objections are spirit killing? A denial of eros?

[Belinda]

Nick_A wrote:

You've listed topics. For example you mentioned sexual taboos. Suppose a student asks why we have sexual taboos and why should anyone pay attention to them. How will secular sex education reply?

I note that you are asking the right question. Please research sexual taboos and let me know what you have learned.

As usual the teacher passes the buck and the kid soon learns that these people he once thought to be knowledgeable are really fools when it comes to sex. What else are they ignorant of?

The teacher encourages the pupil to learn how to retrieve information online and from books. Nick, if you don't know how to retrieve information you only have to ask .It occurred to me later that you might look to social anthropology for examples of sexual taboos. One illustration is in the Story of Ruth , when she uncovers Boaz's feet. NB as I said before take care that your source is impartial.

The Bible is an impartial source when the text reveals unwitting testimony. Social anthropology had not been invented when the Story of Ruth was first told therefore the Story of Ruth and the entire Bible may be used as a source of unwitting testimony for social anthropological information where available.

I have explained the above to you who are an adult. If one is telling a child about different peoples ' sexual taboos one uses language appropriate to the child's ability.

Kevin, advise that you do not insult teachers in that adolescently defiant manner as only other defiant adolescents will take you seriously.

[Nick_A]

Greta

What's with this claim that I deny the human need for eros? Are you nuts? Everyone enjoys loving and fucking when they are young.

Here is the problem. I’ve geen referring to eros in the Platonic sense as the conscious span between Man and God Experiencing eros is the attraction of philosophy. For Greta, eros is the attraction to fucking.

Whatever, objecting to the grabbing of people by their genitals by those with enough power to get away with it is not politically correct, just a bit civilised. Who wants some self entitled stranger groping at their private bits? Why should you think that is okay that your preferred political representative should do such things and not even express remorse?


Why would you believe that such objections are spirit killing? A denial of eros?

Matthew 22: 18 But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, “You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? 19 Show me the coin used for paying the tax.” They brought him a denarius, 20 and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”
21 “Caesar’s,” they replied.
Then he said to them, “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
22 When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away.

As a secularist you don’t recognize the difference between God’s vertical conscious domain and Caesar’s horizontal kingdom in the world. Since the Great Beast is God for you, they are the same. Eros is the attraction to fucking. All else is imagination only good for pleasant expressions of fantasy and escapism.

From the previously posted Jacob Needleman interview:

As to how I would guide someone who is confused about the idea of God, I would suggest that he or she begins identifying what one might called “philosophical friends,”—people with whom one could seriously examine our thought about God through listening to each other, reading important and useful books together and trying to think for oneself while familiarizing oneself with the ideas of some of the world’s great thinkers. Cultivate openness without gullibility and skepticism without cynicism.

And, as soon as possible, be on the lookout for someone whose whole manner of speaking and being makes, as it were, a “sound” that draws your mind and heart. And then, little by little, try to see if that person can be of real help on the way to genuine self-knowledge and insight about what God is and is not. In this realm, more than any other even, the paradoxical marriage of both openness and scepticism is essential.

This is the problem for the young trapped in secular schools. How do they find philosophical friends with the need for dialectic as opposed to debate and the social need to fit in? Adults free of secular intolerance will not be accepted in these secular schools so it will be really difficult to get any help from adults. Philosophy sites become dominated by secular intolerance so become useless. Fucking is fine but the young who feel that eros is more than just fucking find themselves stuck between attempts at indoctrination from secular education and secular religious institutions

It does seem that adults capable of understanding more than three inches in front of their nose have to consider how to make philosophical friends possible.

[Belinda]

Nick wrote:

This is the problem for the young trapped in secular schools. How do they find philosophical friends with the need for dialectic as opposed to debate and the social need to fit in? Adults free of secular intolerance will not be accepted in these secular schools so it will be really difficult to get any help from adults. Philosophy sites become dominated by secular intolerance so become useless. Fucking is fine but the young who feel that eros is more than just fucking find themselves stuck between attempts at indoctrination from secular education and secular religious institutions

It's a problem for grown-up intellectuals everywhere except when they are sufficiently well organised to find intellectual companions.

Meantime I sincerely hope that school teachers will strive to help their pupils avoid the shades of the prison-house.

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

Wordsworth

Wordsworth/Rousseau meant that society formed a prison in which the child ceased to be free because his ideas were channeled and restricted by contact with others - viz. man is born free but everywhere he is in chains. For the writer the school is a much more obvious kind of prison, in which his freedom is restricted in more practical ways.

I quoted this from an opinion in online comment dated 2007

[Greta]

What's with this claim that I deny the human need for eros? Are you nuts? Everyone enjoys loving and fucking when they are young.

Here is the problem. I’ve geen referring to eros in the Platonic sense as the conscious span between Man and God Experiencing eros is the attraction of philosophy. For Greta, eros is the attraction to fucking.

Like most Trump supporters, you need to simplify reality so it will fit with your blinkers. Given that you previously criticised my approval and adoption of asexuality in my elder years as my lacking appreciation for eros, what you have said above is simply a matter of "bait and switch". I also noted that you ignored my reference to "love".

Re: your Trump support:

Whatever, objecting to the grabbing of people by their genitals by those with enough power to get away with it is not politically correct, just a bit civilised. Who wants some self entitled stranger groping at their private bits? Why should you think that is okay that your preferred political representative should do such things and not even express remorse?

Why would you believe that such objections are spirit killing? A denial of eros?

I note that you sidestepped this. Given your hostile attitudes towards women (who are not Simone Weil) I assume that you think that what Trump did in grabbing women's private bits was okay. Just the robust expression of a real man in a politically correct world, right?

As a secularist you don’t recognize the difference between God’s vertical conscious domain and Caesar’s horizontal kingdom in the world. Since the Great Beast is God for you, they are the same. Eros is the attraction to fucking. All else is imagination only good for pleasant expressions of fantasy and escapism.

Do you have any memory at all? I would compare your mentality with that of a goldfish except it would be insulting to some nice animals.

It has apparently completely slipped your "mind" that I am a keen musician and cartoonist, and am obsessed with trying to understand reality. Suddenly, as far as you are concerned, I have transformed into a soulless human adding machine.

Why might I play music and draw cartoons? Passion. Interest. Eros. Duh. Actually, in my observation it would seem that it is you, locked in your mechanistic mindsets and Trumpian values, who lacks creative energy. This may explain your apparent overcompensation regarding eros.

It's hard to hold a sensible conversation with someone who cannot retain information in their heads and needs everything repeated every post.