RCSaunders wrote: ↑Sat Feb 19, 2022 9:19 pm
This entire thread, and expecially all you have said, are the proof of what H.L. Mencken said:
"The costliest of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind."
In my own case I am not at all closed to allowing and examining the statements that you make. The fact is that you are one among millions who choose to take on this view and when one examines it the view is mono-dimensional and pretty easy to grasp, as well as to counter. I have my own way of going about this. And one part of it is to
suggest turning the harsh examination lens around -- the acidic analytical stance, the glossary declarative posture -- and using it to examine *you*. Sort of a reverse application of 'acid'.
My basic statement -- sort of a boiler-plate statement -- is that you and people like you (here I can certainly include Lacewing, Uwot, Promethean) when you are closely examined, all of you operate from a very limited knowledge-base.
You write, and think, from your closet as it were. On one level I could say that your lack of developed literacy locks you out of the possibility of knowing and understanding how tremendously important Christianity and the Christian perspective (and the ethical imperatives) are and have been. But then the next question is What locks you in to your unending critical stance?
Now the reason I say this might sound like snobbish literary one-upmanship, and I do admit to a certain pretentiousness, but I sincerely believe after years of careful study that you-plural have nearly no base at all to make the harsh and reductionist statement that you do make. That is if you had any intention of
being fair. But I admit that I am speaking here more about 'effects' of adherence to the religious practice, on a personal and social level, as well as the undeniable importance of the Christian systems in the formation of Europe. But this perspective is historical and -- I admit this -- emphasized by Christian believers like Christoper Dawson (being one who influenced me most at the beginning of my studies). I do know that there are other historians who are critical of Christianity such as Gibbons so, of course, the position of advocacy and apology has a (valid and considerable) critical counterpart.
It is a simplistic retort but one thing is very clear to me : there could never have been a Shakespeare without a deep involvement in *Christian terms* and *Christian metaphysics*. And as
Harold Bloom asserts Shakespeare
invented the human. So I would say, merely with this reference, which I admit to being an *effect*, that 1) you have no knowledge and no
believable understanding of what Christianity is to be able to mount a substantial critique at any point, or at any level, and 2) that I suppose that the best way to understand *you* (as I have been saying) is to
supersede you and attempt, if it is possible, to
discover and examine your motives. Remember : you are not creative and you affirm nothing constructive, and your entire project is one of tearing apart. Once this core motive is recognized I believe that it makes analysis of *you* possible and also 'productive'. (And this is what I mean by *turning the lens of examination around*). So this is why I say there is much more to be gained when one sees *you* as part of largely destructive processes, not creative processes, and the effects of this destructive, undermining burrowing needs to be better seen and understood.
This is just one of a number of lines of action through which a retort to your simplistic reductions can be mounted.
So, your Mencken quote . . .
What do we make of it? Mencken was a notable Nietzschean and, having read his early commentary on Nietzschean philosophy, I can say with at least some authority that he grasped Nietzsche very superficially. Mencken is admirable as a polemicist (I have read a certain number of his essays and I have both volumes of The Library of America edition of
Prejudices, all six series) and explosive and trenchant in many areas [his enemy was provincial Americanism and small-minded attitude]. But it must be said, because it is true, that he seemed to have no real understanding and essentially no way to have an understanding of the essences present in Christian thought.
Now
why is that? Well, it is a question that also requires *turning
our lens of examination around*. You have to examine what Mencken's core commitments and intentions were. He has a deep connection with a particular Northern mind-frame, not to exclude American Neo-Imperialism and an invasive expansionism, which took shape around the turn into the 20th century. Mencken in this sense represents a particular impetus bent on
driving forward, and plowing over his enemies and those he saw as *obstacles*, and as an intense polemicist whatever stood in the way of that *project* received the full weight of his intensity. Does this mean that I would roundly dismiss Mencken? Of course not! In this sense he demonstrates one of the effects of Nietzschean
intensity in his dedication to isolate powerful ideas and then push against all conventions that defend provincial and small-minded attitudes. And yet it is just this effort, this project, this intensity, this bull-like forward-lurching project that I suggest needs to be carefully balanced-out.
But let's turn the lens around in respect to "The costliest of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind". Why not? Let us talk about what is true and put the truth (truthful things) out on the table for examination. Can you honestly say that you have a sense of what truth is and thus what are truthful notions? Examine what you write. Examine what Lacewing and Promethean and Uwot (philosophy's own magnificent popinjay
who squawks like no other) and what you find, I suggest, is utter superficiality of perspective. How can any one of you actually and honestly talk about or even refer to what is true (which does require a special emphasis and even perhaps a capital T) when your only concern -- again if you were honest -- is simply and reductively with
tearing down?
So the question should be turned around and an answer -- soaring well above the reductive babble that is typical -- should be demanded of you. Talk about *truth*. Demonstrate that you have any level of understanding of what it means or can mean. The fact is you do not believe in truth. There are no truthful things for you. You are unaware of what they are and even what they could be. You have never devoted yourself to answering this most poignant of questions!
