In some way at least this underhanded assault could be described as clever if also a bit typical. And surely it fits into your general approach, which is of course terribly reductive and determined by your specific and activist prejudices. So again I merely point out that you have a didactic objective and this objective of yours fits into a cultural movement whose purpose is, as I say, undermining. Your burrowing is insect-like.RCSaunders wrote: ↑Sun Apr 03, 2022 3:10 pm It's a mistake to describe others in terms of one's own disintegrated personality. There's a name for what you are describing as your view of consciousness, which one must assume is yours. It's called schizophrenia, and those suffering from it often mistakenly believe everyone suffers from the same problem they do. They don't, but the schizophrenic's destroyed mind makes it impossible for them to understand that.
Your problem cannot be cured, but at least can be managed however.
On this thread, and certainly on this forum, there is a general effort to undermine the religious mind and what I describe as 'the former metaphysics'. I believe I have enough understanding of the issue to say I understand this, indeed I sympathize with some part of it as project. So, I see what you say here as 'underhanded attack'. You have your objectives. You are decided on what they are. And you seem to be willing to use any means to gain your objective. What you are doing here is implying mental disorder and even sickness.
It is a common motif and strategy.
So what I suggest is examining these assertions. Note as well that Dubious has made a series of statements the purpose of which is to ridicule and to describe as weakness or defect certain understandings, views and beliefs which he has determined are not productive or necessary. It looks to be somewhat Nietzschean of perhaps 'wolfish' in the Steppenwolf sense.
How the self, the person, the personality, and the soul are viewed varies a great deal. I am pretty sure that IC's view, for example, is typically Christian. That is, childishly simplistic. The stuff for mass-understanding and also mass-consumption. The more simple the picture the easier it is to bring in simple people.
In this view the soul is more or less the same as the person and the person's personality. Kind of like in a Watchtower cartoon when men and women are shown dressed as they lived but transferred to a heaven-realm. But obviously here, and at the base there is still the idea of a soul. The soul as a real thing. And the soul's struggles as consequential.
I cannot imagine that RC or Dubious could or would assert any such view. In their view there is no 'soul' and there is no continuance of the soul's existence. And the person dissipates at death. Nothing remains. The entire pattern of focus changes thereby.
But in other systems of interpretation -- those that also define a soul for example, such as the Vedic view -- the accreted personality is what falls away and dissipates. It is seen as ephemeral, temporal and mutable. The soul remains and it is this soul that is part-and-parcel of the Supreme Being. And the Supreme Being shows itself in all forms of consciousness, not just the human form. But the human form, obviously, has special importance in the scheme of things.
The view that Nick expressed, I'd guess, has commonality with Eastern Christian understanding. It is a more elaborate or expanded view, say, from that of IC. The implication being that certainly there is a soul but this soul is not always realized, or realized enough. What is given a great deal of emphasis and focus is the fragmented personality, not necessarily the eternal soul. And that is why he mentioned the I AM. It is a way of asserting God's reality as the origin of all things but also awareness and consciousness. And within some spiritual traditions, notably the monastic, the object is to realize the soul and diminish the fragmented personality.
The idea is in no sense schizophrenic!
I also think it is verifiable but this will be so in the case of those who have, in some form, an inner, spiritual life. If the entire idea of the *soul* and the soul's growth and evolution within this plane of manifestation is denied as real, then the entire object as defined by esoteric Christianity is denied along with that blanket denial. The objects of life, then, become horizontal and not vertical. And this 'horizontal' focus explains a great deal about modern culture in its inane sense. The 'return to the body' and the return to the Earth in the Nietzschean sense cannot and should not be denied. But neither should the vertical motive be simultaneously denied (ridiculed, explained away as sickness).
Nice try fellows!
But it does not wash when it is examined more closely. Can the 'fragmented self' become more collected? Yes, that certainly seems to be the case. But a fragmented self does not imply a schizophrenic individual as a malady. Though one can easily imagine a Modern as one captured by fragmenting influences. A fragmented and fractured person will be an easier subject of powerful political, social and economic forces. The collected and integrated person will not. Fragmentation rather describes a self that is pulled in too many directions -- distracted perhaps is the better word. Or drawn into vain identifications with all that is mutable and away from what is eternal.
But here again I doubt that RC or Dubious have any way to define what is eternal. Because the idea is bound up in the former metaphysics and they choose not to entertain the idea as real.
All this just more evidence of how our ideas and our views are consequential in so many ways.
Yes, and this implies chemical intervention, does it not? So examine the implication here: the individual surrenders the management of the self to chemicals, to Big Pharma, and really ultimately to a governing system. Did you bother to think this through RC? Or is it easier just to spout off your half-thought thoughts, your private assertions?Your problem cannot be cured, but at least can be managed however.
Much better for any person to become a manager of his own self and to become aware of fragmenting influence and then to collect and recollect himself. I think that type of project would fit into Nick's general sense of combatting or opposing the cultural monster or the collective beast he writes about at times. (I forgot how he phrases it). The perspective of being in a 'cave' where shadows reign and turning to the light source. That sort of thing.
