Christianity

[henry quirk]

You have been frowned upon, Harbal.

I consider it a failure if I haven't been frowned upon at least once every day, henry.

[Harbal]

It has nothing to do with 'frowning', it has to do with seeing clearly and possibly explaining. There is a causal chain that has led to the emergence of a person, a man, who sees as Harbal does. This is a philosophy forum where, at least in some ideal world, careful and penetrating analysis should be undertaken.

What gets me is how you knew what I meant when I didn't really know what I meant.

[Immanuel Can]

You have been frowned upon, Harbal.

I consider it a failure if I haven't been frowned upon at least once every day, henry.

[In outrageous French accent] "I frown my brow in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries...etc."

[Alexis Jacobi]

What gets me is how you knew what I meant when I didn't really know what I meant.

Good point!

If you are taken as today's Everyman, or one of them, you have no ability to explain how you came to be. Meaning, the intellectual and cultural trajectory through which you have been formed. While I cannot be sure that this is true in your case, since you are present on a supposed 'philosophy forum', and might have read something here and there or once, I definitely can comment on what is going on within and among 'average men'. The reduction in intellect so to become malleable to determining forces. They have been removed from even the possibility of understanding how their views and ideas have been, in a certain way, manufactured.

In your case, and possibly in Henry's case, if someone 'describes' you or 'explains' you (especially to you) it is taken as an offense. That someone does this is taken as snootiness or arrogance. It is taken as 'being talked down to'.

What distinguishes you, Harbal, from the image of Alfred E. Neuman of your avatar? I wonder if you are aware of how perfect the image is for that man who has no (or very little) self-understanding. (And I do not mean you since I've read little of what you write. I am referring to something general and emergent).

Is it allowable in your world to talk about the culture surrounding you with a penetrating eye? And what if that penetrating glance is directed to you?

If you take any of this as if I am trying to offend you you'll be very far off the mark. I am speaking to a sort of anti-Ideal Man who is certainly one of the major outcomes of our decadent and degenerate cultures. If we do not recognize this as an outcome how could we ever resist those forces that have an interest in reducing us in this way?

That is, turning us into cogs. A cog is by definition a mere component, a mechanism, in a greater machinery and has no agency.

[Belinda]

The Great Ways are those like Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism which all began with a conscious source and after a while devolved into secular expressions.

Apart from a vague knowledge of Christianity, I know next to nothing about all that. I don't like organised religions,in fact, I just don't like religions of any type. I'm all for making the world as good as we can make it for everybody, but I don't see why your way is the only way. I am turned off by anything that tastes of "spirituality" and I am sure there are many like me. You are going to get absolutely nowhere with people like me as long as you continue to use the language you use.

I like how Simone Weil explains it free of academic jargon and the purity able to communicate an essence:

Yes, I'd forgotten about your crush on Simone. I don't know anything about her, I'm afraid, but that is another thing I am always suspicious of; hero worship. It's another thing that turns me off.

I think what Nick means by "a conscious source" is Platonic eternal forms of good, truth, and beauty.
Harbal is sensitive to literary style, and finds Nick's style too obscure, but this is not to say Harbal has no principles that can be traced back to one or more of these Platonic forms.

Aversion to hero worship is traceable to Platonic truth, and partisanship of fairness and distributive justice is traceable to Platonic good.

[Harbal]

In your case, and possibly in Henry's case, if someone 'describes' you or 'explains' you (especially to you) it is taken as an offense. That someone does this is taken as snootiness or arrogance. It is taken as 'being talked down to'.

I'm not offended, although I'm not thrilled about being designated a representetive of everyman, as I think everyman is an idiot. Still, I'm not offended.

[henry quirk]

I consider it a failure if I haven't been frowned upon at least once every day, henry.

[In outrageous French accent] "I frown my brow in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries...etc."

Holy Grail?

[Alexis Jacobi]

In your case, and possibly in Henry's case, if someone 'describes' you or 'explains' you (especially to you) it is taken as an offense. That someone does this is taken as snootiness or arrogance. It is taken as 'being talked down to'.

I'm not offended, although I'm not thrilled about being designated a representetive of everyman, as I think everyman is an idiot. Still, I'm not offended.

I would not be thrilled either. But I have a question: How is it that you determine that Everyman is an *idiot*? Why is Everyman an idiot? How do you form this judgment?

[henry quirk]

In your case, and possibly in Henry's case, if someone 'describes' you or 'explains' you (especially to you) it is taken as an offense. That someone does this is taken as snootiness or arrogance. It is taken as 'being talked down to'.

I'm not offended, although I'm not thrilled about being designated a representetive of everyman, as I think everyman is an idiot. Still, I'm not offended.

I am cuz it is.

[Harbal]

I think what Nick means by "a conscious source" is Platonic eternal forms of good, truth, and beauty.
Harbal is sensitive to literary style, and finds Nick's style too obscure, but this is not to say Harbal has no principles that can be traced back to one or more of these Platonic forms.

Harbal's aversion to hero worship is traceable to Platonic truth, and his partisanship of fairness and distributive justice is traceable to Platonic good.

The point is, Belinda, in the years I have been on and off this forum, I have never been able to work out what Nick actually wants. His empassioned outbursts against the Beast, and his adoring evocations of Simone Weil have always left me scratching my head. Why can't he just say, in plain English, what he wants?

[Harbal]

I would not be thrilled either. But I have a question: How is it that you determine that Everyman is an *idiot*? Why is Everyman an idiot? How do you form this judgment?

Well, what you call everyman, I call "the man on the street". He's the bloke who the news reporter sticks his microphone in front of during election campaigns to get an impression of public opinion. He's also the bloke you work with who would make a better job of running the country than the government. You find him all over the place. Everything is black and white, and clear cut to the man on the street.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I am cuz it is.

Psssssssssst!

"The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

On anti-intellectualism:

Richard Hofsadter:

The classic work on this subject by Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter, "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life," was published in early 1963, between the anti-communist crusades of the McCarthy era and the social convulsions of the late 1960s. Hofstadter saw American anti-intellectualism as a basically cyclical phenomenon that often manifested itself as the dark side of the country's democratic impulses in religion and education. But today's brand of anti-intellectualism is less a cycle than a flood. If Hofstadter (who died of leukemia in 1970 at age 54) had lived long enough to write a modern-day sequel, he would have found that our era of 24/7 infotainment has outstripped his most apocalyptic predictions about the future of American culture.

Defining anti-intellectualism as “resentment and suspicion of the life of the mind and of those who are considered to represent it; and a disposition constantly to minimize the value of that life”, Hofstadter demonstrated that it reaches deep into American history, extending across the domains of religion, politics, business, and education. Beginning in the 1720s, the Great Awakening swept across colonial America, encompassing Christian revivalist and evangelical movements that rejected clerical learning and cerebral, doctrinal worship in favor of ecstatic emotion, inner spiritual conviction, and mass conversion. And though founded and first led by members of the patrician elite, the nation sidelined its intellectuals by the early nineteenth century, giving way to a Jacksonian popular democracy that valorized coarseness and common sense over cultivation and formal training. This cult of character and direct, practical experience extended to the realm of business, where the uneducated, self-made man became a shared ideal. Similarly egalitarian in ideology, American public education was perennially bemoaned for its makeshift conditions, poor regard and remuneration for teachers, and pedagogical appeal to the lowest common denominator.

“Society will develop a new kind of servitude which covers the surface of society with a network of complicated rules, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate. It does not tyrannise but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville

“Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?

Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things;it has predisposed men to endure them and often to look on them as benefits.

After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville 1805-1859, Democracy in America

I would be interested in reading you expand on your notion of what turns man into a 'cog', Henry.

[henry quirk]

I would be interested in reading you expand on your notion of what turns man into a 'cog', Henry.

Yeah, I don't believe that for a second.

But: I'll bite anyway and start a thread on it this evening.

[Belinda]

I think what Nick means by "a conscious source" is Platonic eternal forms of good, truth, and beauty.
Harbal is sensitive to literary style, and finds Nick's style too obscure, but this is not to say Harbal has no principles that can be traced back to one or more of these Platonic forms.

Harbal's aversion to hero worship is traceable to Platonic truth, and his partisanship of fairness and distributive justice is traceable to Platonic good.

The point is, Belinda, in the years I have been on and off this forum, I have never been able to work out what Nick actually wants. His empassioned outbursts against the Beast, and his adoring evocations of Simone Weil have always left me scratching my head. Why can't he just say, in plain English, what he wants?

I guess what Nick wants is for European culture to forgo reason and embrace religious awe.

Religious awe is a thing although most people nowadays feel awe not from religious devotions but from places like mountain tops, coral reefs, great cathedrals, starry skies, and from works of art , and from the actions of certain people.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Yeah, I don't believe that for a second.

But: I'll bite anyway and start a thread on it this evening.

Post it here in this thread. It is all part of an on-going conversation and it certainly does fit in.

For now, what do you think of the Tocqueville references? And Hofstadter? Have you read Democracy in America?