nihilism

[Fairy]

but it truly describes the human condition.

Yes, and a description can be none other than a belief. Not actual.

While the belief that there is Human existing, that is not going to be denied, will ensure the belief is not going to go away, that belief will be here to stay.

And while the belief that there is God existing, that is not going to be denied, will ensure the belief is not going to go away, that belief is here to stay.

The question is: where do beliefs come from?
The answer is: they come from the believer.

The question is: where does the believer come from?
The answer is: from the belief.

From belief to actual clarity.

Where there's belief in God, then God exists just as the belief exists, without doubt or error.

Where there's belief in Human, then human exists just as the belief exists, without doubt or error.


So who is the author of belief - who is the author of knowing belief?

The answer is you are, because you are the one who is asking the question, and the one who is seeking the answer to your own question.

If there is a belief in God knows everything, then there's no need to ask questions, simply, the belief that God knows everything, doesn't require a question or an answer.


On the other hand, if the belief that only God exists, then the belief that human exists cannot exist. This you, cannot know anything because of the belief that God knows everything, which would negate the belief that You know.

If the belief in YOU as the knower is real and true, then only YOU exist and there is no God. If the belief in God as the knower is real and true, then only God exists and there is no YOU.

[promethean75]

That alternative scene was fuckin awesome, Gary. You may seriously need to consider co-writing with me.

[Immanuel Can]

Belinda:But I don't think you actually believe of your God that he makes fun of any of his poor little creatures.

Actually, you should read Psalm 2. You'd quickly realize that it depends on which side you've decided to be on.

My God is love in all its manifestations.

Which god is that? Aphrodite?

I can claim, despite the Holocaust ,that our souls are good because it is weakness of soul that causes atrocities.

So it's man's fault, a product of his/her "weakness" that the Holocaust happened? Then the blame is on mankind. And you can call it "weakness" or you can call it "wickedness," and the outcome is the same.

So why blame God?

P.S. -- Did you figure out the answer you want to give to my question about how you would want God to act?

P.P.S. -- Existentialism begins with Kierkegaard, and secular Existentialism with perhaps Nietzsche, but certainly Sartre and Camus. It's impossible for anything earlier to be "Existentialist."

Regarding Psalm 2 , modern Zionism...

Psalm 2 isn't modern. It vastly predates both Modernism and Existentialism. But you must know that.

...your essentially all-powerful God that can work miracles by intervening in history is to blame, however that version of God is a superstition .

So you blame things you claim don't exist?

Nazism deprived German children and some adults of access to their souls and substituted a cynically manufactured lie. Trump is doing the same today in the USA.

Well, I say again...I don't live in the US, and I'm not even capable of voting for Trump. But I find it very amusing whenever the Left trots out this particular lie. Do they really think anybody...other than their own friends and indoctrinated supporters...is stupid enought to believe it?

There's no association between Trump, or any US candidate, and Nazism. Trump has many Jewish relatives in his family, and has proved to be the most pro-Jewish of all the candidates. Even Obama didn't dare to move the embassy to Jerusalem, and Biden and co. had no equivalent achievement to the Abraham Accords. So your claim is just too silly for words...the facts simply don't bear it out at all.

It's interesting how the Left uses the word "Nazi," though. They use it to mean "anticommunist," essentially. And if that were right, they'd have a case, maybe. But it's dishonest and self-serving propagandizing of a normal term. The truth is that the struggle between the Nazis and the Communists was a family struggle: two Socialisms that hate one another, because one is nation-centered and the other is globally-ambitious. But what both of these cousins hate is liberal democracy. (This case is well made in the debate between Furet and Nolte, in Fascism and Communism. It's worth a read.)

So no, Trump is clearly no Socialist of any kind, neither of the Communist type or of the National Socialist (or Nazi) type. Neither is there any evidence he's an anti-semite. That allegation is just the latest desperate gesture of a corrupt administration that's imperiled in an election race and is desperate to slander their rival candidate. The political rhetoric in your country has become truly shameful, I must say.

[Immanuel Can]

Excellent question. I’d say there are numerous levels. Personally, I take the myth of a Perfect Garden to be a sort of memory of something, a state perhaps, in which we lived before. I see our incarnation here (moving from spiritual being into a physical being) as being interpreted as a fall. The memory is of something lost. And yes, perhaps or likely through a mistake, or something analogous to disobedience.

Oh. You're a Gnostic.

I view the Garden of Eden as state of primal innocence. From this state of primal innocence , natural curiosity inspired Eve to eat the apple , which had the unhappy effect of giving her the idea that mankind can make his own way in the world with or without any reference to God's primal innocence, as he choses.

Wait. If that were the case, then there would have to already be a code higher than Eve herself. That is the imperative that "primal innocence must be maintained," or "primal innocence is good." But you don't believe in codes higher than human beings.

Genesis does not threaten or prescribe,

Really? So you don't regard, "...for in the day you eat of it [i.e. the tree] you shall surely die..." as a threat? Maybe so. Maybe it's more of a promise. But either way, how could anything be more threatening?

[Alexis Jacobi]

A Gnostic, then, but with modernist and Catholic sprinkles on top.

To be quite honest, I would not, I could not, deny that some of the ideas I have, which I describe as *strategies* and *manoeuvres* (each of these terms having a specific sense in my lexicon), can be perceived, even ridiculed, as absurdist. What absurdist means to me is an attempt to create a bridge between different incompatible ideas, or stances, or positions, or perspectives, that perhaps does not come off so well. My view is that this is what we all deal with, in truth. In one way or another we exist in a type of ungroundedness, and frankly *philosophy* is a total mess and very little help in regaining any foundational, encompassing grounding at that *metaphysical* level.

Factually, we no longer have the language to express, concretely, where we are, what is, what it means and where we are to go with it. We do not know what *reality* is.

Every person writing on this forum flounders in this area. Don't kid yourselves!

flounder (ˈflaʊndə)
vb (intr)
1. to struggle; to move with difficulty, as in mud
2. to behave awkwardly; make mistakes
n
the act of floundering

As is always the case, you (and others here) miss an opportunity to tie the topics of the conversation here to what is going on around us in the political, social, religious, "globalist" world. Frankly, it is all really absurd. Competing narratives, people holing-up in positions they have carved out for themselves out of a general chaos and into which they retreat, believing, or pretending, they have discovered *solid ground*.

A few days ago, in the NYTs, an article referencing Robert O. Paxton appeared. He wrote an important work (2004) that attempted to define fascism and as you know that descriptor has recently been assigned, with a special vigor, to Donald Trump. I downloaded the book and have been reading it. It is quite good, I think. The origins of fascism in Europe should really be better understood, but not through emotionalized political rhetoric, but realistically and fairly.

I mention this because "religious ideology" is so much a part of Weltanschauung, and the truthful fact is that today any agreed-upon sense of what is the proper and *right* way to look at anything is in a state of chaos. So then, there will arise, and there are arising, forced and coerced ideological positions that manifest because there is a need for a solidity of perspective that (a person, and people) can believe in and rally around.

The general outline of post-WWl and the Interwar struggle for sound and solid ideological positions still can be located within Liberalism, Communism, and Conservatism, with various strains of what is Fascist-like and being an attractive alternative, or a dangerous ideological play-thing, for people who feel themselves to be existing in a 'lost grounding'. It is very hard to define Fascism though, and harder to get to the root of the *desperation* (another term from my own lexicon with a special definition) that drives people to a sort of radicalized decisive willfulness.

Please do not think that I come here to oppose Fascism or the *strategy* that gives rise to its active manifestation as most feel they must (to be ideologically pure and *good*). . That is not quite my business or my interest. If what motivated Fascism is located in a psycho-social mood, that mood surrounds us. It is evident everywhere. My own object, in this sense, is to avoid becoming contaminated by it or by any raging *strategy* or *manoeuvre* that will arise, and do arise, in times of social, ideological and existential conflict.

Now, what I myself describe is not, to be truthful and accurate, 'gnosticism', but more a sort of pastiche of varied and different ways of dealing with ideological and conceptual conflicts; with views and positions that cannot be reconclied except by a movement of the will, and other suchlike ways of describing desperate solutions. Really, it is more postmodern or even perhaps syncretistic than it is a view based on a defined cosmological picture (which is what I understood Gnosticism to be).

The Torture Never Stops

Don't you see?? There is so much to discuss. But you really have to become open to it.

[Immanuel Can]

A Gnostic, then, but with modernist and Catholic sprinkles on top.

To be quite honest, I would not, I could not, deny that some of the ideas I have, which I describe as *strategies* and *manoeuvres* (each of these terms having a specific sense in my lexicon), can be perceived, even ridiculed, as absurdist. What absurdist means to me is an attempt to create a bridge between different incompatible ideas, or stances, or positions, or perspectives, that perhaps does not come off so well. My view is that this is what we all deal with, in truth. In one way or another we exist in a type of ungroundedness, and frankly *philosophy* is a total mess and very little help in regaining any foundational, encompassing grounding at that *metaphysical* level.

Okay. But the Gnostic thing is a particularly hard thing to sustain in connection with any belief that takes a positive view of the Creator. Normally, Gnostics regard him as a demiurge, not as an entity worthy of worship.

So that creates a fairly serious conflict with Catholicism. It might require much harder "floundering" than is possible.

The origins of fascism in Europe should really be better understood, but not through emotionalized political rhetoric, but realistically and fairly.

Well, that statement is true.

...there is a need for a solidity of perspective that (a person, and people) can believe in and rally around.

That 'need,' when channelled into Socialist ideologies, nationalist or internationalist, always kills people. And lots of them. More than anything else, in fact, statistically speaking.

[Alexis Jacobi]

IC: Okay. But the Gnostic thing is a particularly hard thing to sustain in connection with any belief that takes a positive view of the Creator. Normally, Gnostics regard him as a demiurge, not as an entity worthy of worship.

What you are doing now, you do often.

You have assigned the term gnosticism to what you wish to see as my position. The purpose and function of this, in your discourse, is simply so you can go on with your set of ideas, disregarding what I have actually said.

But my position of not gnosticism, and I clearly explained this to you, and why, but you are *deaf for all that you have ears*.

You are so filled with yourself that you simply cannot hear other people. This is a real fault.

So again, you become, and you do this so amazingly well! the worst apologist for all that you say you value.

[Immanuel Can]

IC: Okay. But the Gnostic thing is a particularly hard thing to sustain in connection with any belief that takes a positive view of the Creator. Normally, Gnostics regard him as a demiurge, not as an entity worthy of worship.

...my position of not gnosticism...

Not Gnosticism?

Then why mention it at all? Your last message seems to imply a syncretistic fusion between three things: Gnosticism, Catholicism and Modernism. I merely point out that the fusing of the three is likely to prove difficult...you may call it "absurdist" if you wish. I did not. But perhaps that term does apply.

You are so filled with yourself that you simply cannot hear other people.

I'm going to suggest an alternate hypothesis: namely, that you do not explain yourself well. If I may speak plainly, I see this: in the attempt to create a welter of pedantic jargon, you often obscure your meaning and lead the reader down blind alleys. Then you blame them for trying to make sense of the convolutions of your imprecise verbiage and syntax. But one who has special skills in the English language can detect that this is what you are doing, and realizes that you are obscuring your own ideas. He takes you at your word; and you hate when he does.

This is the real source of your frustration. In your effort to immunize your claims against critique, you indulge yourself in jargon. This has the salutary effect of always allowing you to say, "That's not what I meant," and to abuse your listener for failing to attend to your claims -- instead of having to face the incoherence of the claims themselves.

But I suggest that that is a poor way to do philosophy. Your ideas could benefit from the sunlight, if you would bring them into it. Shrouded in imprecision and jargon, the fester like mushrooms in the dark. But brought into the light, they can be tested, refined, improved, purified...if not by your interlocutor's insights, by your own process of critiquing the way you have put an idea, and refining it to be better stated.

That is the good that is available to you, should you wish to take it. But if pedantry and posing is really your aim, the hope of being thought "academic" or a "guru" by the less astute, I can understand why you would eschew that good. However, there are moments when you stop speaking like that, and speak like a human being. Those are your best moments. So you're capable of actual insight, I think. However, at the present moment, you're not offering your ideas the best framing, or explaining yourself with great lucidity.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Then why mention it at all?

It was Promethean’s contribution. It is a “turn of phrase” but not enough accurate to have much descriptive value.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Your alternate theory, IC, is filled to the brim with your basic dishonesty.

[Immanuel Can]

Your alternate theory, IC, is filled to the brim with your basic dishonesty.

I think not. It's exactly what I believe to be the case.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Oh, I know that you really do believe it, just as you really believe a whole range of things that are the buttresses of your peculiar religious fanaticism!

And this is — in my own case — what interests me and draws me to these conversations and exchanges. You are an example of a man who (as I said previously) “holes-up” within a satisfying, but actually forced, biblical realism. You believe a dozen unbelievable things before the remains of breakfast have been cleared …

That is not the case for me, so an interesting contrast comes to the fore. My objective, if only in this area, is to point it out, to get it to stand out.

However, at the present moment, you're not offering your ideas the best framing, or explaining yourself with great lucidity.

As I’ve noted about (my impression of you): “Obstinacy makes us unable to hear, for all that we have ears.”

[Alexiev]

The last paragraphs of Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons" comprise one of the great endings in literature. Of course they are great because of the manner in which they sum up the novel, but they are worth quoting here because Turgenev coined "nihilism" in the novel.

There is a small village graveyard in one of the remote corners of Russia. Like almost all our graveyards, it has a melancholy look; the ditches surrounding it have long been overgrown; grey wooden crosses have fallen askew and rotted under their once painted gables; the gravestones are all out of position, just as if someone had pushed them from below; two or three bare trees hardly provide some meager shade; the sheep wander unchecked among the tombs . . .

But among them is one grave untouched by human beings and not trampled on by any animal; only the birds perch on it and sing at daybreak. An iron railing surrounds it and two young fir trees have been planted there, one at each end; Evgeny Bazarov is buried in this tomb. Often from the near-by village two frail old people come to visit it--a husband and wife. Supporting one another, they walk with heavy steps; they go up to the iron railing, fall on their knees and weep long and bitterly, and gaze intently at the silent stone under which their son lies buried; they exchange a few words, wipe away the dust from the stone or tidy up some branches of a fir tree, then start to pray again and cannot tear themselves away from that place where they seem to be nearer to their son, to their memories of him . . .

Can it be that their prayers and their tears are fruitless? Can it be that love, sacred devoted love, is not all powerful? Oh, no! However passionate, sinful or rebellious the heart hidden in the tomb, the flowers growing over it peep at us serenely with their innocent eyes; they tell us not only of eternal peace, of that great peace of "indifferent" nature; they tell us also of eternal reconciliation and of life without end

[Immanuel Can]

Oh, I know that you really do believe it, just as you really believe a whole range of things that are the buttresses of your peculiar religious fanaticism!

And this is — in my own case — what interests me and draws me to these conversations and exchanges. You are an example of a man who (as I said previously) “holes-up” within a satisfying, but actually forced, biblical realism. You believe a dozen unbelievable things before the remains of breakfast have been cleared …

That is not the case for me, so an interesting contrast comes to the fore. My objective, if only in this area, is to point it out, to get it to stand out.

However, at the present moment, you're not offering your ideas the best framing, or explaining yourself with great lucidity.

As I’ve noted about (my impression of you): “Obstinacy makes us unable to hear, for all that we have ears.”

You're doubling down, are you?

Good luck with that. If people actually believes about you what you think they believe, you'd be king of the philosophers. I wonder whether they actually do believe what you think they believe...

[Alexis Jacobi]

Can’t you quote some Turgeniev?!?