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Well, my view is that Man and Argument are better seen as a whole and inseparable. It is the real view that we hold (of what is and the way things are) that really determines what a man does.
It may be what a man does but it's not necessarily what a man argues.
I think your view is weak because it takes away from the points being made and places an emphasis on the beliefs of the man. Beliefs which you may well be imagining.
phyllo wrote: ↑Fri Oct 09, 2026 2:42 pm
Then there is the problem that the "fall from Grace" involved Adam and Eve, but some how "man", ie everybody, is being held responsible. Is that fair?
Gary Childress wrote: ↑Fri Oct 09, 2026 2:49 pm
I think we're all chasing phantasms. Which is maybe fine as long as it doesn't get us all into a nuclear war or divert us away from trying to salvage our environment. (Things that are actually real concerns.)
So too is that impetus to make better, to improve the world, and to build a better world, to participate as an agent?
I think that is at least one of the central pillars of Christian ethics.
Well, my view is that Man and Argument are better seen as a whole and inseparable. It is the real view that we hold (of what is and the way things are) that really determines what a man does.
It may be what a man does but it's not necessarily what a man argues.
I think your view is weak because it takes away from the points being made and places an emphasis on the beliefs of the man. Beliefs which you may well be imagining.
You are, I think, avoiding presenting a position. In the sense that Carlyle means. Are you hesitant to reveal it cleanly? Why?
In you Man and Argument come together as one.
So, you could answer, but simultaneously you could not. But it would not change: you have (as we all have) a core paradigm that we live through.
phyllo wrote: ↑Fri Oct 09, 2026 3:09 pm
Ah, you agree with the "sins of the father".
I made a reference to “hidden meanings” in Hamlet. I wish it could be taken seriously. We are dealing, in myriad ways, with struggles and conditions that involve our “spiritual selves” extremely dramatically. It is simply obvious that no man can avoid or escape the trajectory that his “fathers” have set up, and that their fathers have set in motion. So INEVITABLY you and I are and must deal with everything that has been set in motion.
But you are really asking a question about man’s rather angst-ridden sense of his relationship to “sin”: that confining sense of complicity. And yes, I see very little else but the condition of complicity in all that we call error: missing the mark.
What I find interesting about Gary’s contributions recently is that they are all ironic. Shall he also describe his extreme suffering through ironies? But as a man he is utterly subsumed in the problems and the angst of “missing the mark”. As in fact I genuinely think we all are, if stated honestly.
Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Oct 09, 2026 3:32 pm
I wish it could be taken seriously. We are dealing, in myriad ways, with struggles and conditions that involve our “spiritual selves” extremely dramatically. It is simply obvious that no man can avoid or escape the trajectory that his “fathers” have set up, and that their fathers have set in motion. So INEVITABLY you and I are and must deal with everything that has been set in motion.
Sounds like a grand undertaking. Speaking of undertaking, I'll give my regards to your undertaker when we're finally rid of your nonsense.
Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Oct 09, 2026 3:32 pm
I wish it could be taken seriously. We are dealing, in myriad ways, with struggles and conditions that involve our “spiritual selves” extremely dramatically. It is simply obvious that no man can avoid or escape the trajectory that his “fathers” have set up, and that their fathers have set in motion. So INEVITABLY you and I are and must deal with everything that has been set in motion.
Sounds like a grand undertaking. Speaking of undertaking, I'll give my regards to your undertaker when we're finally rid of your nonsense.
Can you develop this further? What is nonsense?
And why don’t you give your regards now to my undertaker? Why wait?
Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Oct 09, 2026 3:32 pm
I wish it could be taken seriously. We are dealing, in myriad ways, with struggles and conditions that involve our “spiritual selves” extremely dramatically. It is simply obvious that no man can avoid or escape the trajectory that his “fathers” have set up, and that their fathers have set in motion. So INEVITABLY you and I are and must deal with everything that has been set in motion.
Sounds like a grand undertaking. Speaking of undertaking, I'll give my regards to your undertaker when we're finally rid of your nonsense.
Can you develop this further? What is nonsense?
And why don’t you give your regards now to my undertaker? Why wait?
A never ending bag of hot air. I guess if you stand there adamantly and keep saying something, then more people will start to believe you. Unfortunate really. You should give youself and all your victims a rest once in a while.
Gary Childress wrote: ↑Fri Oct 09, 2026 3:42 pm
A never ending bag of hot air. I guess if you stand there adamantly and keep saying something, then more people will start to believe you. Unfortunate really. You should give yourself and all your victims a rest once in a while.
Shouldn’t you refer to a “never depleted” bag of hot air? Or perhaps “ever full”?
Do you mind much that I continue to ask you to tell me what you think of Carlyle’s pithy pronouncement?
But the thing a man does practically believe (and this is often enough without asserting it even to himself, much less to others); the thing a man does practically lay to heart, and know for certain, concerning his vital relations to this mysterious Universe, and his duty and destiny there, that is in all cases the primary thing for him, and creatively determines all the rest. That is his religion; or, it may be, his mere scepticism and no-religion: the manner it is in which he feels himself to be spiritually related to the Unseen World or No-World; and I say, if you tell me what that is, you tell me to a very great extent what the man is, what the kind of things he will do is
Where actually do you stand, Gary?
Last edited by Alexis Jacobi on Fri Oct 09, 2026 3:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
MAN with his burning soul
Has but an hour of breath
To build a ship of truth
In which his soul may sail—
Sail on the sea of death,
For death takes a toll
Of Beauty, courage, youth,
Of all but truth . . .
Ask God for gladness. Be glad like children, like the birds of heaven. And let not the sin of men dismay you in your doings: Fear not lest it choke your work and hinder its accomplishment. Say not, Sin is powerful, Ungodliness is powerful, bad Conventionalism is powerful; while we are solitary and powerless: the world will choke us and will frustrate the good work. Away with such despondency, my children. . . If a man cast the blame of his sloth and inefficiency upon others, he will end by sharing the pride of Satan and murmuring against God. Now, about the pride of Satan, I think thus: it is difficult for us on earth to understand it, and therefore it is easy to be ensnared in it, and to share it, and even to imagine all the while that we are doing something great and wonderful. And in the profoundest sensations and impulses of our nature also there is much that we cannot now understand... On this earth we truly wander, and are as it were lost; so that were it not for the glorious figure of Christ before us, we should perish utterly. . .Much on earth is hidden from us, but there is given us in recompense the secret conviction of our living bond with another world, a celestial and loftier world: and the very roots of our thoughts and sensations are not here but there, in other worlds. And that is why the philosophers say that on earth it is impossible to knowthe essence of things.
