Philosophy Now Forum

Nick_A wrote: ↑Tue Sep 12, 2017 4:43 pm It isn’t me that is rejected but rather what Simone Weil called the third direction of thought

Nick_A wrote: ↑Tue Sep 12, 2017 4:43 pm... secular dominance ...

Greta wrote: ↑Tue Sep 12, 2017 10:34 pm

Nick_A wrote: ↑Tue Sep 12, 2017 4:43 pm... secular dominance ...

For goodness' sake, where is this secular dominance? It does not exist anywhere. This is a paranoid conspiracy theory.

Humanity has been waiting for thousands of years for secular dominance. However, theism and cults of personality (which are a kind of theism) have never lifted their jackboots from humanity's throat for a moment. Instead the Christian old boys' networks control most western governments, deliberately blurring the divide between church and state and, in the west, godbotherer Rupert Murdoch's publications keep the populace brainwashed by his old school religion 'n' corruption politics.

Arising_uk wrote: ↑Tue Sep 12, 2017 8:36 pm Every thought that teaching people to think and learn might be more useful in your quest to dethrone your 'Great Beast' Nick? Give them tools to think and reason with? I suspect not as like Plato you wish to produce a society with no social movement, where everyone knows their place in the 'great chain of being'. It's what you most dislike about the current educational system as despite all its flaws it's essentially a meritocracy, it depends upon results and it's why you wish to replace it with your metaphysical theology/theocracy as in such a system the pious can rule over the credulous.

Harbal wrote: ↑Tue Sep 12, 2017 8:43 pm

Nick_A wrote: ↑Tue Sep 12, 2017 4:43 pm It isn’t me that is rejected but rather what Simone Weil called the third direction of thought

No, Nick, it really is you that's being rejected.

Nick_A wrote:The secular purpose of society requires that man serve the whims of the Beast. ...

In contrast, a free society serves the purpose of enabling a person to become themselves as opposed to an atom of the beast. ...

That being the case, what would I have against critical thinking skills which are a valuable tool in the cause of understanding? ...

You think I want the pious to rule over the credulous. ...

That requires psychological slavery. ...

Actually it is educated snobbery considering itself to be the educated elite that makes psychological slaves out of the credulous often through the intimidations of secular intolerance. ...

You seem to believe that critical thinking is the only tool necessary to build understanding and the schools dominated by secluar intolerance agree with you. I say that we also need the tools necessary to promote the emotional IQ along with physical development. If you don’t feel what you think it is only good for taking tests and BSing. ...

What good is modern meritocracy in the cause of objective human understanding? ...

It is largely a desire to be accepted by people proven by a degree who don’t feel what they know. What is learned; facts without meaning. This only furthers hypocrisy. It is called progressive education. This is the same progress being made by someone falling off of a roof. They are making progress towards the ground but its benefits are open for debate.

You're wrong. Secularism was implemented with the aim of freeing us from institutional religion, something you wish to reinstate. It was also with the aim of freeing the religious to believe what they like without state interference, something you wish to reinstate.

Yes, as you support Plato as believe in an elite and a chain of being.

No, it generally requires a religious theocracy and a metaphysical believe that some are higher in a 'chain of being' than others.

Not so, all can study the sciences and the arts if they wish but according to you only a few can attain your 'higher state of being'.

There you go, no critical thinking as you've already decided that your religious theist metaphysic is the answer and will brook no other.

Are they? What has your metaphysic produced to progress the world. In fact what has it done to progress you?

Nick_A wrote: ↑Wed Sep 13, 2017 12:37 am

Harbal wrote: ↑Tue Sep 12, 2017 8:43 pm

Nick_A wrote: ↑Tue Sep 12, 2017 4:43 pm It isn’t me that is rejected but rather what Simone Weil called the third direction of thought

No, Nick, it really is you that's being rejected.

I know you think you understand what you thought I wrote but I'm not sure you realize that what you read is not what I meant'.

Nick_A wrote: ↑Tue Sep 12, 2017 11:50 pm

Greta wrote: ↑Tue Sep 12, 2017 10:34 pm

Nick_A wrote: ↑Tue Sep 12, 2017 4:43 pm... secular dominance ...

For goodness' sake, where is this secular dominance? It does not exist anywhere. This is a paranoid conspiracy theory.

Humanity has been waiting for thousands of years for secular dominance. However, theism and cults of personality (which are a kind of theism) have never lifted their jackboots from humanity's throat for a moment. Instead the Christian old boys' networks control most western governments, deliberately blurring the divide between church and state and, in the west, godbotherer Rupert Murdoch's publications keep the populace brainwashed by his old school religion 'n' corruption politics.

Secularism is concerned with what we DO in the world. It doesn't matter if it is the morality of a secularized religion or the political correctness of the Great Beast. Either way it concerns what is done in the World so makes it secular.

The esoteric paths connecting Man to its transcendent origin in the conscious inner direction of the ineffable God is concerned with what we ARE in relation to the conscious potential for human being. The esoteric paths are all underground. Dominant secularism will not allow for anything else.

I cannot see any other way to minimize the degenerating effects of secular intolerance and it mimetic programming that glorifies the Great Beast as opposed to seeing it for what it is..

Nick_A wrote:As I’ve said countless times I’m well aware of the damage done by secularized institutionalized religions just as I m aware of the damage done by secular governments. ...

Wht else can be expected from hypocrisy normal for the human condition? ...

However, secular humanism has not made matters better. ...

It has not satisfied the human need for objective meaning and purpose. ...

I have said that without the help of grace and its awakening effects on human consciousness, nothing can collectively change for the better. ...

Secularism does what it can to deny the help of grace so everything remains the same.

This is the crux of our disagreement. Yes I believe in the great chain of being and that the being of Man can vary greatly. Why do you find this offensive? ...

A society built on Plato’s ideas would be impossible since it requires philosopher kings to govern it. You won’t find them and they won’t be produced by progressive education. ...

My gut feeling is that the Great Beast is doomed so I support those who are awakening influences within society and can help others to develop their being for the sake of the future. ...

Are you offended by those making efforts to develop a skill? ...

Is it unfair that a person puts in the time to become a concert pianist while others don’t? ...

Is it unfair that a person makes the efforts to develop their being while others don’t. ...

Is it really better just to say that we are all the same? ...

I don’t see what there is to be offended about.

I am not claiming a higher state of being. I’m still in Plato’s cave. If I can learn from the higher so as to eventually give to the lower I’ll be serving a human purpose. ...

If a person’s aim is to leave the cave what good will it do to become blind followers of those taught to keep you in the cave? ...

Critical thinking is necessary for life in the cave but lacking the third direction of thought, how does it serve for leaving the cave?

Plato’s cave or the World in Christianity exists in spiritual darkness and now people strive to both sustain it and manipulate the darkness. Since we are as we are, everything is as it is. The question becomes what a person putting in the effort to develop their being can accomplish. That is another question.

…………………As once again we witness the horrific engines of war being fueled by religious zeal of one kind or another, and under one kind of name or another, the answer to this question seems obviously to be: Yes, sometimes; Yes, often! Have not the darkest crimes of world history—the insane barbarism of genocide, the bloody crusades, the murder of innocents and the depredation of defenseless cultures– have not many, if not most of these crimes been committed under the banner
of religion or through a quasi-religious frenzy attaching itself to
religious ideals? Put next to these endlessly recurrent horrors, the
intimate comforts of personal religious faith and the day-to-day
individual efforts to live religiously may seem to count for little in the balance scales of human life on earth. Little wonder, then, that so many of the best minds of the modern era entirely rejected religion as a foundation for both ethics and knowledge. Just as the scientific turn of mind seemed to have entirely eclipsed religion’s claim to knowledge, so—it has seemed to many—the same modern turn of mind must inevitably displace religion’s claim to moral authority. Just as religion can no longer show us what is true,
but must yield that task to methods of thought that are independent of
religious doctrine, so neither can religion, it was claimed, show us
what is good, but must now surrender that task as well to the secular mind of modernity.

But in fact, no such assumption of moral authority by secular humanism, has
taken hold or now seems in any way likely or justified. The modern era, the era of science, while witnessing the phenomenal acceleration of scientific discovery and its applications in technological innovation, has brought the
world the inconceivable slaughter and chaos of modern war along with
the despair of ethical dilemmas arising from new technologies that all
at once project humanity’s essence-immorality onto the
entire planet: global injustice, global heartlessness and the global
disintegration of the normal patterns of life
that have guided mankind for millenia. Neither the secular philosophies
of our epoch nor its theories of human nature—pragmatism, positivism,
Marxism, liberalism, humanism, behaviorism, biological determinism,
psychoanalysis–nor the traditional doctrines of the religions, in the way we have understood them, seem able to confront or explain the crimes of humanity in our era, nor offer wise and compassionate guidance through the labyrinth of paralyzingly new ethical problems.

What is needed is a either a new understanding of God or a new understanding
of Man: an understanding of God that does not insult the scientific
mind, while offering bread, not a stone, to the deepest hunger of the
heart; or an understanding of Man that squarely faces the criminal
weakness of our moral will while holding out to us the knowledge of how we can strive within ourselves to become the fully human being we are meant to be– both for ourselves and as instruments of a higher purpose.

But, this is not an either/or. The premise –or, rather, the proposal—of this
book is that at the heart of the Christian religion there exists and
has always existed just such a vision of both God and Man. I call it
“lost Christianity” not because it is a matter of doctrines and concepts
that may have been lost or forgotten; nor even a matter of methods of
spiritual practice that may need to be recovered from ancient sources.
It is all that, to be sure, but what is lost in the whole of our modern
life, including our understanding of religion, is something even more fundamental, without
which religious ideas and practices lose their meaning and all too
easily become the instruments of ignorance, fear and hatred. What
is lost is the experience of oneself, just oneself—myself, the personal
being who is here, now, living, breathing, yearning for meaning, for
goodness; just this person here, now, squarely confronting one’s own
existential weaknesses and pretensions while yet aware, however
tentatively, of a higher current of life and identity calling to us from
within ourselves. This presence to oneself is the missing element in
the whole of the life of Man, the intermediate state of consciousness
between what we are meant to be and what we actually are.
It is, perhaps, the one bridge that can lead us from our inhuman past
toward the human future……………………..

Nick_A wrote: ↑Wed Sep 13, 2017 9:07 pmGreta, Belinda, and A_uk are all concerned with governments. But if governmentts just reflect what we are, how could they be any different from what we are?

Nick_A wrote:...
Yes I support the young still spiritually alive with the need and courage to "know thyself" in the context of what is greater than themselves in pursuit of objective human meaning and purpose. It isn't easy remaining normal in the presence of the spirit killers intimidating them into becoming spiritually blind atoms of the Great Beast through the denial of the quality of consciousness and impartiality necessary to "know thyself."