The Apparatus

[yiostheoy]

Walker said:

Do you think that by admitting this effect the many will regain their humanity while still supporting the Beast?

Yes, but I believe it would require opening to a certain quality of understanding secularism is closed to. Mark 12:17 And Jesus answering said unto them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. And they marvelled at him.

IMO In order for a person to become more human and less a conditioned particle of the Great Beast, a person needs help from above. How many know the difference between giving to the state (the Beast) and directing ones attention to the above? Not many would know how they become complimentary. Of course a philosopher king could but there are not many of them.

While I agree with Jesus that paying your taxes is a good thing, and that going two miles carrying the gear of a Roman soldier is fine, the Romans were not drafting 19 year olds to go to war in Viet Nam.

So I believe that civil disobedience in cases where The White House is abusing its power is permissible, even as Jesus overturned the money tables in the temple two years in a row.

There is a valid philosophy to civil disobedience. This philosophy says that if the government violates its responsibility then it should be protested.

This way you do not go on empowering a corrupt government.

LBJ's ramping up of JFK's and Ike's Viet Nam involvement together with the draft was corrupt. There was no national security interest such as during WW2 or the US Civil War that warranted conscription during Viet Nam.

[Walker]

Walker wrote: Placement of attention has a larger horizon and is really all it takes for an intellectual contemplation that yields insight of such significance as to change the course of a life. This is actually the method used in the practice of self-enquiry, which begins as an exhausting intellectual contemplative practice and then continues from there.

You are right IMO but the problem is that humanity as a whole is incapable of conscious attention. Without impartial conscious attention self-enquiry becomes meaningless interpretations and self justification

"Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. It is given to very few minds to notice that things and beings exist. Since my childhood I have not wanted anything else but to receive the complete revelation of this before dying." ~Simone Weil.

Could it really be that the majority of the world’s atrocities and the experience of personal emptiness are due to the loss of the capacity for conscious attention which makes it easy to hide in imagination for the sake of imaginary self justification?

Then consider this in light of your opinion.


Conscious attention gets placed all the time, individually and en masse. Word definitions, i.e., concepts, are changed by mass useage which is evidence of mass placement of attention.


So who/what is placing the mass attention ... wherever?

Examples of humanity's common focus of attention:

Walk around where people congregate in public places while waiting. You will notice much attention directed downward, to the hand-held computer/communicator. Folks trust that someone is watching the sky.

Look at the POTUS race. Mass attention is being directed to what it is that people vote for in the hope of getting a mass of votes that leads to vast power to be used for the purposes of good, or evil.

[yiostheoy]

Walker wrote: Placement of attention has a larger horizon and is really all it takes for an intellectual contemplation that yields insight of such significance as to change the course of a life. This is actually the method used in the practice of self-enquiry, which begins as an exhausting intellectual contemplative practice and then continues from there.

You are right IMO but the problem is that humanity as a whole is incapable of conscious attention. Without impartial conscious attention self-enquiry becomes meaningless interpretations and self justification

"Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. It is given to very few minds to notice that things and beings exist. Since my childhood I have not wanted anything else but to receive the complete revelation of this before dying." ~Simone Weil.

Could it really be that the majority of the world’s atrocities and the experience of personal emptiness are due to the loss of the capacity for conscious attention which makes it easy to hide in imagination for the sake of imaginary self justification?

Then consider this in light of your opinion.


Conscious attention gets placed all the time, individually and en masse. Word definitions, i.e., concepts, are changed by mass useage which is evidence of mass placement of attention.


So who/what is placing the mass attention ... wherever?

Examples of humanity's common focus of attention:

Walk around where people congregate in public places while waiting. You will notice much attention directed downward, to the hand-held computer/communicator. Folks trust that someone is watching the sky.

Look at the POTUS race. Mass attention is being directed to what it is that people vote for in the hope of getting a mass of votes that leads to vast power to be used for the purposes of good, or evil.

After creating the Windows prototype of Macintosh and making the world a BETTER place, Steve Jobs definitely turned most of the world into a bunch of zombies with his I-phone, making it a WORSE place.

When I am out in public I leave my computer at home and I watch my environment. My face is not glued to a palm device.

The world is too dangerous to go walking around like a zombie.

[uwot]

The world is too dangerous to go walking around like a zombie.

But apparently you perceive no risk in thinking like one.

[Arising_uk]

...
While I agree with Jesus that paying your taxes is a good thing, and that going two miles carrying the gear of a Roman soldier is fine, the Romans were not drafting 19 year olds to go to war in Viet Nam. ...

Well obviously not, but they did have a draft.

So I believe that civil disobedience in cases where The White House is abusing its power is permissible, even as Jesus overturned the money tables in the temple two years in a row.

There is a valid philosophy to civil disobedience. This philosophy says that if the government violates its responsibility then it should be protested.

This way you do not go on empowering a corrupt government.

LBJ's ramping up of JFK's and Ike's Viet Nam involvement together with the draft was corrupt. There was no national security interest such as during WW2 or the US Civil War that warranted conscription during Viet Nam.

Can't disagree with this, although can't quite understand whose national security was involved in the US civil war?

[Walker]

Could it really be that the majority of the world’s atrocities and the experience of personal emptiness are due to the loss of the capacity for conscious attention which makes it easy to hide in imagination for the sake of imaginary self justification?

I think a more interactive view includes the concept of desensitization.

A sensitive person is an intelligent person. Sensitivity is intelligence. Desensitization, which has many causes, numbs intelligence.

A sensitive young mind needs the spirit-building environment as you mention to someday face the truth that in the face of the universe words are sacrificed to the impartial maelstrom. Like wrapping fish in newspapers covered with words.

Peacefully integrating the natural intelligence of sensitivity into life is not the aim of philosophy, but peace-of-mind does activate the wiring for rational contemplation that accurately correlates thought with the reality of what’s happening.

Desensitized minds commit atrocities.

[Lacewing]

Placement of attention has a larger horizon and is really all it takes for an intellectual contemplation that yields insight of such significance as to change the course of a life. This is actually the method used in the practice of self-enquiry, which begins as an exhausting intellectual contemplative practice and then continues from there.

Can you understand how conscious attention and intellectual self-enquiry have NOTHING to do with whether or not one believes in a god? Believing in a god does not ENABLE a person to do this, nor magically make a person aware. If you can separate religion from awareness -- as they are two different things -- you can understand the potential of ALL people with more truth and clarity.

Without impartial conscious attention self-enquiry becomes meaningless interpretations and self justification

Yes! Which is why any kind of rigid theist mindset (like ANY rigid mindset) obstructs clarity and truth. Such is not impartial conscious attention or self-enquiry. Such is, rather, adoption and maintenance of a preferred mindset that avoids questioning and challenges in order to thrive as-is.

Could it really be that the majority of the world’s atrocities and the experience of personal emptiness are due to the loss of the capacity for conscious attention which makes it easy to hide in imagination for the sake of imaginary self justification?

I can see truth in that. We live in bubbles with lots of limited rules and ideas to our liking -- refusing to see or accept anything beyond the membrane of that protective, self-validating world. When the bubble pops (by choice or not), and we really notice all that is around and flowing through us, EVERYTHING CHANGES!! Much more becomes possible. Perspective is expanded. Ideas of separation are replaced by vast connections. Resistance and hate are more easily transformed into acceptance and love.

[Arising_uk]

...

When I am out in public I leave my computer at home and I watch my environment. My face is not glued to a palm device.

The world is too dangerous to go walking around like a zombie.

True but over here that basically means taking care to watch where you're walking so you don't trip and crossing the road.

Surely he takes his smartphone with him to call for help in case of danger? Given what he said an' all.

[Walker]

Placement of attention has a larger horizon and is really all it takes for an intellectual contemplation that yields insight of such significance as to change the course of a life. This is actually the method used in the practice of self-enquiry, which begins as an exhausting intellectual contemplative practice and then continues from there.

Can you understand how conscious attention and intellectual self-enquiry have NOTHING to do with whether or not one believes in a god? Believing in a god does not ENABLE a person to do this, nor magically make a person aware. If you can separate religion from awareness -- as they are two different things -- you can understand the potential of ALL people with more truth and clarity.

So what. People are free to believe in all kinds of things. The primacy of belief exists in the mind of the concept worshipper. If the concept worshipper believes that in order for her to exist another cannot exist, then that is a belief predicated on the negation of life. Ergo, ego gone wild.

[uwot]

People are free to believe in all kinds of things.

That's what I keep saying.

If the concept worshipper believes that in order for her to exist another cannot exist, then that is a belief predicated on the negation of life. Ergo, ego gone wild.

It is generally theists who demand that nonbelievers conform. There are atheists who are dogmatic, but is is very rare to find one on this forum who believes that god doesn't exist. That is different to not believing in a god.

[Lacewing]

Can you understand how conscious attention and intellectual self-enquiry have NOTHING to do with whether or not one believes in a god? Believing in a god does not ENABLE a person to do this, nor magically make a person aware. If you can separate religion from awareness -- as they are two different things -- you can understand the potential of ALL people with more truth and clarity.

So what. People are free to believe in all kinds of things. The primacy of belief exists in the mind of the concept worshipper.

Does your "so what" mean that YES, you understand that conscious attention and intellectual self-enquiry are not assured by, nor dependent on, theism... therefore non-theists can also have these qualities?

If the concept worshipper believes that in order for her to exist another cannot exist, then that is a belief predicated on the negation of life. Ergo, ego gone wild.

I'm unfamiliar with any reality like this... unless you're speaking of theists (like yourself) who seem unable to acknowledge value or validity in non-theists. So this seems to be yet another wacka-doodle idea/statement you've concocted out of thin air to support something about your self/ego for reasons and twisted logic that none of us can know. I can't figure out whether you're extremely dishonest or ignorant or afraid.

[Walker]

If the concept worshipper believes that in order for her to exist another cannot exist, then that is a belief predicated on the negation of life. Ergo, ego gone wild.

I'm unfamiliar with any reality like this... unless you're speaking of theists (like yourself) who seem unable to acknowledge value or validity in non-theists. So this seems to be yet another wacka-doodle idea/statement you've concocted out of thin air to support something about your self/ego for reasons and twisted logic that none of us can know. I can't figure out whether you're extremely dishonest or ignorant or afraid.

Translation: killing in the name of religion according to a radicalized fundamentalist interpretation of the precepts = ego gone wild.

What do you care anyway. Out to prove something?

[Walker]

So what. People are free to believe in all kinds of things. The primacy of belief exists in the mind of the concept worshipper.

Does your "so what" mean that YES, you understand that conscious attention and intellectual self-enquiry are not assured by, nor dependent on, theism... therefore non-theists can also have these qualities?

Are you trying to say that atheists require empirical proof (as recognized by the atheist) that God exists in order to know God, and because atheists require this as proof of God’s existence, empirical evidence as recognized by another but not by the atheist, equates to belief in the mind of an atheist, and so the atheist thus projects her capacity for knowing onto others?

Spare me the essay. It’s a yes or no question.

[Lacewing]

Are you trying to say that atheists require empirical proof (as recognized by the atheist) that God exists in order to know God, and because atheists require this as proof of God’s existence, no empirical evidence equates to belief in the mind of an atheist, and so the atheist thus projects her capacity for knowing onto others?

I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm thinking you're on medication or should be.

Twice, I asked you a VERY SIMPLE question based on your own comments...

[Do] you understand that conscious attention and intellectual self-enquiry are not assured by, nor dependent on, theism... therefore non-theists can also have these qualities?

...and for some reason you are completely incapable or unwilling to answer. So, nevermind. I've completely lost interest in whatever you have to say. You clearly can't function in a normal question/answer kind of way... you have to convolute everything (probably in hopes of avoiding and obscuring truth)... and I'm not going to wade any more through your noisy, thick ramblings that you seem to think are clever. You demonstrate neither conscious attention nor intellectual self-enquiry, so it seems absurd for you to even talk about it as if you could.

[Walker]

Are you trying to say that atheists require empirical proof (as recognized by the atheist) that God exists in order to know God, and because atheists require this as proof of God’s existence, empirical evidence as recognized by another but not by the atheist, equates to belief in the mind of an atheist, and so the atheist thus projects her capacity for knowing onto others?

Spare me the essay. It’s a yes or no question.

I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm thinking you're on medication or should be.

It makes perfect sense, I assure you.

I'll take the insult on the chance you give the question a portion of the attention I gave it.

What you see as convolution is actually a removal of the superfluous. It’s a courtesy to reveal the rationality.

What you see as lack of evidence may also be a misinterpretation of reality.

If you’re sincere and not just on a smear, it would be a courtesy to give it some effort. The world often repays in kind.

Call it a fork in the road, and if you don't take it, you know the saying.

Do your best and if it doesn't work out, no hard feelings.