Christian apology by a non-Christian

[Mike Strand]

Gustav: I've been away from the forum for awhile, due to family medical issues, but I congratulate you for this topic, and I'll try to contribute something.

I'm a skeptical Christian at best and often just a straight doubter but nevertheless have tried on many occasions to defend it. But I've come to the position of many of the earliest Christian thinkers/believers (e.g., Origen): Universal Salvation (or Universal Reconciliation). This position was of course deemed heretical later on in the history of Christianity, but these days it's probably far from controversial.

The logic is as follows: Assume God exists, is the Creator of everything (and therefore responsible for the existence of every human being), loves humanity, and has tremendous power and knowledge. Then it follows that every human being will eventually be saved. This means hell, if it exists, is at worst a temporary state.

Since these assumptions are common among Christians, Jews, and Muslims, it would appear that universal salvation is a tenable position for a vast swath of humanity.

Personally, I tend towards a belief in universal salvation as a metaphor -- eternal rest and peace with the grave. We're all headed for the same fate, whether it's oblivion, or, more optimistically, heaven with God.

The implications of this position are interesting and encouraging. Just a few: I'm not any better or worse than any other human being since we're all in the same boat and headed for the same end. There is no reason to persecute other people for their beliefs, only to restrain those who hurt others. The golden rule (treating self and others with kindness and respect), or the second great commandment, may be difficult to follow, but it's a way to make human life on earth as good as it can be. If there is a heaven with God, you may get there before I do, and I may spend some time in hell before seeing the "Light", maybe even a million years. But a million years is nothing compared to eternity in heaven, and I may have more interesting stories to tell.

Given the assumptions about God in the third paragraph above (i.e. given the Christian God as commonly understood), it appears illogical to defend the idea of eternal damnation, because it implies that the pride or sin or stubbornness of a mere human being is stronger than God. Would God have to take away free will to save some people? No. God's love is powerful enough to persuade any human to freely choose the Light, even if it has to be "tough love". If you want to debate the meaning of free will, OK, but it's a logical morass.

What do you think? Whether you buy into universal salvation (literal or metaphorical) or not, I invite you and others to write about other interesting implications of universal salvation. I might come up with a few more, myself.

[Skip]

But... what is salvation? From what do we need to be saved/salvaged? Where is the perdition coming from, and how is it distributed? My original and still insurmountable problem with Christianity was the idea of original sin. Mythology answers the question - more or less satisfactorily - but nothing in Christian doctrine overcomes the objection.

[Mike Strand]

Hi, skip, and thanks for weighing in.

That's one of my beefs with Christianity, too -- that human beings are somehow inherently "sinful", or even, as some others would say, inherently "good". We are what we are, it seems to me, as another species of animal on this planet.

I guess I would say that we might be "saved" from our current state of life and culture and improve upon it by reducing the likelihood of destroying our species (making ourselves extinct) through warfare or bad decisions about use of earth's resources to support ourselves.

We may even learn to reduce the chances of being wiped out by forces beyond our control -- another large asteroid hitting the earth, climate changes caused by factors other than our own activities (such as precession of the earth's spin), or some such thing. This may require, for example, monitoring dangerous asteroids and blowing them apart with missiles, or migrating to other planets and setting up colonies. But this may call for using more of our time and energy and brains on constructive and human life-affirming projects and less on clever techniques of military offense and defense.

Not that we haven't learned a lot from military applications (e.g. those earth-saving missiles), but it may be time to recognize that we can destroy ourselves with that technology, and that it would be a better idea to use that technology to help save us from dangers other than ourselves.

This might be called "salvation": The preservation of homo sapiens for a better life, and possibly its eventual evolution into new and happier species.
___________________________________________________________________________________________

Some folks also believe in a type of personal salvation. They say attitude is everything, and people like Jesus or the Buddha or Mahatma Gandhi may be good examples. It's an attitude of love of humanity, non-violence, acceptance, and personal peace and bliss that is arguably achievable in this life. It involves being fearless -- no fear of injury to self or one's own death. It involves trying to help others (or at least do no harm) no matter what else happens. Fearlessness and love are the two key ingredients to such a state of mind.

It's interesting that this notion of personal salvation and also the "save the human species" notion I outline above both involve what is called the second great commandment in the bible, which is essentially the golden rule. In fact, even if you are a secular humanist, you can interpret the two great commandments as follows:

1. To desire to do good (to love God).
2. To do good (the golden rule).

Is this Christianity? Not necessarily, since Confucius and also the Hebrews propounded the golden rule before Jesus walked the earth, and we all know how some over-enthusiastic (bigoted) Christians ignored in the past and still ignore these two commandments in their zeal to "save" others (or to make everybody like them).

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Oh God, Oh God. Last time I was in Providencia it was hell to find an Internet connection. Now, lying on my hotel bed, I have a strong unencrypted signal from god-knows-where but I know it isn't the hotel's. What's the world coming to?

Hello there Mike and thanks for your note. I am going to start with Skip's comments first.

But first, consider this...

But... what is salvation? From what do we need to be saved/salvaged? Where is the perdition coming from, and how is it distributed? My original and still insurmountable problem with Christianity was the idea of original sin. Mythology answers the question - more or less satisfactorily - but nothing in Christian doctrine overcomes the objection.

To help to understand ideas in general, and this idea specifically, it is possibly useful to step out of one's given thinking-system, and our instinctive loathing of Christian piety and dogmatism, and look at the issue from another point of view.

Turning to the early Vedas, those so-called 'Rishis' who in their way were similarly ingenious as the very early Greeks, there are descriptions---poems essentially---of men turning their eyes on the truly marvelous world that we live in, but which also have a hard time seeing, perhaps because we are not really in the world, but living within abstractions about the world. But these early Vedists really seemed to look at the world, and they marveled. This bright orb, this 'space' of earth with a round container of blue, this unreal, blazing golden sun, then the cool, soft, yet penetrating moon. Wind, Water, the ever-recurring Dawn, the Night, Fire, these entities were seen, felt, understood, conversed with you might say, and their being was seen and felt as an aspect of a greater something, something indefinable. Something within the very core of the possibility of being, of existence: Brahman---from Sanskrit 'brh', 'to grow, expand'. The Supreme, life-existence beyond all forms. Reading the 'poetry' of the early Vedists you have the sense of men who looked at the world with open, perhaps 'unprejudiced' eyes. The world they saw was marvelous, utterly strange, magical.

But also, with eyes open, they noted the horrible end of all creatures, and certainly themselves: the agonizing and terrifying death. Strange, terrifying diseases. Frailty, loss of power, involuntary surrender to dissolution. The notion of death, the fact of death, could be said to have freaked them utterly out, as it does now all people, and as it always will. It is a backdrop to all human endeavors, and is, I suppose, the one 'face' that no man can really stare into. (See Ernst Becker 'The Denial of Death'). These early Vedists, confronting that fact or that inevitability, pushed themselves into experiments of perception. To employ the human body and soul, the human vessel, as a tool of perception and to attempt to penetrate (backward? inward? outward?) and discover, feel, know some fundamental understructure of Reality.

Brahman is that which 'utters' (as in 'speaks the Creation') but also that which is spoken, and also all acts of speaking-uttering. It is a very interesting connecting point: that our capacity for speaking has a creative relationship to the indescribable force that brings 'all this' into being. But perhaps in the original sense, a man's 'speaking' in this sense was a kind of 'hymn of marvel', a hymn of wonder.

[On other, descending levels, we have 'descriptive speech', idle chit-chat, vacuous expressions of next-to-nothing. But at the 'highest' level (in my view) we have truly creative speech, creative utterance which is on such another level that (forgive me, again) the average idiot raised up by his TeeVee is in no position to understand. But it is important to mention, once again, that we live in an age where this 'Idiot' asserts himself, makes determinations, assesses values, and he is simply not qualified to do so. To the degree that we link ourselves with 'him' is the degree that we fail, and will continue to fail, knowledge and knowing, and certainly a noble form of excellence. If we are content being dopes, well, God Bless us, somehow! But if we really strive for something higher there is a great deal of work to be done to realize it.]

In this sense, 'worship of God' is really, in its essence, a song. And as most of us know, or at least have a dim inkling, the highest expressions of man's striving and understanding seemed to be expressed in song and also poetry. And Scripture is also part of that.

But back to the Vedas: when these so-called Rishis began to use themselves as the perception-tool (their 'psyches' you might say), they discovered all manner of different things, but things not easy to understand. They felt that to hone their 'perception-tool' meant to purify it, to subject it to forms of discipline, and perhaps it could be said that these discipline-activities opened them up to difficult-to-perceive dimensions of perception about 'the nature of this reality'. But in a nutshell they discovered, or thought they discovered, that in a sense (or is this only 'angle-of-view? or 'story'?) that what was divine in them, that is what had been originated as 'consciousness' and 'awareness', was the very essence of Divinity in se. In this sense the perceiving soul, the soul's awareness of itself, and that as possibility, was the very 'thing' that connected them to Divinity. And the knowledge of that came rushing in (to put it that way) with a living, effervescence! And I suppose that you might say such effervescence produced a 'song', and that 'song' is a kind of 'music' which is expressed about the very nature of the Reality itself! It is both expression of beauty and 'key' to understanding it.

Now, let us consider 'salvation': Moksha. I think we all know and have heard very often the ideas about 'liberation' and 'enlightenment' and even 'moksha'. It seems that in the most simply described Vedic sense to achieve or to know (or perhaps to feel?) moksha is to have returned, on some level or other, perhaps unexplainable (as so much about life and perception and understanding ultimately is), to awareness of connection with Creation-Creator itself. Those that achieve it, know it. It is mystical no doubt, if mysticism is defined as the turning of the whole perception-tool that is man toward the seen and unseen Cosmos and 'divining' a relationship to it, and knowing that relationship in the core of oneself.

Svetasvatara Upanishad

• "When the Lord is known all fetters fall off; with the cessation of miseries, birth and death come to an end. From meditation on Him there arises, after the dissolution of the body, the third state, that of universal lordship. And lastly, the aspirant, transcending that state also, abides in the complete Bliss of Brahman."

It is not hard to draw a connection from a more developed 'metaphysical' description offered by Vedanta and the (excuse the pretentious term) soteriological notions that run through Christianity.

But there are still large problems and issues here, and these go to the heart of our issues with dogmatic Christianity. Do we escape from the world as it is to some 'other' world or platform of being? Or, is it that we are supposed to realize something within ourselves and thusly 'come into life' and live life more fully, more really, more honestly? To be more here? And if so, what would that entail as ethical precepts and choices? Obviously, if one postpones life for some imagined future, well, that is certainly problematic. We all know a great deal about 'stalled life', eh? If one in essence hates the present, hates the body, hates even the 'bright orb of the skies' and the very possibility of existence in a World, then one is, I suggest, just a wee bit fucked.

But here is another angle-of-view to understand what 'salvation' could mean:

We can certainly imagine a man who has been imprisoned, say in the worst imaginable 'oriental despotism' that can be imagined (oriental just for imagination's sake). He has carried on his existence for 30 years in a literal slimy, poisonous, lightless hell-realm. He is diseased, hopeless and nearly dead. Depressed. No one remembers him. No one knows he is there or cares he is there. He is dead in that sense and forgotten. Is not hell in its most excruciating sense the knowledge that one has been abandoned utterly? And 'heaven', at least in terrestrial terms, is to be found, discovered, uncovered, known, appreciated, loved?

If you or someone were to know of his existence and if you or someone were to dedicate yourself to challenge the authority which put him there and kept him there, and if you were able after a long struggle to free that man and bring him into the light so to be able to 'live his life in greater measure', it could be said that you undertook a 'work of salvation'.

The notion of someone on high or outside of 'imprisonment' who sees and knows another's suffering and (excuse the term) 'perdition', and who acts to alleviate it, can be applied in so many different senses to our concrete world that it hardly has to be spelled out. Even mundane knowledge can function to liberate. Are there other levels of knowledge (about this realm) that have liberating power? What would that be about if so?

And of course one must acknowledge that it is not at all impossible that, on some level, our own world is a place from which we may be 'liberated'. I am not saying, exactly, that I see it like this. In fact I tend to see notions of liberation into heaven-realms as a dangerous fantasy if it keeps one from self-realization in one's 'incarnated existence'. But it is not impossible that our conduct, or possibly 'special knowledge' about the true nature of the world, might help in the work of bringing one's incarnated self to existence in a less fatal plane of existence. This idea, basically, operates behind all of the Eastern schools in one way or another.

In any case, is it possible that some acts and some actions of 'purification' or 'preparation' (certain ethical practices) have concrete value in this motion or movement? Indeed, our ethical systems have their origin in such notions of purification for a life-to-come.

No part of our knowledge-base or our symbol-systems should be chucked, rather it must all be reexamined, reinterpreted.

Here, the Medieval Version, rather crude and of debatable effectiveness.

[Skip]

Lovely; lovely and long, respectively.
Okay, what's it been since the onset of organized religion, +/-4000 years?
In that time, since the first oh-so-poetic awareness of good and bad stuff in the world and advice to turn our internal eyes heavenward/ Godward/ toward renunciation, are we ever farther removed from the possibility of self-annihilation? Have we been saved? If not yet, when? 'Coz we're cutting it mighty close, guys!

[jackles]

Existance loves its self.and loves creation as its self.so when the event is over.existance remains the same as it allways woz.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

I think that it was only after the invention of the atom bomb that a man-originated possibility of annihilation of the world became an imagined possibility. And that means that the idea of universal annihilation in a 'real sense' (and not merely mythic or prophetic) has only been with us a short while. But we certainly have responded to that, not only with action taken (protest, etc.) but through inner, psychological content: the symbolization of fear and different sorts of existential terror.

It has been said that our modern world came close to nuclear conflagration more than once.

Now, we seem to deal with another group of possible causes of a feared and expected annihilation. The natural systems of the Earth herself, stirred up by man's unconscious activity, coalesce as atmospheric force, as accelerations of natural processes or processes that break up natural balance and do great harm to man's systems.

But this sort of destruction will not, cannot, bring an end to life. It may tremendously affect man's technical systems though.

The other 'imagined catastrophe' (unless I am missing one?) is that of the mega-asteroid that crashes into the Earth, creates megatsunamis and supersonic destructive waves and then a particle plume that envelopes the Earth, cuts off the sunlight, and starts a huge chill.

In apocalyptic literature, Jewish, pre-Christian, and other, destruction is an outcome decided by a moral force. Mankind is evil and has to be destroyed or put back in its place. Intelligent force overseeing man's ascent conspire to set him back, essentially to punish him.

I suggest that the notion of apocalyptic destruction, destruction by force utterly beyond man's capability to influence, connects to symbolic psychologies that 'live' in our consciousness. Even Al Gore with his filmed images of megastorms and disasters, even if such things will happen, strike a deeply 'psychological' hot point in our consciousness. This sense of the fragility of self, or the temporality of our life: a deep insecurity.

Myself, I welcome the wall of water, stretching from horizon to horizon and though I know it will come without soundtrack, still, it deserves one. The idea of a supersonic wave, a kilometer high, churning over the earth and utterly wiping out mankind gives me an sense of inner peacefulness!

Selah, it is as it should be.

What I find interesting has more to do with what people do with these ideas or feelings. See, I tend to believe that wretched little man, stuck in a wretched little hole, capable only of imagining a wretched little present, and a wretched little future, is really nothing more than a dead little man who wanders looking for a grave to bury himself. A man who has 'died in life'.

Even if life will be wiped out in the next moment, I think that we can display a little more dynamism of imagination.

I think a rather devilish, deviant thought: I think that this lack of imagination, this endless deadness, is an expression of a crypto-Christian hatred of life. A mega-resentment that has hold of many people. You know:

• “ ‘Come out of her, my people,’
  so that you will not share in her sins,
  so that you will not receive any of her plagues;
  for her sins are piled up to heaven,
  and God has remembered her crimes.
  Give back to her as she has given;
  pay her back double for what she has done.
  Pour her a double portion from her own cup.
  Give her as much torment and grief
  as the glory and luxury she gave herself.
  In her heart she boasts,
  ‘I sit enthroned as queen.
  I am not a widow;
  I will never mourn.’
  Therefore in one day her plagues will overtake her:
  death, mourning and famine.
  She will be consumed by fire,
  for mighty is the Lord God who judges her."

A sort of mass psychology of fear, hatred, contempt, recognition of powerlessness, contempt for the 'rulers of the earth', etc.

Keep up your recycling Oh Ye Children of a God of Production and Distribution in an Eternal Walmart Chain of Life and Thought, and modify your carbon footprint, Yea, but let's not abandon completely the higher resonances!
_______________________________________

• The Final Journey
  
  .... and I will go away.
  And the birds will stay, singing
  And my garden will stay
  With its green tree
  And white water well.
  
  And every afternoon the sky will be blue and peaceful
  And the pealing of bells will be like this afternoon’s
  Peal of the bell of the high campanile.
  
  They will die, all those who loved me
  And every year the town will be revived, again
  And in my circle of green white-limed flowering garden
  My spirit will dwell nostalgic from tree to well.
  
  And I will go away
  And I will be lonely without my home
  And without my tree with its green foliage
  Without my white water well
  Without the blue peaceful sky
  And the birds will stay
  Singing.
  
  ---Juan Ramón Jiménez

[Skip]

There are plenty of ways for human populations to destroy themselves and each other. I submit that fairly wide swaths have been hacked with pre-nuclear weapons, and that people were very much aware of local extinction events from plague to volcanic eruption, from barbarian invasion to flood... especially flood! long before Hiroshima. They had no reason to think globally; no reason to care, or know about anyone outside their own nation.

No, I mean how many - what percent of the people who have lived and died on Earth in the past 4000 years - have actually been salvaged? Are the savings increasing over time? Are the odds of long-term species viability better now than in 2000BC?

Has organized religion made us, overall, less combative and less destructive?

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Has organized religion made us, overall, less combative and less destructive?

How would you undertake to answer such a question? And really Skip your question is rhetorical: It is your view that 'organized religion' is a big part of the problem, and at times I have the impression you believe it is The Problem.

They had no reason to think globally; no reason to care, or know about anyone outside their own nation.

But don't you think it is 'religion', in the sense of awareness of solidarity, of the potential of union, of peaceful cooperation, that has given us that sense? I was always under the impression that that was on one level the goal or desire of Catholic Europe: an Empire overseen by a legal authority operating 'under God'. From our perspective it looks rather impossible and suspect, but it worked in its way. We may be in the process of recreating it with a unified world system, interconnected industries and distribution systems, and of course communication systems. Then, we can all sing together. Then, no more 'gargling in the rat-race choir, bent out of shape by society's pliers', but unified at a fundamental level and singing in harmony!

It is strange to understand worship as a 'song' (though I meant it more as hymn or mantra) and then to ridicule an attempt at singing such a song, or applying certain (rather dubious and emotional) values to the whole, troubled world.

Myself, I can't really participate in a conversation about the Collective, about The Whole World. I think I am uniquely unqualified and also rather uninterested. I don't myself know if it is appropriate to fear the emerging 'world state' (a military, corporate and governmental union) or to herald its coming.

Still, the Question what leads to mass hysteria and mass madness and mass killing is an interesting one. According to Wilhelm Reich:

• "Suppression of the natural sexuality in the child, particularly of its genital sexuality, makes the child apprehensive, shy, obedient, afraid of authority, good and adjusted in the authoritarian sense; it paralyzes the rebellious forces because any rebellion is laden with anxiety; it produces, by inhibiting sexual curiosity and sexual thinking in the child, a general inhibition of thinking and of critical faculties. In brief, the goal of sexual suppression is that of producing an individual who is adjusted to the authoritarian order and who will submit to it in spite of all misery and degradation. At first the child has to submit to the structure of the authoritarian miniature state, the family; this makes it capable of later subordination to the general authoritarian system. The formation of the authoritarian structure takes place through the anchoring of sexual inhibition and anxiety."

In any case I wouldn't know how to even approach such large questions.

[Skip]

But don't you think it is 'religion', in the sense of awareness of solidarity, of the potential of union, of peaceful cooperation, that has given us that sense?

No, I truly and honestly, and without for one second considering it The Problem*, believe that religion has done this.

We may be in the process of recreating it with a unified world system, interconnected industries and distribution systems, and of course communication systems.

So, once the supranational corporations, with the help of US military and IMF, has conquered the world, established the necessary work-camps and residential schools, they'll convert everyone to the same happy tune. Global Mass Man ... but at least he'll be operating under the tutelage of a Euro-Christian elite.
Seriously?
It may happen.... but I think it's a long shot.

*The Problem is that we are insane. Religion is but one of the symptoms.

[jackles]

Your dead right there skip religion is a symptom. of an eternal being trying to make scence of its self in an event.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Ok. Religion is a symptom of the insanity of man. To describe man as 'insane' raises some questions:

1) Are men born insane? Or, do they receive training in insanity?
2) Has there existed and does there exist now any 'sane' person?
3) What are the 'symptoms' of sanity?
4) Are men insane equally? Or are some more insane than others? For example, a small tribe (if such remains) living (to reference a cliche) 'in the jungles of South America', that is, in a preindustrial condition: are these people sane, more insane, or more or less equally insane as the truly or really insane (the insanity, perhaps, not having been able to jump out and come to life, as it were).
5) How do men get sane?
6) Are women equally as insane as men? I ask just to see if your theory is gender-based.
7) A hypothetical: If religion is a symptom of insanity, it follows that in a man who did not 'suffer' from religion, there would be no symptom of insanity and that, perhaps, he would be sane. Yet if religion is a symptom one assumes there are other symptoms. What are these other symptoms? Essentially, who determines who is insane and sane?
Do you have to be sane to recognize insanity? Or is it possible that an insane person might also be able to recognize insanity?
9) To ameliorate man's (universal) insanity, what do you think is required? Is healing of the insanity possible? What helps man to move toward sanity? What may be the role of pharma-psychological drugs? Do you think it possible that man can be 'cured' by engineering appropriate drugs to modify-eliminate his insanity?
10) This man, according to some standard definition, suffers from an 'insane' condition. Do you see his illness as being of the same order as man's general 'insanity', the one of which religion is a symptom? Ever see the film 'Clean, Shaven'?

Here is a BBC reportage on the lifestyle of the Hare Krishnas. Having myself looked into this 'movement' and read a good deal about it, I know that it has some darker aspects and does function in numerous ways cult-like. But I am curious if you see defects in the core and underlying mode of life? I.e. living in accord with defined and strict ethical principals. Controlling sex-life, non-harmfulness of animals (vegetarianism), a life dedicated to service, etc. In principal, I wonder, what sort of life-ethic would you recommend---I mean 'for the sane'?

It seems to me fair to ask you to define 'sanity' for a given human being, at least in some roundabout way. I know or strongly sense that you will not be able to and will avoid all these questions because the whole issue is utterly conflict-ridden and if one thing can be said about 'man', to speak so generally, and certainly 'Western man' to speak of one we know, what characterizes us most is utter confusion and inability to decide anything at all!

To attempt answers is to land squarely in the center of the problem, don't you think?

So, once the supranational corporations, with the help of US military and IMF, has conquered the world, established the necessary work-camps and residential schools, they'll convert everyone to the same happy tune. Global Mass Man ... but at least he'll be operating under the tutelage of a Euro-Christian elite.

Well, the 'corporate organization' and the whole economic model is, unless I have it wrong, a European creation. The ordering of the world after WW2 that Chomsky writes about: dividing the world into 'sectors' and setting up local managers in each sector. The punishing of rogue and unaligned sectors. The vilification of enemy-sets who resist incorporation within the International Model. This is literally constructing an infrastructure for a world system. While it may not have a specific religious affiliation---just as corporate structures are not religious---it does seem to be the general direction. It becomes a global game of 'coopetition'.

[bobevenson]

Ok. Religion is a symptom of the insanity of man.

"Insanity" is a legal term, not a medical term.

[Skip]

1) Are men born insane? Or, do they receive training in insanity?

Both. They inherit it and do everything in their power to pass it on.

2) Has there existed and does there exist now any 'sane' person?

Yes, always. Of course, it's a relative sanity - hard to attain and harder to keep. It's a Bell curve, with the sanest minority at one end having the least power and the most insane minority at the other end having the most.

3) What are the 'symptoms' of sanity?

1. A desire for power below the threshold of taking action to get it.
2. An ability to form judgments based on evidence, rather than whatever a crowd is chanting.
3. Sustained attention to one's personal responsibilities and relationships.
4. When a response to a problem has failed to solve that problem 14 times, not attempting that same solution, only with more force and at greater cost, a 15th time.
5. Not volunteering to die for a. a line on a map b. a piece of cloth c. morons with shiny brass buttons on their coat d. a dare e. 6' of muddy hillside f. some retard's claim to an uncomfortable chair in a drafty palace g. slogans h. black sludge i. yellow metal j. bragging rights or k. any other stupid idea or empty promise.
6. Not volunteering to kill anyone because a. they speak the wrong language b. live in the wrong place c. have the wrong skin colour d. call god by the wrong name e. love the wrong person f. said the wrong thing g. looked at you funny f. made a mistake g. put on the wrong uniform h. have something you could have too, if you went home an built it instead of being out here blowing it up.
7. Dividing issues into categories like real/unreal, my business/not my business, harmful/benign, makes a difference/doesn't affect a damn thing, instead of righteous/abomination.

4) Are men insane equally? Or are some more insane than others?

As above.

For example, a small tribe (if such remains) living (to reference a cliche) 'in the jungles of South America', that is, in a preindustrial condition: are these people sane, more insane, or more or less equally insane as the truly or really insane (the insanity, perhaps, not having been able to jump out and come to life, as it were).

The potential was there, as soon the cerebral cortex outgrew pragmatic requirement. You begin to see the extent of its potential in the early city states; it bursts into full bloom with the crusades and the conquest of the Americas and reaches fruition about here http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/08/17-0 (See Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos) Generally, the bigger, more complex and technologically advanced a society, the large3r percent of its members are crazy.

5) How do men get sane?

First, by their parents curtailing species insanity from infancy and teaching them life skills; later, society providing a sanity-promoting environment (where children are not forced to deny their own experience, thoughts and feelings in favour of the prevailing social myth; not told to "do as I say, not as I do") and opportunities to fulfill one's potential. By contact with emotionally stable people, with nature and other species, and through the exercise of one's physical and mental capabilities.

6) Are women equally as insane as men?

No. Maybe 70%, but I'm guessing.

I ask just to see if your theory is gender-based.

Partly. The main reasons females are generally less prone: low testosterone, practical concerns tend to keep them grounded in reality, better relationships within the gender, and being excluded from power.

7) A hypothetical: If religion is a symptom of insanity, it follows that in a man who did not 'suffer' from religion, there would be no symptom of insanity and that, perhaps, he would be sane.

It's a symptom, not the symptom. This is one of the collective symptoms; there are also individual symptoms.

Yet if religion is a symptom one assumes there are other symptoms. What are these other symptoms?

Some diagnostic features: poor impulse control; a desire to kill or hurt other people; a desire to hurt weaker creatures; willingness to trade useful objects for useless ones; a desire for control of things, events and persons that have no effect on one's survival or welfare; enmity toward others who pose no threat; willingness risk one's safety, kin and happiness for nebulous ideas and uncertain gains; an urge to make dramatic but unproductive gestures; a need to be feared... etc.

Essentially, who determines who is insane and sane?

In this instance, I do, but I'm willing to defer to the CPA on particulars. The funny thing is, psychiatrists are able to spot mental illness in individuals, but when their whole society behaves like a giant fruitcake, they just pay their taxes and keep truckin'. Well, maybe BMWing.

Do you have to be sane to recognize insanity? Or is it possible that an insane person might also be able to recognize insanity?

We can see each other's pretty well; just not our own.

9) To ameliorate man's (universal) insanity, what do you think is required?

Reverse the power-curve. The vast majority of people in the middle are potentially equally sane and insane - which way they go depends on who leads them. When things are really desperate, we turn to the smart and stable ones for guidance. Solon did a pretty good job for a couple of years, but the other guys came back and it all went pear-shaped again.

Is healing of the insanity possible?

In small, local, temporary applications, it has been done many times. So, I know it's possible.

What helps man to move toward sanity?

A loving and competent mother. Make her president.

What may be the role of pharma-psychological drugs?

Fermented pears are helpful; the mushrooms just make you talk to the darkest part of your own brain.

Do you think it possible that man can be 'cured' by engineering appropriate drugs to modify-eliminate his insanity?

Nope. You have to be there , talk to each other and dig up the carrots. Yes, even if the ground is frozen.

10) Do you see his illness as being of the same order as man's general 'insanity', the one of which religion is a symptom?

Same order, no; same genera, yes; as a traffic accident victim is part of his society's collective damage.

Ever see the film 'Clean, Shaven'?

No. And i'm not for up a lot of movies right now.

in numerous ways cult-like.

That's the fatal flaw - every time.

living in accord with defined and strict ethical principals

Principles are fine, as long as everyone is more or less in agreement, rather than having them handed down from a superior authority. I say more or lass, because intelligent animals can't be in total agreement about anything for more than a minute: they have to constantly negotiate, compromise, give and take, balance.

Controlling sex-life,

We should all control our sex-life, but nobody who wasn't invited and freely agreed to share the bed ought to have any input.

non-harmfulness of animals (vegetarianism)

I approve. So do the cows.

, a life dedicated to service,

Why? Nobody should serve - ever! Co-operation, kindness and helpfulness are good; subservience, self-effacement and humiliation are obscene.

etc. In principal, I wonder, what sort of life-ethic would you recommend---I mean 'for the sane'?

Back to Vonnegut: What the world needs is not love, but common courtesy.
Start there. Add common sense, moderation and delight.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

It seems to me that the philosophy that you outline is essentially one of renunciation. It is a path that could be recommended and implemented only by an individual or a group of like-minded individuals. But if it came to any organization of scale, or an organization that had to handle wealth, production or property, that it would quickly become impracticable.

It would not be possible for an 'ambitious' person or family either. By its recommendations it is a quiescent philosophy.

I have a feeling that one who would outline such an ethical program is likely one who is the 'ward' of a large, existent state. I say this tentatively and without being certain. I have noticed that some people I know who are 'wards' of socialist or semi-socialist states have little 'ownership interest', or have relinquished their ownership interest. The funds they receive that enable them to live and carry on come from a 'collective pool'. Not bad in itself, I reckon, except that it tends to remove a person from the rather down and dirty side of terrestrial life. From a protected vantage or platform one can then philosophize almost utopian ideals and ideal relations between people. There is nothing wrong with that, per se, yet I have observed that when that sort of person attempts to impose their ideals in other environments it doesn't quite work out as they imagine.

But then there are people---admirable people who have made admirable life-choices---who opt off the 'grid' and resolve to live in simple circumstances. I am sort of curious about the choices you have made, Skip, but then too personal questions on Internet forums are not advised.

To understand how I see things, you have to keep in mind that I live in a radically different sphere than N America, Canada or Europe or Australia. The 'world' I see functioning around me is rawer, more basic, more brutal, and people survive and get by through their own efforts and not by the tremendous advantage of great resources offered by a strong and developed state.

Yet I think the core problem can be outlined, generally speaking, in relation to the value-system you have described, or the one that opposes it. When you speak of 'a desire for power below the threshold of taking action to get it', it seems to me that you would have to extend it beyond mere 'power' and to any and perhaps all levels of ownership. And I think one has to come out and say, right at the beginning, that essentially you outline a path of reducing 'ownership' and 'ownership interest'. But with this one runs into real problems and rather quickly.

We (I mean a general, hypothetical 'we' and not you and I) seem to recognize that the more terrestrial power and wealth one has, the more problematical becomes the life of holding and maintaining it. The more you have, the more you have to protect. And yet the business of life, and prospering in life, require resources. A simple example is a family that desires to raise up professionals. Unless one has recourse to a State that will provide, free of charge, such an education, and that is certainly NOT the case where I live, though it may be in your neck of the woods, one will have to make choices and channel one's activities toward the getting of those resources.

Here, where I live, it is true, large sectors of the population 'choose' to remain stationary in their more or less impoverished condition. They do not move up but they do not move down, either. And the choice to 'move up' requires special and 'unusual' efforts. It requires ambition, essentially. I have observed that changing one's economic status has an essential first step of understanding the dynamic of 'impoverished thinking'. While it is not quite a 'self-help philosophy' it has certain things in common with it. There is a mental dynamic of impoverishment and perhaps it is also 'spiritual'. Certainly it has to do with education and also how one views the world and sees oneself in it.

The strange part is what occurs when a person moves toward generation of wealth. One begins to make an 'investment' in the body of one's physical presence on the Earth. One begins to take a stand, even in subtle ways, against all that that holds one in impoverishment. One looks at the 'apathetic' and the powerless and begins to notice that it is their own mentality that holds them in their static impoverishment (though this is not the only factor). To change ones economic position means a change in one's entire attitude.

But this is just a little preamble to what I see around me, as distinct from the world I surmise you live in. (I can't know). The real point has to do with to what degree we plant ourself within this reality. To recommend to people that they limit their desire for power (I understand this as wealth, as attainment, as social mobility, education, etc.) and of the action taken to get it functions directly against what could be described as a core truth or fact of life itself. To advance in life was traditionally understood as gaining land, gaining herds, having wealth in the form of cloth, silver and gold and the storehouses filled. It still is, essentially. But in doing that, in getting that, in having that, one confronts the problem of just what sort of being am I? What am I willing to struggle for, what am I willing to sacrifice for? And it leads straight to the basic question: What am I willing to defend?

Would you defend the life of a child? Would you defend your home? Would you defend that 'invisible border' within which your terrestrial life occurs? Would you defend 'everything that you have worked for', legally and honestly, within the structures of your society? Only a person who has 'ownership interest' would say 'yes'. And of those who would say 'no', they likely have little or no 'ownership interest'. Or perhaps some other view of life claims them?

Here, you have cute-ified it:

• 5. Not volunteering to die for a. a line on a map b. a piece of cloth c. morons with shiny brass buttons on their coat d. a dare e. 6' of muddy hillside f. some retard's claim to an uncomfortable chair in a drafty palace g. slogans h. black sludge i. yellow metal j. bragging rights or k. any other stupid idea or empty promise.

You have essentially reduced to the ridiculous what in actual fact, for some, would literally amount to a defense of all they have struggled for in their whole life. Once, outside of a fairly large Colombian city, one Sunday when average (read: poor) people have a little free time to get outside, I was walking with a friend along the river on the outskirts of town. Lots of people, kids swimming in the river, families making a day of it. A couple of men ran by and yelled that they had just been robbed of a bicycle at knife-point. They were going after the robber and one of them said, 'That bicycle represents all my work of the last year!' And if they were to have caught that robber they would have severely beaten him if they could and perhaps even killed him.

When you see first hand people who struggle against odds that 'some of us' have never faced nor will ever face, it puts in relief in weird ways some of the fundamental facts of terrestrial life. Now, the bicycle was not 'yellow metal' but iron and aluminum, and though it was not 'cloth' in the sense of vanity or excess, it did indeed represent the investment of a poor person in a mode of transportation the having of which might lead to other possibilities (more work, a better job, even relationship possibilities: status too, which is not to be dismissed).

So, let's suppose they recovered the bike and bashed in the thief's head. Was this 'sane' or 'insane'? Was it ethically defensible, or not? (Rule out police as they are impotent and ineffective). What in this sense, in your life, corresponds to your most 'cherished possession'? A few acres of land? An orchard? A small house?

Here is another example: Once (in the same area but during the week) I was robbed at gunpoint by 4 teenagers. Perhaps 14-15 years old. Often, in similar situations, if the victim doesn't have any money or valuables on him they shoot them dead. A bullet in the heads will do that. Happens all the time. Again, the police are totally ineffective so there is no recourse to them. Let us suppose that you, Skip, were called to adjudicate this: Some youngsters, poor indeed, get hold of a gun and start to rob. When their victims have no cellular phone or watch or cash they shoot them in the head and they die. You must make a ruling here. What should happen? (I had about 10 dollars and a cellphone and obviously lived to tell the tale).

First, by their parents curtailing species insanity from infancy and teaching them life skills; later, society providing a sanity-promoting environment (where children are not forced to deny their own experience, thoughts and feelings in favour of the prevailing social myth; not told to "do as I say, not as I do") and opportunities to fulfill one's potential. By contact with emotionally stable people, with nature and other species, and through the exercise of one's physical and mental capabilities.

Sure sounds good on paper. It is relatively (well, terribly easy) to make these recommendations from an advantaged position, protected by a developed State, but quite another to map a road to getting out of miring poverty and building a 'sane community'. Along the way to that, all manner of Force is required, all manner of use of power and defense of what one has. To see it and understand it is 'sobering' as they say.

Partly. The main reasons females are generally less prone: low testosterone, practical concerns tend to keep them grounded in reality, better relationships within the gender, and being excluded from power.

It is true. Women always have direct awareness of all that must be protected at any cost---their body as the matrix of culture and their offspring. Men have the responsibility of constructing a world from out of chaos and have to fight, risk, struggle, and also lose everything from time to time. Is it only when an advanced and powerful Motherly State is brought into existence that man himself is asked (forced?) to become female? Without that protective state that man would be left on his own to defend what is his, what he can get and what he can maintain. Then, trust me, the picture radically changes.

The essence here, the essence of the question, has to do with just how and how much one roots oneself in concrete reality. The more that one roots oneself, and by extension the society that supports one, in physical reality, the more that one has to confront the issues of 'ownership interest', defense, maintenance, etc.

One can live 'off to one side' and off the Grid. That was a beatnik solution: Not to confront society but to evade it. But when one is interconnected through one's rootedness, one is complicit. It is that complicity that is the hardest thing to recognize.