Uwot wrote:So in 2 and a bit years of engaging with the good people of this forum, some of whom are not completely mental and others who actually know what they are talking about, you apparently cannot think of a single thing you have learnt from any one of them. Frankly, if I thought my co-contributors were that useless, I would have given up some time ago.
I have tended to stay down here in the religious philosophy subsection and this section is, if taken against the forum as a whole, and taking in the forum owner's thrust (to the degree I understand it and I have not put that much energy into it), the notion of 'God', divinity, the 'importance' of religion, and the relevance of Christianity, these are simply no longer considered nor viewed as relevant or important topics. That is the general mood in academic circles these days. What may help you is to understand that I confine my reading to an older reading list. For example I tend to read people who were writing before WW2 certainly, and sometimes before WW1 or near that time. This is a deliberate choice on my part and fits with my idea that a great deal that is most relevant - in ideas and shifts in ideas - occurred between (roughly) 1880-1920. Modernism truly took form then, it seems.
You must also recognise - that is if you wish to - that I don't seek people out generally. I start a thread and stay on it, or involve myself in a thread and stay on it. Truthfully, I only rely on those who respond to me, and these are not many. As you may (painfully) remember it was Felasco who most engaged me on Non-Christian Apology and to a lesser extent Skip. But, if the question is What is there to be learned from people who operate in these domains of knowing, and by that I mean those who come to PN, all that I can do is share my impression: Their work overall is destructive. I mean 'destructive' in a neutral sense as in dismantle, disassemble. I would ask you to bring forward just one person who, critical of older religious forms, say, is attempting to build a new mode of relationship to 'spirituality' or religious life who writes on this forum. That is, one who is philosophically engaged and who remains open to the question of religious life as valid and relevant. If by 'co-contributors' you mean yourself, or Skip, or Hobbes or Leo, I see these folks as
dismissive of real philosophy in these arenas. They do not
actually engage the topic.
My 'co-contributors' are not at all irrelevant to their various projects, but their project is totally different from mine. You for example. I respect your positions and admire what I understand of your work, but we just have so few points where our interests overlap. Oh well...
So, and I have said this, I understand quite precisely that PN represents a certain point in a certain intellectual movement and evolution, and also modern trends in philosophy and science generally, and I
desire to remain anachronistic to it.
You attribute the development of your position to two authors.
I mentioned two authors who contributed to evolving views. What I would ask you to understand is that I personally am beginning to understand that understanding will take one to an area little peopled. The more that one understands the more understanding separates one from 'mass view'. I know that you despise this aristocratic term - that is too bad really - but this is how I see it. I suppose there is a point where one *sees* the world in the light of its general impossibility (meaning: convolution, inability to escape the motions of its own self, stuck and perhaps condemned to the line of its own movement) and then becomes sort of a *sage* to it. Meaning, the world moves by in all its motions and one simply observes it, powerless. I will leave it to you to draw conclusions as to what that perspective might mean.
If we really wanted to talk about radical thinkers though, and yet ones who are totally intellectual and rather stunning in their intellect, I would refer to Houston Chamberlain and to Rene Guenon. Because I am influenced by their ideas is one of the reasons you find my thinking (what you can understand of it which is not much) intolerable. I have only completed an initial reading of Chamberlain and see that this man is
dangerous.
You seem to me a person who - politically and perhaps in most areas - prefers to stay in safe waters with rather dreary, middle-of-the-road views determined by social convention. While my own day-to-day choices remain conservative and non-radical (in any sense) - and by this I mean influence on the kids, the daily activities of school, Boy Scouts and all that sort of things, I find it useful to veer far and wide in reading and to explore the trends that have been uncovered in this strange and radical period: 1880-1920. What I most want to do is find people who are interested in speaking about *all that* yet this proves difficult.
...we at least agree that we create a narrative from accepted "operative predicates".
But you did not take up the opportunity to share your specific perspective. I would say that 'romanticism' (to take a contrary position to you!) needs to be understood and then, when understood, cultivated. All you can say - and yet you say nothing - seems to be that it should be eliminated. You come up to the border of good topics and then, like a weak fart, waft away in the breeze ...
I say: I can see that something amazing is going on, I don't know the cause.
You say: I can feel something, that I believe is responsible. What a coincidence; it thinks like me.
What a silly encapsulation! I don't blame you: We encapsulate based on our perceptions, and our perceptions are quite often projections.
Really, it is quite different. At a tender age I had experiences in relation to the world (the amazing going on) which revealed to me the operation of intelligence and consciousness in it and through it. This happened at a pre-intellectual stage. My life has been about translating those experiences, and that sense of things, into terms amenable of discourse. While I cannot expect you or anyone to appreciate my experience (why should they? and how could they?) one always hopes that one might become a little better understood. But that is not necessarily my purpose. Really, one of my *purposes* is - and I thank you and others for giving me the chance to clarify myself to myself - understanding degeneration.
Understanding degeneration. Were you interested in the core meaning there, you'd likely be more interested in my discourse. But this is not your focus. Yet: What is your focus? How do you describe your project?
I say: I'll take people as I find them and give them the respect their behaviour deserves.
You say: The human race is stratified and I can conveniently group certain types together and ignore anything that looks like individuality.
How contingent! Since I am interested in tracing degeneration in culture, in what operates as-against solidity of self, and really all things, all forms, and also discovering what its opposing medicine might be, I am totally non-interested in where people stand, I mean in their 'becoming' and 'contingency', in their given moment. I am interested only in people who gain the inner power to
define themselves, and who then resist and countervail the movements of degeneration in the present. To understand my project, you'd have to hold this idea central. It would help to understand that all the degenerative influences I came to understand operating in me! I am a product of *all this* just as we all are. I became convinced that we
HAVE to seek an anchor in what I can only describe as 'invisible metaphysic' (
being, and of course you understand the references), and that this is a work that is carried on by a transitory entity (us) in a fleeting world, and yet we seek an anchor in the solidity of ideas. But ideas is just a word, and the being to which it refers is what I attempt to refer to. If you understood this - what I am trying to express - you would understand why I consider this effort vital and why I do not and cannot consider it 'twaddle' nor 'romanticist' in the sense you - pejoratively - mean.
I am married and though I do not have children of my own my wife does (she is now finishing up a law degree) and I have the responsibility to exert influence, make education choices, etc. (pre-teens). And one idea that I have talked over with her many times, and which she has used to mould her own relationships in
her context of non-achiever family members and people caught up in degeneration, is through a statement, a stance (this is my stance, in essence):
- "Either you will come under my influence to change, or I will come under your influence and change. It will be one or the other, not both".
If you understood degeneracy in the South American (Latin American) context, which you likely cannot, you would understand better what a solid anchor in Being means, or can mean. The acids of degeneration operate everywhere. To build up one must first understand What
is this acid? What is its intentionality? And when one has understood that, the next question is: What is an 'anchor'? What
is Being? What will it mean to choose to build myself up and to be capable of resisting degeneration in its many many different forms?
Now, a wider statement: I have no intention of 'coming under your influence', Esteemed Mr Uwot, because you do not have and you have not (yet) defined an 'anchor' in your own being! The very terms are impossible for you! At a cognitive/language level they are impossible (unless I am very wrong). You do not understand the ramifications of what I have written here and, I assume, it will take you some additional years to understand it, if you ever do and if you choose to. If you had such an anchor it would animate all your writing, you would come across as charged with *value* and also with the capacity to influence. You are (turning back to Weaver and his discourse on the
Phaedrus) the lover who has no love. You have discourse but little animating power.
