Philosophy Now Forum

Posted: **Tue Jan 04, 2022 4:01 pm**

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Jan 04, 2022 12:28 pm
Lacewing wrote: ↑Tue Jan 04, 2022 12:26 am I'm not fixated on a certain position. It's understandable that many people may not fathom even the possibility of that or how it can work (and how it does work very well for many other people). Sometimes it seems there is no language for crossing certain chasms.
I do the best I can reading and analyzing what you write.

Yes, you do. It's all filtered and affected by what you think you know.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Jan 04, 2022 12:28 pm You are right: I am one among those who cannot fathom the positions you wish to hold and assert, yet without actually assuming responsibility for them.

The inability to fathom is what leads to distortions being projected onto me. And now you charge that I don't take responsibility for the positions you claim I must hold?

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Jan 04, 2022 12:28 pmYou say you are not ‘fixated’ on a ‘certain’ position. But do you have any position at all?

I have as much position as necessary for moving with stability and growth through life, day to day. Opinions and ideas expand and evolve with new information and perspectives. I do not need to raise a flag to anything. I am not compelled to win a game or climb a pyramid of common or conventional thinking.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Jan 04, 2022 12:28 pmIs it that you just don’t want to be ‘located’?

I have shared extensively on this site. I do not hold back anything -- I'm genuine and I love connecting with people. I simply don't want to deal with these distortions and misunderstandings (such as what you have begun expressing). It's why I stopped talking to Age, too. What value is there in wading through a flood of someone else's misperceptions?

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Jan 04, 2022 12:28 pmam I right to perceive that at a decisive moment . . . you drop out of the discussion? What were you doing in the discussion in the first place?

It was not a decisive moment

-- it was your reaction of launching into your trip which I was not interested in sorting through. No offense. We're all here to say what we want to express. We can challenge the claims or ideas of others, but I'm not personally into arguing a particular point. People can think what they think, and I pretty much don't care unless they impose or project it onto me. I don't need to have 'the right answer' that everybody agrees with. I simply offer my perspective to hopefully demonstrate the existence of 'more' to consider and experience (as compared with someone who claims what is or must be). I find value within and beyond conventions, based on the circumstances at hand. What position is that?

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Jan 04, 2022 12:28 pmIt is also a valid and necessary project to try to locate your positions within intellectual currents operating today.

Perhaps if you think the way you do, which may mistakenly impose false limits and standards. There are more ways to think and operate.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Jan 04, 2022 12:28 pmWhat else should be done on a philosophical forum?

People offer many perspectives that may or may not be tied to current conventions. How else do we see beyond the conventions we tie ourselves to?

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Jan 04, 2022 12:28 pmI believe it fair to say that one notable element of your position is that it is anti-Christian and/or counter-Christian.

Most Christian claims do not make sense to me, no -- but I do support and appreciate (as I've said) that other people are free to use what makes sense to them as long as they don't turn it into a religion that is imposed onto everybody else, and which potentially stunts broader awareness and progress. That is what I oppose. To me, it's less important what a person believes... and more important what they do with it.

Posted: **Tue Jan 04, 2022 4:27 pm**

Dontaskme wrote: ↑Tue Jan 04, 2022 1:27 am
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Jan 04, 2022 12:52 am
Dontaskme wrote: ↑Tue Jan 04, 2022 12:44 am I have no idea...
We finally agree.
congrats

You won the philosophical debate. You must be so proud.

No, I'd rather have a conversation with some real content in it, some challenges and some disciplined thinking. But one works with what one has, I suppose.

Posted: **Tue Jan 04, 2022 4:37 pm**

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Jan 04, 2022 4:27 pm
Dontaskme wrote: ↑Tue Jan 04, 2022 1:27 am
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Jan 04, 2022 12:52 am
We finally agree.
congrats

You won the philosophical debate. You must be so proud.
No, I'd rather have a conversation with some real content in it, some challenges and some disciplined thinking. But one works with what one has, I suppose.

What you mean like IC's definition of God content or fuck off. You arrogant twerp.

Posted: **Tue Jan 04, 2022 4:45 pm**

Nick_A wrote: ↑Tue Jan 04, 2022 4:12 am Why wasn't creation made perfect?

The Bible says it was originally made "good." It is man's departure from God that has caused what you now see.

It does seem Peter is describing this process.

Not at all. The Eastern view is cyclical and perpetual. Peter's describing a linear timeline. And that's just the first of many differences. In Eastern thought, there can be no final "judgment" nor any winding up of material reality: it must needs be eternal. Peter's clearly saying it's not.

Christianity on this thread is centered around God. The Christianity I know of is centered around the Christ.

There is a difference of role, but none of identity. Christ is God, God manifest in flesh. (1 Tim. 3:16)

...the vertical Great Chain of Being.

This is a Medieval fiction, and one you will not find in the Bible. The Bible says that "there is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus." (1 Tim. 2:5) There are not many such "mediators," as the GCB theory holds.

If a person wants to feel Christianity, what does it mean to carry ones cross and why we can't do it?

What makes you think you "can't do it"?

But people prefer to argue about Conceptions of God and call it Christian? What's wrong with this picture?

Nothing, really.

Given that the issues at stake are so important, we ought to expect there would be considerable debate about their implications. However, that doesn't mean the debate needs to become hostile and abusive. And when it does, then there's something wrong. But one should certainly wish to parse out carefully the implications of the Word of God, so one ought to expect important conversations around those issues. The key is to have a common basis of arbitration in the revealed word of God, rather than a free-for-all.

In fact, Creation itself was an interruption to "the status quo," so to speak; so it's inevitable that God can, should He choose, do anything He wishes with it. Who will tell him "No"?
If creation is a necessity for the body of God

It isn't. Creation is not "the body of God."

If adjustments are necessary within the machine of creation, they are handled by the demiurge

No such entity exists, and no such entity is ever mentioned in the Bible.

But in Gnostic thought, the Demiurge was created to explain the problem of the Ultimate Being (sometimes called "Abyss," or other names) having created something (i.e. material reality) that Gnostics think is a prison for the soul. So the problem is pseudo-solved by removing the Ultimate Creator from the material reality by means of the GCB.

However, a little thought shows that this is not a successful strategy. All it does is make the methods of the Ultimate Being the manipulation of others; it doesn't absolve the Ultimate Being of ultimate responsibility, or make the existence of the putative material "prison" any less morally problematic.

Posted: **Tue Jan 04, 2022 5:11 pm**

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Jan 04, 2022 2:14 pm
Dontaskme wrote: ↑Tue Jan 04, 2022 8:46 amWell it's a convincing story, but it's meaning has about as much use as a chocolate teapot. The real truth is that for thinking sentient life,

1) there can occur a realisation of the true nature of all sentient life on earth, which is not pretty, with no purpose or reason for any of it, and not the other way around. And when that truth dawns,

2) is when the ego is seen through for the illusion it is.

3) The main goal of the human ego is to buttress itself into believing it has a real place to stake it's flag of self-importance in a reality that is otherwise absolutely unfathomable to it. So in it's despair, the thinking organism clings to it's mentally created story of purpose and meaning, until it is seen for what it actually is.

4) The ego employs a clever tactic to control every other thinking organism into denying them of their actual true nature which is their animalistic origins. And is why the human thinking organism is even capable of thinking up this beastly story in the first place, it's possible because the beast is the beast no matter how much the beast tries to deny it, in it's fake attempt to be over and above the rest of nature.

5) In reality, human existence has no more importance and meaning than pond scum.
I thought to try to isolate your *assertions* and then comment on them. All assertions of this sort have a function, of course, and it is helpful to try to isolate and highlight the function and the purpose of the assertion. All assertions (of this sort) are arrived at through reasoning and processes involving reason. So one can then examine the reasonableness of what is asserted. I do note in your assertions that you say (and I sort of agree) that *life is unfathomable* and you also imply that it is not possible to fathom it -- yet this assertion can be and must be challenged, mustn't it? because on what basis can you make this ultimate assertion?

What I do find truthful in what you assert, or logically consistent, is your assertion that the natural world proceeds according to its own designs and operates according to its own laws. But when man enters the scene, this seems obvious, man's *interpretation-machine* turns on. We are all called to *interpret*, aren't we? You disagree that interpretation is possible, or you disagree that any select interpretation is *right* (?) yet it is clear that you are making interpretive statements.

And your interpretive statements must lead (mustn't they?) to whole sets of interpretive decisions -- to a sort of interpretive praxis of life. On the basis of what you know to be true, and which you declare with absolute certainty, I am curious to understand how you would teach your own children? Wouldn't you be forced, more or less, to teach a life-philosophy consistent with nihilistic view?

I think that your description of the natural world is largely right however, at least I also see the Natural World through that interpretive lens. Where I disagree with you is in your anthropology -- your apparent *doctrine of man*. And I suppose that one could delve into your views and seek out the causal chain that has led to you thinking in this way.

If meaning exists or is discovered, let's say, in human life, meaning therefore exists. Yet you deny meaning even as you simultaneously assert an anti-meaning, which is also a meaning. How could one determine if you are right?

For me, all philosophical interpretations, or assertions about the nature of reality, are just useless, meaningless ramblings, appearing as useful and meaningful cookies for the ego to drool over in it's indulgent desire to buttress itself a higher place of self-importance in a world that does not have any importance or significance other than what is put there by the human mind of thought and imagination which is just a grand illusion of the senses anyway. In that it is the brain that uses the human body as a vehicle to advance evolutions path through it's will to survive and create fully functioning life forms, in fact nature is currently working on a new evolved model of species as I speak, it's called the AI robot..this AI species is unfolding right now and is natures attempt to fulfill the possibility of immortality.

As for teaching my children the idea of a life-philosophy consistent with nihilistic view...to me is a redonkulous idea. I have no idea what you mean by that, and never in my life have I ever taught my children anything they didn't already know when it comes to natures already innate intuition. In fact my children brought themselves up, children are very intelligent creatures and know more than we give them credit. They taught themselves everything they know today, I had nothing to do with what they personally know about life and philosophy.

All I did is change their nappies, feed them food and kept a roof over their head, and made sure they attended school and the doctor when they were sick. I also made sure they were kept from harms way when they were too young to understand dangerous situations. All I did is provide a stable and loving environment for them to grow in. All I did is love them unconditionally.And it turns out they all turned out great, living amazing productive independant lives, two of them being close to becoming a millionaire, they have beautiful houses of their own and good jobs through the efforts of their own hard work and critical thought processes that just happened to drive them into work that was very well paid. They taught themselves everythihng they know, all I did was tenderly care for them until they were adults.

Turns out they are nothing like me insofar as they each have their own unique character, completely different to what is my character. Turns out they are likeable people with amazing skills I personally never dreamt possible they could have, it was a huge surprise to me because it's like watching the birth of a genius being born. And I had nothing to do with their natural talent.

.

Posted: **Tue Jan 04, 2022 8:11 pm**

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Jan 04, 2022 4:45 pm
Nick_A wrote: ↑Tue Jan 04, 2022 4:12 am Why wasn't creation made perfect?
The Bible says it was originally made "good." It is man's departure from God that has caused what you now see.

I wasn't defining imperfection by the actions of Man. God cannot create itself which would be necessary to create perfection. Creation presumes the laws creating universal imperfection. It is what brings meaning to the repeating cycles of birth, maturity, and death. Of course the results of the fall of man is responsible for the human condition we see now in the world

It does seem Peter is describing this process.
Not at all. The Eastern view is cyclical and perpetual. Peter's describing a linear timeline. And that's just the first of many differences. In Eastern thought, there can be no final "judgment" nor any winding up of material reality: it must needs be eternal. Peter's clearly saying it's not.

Can Man transcend repeating on the wheel of Samsara and evolve into a higher quality of being? Christianity asserts it can and the mission of the Christ on the earth is to show how it is possible through the Crucifixion and the Resurrection.

Christianity on this thread is centered around God. The Christianity I know of is centered around the Christ.
There is a difference of role, but none of identity. Christ is God, God manifest in flesh. (1 Tim. 3:16)
...the vertical Great Chain of Being.
This is a Medieval fiction, and one you will not find in the Bible. The Bible says that "there is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus." (1 Tim. 2:5) There are not many such "mediators," as the GCB theory holds.

The way I see it is that the universe is a giant vertical octave. High C represents the Father. Middle C represents the Son (sun) or the Christ. The Christ within the Father is in the image of the Father but at a lower level of vibration.
evolved Man is in the image of the Christ but at a still lower level of vibration

The Bible isn't a text book showing a person how to build a machine. The Bible is a psychological text and aids in a person's awakening. Its purpose is to bypass the literal mind allowing a person to be touched in their essence. A person must not believe but rather try to experience it through conscious contemplation

If a person wants to feel Christianity, what does it mean to carry ones cross and why we can't do it?
What makes you think you "can't do it"?

St. Paul in Romans 7 described what it means to be the wretched Man. He is attracted to higher ideals yet a slave to sin. Man is dual natured. The sacrifice of the Christ bringing the Spirit makes change possible in which a person can evolve to become one in conscious service to a universal necessity.

But people prefer to argue about Conceptions of God and call it Christian? What's wrong with this picture?
Nothing, really.

Given that the issues at stake are so important, we ought to expect there would be considerable debate about their implications. However, that doesn't mean the debate needs to become hostile and abusive. And when it does, then there's something wrong. But one should certainly wish to parse out carefully the implications of the Word of God, so one ought to expect important conversations around those issues. The key is to have a common basis of arbitration in the revealed word of God, rather than a free-for-all.

I've learned by experience that the world does not want what the Christ offered. The only way to approach deniers is with lies justifying the world. For example it would be impossible to discuss Matthew16:26 For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?
without hostility
In fact, Creation itself was an interruption to "the status quo," so to speak; so it's inevitable that God can, should He choose, do anything He wishes with it. Who will tell him "No"?
If creation is a necessity for the body of God
It isn't. Creation is not "the body of God."

If adjustments are necessary within the machine of creation, they are handled by the demiurge
No such entity exists, and no such entity is ever mentioned in the Bible.

But in Gnostic thought, the Demiurge was created to explain the problem of the Ultimate Being (sometimes called "Abyss," or other names) having created something (i.e. material reality) that Gnostics think is a prison for the soul. So the problem is pseudo-solved by removing the Ultimate Creator from the material reality by means of the GCB.

True but if the purpose of the Bible is to inspire awakening, getting involved with details will just turn it into the usual battle of opinions

However, a little thought shows that this is not a successful strategy. All it does is make the methods of the Ultimate Being the manipulation of others; it doesn't absolve the Ultimate Being of ultimate responsibility, or make the existence of the putative material "prison" any less morally problematic.

God or the Christ isn't responsible. The purpose of the Bible is revealed in the process of creation. The results are secondary. Some people may evolve and others may not. It is all a part of the process. Man has the potential to choose between involution (down into creation) or evolution (consciously evolving towards the Source.)

No one could respond to Meno's Paradox. That is because it makes us aware of remembrance or what has been forgotten by the literal mind which the soul needs. The secular mind calls it nonsense.

Posted: **Tue Jan 04, 2022 9:35 pm**

Dontaskme wrote: ↑Tue Jan 04, 2022 8:46 am
Nick_A wrote: ↑Tue Jan 04, 2022 3:20 am
The darkness of Plato's cave or the darkness of the world governed by the prince of darkness governs the world and assures humanity continues to follow natural cycles including the cycle of war and peace. Society as a whole is the Great Beast and like other beasts follow natural cycles beginning with birth, maturity and ending with death. Secularized religion is normal for the darkness of Plato's Cave and what you call Christian bullshit is a part. Remember 99% of rat poison is good corn. It is that 1% or the arsenic that makes it deadly.

Christianity as opposed to man made Christendom requires being aware of and remembering the 1% which prevents a person from experiencing human meaning and purpose and keeps him turning in circles

Well it's a convincing story, but it's meaning has about as much use as a chocolate teapot. The real truth is that for thinking sentient life, there can occur a realisation of the true nature of all sentient life on earth, which is not pretty, with no purpose or reason for any of it, and not the other way around. And when that truth dawns, is when the ego is seen through for the illusion it is. The main goal of the human ego is to buttress itself into believing it has a real place to stake it's flag of self-importance in a reality that is otherwise absolutely unfathomable to it. So in it's despair, the thinking organism clings to it's mentally created story of purpose and meaning, until it is seen for what it actually is. The ego employs a clever tactic to control every other thinking organism into denying them of their actual true nature which is their animalistic origins. And is why the human thinking organism is even capable of thinking up this beastly story in the first place, it's possible because the beast is the beast no matter how much the beast tries to deny it, in it's fake attempt to be over and above the rest of nature. In reality, human existence has no more importance and meaning than pond scum.
Tell me if I'm wrong but you seem to be saying that since creation is an illusion with no purpose you must be God looking down on imagination. But if true, why create the illusion?

.

Posted: **Tue Jan 04, 2022 9:57 pm**

Nick_A wrote: ↑Tue Jan 04, 2022 8:11 pm God or the Christ isn't responsible.

Genesis 1 and John 1 say He is.

Man has the potential to choose between involution (down into creation) or evolution (consciously evolving towards the Source.)

I know that's what the Gnostics think. It's just not what the Bible thinks.

No one could respond to Meno's Paradox.

Yes, they can. It's that Meno's Paradox uses "know" ambiguously, so the fault is in the premises. Check it out: https://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/menopar.htm.

So it's not any kind of problem at all, actually.

Posted: **Wed Jan 05, 2022 2:35 pm**

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Jan 04, 2022 4:45 pm
Not at all. The Eastern view is cyclical and perpetual. Peter's describing a linear timeline. And that's just the first of many differences. In Eastern thought, there can be no final "judgment" nor any winding up of material reality: it must needs be eternal. Peter's clearly saying it's not.

Nick: "...the vertical Great Chain of Being."

IC: "This is a Medieval fiction, and one you will not find in the Bible. The Bible says that "there is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus." (1 Tim. 2:5) There are not many such "mediators," as the GCB theory holds."

I do not profess to have much knowledge of Jewish mysticism, and Kabbalah, though I do think it is true that it was developed in the Middle Ages. However, the roots of Kabbalah are said to go back much further in time.

If we agree that *our traditions* of thought are composed of amalgamations between Greece, Rome, Judea, which became blended notably in Alexandria, then the Judean aspect is the thought-tradition that connects to Egypt, to the larger ancient Eastern world, and through the ancient world generally to other cultures, potentially as well to India, Persia, etc.

In this sense Christianity, insofar as it is a Jewish branch (and in one sense it is and in another sense it is not) connects *back* to the Ancient World in a way that is not well recognized. Christianity is deeply infused with *mysticism* and indeed a practitioner of Christianity is best understood as a mystic-of-sorts. It is a question of degree.

Kabbalah, obviously, is infused with mystical ideas. The very notion that there are *emanations* from a Supreme Source that *condense* into the world that we recognize before us links the idea that operates in The Great Chain of Being to overt mysticism and, if you will permit the term, 'mystical science'.

I do not have a source to link to but I would wager that you could find, in Jewish mystical thought, links to cyclical views of history (and the emanations) just as you might find linear views of history (and time).

And I also think that there is a strong, indeed an undeniable, link between the Medieval ideas that inform the Great Chain of Being (which ideas utterly infuse Shakespeare I wish to add) and Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah. And Jewish thought is just as heavily involved mystical notions, or leads to such expressions and expostulations, as anything within Mediaeval Christianity.

I guess that, yes, the Great Chain of Being idea is a 'theory' about the structure of the manifest world, and it has definitely been challenged by Modernity and modern scientific view. But one of my assertions is that though this is so, all the *meanings* connected with the perceptual system are just as *alive* as they ever were, though submerged. Plato is also infused with these idea-strains -- as for example the notion of the soul in Phaedrus.

One thing I have always remarked about your position IC is that you avail yourself of the ability, the *right* as it were, to jump over all of Christian history, which has been constructed through idea-processes that are often highly mystical, and to anchor yourself, as a modern Christian, infused with utterly modernist ideas, in a 'new' relationship with the Gospel texts. I admit that this baffles me. Or to put it another way I really don't see how you justify pulling it off.

My *way*, so to speak, is to go back into the roots of Christian thought by researching the real sources of it, the actual historical sources, not what I could make of it now were I to similarly *jump over* the entire history of Christianity.

For this reason I try to understand both Gnostic conceptions (though I understand why conventional Christianiy rejected them) but also a gnostic relationship (ie one based on uncommon intellectual notions, on simple gnosis = knowledge, knowing).

Posted: **Wed Jan 05, 2022 2:55 pm**

Dontaskme wrote: ↑Tue Jan 04, 2022 5:11 pm For me, all philosophical interpretations, or assertions about the nature of reality, are just useless, meaningless ramblings, appearing as useful and meaningful cookies for the ego to drool over in it's indulgent desire to buttress itself a higher place of self-importance in a world that does not have any importance or significance other than what is put there by the human mind of thought and imagination which is just a grand illusion of the senses anyway. In that it is the brain that uses the human body as a vehicle to advance evolutions path through it's will to survive and create fully functioning life forms, in fact nature is currently working on a new evolved model of species as I speak, it's called the AI robot..this AI species is unfolding right now and is natures attempt to fulfill the possibility of immortality.

I do believe that I understand *where you are coming from*. I do not, I hope you see, judge you for having the view that you have, and what interests me is much more the evolution of thinking that has produced a person who sees as you do, and turns those perceptions into statements-of-declaration, as indeed you do. You posit, very directly (do you see this?) an entire existential outlook. I am interested in this. I am interested in how it came about and also where it leads.

My assertion, at least tentative, is that it is not part of constructive processes of building, but processes of deconstruction and dissolution. I am sure that this is why I often *clash* with some people who have modernist viewpoints. My ideas on this topic (of inanition and decay) were influenced by Waldo Frank and his view about the dissolution visible in modernity and the ways-and-means to counter it. Some of my ideas are "Spenglerian" and such pessimistic views are dealt on by people like Richard Weaver (another influence) and Robert Bork.

My own view is that we are in a descending arc (generally speaking) but that descent, by some, can be managed productively if they have necessary awareness.

And also that for you and I to understand each other a great deal of careful preamble would need to occur. But that is often the case on these forums, isn't it?

As for teaching my children the idea of a life-philosophy consistent with nihilistic view...to me is a redonkulous idea. I have no idea what you mean by that, and never in my life have I ever taught my children anything they didn't already know when it comes to natures already innate intuition. In fact my children brought themselves up, children are very intelligent creatures and know more than we give them credit. They taught themselves everything they know today, I had nothing to do with what they personally know about life and philosophy.

That you do not -- immediately -- grasp what I mean by reference to nihilism does not surprise me. Why? Because there is a rather involved idea-train that has led to my view that we, as a civilization, are in the throws of *nihilistic outcomes*. If I were to proceed I would have to *present evidence* and, of course, the exchange would become burdensome and potentially tedious.

I have juxtaposed detachment (from our traditions) with identification (with the content of our traditions). And since my project in a larger sense has to do with reanimating identity, I seek to strengthen identity not weaken it.

"...never in my life have I ever taught my children anything they didn't already know when it comes to natures already innate intuition."

This statement is difficult for me to understand. The reason is because of my understanding of paideia (a term I often use). Paideia is, essentially, the content of our traditions beginning, classically I guess, with Homer. But it includes essential knowledge from the *worlds* identified as those of Greece and Rome, Judea and Alexandria -- the Mediterranean world which then met the northern 'pagan' world. It is the stuff of our civilization.

So I suspect that we are referring to very different things.

All I did is change their nappies, feed them food and kept a roof over their head, and made sure they attended school and the doctor when they were sick. I also made sure they were kept from harms way when they were too young to understand dangerous situations. All I did is provide a stable and loving environment for them to grow in. All I did is love them unconditionally.And it turns out they all turned out great, living amazing productive independant lives, two of them being close to becoming a millionaire, they have beautiful houses of their own and good jobs through the efforts of their own hard work and critical thought processes that just happened to drive them into work that was very well paid. They taught themselves everything they know, all I did was tenderly care for them until they were adults.

Yes, but someone educated them. Education was *infused* into them. Again we are talking about very different things.

And note that I am very happy to heear that your children are successful, productive and happy. Nabokov made a rather poignant statement: the thing that most irks some of very American mind is 1) the notion of a longstanding and happy homosexual relationship and 2) the notion of a happy, balanced and productive atheist.

These are almost intolerable ideas to some of a certain mind-set.

Turns out they are nothing like me insofar as they each have their own unique character, completely different to what is my character. Turns out they are likeable people with amazing skills I personally never dreamt possible they could have, it was a huge surprise to me because it's like watching the birth of a genius being born. And I had nothing to do with their natural talent.

You have good reasons to feel deep satisfaction.

Posted: **Wed Jan 05, 2022 3:18 pm**

From Elizabethan Psychology and Shakespeare's Plays (Anderson, 1927)

CONFLICT AMONG THE FACULTIES OF THE SOUL

Plato tells us that when the offspring of the Creator fashioned
man they provided him with an immortal and a mortal soul. The
latter they made subject to terrible and irresistible affections:
pleasure, which incites him to evil, and pain, which deters from
good; rashness and fear, foolish counselors; implacable anger, and
hope, which may be deceived easily by sense and by all-daring love.

Fearing to pollute the “divine principle” any more than was nec-
essary, they placed it in the head and constructed the neck as an
isthmus and boundary line between it and the mortal nature. Since
one part of the mortal nature is superior to the other, they divided
the trunk of the body into two compartments separated by the
diaphragm. That part of the inferior soul which gives courage
and spirit they placed nearer the head, between the diaphragm and
the neck, that it might be directed by reason and join with it in
restraining desires “when they are no longer willing of their own
accord to obey the command of reason issuing from the citadel.”

That part of the soul which desires food and drink for the body
they placed below the diaphragm; in this region, as far away from
the council chamber as possible, they bound the desires “as a wild
animal which was chained up with man and must be nourished if
man was to exist."

In the Phaedrus the soul with its powers thus separated is
represented as a charioteer with two horses not easily
managed:

"Now the winged horses and the charioteer of the gods are all
of them noble, and of noble breed, while ours are mixed; and we
have a charioteer who drives them in a pair, and one of them is
noble and of noble origin,and the other is ignoble and of ignoble
origin; and, as might be expected,there is a great deal of trouble
in managing them.''

Posted: **Wed Jan 05, 2022 3:23 pm**

Kabbalah's "Great Chain of Being"

Posted: **Wed Jan 05, 2022 3:48 pm**

Nick_A wrote: ↑Tue Jan 04, 2022 9:35 pm
Tell me if I'm wrong but you seem to be saying that since creation is an illusion with no purpose you must be God looking down on imagination. But if true, why create the illusion?

.

Illusions are not created, they are the effects of their cause, and a cause is only known in it's effects, any thing known is not the knower, or the knowing... knowns are the effects of the cause which is the known of the knower which is ONE THING ONLY...

...any distinction between the creator and created, the knower and the known is indistinguishable except in this conception, known as and through the only knowing there is.

Reality is one, reality is a verb. There is only ''knowing'' that can not be known, hence the word ''illusion'' ..of course this makes no sense and is seen as the ultimate oxymoron, but then nonduality can be difficult to grasp, because the use of language is dualistic, so it's grasped through the art of thinking backwards to the source of all knowledge, and it is there that the illusion is seen for what it is.

See here, in my last post, for all your answers to why the illusion.. viewtopic.php?f=11&t=33904&start=15

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Posted: **Wed Jan 05, 2022 3:56 pm**

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed Jan 05, 2022 2:35 pm Christianity is deeply infused with *mysticism* and indeed a practitioner of Christianity is best understood as a mystic-of-sorts. It is a question of degree.

An interesting claim. Can you substantiate it?

I do not have a source to link to but I would wager that you could find, in Jewish mystical thought, links to cyclical views of history (and the emanations) just as you might find linear views of history (and time).

Well, that would link Judaism to Gnosticism, but not at all to Christianity, since Christianity denies the existence of "emanations" and "the Demiurge," does not support the GCB, and, of course, like traditional Judaism and science itself, denies that cyclical time is a reality.

That's a whole lot of big, important differences. But it's not even all of the most important ones.

One thing I have always remarked about your position IC is that you avail yourself of the ability, the *right* as it were, to jump over all of Christian history,

No, not at all.

I merely interrogate the question of whether secular historians have proved adequately informed to know what a "Christian" actually is. That's a profound theological question, and not one that a historian can simply take for granted, or take on the basis of mere self-identification. But without a correct definition of "Christian," how does any historian know what "Christian history" is actually comprised of?

A good illustration would be Nick here. Nick sees Gnosticism as a branch of the "Christian." But since Gnostics disagree with Christians on just about every important theological matter, it would badly skew our data to include Gnostics under the category of "Christian history." In fact, the Bible itself explicitly rejects Gnostic cosmology in Ephesians 1. Similarly, the Roman Catholic hierarchy call themselves "Christian": but are they? The answer to that question depends 100% on the comparability of their beliefs to those of Christ. And it's really not hard to see what conclusions such a comparison compels...not for anybody who knows theology, anyway.

The problem for secular historians is that they are prone to think the designation "Christian" is pretty much devoid of important content. Since, in their view, theology is on parallel with unicorn farming, they are often not persuaded to regard it seriously at all. Even among those secular historians who know the major controversies within the professing "Christian" groups, they tend to interpret these matters as mere "in-house" debates, not as definitive ones. So they tend, for secular convenience's sake, to meld all the various groups that have claimed the name "Christian," as if it never mattered; and because Catholicism is the largest and most political of the bodies in question, and left us the most manuscript evidence and political impacts, then tend to organize their thinking about "Christian history" around that body.

So they say, "Christians" caused the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Pogroms, the Wars of Religion, or whatever, using nothing more than the self-identification criterion to generate such a claim, and totally disregarding the specific ideological, political and historical derivations of such events. It suits them to dismiss Christianity, and in this goal, keeping it in fuzzy focus serves their turn admirably.

This is wrong historiographically and morally, of course; but it's not easy to convince a secular historian, who tends to treat theology lightly and to gravitate to the easiest definitions for study purposes, that he should be making his distinctions more precisely.

Nevertheless, he should.

...which has been constructed through idea-processes that are often highly mystical, and to anchor yourself, as a modern Christian, infused with utterly modernist ideas, in a 'new' relationship with the Gospel texts.

I think you've got the wrong characterization here. My ideas are no more "highly mystical" than Torah. And as for Modernism, I regard it as a failed experiment in the secularizing of the world...as do the Postmodernists, of course. There's nothing really "new" about my ideas...they are just the Biblical ones, and hence have as much time behind them as the two Testaments have.

My *way*, so to speak, is to go back into the roots of Christian thought by researching the real sources of it, the actual historical sources, not what I could make of it now were I to similarly *jump over* the entire history of Christianity.

Sort of. But it seems to me that you, like the secular historians, are disconcerted by the thought of having to extert more intellectual effort to parse out carefully what "Christian" really means, and prefer to lapse into the convention definitions sponsored traditionally by secular historiography, as a matter of convenience. It certainly makes the production of broad generalizations about what "Christianity" has done much easier than actually having to drill down into the data.

Clearly, you have a theory of civilizational development: and in that theory, questioning the nature of the truly "Christian" is unhelpful and would possibly unravel it. So I can quite understand why you might now want to go there. Nevertheless, I don't think you're intellectually dishonest, so I think you'll find that eventually you have to go there anyway...that, or live with a theory founded on sand; and I don't think you're ultimately going to be content to do that.

Posted: **Wed Jan 05, 2022 4:15 pm**

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed Jan 05, 2022 2:55 pm what interests me is much more the evolution of thinking that has produced a person who sees as you do, and turns those perceptions into statements-of-declaration, as indeed you do. You posit, very directly (do you see this?) an entire existential outlook. I am interested in this. I am interested in how it came about and also where it leads.

In answer to your interest...I have spend all my life from the age of 4 - 5 just silently observing and being aware of human and animal nature, and their mental and emotional conditional responses to everything that happens in life.. taking mental notes and forming my own story via my own perception and interpretations of what I've witnessed. Reality for me, is the nature of being an aware sentient living organism who has the capacity to be able to conceptualise it's knowing and report it back to itself. . and that's basically all there is to it. . as a thinking organism, we are only ever forming narratives about life through our capacity to be able to turn thoughts, into words. Words are are just sound heard as words, therefore all narratives are just optical and auditory illusions of sound waves, just vibrational energy so to speak, nothing more than that, but manifesting as a whole real life story like watching a movie on TV

And yes, you are quite right when you notice I have a tendency to think in a process that deconstructs reality rather than builds it. It pleases me that you were able to use your intelligence to point that out to me, because you were right with your observations of what my posts are all about..and yes it's seen as pessimistic to most people, but that's just because it's a threat to the ego. But that's another long story as you can imagine.

As for my children being educated, of course they attended school and college and then university, they also grew up in the age of the internet. the internet is a very good teacher of just about any subject you care to think about. Also, the Youtube channel when that launched was also a constributing factor in their education because of it's tutorial videos which you can just type in any subject you want and it will guide you through what ever it is you want to know.

Anyone can be a genius today, absolutely anyone, if they so desire to apply themselves to their chosen career.

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