Belinda wrote: ↑Fri Sep 05, 2025 10:33 am
At last! What you believe in, in simple language.
It’s more like this: every once in a while you become more open to understanding ideas and views that are foreign, and perhaps contrary, to your
established views. When you become receptive, you succeed in understanding what is being said. Suddenly what is being said is no longer “turgid” but clear.
What I believe? As far as that question pertains to this thread what I believe is that metaphysical ideas and the
realness of them must be paid attention to. Though we are ensconced in times that distain this. That we are in an age in which people’s concepts are molded by ulta-maternalistic modes of thought. As TE Hulme put it:
“We are all of us under the influence of a number of abstract ideas, of which we are as a matter of fact unconscious. We do not see them, but we see other things through them.”
What I believe, therefore, is that we can ‘take some steps back from our projected assumptions’ and attempt to see things by interposing different ‘lenses’.
(Are you having difficulty following, Belinda? Is my prose all on the sudden becoming ‘turgid’ again? Take a breath.
Focus!)
I suggest examining not the surface of what our resident Evangelical (Non-Denominational) Christian religious zealot and fanatic declares, but penetrating under the surface and getting to the very core of the IDEAS expressed, or meant, when the figure of Christ is referenced. If we succeed here, we may feel less inclined to jettison the entire structure and we may be able to salvage what is of transcendent value there, and put to the side the mere ‘mess of pottage’ or the superficial packaging.
You dislike the metaphor of pushing the spirit back into the bottle.
Obviously, because you intend it critically and as a contradiction. “Spirit” has a very limited meaning in your lexicon, driven as you are by materialistic
abstractions. And by ‘bottle’ you mean something like
confining hierarchies of the Dark Ages …
Your motivating predicates are quite obvious.
Literally, you disdain values that relate to world views, but believe in eternal values. So be it.
You have no idea as to what attitude I take to material concerns (human struggle, economic struggle, poverty, etc.) To know you’d have to ask. But yes, on the intellectual plane I definitely ‘believe in’ those values understood to be eternal.
Check!
What I don't understand is how someone can be uninterested in the suffering in the world. Are you really not interested in existential dangers that face all of us? Really?
Well, this I can tell you: I live in direct relationships and proximity to people far more in the midst of that struggle and suffering than you do. In South America (in urban centers) it is all around me. And in fact I have spent a full decade involved in specific melioration of a family mired in the limitations imposed by such circumstances. I have first-hand knowledge of what success can be and looks like.
I am
aware of giant existential dangers but there is nothing I can effectively do about them.
The word 'transcendent' seems to be a difficulty between us.
Perhaps …
tran•scend (trænˈsɛnd)
v.t.
1. to rise above or go beyond the ordinary limits of; overpass; exceed.
2. to outdo or exceed in excellence, extent, degree, etc.; surpass; excel.
3. to be independent of or prior to (the universe, time, etc.).
v.i.
4. to be transcendent or superior; excel.
[1300–50; Middle English < Latin trānscendere to surmount =trāns- trans- + -scendere, comb. form of scandere to climb]
5. (Philosophy) philosophy theology (esp of the Deity) to exist beyond (the material world)
My sense about metaphysics inclines me to suppose they are transcendent to material existence. I.e. eternal. They transcend the entire manifestation.
