Christianity

[Immanuel Can]

...racist terms....

Hey, you're the one who's speaking about "race." I have no such categories. Nor did I bring them to this discussion. I feel a little sorry for you, actually.

Good luck to you.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Well, that's interesting. It makes me really wonder what you've been "imagining" me to believe.

There is perhaps some 'background' to my recent comments, held in abeyance. I am very uncertain if the Christian Zionist perspective is one that can be defended. (I have been influenced in my present view by Miko Peled and also by Stephan Sizer). To clarify, it is quite possible, and good and necessary, to choose to support and defend Jews as Jews. It is quite another thing to support the State of Israel as if it is a continuation of the Israel of the Bible. This position (Christian Zionism) seems to me so fraught and problematic, and potentially so very erroneous, that when I encounter people who hold to the belief, and transform it into a substantial tenet of their Christian belief -- indeed turn it into a sort of Christian mission -- I don't know how to react to it and what to think about it. In short it seems very suspect.

In regard to Ellul I just did some Google searching and, yes, he seems to have held the view that the return of Jews to Judea and, I gather, the establishment of the State of Israel, is a sign of God's providence. I ain't convinced of that.

But the larger point is really not so much the question of the State of Israel (and what was done and is being done to secure that state) but the nature of belief within a wider political and social atmosphere.

But as far as 'imagining what you believe' I only can go on what you write. I am I think somewhat less interested in what you conclude as I am in the methods through which you arrive at your conclusions. The background to that statement is that I see all issues and problems that confront us as hermeneutical problems -- issues of interpretation. (My chief influence in this was Frank Kermode's The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative).

Everyone, and I mean this literally -- everyone -- is struggling, or flailing, in their effort to 'interpret' the world; what is going on in it; what things mean. We have no choice really. To *see* is to *interpret*. This is really one of my main areas of intellectual concern: that people exist within viewpoints and viewing positions which cannot be else but partial and very very limited, and yet they (we) are forced to interpret. And our interpretations (see Michael Barkun's A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America) border into zones of madness.

I can offer one example: a famous Christian Zionist named George Bush engineered an invasion and occupation of Iraq by employing a sense of religious mission. It actually appeared that he saw things through lenses of this sort. And people (I gather) supported the war because, consciously or unconsciously (?) they wanted to be aligned with this mission (which could only be God's mission, right?) That war, and the wars that followed, were absolutely criminal and indefensible by any 'Christian' standard.

So I think that you might be able to gather why I have questions about the blind 'support of Israel' issue.

[Immanuel Can]

It is quite another thing to support the State of Israel as if it is a continuation of the Israel of the Bible.

I agree. I'm quite aware of policies in Israel I think are odious...the discriminatory aliyah policy is obviously one. Modern Israel is rather godless, actually.

At the same time, I don't think that hatred of Israel today is being sponsored by good things, either.

But I did not call myself a "Christian Zionist": you did.

In regard to Ellul I just did some Google searching and, yes, he seems to have held the view that the return of Jews to Judea and, I gather, the establishment of the State of Israel, is a sign of God's providence. I ain't convinced of that.

I try not to read modern events into Biblical prophecy. At the same time, it's quite inescapable that the prophets of the Tanakh and of the New Testament all recognize that Israel would be revived...and that in days when there were no such prospect evident, and really wouldn't be for thousands of years. Very interesting.

But as far as 'imagining what you believe' I only can go on what you write.

Quite so.

But beware of jumping to conclusions, as you did on the "Christian Zionism" issue. Just because you hear a word or phrase that you have heard in another context, or used another way, does not mean I am committed to being whatever you might thereby imagine. If you're in doubt, you can ask me: I'm happy to be forthcoming on that.

I am I think somewhat less interested in what you conclude as I am in the methods through which you arrive at your conclusions. The background to that statement is that I see all issues and problems that confront us as hermeneutical problems -- issues of interpretation. (My chief influence in this was Frank Kermode's The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative).

"All"? Interesting...go on...

Everyone, and I mean this literally -- everyone -- is struggling, or flailing, in their effort to 'interpret' the world; what is going on in it; what things mean. We have no choice really. To *see* is to *interpret*. This is really one of my main areas of intellectual concern: that people exist within viewpoints and viewing positions which cannot be else but partial and very very limited, and yet they (we) are forced to interpret. And our interpretations (see Michael Barkun's A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America) border into zones of madness.

Okay, good...but only partly right, I have to say. For to speak of "interpreting" we have to speak of two things, not merely one. Most talk of a "culture of interpretation," say, presupposes that there is only one important thing in play: perception. That is clearly not true. There's another one: reality. To "interpret" is to "interpret reality." There is the interpreter, but there is also the thing being interpreted. And it is the dynamic between them that is where the interesting issues lie.

To put it philosophically, we would say that there is a) the thing-in-itself, and also b) the perception. The percipient who is behaving rationally is always trying to square up his perception with the nature of things-in-themselves. One who fails to persist in such an attempt is just a fantasist, an imaginer, and plausibly a lunatic.

God is the one who created things-in-themselves. His perception of them is inerrant, inevitably. We human beings are much more fallible. Still our job is to square up our perception with the way God sees the things that are assembled in our world.

So I think that you might be able to gather why I have questions about the blind 'support of Israel' issue.

Well, I'm happy to put concern to rest on the "blind support" issue.

As I said about Ellul, I don't feel I need to agree with somebody on everything in order to agree with them on something. I have little enthusiasm for present laws in Israel. But I do have sympathy for Israel's right to exist. And I have a good deal less sympathy with the laws of the nations that surround Israel.

I have gratitude to Israel for their role in preserving Torah, but no particular interest in defending the Talmud or the traditions, which I think are often obscurantist and sometimes even opposite to Torah. (Jesus Himself too the same position, in Matthew 15:3. "Why," he asked the Pharisees, "do you yourselves also break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?")

Among the mideast nations, if you make me pick, I'll take Israel. But I'm sure as heck not going to be supporting the current political strategies, or their interminable parliamentary squabbles and infighting, and certainly not their visceral antipathy to Christians, whether Gentile or Jews or to Yeshua HaMaschiach.

Still, as messed up as they are, they have a right to live and to hold the land they do. And even in the matters in which I think they're wrong, they have a right to be wrong, if that's their decision, so long as they harm no one.

So I would say my support for Israel is selective and, I hope, judicious rather than "blind."

[Lacewing]

Where I differ -- apparently -- is that I am interested in defining limitations and boundaries, not in expanding parameters into indefiniteness.

Ah, okay. Is it correct to say that your interest lies in choosing and focusing on what seems most workable for how you (currently) see and think? I think that's probably what we're all doing, to varying degrees of proficiency, and based on varying degrees of awareness? Seems to me that it can be valuable to acknowledge that's what we're doing (in whatever way we're doing it), as a matter of leaving the door open for more that we can discover along the way. Although, perhaps there are people who do not wish to discover more -- preferring to rule in their own minds?

What do you think about that?

[RCSaunders]

...racist terms....

Hey, you're the one who's speaking about "race." I have no such categories. Nor did I bring them to this discussion. I feel a little sorry for you, actually.

Good luck to you.

Every racist tells that same lie. "I never used the word, "race," so when I judge people based on their ethnicity it is not racism. When I attribute virtue to some people because they are British, or Jewish, or Canadian, it's not racism because I didn't use the word race. So we'll just call it what it is--irrational prejudice based on ethnicity--which is what everyone but you means by racism.

By the way, what categories do you use to differentiate between people who are more prone to sickle cell anemia (black), or pemphigus vulgaris (Jewish and Scandinavian), or who are lactose intolerant (Northern European)? There is nothing wrong with the concepts of racial and genetic differences. It's judging individual's character, value, or significance on the basis of such genetic distinctions that is wrong. If you don't recognize genetic differences or racial "categories" you are just ignorant. If you evaluate any people as more important or significant on the basis of some genetic classification, that's racism.

[Immanuel Can]

...when I judge people based on their ethnicity...

You do: I don't.

What I said is that we should be grateful to all nations that have done us a favour. And I said zero about "race." There are many nations, even many ethnicities and cultures, but only one actual "race" -- the human race.

if you think otherwise, that's your problem, and none of mine.

[RCSaunders]

...when I judge people based on their ethnicity...

You do: I don't.

What I said is that we should be grateful to all nations that have done us a favour. And I said zero about "race." There are many nations, even many ethnicities and cultures, but only one actual "race" -- the human race.

if you think otherwise, that's your problem, and none of mine.

No, that's not what you said. You didn't mention, "nations."

Here's what you said:

You have a debt to some ethnic group?

Of course. And to various ones, for various things.

So take your lying semantic dance about, "there's only one race," BS someplace else, because you know that is not what racism is about at all, and you know that is not what the question is about. What makes any ethnic group, as a collective, of such value to others, those others are then indebted to them?

[Immanuel Can]

Here's what you said:

You have a debt to some ethnic group?

Of course. And to various ones, for various things.

Hair-splitting nonsense. As I said, There are many nations, even many ethnicities and cultures, but only one actual "race" -- the human race. You can be grateful to an ethnicity, a culture or a nation.

But if the idea of gratitude is beyond you, I can't help you.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Ah, okay. Is it correct to say that your interest lies in choosing and focusing on what seems most workable for how you (currently) see and think? I think that's probably what we're all doing, to varying degrees of proficiency, and based on varying degrees of awareness? Seems to me that it can be valuable to acknowledge that's what we're doing (in whatever way we're doing it), as a matter of leaving the door open for more that we can discover along the way. Although, perhaps there are people who do not wish to discover more -- preferring to rule in their own minds?

What do you think about that?

Well, the way I would put it, if asked for a more detailed answer, is that I am a person who has felt the need to react against what I perceive to be immense waves of decadence and a 'liberal rot' that has been identified by some, admittedly conservative-tending, intellectuals of the European right.

I spent time reading Rene Guenon, Julius Evola and other less radical traditionalists (I would add Plato and Shakespeare to that group, though I do say this somewhat tongue-in-cheek) in order to be able to say "I understand what they are about". Prior to this I spent a similarly long period of time reading more or less exclusively on the Progressive-Left -- so I think I also grasp this side of things.

What I have done over the course of a number of years now (it has become more clear to me recently) is to have hopped down the dreaded Rabbit Hole which has been described as a sort of ideological vortex that grabs people and sucks them down into what are described as basement realms -- a cloacal realm of ideological filth. I am being deliberately facetious and exaggerating. But not entirely so. People do indeed describe right-leaning traditionalist ideas in that way today.

My effort has been (it still is really) to discover, to uncover, something like a 'bedrock' within ideas. A sure and certain platform within metaphysics upon which it would be possible to construct an existential edifice. That is a dramatic (perhaps ridiculous) way to put it yet I am serious.

Fundamentally, I really and truly believe that a religious perspective is not only natural, but also inevitable and necessary. I would suggest it is impossible to get away from it. And if one thinks that one is not within one's 'metaphysical dream' and that it is not a vision of what value to live by, what to do and what not to do, I think that one is in illusion. It is a serious illusion and a self-deception. (I think we live in a moment in which -- so strangely -- the State is asserting itself in a rather totalitarian manner to 'assert' a set of social and political values. It is a dangerous time really.)

I would have to carefully define what I mean by religion of course.

All peoples attempt and I think will always attempt to develop a metaphysical sense of the world in which they find themselves. When one examines different metaphysical systems one sees pretty clearly that this is so. We have to define the world. And our definition of the world (existence, our being here, life, awareness) will then inevitably bring forth a response, or an answer, in what is necessary to do, in how it is necessary to live. One way or the other we will define a metaphysics.

So when you ask: "Is it correct to say that your interest lies in choosing and focusing on what seems most workable for how you (currently) see and think?" I would say definitely yes, except I would likely state it, as per habit, somewhat more sententiously.

Waldo Frank said interesting things in The Re-Discovery of America:

There is in all religions a common trait: they stand
on the premise of order. Man, confronting a multi-
verse, transfigures it into some kind of order in which
he has his share. This order will be animistic, re-.
ferring the trees and beasts of a jungle to the savage
need; or it will be cosmic, according to the scope of
consciousness of the religion. Order of some kind is
always there; and every order is a unity fused from
variety by a mind. Order is the anatomy of every
whole. Therefore religion is a building of some kind
of whole. The whole of religion is always one which
the believer experiences as well as knows: which he
can share in (this is holiness) by a certain way of life.
Thus religion is the deliberate building of a whole:
this building of a whole reveals the need of a whole:
and this need of a whole must answer to a sense.

[Lacewing]

Alexis, thank you again for your thoughtful response. I appreciate your honesty.

I am a person who has felt the need to react against what I perceive to be immense waves of decadence and a 'liberal rot' that has been identified by some, admittedly conservative-tending, intellectuals of the European right.

Okay. I cannot speak to that directly. Rather, it has been my experience that rot is typically across the board, not just on one side or another. So I would be wary of seeing it (or defining it) in only one direction. Personally, I think that men continually choosing battle-sides (of one kind or another) has been a disaster for humankind. A war-like mindset just keeps creating war and all of its destruction, hate, and blindness.

My effort has been (it still is really) to discover, to uncover, something like a 'bedrock' within ideas. A sure and certain platform within metaphysics upon which it would be possible to construct an existential edifice. That is a dramatic (perhaps ridiculous) way to put it yet I am serious.

Is it because you want to 'know'? What if there were no chance of knowing such a thing? Does value only come from thinking one knows?

All peoples attempt and I think will always attempt to develop a metaphysical sense of the world in which they find themselves. When one examines different metaphysical systems one sees pretty clearly that this is so. We have to define the world. And our definition of the world (existence, our being here, life, awareness) will then inevitably bring forth a response, or an answer, in what is necessary to do, in how it is necessary to live. One way or the other we will define a metaphysics.

Yet there are many different definitions and answers, yes? Is it a goal to 'find' or establish the best one? What if such thinking demonstrates that we are actually too misaligned to ever have such clarity and completeness as we desire? Maybe we have to give up the questing -- with all of its expectations and needs -- in order to see and accept what is already perfect. In another words... towards this aim, there is nothing to 'do', but there is more to 'see'. Perhaps all of our mental noise and ideas are obstructing more of the very understanding we seek.

"Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine."

To want to dominate ideas/answers -- to claim to know the ultimate truth -- even when it's clearly impossible and a fantasy -- is like playing 'god'. Lots of humans (mostly men) seem intrigued to play that game. Talk about 'immense waves of decadence and rot' ! Will we move on from it in my lifetime, I wonder?... I hope so.

Perhaps men were set up to command and supposedly know such impossible answers (even if they had to make it up)... just as women were set up to take a more subservient position and be preyed upon -- a horrible and ignorant path for humankind. Perhaps we can learn from it.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Okay. I cannot speak to that directly. Rather, it has been my experience that rot is typically across the board, not just on one side or another.

For the sake of a further definition, I quote here Pierre Krebs who wrote Fighting for the Essence:

"...our task is to oppose the egalitarian ethos and egalitarian socio-economic thinking with a world-view based on differentiation: this means an ethic and a socio-economic theory which respects the right to be different. We want to create the system of values and attitudes necessary for gaining control of cultural power. Our strategy is dictated neither by the immediate contingencies of reality nor the superficial upheavals of political life. We are not interested in political factions but in attitudes to life... What motivates us and what we are striving for does cannot be accommodated within the activities of a political party, but - and we insist on this point - solely within the framework of a metapolitical, exclusively cultural project. A programme which sets out once again to make us conscious of our identity through awakening the memory of our future, as it were. In this way we aim to prepare the ground for what is to come... The tragedy of the contemporary world is the tragedy of disloyalty: the uprooting of every culture, estrangement from our true natures, the atomization of man, the levelling of values, the uniformity of life. A critical and exhaustive engagement with modern knowledge - from philosophy to ethology, from anthropology to sociology, from the natural sciences to history and educational theory - if carried out with the appropriate intellectual rigour and sound empirical methodology, can only contribute to throwing light on the general confusion of the world."

LaceWing wrote: “Yet there are many different definitions and answers, yes? Is it a goal to 'find' or establish the best one? What if such thinking demonstrates that we are actually too misaligned to ever have such clarity and completeness as we desire? Maybe we have to give up the questing -- with all of its expectations and needs -- in order to see and accept what is already perfect. In another words... towards this aim, there is nothing to 'do', but there is more to 'see'. Perhaps all of our mental noise and ideas are obstructing more of the very understanding we seek.

If that is not a proper goal, what other goal would you propose? You seem to say that ‘alignment’ is possible (it is suggested as possible). When aligned what do people do?

Note that your question/comment: “What if such thinking demonstrates that we are actually too misaligned to ever have such clarity and completeness as we desire? Maybe we have to give up the questing” is, in its way, an attempt to counter the process, but as an assertion you are in fact making a proposition. What I would ask is if you have succeeded in defining what your proposition is?

If it is true that you hope to move beyond arriving at tangible, practicable answers (I modify to a degree what you wrote), what is your hoped for object? What does that look like?

Perhaps men were set up to command and supposedly know such impossible answers (even if they had to make it up)... just as women were set up to take a more subservient position and be preyed upon -- a horrible and ignorant path for humankind. Perhaps we can learn from it.

What’s your opinion of Camille Paglia? She has a poignant quote I thought to include here, but it is a bit sharp.

[RCSaunders]

Here's what you said:

You have a debt to some ethnic group?

Of course. And to various ones, for various things.

Hair-splitting nonsense. As I said, There are many nations, even many ethnicities and cultures, but only one actual "race" -- the human race. You can be grateful to an ethnicity, a culture or a nation.

But if the idea of gratitude is beyond you, I can't help you.

I never asked for your help. I just asked you to be honest. I am grateful I didn't make the mistake of believing you would be. If you are so grateful to some ethnic group, why won't you name one and what it is they gave you that you are grateful for?

[Immanuel Can]

I never asked for your help.

You need somebody's, apparently. Good luck.

[uwot]

My effort has been (it still is really) to discover, to uncover, something like a 'bedrock' within ideas. A sure and certain platform within metaphysics upon which it would be possible to construct an existential edifice. That is a dramatic (perhaps ridiculous) way to put it yet I am serious.

That is the goal of all rationalist philosophers. In two and a half thousand years of recorded philosophy, only two people have managed it: Parmenides who pointed out that 'Being is' i.e. something exists, and Descartes whose 'I think, therefore I am' reduces to 'Experience exists'. In effect you are looking for an analytic a posteriori proposition, which Kant thought self contradictory, but of which both the above are examples. Contemporary rationalists largely follow Peirce, kicking and screaming sometimes, but most concede that abduction is the best that metaphysics can provide. Any 'metaphysician' who knows The Truth is almost certainly a nutcase. Look no further than this forum for examples.

[Belinda]

I never asked for your help.

You need somebody's, apparently. Good luck.

And of course you don't!