AJ intoned: All religions (that I am aware of) and all spiritual paths always recognize that in order to perceive what I have called the higher elements (subtle metaphysical perception and realization) recognize that the addiction to sensuousness, the indulgence in mutable sensation, must be sacrificed so that the higher element can be received and cultivated.
Harry Baird wrote: ↑Tue Jul 19, 2022 7:06 amThis seems true, and, probably, it's a correct idea. It's a challenging one though.
If it is a correct idea, and if it is true, then it is possible that it deals on some First Principles of one sort or another that you could yourself explain, right? You respond intuitively, right? But what principles are involved then? Defining these would be a way to arrive at to those First Principles which make for a sound assertion.
OK, but that still doesn't explain what's most valuable in Christianity, because the same problem could occur in other cultures even if their traditions are not as valuable as Christianity.
You desire that I make a 'convincing case' and present it to you in easily masticated portions. But my assertion is that you need to become a
better chewer! What is 'most valuable in Christianity', in my own view, is not one thing or just one element, but an entire set of contributing elements. If I only were to say that early Christianity incorporated into it a wide range of Platonic notions and ideas, which seem to have become the base for all philosophical musing (Plato and Platonism), would that in itself function for you as one
sufficient element? But there are
dozens of such incorporations. And it is the sum totality of all these contributions that have filtered into and then become, or helped to bring into being, who we are and what *we* have achieved.
The issue about other traditions and other cultures is in what became possible for them to build on the established foundations. I would not devalue them, in fact I think that if I have a method is to abstract concepts in such a way that they can be recognized
universally.
Moreover, as you're not even a Christian yourself, it's not really clear to what, exactly, you're proposing that we recur.
What am I then?
I am surprised that you ask this question when I have, even if badly or incompletely, demonstrated or at least alluded to the value in 'higher things'. All that is 'higher' had to pre-exist the moment when they became manifest in our world, is that not a necessary idea? Before man came on the scene all those ideas had to exist, did they not? How did they exist? In what form? How do they enter our world?
So what would
you suggest is the thing that must be
recurred to?
AJ: But the other element here is when these ["the restraining power of Christian ethics and the guiding/restraining power of the appreciation of the metaphysical principles, even the understanding of them"] are deliberately undermined.
HB: Can you speak to who or what is deliberately undermining these, and, most especially, why? How is it that they fail to recognise what you recognise? Are they wicked, or well-intended but mistaken? What are they trying to achieve?
Your Kids Go to Paulo Freire's Marxist Schools
Again, you want pre-masticated bullet points -- what can be explained to an 8-year old is how you put it -- because you have mastication issues! You.do.not.read.and.study.enough!
If you understood that Richard Weaver (one writer you are familar with) worked with a critical set if ideas you would yourself understand his notion of the
degeneration that he exposes.
From the Wiki page:
Weaver attributes the beginning of the Western decline to the adoption of nominalism (or the rejection of the notion of absolute truth) in the late Scholastic period. The chief proponent of this philosophical revolution was William of Ockham.
The consequences of this revolution, Weaver contends, were the gradual erosion of the notions of distinction and hierarchy, and the subsequent enfeebling of the Western mind's capacity to reason. These effects in turn produced all manner of societal ills, decimating Western art, education and morality.
As examples of the most recent and extreme consequences of this revolution, Weaver offers the cruelty of the Hiroshima bombing, the meaninglessness of modern art, America's cynicism and apathy in the face of the just war against Nazism, and the rise of what he terms "The Great Stereopticon".
Again the Wiki page:
Weaver gives the name "The Great Stereopticon" to what he perceives as a rising, emergent construct which serves to manipulate the beliefs and emotions of the populace, and ultimately to separate them from their humanity via "the commodification of truth".
Here, notably, Weaver echoes the sentiments of C. S. Lewis in his book The Abolition of Man (which was written nearly contemporaneously with Ideas Have Consequences), and anticipates the modern critique of consumerism.
Harry writes: Yes, I've read Richard Weaver, and, as you know, one of my broad critiques of his thinking is that nowhere does he even propose any first principles, let alone justify them - at least as far as why Ideas Have Consequences goes, which is all I've read of him. The same, in my view, can be said of you. If you disagree, then please outline what first principles are in your view, where you've outlined them in the past (if at all), and how you justify them as such.
The first principles he works with form the ideas that he communicates. No, I guess that he has not written out a list, so you have that right, but there is a whole series of assertions and predicates that inform his presentation. I guess I would say that those who could manage to read his book would, at least to some degree, have been made familiar with the basic ideas of Platonic philosophy. They were, of course, at one time the stuff of
grammar school.
How do you *justify* then any of
your most primary assertions?
You are asking me, once again, for a pre-digested list of first principles. But I do not think that the first principles that, say, Weaver works with can be reduced to a list. I suppose they would have to be brought out slowly and revealed through the essay form. And here Weaver becomes for us a paradigm of conservative thought and a set of ideas that can oppose hyper-liberal radicalism (if this is taken as ungrounding from solid principles as well as of identity).
Harry wrote: I understand that perspective, but it seems to me to be more important of an issue than for it to be left at that. It's not just "something" that got set in motion; it's the world's largest religion, and right from the start, adherents were giving their lives up for it. The question as to the true nature of its founder, then, would seem to be of greater significance than that which you seem to afford it - at least, according to my rather dogged and literal mind, of course.
I guess you might reduce it to effects emanating from one man. That would be the faith-based, and therefore the necessary, conclusion.
Many
many different ideas and many
many different men worked out the sets of ideas that formed the Christianity we are talking about.
adherents were giving their lives up for it
And so do suicide bombers today. Do you think that zealousness is proof of the validity of assertion?
