Philosophy Now Forum

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 1:48 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 1:05 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Nov 03, 2021 8:24 pm
I said that.

It's worse.

Queen Elizabeth, unlike Jesus of Nazareth , has not been deified.

"Deify" means "to raise to deity, from a lower inherent state." Jesus Christ is already Lord...he always has been, even for those people who don't know it yet.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 1:48 pm But which is worse: to insult Queen Elizabeth, or to insult God?

owl of Minerva wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 2:38 pm Emmanuel Can:

Owl Minerva wrote:
The name Jesus refers to his humanity. The Christ refers to his consciousness.

Emmanuel Can:
You've been misinformed, I fear. "Christ" means "anointed One," which is identical with the Jewish synonym "Messiah." You can find that out with any simple Greek concordance. Or here, with something even as ordinary as Wiki.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_(title)

Whoever told you the wrong thing was trying to make something fit his narrative, not explaining the word itself.”
……………………………………………………………….

This is taken out of context. Nothing in my post indicated that Christ was not an anointed One or not in correspondence with the Jewish synonym “Messiah,” in both his humanity and divine consciousness. The son of man (humanity) and the son of God (divinity) incorporates both.

Try not to take an entire post out of context by taking a portion of it and making a controversy out of it.

owl of Minerva wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 2:38 pm The early Christian church accepted the doctrine of reincarnation; expounded by the Gnostics; accepted by Clement of Alexandria; the celebrated Origen; and St. Jerome. It was declared a heresy in A.D. 553 by the Second Council of Constantinople, apparently the Pope at the time was absent. It left Christians with the concept of a special creation in a human form for the first time which contradicts original Christian teaching and separates it from the East where Avatars strive over many, many lifetimes to reach liberation and then, with divine dispensation, incarnate to help humanity.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 3:12 pm

owl of Minerva wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 2:38 pm Emmanuel Can:

Owl Minerva wrote:
The name Jesus refers to his humanity. The Christ refers to his consciousness.

Emmanuel Can:
You've been misinformed, I fear. "Christ" means "anointed One," which is identical with the Jewish synonym "Messiah." You can find that out with any simple Greek concordance. Or here, with something even as ordinary as Wiki.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_(title)

Whoever told you the wrong thing was trying to make something fit his narrative, not explaining the word itself.”
……………………………………………………………….

This is taken out of context.

I wasn't, actually; I saw what you said. You wrote:

Similar to Krishna in the Hindu religion....Cosmic consciousness,

It has nothing whatsoever to do with "Krishna" or the Hindu idea of "Krishna consciousness." The two are totally unassociated ideas, untited only in the interests of the "Krishna" narrative. Sorry.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 3:12 pm

Nothing in my post indicated that Christ was not an anointed One or not in correspondence with the Jewish synonym “Messiah,” in both his humanity and divine consciousness. The son of man (humanity) and the son of God (divinity) incorporates both.

Suddenly, both Hinduism and Krishna have disappeared from your explanation here. I wonder why...

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 3:12 pm

The early Christian church accepted the doctrine of reincarnation; expounded by the Gnostics

Actually they did not. You're confused between the wanna-bes and the actual Christians, I can see.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 3:12 pm And I can tell you for sure that Gnostics are not, and have never been Christians.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 3:12 pm It's a common error, but not less an error, for all that. Modern Gnostics won't like that, of course, but it doesn't change the facts.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 3:12 pm The problem is doctrinal and profound. Their fundamental hatred of the Creator and of the flesh makes it utterly impossible for them to be, in any sense, "Christian".

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 3:12 pm They are, however, an excellent example of people who seize upon the name "Christian" illegitimately, and use it for the purposes of misleading people. And that, I admit, is a serious problem for anybody trying to understand Christianity from a merely outside perspective. It's not until one drills down into the actual doctrine, rather than taking the self-identification of people as "Christians" at face value, that one is going to see how implausible the Gnostic claim to association with Christianity actually is.

However, there was an extended historical time when Gnosticism did try very ardently to sell itself to Christians, and as "Christianity," though solid proof exists that the Gnostic beliefs existed long before Christianity itself ever actually was formulated. In their canon, as time went on, Gnostics created numerous writings that were designed to replicate Christian language and concepts, but to co-opt them to the Gnostic narrative...thereby, hopefully also drawing away Christians to the Gnostic view. And this collection of texts still confuses the marginally-informed, who tend to take any claim of being "Christian" as real. In fact, I have many of these Gnostic texts right beside me as I type, on my shelf. I've read them, looked at their origins and historiography, investigated their doctrine, compared it to Scripture, and found them totally incapable of fitting into any genuinely Christian worldview.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 3:12 pm And that is, in fact, what Christians generally also have decided is the case: Gnosticism is not Christianity.

But also you're right to associate Hinduism and Gnosticism. They're not the same, but they do share certain common significant features, such as the "enlightenement" story, the contempt for the world and flesh as a realm of maya or "illusions" in the first case, and as a prison of the soul in the second. But neither has anything to do with Christianity. They also share the idea that a class of imaginary elites, called something like "the compassionate ones" or maybe "the illuminati" puts one set of people ahead of others in "enlightenment," and makes them into special "priests" of truth to whom all others have to apply in order to escape material reality.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 3:12 pm The Christian story does not share these features at all. And the dynamic of salvation in Christianity is the person and work of Christ, not esoteric knowledge or some "illuminated class" of better folks. And whereas Christianity celebrates the Incarnation, and regards the body as an instrument of relationship to God, Gnosticism utterly deplores such ideas. The antipathy between those worldviews is actually deep and not hard to detect, if one knows how to look to find it.

But most outsiders to the controverys between them simply don't.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Nov 03, 2021 6:37 pm
Right now, I'm reading Dr. Joost Meerlo's treatise The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide and Brainwashing. It was written almost half a century ago, and yet the dangers of which it warns could easily have been culled from the internet this morning. The techniques of mass manipulation do not themselves change, though the tools that are being used to achieve them are more sophisticated today. One comes away from his book with the overwhelming recognition that we are "being had," and "had" in the worst way, by our elites.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Nov 03, 2021 6:37 pm Next to me, on my desk, is a copy of The WEF's "Covid 19: The Great Reset." If it were not enough that guys like Ellul (who had his own study on propaganda, which I also have) and Meerlo were warning us, the imperious fools at Davos are coming right out and publishing their totalitarian intentions -- a grimy Socialism for the masses, privilege and elitism for them, is the sum of it. It's almost hard to believe that such rogues still crawl between heaven and earth...and these, today are our leaders and heads of technology...

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 4:18 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Nov 03, 2021 6:37 pmRight now, I'm reading Dr. Joost Meerlo's treatise The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide and Brainwashing. It was written almost half a century ago, and yet the dangers of which it warns could easily have been culled from the internet this morning. The techniques of mass manipulation do not themselves change, though the tools that are being used to achieve them are more sophisticated today. One comes away from his book with the overwhelming recognition that we are "being had," and "had" in the worst way, by our elites.

Next to me, on my desk, is a copy of The WEF's "Covid 19: The Great Reset." If it were not enough that guys like Ellul (who had his own study on propaganda, which I also have) and Meerlo were warning us, the imperious fools at Davos are coming right out and publishing their totalitarian intentions -- a grimy Socialism for the masses, privilege and elitism for them, is the sum of it. It's almost hard to believe that such rogues still crawl between heaven and earth...and these, today are our leaders and heads of technology...

Coincidentally I had ordered and just yesterday received the title Battle for the Mind (William Sargent, 1957). An idea I had been working with to put labels on the very strange goings-on in America over the last 8+ years has to do with 'hysteria'. I used the term loosely, depreciatively, yet now I begin to think that what is going on today, deliberately or inadvertently, brings out conditions of genuine social hysteria. I am interested in the first major instance of fracture: the events of 9/11. It seems fair and accurate to say that here a huge *crack* appeared. It has not gotten better and is widening.

I am especially interested in the reaction that has been cultivated and inculcated and directed against one notable orangish political character. It seems to me fair and reasonable to say that the sort of cultivated fear & anger that became so prevalent, and then exacerbated by a pandemic and all the associated stresses (similar to war-conditions) have primed the population, but especially the susceptible in the population, to real manifestations of social hysteria.

In those conditions people are said to become 'highly suggestible' and in that sensitive, weakened state, become susceptible to fanaticism, credulity, and paranoia.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 4:18 pm So on one hand during times of extreme stresses during war and crisis, they become hyper-sensitive to suggestion, but another reaction is sometimes completely the opposite: incapacity to hear and consider reasoned arguments.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 4:18 pm So someone in the grip of extreme stress and hysteria (after a bombing for example), instead of being capable of reacting normally will react very abnormally and cannot be reasoned with even to preserve themselves.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 4:18 pm There were of course those videos that circulated, and still circulate, by Yuri Bezmenov about how social structures are broken down for purposes of political destabilization. Reaction against even that idea (Marxist take-over, CRT, etc.) have been also similarly hysterical though what is going on seems to fit into the picture Bezmenov describes.

In short this is where I think we must have, we must come up with, a sane, rational and accurate hermeneutics. To be able, even while in the midst of high-stress events and social manipulation, to see what is going on.

Sargent's examination is based on Pavlov's models. Protective inhibition is some form of shut-down, some type of abnormal reaction against the stress. One can apply the picture offered in this following paragraph to events we have all witnessed, though I would gather we all interpret them differently:

Once a state of hysteria has been induced in men or dogs
by mounting stresses which the brain can no longer toler-
ate,“protective inhibition” is likely to supervene. This will
disturb the individual's ordinary conditioned behaviour
patterns. In human beings, states of greatly increased sug-
gestibility are also found; and so are their opposite, namely,
states in which the patient is deaf to all suggestions, how-
ever sensible. Hysteria has produced sudden and unex-
plained panics in most wars; often among troops famous
for their battle-record.Among the finest fighters of the
ancient world were: Caesar's veteran legionaries, and from
the bravest of these he chose his Eagle-bearers.Yet after ten
to thirteen years of continuous campaigning in Gaul they
also could break down suddenly. Suetonius26 records two
cases of hysterical Eagle-bearers running away on differ-
ent occasions. When Caesar tried to stop them, the first
attempted to strike him with the sharp butt of the Eagle,
the second left the Eagle in his hand and rushed on. But
these are extreme cases; hysteria was also evidenced in the
susceptibility to rumours of Londoners during the Blitz.
Brain exhaustion led them to believe stories about “Lord
Haw-Haw's” broadcasts from Germany which they would
have at once rejected as untrue when in a more relaxed and
less exhausted state. The anxiety engendered by the Fall of
France,the Battle of Britain, and the Blitz created a state in
which large groups of persons were temporarily able to ac-
cept new and sometimes strange beliefs without criticism.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 5:14 pm

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 4:18 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Nov 03, 2021 6:37 pmRight now, I'm reading Dr. Joost Meerlo's treatise The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide and Brainwashing. It was written almost half a century ago, and yet the dangers of which it warns could easily have been culled from the internet this morning. The techniques of mass manipulation do not themselves change, though the tools that are being used to achieve them are more sophisticated today. One comes away from his book with the overwhelming recognition that we are "being had," and "had" in the worst way, by our elites.

Next to me, on my desk, is a copy of The WEF's "Covid 19: The Great Reset." If it were not enough that guys like Ellul (who had his own study on propaganda, which I also have) and Meerlo were warning us, the imperious fools at Davos are coming right out and publishing their totalitarian intentions -- a grimy Socialism for the masses, privilege and elitism for them, is the sum of it. It's almost hard to believe that such rogues still crawl between heaven and earth...and these, today are our leaders and heads of technology...

Coincidentally I had ordered and just yesterday received the title Battle for the Mind (William Sargent, 1957). An idea I had been working with to put labels on the very strange goings-on in America over the last 8+ years has to do with 'hysteria'. I used the term loosely, depreciatively, yet now I begin to think that what is going on today, deliberately or inadvertently, brings out conditions of genuine social hysteria. I am interested in the first major instance of fracture: the events of 9/11. It seems fair and accurate to say that here a huge *crack* appeared. It has not gotten better and is widening.

One of the tricks of totalitarians is to convince the public that a controversy that is actually secondary or even trivial is the central controversy. In that way, the autocrats can trick the public into expending all its oppositional energy on battles that, even if they win them, will actually not change anything important at all.

Let me illustrate, if I may. Consider the Coke-Pepsi "wars." These wars are actually a fake controversy. They are a cooperative project by both companies to make people think that deciding which carmel-flavoured sugar beverage to choose is very important. But the truth is (and the thing neither side ever wants you to realize is the issue), nobody needs a caramel-flavoured sugar beverage. Nobody. It's junk.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 5:14 pm So long as people focus on allegiance to one company or the other, they will continue to invest belief in caramel-flavouored sugar beverages, and maybe even come to see them as a focus of loyalty, of character, or of group belonging, a signal of the good life.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 5:14 pm And consumption will continue apace, no matter who seems to be "winning" the Coke-Pepsi war.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 5:14 pm In the same way, the Democrats and the old Republicans have been directing public attention to the question of who wins the next election. And it's not an unimportant question -- unless both candidates are essentially committed to the same kinds of policies and objectives...and the chief objective of increasing government power and influence, and thereby bolstering their own money and status. Then, like the caramel-flavoured sugar beverages, it no longer matters who's in: the puppet on the right and the puppet on the left are essentially working on the same project anyway. But the public is distracted from the main issue, which is that no actual choice of a different candidate, policy, trajectory and outcome is being offered them. They will keep thinking they have won, when all that's really happened is they've found a different way to loose.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 5:14 pm Does it matter who's on the Left and who's on the Right in America? Maybe sometimes it does. Maybe the new governor in Virginia, for example, is a different fish from the regular politician; in which case, great. But too many times, we think that because one side won or lost that the public also won or lost. And I think that the truth is that the public has been losing to a generaly corrupt political system for some time now, no matter who ended up on whatever side.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 5:14 pm The authoritarians have been winning by distracting the public from the real issues with side-squabbles.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 5:14 pm

I am especially interested in the reaction that has been cultivated and inculcated and directed against one notable orangish political character. It seems to me fair and reasonable to say that the sort of cultivated fear & anger that became so prevalent, and then exacerbated by a pandemic and all the associated stresses (similar to war-conditions) have primed the population, but especially the susceptible in the population, to real manifestations of social hysteria.

In those conditions people are said to become 'highly suggestible' and in that sensitive, weakened state, become susceptible to fanaticism, credulity, and paranoia. So on one hand during times of extreme stresses during war and crisis, they become hyper-sensitive to suggestion, but another reaction is sometimes completely the opposite: incapacity to hear and consider reasoned arguments. So someone in the grip of extreme stress and hysteria (after a bombing for example), instead of being capable of reacting normally will react very abnormally and cannot be reasoned with even to preserve themselves.

Yes, yes. Absolutely.

Every autocrat knows that if you cause the people fear they will surrender their freedoms to the next guy who promises some stability. So the panic and craziness, the info overload and the babble of conflicting opinions, the COVID fears and the collapse of the supply chain, the price of gas and the empty store shelves, the wars in education and in academia...all of these are tools (or perhaps just opportunties) of the same goal: make the public nervous, then tell them you'll fix it if they surrender more authority to you.

In short this is where I think we must have, we must come up with, a sane, rational and accurate hermeneutics. To be able, even while in the midst of high-stress events and social manipulation, to see what is going on.

You're using "hermeneutics" in a very general way there, are you not? I think you're using it to refer to how anybody interprets anything, such as news events, perhaps. I don't think you're using it in a way limited to actual text, are you?

I'm not objecting: I'm just asking, so I'm clear on what you mean.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 4:18 pm

Once a state of hysteria...a state in which large groups of persons were temporarily able to accept new and sometimes strange beliefs without criticism.

That's a great quotation. And very true, I think.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 5:14 pm It squares with something David Shenk wrote years ago, in his book Data Smog. He talks about how Spinoza and Descartes had a controversy over the question, are people basically critical thinkers or are they basically credulous?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 5:14 pm Spinoza thought people tended to believe what they heard first, and afterward to examine, criticize and accept or reject it on more intellectual grounds.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 5:14 pm Descartes, on the other hand, believed that people were sort of instintive cynics, who would first disbelieve in new information, and then afterward, perhaps accept it and believe it if there was subsequent evidence or proof.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 5:14 pm As modern psychology has shown, one of them was right. And it wasn't Descartes.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 5:14 pm People immediately believe information they hear for the first time -- perhaps only for as long as a second or so -- and then afterward, to become more critical and thoughtful about it.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 5:14 pm And this fact is easy to test: just t tell somebody an outrageous untruth, like, "Did I tell you that it turns out I'm Madonna's cousin?" and see how frequently people's first response is "Really?"

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 5:14 pm Then you'll see them think about it, and say, "Yeah, right...nice one."

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 5:14 pm But it's too late. They already believed you for a second, and they realize they've been had.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 5:14 pm So people believe lies instinctively, then quickly figure out they've been had.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 5:14 pm But, asks Shenk, what happens when people are denied the time to think?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 5:14 pm What happens when the lies come in so thick and fast that no sooner have they heard one lie then they are hit with a new one, or even with the same lie repeated?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 5:14 pm The answer turns out to be that people slip into a kind of mental "surfing" mode, where, instead of trying to slow and process the amount of information, they start to sort of "go with the flow" of the lies.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 5:14 pm They don't have time to do more. So they go into "believer" mode, and only if they have time afterward, get around to putting the lies to the test in "critical" mode.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 5:14 pm With no time, because the information flows so fast, people spend less and less time being thoughtful, reflective, critical and careful, and devote more energy to just keeping their heads above the flow of information.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 5:14 pm That's where the "without criticism" part of your quotation comes in. With no time to think, people cannot be critical. They can only believe.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 5:14 pm Hysteria sucks up their psychological energies, and the pace of propaganda overwhelms them. They start to "surf," and just accept stuff as it comes. And that's when the totalitarian leader has them in exactly the state he needs them to be in, in order to enact any bizarre or morally reprehensible plan he may have. There won't be sufficient public critical awareness available anymore to call his projects to account. He has won.

I do think we're approaching that critical point of public confusion very quickly. And in some countries, I think we're already there.

Lacewing wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 5:28 pm

henry quirk wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 2:28 am Man is free (self-directing, self-responsible, self-reliant). This is a truth about him. It is a principle (a fundamental law or truth or fact from which others are derived). This freedom is natural to him. It's part of his substance. It can't be separated out from him. It isn't granted to him by other men. We can codify it, but never create it. We can violate it, but never destroy it.

Man is his own. This is a truth about him. It is a principle. This self-possession, this ownness, is natural to him. It's part of his substance. It can't be separated out from him. It isn't granted to him by other men. We can codify it, but never create it. We can violate it, but never destroy it.

Notice how you have no trouble repeating this (above) for the 5,000th time.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 2:28 amWould you fight to defend these principles? If the choice was, as the expression goes, dying on your feet or living on your knees, which would you choose?

I choose my battles -- and how to survive them -- based on the circumstances. Not everything is known. Sometimes there are trade-offs, and they're worth it.

For example, when I was raped at knifepoint, I could have fought to the death -- and sure, I screamed like crazy at first until he jammed his fingers down my throat -- but ultimately, I had to choose (or not) to keep it in perspective of the bigger picture of life.

Lacewing wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 5:28 pm Have you ever been raped, Henry? There have been people who were imprisoned and treated horribly for years of their lives -- and some learned to keep it in perspective -- and/or they had no choice.

Lacewing wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 5:28 pm Life is usually worth surviving for. Things can shift.

Lacewing wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 5:28 pm The truth often is that you can't actually know if you're going to die from something. You might live, if you play your cards right... and if the right cards have been dealt to you. All of your pride and bluster, Henry, seems more about justifying and excusing yourself to act like an uncompromising asshole. It's clearly fun for you. You're not doing anything truly revolutionary, though... you're just mouthing off in your one-sided way at your computer. It appears that you have too much time on your hands, which is why you CAN bury yourself in mountains of nonsense that appeals to you, and insist that everyone else have the time and interest in doing that too.

Lacewing wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 5:28 pm And here you are asking me about my principles.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 2:28 am 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.

Like we've done and always do? What's DIFFERENT?

henry quirk wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 2:28 am Seen thru this lens: all things are not equal, there is no gray to hunker down in. A person can't evade committing (so he best make sure what he commits to is real).

And how do you do that, Henry?

henry quirk wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 2:28 am

Lacewing wrote:I think clarity is more important than principles.

By definition: a principle is unambiguous, is intrinsically clear. There's no reason to choose one over the other.

So, are you claiming that all of man's principles are based on clarity? Then what is it that you're fighting against?

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 7:11 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 5:14 pmYou're using "hermeneutics" in a very general way there, are you not? I think you're using it to refer to how anybody interprets anything, such as news events, perhaps. I don't think you're using it in a way limited to actual text, are you?

There is an interesting fellow -- Graeme MacQueen -- who studied comparative religion at Harvard. He is now involved in peace studies ["In 1989 he became founding Director of the Centre for Peace Studies at McMaster, after which he helped develop the B.A. programme in Peace Studies and co-directed (with $2 million in government, UN and NGO funding) peace-building projects in Sri Lanka, Gaza, Croatia and Afghanistan].

He is one of those who has a different view, based on his exegesis (of the sort that he employed in his academic discipline) of the *texts* that are available surrounding 9/11. And through his exegesis he came to very different conclusions. It was through a talk he gave I began to think that our entire present is a *text* requiring a hermeneutics.

[https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/tkel ... 7_14-07_00]

Note: I have no idea what happened at 9/11, and in fact no sufficient tools to be able to know. All that I can say about it is that so much confusing and conflicting information is presented, that in the end it seems to become impossible to know. That state of knowledge impossibility interests me as a topic in itself).

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 3:57 am

owl of Minerva wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 11:16 pm Response to Immanuel Can’s post dated: Thu Nov. 4, 2021
Why, if believers acknowledge that there is one God, though worshiped in different ways in different times and climes, it becomes a matter always of my God is better than your God.

Simple. Even among people who believe in one God, the "God" described in their creed is often so different from other descriptions of the Supreme Being that there is no possibility the people are even talking about the same entity. You will find, for example, that the Jewish God is not at all the "god" of the Islamists. And Krisha is a totally different concept again, and not compatible with any of the former.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 3:57 am

...are there two different states of consciousness one for the East and one for the West?...

If there's one God, it's the same God in both the East and West. But either the East or the West has their story wrong: because they don't believe in the same conception of "God."

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 3:57 am

If there is one God why would one culture’s liberated Master be less liberated than another culture’s liberated Master?

"Liberated master?" That's not even a concept that occurs in Judaism or Christianity.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 3:57 am

That must be puzzling to atheists

Being "puzzling to Atheists" is no real mark against anything. There's a great deal that fits that description.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 2:29 pm Age,

I wrote: Being moral: as I reckon it, you start with the recognition the other guy's life, liberty, and property are his just as your life, liberty, and property are yours.

Your assessment: Well you OBVIOUSLY have NO recognition of this.

Would you explain your assessment?

henry quirk wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 2:29 pm I wrote: You ought not monkey around with his any more than he ought to yours. This recognition, as it makes certain things between and among men impermissible, encourages cooperation and a particular competition. Trade instead of tyranny, negotiation instead of thievery, and acceptin' no as the answer when no trade can be had or negotiation dead-ends. And this recognition encourages compassion. Lendin' an assist to the truly needy cuz if not for the Creator's grace, that fella could be me.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 2:29 pm You assessed: Your CONTRADICTIONS are BLINDING.

Would you explain your assessment?

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 2:40 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 1:05 pmI regret that I did not sufficiently endorse AJ's point about the inertia of social reality, a point with which I do agree.

"Inertia is the tendency of an object to continue in the state of rest or of uniform motion. The object resists any change in its state of motion or rest."

Perhaps it will serve us to examine this issue more closely. I want to recall here your notion of dynamism. And I also want to recall LaceWing's belief that (I have to paraphrase which is, of course, interpretation applied) when you or I present a set idea, or attempt to define a 'truth', that it is always possible that a) there is something *more* beyond that and thus what is true cannot be considered to be absolutely true, and b) to ponder on this 'something more', and to become open to seeing things in 'new ways', is some part of the dynamism and evolution of which you speak.

I am interested in defining certain aspects of our present time and our present situation. But simultaneously, and this has gone on for years now, instead of forging forward into territories of the ever-opening, the ever-new, the ever-shifting, the ever-evolving, I made a choice when I read certain conservative philosophers (Richard Weaver was definitely one) to consider the notion of The Eternal Constant. It is a Platonic Idea obviously that the mutability and constant-shifting nature of Reality is contradicted or opposed by something that must be eternally constant. So Being is opposed to Becoming.

So therefore, if someone proposes moving back toward things that are constant -- I use the terms of cultural renovation, renewal, re-grounding -- the idea is that there are things which are eternal and constant, and that upon those *things* (ideas, beliefs, feelings, understandings) it is possible to build. Because, logically, you cannot build on an ever-changing, no-constant, ever-shifting ground. Yet we live, obviously, in a mutable world.

So what is it that is the Constant Thing that is sought after?

But let's examine the notion of 'anomie' more closely. Let us consider what happens in the psychology of a person when, say, all the stable ground under that person has been undermined (let's take the example to the extreme). So then there is nothing solid to be *believed in*.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 2:40 pm Everything that very recently was 'solid' now becomes un-solid.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 2:40 pm Everything is doubted.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 2:40 pm At the same time the social hierarchies, and the hierarchies within knowledge, within institutions, within valuation, are confronted and doubted. The very idea of 'authority' is brought into question. And then -- it proceeds logically, doesn't it? -- the notion of 'metaphysical solidities' must necessarily also be undermined.

It seems to me that once we have noticed what is happening, if indeed we can gain the perspective to actually see it, we can then recognize that we have been acted upon by idea-forces which have, consciously though perhaps also incidentally, acted upon us in a deliberate effort to undermine the solidities within us.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 2:40 pm Now why does this happen?

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 2:40 pm Or put another way what is the function or the utility of undermining the solidities on which the individual depended (or depends)?

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 2:40 pm I think the answer is to render that individual malleable.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 2:40 pm The culture of propaganda needs to do this, but so does the related social science of advertising and public relations. The role of advertising is, in a way, to weaken the individual's argument against buying the given article. The individual -- the strong and resilient individual -- is the object that must be defeated and overcome by the sophistry and rhetoric of the advertising effort, isn't that right?

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 2:40 pm Political propaganda and even of course (or perhaps especially) the distortions of religious indoctrination (as for example in the mega-churches where 'conversions' are sought through dubious means and the individual is also undermined and overcome)(as opposed to spiritual processes that transform the individual in ways we recognize as positive and necessary -- as 'good' -- which come about through social and cultural paideia).

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 2:40 pm Moving very quickly and jerkily forward -- what sort of individual remains in our present? Disjointed, separated, atomized, uncertain, in constant existential doubt, non-believing because all is 'relative' and one thing is just as valid as any other thing, we see persons whose biological sex (which must be seen as a primary solidity) cannot even be believed in any longer.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 2:40 pm So the individual, according to the narrative I attempt to present here, is thus removed from the possibility of having a foundation! No foundation remains.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 2:40 pm Not within her- or himself, not in the political world, not in the sociological world, but primarily not in the *world* of being. That individual has been knocked off his foundation -- and knocked off, so it is said, in the name of what is true! (That there are no solidities, that there should not exist hierarchies, that all values are relative, that one 'belief' is equal to any other belief and all must be accepted as equal and perhaps (somehow) equally entertained.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 2:40 pm Now what happens to that individual? I would say that that individual 'goes crazy'.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 2:40 pm Becomes susceptible to 'hysteria'.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 2:40 pm Becomes, literally, ungrounded within her- and himself, unable to find a 'constant home'.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 2:40 pm It is within this sort of social and cultural situation that people become *suggestible* to all sorts of different ideas.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 2:40 pm Or is it more feelings?

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 2:40 pm So in my view the object of 'seeking solidities' (within Occidental paideia, my preferred term), and also within a solid spiritual/philosophical practice that is as profoundly related to our own "Occidental traditions", is not a false-object, though it may be an endeavor involving reaction -- reaction against the too-much-shifting of a world that has become unmoored.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 2:40 pm We have to face, in my view, that the process I describe (of return, of seeking solidities, of rejecting radical trends) is similar to, say, the Interwar Period (the 1920s and 1930s) in which fascistic trends manifested themselves. Fascism is 'reactive' and, I think, usually involves similar notions of return to what is solid, return to what can be believed in, and return to what people can agree on as 'sane living'.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 2:40 pm But it becomes highly contaminated, and ultra-dangerous, when the focus becomes the State or when the State takes over the 'reaction-process'. But consider that a well-disciplined spiritual life is, in its way, a form of self-chosen reaction. Taking oneself in hand, disciplining oneself, is sort of 'self-fascism'.

The object of 'recovery of the self' however is something uniquely personal and interior. It leads or should lead to a well-grounded individual capable of seeing and acting properly, maturely, civically, responsibly, but also to a person with the capacity and the interest in acting ethically.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 5:24 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 5:18 pm ... it's surprising that Christians do not know it.

The reason they "don't know it" is simple: it isn't true.

We know too much about the Biblical portrait of God to mistake Him for the Islamic, Hindu, Polytheist, or for that matter, Humanist "gods."

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 5:24 pm It's really the kind of thing that only somebody who was devoted to the Krisha idea but totally uninformed about the nature of God as decribed by the Bible could possibly think.

Belinda wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 5:51 pm

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 2:40 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 1:05 pmI regret that I did not sufficiently endorse AJ's point about the inertia of social reality, a point with which I do agree.

"Inertia is the tendency of an object to continue in the state of rest or of uniform motion. The object resists any change in its state of motion or rest."

Perhaps it will serve us to examine this issue more closely. I want to recall here your notion of dynamism. And I also want to recall LaceWing's belief that (I have to paraphrase which is, of course, interpretation applied) when you or I present a set idea, or attempt to define a 'truth', that it is always possible that a) there is something *more* beyond that and thus what is true cannot be considered to be absolutely true, and b) to ponder on this 'something more', and to become open to seeing things in 'new ways', is some part of the dynamism and evolution of which you speak.

I am interested in defining certain aspects of our present time and our present situation. But simultaneously, and this has gone on for years now, instead of forging forward into territories of the ever-opening, the ever-new, the ever-shifting, the ever-evolving, I made a choice when I read certain conservative philosophers (Richard Weaver was definitely one) to consider the notion of The Eternal Constant. It is a Platonic Idea obviously that the mutability and constant-shifting nature of Reality is contradicted or opposed by something that must be eternally constant. So Being is opposed to Becoming.

So therefore, if someone proposes moving back toward things that are constant -- I use the terms of cultural renovation, renewal, re-grounding -- the idea is that there are things which are eternal and constant, and that upon those *things* (ideas, beliefs, feelings, understandings) it is possible to build. Because, logically, you cannot build on an ever-changing, no-constant, ever-shifting ground. Yet we live, obviously, in a mutable world.

So what is it that is the Constant Thing that is sought after?

But let's examine the notion of 'anomie' more closely. Let us consider what happens in the psychology of a person when, say, all the stable ground under that person has been undermined (let's take the example to the extreme). So then there is nothing solid to be *believed in*. Everything that very recently was 'solid' now becomes un-solid. Everything is doubted. At the same time the social hierarchies, and the hierarchies within knowledge, within institutions, within valuation, are confronted and doubted. The very idea of 'authority' is brought into question. And then -- it proceeds logically, doesn't it? -- the notion of 'metaphysical solidities' must necessarily also be undermined.

It seems to me that once we have noticed what is happening, if indeed we can gain the perspective to actually see it, we can then recognize that we have been acted upon by idea-forces which have, consciously though perhaps also incidentally, acted upon us in a deliberate effort to undermine the solidities within us. Now why does this happen? Or put another way what is the function or the utility of undermining the solidities on which the individual depended (or depends)?

I think the answer is to render that individual malleable. The culture of propaganda needs to do this, but so does the related social science of advertising and public relations. The role of advertising is, in a way, to weaken the individual's argument against buying the given article. The individual -- the strong and resilient individual -- is the object that must be defeated and overcome by the sophistry and rhetoric of the advertising effort, isn't that right?

Political propaganda and even of course (or perhaps especially) the distortions of religious indoctrination (as for example in the mega-churches where 'conversions' are sought through dubious means and the individual is also undermined and overcome)(as opposed to spiritual processes that transform the individual in ways we recognize as positive and necessary -- as 'good' -- which come about through social and cultural paideia).

Moving very quickly and jerkily forward -- what sort of individual remains in our present? Disjointed, separated, atomized, uncertain, in constant existential doubt, non-believing because all is 'relative' and one thing is just as valid as any other thing, we see persons whose biological sex (which must be seen as a primary solidity) cannot even be believed in any longer. So the individual, according to the narrative I attempt to present here, is thus removed from the possibility of having a foundation! No foundation remains. Not within her- or himself, not in the political world, not in the sociological world, but primarily not in the *world* of being. That individual has been knocked off his foundation -- and knocked off, so it is said, in the name of what is true! (That there are no solidities, that there should not exist hierarchies, that all values are relative, that one 'belief' is equal to any other belief and all must be accepted as equal and perhaps (somehow) equally entertained.

Now what happens to that individual? I would say that that individual 'goes crazy'. Becomes susceptible to 'hysteria'. Becomes, literally, ungrounded within her- and himself, unable to find a 'constant home'. It is within this sort of social and cultural situation that people become *suggestible* to all sorts of different ideas. Or is it more feelings?

So in my view the object of 'seeking solidities' (within Occidental paideia, my preferred term), and also within a solid spiritual/philosophical practice that is as profoundly related to our own "Occidental traditions", is not a false-object, though it may be an endeavor involving reaction -- reaction against the too-much-shifting of a world that has become unmoored.

We have to face, in my view, that the process I describe (of return, of seeking solidities, of rejecting radical trends) is similar to, say, the Interwar Period (the 1920s and 1930s) in which fascistic trends manifested themselves. Fascism is 'reactive' and, I think, usually involves similar notions of return to what is solid, return to what can be believed in, and return to what people can agree on as 'sane living'.

But it becomes highly contaminated, and ultra-dangerous, when the focus becomes the State or when the State takes over the 'reaction-process'. But consider that a well-disciplined spiritual life is, in its way, a form of self-chosen reaction. Taking oneself in hand, disciplining oneself, is sort of 'self-fascism'.

The object of 'recovery of the self' however is something uniquely personal and interior. It leads or should lead to a well-grounded individual capable of seeing and acting properly, maturely, civically, responsibly, but also to a person with the capacity and the interest in acting ethically.

Lovely essay, Alexis Jacobi. I admit to belief in what is variously expressed as Beauty, Truth, and Good, which is the eternal constant. The eternal constant must always transcend the phenomena of this world or else there is the danger of idolatry, a danger which is given prominence in the Koran. The eternal constant can't be diminished but it can fail to appear due to some of the many and various shadows of the world.

Belinda wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 5:51 pm Psychological anomie is uncomfortable, even painful. You well describe the results of psychological anomie. For this reason, and also the reason of occidental paideia , it's important that Christianity is made a more reasonable faith for modern people in this age when the bad results of anomie are so apparent. Reasonable faith is the extent and direction to which occidental paideia should evolve. Whose responsibility is it to guide the evolution?