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You seem to be the one with the closed mind, Nick. You simply can't accept any view other than your own about what is creating those shadows. If I look for the cause of them, and see something different to what you see, you just condemn me for failing.
That is not practical. I know what I am talking about as I have actually done a physical 'spiritual' exercise , regularly for a few years. Practice involves bodily movements which may be ritualistic or free. Practice involves use of the actual physical voice as in singing , speaking(perhaps in invented 'tongues') Practice involves movement from place to place as in dancing, walking about, running, jumping and so forth.Nick_A wrote: ↑Tue Aug 09, 2022 2:07 pmIt was practical in the sense that without what Learned and verified on both the law of three forces and the dicontinuity of vibrations and described in the law of octaves and why everything turns in circles I would still be arguing for duality. It was practical as a mind opening experience. What is so practical about a closed mind fixated on the shadows on the wall to supply meaning?Belinda wrote: ↑Tue Aug 09, 2022 10:56 am Nick wrote:
Was the other part of your experience practical?Education is limited. I have gone through my readings on the great ideas brought to the West by Gurdjieff and expanded upon by Ouspensky They contributed to the cause of my experience with metanoia: inwardly turning towards the light with the whole of oneself and away from the shadows on the wall.
While I understand and also acknowledge that in your way of seeing and explaining things 'metaphysics' is not a category you consider real, I simply do not think your position is logically tenable. The error you express here, just now, is in setting up a false dichotomy between what is physical and what is, according to the definition I employ, metaphysical. I say that both are plainly real. But I do say, and repeat, that the only way to know about metaphysics is to examine causation. That is why I referred to the tea ceremony.Dubious wrote: ↑Mon Aug 08, 2022 11:52 pmMuch more than metaphysics (which explains nothing), physics, etc., in all its capacities is the art by which all things created get examined which doesn't render it less mystical than any of your metaphysical pretensions. Only then do we face the real mysteries of nature; not the ones we manufacture.
I think you have missed the point. However I also am aware that the point that I make cannot be seen by you given your adamantine predicates. And that is actually the thing that interests me more: how the determinations that are made on a mental plane influence and determine what we allow ourselves to understand (and understand is used in a special sense). The best way to illustrate what I wish to refer to is to quote Blake:The tea ceremony is a highly ritualistic process; the Japanese have always been extremely ritualistic and formal in their society. To truly understand it requires knowledge of each movement in its performance not only in its execution but also in its meaning. No one questions the formality, the power of ritual on the psyche and the necessity for its performance. Art can also be qualified as a revelation of it. One can even extend its formality to the universe as a cosmic tea ritual. If you insist on calling that kind of experience metaphysical in the sense of aspiring to fixed eternal values which preexist humans, that depends entirely on your belief preferences being not unlike theism.
I fully recognize and I grasp with no doubts of any sort that if Blake is correct in what he is saying that it requires another man who sees similarly to agree with him. I also understand that this seeing, if indeed it is seeing (and not projecting and hallucinating) is a problematic epistemological zone. I grant this fully. What I wish to accomplish in bringing this out is to demonstrate that what we are dealing with are irreconcilable existential and perceptual modes. Will I ever be able to *convince* you to see differently than you choose to see? That is doubtful.“This life's dim windows of the soul
Distorts the heavens from pole to pole
And leads you to believe a lie
When you see with, not through, the eye.”
Allow me to respond ("Oh! you were finished well allow me to retort!) by saying that by putting it in these terms you are not dealing responsibly with an important, a crucial, topic. So I have no option but to regard the position you take as crucial to examine, and indeed I have been doing this for many years now (in my reading).With all the reading that you do, it's especially important to have one's Bullshit Detector on at all times.
Nice! This illustrates a transvaluation of value that is common today. The one who has no ethical and moral stance of any defined sort, and who cannot define in any sense why such a stance is valuable and necessary, brings out an attack against the structure of valuation and the principles that allow the definition, and presents this benighted valuation as superior. That is, as better and more ethical.
You have no means with which to look. Looking is of no interest to you as per your own statements! Assessment, valuation, these are determined by what is pleasurable for you in a moment and nothing else. You make no statements about what is right and proper around you, and you assert that pleasure (and entertainment) is your sole objective.If I look for the cause of them, and see something different to what you see, you just condemn me for failing.
No, I hadn't made a guess as to what your view might be.Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Aug 09, 2022 2:18 pm
as you might guess I view your attitude, the attitude you express, as being another symptom of social, cultural and personal degeneration.
I don't remember making that statement. I don't suppose I do see myself as having any responsibility to teach any particular values, and neither do I see myself as having any authority to teach them. I wouldn't say I see myself as representing any particular values, either. I hope I demonstrate my values, but I don't make a conscious effort to do so.There are a number of *statements* that you are making. One, that you do not see yourself as having responsibility in representing or teaching or demonstrating any particular values
Of course not.You are 'value neutral'.
No, that is a false conclusion you have arrived at, unless, of course you consider any view of the world, other than your own, to be degenerate.You 'have no thoughts' meaning that you avoid any thought or any conclusiveness in regard to what are, in fact, ethical issues. To have, say, abandoned the field' in this way, and in regard to ethics, is a symptom of the degeneration I talk about.
No, I didn't make an assertion. I was merely saying that achieving a state of contentment seemed like a desirable goal to me. You can watch whatever you like on TV, and be as discontent as you please, that's fine with me.You then assert that 'contentment' is the best human occupation and perhaps even goal. Again you are making a positive ethical assertion. Contentment, as you point out, could be achieved giving one's life over to watching trash TeeVee 'if it brings contentment'. What a puzzling assertion!
You assume that, do you?Your views, I assume, fit into this ethical category.Pleasure (ἡδονή/hedone) is the only thing that is intrinsically valuable. Other things (e.g., knowledge, virtue, friendship, and philosophy) may have value, but only insofar as they contribute to pleasure. Whatever value they have is thus merely instrumental.
I don’t really see how I can be blamed for any implications that result from your translations.Then you say -- and this is also a laden statement -- " If the world was full of deep thinkers, life would probably be Hell for everyone". Which when translated means "too much thought contaminates pleasure" or disrupts pleasure. The implication being that the great mass of men if left to themselves just want to sit around doing those things which correspond to watching trash TeeVee and would see the living of life transformed into a sort of 'hell' if people who thought too much had too much influence.
No, I haven't seen that film, and after watching the clip I would quite like to see it. I imagine that you see me as the McDowell character, and you are the pompous twerp trying to shame him. We are on the same page here; that’s how I see it, too.I wonder if you'd ever seen the movie If? (with Malcom McDowell)
Forgive me if I don't respond to this, but it seems that you are much more interested in me than I am in you.Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Aug 09, 2022 3:08 pmNice! This illustrates a transvaluation of value that is common today. The one who has no ethical and moral stance of any defined sort, and who cannot define in any sense why such a stance is valuable and necessary, brings out an attack against the structure of valuation and the principles that allow the definition, and presents this benighted valuation as superior. That is, as better and more ethical.
Pretty amazing . . .
Therefore, for you Harbal, an open mind can only assert that pleasure and 'contentment' and the absolute right to pursue it, is a superior platform to one who focuses consciousness through seeing principles and choosing, as an etical aand moral imperative, to hold to them and enunciate them.
What we see here is just one more evidence of degenerate intellection.
You have no means with which to look. Looking is of no interest to you as per your own statements! Assessment, valuation, these are determined by what is pleasurable for you in a moment and nothing else. You make no statements about what is right and proper around you, and you assert that pleasure (and entertainment) is your sole objective.If I look for the cause of them, and see something different to what you see, you just condemn me for failing.
Yes, for sure, you are condemned (by an entire intellectual world!) for having given over the entire ground on which intellection is based! You are reprimanded in order, one hopes, that you could begin to understand consequences of the ethical and perceptual stances that you accentuate in yourself.
You have never been asked to do this! For these reasons you exemplify, you demonstrate, what today's Everyman is and what he proposes.
Trippy, eh?
I am interested in what I usually call *the structure of the ideas that inform us*. Whether you respond or not doesn't make too much difference really. Yet your own statements have clarified where you stand. Since you have never had anyone focus on you (the ideas you hold, your ethical positions, you examined as a consequence), you react neutrally sometimes but then show signs of disliking the focus and certainly the critical focus.
There is no condemnation. I am looking for verification on what creates shadows rather then condemnation. Look at a wall with shadows on it. Are the shadows real? If not, what is the source of reality or what produces the shadows? This requires a higher form of reason; what good is empty condemnation?
Your comments about me reveal that you have learned nothing about me, but they reveal quite a lot about you.Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Aug 09, 2022 5:31 pm
Each person that has written on this thread reveals their 'orientation'. And each orientation can be examined as an *outcome* of the effect of certain ideas.
I agree that form and meaning are closely entwined. I also believe that some forms are psychologically identical with specific meaning. Take skillfully performed Tai Chi for instance. The grounding movements of Tai Chi can't be interpreted as one may interpret the elevating movements of classical ballet. Similarly the precise togetherness of the tea ceremony can't be interpreted like the solo act of a commercial tea taster.Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Aug 09, 2022 3:03 pmWhile I understand and also acknowledge that in your way of seeing and explaining things 'metaphysics' is not a category you consider real, I simply do not think your position is logically tenable. The error you express here, just now, is in setting up a false dichotomy between what is physical and what is, according to the definition I employ, metaphysical. I say that both are plainly real. But I do say, and repeat, that the only way to know about metaphysics is to examine causation. That is why I referred to the tea ceremony.Dubious wrote: ↑Mon Aug 08, 2022 11:52 pmMuch more than metaphysics (which explains nothing), physics, etc., in all its capacities is the art by which all things created get examined which doesn't render it less mystical than any of your metaphysical pretensions. Only then do we face the real mysteries of nature; not the ones we manufacture.
I think you have missed the point. However I also am aware that the point that I make cannot be seen by you given your adamantine predicates. And that is actually the thing that interests me more: how the determinations that are made on a mental plane influence and determine what we allow ourselves to understand (and understand is used in a special sense). The best way to illustrate what I wish to refer to is to quote Blake:The tea ceremony is a highly ritualistic process; the Japanese have always been extremely ritualistic and formal in their society. To truly understand it requires knowledge of each movement in its performance not only in its execution but also in its meaning. No one questions the formality, the power of ritual on the psyche and the necessity for its performance. Art can also be qualified as a revelation of it. One can even extend its formality to the universe as a cosmic tea ritual. If you insist on calling that kind of experience metaphysical in the sense of aspiring to fixed eternal values which preexist humans, that depends entirely on your belief preferences being not unlike theism.
I fully recognize and I grasp with no doubts of any sort that if Blake is correct in what he is saying that it requires another man who sees similarly to agree with him. I also understand that this seeing, if indeed it is seeing (and not projecting and hallucinating) is a problematic epistemological zone. I grant this fully. What I wish to accomplish in bringing this out is to demonstrate that what we are dealing with are irreconcilable existential and perceptual modes. Will I ever be able to *convince* you to see differently than you choose to see? That is doubtful.“This life's dim windows of the soul
Distorts the heavens from pole to pole
And leads you to believe a lie
When you see with, not through, the eye.”
But it is not completely impossible that, with more explication, more understanding, of what happened and why it happened, how it came about that metaphysical categories were supplanted by the epistemological categories that you now favor, that I might be able to influence someone else (the not-you!) to understand what is lost when the relationship to the *upper world* is cut.
But most importantly I have to make the case I make essentially to myself. That is why I said to Harbal that the function of my (or our) argument has a great deal to do with creating conceptual defenses against this mode of thought that you represent. And that is why I speak in terms of seeing ourselves as outcomes, as products of ideological processes. I cannot say that everything about this shift is negative, no, but a good deal of it has negative ramifications and consequences.
And I have made the assertion that when you examine, at the essential points, the position that Harbal defines and defends (his existential position) that it is not hard to see it as a degeneration. And having been influenced by Weaver and the notion that ideas have consequences, I am, logically, concerned to be able to see and describe how this has all come about.
You have -- of course! -- totally missed the point that I wanted to make about how a form of ritual, because it is contemplative and what is contemplative in this precise sense is what stands behind religious performances, is the place where one can see the invisible (a transcendent idea and a metaphysic) expressed in human behavior, in art essentially. What you do is focus on the exterior ('seeing with and not through the eye') and so all that you see, which is also what you won;t see, or cannot see, or perhaps refuse to see, is the way that the expression reflects an idea (a set really, a complex) that can only be understood as metaphysical and transcendent. And when it happens, and it indeed does happen, that no one is there who can understand what is going on in the rite, and when the viewers of it no longer understand, that is a result and a consequence of a break or a severing from the appreciation, the grasp, of the principle involved.
And when that happens what results is a breakdown of all that which allows a high art to exist. But the tea ceremony is just one revealing ritual. When this happens on all levels it is then that truly horizontal man occupies the present, indeed determines the present. His mode of seeing is 'vulgar' in the honest sense of the word. The way he sees (with and not through the eye) drags down the other possibility of a ways and means of seeing that requires, literally, a man of another sort.
Therefore, the Kafka story An Old Manuscript, is a relevant and revealing anecdote about a specific consequence. It has to do with debasement.
Allow me to respond ("Oh! you were finished well allow me to retort!) by saying that by putting it in these terms you are not dealing irresponsibly with an important, a crucial, topic. So I have no option but to regard the position you take as crucial to examine, and indeed I have been doing this for many years now (in my reading).With all the reading that you do, it's especially important to have one's Bullshit Detector on at all times.
This is why it seems that the differences we are dealing with on this thread -- insurmountable, consequential, ultimately having to do with foundational perspectives -- become so acute and show why there are ideological wars going on all around us.
Bullshit is not the right word though. Because directive, conceptual orders of ideas actually determine the *world* we live in the term bullshit it far too crude, far to general. Perspectives are engineered for a whole host of reasons (political ideological, etc.) and these need to be seen and understood.
You and I have very different outlooks, Nick. I am not criticising your way of thinking, just your attitude towards my way of thinking, which you actually don't know much about. Most of the assumptions you make about me are wrong.Nick_A wrote: ↑Tue Aug 09, 2022 5:40 pm
There is no condemnation. I am looking for verification on what creates shadows rather then condemnation. Look at a wall with shadows on it. Are the shadows real? If not, what is the source of reality or what produces the shadows? This requires a higher form of reason; what good is empty condemnation?
We all fail. That is why Socrates said: I know Nothing. Who knows what the light is?
In a nutshell: I rub you up the wrong way, and you have taken it upon yourself to put me in my place. I'm afraid the task is beyond you, but try if you must.
That is not it at all. I think you are largely quite pleasant and also you are politely, and sincerely, interacting with me. You do not rub me wrong personally. What I examine, what I try to analyze, is the content of your speech and your assertions. But all of this I have written out clearly -- very clearly.
I'm pleased you think so, but don't try to pat me on the head, whatever you do.Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Aug 09, 2022 8:06 pm I think you are largely quite pleasant and also you are politely, and sincerely, interacting with me.
No, I don't think I would like it.Would you like me to reveal what I think you should have revealed about me had you been able to mount a more fulsome critique?