End of Suffering?

[maestro]

Isaac, you're a real piece of work. I'd hate to be in your mind.

I think he raises a valid doubt, is the so called work a fantasy, delusion of rising above the common lot. In other words is one fooling oneself.


Gurdjieff refers to this tendency to fool oneself a lot too.

[Isaac]

It seems to me he is onto something that is real and he is sincere, but that he is taking shots at it with a shotgun, and blows things to peices. The psychological angle, especially pharmacological suggestions, seems rather grotesque.

I think our genetics and brain chemistry has a lot to do with how we think and feel. But how our genes unfold and how our brain manufactures it's elements are partly determined by the affection we've received as children, our physical exercise, and the quality of our concepts (the view we take of things).

It would be interesting for you to consider, Isaac, the writings of the Beats, many of whom were beaten-up people with some pretty severe personal problems and examine how they discovered life under the curtain of death, and awoke in life, to life.

Yeah, I was into the beats when I was younger. I'm not very proud of that period of my life.

The beats remind me of a definition from the Devil's Dictionary:

ECCENTRICITY, n. A method of distinction so cheap that fools employ it to accentuate their incapacity.

I think that's what motivated the beats: to esteem themselves for being 'creative' people, when really, they never had much talent. That's why they needed the drugs - the drugs helped make it seem like their creations were in some way worthy of being read.

To me, great literature is Capote's 'In cold Blood' or Steinbeck's East of Eden and of mice and men. Those books contain insight, research and well developed plots and characters.

Capote, after reading 'on the road' reportedly said about Kerouac's work, "That's not writing, it's typing."

He was right. On the Road is kind of just mindless spewing.

How do you define 'normalcy'? And those 'who are well adjusted and thriving in modern day society'? Where are they? Who are they?

I don't really see much use in the term 'normalcy' - but I believe people should be productive and active. People should be producing things that help give greater efficiency, happiness and understanding. I like Movie Critics like Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper, neurologists like Vilayanur S. Ramachandran and Oliver Sacks, Biologists like Richard Dawkins, physicists like Einstein, Artists/engineers like Theo Jansen I like philosophers like Daniel Dennet and video game designers like Shigeru Miyamoto and Will Wright. Computer Scientists, filmmakers, actors, farmers, miners, geologists, plumbers, Carpenters, Architects, Service Representatives, Athletes, programmers, musicians, comedians. The list just goes on and on.

[Alex Jacob]

Capote also said: "Well, I'm about as tall as a shotgun, and just as noisy."

You have to consider the quip about Kerouak in the context of so many other acid observations he makes.

Your criticisms about the Beats, of course, have validity, but it doesn't seem that you are validating the struggle to see clearly and to propose alternatives to a strange, dark turn in American culture, and to work in the direction of changing it, bringing light into it.

"I think our genetics and brain chemistry has a lot to do with how we think and feel. But how our genes unfold and how our brain manufactures it's elements are partly determined by the affection we've received as children, our physical exercise, and the quality of our concepts (the view we take of things)."

Some would say what we think and feel is brain chemestry. It would be very hard to prove them wrong. Then, you refer to conditioning, which modifies the physical instrument, but you are leaving out a corrupt social structure, a mechanized culture built on war-making and pr propaganda of an extreme sort, etc. What I don't think you are taking into consideration is that everything that was once being struggled against, is still being struggled against: and in your precise sense it is that which conditions a human being and distorts a human being.

Your idea of 'getting well' is, apparently, not very profound, but that doesn't mean that some of the points you raise aren't valid or worth taking into consideration.

I grew up in the aftermath of California Beat culture. My own father was an artist who came out of Beat circumstances. My contemporaries were also sons and daughters of the 'Keseyans'. My personal opinion is that all of those who write here are part of an evolution that stems from 'post-war radicalism' and we are all still trying to work out so many things related to that struggle.

[David Quinn]

The beats remind me of a definition from the Devil's Dictionary:

ECCENTRICITY, n. A method of distinction so cheap that fools employ it to accentuate their incapacity.

I think that's what motivated the beats: to esteem themselves for being 'creative' people, when really, they never had much talent. That's why they needed the drugs - the drugs helped make it seem like their creations were in some way worthy of being read.

To me, great literature is Capote's 'In cold Blood' or Steinbeck's East of Eden and of mice and men. Those books contain insight, research and well developed plots and characters.

Capote, after reading 'on the road' reportedly said about Kerouac's work, "That's not writing, it's typing."

He was right. On the Road is kind of just mindless spewing.

How do you define 'normalcy'? And those 'who are well adjusted and thriving in modern day society'? Where are they? Who are they?

I don't really see much use in the term 'normalcy' - but I believe people should be productive and active. People should be producing things that help give greater efficiency, happiness and understanding. I like Movie Critics like Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper, neurologists like Vilayanur S. Ramachandran and Oliver Sacks, Biologists like Richard Dawkins, physicists like Einstein, Artists/engineers like Theo Jansen I like philosophers like Daniel Dennet and video game designers like Shigeru Miyamoto and Will Wright. Computer Scientists, filmmakers, actors, farmers, miners, geologists, plumbers, Carpenters, Architects, Service Representatives, Athletes, programmers, musicians, comedians. The list just goes on and on.

Let's not forget thinkers, sages, mystics, mavericks, rebels, iconoclasts, misanthropists ........

I agree with your generalization about the beatniks – namely, short on talent and strong on pretentiousness. However, I tend to view your happy Ant Colony world in much the same light. And the way you judge all those who reject the Ant Colony world as having mental diseases and being maladaptive - well, that's a view which seems to come straight from the conservative 1950's.

The people on your list are certainly productive, but I don’t necessarily consider them to be all that effective or wise. I used to like Richard Dawkins, for example, especially when he wrote The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker, but over the years he has slowly turned into a buffoon.

I’ve been watching his recent TV series, “The Enemies of Reason”, which has been extremely painful to sit through, owing to the fact that Dawkins, without knowing it, has become just as superstitious and irrational as the religious nutcakes he interviews.

He makes it plain that he has no understanding of religion, other than to dismiss it as a kind of mental virus. His knowledge and familiarity of altered states and mystical experiences seems to be non-existent. His appreciation of truth beyond the scientific realm is equally non-existent. As a result, he comes across as an extremely ignorant human being, despite all the smirking and sixth-form arguments at his disposal.

This aura of ignorance is so palpable that even the nutcakes can see it. And so even when Dawkins is rude enough to be openly sneering at the nutcakes and laughing at their foolish beliefs, which seems to be his standard MO, it doesn’t seem to bother them at all. Quite the contrary, they just look on him in pity, even with compassion, as though he were a simpleton without a spiritual bone in his body – which is pretty darn close to the truth.

The funny thing is, Dawkins’s efforts are proving to be very counter-productive. Far from persuading people to abandon religion, he is only reinforcing their attachment to it. Because his arguments are so weak and altogether missing the point, he only reinforces the standard religious view that scientists and rational people are out of touch with spiritual matters. Dawkins needs to direct his attack on religion far more intelligently than what he is doing, otherwise he is going to leave the world in worse shape than when he found it.

So it’s all very well to say that people like Dawkins are "productive and active", but it doesn’t mean much if they don’t have the wisdom to make their activity effective.

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[David Quinn]

My personal opinion is that all of those who write here are part of an evolution that stems from 'post-war radicalism' and we are all still trying to work out so many things related to that struggle.

What about "post-postmodernism radicalism"? Or "post-Darwinian radicalism"? Or "post-Copernicus radicalism"? Or "post-tribal radicalism"?

Or what about more personal forms of radicalism, such as "post-mystical radicalism", or "post-disgust with the folly and lies of the world radicalism", or "post-mind suddenly blown away by truth radicalism"?

Aren't all these just as valid and real?

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