Aesthetic experience as a 'mini-me' of enlightenment?

[Alex Jacob]

Diebert, you remind me of the I-Ching hexagram Taming Power of the Small, and the 'minister' whose influence is to impede, to hold back. You draw me down, in a way, to answer your criticisms and doing this, the breeze diminishes, and the sails go flaccid. I really hope that instead of merely pointing portentously to a direction you think I or we should go, that you will go there, that you will more than point the way, that you will go there and draw us along. I am working within the only area that has relevance for me, now.

"Well, in that perversion and insult lies certainly a clue? Were Jesus and before him the prophets and in generally the Jewish people not seen as perversion and insult for those still stuck in older ways? And certainly being seen as perversion or insult is therefore not necessarily a sign of ignorance or error. It can also hold a promise for new wine in new wine bags. But perhaps it has to develop in the cellar for a few more years?"

If that clue is there for you, then all you have to do is demonstrate how it is relevant. As of yet I never read any such opinions or ideas from you. You defend QRS-tendom only by weakly challenging my assertions.

I say that this is not 'new wine' in 'new bags' because it is disconnected with a vital and living force. It starts from a dangerously disconnected psychological stance, and therefor is a tree that cannot produce sound fruits. The fruits it will produce are a group of pathologies that are rigorously defended as 'health itself'.
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David wrote:

"The more a person becomes a genius, the less he is recognized to be a genius by the human race, and that is essentially because he has soared too far away for them to see. It is as though he has become invisible."

The whole human race, huh?

"Conversely, what the world calls "geniuses", and this applies to Nietzsche and Kierkegaard to some extent as well, are those who move beyond the ordinary in small measure. Were they ever to attempt to go further than this, they would quickly disappear off the radar. I think with Nietzsche, in particular, this realization held him back."

Anyone with even a pedestrian understanding of the notion of 'enlightenment' in the Eastern schools, the Hindu schools, recognizes what you are proposing here, and to a great extent, I suppose, it is true. Normal people, in normal physical incarnation, doing normal human things, engaged in 'eating, mating and defending' as the Hare Krishnas say, will demonstrate little interest in sophisticated inner states that seem to require the negation of 'the world' for the realization to occur. But this common mass of man, this unconscious protoplasm, hardly demonstrates interest in ANY of the higher pursuits or attainments, intellectual, emotional, artistic, philosophical. This 'unconscious protoplasm' is an engineered creation of consumer culture, but we all know this, this is 'old hat'. You may lament that you, who claims to be such an enlightened one, have become invisible and no longer appear on their radar, but there are some very definite problems with this 'enlightenment' that you hold up as the most precious and the most important goal. One is that it always remains insubstantial, it has no relationship to the human world, it has no point where it connects to the human world. When we examine the ethic that arises from this 'precious state' it is itself a disappearing; it is itself a decision to sever contact with the human world; and it is an assertion that there is this other 'world' that you inhabit---all 3 of you---and you call out to the whole world to see, grasp, appreciate and emulate this ipso facto invisible and intangible attainment that moves away from the earth and life in a space capsule.

"Having said that, enlightenment is a bit like dwelling in outer space, in that the enlightened person is infinitely removed from all things, while at the same time infinitely in tune with all things."

As far as I am concerned it decisively comes down to the following: it is a mistake but actually also a form of misdeed, a 'sin' if you will, to propose such a path as a valid path. It is essentially unethical, and I think that one could demonstrate that it is unethical to the majority of the traditions we all seem to have accessed in greater or lesser degrees. The motion of divinity and divinization is not AWAY from the Earth it is toward the Earth. And there is clearly a hubristic parallel here.

But in my particular case, interested as I am in the Biblical tradition---not as a doctrinal closing down, a shutting down, but as an opening up, an ever-renewing opening up to the meaning of God and the core questions and preoccupations of human life---your doctrines are directly contrary to the entire Biblical spirit. One could make a very sound psychological argument to point to the essential dysfunction and 'pathology' of your position, that is true: it is a road that leads to separation, to 'disappearing', to the severance of connection to Life, and to the human process. That is very dangerous, it seems to me. So, one makes that point. But more importantly, as I see things, you deliberately choose to shut down in the face of a historical movement, a social and 'world' movement toward 'salvation' and 'redemption' (they are rather fantastic terms I admit), and instead you take refuge in a kind of nothingness that you say has all Somethingness contained in it.

In this sense, from my present perspective, your doctrines are 'perverse'. They lead you and others not to health, vitality and service, but to distortion, separation, and in this sense to death. I write what I write, therefor, because 1) it appears to me to be true and 2) because I think it is a valid counter-point to the entire thrust of your-plural ideologies.
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“I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."
---Jeremiah 29:11

[Diebert van Rhijn]

You draw me down, in a way, to answer your criticisms and doing this, the breeze diminishes, and the sails go flaccid.

I'd call it: sobering up.

There's this Sufi teacher of name, Inayat Khan, he had a vision once. As a matter of fact he had it just a few blocks from here at the same spot I visit on my walks. They built a freaking temple in his honor right next to it. What he exactly saw I don't know but he wrote later: There is nothing more intoxicating than our life itself and man loves this intoxication as much as the drunkard loves the intoxication of wine. .

This is where it's all about: before one can focus on the situation as it is (truth) one has to sober up first. It's not blindness which plagues man but seeing double, seeing in a haze of spirit.

If that clue is there for you, then all you have to do is demonstrate how it is relevant. As of yet I never read any such opinions or ideas from you. You defend QRS-tendom only by weakly challenging my assertions.

It's hard to point to something as obvious as daylight. One way to do it is to create some darkness or contrast first. And you know very well I'm not defending anyone here, actually I try to make your challenge more worthy, more seriously, if anything. It's not bloody enough. It's like saying I'm defending road signs when I'm discussing roads and maps. I'm not interested in who they are or what they are capable of doing with their life. I'm only interested in their ability to point in a certain context.

I say that this is not 'new wine' in 'new bags' because it is disconnected with a vital and living force. It starts from a dangerously disconnected psychological stance, and therefor is a tree that cannot produce sound fruits.

There's something to that of course but you have to realize almost everyone is already saying these things as a first reaction, a 'gut' feeling translated into imagery. But lets run with it anyway.

The idea of one being 'disconnected' with some 'vital living force' is flawed. There's no golden standard of connectivity. One is alive: one is filled to the brim with it. If life was an ecosystem you'd have your jungles as well as deserts - all intensely existing and lively in their own way. With life you have your participants and your hermits. You have death giving birth to life and life causing a lot more death in return. The cycle itself is life and death becomes part of it, a secret engine.

So the only thing that is behind your 'disconnected psychologically' is the degree of social participation, or the amount of beauty, function or glitter one produces to justify, rectify, glorify existence a bit more.

While life certainly by its very nature produces the glitter and glamor, shallow ends that look deep and amazing depths that are hidden, it will not be justified by some amount of spirit or life force it might demonstrate. This is only the alcoholic fix - the great comforter to most.

The moment one stops justifying, making up excuses for the way existence appears, there's a chance on some clear sight. A seer, prophet, sage, 'man of knowledge', however you want to name someone who looks into these things just tells what he sees if he speaks at all. Without reward, without excuse, without sugarcoating it.

The more words, the more knowledge, the more feelings are invoked the less useful the message becomes: it will only act as more liquor. Really, I said enough already.

[Alex Jacob]

You mistake flamboyance, color, enthusiasm in expression, for a 'drunkenness'. My thrust is specific and very defined and the embellishments are just embellishments. And I am definitely not at all drunk, or unsober, Diebert.

The Sufi wrote:

"There is nothing more intoxicating than our life itself and man loves this intoxication as much as the drunkard loves the intoxication of wine."

This is the kind of statement that, if you ask me, is a mind-fuck. The very idea contained in it, is exactly the sort of seed-idea that Nietzsche rebelled against. The idea drips with anti-life sentiment.

You see, Diebert, what you seem to call 'sobering up', and what they seem to mean by 'sobering up', for me is taking huge steps backward. Trust me when I tell you that this is how it is for me. I am not lying to you and I am not reeling with drunkenness. I have, it seems, a different idea about what sobriety is: sobriety, for me, has to do with discovering and joining a living, vital current, and in asserting ways to be alive, to come back into life.

"It's hard to point to something as obvious as daylight. One way to do it is to create some darkness or contrast first. And you know very well I'm not defending anyone here, actually I try to make your challenge more worthy, more seriously, if anything. It's not bloody enough. It's like saying I'm defending road signs when I'm discussing roads and maps. I'm not interested in who they are or what they are capable of doing with their life. I'm only interested in their ability to point in a certain context."

One, I appreciate that you engage me, though I don't confess to understand what you want of me, or how I might satisfy you. Two, what you imply is not at all obvious, not to me. And three, though I am not really too concerned what these fellows do and don't do, my road, my destiny, my fate led me to these shoals, for certain reasons, and I must continue until I am done. I am a writer who looks for readership. It is true that by taking issue with me, you and they help me to concretize my thinking, to get to the real core of it, to spell it out. I spent too great a portion of my 'precious time' involved in dead-end roads, in defective philosophies and practices that I later had to abandon. I have a history in this, it extends over 6-7 years, and I have gone from forum to forum with a recognizable trajectory. It is part of an evolutionary process, a movement from one point to another. So, the 'you're drunk' insinuation just doesn't fly with me.

"The idea of one being 'disconnected' with some 'vital living force' is flawed."

Diós mío! I totally disagree with you! Idea structures, philosophies, and patterns of thinking directly link either to 'vital springs' of living energy, or they have their basis in dryer ground, in sandy ground, or if you wish 'rocky soil'. It is imperative therefor that our idea structures, the structure of our hopes, our aspirations, our vision, is structured on a foundation that is wide and solid, and well-nourished with 'water'. I refer to the I-Ching Hexagram No 48, The Well, which speaks very directly to this idea. I could write for pages and pages on this subject, it is that important. I am surprised that this is not evident to you! Certain idea-structures, maybe specifically certain turns within modernity, lead to a kind of dead area, a desert if you will, and (I discover) people suffer in this barren land, on unfruitful soil. Actually, there are places people can go or are forced to go, that can and do drive them crazy.

It's a bit of a plug I guess, but it's how I came on here to this forum, it was one of the first notes. I think it was David who, back in August, asked me just what I found so vital and important in Judaism, and why I would defend it. As it turns out, I realize now, all this is my answer, but it is true that I am essentially working out that answer for myself.

"It's not bloody enough."

I take that to mean that what I offer is not enough, something is lacking or missing. What? How?

[Trevor Salyzyn]

I haven't seen such a skilful use of alternating colours since Schopenhauer, although I might be mistaking Schopenhauer with an 8-year old girl.

[David Quinn]

Even funnier is this photo taken from Lou, Nietzsche and Rée together. It's authentic and perhaps shows a glimpse of self-mockery but perhaps also of other philosophies that were yet to come.

Yes, it's a funny picture, all right. Nietzsche looks like he is about to explode into full-scale insanity, while Paul Rees and Lou Salome look like they're about to take a walk in the park, arm in arm, and discuss the weather.

God knows what he saw in them. I guess it indicated the strength of his helplessness and despair. He didn't have the internet in those days, and thus didn't have the means to meet people more in tune with wisdom.

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[tek0]

"The idea of one being 'disconnected' with some 'vital living force' is flawed."

That is a shred human enlightenment and chase it while you can because the machines are nipping at your heels like a hound that feels no pain.

[bert]

consciousness that is personal is the 'evidence' of all things. most of our positive or unitairy knowledge from experience has become unconscious, organic, and functions automatically. it is not normally presented to perception except when we are disstressed or inspired. there are divergent ways to knowledge, and many kinds of knowledge and truth. only effort towards thruth disloses it. if there are no conclusions - though things evolve, devolve and invlove - things are ever complete( 'as if'), the 'as now ' always is. we do not say that microbe is a man or has the potentiality of a man, although we may assert that man is a recurrent form of parasite having for himself and his kind the greatest hatred.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

You mistake flamboyance, color, enthusiasm in expression, for a 'drunkenness'. My thrust is specific and very defined and the embellishments are just embellishments.

Are they? Is it like a nervous twitch then? Or unconscious drive? Nature never throws in embellishments for no reason, it has no time for that. They are there to bewilder or stem from bewilderment. Magick!

Whatever, I'm not sure yet if you know what I mean with drunkenness. It's not about being incoherent or lack of thrust.

The Sufi wrote:

"There is nothing more intoxicating than our life itself and man loves this intoxication as much as the drunkard loves the intoxication of wine."

This is the kind of statement that, if you ask me, is a mind-fuck. The very idea contained in it, is exactly the sort of seed-idea that Nietzsche rebelled against. The idea drips with anti-life sentiment.

Yeah, it's hyper-religious for sure. But don't forget I earlier equaled your definition of spirit with some form of drug [even when it's more than just that]. So it's anti-alcohol, in that other sense. At least it's consistently so.

You see, Diebert, what you seem to call 'sobering up', and what they seem to mean by 'sobering up', for me is taking huge steps backward. Trust me when I tell you that this is how it is for me. I am not lying to you and I am not reeling with drunkenness. I have, it seems, a different idea about what sobriety is: sobriety, for me, has to do with discovering and joining a living, vital current, and in asserting ways to be alive, to come back into life.

Well, all I can tell you is how it is from my experience and I think I have been there too, with all the discovering, the joining, looking for pulse, listening to the heartbeat of the world, getting into that beat. It's like being completely in love [ a rare experience]: at the time it's not seen as blindness but quite the opposite. Everything becomes vivid, meaningful and insane clear, like riding on top of a wave.

If such things attract please by all means follow that path! You'd be crazy to hesitate. Actually being here protesting, constructing your argument with your great mastery of language and its symbols is keeping you away, it's indeed dragging you down. That would be anti-life.

What's pro-life is discovering and following your own path, naturally and spontaneously. And mine brought me here telling this to you. But to discuss life as topic, dissecting, analyzing, this drive toward truth makes only sense if one is wholeheartedly driven to do so. As good old Nietzsche wrote: truth cuts into life. And certainly it can and will appear like that. It always has and the religious traditions, all of them, are full of the traces which you seem to step over quite lightly.

One, I appreciate that you engage me, though I don't confess to understand what you want of me, or how I might satisfy you.

It's more of a mystery what you want out of it as for me any lack of desire is not the enemy. Your desire to write here must be messianic in proportion! Bringing light to people who willingly, knowingly poked their eyes out in the first place!?

I spent too great a portion of my 'precious time' involved in dead-end roads, in defective philosophies and practices that I later had to abandon. I have a history in this, it extends over 6-7 years, and I have gone from forum to forum with a recognizable trajectory. It is part of an evolutionary process, a movement from one point to another. So, the 'you're drunk' insinuation just doesn't fly with me.

Well, then, is it so horrible to be accused of being effectuated, affected with life? It's the initial human condition so while I can offer a sobering view I cannot show you sobriety itself.

Diós mío! I totally disagree with you! Idea structures, philosophies, and patterns of thinking directly link either to 'vital springs' of living energy, or they have their basis in dryer ground, in sandy ground, or if you wish 'rocky soil'.

No, they all come from 'living energy' or whatever name you want to call it by. There's no true disconnection possible. But you're drawn to the 'Earth' clearly, specific energies, frequencies, soil, whatever. It's a bit like dissing marijuana and promoting alcohol instead.

Certain idea-structures, maybe specifically certain turns within modernity, lead to a kind of dead area, a desert if you will, and (I discover) people suffer in this barren land, on unfruitful soil. Actually, there are places people can go or are forced to go, that can and do drive them crazy.

As I wrote before death is also part of life. One cannot even discover the secret of life without knowing death first. Another way to say it is to have roots deep into the rocky layers of soil needed for any tall tree that has to resist heavy storms. The tree signifies a lot more than how you defined life so far. It's more than a water container; it reaches to the heavens with its dry sticks, bringing the light down! Or sometimes the lightning too.

[Alex Jacob]

No, I do very well understand what you and so many others mean when they denounce the 'drunkenness' of man.

There is one major and positive thrust on this forum, and that is to point to that surging drunkenness of culture, the endless appetites, the never-ending being pulled from one attraction to another, everything that might be indicated by 'gaining the whole world and losing your own soul'. The Vaishnavas, I think, enter into the psychology and they describe the desperation of beings who, for want of alternatives, can only rush headlong into pleasures, and who effectively 'go crazy' within this intoxication.

The intoxication and the desire to be intoxicated takes control of them, directs them, owns them. From the Vaishnava perspective, this is 'samsara', because if we give ourselves over to material pleasures (especially the whole sex-complex), it is that desire, that longing, that brings us again and again into the heaviness, the density, of this earth-realm.

So, from that perspective, the alternative is to relinquish the desire, the compulsion, to be the 'enjoyer of sense pleasures' while one recognizes that there s a Supreme Enjoyer who is originating all pleasures---existence as the core cosmic sexual experience, God's self-pleasuring, God´s experience of his essential self, an eternal, beginningless, unfathomable process ungraspable by the mind.

I have a strong feeling this is pretty much what the Sufi meant, but how he resolved this narrative about Life, well, that's another story.

The downside of these kinds of philosophies that vilify, if you will, the processes of life, is that they often produce an unbalanced and rather sickly individual, a distorted individual, a mind-fucked individual. Maybe the Vaishnava perspective is 'ultimately true', or true in some ways, but you can't ask people to live like that. You cannot ask that people deny fundamental aspects of themselves, and you or I cannot long do it. Many of the cults of the 60s and 70s, in one way or another, 'built their philosophical house', if you will, on foundations of this sort. Then, you spend years and years recovering from it, and searching for a 'living current', water that is healthy and living. There is a very fine line between recognizing the biological, sexual, sensual, enslaved aspect of our human life, and the proposing of an alternative to it. We are what we are and, like it or not, we have to work within that context. So, when I spoke of philosophies that lead to 'building on unstable ground', and the deleterious effects, that is what I am talking about. The way I interpret Nietzsche is as a man who knew and felt the Death-Currents of existing idea structures in his own person because they were killing him! Those ¡death'currents' he discovered and isolated within a kind of interpretation of Christianity, and his 'philosophy with a hammer' was to knock them to the ground, to overturn their authority, to cast the whole deck into the wind and see how the cards fell. The ramifications are awesome.

There are other levels too, such as setting up Abstractions as attainable goals, and attracting unbalanced people, who are essentially suffering and desperately need relief, and enticing them with goals they can never, ever attain. You cannot attain an abstraction, you can only live certain ideas within the context of your lived life, on this planet (the Earth), and in a community of others (all the rest of us). I offer as case-in-point the psuedo-philosophy of Carlos Castaneda---and also draw to you attention that these ideas captured the imagination of nearly a whole generation. I submit that if you examine the ideas, and then observe how these ideas functioned within the people closest to CC's inner circle, you will find dysfunction, a mental dysfunction that manifests in the body and emotions (the whole person). This is what I mean when I refer to a tree that cannot put forth good fruits since the structure of the tree is defected.

Well, here on this forum and among the QRS-tians themselves there is a core, organizing group of ideas. These ideas are isolatable and examinable. They are constructs that, as I see things, depend on certain negations. It is a recoiling away from life because it notes that some people, or a great many people, are delving into living in a drunken way. Most of us understand precisely what this means, I know I do, but each interpretation will be different of course. It is one thing to want to cure oneself from this sort of drunken, unsober, stupid, thoughtless consuming of life in essentially vain activities, life as a sort of consuming of self, a burning, a wasting, and quite another to propose a healthy, committed, vital, sane, balanced manner of living.

"Are they? Is it like a nervous twitch then? Or unconscious drive? Nature never throws in embellishments for no reason, it has no time for that. They are there to bewilder or stem from bewilderment. Magick!"

Never reveal all your cards, Diebert, and don't ask that someone reveal all their cards! It takes all the fun out of it.

"Well, all I can tell you is how it is from my experience and I think I have been there too, with all the discovering, the joining, looking for pulse, listening to the heartbeat of the world, getting into that beat. It's like being completely in love [ a rare experience]: at the time it's not seen as blindness but quite the opposite. Everything becomes vivid, meaningful and insane clear, like riding on top of a wave."

We're talking about very different things, Diebert. Very different. You interpret me on the basis of what your previous experiences have been and what you seem to want to get away from, to sober up from. I too am talking, essentially, about sobriety in respect to, in the face of, the living spirit, but I am also saying (and yes the fountain is, for me, essentially the Judeo-Christian wellspring) is that we have to go back over all of it, we have to breath life back into it even as life is breathed into us, we have to make it acutely real and deeply relevant, but it has to be i such a way that it brings life into the whole system of our selves.

The best that ever happens in life, on the surface of the earth, happens when the spirit moves in us. And that is what I refer to whenever I talk of poets and art. This spirit rarely moves among the deathlike priests who drag around their doctrinal chains, who hang themselves with their fear, but it most certainly manifests itself in surprising and unexpected ways, and is perennial like the grass.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

The downside of these kinds of philosophies that vilify, if you will, the processes of life, is that they often produce an unbalanced and rather sickly individual, a distorted individual, a mind-fucked individual.

That's very Nietzschean thinking of you and even he was by all measures rather sickly still. The question remains then what is this healthy being you've dreamed up, this Ubermensch that is balanced, healthy, undistorted? I mean, what are you getting at with the phrase participation. anything specifically?

Maybe the Vaishnava perspective is 'ultimately true', or true in some ways, but you can't ask people to live like that. You cannot ask that people deny fundamental aspects of themselves, and you or I cannot long do it.

It's not a matter of asking, that would be deluded and all too human. One flies to that flame as a moth, I don't see how one could stop it if it's already part of ones very being.

We are what we are and, like it or not, we have to work within that context.

This means nothing at all. You are defining first 'we' as sexual, sensual, enslaved and then claim it's all there is or can be as context as if everything bows down to it ultimately.

The way I interpret Nietzsche is as a man who knew and felt the Death-Currents of existing idea structures in his own person because they were killing him!

But that's really a wrong and twisted view on his relationship with truth. He engaged in all of it nevertheless, this is why he talked about courage.

Those ¡death'currents' he discovered and isolated within a kind of interpretation of Christianity, and his 'philosophy with a hammer' was to knock them to the ground

Nah, that hammer was a tuning device, he hit the 'bell' and listened how they were at the inside, if its inner sound and shape was pure. Again his measure was still truth in its more existential mode.

I offer as case-in-point the psuedo-philosophy of Carlos Castaneda---and also draw to you attention that these ideas captured the imagination of nearly a whole generation.

It's amazing how many ideas of him are a rehash of Eastern and tribal shamanic ways. A rather brilliant rehash though.

I submit that if you examine the ideas, and then observe how these ideas functioned within the people closest to CC's inner circle, you will find dysfunction, a mental dysfunction that manifests in the body and emotions (the whole person). This is what I mean when I refer to a tree that cannot put forth good fruits since the structure of the tree is defected.

Perhaps that's true, I'm not too familiar with the details of what happened with the whole inner circle, although I did hear one or two things. Could you expand?

It is one thing to want to cure oneself from this sort of drunken, unsober, stupid, thoughtless consuming of life in essentially vain activities, life as a sort of consuming of self, a burning, a wasting, and quite another to propose a healthy, committed, vital, sane, balanced manner of living.

Well, propose it then! Describe the health and commitments you value! What has it do to with going from forum to forum for 6-7 years, if anything? Who are your heroes then, examples of how it's done? Or is it theory but then you could describe as well its inner logic and sense?

We're talking about very different things, Diebert. Very different. You interpret me on the basis of what your previous experiences have been and what you seem to want to get away from, to sober up from.

But I don't really want to get away from anything at all! This is your dogma you bring to the table, that everyone else flees from life. But we haven't even established yet if you aren't the one doing that instead. And then feel the need to point out your animus in others.

The best that ever happens in life, on the surface of the earth, happens when the spirit moves in us. And that is what I refer to whenever I talk of poets and art. This spirit rarely moves among the deathlike priests who drag around their doctrinal chains, who hang themselves with their fear, but it most certainly manifests itself in surprising and unexpected ways, and is perennial like the grass.

To you the spirit of that priest is alien but why deny him spirit, their claim on truth, their inner world, their existential fears, desires, highs and lows? It seems essentially quite fundamentalist to justify ones religion, even a natural personal religion, by outlining the flaws in the opposite camp.

Someone might have greater understandings, deeper reflections or higher conceptions of truth but they are not that meaningful when compared to the magnificence of the whole. In similar ways any Dionysian expression of art or joy, the orgasmic releases of nature's drives - it doesn't deserve a claim to being 'better', not even for the 'good of the race'.

It's without any claim for ultimate superiority that the wise say that one has to sober up to obtain the needed clarity. It's more like a logical statement, there should not be any further judgment attached to it as the wise know better than that.

[sue hindmarsh]

Jason wrote:

David Quinn: The main problem was that he wasn't willing to give up his attachment to iconoclasm. Even his least iconoclastic work (Zarathustra), and thus the closest he came to promoting wisdom in a positive sense, was steeped in iconoclasm. He couldn't quite bring himself to stand out in the open, for fear of being torn down by some other iconoclastic upstart.

He knew the dangers of being exposed. Being a hunter, becoming the hunted would be humiliating. Safer to stay hidden within the labyrinth of iconoclasm where no one can touch you.

Sue,

This is completely out of the blue, but so be it. Sue, what David wrote above about Nietzsche reminds me of the vibe I get from you. Constant attack, constantly on the offensive, quite possibly so that no counterattack can ever seriously threaten you. I've had this sense about you for a long time, David's words just finally moved me to share it.

I know what you mean. I'm a plodder. I persist in having a low opinion of myself and others even though it is directly at odds with my knowledge of my and their true natures. Thankfully, not all my work is thus tainted. That gives me hope that I’ll soon grow completely out of it. Certainly your post has been propitious in that process.

[bert]

The downside of these kinds of philosophies that vilify, if you will, the processes of life, is that they often produce an unbalanced and rather sickly individual, a distorted individual, a mind-fucked individual.

That's very Nietzschean thinking of you and even he was by all measures rather sickly still. The question remains then what is this healthy being you've dreamed up, this Ubermensch that is balanced, healthy, undistorted? I mean, what are you getting at with the phrase participation. anything specifically?

Ubermensch died with Pantheism - since then we have had only invalids and salvationists.

It is one thing to want to cure oneself from this sort of drunken, unsober, stupid, thoughtless consuming of life in essentially vain activities, life as a sort of consuming of self, a burning, a wasting, and quite another to propose a healthy, committed, vital, sane, balanced manner of living.

Well, propose it then! Describe the health and commitments you value! What has it do to with going from forum to forum for 6-7 years, if anything? Who are your heroes then, examples of how it's done? Or is it theory but then you could describe as well its inner logic and sense?

will is but given temporarily to us and we put it to noble or to base ends; our good and evil stalk us and predestine our becoming.

[Alex Jacob]

To think that at any moment the whole human world is swirling & writhing, swelling & bleeding, that babies are being born, maybe hundreds every second & thousands of people are gasping out their last breath, that thousands, hundreds of thousand, millions, are having sex, their bodies struggling for the pleasure of love; and too people are murdering, strangling, knifing, torturing, shooting & bombing, all hopped-up with adrenalin, sweating & gripped by the strange passions that possess them; that many people in the light of the sun or the moon or under a bare bulb or passing on the streets of the world just saw someone and felt the pang of love, or lust; that everywhere people are having arguments over money, or things, or hurt feelings or jealousy; that many people are grieved and convulsed in the depth of pain, that other people, millions of people, are completely happy: laughing, ecstatic, blissful; that people too are stealing things, breaking into some shack, putting a hand through a window, boarding a boat to steal it, rushing into a bank to rob it, joy-riding in a stolen car, running from the police; shooting drugs in their arms, or sniffing strange drugs, drinking in bars; bombs fall and explode & people are blown to bits or incinerated, that somewhere someone is planning murder, or planting flowers, climbing a mountain, dying in an airplane crash, walking in the desert, looking at the sky and thinking about 'life', about 'reality', or deep in meditation bliss; maybe some guru just touched someones forehead sending them into samadhi like Yogananda at 16; or monks are chanting and temple-church-shrine bells and cymbals are ringing; & people are having dreams where all the symbols of man appear, & some aboriginal man, the last undiscovered man in the Amazon, is telling a story about the birth of the world & the arrival of people into that world; & millions of televisions flicker with dramas & movies & advertisements; & many people are at their wit's end, or bored to tears, or exhausted after a day's labor or cutting bush with a machete, or digging in the ground & looking at the overturned dirt; that millions of kids are playing and their child's voices echo all around, that some are being punished & scolded, are eating rice or fish or beans, are studying in schools in hundreds of different languages; that my analogue somewhere is having a parallel thought, maybe exactly the same thought, the same general idea; that someone just fell off a bridge to their death, someone just tripped & fell, someone cut themselves with the kitchen knife, just dropped vegetables into a hot pan, poured boiling water of coffee, in a tea-cup, slaughtered a chicken, a pig, a goat, a cow, just made a resolution, just broke one, is having psychotic episode, is drunk, just got thrown out of their house or turned the key to go in, is having the surprise of their life, just got the worse news, just killed themselves, just took a shit, hit someone, caressed someone, won a prize, or lost everyone they ever loved in the whole world in an earthquake, a fire, a flood, an accident, or murder---And all this is just a drop in the bucket of astonishing almost inconceivable experience, the stuff that happens to you, the whole experience of life, & it's happening to 6 billion people who metabolize, breathe, sing, talk, think, desire...

[samadhi]

Wow, I feel like I've just lived a lifetime! Bravo, Alex!

[brokenhead]

Yeah, that post alone is going to leave a carbon footprint...

[Alex Jacob]

Diebert, can you believe it? Two posts I wrote (still on rented computers) were sacrificed, that is, vaporized, on the electronic altar. Sheesh. What's that all about? I do have an pretty clear idea what I want to say, to your post, but it will have to wait till tomorrow.

[bert]

diebert:

To you the spirit of that priest is alien but why deny him spirit, their claim on truth, their inner world, their existential fears, desires, highs and lows? It seems essentially quite fundamentalist to justify ones religion, even a natural personal religion, by outlining the flaws in the opposite camp.

man is a balagan of strange paradoxes, an accomplishment of lies and pretences proportionate to his knowledge.

Someone might have greater understandings, deeper reflections or higher conceptions of truth but they are not that meaningful when compared to the magnificence of the whole. In similar ways any Dionysian expression of art or joy, the orgasmic releases of nature's drives - it doesn't deserve a claim to being 'better', not even for the 'good of the race'.

man's contingency procedure is not only to catalogue existence but, by artistry, to enjoin the aesthetic and the ethical as logical social functions. the uncommited life turns out to be deeply wedlocked within life itself.

It's without any claim for ultimate superiority that the wise say that one has to sober up to obtain the needed clarity. It's more like a logical statement, there should not be any further judgment attached to it as the wise know better than that.

logic refutes its own syllogisms; we fly madly from experience to religion whose only alternative is another form of mania.
the wise man often desquamates his knowledge; rectifies his pastiche of acceptances and reverts to simple fundaments. by courage his eye is never stale and his levels become as steps. he again reorientates by oblique parenthesis, new symmetries,dynamics, complexities and funambulatory compositions ; never destroying his essential dis-symmetry.

[bert]

I feel like school-time's past. time to move on.

[David Quinn]

To think that at any moment the whole human world is swirling & writhing, swelling & bleeding, that babies are being born, maybe hundreds every second & thousands of people are gasping out their last breath, that thousands, hundreds of thousand, millions, are having sex, their bodies struggling for the pleasure of love; and too people are murdering, strangling, knifing, torturing, shooting & bombing, all hopped-up with adrenalin, sweating & gripped by the strange passions that possess them; that many people in the light of the sun or the moon or under a bare bulb or passing on the streets of the world just saw someone and felt the pang of love, or lust; that everywhere people are having arguments over money, or things, or hurt feelings or jealousy; that many people are grieved and convulsed in the depth of pain, that other people, millions of people, are completely happy: laughing, ecstatic, blissful; that people too are stealing things, breaking into some shack, putting a hand through a window, boarding a boat to steal it, rushing into a bank to rob it, joy-riding in a stolen car, running from the police; shooting drugs in their arms, or sniffing strange drugs, drinking in bars; bombs fall and explode & people are blown to bits or incinerated, that somewhere someone is planning murder, or planting flowers, climbing a mountain, dying in an airplane crash, walking in the desert, looking at the sky and thinking about 'life', about 'reality', or deep in meditation bliss; maybe some guru just touched someones forehead sending them into samadhi like Yogananda at 16; or monks are chanting and temple-church-shrine bells and cymbals are ringing; & people are having dreams where all the symbols of man appear, & some aboriginal man, the last undiscovered man in the Amazon, is telling a story about the birth of the world & the arrival of people into that world; & millions of televisions flicker with dramas & movies & advertisements; & many people are at their wit's end, or bored to tears, or exhausted after a day's labor or cutting bush with a machete, or digging in the ground & looking at the overturned dirt; that millions of kids are playing and their child's voices echo all around, that some are being punished & scolded, are eating rice or fish or beans, are studying in schools in hundreds of different languages; that my analogue somewhere is having a parallel thought, maybe exactly the same thought, the same general idea; that someone just fell off a bridge to their death, someone just tripped & fell, someone cut themselves with the kitchen knife, just dropped vegetables into a hot pan, poured boiling water of coffee, in a tea-cup, slaughtered a chicken, a pig, a goat, a cow, just made a resolution, just broke one, is having psychotic episode, is drunk, just got thrown out of their house or turned the key to go in, is having the surprise of their life, just got the worse news, just killed themselves, just took a shit, hit someone, caressed someone, won a prize, or lost everyone they ever loved in the whole world in an earthquake, a fire, a flood, an accident, or murder---And all this is just a drop in the bucket of astonishing almost inconceivable experience, the stuff that happens to you, the whole experience of life, & it's happening to 6 billion people who metabolize, breathe, sing, talk, think, desire...

Yes, indeed, the awesome complexity of the Infinite ...... and the awesome power of causation.

-

[Alex Jacob]

Diebert wrote:

"Well, propose it then! Describe the health and commitments you value! What has it do to with going from forum to forum for 6-7 years, if anything? Who are your heroes then, examples of how it's done? Or is it theory but then you could describe as well its inner logic and sense?"

I started my internet adventures in forum-land with a 3 year sojourn on a private forum composed of members and ex-members of the cult CC ran in Los Angeles. Among those who participated was Amy Wallace, daughter of the writer Irving Wallace, who later wrote a book about her 25 year experience with CC dating from her late teenage years. The reason for participating was to examine all of my belief-system, and to address all of my experience of spirituality and religion against the backdrop of a destructive cult (with redeeming features of course) in the context of the entire post Second War adventure of radical spirituality and religion, and importantly in the 50s and 60s influx of new currents, and all of the contact with 'foreign spirits' that had dramatic impact on the American scene, and is still having. After that, I spent 3-4 years on a Jungian forum, now dissolved, where the same questions were explored but with a different focus. Then, when that forum imploded, I wound up on a spin-off of that forum which degenerated significantly, one of the reasons being (as I interpret things) that it was mostly women left over from this Jung Forum, and they lacked a cohesive, directing focus and defining spirit. After that, I was adrift for awhile, looking for a place to participate. Fate would have it that, following links related to Weininger, to feminist doctrine, and myself just having come out of a failed relationship that turned my world upside down (all for the best of course, all part of 'spiritual' processes, all part of a 'trajectory'), it was then that I spied this odd isle of pseudo-genius, this mental prison camp where some dysfunctional men retreat into holes they've dug, but too where they await the Savior, the guiding idea, a force or a power that could give meaning to manhood, where they might successfully define what it even means to be a man, etc.

Somewhere, you said you didn't think it was sufficient to merely criticize the QRS-tian philosophy without clearly enunciating an alternative, and I do sense your impatience with me. But I do feel it is entirely appropriate to level any sort of criticism one wants to against any constructed platform. Indeed, QRS-tendom, I am certain, welcomes and desires this criticism, and they feed off of it, it gives them a certain reason to live, just as we all derive sustenance from a platform where ideas can be discussed. So, over the last 8 months I and others have levelled criticism against the QRS edifice and much that is valuable has come out of that. The questions are vitally important. I sincerely believe 'we' are in a process of reexamination, redefining, reconsideration. I think that this is simply a vast endeavor, and as I see it is a continuation of the very spirit of so-called 'Post War Radicalism'. To everything that we are 'doing' now (thinking, formulating) there are roots and connecting links. Nothing that we are doing now exists in a vacuum and the strains of ideas we are working with, that are worked out in us, are not new, are not our invention.

The question you ask, impatiently, tapping your foot in challenge: to define this Ubermench, and to define commitments and values is not easy, for me. Because my commitments and values are topsy-turvy, confused. I have felt and 'lived' many different strains of ideas as well as inner levels of experience, and as I have done this---the trajectory of my life---I have passed through the 70s the 80s the 90s and now into the New Millennium. And here I am and here we are in 2008. As I see things, none of what we do can be separated from the trends of culture, and everything we do must speak to that process of addressing culture. So, you ask me for some examples and I will refer principally to the doctrines and formulations, within the context of religious idealism, of Social Christianity. The people who formulated these doctrines, who readdressed Christianity and what it could and should mean within the field of life, re energized it in a way that, as far as I know, has no other parallel in any other religious and social (and philosophical) tradition. It is a stance whose impact has been almost unreally important, amazingly potent. Of course, as I see it, it is 'Jewish', since Christianity is really a development of Judaism, but unfortunately Judaism can never become universal, and always seems to close in on itself, and to remain far too self-preoccupied, too narrow.

As I see things, spirituality and religious life cannot ever sever itself from its own matrix, and so the Christian ideal that the essential message of the Creator, the command if you will, is to advance 'spiritually' both through the transcendent desire as well as to get engaged in service to the 'living flesh' of life, is to me an awesome idea. When this happens, powerful things occur in the world. When people move away from this commitment, they move into irrelevant spheres, dead-end roads, error. It diminishes life, atomizes the individual, and becomes a kind of 'death-road'.

The platform from which I critique QRS-tendom is from these socio-spiritual ideas. It all stems from that view and returns to that view.

"To you the spirit of that priest is alien but why deny him spirit, their claim on truth, their inner world, their existential fears, desires, highs and lows? It seems essentially quite fundamentalist to justify ones religion, even a natural personal religion, by outlining the flaws in the opposite camp."

Again, as you maybe see, I place a different emphasis and if you will demand on the priest (well, I don't do this, this is done by a reinterpretation of religious doctrine on the part of the formulators of Social Christianity). Keep in mind that my criticism of QRS-tianity is specific, and there are elements I heartily agree with. Also, I submit that the others who criticize QRS-tian philosophy seem to me to do so because of their core, inner connection to some sort of Social Christianity or to its analogue in other traditions. But since they are, and we all are, products of Judeo-Christianity I submit that we can never and never do sever ourselves from that 'tree', even if we go to live in another one. It is just a peculiar fact.
________________________________________

Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?
---1 Corinthians v. 6.

Remembering without ceasing your work of faith, and labor of love.
---1 Thessalonians i. 3.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Diebert wrote: " Describe the health and commitments you value!"

I started my internet adventures in forum-land with a 3 year sojourn on a private forum composed of members and ex-members of the cult CC ran in Los Angeles. Among those who participated was Amy Wallace

You call it a destructive cult with redeeming features but I guess I've to read Amy's book to find out more about why you call it like that?

It almost makes one believe truth telling comes to us in a crooked fashion, that it fucks up way more than we'd prefer.

this odd isle of pseudo-genius, this mental prison camp where some dysfunctional men retreat into holes they've dug

Hasn't all spiritual effort so far been, or ended up as such camp? Or isn't it the state the thinking part of the human race can be described as?

but too where they await the Savior, the guiding idea, a force or a power that could give meaning to manhood, where they might successfully define what it even means to be a man, etc.

The majority here seems to be too tired for all that. Perhaps tired of the stress they uncovered behind their former actions and beliefs. Before you can give anyone power they should be first capable to endure it.

The question you ask, impatiently, tapping your foot in challenge: to define this Ubermench, and to define commitments and values is not easy, for me.

It's not like that. You introduced an alternative by dragging in issues like health and connectivity. It's only fair that I ask you to specify them a bit more.

So please don't turn around the issue: you introduce terms but seem to refuse to clarify them. Hence the lingering accusations about your vagueness.

Because my commitments and values are topsy-turvy, confused.

Why then introduce and praise values like health, balance, health and participation? Or as you said before "healthy, committed, vital, sane, balanced manner of living". Why even mention those if your commitments and values are so confused and uncertain. Are you just wishing away?

So, you ask me for some examples and I will refer principally to the doctrines and formulations, within the context of religious idealism, of Social Christianity. The people who formulated these doctrines, who readdressed Christianity and what it could and should mean within the field of life, re energized it in a way that, as far as I know, has no other parallel in any other religious and social (and philosophical) tradition. It is a stance whose impact has been almost unreally important, amazingly potent.

You'll have to do more than claiming it has no other parallel. The Wiki article is short and represents everything Nietzsche called anti-life and 'death currents'. If you find anything of value here you should renounce Nietzsche with all of your heart but strangely enough you identified with part of his arguments too.

This appears to point to an outrageous conflict inside you, a major contradiction of some kind. Can it be you don't understand Nietzsche at all or did you just skip over the Christian doctrinal essence completely? You tell me.

to advance 'spiritually' both through the transcendent desire as well as to get engaged in service to the 'living flesh' of life, is to me an awesome idea. When this happens, powerful things occur in the world. When people move away from this commitment, they move into irrelevant spheres, dead-end roads, error. It diminishes life, atomizes the individual, and becomes a kind of 'death-road'.

What do you mean with 'the transcendent desire'? What kind of living flesh are you servicing? The pilot of the Enola Gay was surely serving others, surely committed?

The platform from which I critique QRS-tendom is from these socio-spiritual ideas. It all stems from that view and returns to that view.

You need to explain more of it, the Wikipedia article helps nothing. It's weird you write so easily paragraphs of prose about almost anything but when it comes to the core of your own thought and influences you refer to articles, books and undetermined concepts as 'life force' and 'health'.

[Tomas]

.


-tomas-
The following seems a spin-off of Billy Joel's, "We Didn't Start the Fire." The downside,? he couldn't give up the alcohol and drugs, a DUI (the town drunk crashed into a house) a couple few years ago :-(

Billy's lyrics http://www.teacheroz.com/fire.htm


Alex Jacob - To think that at any moment the whole human world is swirling & writhing, swelling & bleeding, that babies are being born, maybe hundreds every second & thousands of people are gasping out their last breath, that thousands, hundreds of thousand, millions, are having sex, their bodies struggling for the pleasure of love; and too people are murdering, strangling, knifing, torturing, shooting & bombing, all hopped-up with adrenalin, sweating & gripped by the strange passions that possess them; that many people in the light of the sun or the moon or under a bare bulb or passing on the streets of the world just saw someone and felt the pang of love, or lust; that everywhere people are having arguments over money, or things, or hurt feelings or jealousy; that many people are grieved and convulsed in the depth of pain, that other people, millions of people, are completely happy: laughing, ecstatic, blissful; that people too are stealing things, breaking into some shack, putting a hand through a window, boarding a boat to steal it, rushing into a bank to rob it, joy-riding in a stolen car, running from the police; shooting drugs in their arms, or sniffing strange drugs, drinking in bars; bombs fall and explode & people are blown to bits or incinerated, that somewhere someone is planning murder, or planting flowers, climbing a mountain, dying in an airplane crash, walking in the desert, looking at the sky and thinking about 'life', about 'reality', or deep in meditation bliss; maybe some guru just touched someones forehead sending them into samadhi like Yogananda at 16; or monks are chanting and temple-church-shrine bells and cymbals are ringing; & people are having dreams where all the symbols of man appear, & some aboriginal man, the last undiscovered man in the Amazon, is telling a story about the birth of the world & the arrival of people into that world; & millions of televisions flicker with dramas & movies & advertisements; & many people are at their wit's end, or bored to tears, or exhausted after a day's labor or cutting bush with a machete, or digging in the ground & looking at the overturned dirt; that millions of kids are playing and their child's voices echo all around, that some are being punished & scolded, are eating rice or fish or beans, are studying in schools in hundreds of different languages; that my analogue somewhere is having a parallel thought, maybe exactly the same thought, the same general idea; that someone just fell off a bridge to their death, someone just tripped & fell, someone cut themselves with the kitchen knife, just dropped vegetables into a hot pan, poured boiling water of coffee, in a tea-cup, slaughtered a chicken, a pig, a goat, a cow, just made a resolution, just broke one, is having psychotic episode, is drunk, just got thrown out of their house or turned the key to go in, is having the surprise of their life, just got the worse news, just killed themselves, just took a shit, hit someone, caressed someone, won a prize, or lost everyone they ever loved in the whole world in an earthquake, a fire, a flood, an accident, or murder---And all this is just a drop in the bucket of astonishing almost inconceivable experience, the stuff that happens to you, the whole experience of life, & it's happening to 6 billion people who metabolize, breathe, sing, talk, think, desire...


.

[Alex Jacob]

Diebert,

You say that I need to explain more of it, as if I am in your employ, as if I have an obligation to you. I rather think that this is a conversation and we can build a conversation that includes more information on that subject. Your advantage is that you merely quote me and insert comments, and this takes far less time.

In respect to Social Christianity, I am going to let it stand as it is. Any of the theorists who are listed on the right of that page can be referred to. I don’t have the time to explain, in detail, the core doctrines of Social Christianity, but there are volumes of information there, and from those you can get an idea of what I am referring to. The era I am most interested in though, is the 50s and 60s and especially in the context of American Post War Radicalism. I don't have the energy to write out vast posts to explain ideas that are expressed in other areas. I hope you don't mind.

‘Transcendent desire’ (my phrase) is a desire, a longing to transcend. The belief or hope that if I do thus-and-such I may discover a way to either rise about all confusion into some transcendent internal state, or that by doing thus-and-such I will in some later life enjoy transcendence.

To serve ‘living flesh’ is just a way of referring to one’s community, one’s culture, the human race. There are of course many---infinitely many---ways to do this, but I used the term in the context of defining Christian (and Jewish) ideals in regard to service to people, to community. I have a strong feeling that dropping the atom bomb on a whole bunch of people, at least in the eyes of the Social Christians, would be frowned upon.

I say that it (the admonitions of social Christianity) has no parallel that I am aware of, either in Hinduism or in Buddhism. You can take it just as a personal opinion, and I am not sure how I could even prove it to you. Do you see things differently?

In respect to Nietzsche and your suggestion that I should ‘renounce’ him, I would only say that I never claimed him so there is nothing to renounce. In respect to that, though, I was today reading some Kierkegaard and he mentions the idea that the Gospel message, as he understands it, is not and could never be a doctrine that you could ever feel ‘comfortable’ with. Also, that the entire operation, the opus of this figure Jesus, is at its very core a paradox. If one perceives it as ‘normalcy’ and if it appears ‘reasonable’ and ‘rational’, it is likely (according to him) one hasn't gotten to the core of the message. As I understand Nietzsche, as Nietzsche is refracted through my own understanding, I see him as ‘reason’ striking up against thie paradox that Nietzsche, it seems, could not surmount. Nietzsche, it also seems to me, is a very profound thinker, of tremendous brainpower, but the 'paradox' outwitted him. You mention ‘identification’ with Nietzsche or his message and I would say, yes, I do identify, in many ways. I identify too with the heroic mood of Nietzsche and I seek ways to emulate it.

But anyway, and again if I have understood Nietzsche, what Nietzsche is IS a mass conflict, an inner struggle, one pole that neutralizes the other. He points right at the very core of that struggle, right at the ‘biological facts’ of that struggle. He intuited a coming train wreck and in so many ways, it seems to me, we are living in that trainwreck, or shipwreck is a word I like to use, with its echos of Dafoe, a regenerative while spent on a desert isle. And you are surprised that I have major contradictions, such that you need to point it out to me? This is news for you? The way I see things our whole culture is ‘convulsed’ by these conflicts and we are trying to understand how to resolve them, the whole world is in the throws of conflict.

If you were to ask me (nicely, without this impatience that seems to be creeping in) I will tell you that I personally think that there may be no way to reconcile the core Gospel message with our day-to-day existence, and certainly our biological existence, certainly our our state existence. Kierkegaard seems to feel that it is in the nature of things (‘God’s desire’) that there should be conflict and dissonance within culture, and that only a small percentage could ever, would ever, act according to the core truth of the Gospels. I was trying to get at that by mentioning the little bit of leven that lifts the whole lump, and the reason is because you said that you had spent so much time mulling over issues of Christianity. You actually said you are sort of an 'expert'. I thought you'd quickly pick up my allusion, yet sometimes it seems we miscommunicate.

Anyway, Diebert, what do you want me to do? What do you want me to say? Do you doubt my 'good faith' in this conversation with you? What about your faith? Are you getting from me the explanations you demand? How about this (again): Can I know what you think? What are your thoughts on these matters?

You ask why, if I am ‘topsy-turvy’ myself, why I introduce values like ‘health, balance, etc’?

1) I do simply because I can, 2) because it is relevant to my critique even if I cannot fully and authoritatively define, exactly and clinically what is ‘health’ and ‘commitment’ (etc.), and 3) because I like to think this is not a purely antagonistic environment (this forum or this conversation) and that there is a mutual desire to define those things. My impression is that many here, though not all thank Heavens, seem dull as lumps on logs and literally half-dead in certain ways, but truthfully from you I don't get this impression.

[David Quinn]

It's weird you [Alex] write so easily paragraphs of prose about almost anything but when it comes to the core of your own thought and influences you refer to articles, books and undetermined concepts as 'life force' and 'health'.

Interestingly, this is a very common trait in women. They can speak with much eloquence about anything under the sun and can analyze other people's issues with ease, yet as soon as attention turns to their own issues they suddenly become all at sea.

I'm not saying that Alex is a woman, but I do find his relationship to spirituality to be feminine in nature. The confusion and topsy-turviness, the excessive attention to surface details, the inability to cut through the chaos and uncover universal principles, the constant recourse to societal and cultural frameworks to provide a platform for his thought, the desire for someone to come along and save him. This is very much the mind of a woman.

To my mind, the following paragraph by Alex says everything:

I sincerely believe 'we' are in a process of reexamination, redefining, reconsideration. I think that this is simply a vast endeavor, and as I see it is a continuation of the very spirit of so-called 'Post War Radicalism'. To everything that we are 'doing' now (thinking, formulating) there are roots and connecting links. Nothing that we are doing now exists in a vacuum and the strains of ideas we are working with, that are worked out in us, are not new, are not our invention.

It's as though he can't conceive of himself as an individual, much less one capable of using his own mind to discover what is true. This deep need to be part of a larger social movement, always looking for external sources to supply some relief from the chaos, is very telling.

What he means by "transcendence" is simply relief from his own mental chaos, not through his own inner grasp of truth, but through the help of someone else coming along and triggering him out of it. Alas, such triggerings rarely provide more than momentary relief, hence the constant need to keep shopping around for new inspirations.

He is not finding those inspirations here at Genius Forum (which focuses, after all, on the inner grasping of truth, the last thing he wants), and so he feels a need to relentlessly bag the place. We are lacking, not because of anything we might be doing, but simply because he is unable to use us to find relief from the chaos.

-

[Alex Jacob]

Why doesn't it surprise me that you organize your critique through a location of supposed 'female' traits? When the QRS edifice is challenged it is the classic female characteristics that are trotted-out and condemned. Also, it does not surprise me that you would focus on my admitted uncertainty, a lack of complete conclusiveness. And if I locate my 'problem' of uncertainty in a social context, and link it to a history, a movement within the world of ideas, and 'the Nietzschean paradox', that for you becomes the thrust for undermining my general thrust, since, we note, QRS-tianity is based on absolute certainties, an absolute ethical bedrock.

However, I would only point out that as I have seen it, as it is explained here, your 'ethic' is simply to retreat from all earthly endeavors, perform no work, live on nothing, and work toward a nebulous 'enlightenment'. Really, the only place where you interact with the world is through this website. From that position it is quite easy to level critiques against anyone or anything, and of course to take issue with their uncertainty. But if you had to take action in your world, other than just to talk, it would become all very different. And so it is for anyone with a 'real' connection to this existing world.

The reason I did not explain in my own words what I understand Social Christianity to be, and my own relationship to it, is only because I don't have the time right now to compose well thought-out posts. I don't have my own connection at home, am in the process of moving from one place to another. It is in the spirit of efficiency that I include some links, and anyone who is interested can scan them and, at least, get a general idea what I am referrig to.

To work the angle---and it is a working of an angle, the standart QRS-tian angle---of labelling someone's approach to religion or spirituality as 'feminine' is just the standard and easy way to discredit my views. If you---and it is a herd effort, I mean that in the strict Kierkegaardian sense---can get your definition to stick, you have validated your own judgment, and smugly you continue within your 'defective certainties'.

Attention to surface details? It seems to me that if you really internalize the idea of Christian sacrifice, if you really take it seriously, you had better be quite certain just to WHAT 'details' you choose to focus on. If you take the life of Jesus seriously, if anyone does, and if you understand the life of Jesus as a continuation, and extension or a fulfillment of the Prophetic Tradition, I personally do not see how you could ever abstract it from the social context. Also, I am a Jew and not a Christian, you see. I do not have the core sentiments toward the figure of Jesus that a 'real Christian' would-should have. I am tentative in discussing Christian concerns because it is not my domain, and yet I do say that the doctrines of the Social Christians have moved me. They seem to me to be sound expressions of the core Jewish-Christian message, but not a vague message, but a solid commitment, a bona fide commitment. And that commitment has literally and powerfully changed (and improved) the world we live in. It didn't come about through cheap talk either, it came about through committed work.

The question about 'individuality' is in how one defines the ethical individual, and the ethical individual has a relationship to his context, and in my tradition at least, must have. That is the core ethical commandment. You can look upon that as an 'order' that comes from outside, or one that arises from within, but the more that one examines it, interrogates it, the more that it opens up into many problems and questions, none easy to solve, none so clear. When YOU talk about someone not being able to use one's own mind to know what it true, that means, really, that you seek to coerce others to accept your 'herd agreements', David. There is a boyish coerciveness that is not too original going on here, it is a standard feature and tactic of y'all.

I do not see an avenue where I will ever be relieved of 'mental chaos' (uncertainty, discomfort, a sense of deficiency) and I have begin to get 'comfortable' with that. It means that one is still in the thick of things, that one is still struggling. I would mention, in a Christian and Kierkegaardian sense that the mind that continues to engage with 'the paradox' is a mind still alive, still evolving. You guys though THINK you have it all worked out, and your whole endeavor is to get people to accept your shallow doctrines. Where in that is the real struggle of the individual, in a profound sense? How could you ever tie that to the Kierkegaardian recognition of sacrifice, commitment, the message and meaning of Christ's sacrifice in the Gospel narratives? How pathetic and cheap---and rather ugly at times---are your 'reasonings'!

I say that you do not know and cannot claim and represent The Truth, and when you do so you diminish yourselves tremendously. You reduce yourself to a ridiculous personage and the whole intellectual and spiritual process is made shallow and sold short. It seems there are no more questions for you, just answers that you dole out. That is a very, very suspect position. It turns your discourse into a mental game between believers, a sharing of word-definitions, and little more. To come into contact with Truth is to come into contact with something giant, that you answer to, you don't dictate to it. The correct attitude (for questions of this magnitude and importance) is a kind of self-abnegation, a confession of uncertainty. What the QRS priesthood does is to cement shallow views and shallow interpretations, and to diminish the wide possibilities of contact and interaction with truthful possibilities.