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

[bill]

There seems to be an overall disdain for aesthetics in this forum. Do art / sport/ mountaineering not offer glimpses of the sublime, or 'peak experiences' that enlightenment claims to expand upon?

"...aesthetic experience is the momentary, personal, exhilarating – to use Greenberg’s word – form of this nonconformist, fearless scrap. It is a delicious, if brief, taste of critical freedom not unlike what D.W. Winnicott called and “ego orgasm” – a eureka-like experience of restorative “creative apperception” involving the conscious feeling of being intensely alive. It transforms alienation into freedom and adversariness into criticality. This is a ‘fragile achievement of the ego,” to use Mitscherlich’s words, that nonetheless strengthens it, allowing it to transcend its social identity and conformity."

(Donald Kuspit -The End of Art)


A small scrap of freedom - A new song by the British band 'Elbow'...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQIdXKz4sE8&feature=dir

[Carl G]

Pish posh. Altered states like these -- the brief mystical experience -- are mere small stepping stones on the way to the Real Enchilada (which, unfortunately, some people mistake as one or another endpoint).

[bill]

Pish posh. Altered states like these -- the brief mystical experience -- are mere small stepping stones on the way to the Real Enchilada (which, unfortunately, some people mistake as one or another endpoint).

Posh pish. Not a very constructive, helpful or 'enlightened' answer, is it?

[Carl G]

Not posh pish. Pish posh. And yes, actually, the actual kernel of truth in my post was contained in those two words alone. You see, pish posh is a Mid Eastern delicacy consisting of herbed rice and lamb. The lamb is minced into fine bits and is mixed with the rice, creating a hearty and sustaining dish. When a small portion of lamb is eaten alone it is gone in a minute, but when eaten with the rice thus -- the whole dish together -- there is balanced and lasting nutrition, imparting a sustaining energy with which to go forward and do good works. So it is with our path to enlightenment; it is the steady effort which truly feeds us, and moves us on our way, not the spikes of feeling that come from the occasional intense experience. Make sense?

[maestro]

There seems to be an overall disdain for aesthetics in this forum. Do art / sport/ mountaineering not offer glimpses of the sublime, or 'peak experiences' that enlightenment claims to expand upon?

That was my conception too when I began, that it would be a permanent state of exhilaration. It is not. Rather, it is the ability to do the best under the given circumstances. For example even when in a state of negative emotion you use its energy to weaken the neural connections which allow it to be sustained. This is the perfect response, next time it would be weaker and so on and so forth, till you reach perfect clarity and no leakage of energy.

[Tomas]

.


bill - There seems to be an overall disdain for aesthetics in this forum.

-tomas-
Yeah. We want the world and we want it now.



-bill-
Do art / sport/ mountaineering not offer glimpses of the sublime,

-tomas-
art - paint fumes

sport - pulled muscles

mountaineering - lack of oxygen




-bill continues-
or 'peak experiences' that enlightenment claims to expand upon?

-tomas-
I'd place this in the 'unwritten word' category - can't put into words, simply non-describable.




-bill fronts-
A small scrap of freedom - A new song by the British band 'Elbow'...

-tomas-
The hell with British bands ... more Tavistock Institute malarky designed to lull the senses into accepting Madonna as repackaged fresh meat "Like a Virgin."

ps- Nice try, bill.


Tomas


.

[bill]

Not posh pish. Pish posh. And yes, actually, the actual kernel of truth in my post was contained in those two words alone. You see, pish posh is a Mid Eastern delicacy consisting of herbed rice and lamb. The lamb is minced into fine bits and is mixed with the rice, creating a hearty and sustaining dish. When a small portion of lamb is eaten alone it is gone in a minute, but when eaten with the rice thus -- the whole dish together -- there is balanced and lasting nutrition, imparting a sustaining energy with which to go forward and do good works. So it is with our path to enlightenment; it is the steady effort which truly feeds us, and moves us on our way, not the spikes of feeling that come from the occasional intense experience. Make sense?

Yes, like jogging everyday? Many commentators have suggested that jogging, or swimming, or other aerobic activities are akin to meditation. Clearing the mind regularly and improving our health co- efficient through the release of hormones, etc. people who jog everyday or paint everyday may be experiencing the same levels of (moderately) enhanced consciousness, no?

Did your culinary reference have to be so obtuse? Burger and bun? Fish and Chips? Spaghetti and Bolognaise?

[bill]

-bill fronts-
A small scrap of freedom - A new song by the British band 'Elbow'...

-tomas-
The hell with British bands ... more Tavistock Institute malarky designed to lull the senses into accepting Madonna as repackaged fresh meat "Like a Virgin."

ps- Nice try, bill.


Tomas


.

While we're dissing british bands... try this one from a while ago

I Believe In You by Talk Talk. Surely a smidgin' of higher consciousness contained herein? In fact I would say that there is more spirituality in the interstice between two ride cymbal taps in this wee tune than in most of the spiky pontificating that goes on around this forum.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cIWsQuY ... re=related

[bill]

Not posh pish. Pish posh. And yes, actually, the actual kernel of truth in my post was contained in those two words alone. You see, pish posh is a Mid Eastern delicacy consisting of herbed rice and lamb. The lamb is minced into fine bits and is mixed with the rice, creating a hearty and sustaining dish. When a small portion of lamb is eaten alone it is gone in a minute, but when eaten with the rice thus -- the whole dish together -- there is balanced and lasting nutrition, imparting a sustaining energy with which to go forward and do good works. So it is with our path to enlightenment; it is the steady effort which truly feeds us, and moves us on our way, not the spikes of feeling that come from the occasional intense experience. Make sense?

Why name such a spiritual kebab after an urban putdown?

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.p ... =pish+posh

[Alex Jacob]

There is a strong resistance to the 'aesthetic' for a group of different reasons, I think you will discover. One is that the ideas about so-called 'enlightenment' are expressed mostly always in purely rational forms, as mathematical truths. The simple reason is that this is how the minds of many attracted to these pages are organized. They represent a 'type', an order of consciousness, a strategy for confronting life that is an avoidance of being alive. These are men too on the verge of old age, and their 'teachings' are delivered, and drunk up, by young men.

But I submit that the basic structure of their doctrines are far from sound, and they should be interrogated very strongly. Their greatest condemnation of my views is that I am some sort of 'poet' and that therefor what I think and feel is best disregarded.

There is a classical dichotomy between the mathematical mind and the logos-oriented mind. The lens with which they view life is so different. One can see some of the people here as being defective and see this overemphasis of mathematical methodology as being a sort of pathology, a disease of the mind. They are in many ways the sort of people too, like uptight priests, who have no alternative but to deny their own sexuality, to fear and avoid relationships. The covere over their weakness and failure by prentnding it is a strength.

Also, they refuse to participate in life 'as it is' and retreat from the confrontation with life. Surely this is a necessary step, from time to time, and many sages (and artists) have made that choice. But you have to ask yourself if it can ever be a universal prescription for the advancement of the soul, and as it is expressed here (mostly) I would have to say that it is not.

The aesthetic perspective is condemned, grossly and too broadly, in the most cliche of terms. But in no sense at all, it has to be stated, did the great minds they seem to admire (Kierkegaard, Nietzsche among others) even abandon or condemn to structure of the mind and soul that permits one to apprehend life through the faculty of art, as an arttist, in an artistic way. To keep things simple, and deathly boring, and potentially fatal, they must reject the aesthetic with callow phrases that are only symptoms of general disconnect from any internal potency that, even, would allow them to really influence people. I think Kierkegaard even said something like that: that if you didn't have the internal potency to seduce men, you would never be able to influence men.

The men here, and the women who bolster their pathetic egos, are mostly devoid of influencing spirit, and therefor of life. Never, ever would they be able to really influence their fellow men...not like a Jesus figure, or a Ramakrishna, and certainly never like a Nietzsche! The greatness of Nietzsche, it seems to me, is that he was a half-dead man, and he knew it, and yet he wanted to live, he wanted to be robust with life. The men here, on the other hand, want to be dead and they seek death. Naturally, life must be condemned, and with life sexuality, nature, emotions, struggle.

And Jesus? Even the most superficial reading of the life of Jesus and the mission that is expressed in the Gospels, points to a vital man who as a spokesman of God demands engagement with life. And that is surely a Prophetic value: to engage with life, to enter into it with a blazing solar strength and to change the very structure of things. Kierkegaard, it seems, engaged truthfully through his Christian spirit and influenced his world, so he was successful. But these fellows here? Read more closely, and seen more honestly, they are failures to philosophy and to genuine religion.

[bill]

There is a strong resistance to the 'aesthetic' for a group of different reasons, I think you will discover. One is that the ideas about so-called 'enlightenment' are expressed mostly always in purely rational forms, as mathematical truths. The simple reason is that this is how the minds of many attracted to these pages are organized. They represent a 'type', an order of consciousness, a strategy for confronting life that is an avoidance of being alive. These are men too on the verge of old age, and their 'teachings' are delivered, and drunk up, by young men.

Touche, Alex.

Rather than drink up any of their geriatric 'truths' I think I'll stick to my Orange Soda and find another virtual cafe to shuffle about in.

[bert]

"That which is not in some way deformed has something indefinitely insensitive about it; as a result, irregularity, or rather the unexpected, surprise, admiration, are an essential part, and the most characteristic, of beauty." - Charles Baudelaire.

[bert]

by bert on Sun Dec 30, 2007 1:28 pm

I would say that beauty alone reaches simplicity because it is basically 'economy'. envy over-adorns, paints, clothes and transferes to mode. the naked figure is a more truthful beauty: hence to marry a face is often to marry a fiction. our work and behaviour is the trueer portrait, the values we live and give by.

[bert]

formulation aesthetically results when our desire arises from necessity towards functional purpose, great relationships will be given; thus experiencing the full emotional scale.

[bert]

aesthetics give more permanent possibilities of sensation - a reality.

[Alex Jacob]

"That which is not in some way deformed has something indefinitely insensitive about it; as a result, irregularity, or rather the unexpected, surprise, admiration, are an essential part, and the most characteristic, of beauty."

Interesting, I find, what happens when theology and other vital concerns of man escape from the hands of those 'with the right' to handle and define it, and end up in the hands of those who should never have the right. A great deal of this has to do with straight power principals, and God forbid that a common man, any normal man, a living and breathing man from any social category, should have the right, should take upon himself the right to opine on essential matters of this sort. It could be that this is another ramification of the grand event of the French Revolution, and so it is not surpising that a bold opinion such as the above would arise on the lips of a frenchman...

In this sense, the Mahatmas here (I robbed this term from the pages of Olio, heh heh), really place themselves in the camp of theologians more than free-thinkers, when so much of their time and energy is spent claiming their right to define what is human advancement, what is the progress of the soul, 'enlightenment', what is the highest domain of human pursuit. There is a tremendous amount of presumptuousness in their pronouncements, and yet also a sort of lusty relish in controlling the discourse, always placing themselves at the center of all debates, putting down and dismissing others who view things differently, and whole other modes of perceiving God, the spirit, man's link or connection with God, and the 'final end' of all of this process. In our cultural history it is not the theologians who carry forward the banner of truth, it really has been the artists, the creative spirits.

When you read on these pages you distinctly get the sense that these fellows know the score, have access to The Truth, are not at all interested in a conversation on these themes and a common investigation of what it all might mean. There are no questions here, and there are only answers. Yes, they tell you what you are to believe, they tell you what is true. If there is agreement it is a chiming-in by others on certain doctrinal points. In this sense, then, they are non-different than obfuscating theologians. Therefor, it is not about 'light' it is about 'darkness', it is not about illumination it is about convention, it is not progress it is regression.

And yet it is couched as being...revolutionary...daring...importantisimo!

In that climate---and this is where the poets, the artists, and a group of persons who respond to the spirit (this literally indefinable, magical and mysterious spirit that moves through man's world of its own accord), who give expression to its impulses---in this sort of climate it is essential that someone, anyone, you, everyone, bring forward the poetical and mysterious triuths, those truths that are 'unexpected, admirable, surprising', and it turns out that these are the impulses that are the only ones worth anything, really, and the ones that---for good and for evil---move the world.

The best conversations that have ever come from these pages, in my opinion, are those that deal on this controversial area of human concern, and these questions that really should be of vital concern to men (men as leaders, as those who respond to spirit and mold human affairs).

All of this is very much up in the air, and none of it has been decided. It should be our vital and determined concern to carry forward these questions and never to let them rest.
_________________________________________________

Hallelujah! sing the angels in the upper spheres to the content of my posts! Pay heed, oh ye drooling retrogrades! to the precious tid-bits of knowledge that is cast your way!

[Jason]

In this sense, then, they are non-different than obfuscating theologians. Therefor, it is not about 'light' it is about 'darkness', it is not about illumination it is about convention, it is not progress it is regression.

And yet it is couched as being...revolutionary...daring...importantisimo!

I'm not trying to defend "QSR" with this, but what you've written here ironically sort of describes what I sometimes think about "arty" "aesthete" types.

Altering, augmenting, warping, reinterpreting, exaggerating, pimping, dressing, embellishing, ornamenting, decorating, these things are the poets, artists and aesthetes stock in trade. Their lifeblood is to overlay, obscure and distort pure stark reality. This may explain why you think the so-called "mathematical mind" is "deathly boring." There appears to be an allergy, in many poetic and artistic types, to being direct, blunt and honest. There is this need for entertainment, distraction, affect, tarting things up with flowery language and bright splashes of colour - accuracy be damned. And they present this obscuring of things as daring and revolutionary! That is what I call a desire for darkness. The light sometimes exposes things that just aren't pretty and the aesthetes don't seem to like that.

[Alex Jacob]

Jason writes:

Altering, augmenting, warping, reinterpreting, exaggerating, pimping, dressing, embellishing, ornamenting, decorating, these things are the poets, artists and aesthetes stock in trade. Their lifeblood is to overlay, obscure and distort pure stark reality. This may explain why you think the so-called "mathematical mind" is "deathly boring." There appears to be an allergy, in many poetic and artistic types, to being direct, blunt and honest. There is this need for entertainment, distraction, affect, tarting things up with flowery language and bright splashes of colour - accuracy be damned. And they present this obscuring of things as daring and revolutionary! That is what I call a desire for darkness. The light sometimes exposes things that just aren't pretty and the aesthetes don't seem to like that.

To me the artistic or aesthetic sensibility goes far, far beyond merely what a painter or a poet---in some cases---has done. First, I cannot disagree with you, and when one considers the whole romantic period, the romantic movement, there is a great deal about it that one can take issue with. It sorts of depends on how one's criticism functions, and just where one wants to fire one's arrows, and just who one wants to hit. But I don't think that you would imply that this is all that poets and painters do. Artists and other sorts of visionaries---and on intellectual levels one could and should include Kierkegaard and Nietzsche---do so much more than merely embellish and tart up. They bring into their opus an infusion of pure spirit, a generative energy, and in that sense 'seduce' and or course influence.

What I am trying to get at is that spiritual life, the life of the spirit, the life of one who comes under the influence of religion in the most exalted and meaningful sense (Kierkegaard and Nietzsche are wholly located within the religious question, extremely so) could never be approached through some dry, mechanical, 'factualism', what I am calling the output of 'mathematical types' (the refertence is to Jung and his typology). No part of this assertion of mine needs even a great deal of 'proof': Kierkegaard was completely possessed by 'the spirit' in his grappling with...some core energy of Christ or 'Christianity'; and so was Nietzsche. To consider these men, I think, you have to consider so much more than some numbers on a page, some kind of limited algebra that you could express, and sort of control, through some mathematical representations. Those that we recognize as the powerhouses, the geniuses, give expression to something that almost cannot be named, it is utterly mysterious. It is a spirit, an energy, something quite beyond our ken. When I refer to art and artists and to the creative spirit in man, that is what I am talking about. What I find strange is that here they hold up Nietzsche as a sort of example of both genius and enlightenment, and yet Nietzsche was a died-in-the-wool romantic in so many ways!

My impression is that QRS-H are attempting a great reduction when it comes to presenting their ideas about spirituality and 'enlightenment'. It seems 'sinful' to attempt this reduction of things in the human spirit that are almost unnameable, un-understandable. There are manifestations of genius in the Judeo-Christian tradition that are expressed by people like Kierkegaard and Nietzsche---it is in them that one witnesses, if you will, this movement of the spirit. So who can reduce this to a simple equation? Who would attempt such a thing?

If I say that in genius there is something...intangible...inexplicable...marvellous...potent...spiritual...am I merely 'embellishing' and tarting up?

[bert]

Moderns and Art.
we must own that the effect of their respective arguments, as usual with frenetic propaganda, is not to satisfy us with either, but to disatisfy us with both. neither side has much veracity in its conclusions - the usual jumping from half-truths into the uncertainties of generalisations.

the Greek ideals (of art) were tactual of reality and potentiality, with the possibility of being true to Art and Life. wheras the atavistic nostalias called 'modernism' are mainly the dark sanctuary of incapacity - the fear of facing and expressing reality. the fine traditional works (not always so in their period) will always remain great , because they are works that have survived the emphemeral fashions and phrases of thought. the 'Academy school' has lost its fine traditions and often degenerates into sentimental and analgestic art. Let us remember that altough Art may have directions it is not necessarily knowledge, truth, intuition or anything else: it is "wherever it may be", a metaphor of pssibilities and of making aesthetic and other intresting sensations more permanent.

[David Quinn]

Alex wrote:

My impression is that QRS-H are attempting a great reduction when it comes to presenting their ideas about spirituality and 'enlightenment'. It seems 'sinful' to attempt this reduction of things in the human spirit that are almost unnameable, un-understandable. There are manifestations of genius in the Judeo-Christian tradition that are expressed by people like Kierkegaard and Nietzsche---it is in them that one witnesses, if you will, this movement of the spirit. So who can reduce this to a simple equation? Who would attempt such a thing?

If I say that in genius there is something...intangible...inexplicable...marvellous...potent...spiritual...am I merely 'embellishing' and tarting up?

No, I would say that you are merely expressing what you can handle. Given that you love remaining in the fog of uncertainty, experiencing the light of truth as something "intangible...inexplicable...marvellous...potent...spiritual" is as far as you can go with it.

It is like a sightless man suddenly sensing a vague patch of light. It excites him, but he can go no further with it because he is deeply afraid of it. He is terrified of bringing it into his consciousness and staring at it in full-crystalline glory. He then attempts to paper over this fear by trying to make a virtue out of his faint vision. That is what he calls art.

As for the idea of reducing spirituality to an equation, I've already explained that everything said by myself, or Kevin or Dan, are designed as signposts to the extraordinary understanding which is enlightenment. There is never any attempt on our parts to reduce this understanding to words or contain it within equations. If anything, this is what I would accuse you of doing.

That is the main problem with art - or at least the highest form of art. It attempts to depict the full glory of enlightened reality within the limitations of artistic expression, not knowing that such an attempt is deluded beyond measure. If such art can stimulate people into experiencing enlightened reality themselves, well and good. But nothing beats clear signposts which point unambiguously to its location.

-

[Jason]

There is a strong resistance to the 'aesthetic' for a group of different reasons, I think you will discover. One is that the ideas about so-called 'enlightenment' are expressed mostly always in purely rational forms, as mathematical truths. The simple reason is that this is how the minds of many attracted to these pages are organized. They represent a 'type', an order of consciousness, a strategy for confronting life that is an avoidance of being alive. These are men too on the verge of old age, and their 'teachings' are delivered, and drunk up, by young men.

But I submit that the basic structure of their doctrines are far from sound, and they should be interrogated very strongly. Their greatest condemnation of my views is that I am some sort of 'poet' and that therefor what I think and feel is best disregarded.

There is a classical dichotomy between the mathematical mind and the logos-oriented mind. The lens with which they view life is so different. One can see some of the people here as being defective and see this overemphasis of mathematical methodology as being a sort of pathology, a disease of the mind. They are in many ways the sort of people too, like uptight priests, who have no alternative but to deny their own sexuality, to fear and avoid relationships. The cover over their weakness and failure by prentnding it is a strength.

I realize that you're focusing on Dan, Kevin and David, and my philosophical understandings do differ from theirs in some quite significant ways, but I definitely feel a strong connection and identification with their methods and mindsets. Maybe I have more of the aesthete and creator spirit in me than they do, I don't know. Either way, I find some of the ideas you raise here interesting, I have considered them before, and perhaps I can shed some light on both the "mathematical" philosophical mind and the aesthetic mind. Before I start, my disclaimer: I'm going to make some sweeping generalizations, assumptions and guesses in what follows, but hopefully there will be something to be gained from it.

A few of the less than flattering things you say about the "mathematical" mind I agree with. The idea that this mind is a type of running away from life may be true in many cases. Personally, I've tried to work out where my tendency towards approaching life in this extremely analytical/logical/rational fashion came from, and it seems quite possible that it was a reaction based on fear. At least partly. It can be seen as a stepping back from and outside of life, mediating it and putting distance between life and oneself to become more comfortable and safe. Abstracting and generalizing can make life feel(and really be) more controlled and understood, it can seem much easier to manipulate and live with concepts, and representations of things, than the things themselves. For me this tendency was already strong in childhood, so for that reason and others it's difficult to trace back where and why it started exactly(I've made some guesses but it's probably not necessary to go any further into that right now.)

I can understand how this mind can be seen as a weakness, I have often cursed this part of myself and wished the spontaneous, instinctive and intuitive parts of me were more dominant. But I don't believe that just because something may have sprung from fear and weakness that it is forever inherently poisoned and useless. Science, technology, simply thinking before acting, these can all be seen as outgrowths of fear and weakness, but that shouldn't condemn their fruits.

Your suggestion that this type of mindset is a refusal "to participate in life 'as it is'" is to limit what life can be. Why is the hedonistic spontaneous artist living, while the controlled calculating analytical philosopher is dead? Why limit living to your particular prescription of it? Do you mean that the philosopher is denying and suppressing his nature or inherent inclinations? What constitutes really living and why? I may actually sympathize with this view in some ways but perhaps born of different reasons.

On the other side of the fence, and a just as possible scenario, is that many aesthetic and arty types(and other "types") may have at some stage in their lives also come into contact with the more logical and analytical ways of interacting with existence. But what they found deeply frightened them, and lacking the strength or other characteristics necessary to enter these realms, they were repelled rather than attracted, and so retreated back into their warm, comfortable, distracting and fuzzy worlds.

I'm not sure you are aware of the depth and length of suffering, and the massive levels of doubt that confront many who choose the path that I and others like me have. Yes it's possible that this path is initially chosen out of fear, and a desire to avoid the world, its suffering and deep feeling. But, and perhaps unintentionally, this path can eventually become one of destruction of everything that is dear and taken for granted. Such a path certainly requires a lot of strength and courage, and it's an aspect of this path that you may not fully appreciate.

People who take this path will often, along with the habit for generalizing, systemizing and abstracting, develop a very strong love of, and faith in, principles. It is a property of principles(conscience being a common example) that they in some ways can take on a life of their own, independent of their owner. It doesn't matter what I want, it doesn't matter what society wants or expects, principles become independent powers, beholden to no one. This can be startlingly powerful. And when, or if, principles are developed in such a way that their uppermost task becomes seeking out unadulterated truth(as it is with some of the philosophers here of which I include myself), a peculiar sort of ruthless destruction of all that is false can take place, even if it causes immense fear, pain and damage to the philosopher.

The best philosophers are merciless destroyers. They utterly eliminate all that is false, and in their wake all that is left is truth. The truth is simply what is. What's left when the dust settles.

The aesthete, wrapped up and immersed in his feelings, his perceptions, his intuitions, simply cannot act against himself in this way. He will always stand in the way and halt destruction before it begins to hurt too much. He lacks this faith in principles. He cannot divorce himself from himself, there cannot be this striving for objectivity because he is literally a part of everything, his being extends out into what he sees and feels. It is a very subjective way of existing. The pain doesn't make any sense, he cannot understand the value in harming himself.

Yet the aesthetic type will sometimes claim that their relationship with life and existence is more authentic or true or vital. That it has a colour, depth and texture to it that the coldly rational type reject and omit or are even blind to altogether. They will argue that the rationalist is simplifying and generalizing and in the process losing much of the soul and essence of existence. However I think this is just as likely explained by the possibility that the aesthete's mind and vision are fuzzy and incapable or unwilling to sharply focus, delineate and perceive reality.

Imagine there are two people sitting together in a park. One with perfect 20:20 vision, and another who is short sighted.

Both of them looking at a distant sign, the one with perfect 20:20 vision reports "Restrooms: 200m Left."

His short-sighted companion, however, disagrees "What!? Philistine! You're completely missing the life and soul of it! The object presents a studied, controlled and analytical construction, yet upon closer inspection a small swarm of playful minute squiggles adorn the center. The swarm's formation approaches a line in shape, but is interspersed with minute, indistinct gaps. Overall it gives a fulfilling sense of order juxtaposed with elements of chaos. I shall call it 'Fuzzy Squiggles On A Board'! Now where's a toilet, I'm busting!?"

The men here, and the women who bolster their pathetic egos, are mostly devoid of influencing spirit, and therefor of life. Never, ever would they be able to really influence their fellow men...

I'm not sure why you believe that being, or desiring to be influential should be a characteristic of a good philosopher. I don't find influence to be an important characteristic so far as philosophy is concerned. Influence is about relationships with other people, my philosophy has always been about a direct relationship with truth and existence. It's supremely private and personal. Other people disappear far off into the background. The arty type of course seems to often be exceedingly focused on influencing and affecting others, and this can leave them stuck being mainly interested in relationships with people and their perceptions, instead of existence itself, which is the real focus of a philosopher who is interested in understanding the most fundamental nature of reality.

My impression is that QRS-H are attempting a great reduction when it comes to presenting their ideas about spirituality and 'enlightenment'. It seems 'sinful' to attempt this reduction of things in the human spirit that are almost unnameable, un-understandable. There are manifestations of genius in the Judeo-Christian tradition that are expressed by people like Kierkegaard and Nietzsche---it is in them that one witnesses, if you will, this movement of the spirit. So who can reduce this to a simple equation?

I'm not sure that "reductionism" is a fair summation of the QSR-H philosophy, but there are definitely glaring problems in reductionism. In fact the dismissal of reductionism, and the understanding and experience of a perfect 1:1 reality with no reductionism, is a pretty decent way to describe what I have found to be the most fundamental understanding of reality. Absolute clarity demands that no detail is overlooked.

Who would attempt such a thing? If I say that in genius there is something...intangible...inexplicable...marvellous...potent...spiritual...am I merely 'embellishing' and tarting up?

Is it that things really are intangible and inexplicable? Or is it a certain lacking in the aesthete type's vision, an inability to resolve the finer details and sharply focus? A vagueness that follows them around like a bad smell. It may really be a view through a foggy lens. That wouldn't be so profound would it?

[Jason]

The Meaning of Art

[Alex Jacob]

Really, this is a dichotomy that the QRS have set up, established for their own purposes. I never, ever have set up such a polarization, not is it useful to polarize any of the typical dichotomies, the opposites, the poles, the different modes of dealing with life, operating in life. You say, David, that I remain in some sort of 'fog of uncertainty', and I do this because I am a 'poet' who wilfully confines himself in unreal, dreamy, 'foggy' visions.

It would be a folly as far as I am concerned---a literal stupidity---to accept the bait you continually offer to engage in a sort of contest with you; to agree with your definition and to argue, for your benefit, from the position that you have erroneously assigned to me ---and we all have to accept that we rarely really understand one another in this medium, and I naturally do not presume to have you encapsulated. You are in most ways an opportunity for me to explore my own ideas. Despite what you may think I give you a significant benefit of the doubt, and that is simply that I am sure your life and your process has tremendous meaning for you---

But I don't agree with your categorization, you see.

What people seem to do, and you certainly do it, is to 'take possession' of some philosopher, some great, directing mind, and turn that person into the poster-child of whatever personal and private philosophy one is selling. It seems to me as clear as day that no one can take possession of the process of a Kierkegaard or a Nietzsche (or any mystic, any artist, and any of the great men you admire). You take the idea of 'enlightenment' and you totally reduce it...to the things that you do, the ideas you have, the ethical principals you wish to represent and communicate. And, to be frank and to cut to the chase, I totally take issue with this, completely and absolutely. To my way of seeing things it is hubris incarnate when it is not merely ridiculous presumption.

Nietzsche and Kierkegaard are men who entered into a process with some of the core questions and the manner in which they did this, it honestly seems to me, is as huge, vast, soaring artists. They are examples---huge and unavoidable---of the creativity of the human spirit, and all sorts of people---you, me, the next guy, someone off the street---have the opportunity to do something similar. (I am apparently far more generous than you).

It is not One Thing, there is not One Conclusion to be drawn from this contact with Spirit, with potential, with Ideas and with Truth, it is a multitudinous path. You have this absurnd penchant to couch these endeavors in reduced terms---that this is 'coming into a well-lit glade', or coming into a beam of sunlight, which sunlight is some sort of reduced thing, and produces a reduced thing. It's like some fucking third-rate preacher. I guess you are substantially unaware that this is one of the core messages one gets from these pages: a sort of puritanical reduction of the magnifiscent, indefinable, free-roaming, uncontainable spirit of consciousness that moves through the great minds, through great attainments, great discoveries. (You have no knowledge of and seemingly no interest in these matters and these traditions in art and ideas, only your greatly reduced area of concern, up in some eucalyptus forest).

And YES, all of this takes place in a realm of life and death, and all of it, in so many ways, is an absurd dance. But you don't seem to get this, because if you were to get it you wouldn't continually denigrate and diminish the multitudinous possibilities of human attainment; the myriad ways that the spirit operates.

And so, what I end up wishing to communicate is that it is more art than anything else that is expressed by these great minds, and really they do not operate at odds with each other, but are part of grand social movements. And for example there is Nietzsche, connected with so many different disciplines and endeavors, availing himself of every tool of expression, and relevant NOW to so many different disciplines and endeavors. But this plurality, it seems, frightens and discomfits you. You HAVE to reduce the spirit and its movement to something you can, it seems, define and control, and through your defining of it, control it.

And here is your reductionism expressed:

It is like a sightless man suddenly sensing a vague patch of light. It excites him, but he can go no further with it because he is deeply afraid of it. He is terrified of bringing it into his consciousness and staring at it in full-crystalline glory. He then attempts to paper over this fear by trying to make a virtue out of his faint vision. That is what he calls art.

Hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about your silly reductionisms that you apply to Life, God, and Consciousness. Who knows what y'all really think or feel because it is never, ever exressed, you just refer to some magnificent thing and imply its attainment. But this means fuck-all to me, literally fuck-all, yet what DOES concern me, as it likely does all of us, is the magnificent way that this 'spirit' moves in people and events, such as all those great men you admire, and those who may still come along, who are perfect examples of men who get caught up in the whirlwinds of the spirit.

And you don't own that, and you can't define it and control it, or explain it.

And those who DO answer, if you will, to the promptings of the spirit, yes, it is they who can, and they who do, and they don't ask your permission, and what comes from them and through them, is the art of life, the art of the spirit, and when I use the word Art that is what I mean.
_________________________________________

I leave you with this:

Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning?
---Isaiah, 40. 21

Stand by thyself, come not near to me; for I am holier than thou.
---Isaiah, 65. 5

[Tomas]

-bill fronts-
A small scrap of freedom - A new song by the British band 'Elbow'...

-tomas-
The hell with British bands ... more Tavistock Institute malarky designed to lull the senses into accepting Madonna as repackaged fresh meat "Like a Virgin."

ps- Nice try, bill.


Tomas


.

While we're dissing british bands... try this one from a while ago

I Believe In You by Talk Talk. Surely a smidgin' of higher consciousness contained herein? In fact I would say that there is more spirituality in the interstice between two ride cymbal taps in this wee tune than in most of the spiky pontificating that goes on around this forum.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cIWsQuY ... re=related

Much better :-)

Thank you, thank you very much ... Elvis has left the building.



.

[Trevor Salyzyn]

AJ,

I naturally do not presume to have you encapsulated.

One only needs to consider the strawman you built of this "type" of philosophy that scared away bill to see that this statement is false. Not to mention, everything in your post that followed this claim was exactly the sort of presumption that you claim you aren't doing. It really doesn't seem like you have much self-awareness.

If I were you, and I felt the insatiable urge to mimic the style of other writers, I'd aim exclusively for the superior part of Nietzsche's form, where he tries to capture broad truths in brief aphorisms. When you write these long posts, you just end up contradicting yourself.