Musings, Critiques.

[Alex Jacob]

Diebert, the heat gets turned up a little bit and you shift from a discussion of the ideas to a complaint about the strength or the nature of the focus. All the things I discuss, even if you don't see it, understand it, or value it, have relevancy to our 'modernity' and to what is happening inside us.
_______________________________________________________________

David, to recapitulate:

In brief, you have no knowledge of nor connection to Christianity as it is generally understood. But more properly stated as it is understood by an elite of intellectuals, philosophers and mystics. Therefor, your self-proclaimed penetration of Kierkegaard, who was both Christian and something 'additionally Christian', is a form of dishonesty. In any case it is inaccurate and misleading. I think the same is also true of your grasp of Nietzsche.

You have, in fact, almost no connection to the intellectual and spiritual traditions of this matrix known as 'Christianity' or as I prefer to say of 'Mediterranean culture' and the products of the 'Mediterranean self'. But you are very deeply involved in a project that you describe as 'directly perceiving reality'. It may be more than anything else a project first dreamed up on the Indian subcontinent but we cannot be too sure: you are quite idiosyncratic and, when push comes to shove, not a little cagey when pressed. Yet it seems to me that you will always resort, in the end, to 'non-rationalisms'---mystical statements---about the nature of your quest and its object. At this point you exit 'the ballpark' of classical ratiocination and doing so forfeit the right to call your processes 'rational'. They are in fact arbitrary, linked to your own will and, significantIy to your own personality. It is therefor not accurate to refer to this Quest in your preferred terms.

To set the record straight one must redefine your project in honest terms, not romantic misrepresentations and intellectual inflations. The project, I say, has a decided and notable and rather dark underbelly. It reveals itself, it seems to me through its negations and less through its affirmations. To get to the bottom of this is a demanding but really also quite interesting hermeneutical undertaking. It requires exegetical skill and skills of discernment. Your disciples rarely wish to invest the energy required to see your project more clearly and they construct all sorts of defenses, and yet they claim to be engaged, honestly and openly, in processes of 'philosophical enquiry'. I challenge this declaration and rather believe they are involved in an essentially non-rational and 'religious' game. I don't know whether to think of it as a camouflaged religion masquerading as philosophy, or as the hideout of a wounded psyche. I guess the jury is still out as to what 'it' is. But one does not get the truth about it from its apologists!

What you and they do does not occur in a vacuum. It is connected with the religious, existential, cultural and spiritual matrix of our culture and can, and should, be examined and questioned in detail. You have established a platform and come out swinging against so much. It is simply fair that the same energy be applied to an examination of the 'cores' within your system of thought, and recommended praxis.

Diebert wrote: There is no "GF" project unless it's defined as the project of reason itself, of what wisdom aspires and always has aspired.

If this is so then all that I do and say here is absolutely in harmony with the object of the forum: reason itself. And if the use of reason avails us of Wisdom then there should be no fear---and much less whining!---about what I do here.

[Beingof1]

Although I'm not familiar to any documented Flavian psychological warfare capacities or social engineering skills, let no one pretend the Nag Hammadi library would disprove anything here!

Disprove what?

This was just about a theory of Flavian influence on the formation of the Gospel narrative, as suggested by Dennis. It has nothing to do with Nag Hammadi, like you suggested.

Let me se if I get your point:
The Nag Hammadi does not disprove that Jesus was dis-proven to exist.

There is that brain tilt again. I notice that every time we have discussed Jesus or the scripture you devolve into gibberish.

And Josephus is proof for the existence of Jesus.

Perhaps it is. But it's complex material because some of his work is proven to be edited by Christians later on. There's no known independent copy.

If he mentions Jesus Diebert, why would you use it to disprove Jesus existed?

You do realize that this does not make a lick of sense. This is why I said Dennis does not know what he is talking about and apparently you do not either.

Again; whenever Jesus is brought up you suddenly lose all logical coherency.

but you would take the extreem dating as gospel.

Do you even know which books were in the Nag Hammadi library? If you think about the one possible exception, the gospel Of Thomas, then you are mistaken about the topic of discussion: information on a historical Christ figure, but a list of zennish sayings has nothing to do with that.

We have been through this before. I have quoted them extensively, I own the Nag Hammadi library and have done some translation work.

1) The Apochryphon of John - "I John did hear these things."

2)The Gospel of Thomas - "These are the secret sayings that the living Jesus spoke and which Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down."

3)The Prayer of the Apostle Paul - ""prayer of Paul the Apostle."

4)The Apochryphon of James - "James writes to those."

5)The Gospel of Philip - "The Gospel according to Philip."

6)The Book of Thomas the Contender - "The secret words that the saviour spoke to Judas Thomas which I, even I Mathais(Acts 2) wrote down, while I was walking , listening to them speak with one another."

7)The (First) Apocalypse of James - (snipped) "It is the Lord who spoke with me... I have given you a sign of these things, James."

8)The (Second) Apocalypse of James - "This is the discourse that James the Just spoke in Jerusalem which Mareim one of the priests wrote."

9)The Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles - "And I Peter, inquired about the name."

10)Apocalypse of Peter - "he said to me, Peter."

11) The Teachings of Silvanus - "The teachings of Silvanus." (companion of Paul in Acts 15)

12)The Letter of Peter to Philip - "Peter, the Apostle of Jesus Christ, to Philip our beloved brother."

13) The Gospel of Mary - "The Gospel according to Mary."

[Diebert van Rhijn]

The Nag Hammadi does not disprove that Jesus was dis-proven to exist.

I thought you were commenting on the possible Flavius involvement on "defanging" the revolutionary aspects of the messiah narrative. It only takes a little knowledge of Jewish history and culture to see how political and anti-Roman the original expectations for any Messiah were.

If he (Josephus) mentions Jesus Diebert, why would you use it to disprove Jesus existed?

But this discussion didn't seem to be about his existence. It was about a motive and location of Josephus and his Roman aristocratic friends.

I think you are way too obsessed with defending something which does not even need defending. What counts is what happens now. The past becomes increasingly speculative through time.

I own the Nag Hammadi library and have done some translation work.

Then you should know their content does not relate to the Flavius family, Roman emperors or anything they might have done. Nearly all the books you list lie one of two centuries beyond the subject of the topic. So why even bring them up? They often do not even agree with the canon. If you find it unlikely that Josephus would have influenced the formation of the gospel narrative, there are better arguments to bring forward like the presence of motive and opportunity not constituting any proof.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

And if the use of reason avails us of Wisdom then there should be no fear---and much less whining!---about what I do here.

Reason is all about focussing on what's most important and most fundamental first, to get to the essentials. You're pretty bad at that. Even worse: you're suggesting the opposite as a good idea!

[Alex Jacob]

Sure, Diebert, you have often resorted to such a statement but you always fail to speak in depth or length about just what in the heck you're talking about!

From Ortega y Gasset ('Estudios sobre el amor', 1957):

• "Professional noisemakers of every class will always prefer the anarchy of intoxication of the mystics to the clear and ordered intelligence of the priests, that is, of the Church. I regret at not being able to join them in this preference either. I am prevented by a matter of truthfulness. It is this: I think that any theology transmits to us much more of God, greater insights and ideas about divinity, than the combined ecstasies of all the mystics; because, instead of approaching the ecstatic skeptically, we must take the mystic at his word, accept what he brings us from his transcendental immersions, and then see if what he offers us is worth while. The truth is that, after we accompany him on his sublime voyage, what he succeeds in communicating to us is a thing of little consequence. I think that the European soul is approaching a new experience of God and new inquiries into that most important of all realities. I doubt very much, however, if the enrichment of our ideas about divine matters will emerge from the mystic's subterranean roads rather than from the luminous paths of discursive thought. Theology---not ecstasy!"

I think you may very well be---yes, your fine self!---in the thrall of a form of mysticism. Because you are never able to put into clear prose just exactly what you in truth recommend. You vaguely refer to a kind of ratiocination and to 'wisdom' as if it is all acutely clear what is meant. But we really do have to define what are the objects of such 'wisdom'. A simple question: What is the possible value of 'enlightenment'? David, who waxes mystical, refers to well-being or 'freedom' but this is not enough. What is the value of this 'enlightenment'? Who HAS it? Who IS it? You? David? You have to be able to demonstrate this, not just refer to it vaguely...

My basic position is that I think we need good tools for living a good life within the limits imposed by life itself. This is the starting point. I can see no other way around it. To chase chimera, as I call them, is not what it is about.

When he wrote (in 1957):

• "I think that the European soul is approaching a new experience of God and new inquiries into that most important of all realities. I doubt very much, however, if the enrichment of our ideas about divine matters will emerge from the mystic's subterranean roads rather than from the luminous paths of discursive thought."

...he is referring to processes that have have crystallized for us in our present. In many ways we are the outcomes of these 'new inquiries'. But what of tangible value is gained through Quinnian mysticism; a mysticism dolled-up in rationalist garb? True, we get a strong form of sobriety toward life and ideas, a certain taking oneself in hand. But again it is that far too much is excluded and negated. It is the stuff of mystic obsession when we need guidelines for and deeper conversations about how we shall live life. Not how we shall annihilate our relationship to it.

You must please talk more about "what's most important and most fundamental". You make the reference but you do not fill it out. To be cogent (and discursive!) I think you'll have to spell it out, old chum!

[Diebert van Rhijn]

You must please talk more about "what's most important and most fundamental". You make the reference but you do not fill it out. To be cogent (and discursive!) I think you'll have to spell it out.

More specific, cogent and carefully weighed and crafted descriptions and references you'll have a hard time finding elsewhere in my view. But that doesn't mean they cannot be improved upon. You imply that so far it reads like filler but you then progress to demand even more filler! You want even tools? For your little tool shed? You are clearly not satisfied with emptiness and that's completely understandable. It's meaningless, nothing to hold unto and in language certainly a hiding place for all kinds of things afraid of sunlight. But those are no convincing arguments by themselves.

You don't think it's important to understand your own motive here? Why not just realizing this is not for you and move on? Why not spell it out? Know thou self? Way more useful than discussing the semantics of various mystical languages. Cut the crap about helping fellow men or writing fiction, society's predicament and so on. Life is way too short and human nature way to selfish. You are the one in opposition so you need to do the work! I am already in full agreement with you apart from my opinion that what you say is hardly applying in the context. But apart from that there's nothing wrong with your musing themselves. Great and clever entertainment but misdirected.

[Alex Jacob]

Diebert wrote: More specific, cogent and carefully weighed and crafted descriptions and references you'll have a hard time finding elsewhere in my view.

I am going to disregard your other comments as I have already explained my motives and reasons. If you don't want to speak about your sense of what is valuable and meaningful within the framework of the conversation I am broaching here, you are entirely within your right.

You are the one in opposition so you need to do the work! I am already in full agreement with you apart from my opinion that what you say is hardly applying in the context. But apart from that there's nothing wrong with your musing themselves. Great and clever entertainment but misdirected.

But I will once again attempt an inquiry: What exactly are you in full agreement with? Explain how my critique is not related to context.

If it were 'entertainment', how would it be 'misdirected'? (You don't have to answer that! You know that I don't at all regard the core of my arguments as 'entertainment', but I know you do. It is a variation of the 'aesthetics' argument, isn't it?)

Reason is all about focussing on what's most important and most fundamental first, to get to the essentials.

I would say that wisdom is all about what is most important and fundamental, and one arrives at that through various processes, the primary one certainly having to do with how one uses one's reason. But it is important to say that it could be 'reasonings of the heart' and also what one extracts from life experience, pain, sorrow and so many other events, that one transforms into 'wisdom'.

Wisdom usually comes later...when it appears so hard-won!

I call into question your wisdom, Diebert, and I do not mean that as an insult or an offhand, thoughtless or polemical comment. I wish to know what you think is the basis for wisdom in your life.

My basic difference with GF and Quinnism, and you to some extent, is one of differing visions of what IS wisdom. Quinn acts overtly like a child. You sound like a teenager. I am speaking as an adult.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

I would say that wisdom is all about what is most important and fundamental,

It's still the same principle of reason that way, just matured more fully and applied more deeply.

. I wish to know what you think is the basis for wisdom in your life.

Causality :-)

[Dan Rowden]

Nietzsche once wrote something with Alex in mind...

- Of Scholars:

They are clever, they have cunning fingers; what hath my simplicity to do with their multiplicity? Their fingers know well how to thread and knit and weave: thus they knit stockings of the mind! They work like millstones, and corn crushers - if grain be thrown into them! They know but too well how to grind corn and make white dust thereof. They watch one another well, and trust not one another over-much. Ingenious in petty strategems, they lie in wait for those whose knowledge goeth on lame feet; like spiders they wait. They know, moreover how to play with loaded dice. We are as strangers to one another, and their virtues are yet more repugnant to me than their falsehoods and loaded dice. They love not to hear that any goeth over their heads. Therefore they have laid wood and earth and refuse betwixt me and their heads. Thus have they deadened the sound of my footsteps; and hitherto the most learned have heard me least. For men are not equal: so speaketh justice. And that which I will, they cannot will!

[Bobo]

Enlightenment consists of going beyond all perspectives, beyond all arrangements of thought, beyond all mental frameworks and experiencing reality directly. The value of reason is that it can help clear away all of the conceptual barrieries that prevent the mind from connecting to this experiential reality.

It is not that I don't understand what you write, it is in fact an idea that is central certainly to Hindu doctrines. It is that I see this idea as a trap, and it is used by the people who take it up do annihilate connection with themselves, the people around them, and to life.

It's one thing to disagree with a central Hindu doctrine, Buddhist ways, neo-Platonic versions of this, or to disagree with how Christians interpret their Jesus in one specific light and not some other. But it's another thing to keep harping about it here, a place not overly interested in the intellectual fine print, over and over, and not even a fundamentally Hindu, Buddhist or Christian place to begin with.

The Hindu would be reaching Nirvana (here enlightenment) by ending rebirth in (of) Samsara (here delusions) by non-attachment.*

If it is Hindu, Buddhist or Christian... I may as well quote Lao:

"Fame or Self: Which matters more? Self or Wealth: Which is more precious? Gain or Loss: Which is more painful? He who is attached to things will suffer much. He who saves will suffer heavy loss. A contented man is rarely disappointed. He who knows when to stop does not find himself in trouble. He will stay forever safe."

*Where "all perspectives" are Maya.

[David Quinn]

Because you [Diebert] are never able to put into clear prose just exactly what you in truth recommend. You vaguely refer to a kind of ratiocination and to 'wisdom' as if it is all acutely clear what is meant.

I don't have any problems understanding Diebert's prose. It is normally clear and insightful. And I am certainly very clear about what I write about.

The "vagueness" that you see is a product of your own shortcomings.

But we really do have to define what are the objects of such 'wisdom'. A simple question: What is the possible value of 'enlightenment'? David, who waxes mystical, refers to well-being or 'freedom' but this is not enough.

What shines through in your writing is that you have a lot of unresolved issues that you cannot let go of and this is your hampering your desire and interest to seek what is beyond them. You cannot see the value of wisdom because wisdom does not seem to directly address the unresolved problems that consume you, just as a drug-addict cannot see the value of wisdom because he is so consumed with battling his addiction.

This is why you see wisdom as being disconnected from life. It isn't really disconnected from life, but it does represent a quantum leap beyond drug-addiction.

You have, in fact, almost no connection to the intellectual and spiritual traditions of this matrix known as 'Christianity' or as I prefer to say of 'Mediterranean culture' and the products of the 'Mediterranean self'.

I was brought up in the Roman Catholic Church, so I actually have an intimate knowledge of what mainstream Christianity is all about. There has certainly been nothing that you have raised regarding Christianity that is new to me. Its soul is very clear to me, which is why I can dismiss it out of hand. I know it and I reject it.

But you are very deeply involved in a project that you describe as 'directly perceiving reality'. It may be more than anything else a project first dreamed up on the Indian subcontinent but we cannot be too sure: you are quite idiosyncratic and, when push comes to shove, not a little cagey when pressed. Yet it seems to me that you will always resort, in the end, to 'non-rationalisms'---mystical statements---about the nature of your quest and its object. At this point you exit 'the ballpark' of classical ratiocination and doing so forfeit the right to call your processes 'rational'.

Again, you are revealing your own shortcomings here. There is no real division between rationality (when fully expressed) and mysticism (used in the deepest sense of the word). To be fully rational is to be fully mystical.

The fact that you are unable to follow this reasoning (because of your attachment to your unresolved issues) and that you cannot make head nor tail of deeper forms of logic is irrelevent. As Diebert rightly says, you are projecting own inadequacies onto this forum and you don't even realize that you are doing it.

Quinn acts overtly like a child. You sound like a teenager. I am speaking as an adult.

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”

He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 18: 1-3

[David Quinn]

If it is Hindu, Buddhist or Christian... I may as well quote Lao:

"Fame or Self: Which matters more? Self or Wealth: Which is more precious? Gain or Loss: Which is more painful? He who is attached to things will suffer much. He who saves will suffer heavy loss. A contented man is rarely disappointed. He who knows when to stop does not find himself in trouble. He will stay forever safe."

That's Chuang Tzu, isn't it?

Here is another one from Chuang Tzu:

Who can join with others without joining with others? Who can do with others without doing with others? Who can climb up to heaven and wander in the mists, roam the infinite, and forget life forever and forever?

[Bobo]

It's from Tao, here's Legge's translation:

44
Or fame or life,
Which do you hold more dear?
Or life or wealth,
To which would you adhere?
Keep life and lose those other things;
Keep them and lose your life:--which brings
Sorrow and pain more near?

Thus we may see,
Who cleaves to fame
Rejects what is more great;
Who loves large stores
Gives up the richer state.

Who is content
Needs fear no shame.
Who knows to stop
Incurs no blame.
From danger free
Long live shall he.

And here's Oasis : p:

Maybe I don't really want to know
How your garden grows
'Cause I just want to fly
Lately, did you ever feel the pain
In the morning rain
As it soaks it to the bone?

Maybe I just want to fly
I want to live, I don't want to die
Maybe I just want to breathe
Maybe I just don't believe
Maybe you're the same as me
We see things they'll never see
You and I are gonna live forever

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDrcWkSsVqA

"Noel Gallagher from Oasis said in an interview included in the bonus DVD of the Oasis compilation Stop the Clocks that this song inspired him to write "Live Forever", as he thought it was a bit too depressing and set about writing an uplifting song, although Gallagher is a Nirvana fan. Gallagher observed: "I remember Nirvana had a tune called I Hate Myself And I Want To Die, and I was like, 'Well, I'm not fucking having that'... I can't have people like that coming over here, on smack, fucking saying that they hate themselves and they wanna die. That's fucking rubbish.""

Nirvana - I hate myself and I want to die

Even if you own a wide
Even if you rack, I may say
I could never want a bribe
I've been there for matter, well said

In the someday, with my sound

Even if you wanted light
I could never matter to play
Even if you want a life
Even if I like it, you're sad

In the someday, in my sound

Even if you own a wife
Even if you wanted one thing
I could never want a life
I could never, only one day

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YZZiIlJHVA

- Of Scholars:

They are clever, they have cunning fingers; what hath my simplicity to do with their multiplicity? Their fingers know well how to thread and knit and weave: thus they knit stockings of the mind! They work like millstones, and corn crushers - if grain be thrown into them! They know but too well how to grind corn and make white dust thereof. They watch one another well, and trust not one another over-much. Ingenious in petty strategems, they lie in wait for those whose knowledge goeth on lame feet; like spiders they wait. They know, moreover how to play with loaded dice. We are as strangers to one another, and their virtues are yet more repugnant to me than their falsehoods and loaded dice. They love not to hear that any goeth over their heads. Therefore they have laid wood and earth and refuse betwixt me and their heads. Thus have they deadened the sound of my footsteps; and hitherto the most learned have heard me least. For men are not equal: so speaketh justice. And that which I will, they cannot will!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NP484iwhjeQ

[Alex Jacob]

It's the same all over again: you swarm out like antibodies and envelope the offensive agent. Nothing of substance and no real consideration of the critique vis-a-vis the Edifice.

With Quinnism The-Will-to-Win...will always win!
It has Triumphalism built in!

;-)

[Cory Duchesne]

Quinn acts overtly like a child. You sound like a teenager. I am speaking as an adult.

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”

He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 18: 1-3

"A drunken man has to be led by a boy, whom he follows stumbling and not knowing whither he goes, for his soul is moist." - Heraclitus

[David Quinn]

It's the same all over again: you swarm out like antibodies and envelope the offensive agent.
Nothing of substance and no real consideration of the critique vis-a-vis the Edifice.

You may have to rethink your approach. It's too ham-fisted and abrasive at the moment. It gets everyone's backs up. I did warn you.

It would also help if you actually understood the thing you're suppose to be critiquing.

With Quinnism The-Will-to-Win...will always win!
It has Triumphalism built in!

It's not just me. You have insulted everyone here. That is why they are on your case.

[David Quinn]

It's from Tao

Fair enough, my mistake.

[Bobo]

"Or fame or life,
...
Or life or wealth,"

Is pretty recognizable I would say : )


More from Chuang Tsu:

"Do not try to develop what is natural to man; instead, develop what is natural to Heaven. He who develops Heaven benefits life; he who develops man injures life.
Do not reject what is of Heaven, do not neglect what is of man, and the people will be close to the attainment of Truth."

"It is easy to be indifferent to the afflictions of Heaven, but hard to be indifferent to the benefits of man."

[Cory Duchesne]

"It is easy to be indifferent to the afflictions of Heaven, but hard to be indifferent to the benefits of man."

Being partial (holding on) to what there is in this world for benefit, one will surely be bound to affliction.

"Embody to the fullest what has no end and wander where there is no trail. Hold on to all that you have received from Heaven but do not think you have gotten anything."

[Diebert van Rhijn]

It's the same all over again: you swarm out like antibodies and envelope the offensive agent. Nothing of substance and no real consideration of the critique vis-a-vis the Edifice.

Nice one I must say. But the analogy is topsy-turvy : you are the suffering body reaching for antibiotics. You are the substance, seeking its true empty nature while denying the same every inch of the long drag. You are creating a bit of drama around your presence by this basic conflict: attracted by truth and being repulsed at the same time. You keep hanging, preferring the spot between sleep and wake, between night and day, for ever lingering. You are human. You are lam. But you are not special in your opposition.

[Alex Jacob]

I say what I think, David, I describe what I see. How it is dealt with, or not, is not my affair or my problem.

I have been avidly following all of David's posts to his new blog, and even more avidly following the near complete uncritical response of the intellectual lemmings who for all their assertions, blustering and fundamentalist formulations, seem to reveal again and again merely a self-imposed limitation in the use of the mind and spirit. I am again somewhat shocked by the intellectual laziness and the desire (need?) to shut-out constructive dialectic.

I stand by this and everything I have written. The Edifice you have established is by its nature unassailable. This is both it's weak point and it's strong point. For my part, though I would prefer it differently, a direct opposition makes it easier for me to formulate my ideas. Please don't think that I am complaining.

I acknowledge the psychological assessments but don't have anything to say about them. I am open to ideas and thoughts and feelings that can be expressed rationally and tangibly and even beyond that in poetic allusions and even in mystical declarations. But they should be called what they are. I think you, David, have a perfect set-up where you blur the distinctions when you desire to or need to. But note: when anyone is asked to speak honestly and opening about enlightenment, their enlightenment, they show that it cannot be done. It is not really a real thing nor are its benefits to thought at all tangible. It LOOKS like a foil behind which people conceal themselves. I simply *note* how very peculiar this maneouvre looks as I watch it playing out. I think that these 'ideas of the East' are often used in that way and in this sense, as Ortega y Gasset pointed out, the declarations of the mystics do not reveal as much as they imply.

Really, there is nothing more to comment on as in 20" of vertical board space nothing substantial has been said. It is pure 'block'.

It is typical of the followers and the disciples to fall into line and perform this important role in defense of the Edifice. In these 3 pages even IF you saw me as the snarling Devil himself there are hundreds of opportunities for discourse and dialectic.

Still, I have a very clear idea where I wish to proceed. It falls into 3-4 areas. One is the sycophantism one notes here, especially in the responses to your blog posts. The second is a more studied critique of Zen method which casts light on the coercive and non-discursive brand of spirituality that is valued (largely) here; the third is a more thorough revisit of the issue of women and femininity and the cost of the acute denial of both that operates at the core 'here', and the fourth is, if I have time, some comparative work between some of the more obviously 'cultic' religions and the 'disguised' irrationalism of Quinnism. (This last one is a little tentative in my mind).
_____________________________________________

Thanks a million, Cory! ;-)

[Dennis Mahar]

The same post 4000 times Alex means you're not doing philosophy and means you're not talking to Quinn.
The pining for the 'softness' of women and the recoiling from the 'hardness' of men speaks about mother-hunger.

The Jungian Transpersonal Psychologists for about $150 a session can take you thru' infancy again.
They will cuddle you, play with you, develop a bond of trust with you, bring you to the much needed fully expressed tantrum required.
They'll take you into the sandpit with a little bucket and spade and down the park for a game of catch.
Take you for walks, holding your hand, listen cheerfully to your chatter.
They're able to generate that mother-child thing that gives you the attention and caring which you persistently complain is missing from Quinns project.

A chick I met who went with the experience adored it and got free of her emotional demands on others.
She's now completely fine that her parents were remote.
It's empty and meaningless.

[Alex Jacob]

Some ask me why I am here, knowing what I know about the limited mental structure of many who make this place an intellectual and spiritual home. It would seem almost a form of masochism, wouldn't it? to hang in there and subject oneself to the likes, for example, of dearest Dennis. I have the sense that Dennis follows the lead provided by the misrepresentations offered by Diebert and David: these two set the tone, and once it is expressed, the underlings will instinctively fulfill their role, which is of course service to the Edifice. And the Edifice, oddly enough, is in essence an insubstantial thing, a sort of idea about the possibility of 'direct vision' of the totality and some revelation that might come from that. It is like a believe in an incorporeal eye that hovers over 'reality' and through which one imagines, longingly, that one might see through. And this is the 'patrimony sold for a mess of pottage': the substantial traded for the substantial, the ideal for the possibility of the real (or in any case that is how I see it).

But even though I see this, I then think that this indeed is exactly THE place to communicate the ideas I have. In any case it is certainly the place where those ideas of mine stand out in relief. A group of boys who in a form of narcissistic communalism (like out of Lord of the Flies? Is that possible as a comparison to this 'cultish' environment?) play elaborate games where 'reason' is supposed, where the form is observed, but who are playing a most unreasonable game. I don't know who will come along and finally provide the 'authorized' classification!

Dennis is the lowest common denominator here, and one who I can only imagine is an embarrassment. Yet the service he performs is valuable and for this reason his discourse is accepted. Toe the line and you will achieve your place. Curiously, since it was brought out first by David and then echoed by Diebert, the analysis is now at a parental level. It it had moved to this from accusations of 'aestheticism', 'femininity', 'stupidity', 'sentimentality' and any number of different labels, but the ideas that are brought forward will never be discussed. If you don't 'get it'---if you don't understand a priori what the Master is talking about and agree with him (it is the same as agreeing, literally, with the child Jesus)---ipso facto the fault is yours! Because if you 'got it' you would never be in opposition.

What a lovely little circle!

There IS a usefulness, or perhaps 'benefit' is the correct word, in going through all the work required to sift through all the myriad subterfuges that are thrown up, all these weird mirrors and reversals and inversions---in short all the endless games. In the end---doesn't this appear to be the lesson?---we enmesh ourselves in our own traps. We crawl inside the traps that keep us bound up and the 'liberator' is labeled an enemy and resisted tooth and nail. Isn't this in essence what Quinnism deals on, I mean at the core? That there is this web of delusion that we have to resist and that we need to have 'thinking tools' to be able to do that. But the terrible irony is that...

Well, the jury's still out. We suppose we have nailed and labelled the pathology operating here, but we also know that it will NEVER be accepted nor really even allowed as a topic of conversation. Isn't this what a psychologist deals with when dealing with entrenched neurosis? And yet it is true that the psychological analysis is impossible to wield. You can only allude and then everyone makes their own decision.

I am resolved to stick with the use of reason to look at and to uncover what 'shuns the light of day'. There is a darker underbelly in these irrational, fantasy-based notions about 'direct perception of reality' and all that this is built on: contempt of self, contempt of women, a rejection of the fact of femininity, and a thralldom to torrents of words out of scripture squirted out so to avoid clean, discriminating discourse and dialectic.

And in case anyone asks: I do it because I have to. I do it because as a task it appeared before me. Until I have moved through it and overcome it. I have felt that at times there is a shamanistic metaphysic operating here (for me). In order to heal something you have to really know the effect of the sickness, you have to take it on or go inside it. That is the shamanic model. I feel I touch here a certain form of sickness which in no sense am I immune to or disconnected from: it is part our our social body and it is our 'karma' to deal with it and to heal it.

That is what I think, gentlemen! (And ladies). ;-)

I promise though to bring forward some of the new angles.

[Patrick Watts]

Reading these long, piping, prancing and presumptuous rivers of misunderstanding, I can't help but think back to a Satyr I once knew who tried to prove his flute was superior to my Lyre. I tend to see things as existing in complimentary contrasts, and anyone who comes into my space with the idea that I cannot exist in harmony to a different note really doesn't deserve life.

Alex, you're merely a different note in the grand musical scheme. A different instrument, a different shade. Perhaps a fox berry bush tucked away among some pines.

I'll have to dedicate this latest song to you, as you remind so much of a particular Satyr I came across not too long ago.

Marsyas River

[Alex Jacob]

I can't help but think back to a Satyr I once knew who tried to prove his flute was superior to my Lyre.

Did he use language or did he try to do it on the Pan Pipes? ;-)

I see your point. I do feel it is a little more complex, unfortunately.

Some part of your song reminded me of Tim Buckley: Song to the Siren. The fox reference and the pagan undertones.

Studio Version.