Musings, Critiques.

[Alex Jacob]

Whatever point you are getting to is lost on me, generally! Also, your critical article on Western (legal) liberalism is really not so critical. In any case, instead of saying, say "it is all empty & meaningless", it's critical base is exactly the relevant conversation! 'Our traditions' are those of conversation, not some absurd end of it.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Alex, it was never clear to me how you place the Genius Forum or its problems in relation to your critique of the (Western) world at large. For example you wrote about the postmodern 'jettisoning' of culture, engagement and discourse (even thought itself in a qualitative sense) as on-going almost everywhere in the world. Do you see perhaps the themes drifting around at this forum as a condensed, exaggerated example of the ills of modern society?

You appear rather two-faced on the issue. On one hand you are clearly "counter culture", the main Gnostic trait, sick to your stomach of your own culture with you having not much left in common with it, as you admitted. But on the other hand you are writing often in defense of "Western liberal traditions", Christian and Jewish culture or even like you suggested the possibility of being a "fairly decent person" which would be tied up with the same set of values and morals as you were also becoming sick of. This would make you more of a reactionary I suppose despite your interest in liberal traditions. It's like you're admiring the tree but despising the fruits. Or you think some particular fruits are poisoned by external means. But isn't this another attempt to blindly defend the tree?

As for my own position, I do not regard this forum as separate from any Christian "civilization" and its problems. It's displaying much of the same artifacts and artificers. I don't think it even pretends to be some elevated place with distinguished members but sometimes it looks to be full of reflections serving perhaps to realize the mirror. I think that sometimes you get caught up into that. And you're not the only one.

But my main drive with this was to steer the conversation to a clearer focus on what you are critiquing and what not. It's one thing to oppose, it's another thing to propose.

[Dennis Mahar]

Seen from one angle this recent display, to me, is evidence of a bankrupt system of thinking. Maybe it is that as Westerners it is so fundamental to our methods of being to focus on the tangible, that in attempting to make these doctrines 'real' for us, we only demonstrate the seeming vacuity of the ideas and render ourselves ridiculous. Emptiness, 'experience of emptiness', ineffable silence, conceptualized emptiness, enlightenment, 'thingification', Tao, Absolute: what a vain waste of time! There are so many substantial things to focus on, what is the possible value of this crap? Would we sacrifice the Western liberal traditions...for this shite?

That's you talking to your parents concerning an old wound.
Your war on the East is your war on your parents.

Compassion for your parents lad.

You getting thrown into their life like a 'hot brick' with an outstanding flair for soap opera.

They would have had to ditch their Benjamin Spock child rearing manuals pronto and head somewhere for refuge.

[Alex Jacob]

Diebert:

I have seen the 'escape' into Buddhist mysticism (including a vague notion of 'enlightenment') as a reaction to the confusion of the modern age, or perhaps the nihilism. But certainly the madness of a business-driven, propaganda-driven marketing system. This is linked to TV and also cinema-culture: a culture of the spectacle. But please understand: I do not say this is 'bad' in and of itself (Buddhism, etc.) The looking into other traditions, and value-finding in them, can be and often is a way to enhance comprehension of our own traditions and values. Does that sound fair? I do very much suggest that with aspects of Solwayism and Quinnism (how much of a formulator is Dan? I don't know) has taken a very strange, and very questionable direction. But I am aware too that most of its motive power derives from its radical stand. So the question as to how it might reform itself is, to me, up in the air. My impression of Quinn is that he is so launched in his direction, and so adamantly committed to it, that there is no turning back. What this means, for me, is a critique that is offered alongside. Now, if you wish to know Why? (I even bother) you'll have to mine through my posts because, at least, I do and have tried to describe why.

We know that our cultures (I speak mostly of America culture) are 'jettisoning' our heritage, but allow me to clearly state what this heritage is. I locate it here. This is 'Mediterranean culture' and we are the 'Mediterranean selves' that are the product of it. I have made, at least in small ways (since I am unable to find a way in), some effort to get inside Buddhist and also Eastern philosophical systems, but generally speaking I cannot find in them anything that compares with the ideas of Mediterranean culture. In no sense does this mean that there are not great and important things in Chinese, Indian, Japanese or any other repository of ideas, but rather that (in my view) it is our own system which has allowed for a real transformation of man's estate.

Do you see perhaps the themes drifting around at this forum as a condensed, exaggerated example of the ills of modern society?

The question is a good one, and so instead of me attempting to tackle it, let's put it out there as one everyone can take a shot at, including yourself. What do you think?

You appear rather two-faced on the issue. On one hand you are clearly "counter culture", the main Gnostic trait, sick to your stomach of your own culture with you having not much left in common with it, as you admitted. But on the other hand you are writing often in defense of "Western liberal traditions", Christian and Jewish culture or even like you suggested the possibility of being a "fairly decent person" which would be tied up with the same set of values and morals as you were also becoming sick of. This would make you more of a reactionary I suppose despite your interest in liberal traditions. It's like you're admiring the tree but despising the fruits. Or you think some particular fruits are poisoned by external means. But isn't this another attempt to blindly defend the tree?

Two-faced ('lying', either consciously or unconsciously) or do you perhaps mean 'self-contradicting'? I would like to believe that I am 'being honest' but we all know that we tend to demonize the other party and accuse them of 'intellectual dishonestly'. Please note that, with the Reading List linked to above, I am delineating a whole area, a concentrated area where 'all that we are', think, do and believe is to be found. To the degree that we organize ourselves around such a core, is the degree (in my view) that we become and remain relevant. Could you imagine conversation and construction with a group of persons familiar with these sources and vitally involved in them? I don't think we would find ourselves in the brainless zone of modernity as we know it and abhor it. Am I kidding myself? Is there something I am not seeing?

I think Reaction is a very interesting subject! It is generally understood as 'going backward' and not being 'progressive'. Would you agree? I have explored reactionary attitudes and come to understand what they do to a person (for example, Bob Dylan in his Christian phase seemed a classic example of 'reactionary fundamentalism', as does the hardening position of Francis Schaeffer and many others). Am I a reactionary? I would have to say no because my position is one that is not shrinking but is broadening. At least I see it like that. I cannot be held to a specific position right now because my ideas are changing. Is that good or bad? Where will it lead? I am uncertain. My emphasis of a few years ago on 'our Jewish and Christian traditions' has opened up considerably. Or, simply broadened into a broad and open area that is our tradition' itself (as in the reading list). I cannot define and do not know another area in which to move. Would David's 'unmediated vision of the Totality' do a number on me? Would Dennis' deeply internalized 'empty & meaningless' mantra? Would an emersion on Buddhism or neo-Buddhism solve problems here?

So, I have now defined the Tree. But it is still true that I am deeply critical of the (American) present. Are they linked? Yes. Are they the same? No. At this point, at least in the idea-realm, I would begin to define a 'reactionary platform'. Turn off the TV forever. Read widely but especially the trunk and the branches of the 'tree'. Think. Write. Converse. In my view, that represents a substantial step in the direction of a 'cure' to the inanity of the present. The other part of this is the spiritual issue, or the religious-spiritual side. A very big part of my upbringing. But less relevant or less important than the result: a clarification of myself in this present.

I do not regard this forum as separate from any Christian "civilization" and its problems. It's displaying much of the same artifacts and artificers. I don't think it even pretends to be some elevated place with distinguished members but sometimes it looks to be full of reflections serving perhaps to realize the mirror. I think that sometimes you get caught up into that. And you're not the only one.

For the record, I don't believe I said nor do I mean that this forum and its problems are somehow separate from Christian civilization. Indeed, I find them quite linked, but more in unconscious, or non-self-conscious ways.

But my main drive with this was to steer the conversation to a clearer focus on what you are critiquing and what not. It's one thing to oppose, it's another thing to propose.

If one's intent is focussed on, say, a radical project of severing all connection with 'the world' and gaining some special vision which renders one, more or less, a beatified saint (neo-Buddhist sanctification), then in that pursuit, following the story-line, you can and you will jettison everything! All 'earthly' value. It is a form of radical asceticism. While it is true that I oppose THAT as a genuine solution either for the individual or for a culture, I have made endless efforts to hold up other, general possibilities. You see, reaction against an acute reduction (self eaten away by 'acid') cannot be opposed by some similar reduction. It is opposed more with an abundance of possibilities for human life and activity, all of which can be deeply spiritualized.

[Dennis Mahar]

Opinions on cultural machinery is like pissing in the wind.
Confront your own machinery.
Break thru' that.
Have your mind-fuck.
Your 'one trick pony' stunt is empty and meaningless.
How is anyone gonna' get thru' your miasma.
That would be terrifying wouldn't it?
If someone got thru'.

[Alex Jacob]

Diebert, do you ever feel inclined to 'answer' Dennis? What do you think of his statements? What about you, David? Do you agree? Or, is Dennis a sort of loose canon here?

*Scratches head*.

[Dennis Mahar]

Is that the one you pulled on your father when he tried to get thru'.

[Trevor Salyzyn]

Go out into the wilderness and apply your philosophy. Can Alex survive on a desert island?

[Alex Jacob]

Respectfully, Dennis, I am going to decline to converse any more. I will read your posts though (I do read them). But we have no common platform to be able to talk. Even you must see that.

[Dennis Mahar]

There's no 'the answers' buddy.

There's just the moves you make.

You get that much don't you?

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Diebert, do you ever feel inclined to 'answer' Dennis? What do you think of his statements?

Most of his posts are not of the "answerable" type, not designed to exchange viewpoints on this or that. I did have exchanges with him a few times when you were not paying attention and there's obviously a good mind and sharp observance behind the facade. He's like Tomas his Zen twin brother. Or if you want to hear criticisms, he can sound as well as good old member "unknown" with his "I do not exists" and "every body babbles". (how is that for nostalgia, Dan?)

[Alex Jacob]

Sorry to speak about you in the third-person, Dennis. You are literally incomprehensible to me and as I said we have no common platform, but I am willing to suspend disbelief and imagine you like some zen sage. I know you feel you have something to impart, and I certainly hope you keep right on imparting. But for my part---and until illumination comes to me---I prefer to de-enrol myself from dialogue. It is futile, I think. More than that: painful.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Alex, I think I can do better than you. Lets try.

The human condition is all about escapism as reaction to the confusion caused by the shadows cast by awareness. Buddhism is for a large part about easing the suffering and offering ways to stand back, to lighten the camel's load. The strength of Buddhism is the recognition of that situation at least. It's up to the practitioner to realize any depth in that perception. The world is full of different approaches to suffering, to this dilemma of existence and no matter how odd the material of Quinn and Solway might appear to anyone, it must be obvious that there's a lot worse one could find almost everywhere in large volumes. Not to mention that there is nothing fundamentally new being said by them. It's easier to accuse them of not being original than to imply some strangeness.

Motive powers cannot be derived from any radical stand. The power emanates by whatever remains unspoken. If someone wants to understand it, not the analysis of what's being said is needed but getting at what's not being said. Which of course assumes a similar orientation in place. But it might be important to understand that it's not created simply by deriving the secret signs and handshakes.

There is "no turning back" for anyone in this life. Everything is just the fruit of ones life long labor. A culmination of all events leading up to this. Therefore nobody should aim for radical conversion because in all cases something is being enacted what was desired already, what was being worked towards out of sight. Wisdom grows slowly like all core life experiencing and shaping. It's a one way street indeed.

There's the issue of being two-faced, or perhaps better described as having "two minds", like the God Janus. To me all lies are forms of contradiction, consciously or subconsciously, deliberate or ignorant. It's a shady area. A certain fluency of position and idea arrangement is normal although it can feel unsettling. There's this wonderful bible verse: "Foxes have holes, and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to sleep." This could be expressing something about manhood. Always in one or more aspects outcast, double, cursed, dwelling, uncertain, disturbed, troubled, lost, just that bit out of tune....call it the "restlessness" of the eternal. Good or bad?

Being alive means being connected, one can belief in connecting to this or that source or belief in disconnecting but it's both contradictory. One thing is ejected while another thing is embraced. The exchange is endless. Good or bad?

[Dennis Mahar]

Sorry to speak about you in the third-person, Dennis. You are literally incomprehensible to me and as I said we have no common platform, but I am willing to suspend disbelief and imagine you like some zen sage. I know you feel you have something to impart, and I certainly hope you keep right on imparting. But for my part---and until illumination comes to me---I prefer to de-enrol myself from dialogue. It is futile, I think. More than that: painful.

one trick pony,
running circles,
jumping hoops.

geddit?

[Alex Jacob]

Alex, I think I can do better than you. Lets try.

Initially, I desire to note the odd phrasing: "Let us try...for me to do better than you".

You've got to admit there are two opposing currents there. ;-)

I see some possibilities for comparison of view in what you have written, and hope to get to that tomorrow, yet I don't see much relation between my declarations and your apologetics. Maybe it is as you say: the parts that are 'speaking' and not getting through are invisible areas, all that you mention as not being expressed?

Maybe we should take to grading each other's and everyone's posts? ;-) Though I appreciate your post I just can't give it a very high mark. If the transformation of Laird's reference to a journey by bus at night into a metaphor for our uncertain existence deserved, say, an A-, I would only grant this present one a C+ or a B-

[Dennis Mahar]

don't look away lad.
splendid.

do you think causality is making moves?
do you think evolution is making moves?
do you think a possibility is a move?

always moving.

one trick pony?

every move you make.
machinery.

[Alex Jacob]

Hey Dennis. I looked up to see what your first posts were. After about 5 to others you glommed on to me. I read some of them and noted your earnestness of those days: a young-sounding fellow and a committed, Bhodisattva attitude. Back then, you and Kelly were attempting to remind me of my 'true nature'---rather sweet in a certain sense---but no one could ever get through to me about 'Absolute Reality' (sigh). You kept asking me to put down my weapons and to appear in peace, which to a good Greek is like asking to put your hand in his toga. At some point you asked me a rhetorical question: Does Mexico exist? We exchanged a few posts with me leading you on. And then I came up with this post to you which I'd completely forgotten:

"Mexico exists in a really unusual way. Well, maybe not so unusually after all. Still, it exists peculiarly. When you cross the border into Tijuana or into Ciuedad Juarez the first thing you notice is that people's dreams have a tendency to walk around more. Not just at night but during the day. You stare at a whole wall of morning glory vines growing up on a ramshackle steel fence in front of an abandoned lot. The carcass of a dead dog was thrown there months ago and vultures feasted on it. There is this imperceptible movement of the blossems---deep purple flowers and white flowers with purple lines---and you just know that someone is dreaming that whole scene and you are only participating in the seeing of it. The wind rustles as if in agreement.

In the North---as you well know---dreams have been far more contained. Psychic clamp-down. They escape far less frequently and if anyone is captured by dreams they are mechanical and machine dreams; automated dreams like those of people who live and sleep beside freeways where the swish of tires drowns everything out. Dreams do still escape from people's imaginations but they always rush to the outer confines: down in drainage ditches where a bunch of cattails is growing, out in the outskirts beyond the freeways where the wind soughs through the branches, maybe up on some inaccesible plateau behind the factory with hissing steam where you hear the clanking of an automated interior but there are no windows to look in. The railroad spur curves up the valley and you watch the locomotive climb the hill and enter into huge doors that open of their own accord. You hear the whistle as it enters the cavernous inner space.

I doubt though that Mexicans exist. I am rather inclined to see a horde of virtual Mexicans, their imaginations splattered open by an eagle teevee who feasts on their psychic wounds, who are in the process of disappearing, like hard and clear shadows when a cloud passes over the sun. What was once distinct softens, and at a certain point its very existence is questioned. Someone though is blowing into a trumpet. Was it deep in the past or right now on the Zocalo of Mexico City beside uncovered Aztec ruins? I can't be sure because there is a man burning copal in a clay pot and clouds of sweet smoke have diffused my vision. I'd ask you if you see any clearer but I assume you can't. The trumpet is playing some sort of Mexican polka. A woman floats by on a canal of greenish water on a skiff piled high with white calalillies with succulent green stems. She has no teeth but she smiles like solar goddess, and disappears.

I hold a skull in my hands whose ironic grin sums up everything I think and feel. A tiny green lizards pokes its head out of an eye socket. It watches me and I see the breathing movement in its tiny ribs.

As to shared views of reality, I can only say that everything seems to unfold from a series of perceptual accidents. There are ten heavy glasses on a wooden table on lightly rippled sand that stretches to the horizon. The sky is light blue verging into white. It is midday. Under each glass is a little man or woman and I watch the psychic electricity pass among them like flocks of spirit hummingbirds.

You approach from the left.

Cutting up the Mexican you find what looks like the innards of an old blender and mother boards and old transistor radios and unexpectedly a motor starts to whir. There is a jumble of parts lying on the ground including many glass eyes of all colors. You realize it is twilight and you hear a chorus of coyotes from beyond a long outcropping of rock that looks like the back of a stegasaurus. Three bright stars shine over the horizon.

It begins to snow.

You decide to build a fire and rush about collecting twigs and little branches. Then you are sitting next to the fire hypnotized by the twisting flames. The fire crackles and sputters as if angry. You hear a bell tolling from far away. You think of me and I appear on the other side of the fire dressed like an Aztec priest with a long obsidian knife.

It is time to submit to sacrifice. All the omens have been pointing to it. Everything becomes clear.

You offer up your chest and though fearful there is relief in your eyes. A bird screams from a dead tree. The blade descends and as it penetrates your chest there is a white flash and then a cascade of brilliant colors."

[Dennis Mahar]

What does that shit mean?
intoxicated by romantic sensations?

if the strong suit is 'love of writing' which is fine,
and a style of writing shows up as a possibility for 'the love of writing',
called out as,
'intoxicated by romantic sensations'..

anything else?

except that Quinns project of a logical investigation into reality must certainly be experienced as dour and constraining to a romantic disposition with a hangup on Eastern thinking.

Is that gamed out properly?

[Diebert van Rhijn]

You've got to admit there are two opposing currents there. ;-)

I see some possibilities for comparison of view in what you have written, and hope to get to that tomorrow, yet I don't see much relation between my declarations and your apologetics. Maybe it is as you say: the parts that are 'speaking' and not getting through are invisible areas, all that you mention as not being expressed?

Maybe we should take to grading each other's and everyone's posts? ;-) Though I appreciate your post I just can't give it a very high mark. If the transformation of Laird's reference to a journey by bus at night into a metaphor for our uncertain existence deserved, say, an A-, I would only grant this present one a C+ or a B-

It wasn't a very good post, perhaps because it was designed to mirror yours, to reverse the direction step by step. But it was late and it lacks the ability to stand on its own as a coherent whole. I still think there are some very meaningful things in there, meaningful in the context of this forum while your posts are generally meaningless in its context. Of course you also suggest to create another context here but that's clearly not going to happen. For this reason your own posts often sound rather disconnected, not building any bridges and therefore result in remaining self-centered. But enough critique already. Do not bother replying on my last post as it was not designed as discussion piece, it's just for consumption.

There's still a question you seem to have avoided answering. Let me repeat: you have stated very clearly that "our culture" has become something you can no longer bear, something that makes you "sick to the stomach", having little left in common with it, a culture without thought, diseased and fully fractured. Can we agree on you having said and meant it?

Now if your position is so radically counter-culture and are finding yourself in a position of being "cast-out", why would you mount such grave sounding criticism to the ideas on this forum as being disconnected, unwholesome and anti-life? Because to hear that from someone disconnected from his own culture, painting the picture of a pariah, is bordering on being hypocrite. It shows you are in the same boat, the same situation like so many posters here are in but you criticize the approach of turning the attention within, while you are still there, isolated, "sickly", in opposition to all the neon signs of contemporary culture.

Again, this is not designed to be a discussion piece on culture or criticism toward your approach but a question for you to answer. How does your rather radical sounding rejection of modern culture relates to the criticism of this forum. How does the term "disconnect" relate to his and how would it affect your difficulty to relate, to work and flow with the signs and signals of modern culture?

[Alex Jacob]

Looking over Dennis's early posts, trying to get a sense of how he connected to this forum, I was surprised (I know that sounds ingenuous but it is true) to see that back then, and this probably goes back to the very beginning, I have been stating the same thing, more or less, though striving for different ways to say it. But I realized something that I had not realized with as much clarity. And the realization is that 'you-all' (that is, David, Kelly, Dennis and I think everyone who rallies behind the strange banner of the notion of the Absolute) are essentially outright religious fanatics! Do you remember the image of the Cheshire Cat? Who slowly disappears until only the smile remains, hanging in the air? My impression is that as all the ground underneath the platform for the construction of an Absolute religious concept, one that could contain and explain all phenomena, disappeared bit by bit until only the smile, a smile that reads 'Absolute', hangs in the air, unsupported by any 'machinery' of thought, so too this Abstract Absolute is seen and in a sense 'worshipped' here.

It is Dead God's stand in, isn't it?

Ah but here is the deep irony! This whole maneuver, at least in its presentation, is based (so it is said), on 'logic'. It has been 'logically determined' that there is this 'Absolute', and that in relation to it there is a logically determined course of action.

But hold the phone, folks! Stop right there! This is the facade and this is the 'lie'. But we can't really use the word 'lie' here and we have to recur to another word, to another concept, and really to another discipline: the study of religious thought; how it is formed, what upholds it, and very importantly what it does for those who practice it. Therefor! The key to understanding Quinnism and the QRS project and to unlocking its doors and getting at the inner cogs that drive it is not ratiocination as we understand it in an academic sense, but religious conviction!

The reason that it is not possible to reason with the denizens of this ultra- or perhaps hyper-religious system (hyper in its original sense) is because at the core it is not in any sense a rational system! But it houses itself, pretentiously but more than pretentiously absurdly, but not so much exactly absurdly as (and here it comes:) dishonestly as a group of rational ideas that lead to a notion of an Abstract Absolute that serves precisely the same purpose as the notion of God within conventional religious systems of thought! This is very tricky shit, in fact, and it takes some skill to see through the haze---a mystic haze mind you---and to discover the 'machinery' operating there.

Strangely, for me, the revelation goes further. You see I long ago identified myself as an 'essentially religious person'. By that I mean that when I scratch the surface of my consciousness, when I make the slightest effort to 'dig' within myself and my perceptions into the understructure of being, I come immediately in contact with divinity. It is precisely into that gnostic experience in the terms of gnosis (symbol, myth, but also 'sign', 'omen', Vision and 'all that'), that I define as both gnostic and the inevitable understructure of our very selves. I would use Diebert's Bus Journey in Deep Night allegory with images that appear on the windscreen (Platonic Cave allusions and also an allusion about the nature of a soul captured in a bodily drama and struggling to make sense of it) to allude to a 'reality' that we all share. But some of us have a far more---what is the word?---resilient mental and intellectual structure. Meaning, a mental structure so rigid that it is able to block certain forms of perception (mystic, non-rational, visionary, 'poetic', unconscious if you wanted to get Freudian/Jungian) and to hold rigidly to the Rational Edifice. I would locate David and Kevin and many others who glory in this particular System of organizing perception and structuring being in a particular and peculiar pole of human possibilities. But there is one odd characteristic of these fine fellows: they cannot accurately see themselves! It is almost like the classic Nerd Syndrome: a person so involved in their nerdishness that they have no means to understand all the other human types that people the planet!

But anyway, the point has more to do with this religious impulse in relation to these folks. But what is it exactly?! What exactly goes on here?! It is really a maddening project to get to the inside of it because the players themselves are nearly completely unaware of their own make-up.

When Diebert writes:

The human condition is all about escapism as reaction to the confusion caused by the shadows cast by awareness. Buddhism is for a large part about easing the suffering and offering ways to stand back, to lighten the camel's load. The strength of Buddhism is the recognition of that situation at least. It's up to the practitioner to realize any depth in that perception.

You look at this, you think about it, and you are forced to say (if not exclaim!): No! Yours is an apologetic statement but it is not a statement of fact. Or, to state 'facts' is to go much further than an apologetic position. To get to the nitty-gritty, to get to that truth which may require 'getting bloodied' is another endeavor altogether. And here: To understand the vast DEFENSE of an abstract concept, and to begin to approach first the seeing of the deep need for such defense, and then to begin to understand why it is needed and what function it serves for some individuals, is another group of questions!

And it is here, in respect to the GF project, that you will be thwarted at every turn. You will be fought, tripped-up, resisted, ridiculed---and listen: they you will use every trick of sophistry to defeat your enquiry, which is to say to avoid looking into the innards of their system and seeing how it functions. It has all the features of a classic neurotic defense!

Diebert further writes: Motive powers cannot be derived from any radical stand. The power emanates by whatever remains unspoken. If someone wants to understand it, not the analysis of what's being said is needed but getting at what's not being said. Which of course assumes a similar orientation in place. But it might be important to understand that it's not created simply by deriving the secret signs and handshakes.

Oh my dear sir, yes they very much can! This is where your apologetics becomes subterfuge, obsurement. If I may use psychological lingo, it is a generally known fact that a 'neurosis' is a kind of psychic knot that like a blockage in a stream (if you will) holds back what is essentially 'energy'. When the knot is loosened a great deal of energy is suddenly released. The 'radical stand' I refer to is a whole array of suppression of self (sexual, emotional, of the 'feminine' and female, the list goes on). Linked into this system of absolutist thinking is a whole other and undiscussed factors (May I quote you? '...not the analysis of what's being said is needed but getting at what's not being said'). The 'secret signs and handshakes' are a similar patterning and organization of reactions to one's own self, to the world, to the body, and to life.

Diebert wrote: I still think there are some very meaningful things in there [a previous post], meaningful in the context of this forum while your posts are generally meaningless in its context.

This is an interesting and useful statement. It is not at all that I am 'meaningless' in this context, for after all it is 'empty & meaningless' to use ironically Dennis's fine but apt reduction, but that my endeavor appears hostile and antithetical to the purposes of the forum as charade! What you seem to resent most about my writing is that it seeks to go under and to get behind. It exposes with a harsh critical light. It reverses the self-claimed certainties of the Position. It uses the same intense tactic the Systems declares it is founded on...against the System itself.

A critical approach of a religious system, no matter how it is carried out, is never received well by the religious type! Religiosity requires a certain obscurity in which to function. It's not for nothing that those environments are softly lit...mysterious. ;-)

[Diebert van Rhijn]

You have arrived back at square one with that post, Alex. But you are right on the money with this part:

And the realization is that 'you-all' are essentially outright religious fanatics! Do you remember the image of the Cheshire Cat? Who slowly disappears until only the smile remains, hanging in the air? My impression is that as all the ground underneath the platform for the construction of an Absolute religious concept, one that could contain and explain all phenomena, disappeared bit by bit until only the smile, a smile that reads 'Absolute', hangs in the air, unsupported by any 'machinery' of thought, so too this Abstract Absolute is seen and in a sense 'worshiped' here.

Assuming we can exchange worship with devotion and dedication, or simply attention. But what you forget to mention is that the Cheshire Smile is seen also as "everything" including the cat and space it hangs in, so it technically does not hang in the air, only when seen as abstract (which always needs a background to contrast). It's good to see you finally have come to the understanding that its "at the core not in any sense a rational system". Which is what has been said all along to you by various players. But never mind that.

As for my "defense", it's really more like a good opportunity to explain and contrast for me. I learn from that, but do you? You are still believing you can get behind the machinery of this "system" to expose the little man, like a wizard of Oz. But reality works differently, indeed employing a "certain obscurity" to function but that's not because it needs to hide but because of how things are, which is also ironic and revolving around empty non-existing cores; the "unspoken".

Still waiting for you to answer a question....

[Alex Jacob]

Diebert wrote: It's good to see you finally have come to the understanding that its "at the core not in any sense a rational system". Which is what has been said all along to you by various players. But never mind that.

No, my friend, it has never, ever been said, and the implications of it have never been put on the table and discussed. While I appreciate, in some degree, your apologetics, I note certain distortions and glossed-over areas in them. You have to, yourself, be invested in the charade-aspect here to become its defender.

Assuming we can exchange worship with devotion and dedication, or simply attention.

This is sophistry on your part. We cannot and we shall not exchange any particular thing for another thing. Rather, we will stay with the 'facts', or we will attempt to define facts, and we will note the effects of certain facts and the decisions that support them. Attention, devotion and dedication are wonderful traits. Absolutist thinking that borders into 'cult-like thinking' is in another category. We stay within this focus because a local neurotic uses every technique of sophistry to avoid naming things with as much precision as possible as what they are, not what he desires to make them.

Now, what is at stake? A great deal is at stake and it shouldn't be me that needs to point this out.

It all hinges, mystically, here:

I hold a skull in my hands whose ironic grin sums up everything I think and feel. A tiny green lizards pokes its head out of an eye socket. It watches me and I see the breathing movement in its tiny ribs.

;-)

As to your questions: remember that I have asked you numerous very direct questions and you have side-stepped them. If you'd like, we can exchange questions: you answer mine and I'll answer yours. But for that you will need to first answer at least one of the questions I posed to you numerous pages back. Just as with Kelly and Ryan of Bluerap and even Dennis you do not pose the questions. You do not frame the discourse. Right now, I am framing the discourse and asking for/hoping for honest participation. I focus on this again because on this forum there is this overt assumption (by the TBs) that 'we own the conversation'. And as I have been saying it is most commonly a sophistic framing of arguments and bogus 'logic' and other ridiculous techniques that are used to limit it.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Yes Alex, it has been said at least 314 times to you that at the core we're not talking, in any sense, about any rational system. Deny it all you want. Ask anyone here or organize a poll. If you really want any "discourse" to happen, you'll have to learn to listen to what's actually being said. You have to know what others mean, let alone reading them properly.

[Alex Jacob]

In the final analysis, there are only two things we can know about the hidden void for sure - namely, (a) that it is not nothingness and (b) that it possesses the capacity to create the construction in which we live. To know anything more than this is impossible - for anyone or anything. Not even the hidden void itself can know anything more about it. For there is literally nothing more to know. As such, our understanding of what lies beyond consciousness is now complete.

In David's system, a group of analytical choices are privileged that are purely rational in scope. It is a thought-system (I use the term mental reform) that moves step by step to a 'final conclusion' as it were. It holds to that description or that vision and pegs on it, as it were, all that a Christian or another style of religionist might peg on their originating and ultimate god. Every part of the thinking processes, up to the point of facing or intuiting the 'empty void, about which nothing can be said, is strictly rational.

If it is true that we can know nothing about 'it' nor nothing more, we really then have no basis to make any other choice about value or meaning or through what means God (the description of the Void is not unsimilar to Yahweh!) may act or be known in our world. This mental ordering, so it seems, leads one to a mute inference in the face of inferred ineffability. But all throughout the specific course of reasoning choices have been made! And all manner of other choices were and are possible.

[Dennis Mahar]

Constant change, moving always, impermanence,
that would be the 'one pony trick' of existence wouldn't.

Seeing it that way,
you can hold it in the palm of your hand.