Christians and me, Part II:

[Pam Seeback]

Gustav:
Well, to be truthful I have looked at your paragraph for a few minutes and I believe I can sense/feel where you desire to go with it, and I do not want to go there. That means not that I do not respect your reasoning, or your conclusion, but that it represents in my understanding not an opening to knowledge, or understanding, or decisive power, or anything that can be considered useful; but away from that to a zone of dead intellectualisation.

You are falling into the same pattern of ignorance here. How do you know that "going there" leads to a zone of "dead intellectualisation" if you have not yet "gone there?"

Still, I can understand in a topical sense, that you are concerned about 'ending suffering' and that this is a large part of your desired discourse. I imagine that, for you, this dovetails into your ideas about certain aspects of Christianity and Buddhism (you refer to these often), and again I can respect that, yet it holds little interest for me, that is, stated in that way, or with that focus. And although I do not like to suffer, neither do I like to set up ideational anaesthetics. It is for this reason that I say that your philosophy, perhaps taken to its extreme of application, is one with a focus on death's door. I do not dis-invalidate this though.

You only have half the "equation." What is missing is what happens when death's door of beliefs/attachments is crossed. But one has to "go there" to find out, doesn't one?

To hold it, to develop it, is in all the senses I mean and which are important to me, to die. We can then debate if it is better to be dead and unsuffering, or alive and sufferful, but this would not really serve either of us.

Have you formed a belief that to cease trying to retrace causes (that in truth, can't be retraced) means that thinking ceases? This is obviously not true as is evidenced by my posts to you.

So, I restate what I have said over and over again: I am interested in defining very different ideas, and for very different uses, within the plane of the present, in real time, among real persons, with real concerns and needs. Really, and overall, my interest is in 'civilisation' and the ideas and attitudes and projects that support it.

But you are not discussing the present, in real time, rather, you are discussing the past as if it is the present, in real time. There is a huge difference between what you believe you are doing and what you are actually doing. This is why what you present (the past) is dead and why what I present (the present) is alive. Oh the irony.

What you are interested in I leave for you to define. And I certainly hope that you will.

I am interested in what is true, what is present, being awake.

Use my position, my articulation, as a take-off point for your own discourse. Such a glorious opportunity, no?

A contrasting position is indeed a beneficial opportunity, thank you.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Graveyard did you say? Oh but don't die yet! To polish your metaphor (I'd have busted you if you'd not put it in quotes!) I think that you'd better have said a moribundary. A place for people to go and die, or a place for those in processes of dying.

This will make Diebert Mother Teresa! ;-)

You are falling into the same pattern of ignorance here. How do you know that "going there" leads to a zone of "dead intellectualisation" if you have not yet "gone there?"

Only because I have observed the enactment over a long period of time. But mark you that I did not say this was 'useless' or 'unworthy' as an activity, rather only that it is not the activity that interests me.

What is missing is what happens when death's door of beliefs/attachments is crossed.

What does one discover there? Coming back from that what do you do/not do/say/think/feel?

Have you formed a belief that to cease trying to retrace causes (that in truth, can't be retraced) means that thinking ceases?

You have jumped onto the term 'retrace'. I mean something different than you, I think. I mean to understand what the man (Eliot) was looking at and considering when he made his statements about the death or end of a culture. I don't have much of an idea what you are on about to be truthful. I am speaking rather simply about 'history' or historical analysis.

I really have no idea what to say to you about this. I'd guess that your position is 100% subjective and that whatever you do or are interested in is 100% confined to what goes on in your own self. I would not call this an invalid endeavour. You are in numerous senses more in line with the 'intention' of the forum with that approach.

But you are not discussing the present, in real time, rather, you are discussing the past as if it is the present, in real time.

The past certainly has a relationship to the present, and knowledge of the past sheds light on the present. I mentioned a paragraph from Eliot's essay which interests me, in the context of a thread which began on the theme (in some sense). I am very much interested in seeing if it is possible to preserve the relationship - culturally, civilisationally - to the 'Christianity' Eliot speaks of. And I also think I do this if one takes 'Christianity' in a very wide sense. And my interest and involvement in this certainly has an impingement into the present - my present - through the people who are near to me.

What in the heck do you want, Pam?! What do you wish to say? ;-)

[Pam Seeback]

Alex, our paths are too different to meet in union. Cheers and fruitful travels!

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Seriously, I say you're an idiot, you say I'm an idiot, who is correct?

If I were you I'd seriously consider my position.

It's been added to the list of undeniable proofs of wrongness, to be referred to at a later date when hopefully logic reigns surpreme:

Beingof1- "I had a conversation with the meta mind of the universe, which spoke to me through a wall."
Cahoot- "Empirical evidence suggests that the death of the body is the end, finish, end of the line."
Gustav- "one is better off expressing one's sense of things in non-direct terms. I have the strong sense that the really valuable things about life cannot be expressed directly, they can be alluded to though." (In reply to the demand for any kind of direct statement about the basic questions of metaphysics.)

Again, you misread: I did not say that it is not possible to make definite statements about things, or something, or a point of philosophy. Rather I said that it is my understanding that the really important things in life are things that are best alluded to, not stated directly.

It is in that space between what is said ... and what you don't hear where much hinges.

Also, Cahoot spoke quite accurately: 'Empirical evidence suggests that the death of the body is the end, finish, end of the line'. That's exactly what empirical evidence suggests. As does: 'Common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness'.

(That happened to me too BTW: The meta-mind of the Universe I mean. Only it spoke to me through an aphid that landed on my nose, in my mother's voice, and in French. Effectively, the same experience and I don't mean to quibble).

[SeekerOfWisdom]

Finally, thank the lord, a statement! Took a while to get it out of you, which was my entire goal. Now we could either have a discussion about that statement, or leave it here, I feel accomplished either way.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Seriously, I say you're an idiot, you say I'm an idiot, who is correct?

If I were you I'd seriously consider my position.

Thank the lord, a statement!

Was it really that hard? As a statement it is not much, and there are others I've made. If I have contributed to your sense of accomplishment I am happy. But it is not that I consider you an 'idiot'. What I find interesting is how - more and more? - people have lost a ground under their feet on which their view of reality, life, the world, is established. We do not, apparently, exist in the same world, which obviously means mental world. I find this operating in many different areas: politics, discussion of religion, the debate between the athestic group and the theistic group, moral and ethical areas. It is endless. The differences are so wide that people seem only to end up hating each other. And these differences - or am I imagining this? or is it only that I am just noticing it? - seem to be increasing, getting worse.

[SeekerOfWisdom]

What I find interesting is how - more and more? - people have lost a ground under their feet on which their view of reality, life, the world, is established. We do not, apparently, exist in the same world,

Indeed, and this seems to be the core of the difference. I promote that groundlessness, that falling away of what has been established, that renunciation of all prejudice, predisposition, and familiarity, whereas you disagree with this core idea.

But I assume you have heard of the idea? Of a sort of extreme philosophical doubt or skepticism? (That might be the closest way to describe the beginning of this outlook)

I suggest you give it a go! Plunging into that void is the start, I would say. "Non-attachment" it might be described as. And until you do so, until you pursue philosophy and the question of existence/consciousness by independently contemplating it- without the aid of anything that has been established- then you could never understand it.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Seriously, I say you're an idiot, you say I'm an idiot, who is correct?

There's a difference between observations or even opinions and constructing, maintaining some logical coherence between those.

In Gundam Bjornstrand style, one could make the observation that Gustav is the Hannibal Lecter of the forum mental institute, the encyclopedic mechanics of his mind being far elevated over the rumble of the hoi polloi, making all "geniuses" look like dead lambs . Of course in his case perhaps a more rare auto-canabilistic lector. But this observation depends logically on describing this forum, or the world as large, as some State Hospital like in "One Flow Over the Cuckoo's Nest", which would made me Nurse Mildred Ratched of course, not exactly Theresa, while I'd like to see myself more as a Jack Nicholson (as McMurphy but perhaps I'm confusing it with Kubrick's "The Shining", a known territory, as well). Trivia note: I should get a prize by linking two of the thee films ever winning all available academy awards - and I would link the third if I'd ever seen it, but perhaps I'll just pretend I did after reading Wikipedia.

Also, Cahoot spoke quite accurately: 'Empirical evidence suggests that the death of the body is the end, finish, end of the line'. That's exactly what empirical evidence suggests.

It's similar to any observation or opinion on death of the body as "end of line." Which line exactly? The one we first define (birth) and having to end as consequence of that act (death)? There are many lines we could define and they all die at some point. But any more reasonable, logical coherence would lead to the insight that any immortality or eternity has to include the lack of beginning and as such no-defining, no-identifying. This obviously will not change change, the fact we're dying every moment, nothing being exactly the same any more despite desperate attempts at repetition. Most of what human beings do, have to do, has to do with repetition, rituals to open the way for incarnation of something. A process not even related to baby births and dying at "old age", which is all myth, a story one can live in and relate to, which is largely what nature suggests you do as it provides the tools to survive right now, assuming culture remains as-is.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Indeed, and this seems to be the core of the difference. I promote that groundlessness, that falling away of what has been established, that renunciation of all prejudice, predisposition, and familiarity, whereas you disagree with this core idea.

To confront what it is that I understand you as promoting requires a bit of effort.

I'd first suggest what I have suggested as a simple observation: if your promoted process were a valuable one you would have a good deal more as product to offer. In your writing, which I have read fairly extensively, you don't give evidence of this. There are many criticisms one could bring against the way you write, the limited vocabulary, the dreary repetitiousness of your discourse. In short you are, by and large, uninteresting. That could be forgiven if, as in a foreigner writing in a language not his own, some kernels of interesting wisdom and information came through. Someone else might disagree but I think you fail pretty roundly. What this indicates to me (since I can forgive bad writing if there is good content there) is that your promoted project will cause you to deal in and on only a limited quantity (to put it this way) of information circulating in your mind and consciousness. That is one element of the criticism.

I'd further suggest that, in the manner of a young upstart you have latched onto a project which, for you right now, seems to have a tremendous relevance and importance. You seem to me to have been infected narcissistically with some ideas which - I gather this from your general attitude - cause you to assume the discovery of some genuine and important territory, when in truth it is possible that you may only be dallying with some ideas or stances about which you might well be ignorant of consequences. This would be, and has been, my principal line of criticism: Unawareness of consequences. I would link this attitude of yours - an arrogant assumption - very directly with the 3 founders of this forum. In essence, and alongside numerous positive features, these 3 fellows have, if you will, institutionalised their ignorant stances. They have too quickly arrived at conclusions, and too quickly rendered those conclusions into a praxis, and this praxis they have launched as a modus operandi. They attract followers who are quite similar to them in inner construct. You seem to me to be a classic case.

To understand this, one has to 'go into it'. One has to investigate what they are recommending, but then also why they recommend it. There is a surface (what they say they do or desire) and an interior depth (the actual facts of why they recommend and do what they do).

'Ideas have consequences'. As I have briefly suggested, I see you and the focus of the forum as articulated in its 'founding documents' as being not exactly 'wrong' but rather as 'seriously flawed'. I have made many many efforts to indicate why this is so. It is in a space between 'good, valuable, useful' and 'destructive, negative, harmful' that all of my discourse situates itself. It is a critical project, yes, but it is not a project with a harming intention.

Now, with this outline in place we have to turn back to what you have suggested:

• "Groundlessness, that falling away of what has been established, that renunciation of all prejudice, predisposition, and familiarity".

Let us take 'falling away from what has been established' to its logical conclusions. Let us disestablish what has been established in our language. Let us forget language. Let us unteach it. Instead of teaching a child a language (said to be what makes a human being a human being) I see no reason why we cannot 'fall away from what has been established' there. In this, we can certainly take radical positions against prejudice, predisposition, and familiarity.

If you begin to take your statements - which reveal a profound lack of consideration and responsible thought - to their conclusions you will quickly see where they lead. We have no good reason to hold to the 'prejudices' of technical skill such as agriculture, industry, municipal organisation, manufacture, navigation, even to mapping and charting. Do you think I am being merely facetious? I suggest to you that I am not. And I can I believe explain why.

Now, I suspect that you will say: 'No, no! I only mean this in a certain and specific category!' That category is what you call 'philosophy'. But, to be honest, you have zero or very little familiarity with philosophy as it is universally understood and so your definition of 'philosophy' is, I suggest, one of solipsism. You write and think as a solipsist. But I hold you less responsible than you might imagine. While you are ensconced within 'you' and have all these things and ideas you furiously wish to defend, I am not really focussed on 'you' except as a symptom of general processes. I have written extensively about this and it would be easy as pie to locate it. Except: You will not. But it is more serious: You cannot understand what is being written. It goes over your head. Why? Simple: you are involved in a solipsistic process which turns uniquely, and exclusively, upon yourself. It is subjectivity on steroids. You value and exalt as aspect of yourself while you simultaneously negate all that you 'reject' and dismiss because of what you 'promote', i.e. the project that you name, above.

From my perspective there are two elements here. I proposed through a snip of writing about Nabokov (biography I admire) that it is quite possible, and very valuable, to renew our stance in respect to the cosmos, to life, however one wishes to describe it. That is why I posted it:



Additionally, I posted in this thread, and because I consider it of high value in relation to the Kierkegaardian notion (through the lens of the author cited) of Christianity's focus on ever-renewal, of regeneration, of turning back again to 'life' and resurrecting our relationship to it. Remember: All that I have been writing has a relationship to the OP, and my ultimate purposes are, overall, to explain the importance of holding to tradition even though there are myriad ways to carry that forward. I posted this excerpt from Popper which, in numerous ways, expresses the better aspect of what (I suppose) you are interested in 'promoting'.

But I assume you have heard of the idea? Of a sort of extreme philosophical doubt or skepticism? (That might be the closest way to describe the beginning of this outlook).

It would be erroneous to assume I had not. Additionally, I also think that you underestimate many of your interlocutors. I turn back once again to a simple, empirical fact: If you are an exponent of this 'new, fresh take' on things, you have failed its possibilities. Because you have failed its possibilities, I am inclined overall to reject your proposal and your promotion. It is almost that simple. So and as I say: I come along behind and I pick up the pieces of what you carelessly toss away. What you do not really comprehend. I am forced then to look at it all over again and with fresh eyes. Thus, you become a 'promotion' that I feel it better to avoid than one I desire to emulate.

I suggest you give it a go! Plunging into that void is the start, I would say. "Non-attachment" it might be described as. And until you do so, until you pursue philosophy and the question of existence/consciousness by independently contemplating it- without the aid of anything that has been established- then you could never understand it.

One has to spend some time speaking of what happens to a man, and to a culture, which breaks or loses its organic relationship - its roots so to speak - with its past. This is where there is a fine line that has to be navigated carefully (and you seem anything but careful). As Popper expresses, a fresh relationship is required and necessary, but this is not the same as abandonment of 'what has made us us'. I might defend - if I were to rewrite! - what you are promoting, and in significant senses I am doing just that. But what I notice too is the destructive aspect of your project. I have seen it and described it in various ways: An acid, a destructiveness, a carelessness. These acids are operative in our present and I suggest that they are NOT part of wholesome projects. But you have no knowledge or concern about any of that: solipsism will have that effect!

Many of us - I suppose this is so - at different times and in different ways, have pursued paths that are similar to what Popper describes. I can say with honesty that I have. Yet in my case I have learned not to cut, as it were, the connecting tether, and additionally that it is imperative not to do that. I have also written extensively about that.

'You' excite therefor a reaction which is very different from what you desire. One has to backtrack, go back over, return and reconsider, nearly everything. Truthfully, this is what GF has meant to me: An extraordinary opportunity to undertake a great deal of work in these directions. As I have said, I am both appalled and disgusted by the limitations that mire 'them' and 'you', but very thankful that I - like one of the flies I speak of - sailed by and attracted by some light or other, landed here.

[Pam Seeback]

Seeker: I suggest you give it a go! Plunging into that void is the start, I would say. "Non-attachment" it might be described as. And until you do so, until you pursue philosophy and the question of existence/consciousness by independently contemplating it- without the aid of anything that has been established- then you could never understand it.

Are you implying that you did not avail yourself of the established works of those who went before you on the road to non-attachment? No questioning of sutras or scriptures or poems or books that inspired your contemplation? Even the Buddha who meditated unto enlightenment did not come without preparation for the "aha moment" - he experienced many years of questioning different teachings. While it is true that contemplation is a solitary activity, "independent" contemplation an oxymoron. There is no independence in the causality.

This is the meaning of the biblical passage "I will never leave or forsake you". There is always a road of breadcrumbs left by the causality to pick up and taste (or feast upon) both for the conventional path and for the path of its transcendence. They have different tastes to be sure, but their tastes are there for willing tongues.

[jupiviv]

After a heart-to-heart over PMs, Alex and I have felt compelled (for reasons too complicated to mention) to, as Alex puts it, "exist together like Andromeda and the Milky Way, knowing collision is inevitable but wholly ignorant of everything else relevant to that fact". We are opposites, him and me, and we intend to stay that way. But only a fool thinks that "opposite" means "enemy", because they've clearly never memorised every single word in the Oxford dictionary by rote. Enemies hallucinate, opposites perceive; enemies receive one's tail, opposites one's head; enemies want to destroy and be destroyed, opposites want to stay in and play whack-a-mole (literally) with each others bodily orifices. Briefly put, opposites are awesome. And Alex and myself, in the words of Alex him(HAHA! no, no, I won't Alex______...don't worry)self, "are, in view of the recent conflagration, not entirely at altogether too hostile terms with each other".

These are heady days, indeed. In any case, the enemy of my opposite is my enemy, so from now on I shall be picking apart every post of SeekerofWisdom and his supposedly "female" (I don't think anyone in this forum even understands what that word even *means* apart from....no, no, I mustn't!) toady that I can find. There ain't room for two toadies in this here forum, and I - being male - am naturally more competent in such a role towards Alex, she being a wo....I mean, HE being a worthy lad...er...lad, because, you know, lads do better than lasses at everything, including Toadygistics.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Jup, that explains you making a post that says nothing but taking the grand stage and dancing around! These things rub off. :)

The opposites never are in chance of collision though, not here. Let me just quote myself quoting:

My point being: religion in whatever form, even discussions around it, will result in the typical perpetuation of the feminine. As if every discussion is bound to be given homeopathic lethal doses, as Dan remarked halfway that he needed another stroke to fit in. Every discussion of more than one page will suffer the same fate though, a never-ending exposition of the point and the fate of religion.

• Masculine and feminine are light years apart. No one even knows whether there is still a relation between the two. It's like billiard balls which meet at different speeds, the one touching the other before the other touches it: the non-polarity of the sexes means they no longer share the same space. ... And woman is, for example, the only animal creature capable of distilling death for man in homeopathic doses. But the opposite is not true. Man has never signified death for woman, as she signifies it for man. There is no symmetry in the world of love. (from Cool Memories II, by Jean Baudrillard)

[jupiviv]

What I find interesting is how - more and more? - people have lost a ground under their feet on which their view of reality, life, the world, is established. We do not, apparently, exist in the same world,

Indeed, and this seems to be the core of the difference. I promote that groundlessness, that falling away of what has been established, that renunciation of all prejudice, predisposition, and familiarity, whereas you disagree with this core idea.

A Jupitoady appears! Look, Seeker, you aren't fit to pluck the dingleberries out of her...I mean, the herculean dingleberries out of my callipygian Mis...er...Master who is making me so miserable by not responding to my PMs even once in the last hour or so, so be a good boy and shut up when the men...er...grownups are talking.

I'll humour you, though. How can "groundlessness" be an idea, and furthermore be *promoted*? It's like saying - "I paint this wall with paint thinner." No, it's like saying, "I paint this colourless wall in a world devoid of all colour with paint thinner." Reason naturally passes judgement on its environment, and judgment requires grounds and in a certain sense also "prejudice" if one interprets that word etymologically.

Face it, Seeker: you're calling the grapes sour. Dennis Mahar's "Purposeless Guide to Grokking the Meaninglessness of Meaningful Meaningless Emptytude" ain't an ejewmacation, son. An ejewmacation is what you have when you can cite passages from the middle of a book as evidence of your adversary's idiocy!

[jupiviv]

Jup, that explains you making a post that says nothing but taking the grand stage and dancing around! These things rub off. :)

They certainly do. We were pushing boundaries all weekend with a feisty little hardcover of Humanae Vitae...."encyclical" is all I can say without risking incarceration!

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

There is always a road of breadcrumbs left by the causality to pick up and taste (or feast upon) both for the conventional path and for the path of its transcendence. They have different tastes to be sure, but their tastes are there for willing tongues.

This is an interesting and a pretty complex metaphysical statement. The snips of Nabokov submited just above interest me for the same reason: Not only is 'the world' a complex creature, but so is the mind that perceives it. One is related to the other. And it is within 'that' that our life takes place in kama, artha and dharma.

What interests me is a 'world' in which these possibilties function together and not necessarily against one another. Certainly in Catholic Europe the various 'estates' of life were recognised, and the within religious and social organisation society recognised the validity and in a sense the soverignity of each pursuit.

It is also noteworthy that the view you present, though you have expressed in neutrally as 'the causality', points to the possibility (but really more) of interchange and interaction: One can in different ways beckon to the 'causality' and, in one way or other, either immediately or with intricate levels of 'response' over years or a whole lifetime, it 'speaks back' to one.

It will appear as an unfair jab at the Founders but such an idea-possibility does not 'function' in their imposed vision of the world. I doubt for example that Kevin could see or describe it in this way. David though once used rather mystic language to explain some sort of 'causality' issuing forth from the 'black void'.

The topic of metaphysics - and Shakesepare's world as an example - is quite interesting because in the cosmology of the late Medieval world; the understanding, the cosmological grasp, allowed for so much more interchange between the different levels of being. The Cosmos was a totality with infinite links between all parts of it.

Now, as things stand, the complex and multivalent idea you have expressed is not understood as a 'real possibility' but rather as a delusion and a self-deception.

A poem of Robert Frost:

• As long on earth
  As our comparisons were stoutly upward
  With gods and angels, we were men at least,
  But little lower than the gods and angels.
  But once comparisons were yeilded downward,
  Once we began to see our images
  Reflected in the mud and even the dust,
  'Twas disillusion upon disillusion.
  We were lost peicemeal to the animals,
  Like people thrown out to delay the wolves.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

I still am not sure exactly where Diebert fits into a great deal of 'all this'. I am concerned at times by the fixation on Baudrillardian conundrums - and they are 'late' conundrums of a man unsettled in the frame of the human.

[SeekerOfWisdom]

I'd first suggest what I have suggested as a simple observation: if your promoted process were a valuable one you would have a good deal more as product to offer. In your writing, which I have read fairly extensively, you don't give evidence of this.

It's already been established, and it's extremely clear, that you don't at all know what the 'process' is. All that you evidence is that you lean on an intellectual crutch, that your understanding is based on the works of others, and that you have no independent insight into philosophy. So why should I care what you 'think'? I'd bet that you spend almost no time in solitary contemplation, at least compared to how much time you spend distracting yourself with the writings of others. What you 'think' is most likely never criticized or questioned, never compared to what you actually know. As has been mentioned, I want to talk about what you know, and by doing that, we can easily determine whether you're delusional or not. It doesn't matter whether you think you're intelligent or how well read you are, if you spend your time praying to an imaginary god, then you're still delusional. Get it?

For example:

Also, Cahoot spoke quite accurately: 'Empirical evidence suggests that the death of the body is the end, finish, end of the line'. That's exactly what empirical evidence suggests. As does: 'Common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness'.

Absolutely delusional and wrong. That's all that matters to me, so if you'd like to actually talk about philosophy, and discover why you're wrong, rather than spending all your time whining and complaining about what you think about me (ad hominem) then let me know.

To understand this, one has to 'go into it'. One has to investigate what they are recommending, but then also why they recommend it. There is a surface (what they say they do or desire) and an interior depth (the actual facts of why they recommend and do what they do).

Just earlier you were saying how you refuse to 'go into it'. To which movingalways replied:

"How do you know that "going there" leads to a zone of "dead intellectualisation" if you have not yet "gone there?"

To which you replied:

"Only because I have observed the enactment over a long period of time."

Here's a quote for you, something that has been established: ""I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand."

Let me know when you know what you're talking about.

If you begin to take your statements - which reveal a profound lack of consideration and responsible thought - to their conclusions you will quickly see where they lead. We have no good reason to hold to the 'prejudices' of technical skill such as agriculture, industry, municipal organisation, manufacture, navigation, even to mapping and charting. Do you think I am being merely facetious? I suggest to you that I am not. And I can I believe explain why.

Now, I suspect that you will say: 'No, no! I only mean this in a certain and specific category!' That category is what you call 'philosophy'. But, to be honest, you have zero or very little familiarity with philosophy as it is universally understood and so your definition of 'philosophy' is, I suggest, one of solipsism. You write and think as a solipsist.

That is not at all the conclusion, nor did anyone suggest so, save for you. Though I would suggest that if you were to spend time in contemplation, don't let prejudices regarding navigation be part of the process. During that time, you definitely should be as free of prejudice as possible, but not while you're sailing a boat. You took my statement, which is primarily in relation to contemplation of reality, and then straw manned me and idiotically applied it to such circumstances as agriculture.

My defintion of philosophy is 'love of wisdom'.

Solipsism:

"The view or theory that the self is all that can be known to exist.

Extreme preoccupation with and indulgence of one's feelings, desires, etc.; egoistic self-absorption."

The second one sounds a lot like you, since you constantly explain how you feel about things and rarely include any reasoning. The first I can't comment on, since it used the word "self". Unless you'd like to discuss that word.

From my perspective there are two elements here. I proposed through a snip of writing about Nabokov (biography I admire) that it is quite possible, and very valuable, to renew our stance in respect to the cosmos, to life, however one wishes to describe it. That is why I posted it:

I would need more context to properly reply to this short excerpt. Otherwise feel free to quote more specifically.

I posted this excerpt from Popper which, in numerous ways, expresses the better aspect of what (I suppose) you are interested in 'promoting'.

From the excerpt:
"so if we want to make progress we should not fight to the death for existing theories but welcome criticism of them and let our theories die in our stead."

I would instead say that, for someone like you, your whole world view is a theory. Most likely, your entire understanding of reality, self, humanity, and the cosmos is a fiction. That you are essentially living in a fantasy realm, one that is completely made up of prejudices, beliefs, hearsay, conjecture, and second hand knowledge. Accept criticism, but don't believe in theories! We're talking about the most profound subject possible, the very nature of reality and being, and here you are, promoting that you should study the words of others in depth (essentially leading to an ignorant idolization of others, as you seem to be doing) and here I am, promoting that you should study yourself, your beliefs, your thoughts, your feelings, your attachments, and your own experience of reality in depth.

you have failed its possibilities.

By your own word you've admitted you don't know and have never been interested in understanding what "it" is.

But what I notice too is the destructive aspect of your project. I have seen it and described it in various ways: An acid, a destructiveness, a carelessness. These acids are operative in our present and I suggest that they are NOT part of wholesome projects.

Really? How about you look at the standard view, that of the believer, that of the idolizer, that of the dolt who clings to conjecture and hearsay. Go, spend time listening to a single christian who prays, and you will see the effects of the intellectual crutch. What could be more destructive and careless than solely listening to others? Stop bending the knee Gustav, you have it in you to discover truth for yourself. You need to let go of your baggagge and earn an independent understanding, that is the only way to wisdom.

Are you implying that you did not avail yourself of the established works of those who went before you on the road to non-attachment? No questioning of sutras or scriptures or poems or books that inspired your contemplation?

Of course not, they can be extremely valuable for those who are beginning on that road, perhaps even necessary. But the fact is, most people such as Gustav, can't tell the difference between what is valuable in relation to wisdom and what is misleading. More importantly, at some point even these texts need to be completely done away with, at least in terms of the degree of trust one might have in a text, lest they remain as a crutch. It's possible that this is something that you haven't fully done. This relates to what we were discussing on the other thread, we'll see there.

so from now on I shall be picking apart every post of SeekerofWisdom and his supposedly "female"

God, I have to listen to all your ramblings, jokes, metaphors, and other shit.

Example:

play whack-a-mole (literally) with each others bodily orifices.

Mind explaining how that's relevant to the nature of ultimate reality?

so be a good boy and shut up when the men...er...grownups are talking.

Ad hominem, ramblings, idiocy.

How can "groundlessness" be an idea, and furthermore be *promoted*?

The meaning communicated through the use of the word groundlessness, can definitely be called an idea. It can be 'promoted' using language, but of course the word is not the experience. An independent understanding of "non-attachment" would be a requirement for one to properly understand what is being communicated with the word "groundless".

Reason naturally passes judgement on its environment, and judgment requires grounds and in a certain sense also "prejudice" if one interprets that word etymologically.

In the first half of that sentence alone there is an unclear blanket statement which assumes I have made the same philosophical assumptions as you. For example, the subject/object split between "reason" or the "reasoner" and "environment", I think we'd need to talk about the self and reality before I can understand how you percieve the relationship between the two.

you're calling the grapes sour. Dennis Mahar's "Purposeless Guide to Grokking the Meaninglessness of Meaningful Meaningless Emptytude" ain't an ejewmacation, son

Your ramblings, which have nothing to do with philosophy, don't trick anyone into thinking you're intelligent, except maybe for Gustav.

I'd love to hear you actually talk about "The nature of Ultimate Reality an the path to Enlightenment".

As I've mentioned: Your kind are intellectual dancers, you dance around having to say anything of substance regarding these fundamental topics so as to avoid getting caught out and having your ignorance made clear.

Prove me wrong! Gustav already made a statement regaridng his belief about death. He is undoubtedly wrong and has proven his misunderstanding. Waiting on you to make a statement Jup. Every single comment in which you avoid doing so will only prove the fact that you don't know what you're talking about.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Your kind are intellectual dancers, you dance around having to say anything of substance regarding these fundamental topics so as to avoid getting caught out and having your ignorance made clear.

That doesn't seem like a reasonable requirement. It appears as some absolutist pipe dream! You're not going to get your "substance" on any of the most fundamental and substantial topics in existence (on existence). The more one tries, the more it becomes dance, abstract, ambiguous or otherwise just barely useful simplicity. The reason for that is that you cannot "address" any of it fully with words, gestures or any other set of symbols or tradition. Our reality itself dances around on our abstracts, our own ambiguity (who and what are we anyway?) - our own wish to make things clear and understandable or to boil life down into a pill.

And yet I do think something goes on within these conversations, depending on the "substance" already there at both ends. Wisdom can be enjoyed by anyone loving wisdom. Sure, it can become habit, a way to keep one self busy, to produce one self as "philosopher" and online, part-time thinkers but most of the time it's really about the question what can be left out, what can be transcended, what can be let go and let it all speak for itself. All your philosophizing you do by yourself. It's never happening "here". For harder "substance", do go and live a while! Reflect on it. Bring back anything you've learned and leave out the boring details please!

[Diebert van Rhijn]

I still am not sure exactly where Diebert fits into a great deal of 'all this'.

Nice demon-stration of your wish to fit people, ideas, subtext and context in all your neatly controlled and dominated packages!

If I'd be in need of any mission, it would be to escape such boxing clever classification, all those "y'all" schemes! To see the black, "evil", acidic, nihilistic swans take out all the attempts to make sense of your little white world....

[SeekerOfWisdom]

That doesn't seem like a reasonable requirement. It appears as some absolutist pipe dream! You're not going to get your "substance" on any of the most fundamental and substantial topics in existence (on existence). The more one tries, the more it becomes dance, abstract, ambiguous or otherwise just barely useful simplicity.

I'd have to disagree, people like the Buddha for example provided plenty of useful substance. I agree though that philosophy is done by yourself, but discussion is not.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Most Esteemed Seeker. I think we should recognise - I hope that you do - that you are I were not created by the Causality to agree, nor like Jupi's giant swirling galaxies, to blend. As you know, and even if you consider it a borrowed idea, or a delusional 'story' about 'reality', I have a strong hunch that: "You can get nearer and nearer, so to speak, to reality; but you can never get near enough because reality is an infinite succession of steps, levels of perception, false bottoms, and hence unquenchable, unattainable". You have stated that you see this as a 'beginner's position' and therefor do not regard it as 'true'. I'd imagine that, with this, as in many other areas that could be noted, we can be said to come from irreconcilable positions.

As I said just previously, I found that to confront the absolutisms that function at the core of the idea-system of our Beloved Founders, and which ideas in differing dilutions function in many who fly through here, requires a whole project of 'back-tracking' and poring over ideas, history, philosophical positions, social questions, and much else. It is a significant and demanding work. I chose to take some aspect of this work upon me. Now, we know that this 'work' as I call it is ipso facto invalid for you since it involves looking at and considering idea structures that for you are (ipso facto) second-hand and delusional. Again, with that the possibility of 'conversation' ceases because we function in radically different magisteria. So, instead of hashing-out what we both know (we all know) to be unreconcilable, my choice and strategy is just to try to get it out in the open. My sense is that it is for others to judge and by that I mean to look at, to consider. I assume that a 'rational person' (a tricky designation!) will be swayed to my viewpoint (which really is a magisteria in many senses), but we know very well that there are some who are drawn to your viewstructure and who - if you'll pardon the metaphor - make hay with it.

As you may guess, I consider your 'entire position' to be a sort of articulated madness. I am not just saying that to make use of some dramatic term. Like you, I suppose, I allow 'delusion' as a designator though one has to be quite careful with its use. In short and in fine then: I understand your position as being 'delusion on steroids'. Yet at the same time, knowing what I know of Life, and understanding that life is a platform for exploration by the psyche of all matters, all possibilities, all pastimes - everything imaginable - that it offers to a 'soul' (used non-religiously) the ways-and-means to pursue its desires. That is a tenet of my understanding: that we are given this *space* (the 'world' as a loka, a sphere of existence into which we 'come').

Obviously, that is why I appreciate some of the terms of explanation - the suggestions if you will - in some of the biographical sketches of Nabokov's thought. As you may also guess - I have said it various times here on GF - I tend to understand life as being 'novelistic', and that we are all writers of novels and forgers of existential - metaphysical - positions: our metaphysical dreams. There appear to be times when these Visions coincide and achievement on a grand scale is possible, and other times when each vision atomises, breaks apart, the ground of understanding on which we rest fails, and the 'cold night turns us all to fools and madmen'. Unlike you, I cannot be said to be interested in the or an absolute solution or even explanation to existence as, through intuition and some level of experience, I understand it as non-solutionable.

As you may guess my 'strategy' has more in common with a Christian attitude insofar as I see 'soul' as part-and-parcel of greater reality which, in the end, it cannot understand and certainly not control. And this will explain why I am always inclined to defend aspects of Christian religiosity and the understanding of Grace and why, in many different ways and for numerous reasons, I am an apologist for Christian vision at the most central, the most metaphysically revealed, level. Naturally, no part of this will make sense to you.

Some years back I explored Ernest Becker in an attempt to gain some understanding of the 'Zen Manoeuvre', and to understand how it is, and why it is, that Westerners (like yourself) become seduced by a 'philosophy' which is, in the end, the very end of philosophy, as it is of the 'self'. (These are the 'acids' I refer to). It is, I admit, not a simple issue or problem, and I also know that some on this Forum, and in many other spaces one can explore on the Internet, have been similarly 'seduced'. Ideas Have Consequences and they have value and weight. Ideas are the stuff that we feed on, and what we feed on determines the structure of the body that develops. What is happening in our shared 'body' right now - in our minds and with our ideas about 'reality' - is extremely important and highly relevant. That much I know, that much I will say with certainty.

Is this a 'philosophical position'? Is this an 'articulated platform'? It isn't, not really. It is more a defensive posture against an 'infection', an infection that infects the West and that is large, huge, of consequence. That much I also 'know'. For this reason I place a great deal of emphasis on statements of idea as this:

• "The point of view whose object is to show that Christianity is not a peep-hole restricting the vision to a single object, nor a way of thinking and feeling which admits only one state of mind, but on the contrary a permanent source of rejuvenation and life".

I started on this thread with this idea, and I have remained constant with it and in 'defence' of it. I am interested in the conceptual structures that bring one toward 'rejuvenation and life', not to graveyards or moribundaries.

[jupiviv]

so from now on I shall be picking apart every post of SeekerofWisdom and his supposedly "female"

God, I have to listen to all your ramblings, jokes, metaphors, and other shit.

In the immortal words of Alex: "This is an interesting and a pretty complex metaphysical statement."

Example:

play whack-a-mole (literally) with each others bodily orifices.

Mind explaining how that's relevant to the nature of ultimate reality?

Well what does groundlessness and non-attachment have to do with ultimate reality? Why don't you spell them out instead of telling others to spell out their worldviews?

So far, the closest you have come to explaining them is by suggesting that the *beginning* of the process of attaining groundlessness/non-attachment is an extreme form of doubt and skepticism. You're certainly correct about the skepticism part. However, skepticism is not the beginning of non-attachment, but its consequence. We can't doubt anything unless we've *ascertained* why anything should be doubted at all, and that "why" - in its deepest form - is wisdom.

How can "groundlessness" be an idea, and furthermore be *promoted*?

The meaning communicated through the use of the word groundlessness, can definitely be called an idea. It can be 'promoted' using language, but of course the word is not the experience. An independent understanding of "non-attachment" would be a requirement for one to properly understand what is being communicated with the word "groundless".

And how is this posturing any different from what the talented and beautiful Alex does?

Alex: Occidental reality is too complex to explain without quoting passages from books that at least 95% of Occidentalians haven't read, and even then only indirectly. But my purpose is to promote an open-minded and rational approach to understanding it and renewing it within ourselves and our milieu.

You: We have to independently experience non-attachment to understand it, and having understood it I want to promote it through stock Buddhist/Zennish phrases like "non-attachment" and "the falling away of prejudice".

Both of you are spinning around in eternal samsaric circles, touching each other only on the halfway point of the straight line connecting your respective centers. That halfway point is pretentious periphrasis.

Reason naturally passes judgement on its environment, and judgment requires grounds and in a certain sense also "prejudice" if one interprets that word etymologically.

In the first half of that sentence alone there is an unclear blanket statement which assumes I have made the same philosophical assumptions as you. For example, the subject/object split between "reason" or the "reasoner" and "environment", I think we'd need to talk about the self and reality before I can understand how you percieve the relationship between the two.

Regardless of your philosophical assumptions, it is an indisputable fact that reason naturally (i.e. by its very nature) passes judgement. If you dispute this assertion you will prove it.

Reasoning indubitably requires a subject and object, also regardless of the aforesaid. Again, disputing this statement proves its verity. I'm not the one throwing around blanket statements around here.

I'd love to hear you actually talk about "The nature of Ultimate Reality an the path to Enlightenment".

That's what this thread is all about you yob! I started it to demonstrate (perhaps superfluously, but whatever) the obfuscation and deceit in an article written by a Christian apologist, and using that pretext demonstrated the path to Enlightenment. After Alex pranced in, I demonstrated that he is a pleonastic buffoon (which I suspect has "set him off"). My last few posts are concerned with getting some lulz out of a discussion that ended around page 1. You should follow Alex's advice and read what others write before responding to it.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

We can't doubt anything unless we've *ascertained* why anything should be doubted at all, and that "why" - in its deepest form - is wisdom.

Giant Declarative Statement. Is that really what 'wisdom' is? It is with these statements that 'wisdom' is claimed by one or the other. Then, a whole series of further barking statements ensue, each one carving out a position through an 'I am right - you are wrong' discursive game. Jupi has in many senses mastered the game since he has mastered a 'posture' in regard to the Ultimate Declarative Statement: what is 'wisdom', who 'attains' it, and who then doles it out. It is foundational to Zennish intellectual discourse. I have observed Jupi polish his front over time, and tighten up his discourse, but it seems to me all founded on a false claim: 'I know what wisdom is and I define it'. Puncture that claim and the whole insubstantial edifice crumbles.

I'd say that the declaration is a sham declaration. It has no substance. It is in its way a mirage. You have to be playing the game of declaring 'wisdom' for the game to function. To collapse the game, one simply denies the claim as having validity. Then, a 'real conversation' where value has to be defined and explained, with real examples from life lived, comes to the fore.

It actually comes back to a conversation of 'categories of value'. That is a non-functionable conversation since, by definition, 'value' in this style of thinking has no meaning or relevance. One defines meaning the further deluded one becomes!

Both of you are spinning around in eternal samsaric circles, touching each other only on the halfway point of the straight line connecting your respective centers. That halfway point is pretentious periphrasis.

More posture. The term 'samsaric' is likely a key here, but like 'wisdom' is a trick term of pseudo-discourse. I'd also suggest that what Jupi attempts here is not discourse, or an attempt to define a value-base, but more abstract veering away from that. At this point, the conversation circles further and further away from anything genuinely conversable, into a territory that is only personal declaration, or the declarations of a personality. A significant quantity of the conversations that occur on this base of conversation, are valueless and meaningless and serve no real purpose.

[SeekerOfWisdom]

And so, again, I wrote out a long reply, wasn't logged in, and now it's gone. Am I the only one this happens to? I'd be embarassed to mention how many times this has happenned to me. That usually forces me to call it quits.

[SeekerOfWisdom]

I'd say that the declaration is a sham declaration. It has no substance.

See, you want some substance baby! You've probably just been exposed to so many different views you no longer believe it exists, and wouldn't be able to tell if it were right infront of you. I'll tell you again, there is truth, and you can only find it through independent contemplation. Best to start with the fundamentals. Go and contemplate on "thought" and "belief" for a thousand hours. Just my advice.